Former UK ambassador to US who criticized Trump: ‘Do not rule out a second term’

Former British Ambassador Kim Darroch, who resigned in 2019 after leaked memos revealed he called President Trump’s White House “inept,” said on Friday in an interview with NPR that people should “not rule out a second term President Trump.” 

Darroch went on NPR’s “All Things Considered” to promote his new book, “Collateral Damage: Britain, America, and Europe in the Age of Trump.” In the interview, Darroch said that while he predicts Trump will face new challenges in his race against Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden, he doesn’t believe the former vice president should automatically be considered the favorite to win. 

“Donald Trump ran as the absolute outsider in 2016, and he’s now running with a record on which he can be attacked,” Darroch explained. “So it’s not like he can come with a completely clean slate and say — I’ve nothing to do with Washington, I’m going to clean up this mess and all of those things. So you have to say, I guess, that Joe Biden is the narrow favorite. And when I look at the English bookmakers, the British bookmakers, they all have Joe Biden as a very narrow favorite.”

“Second, you still have the debates to come, and you’ll have 80 plus million Americans watching those debates,” he added. “And some of them may make decisions on the basis of what they see. And I think Donald Trump is quite a hard guy to debate with for a whole range of reasons that we could discuss at length.”

Darroch ended by saying, “I think the bookmakers are right to say that Biden is a narrow favorite. But I tell people here — do not rule out a second term President Trump.”

Darroch began his tenure as British ambassador to the United States in January 2016. He announced his resignation in July 2019, days after leaked memos showed Darroch referred to Trump as a “very stupid guy” and “pompous fool.” 

British police at the time launched an investigation into the leak of the confidential diplomatic memos. Darroch said in Friday’s NPR interview that he still did not know of anyone who would have released the information to the public.