Donald Trump may have lost a lot of allies in the Republican party over the past 48 hours but he still had one friend in elected office: Nigel Farage.
The outgoing leader of the UK Independence party appeared in the spin room after the second debate in St Louis on Sunday night to tout the performance of his fellow “Mr Brexit”.
Farage likened Trump to “a silverback gorilla”, elaborating: “He looked like a big gorilla prowling the set and he is that big alpha male – that’s what he is, that’s what he is”.
Asked what animal he thought Clinton would be, he said: “I haven’t worked that out yet.”
This was not Farage’s first appearance on behalf of Trump. The Ukip leader appeared with the Republican nominee at a rally in Mississippi in August when he compared the successful campaign for Britain to leave the European Union to the Trump campaign for the White House.
Farage has stood by Trump in the wake of the release on Friday of recorded comments from 2005 about groping women with their consent. In an interview on Saturday, the British politician dismissed Trump’s words as nothing more than “alpha male boasting”.
Farage, who as a member of the European parliament was one of only three current elected officials to spin for Trump on Sunday – senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama and representative Jason Smith of Missouri were the others – took reporters’ questions with gusto as he roamed up and down the spin room.
He shrugged off this paucity of support from US elected officials, a growing number of Republicans having rescinded their endorsements of Trump over the groping remarks. Asked if he was therefore an immigrant doing a job that Americans wouldn’t, Farage said: “Could be.”
Clinton, he said, was a threat to democratic government.
“If you value democracy and if you value being in control of your own destiny then you have to reject Hillary Clinton’s ideas,” he said. “Simple.”
He also praised Trump’s performance, saying “you could see bags of experience of reality TV coming out in the course of the evening”.
Farage said Trump had had “a very, very awkward and deeply embarrassing 48 hours but had come out of tonight strong”, and said he thought the Republican would be leaving St Louis thinking: “Thank goodness that weekend is over.”
Farage wasn’t entirely effusive about Trump. Of the candidate’s pre-debate press event with women who have alleged sexual misconduct by Bill Clinton, he said: “We all have our own way of doing things, that was certainly unusual.”
He also broke with Trump on one key issue. When asked who was the real Mr Brexit, a title that Trump has claimed on Twitter, he insisted that the title still belonged to him. “I have to say I’m not going to have Trump taking that from me,” he said.