President Donald Trump has retweeted a tweet from controversial British commentator Katie Hopkins, in which she praises a number of far-right politicians and says “the fightback by proud nations is on”.
In a post on Wednesday night, Hopkins listed the names of four politicians, all of whom have a track record of populist and discriminatory views. She also said that “god-willing/jihadi-failing” she will be alive to see “Boris Johnson in Number 10” and “Trump in the White House” and “Netanyahu building Israel”.
Trump retweeted the post early on Thursday morning.
The four right-wing politicians named in Hopkins’ tweet are:
- Jair Bolsonaro, the populist leader of Brazil and vocal opponent of same-sex marriage, immigration and abortion. In 2013 he claimed “90% of the kids adopted by LGBT couples” would be used as sex slaves.
- Matteo Salvini, the deputy prime minister of Italy who has called for the expulsion of Roma people from the country.
- Viktor Orban, the authoritarian Prime Minister of Hungary who has curbed civil liberties in his country, restricted freedom of speech and suggested white europeans are being replaced with migrants from Africa and the Middle East.
- Jaroslaw Kaczynski, a Polish politician who has described the LGBTQ+ movement as a foreign force that threatens the nation.
Hopkins rose to fame as a contestant on the U.K. version of Trump’s TV show, “The Apprentice” before becoming a columnist for the Daily Mail newspaper and a radio host for LBC.
She was dropped from both after a number of controversial statements including tweeting remarks in the wake of the Manchester bombing that some interpreted as calls for ethnic cleansing.
Hopkins wrote: “22 dead – number rising. Schofield. Don’t you even dare. Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution. #Machester.”
She hastily deleted the tweet, changing “final” to “true” and corrected the spelling of Manchester – but not before it had been noticed and screen-grabbed by several sources.
In January 2018, she joined The Rebel Media, a Canadian far-right website, on which Tommy Robinson, founder of the far-right English Defence League, is also a contributor.
Right Wing Watch, a US project that monitors right wing activists, reported in January that Hopkins had been quietly dropped from the website.
She also blogs on her own website and creates videos for YouTube.
The retweet echoes an incident in 2017 when Trump appeared to endorse Britain First by retweeting three inflammatory anti-Islam videos from the far right group’s then-Deputy Leader Jayda Fransen.
This prompted a major diplomatic incident with Theresa May condemning the actions of the president.