Kemi Badenoch turns on Trump: Tory leader says President deserved 'entirely self-inflicted' mid-term thrashing

Kemi Badenoch has turned on Donald Trump as she declares he deserved his 'entirely self-inflicted' mid-term thrashing.

The Conservative leader, 46, once described the US President as 'wonderful' following a speech in 2025, where she said he reminded us 'about all the things that put the 'Great' in Great Britain!'.

However, the tides seem to have changed in their relationship as Badenoch branded his momentous loss to the Democrats as 'entirely self-inflicted', telling Independent editor-in-chief Geordie Greig on The Talk Show: 'Voters want results'.

She said Trump deserved his momentous loss in the US mid-term elections as she criticised him over the Iran war, tariffs, and threatening Canada as well as Greenland.

Badenoch continued to lambast the US politician, saying he does not 'meet the standards a politician at that level, a statesman, should meet' in the way he talks about people and 'always wanting to get dirty in terms of insults'.

She also described Trump's treatment of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House as 'awful', and said she did not like how he was 'rude about [Sir] Keir Starmer'.

The Conservative leader added that she would have been content if Democratic nominee Kamala Harris won in 2024, quipping: 'I like them both equally. Make of that what you will.'

Of Trump, she said: 'He came in with this extraordinary coalition, Latinos; he had more black voters than any other Republican, and what's the first thing that he does?

Kemi Badenoch (pictured on November 4, 2026) has turned on Donald Trump as she declares he deserved his 'entirely self-inflicted' mid-term thrashing

The Conservative leader, 46, once described the US President (pictured yesterday) as 'wonderful' following a speech his speech on Great Britain in 2025

'Tariffs, and then talking about Greenland and Canada, and I think a lot of people were wondering, "What are you doing?"

'Tariffs are bad for the cost of living; they're not good. Then you have a war in Iran, which, I understand the justification, Iran is an enemy of this country, we don't want them getting nuclear weapons, but where's the plan?'

When asked if he deserved to be thrashed, she said: 'Well, yeah. He has not been acting in the way that I would consider conservative.

'Where is the push for free markets and better trade and more enforcement of trade rules, rather than protectionism, America first, the squabbling with allies? That's not what conservatives do.'

She added: 'We need to separate President Trump from the United States. The special relationship is with the country.

'When he was rude about Keir Starmer… I didn't like that at all,' she added. 'What they did to President Zelensky in the White House was awful.'

It comes as Democrats have been set up to hold power for many years following the extraordinary scale of their victory in the US midterm elections, with the party winning majorities in both the House and Senate.

And now, with Trump's capacity to dictate and manoeuvre power on American soil reduced, uncertainty has gripped Iran amid the fallout of his disastrous defeat.

On the Republican midterm loss, Iran's supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, said: 'The process of the US's collapse has accelerated.' His father and predecessor, Ali Khamenei, was killed during strikes in February.

Mehnaz, a Tehran-based journalist, said an air of hopelessness remained following the results of the US midterm elections.

'I am really fearful. Of what? I still don't know. It's a weird feeling,' she told The Guardian. 'Frankly, it's a truly strange scenario here. People have set their sights on the US and Israel, hoping that this will bring change.

'I found that very strange and still do.'

It comes as the US-Iran war, which began after the US and Israel launched strikes against Iran on February 28, 2026, has caused reverberations worldwide, not only in the Gulf but with skyrocketing fuel prices as well as economic disruption globally.

Meanwhile, in her interview with The Talk Show, Badenoch also criticised previous Conservative governments for being guilty of 'gimmicks, mistakes and short-termism'.

She also took a swipe at Reform UK leader Nigel Farage as she maintained his explanation of the £5million crypto donation 'doesn't add up'.

'One of the things going wrong for him was that he pretended to be this everyman,' she said. 'A lot of his supporters… don't understand how he's getting £5 million and they're not able to pay their energy bills.'

Mr Farage has defended receiving the cash from Thailand-based crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne before the 2024 general election, saying it was not connected to his political activity and needed to pay for private security.

But in May, Mr Farage told The Sun: 'Frankly, it was given as a reward for campaigning for Brexit for 27 years.'

When it was suggested the cash may have influenced his decision to return to public life, Mr Farage said: 'I can't be bought by anybody, not even Elon Musk.'

Meanwhile, the Tory leader was also adamant she would never serve in a government with Mr Farage as prime minister, saying: 'No, because he would not be good for this country. I simply wouldn't.'

She also dismissed some of Reform's ideas, such as a recent proposal to nationalise Poundland as 'bonkers', but claimed Mr Farage did her a favour with the defection of Robert Jenrick, which she said was like defusing an 'unexploded bomb'.

Leaks from the shadow cabinet stopped overnight, she said, joking: 'The only thing I haven't done is written a thank you card to Nigel Farage for taking these problems away. I'll write it in his Christmas card.'

She also described Andy Burnham as more 'fun' than Sir Keir; however, she said it made him 'more dangerous because he wants to please everybody'.

Branding Mr Burnham a 'foot in mouth' politician, she said: 'He says things first and then thinks about it later.'

Declining to apologise for calling Bridget Phillipson 'spiteful' over VAT on private school fees, she said: 'Spiteful. What's wrong with that?'

She added: 'She hurt many, many children. They had to leave their schools, which closed down. It was class war. So yes, I will call it like it is.

'We've spent a lot of time dressing things up in fancy words where most of the public don't understand what we're talking about.'

It comes as Phillipson was accused of fighting a 'vindictive class war' to 'scratch a party-political itch' over her tax on private school parents.

The Education Secretary was previously savaged by Tory shadow minister James Cleverly for 'punishing' families who use independent schools with the new VAT on fees.

The private school tax has been blamed for the closure of more than 100 institutions across the UK, with Labour accused of 'pulling up the drawbridge'.