President Trump waded into the British Conservative party leadership battle, offering praise for Boris Johnson but apparently completely forgetting that he had an extended Trump Tower interview another candidate, Michael Gove.
Gove is Scottish but when a British reporter told Trump that Gove was “coming up on the rails” in the leadership contest, Trump misheard and said: “Wow, from Wales?”
May is to step down as Conservative party leader on Friday and those vying to replace her have been maneuvering for attention from Trump.
Gove, the U.K. environment secretary and one of the front runners, secured the first interview for a British news outlet with Trump after his election victory, sitting down with the president along with Rupert Murdoch in Trump Tower just before his inauguration.
But when the president was asked what he thought of the various candidates — including Jeremy Hunt, the foreign secretary as well as prominent Brexiteer Gove — and their ability to run the country, he seemed to have forgotten their Trump Tower meeting.
“I know Boris. I like him, I’ve liked him for a long time. I think he would do a very good job. I know Jeremy, I think he’d do a very good job. I don’t know Michael, but would he do a good job? Jeremy tell me,” he said to peels of laughter.”
Johnson, 54, Hunt, 52, and Gove, 51, and former prime minister David Cameron, 52, were all students at Oxford University together in the mid-1980s.
Trump’s oversight will be embarrassing for Gove who has ground to make up against Johnson.
In the interview for The Times of London , he described their meeting as taking place in Trump’s “glitzy golden man cave” on the 26th floor of Trump Tower and said the president praised the U.K. for voting to leave the E.U.
And Gove gushed when he wrote of their personal connection.
“He even complimented me on my appearance, not just the first time anyone has ever said anything nice about my looks but also telling evidence for his many critics that he is either prepared to lie outrageously at the drop of a hat or has shockingly poor judgment,” he said in the article published three days before the inauguration.
At the end of the interview the president elected posed for a photograph with his thumbs held aloft beside Gove, who did the same .
It later emerged that a third person had been seated beside the two journalists conducting the interview. Rupert Murdoch, owner of The Times, was in Trump’s office at the time.
