'Boris Johnson will "straighten out" Brexit if he becomes Prime Minister next week'

Monday 22 July - The US President told reporters that he spoke to the Conservative leadership frontrunner on Thursday, adding: 'I think he’s going to do a great job. I think we’re going to have a great relationship.'

He also doubled down on his criticism of Theresa May's Brexit, calling it 'a disaster'.

But he said of Mr Johnson: 'I think Boris will straighten it out. A lot of people say Johnson is a different kind of guy.'

The Republican president added: 'He’s a different kind of a guy but they say I’m a different kind of a guy too – we get on well.'

Mr Johnson was criticised this week for failing to label comments from President Trump telling non-white congresswomen to 'go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came' as 'racist'. 

When asked if the remarks were 'racist' in the final Tory leadership debate on Monday, the former foreign secretary said only that they were 'totally unacceptable'.

Pressed on whether they were 'racist', he said: 'You can take from what I’ve said what I think about President Trump’s words.'

Both Mr Johnson and Mr Hunt have been under pressure to condemn the President’s comments, as the row between the Mr Trump and four Democratic congresswomen has escalated.

At a rally in North Carolina on Wednesday, as President Trump attacked congresswoman Ilhan Omar, his supporters chanted 'send her back'.

Before Mr Trump won the 2016 presidential election, Mr Johnson criticised his pledge to ban some Muslim immigrants from entering the United States.

He said at the time: 'I think he has betrayed a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him frankly unfit to hold the office of President of the United States.'

Author's comments: Boris has been less than complimentary about the leaders of virtually every nation during his political career, one of the most notable being the rude poem that he wrote about the Turkish president having sex with a goat. (He won a £1000 prize in a poetry competition for that one.) However, Donald Trump has a similar track record and each probably appreciates the other's point of view.