Nigel Farage, the leader of the Reform UK party, got into a heated exchange with Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD) during a cross-Atlantic meeting.
A bipartisan U.S. congressional delegation led by House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) traveled to the United Kingdom to lobby against London’s controversial new Online Safety Act, which Republicans believe harms free speech rights. During a meeting between the congressional delegation and Farage, Raskin began giving a presentation on President Donald Trump’s alleged threats to free speech. Farage immediately moved to shut down the presentation.
“’We’re not here to talk about Donald Trump,’” Farage said, according to Raskin’s account in an interview with Politico. Farage “said that I am a guest here and I should act like a guest. And I told him that he was a host and he should act like a host.”
The exchange quickly escalated into a shouting match between the two, with Farage saying Raskin was “the most pigheaded person he’d ever met.”
“This is why we had a revolution against you guys,” Raskin retorted.
Reps. Lou Carrea (D-CA), Jasmine Crockett (D-TX), and Eric Swalwell (D-CA) all confirmed the exchange to Politico, taking their colleague’s side.
“This manbaby was not feeling it. … He was gonna pigeonhole the conversation into only things that he wanted to discuss, and anything else was going to be shut down because that’s what free speech, I guess, looks like to him,” Crockett said.
Farage is a longtime ally of Trump.
Raskin dismissed Farage’s “explosive” behavior as coming from someone who “didn’t want any challenge to his view that he’s a free speech victim.”
“We thought there were some very good things in the Online Safety Act, and there might be some problematic things,” Raskin said. “I think the intervention of Democrats who don’t have a dog in that fight was maybe too much for [Farage] to handle, but we did want to make some general points about the freedom of speech.”
No one noted any interventions from Republicans in the delegation. The Democrats said the meeting had been civil before the outburst.
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Representatives from other conservative groups, including the Alliance Defending Freedom, were also in attendance.
The U.K.’s Online Safety Act requires companies to verify users’ age to prevent them from accessing pornography and other harmful content. Critics argue that the bill lumps in some political content, with some users noting that they were blocked from viewing content showing protests against immigration in the U.K. under the law.
