Trump described Brexit as a bid for autonomy and drew parallels to his own campaign, declaring a Trump presidency would bring ‘American independence’

Donald Trump positioned himself as an underdog Wednesday night, leaning on Nigel Farage, architect of the British exit from the European Union, to boost morale in the face of sliding polls.

Midway through a speech in Mississippi Trump described “Brexit” as a bid for independence and drew parallels to his own campaign, declaring a Trump presidency would bring about “American independence”.

'Mr Brexit' meets Mr Brexit: Nigel Farage to stump with Trump Read more

He introduced Farage as the leader of Ukip who stood up to the EU “against all odds”. Farage told the crowd of thousands, “We reached those people who have never voted in their lives but believed by going out and voting for Brexit they could take back control of their country, take back control of their borders and get back their pride and self-respect.”

The crowd seemed slightly puzzled by Farage’s appearance on stage. But Trump welcomed Farage warmly, and stood by him as he spoke.

Farage, on stage alongside one of the wealthiest men in the United States, said that Brexit was “for the little people, for the real people”.

Farage’s involvement is part of Trump’s latest strategy that centers on his new campaign chair, Stephen Bannon. Bannon was the head of the Breitbart website before Trump hired him, and is an enthusiastic supporter of Brexit.

But the mashup Wednesday night of Trump, New York politician Rudy Giuliani and British affairs left the Mississippi audience bemused. Before the rally, a quick survey of the crowd at random showed that eight in 10 people had never heard of Farage or Brexit. One woman said she had learned of him in the lead-up to the rally, and the other said, “He’s from the Brits. That’s all I know.”

The rally’s audience was almost entirely white, but Trump placed a new emphasis on reaching minority voters. The opening speaker, a black pastor named Mark Burns, worked through a list of anti-Hillary Clinton points from the traditional – Benghazi, state department emails – to the new and novel, like questioning Clinton’s health. But most pointedly he accused Clinton of racism.

“Millions of babies are dying,” he said, referring to abortion, “at the hands of the race-baiting Democrats.”

Trump himself put an even finer point on it, during his speech: “Hillary Clinton is a bigot,” he said, to an audible gasp in the audience, “who sees people of color only as votes, not as human beings.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Donald Trump greets Nigel Farage during a campaign rally in Mississippi. Photograph: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

Amid the unfamiliar talk of British politics, the crowd enjoyed the familiar Clinton and Obama aspects of the speeches, chanting “Lock her up” at the mention of Clinton.

“It’s hard to tell where the Clinton Foundation ends and the state department begins,” Trump said, referring to a recent analysis by the Associated Press that showed more than half the people Clinton met outside the government as secretary of state were donors to the Clinton family’s foundation. “Hillary Clinton does not believe in America first,” Trump said. “She believes in donors first. And special interests. And lobbyists.”

Farage stopped short of endorsing Trump outright, but added: “I will say this: if I was an American citizen, I wouldn’t vote for Hillary Clinton if you paid me!”



After the rally, Bo Smith, a nurse from Florence, Mississippi, said that he enjoyed what he had heard, from the Clinton rhetoric to Farage’s talk on Brexit.

“Yeah, I support it,” he said. “You’ve got to control the borders. They say one in 50,000 might be a terrorist. But if I give you a jar of 50,000 M&Ms and tell you one is cyanide, are you going to take a big handful?”

• This article was amended on 25 August 2016 to include information referring to a recent analysis by the Associated Press that showed more than half the people Clinton met outside the government were donors to her foundation.