Farage says Trump advisor was “involved” in Brexit campaign

The American right-wing website Breitbart News founded by Donald Trump’s former Chief Strategist, Steve Bannon, helped secure a Leave vote in last year’s British referendum about Europe, says UKIP’s Nigel Farage.

“Breitbart were involved, of course they were,” the former leader of the UK Independence Party says in a podcast interview with Danish political media Altinget.

“Breitbart had a media operation in London. Them and The Daily Express were the only two media organs that were prepared to give me and UKIP and our arguments a fair chance over the course of the last few years. But hey, that is genuinely what happens if you have a pluralist, democratic and liberal – in the proper sense of the word – media system,” he says.

“But does that mean that Breitbart put money into it? That the Russians put money into it? No! Look, we voted to leave The European Union because we’re sick to death of Juncker, un-elected old men and open-door immigration. Simple as.”

Hysterical rubbish
In the interview, Nigel Farage calls President Trump “a giant on the world stage” and he confirms that he knows Steve Bannon “very well”. 

But Farage denies stories in The Guardian and other UK media who in recent months have reported that the former UKIP leader could have been acting as a middle man between Trump’s inner circle, the Russians and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to influence both the American elections and the Brexit vote last year. 

“A recent piece in The Guardian newspaper explained that I was the center of an international spider’s web. That I am the person that links Putin, Trump, Assange. I am the bag carrier! I am the man who moves the secrets around the globe. Hysterical rubbish,” says Farage:

“The idea that Russia has had some massive influence on either the American elections or Brexit or anything else, frankly is fantasy.”

You can listen to the whole interview from Altinget in English here: