Why does MAGA America take Liz Truss seriously?
While Liz Truss may be a political punchline in the UK, to MAGA Americans she is a voice to be listened to about the problems facing Britain. Why is she taken seriously?
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What’s the story?
In the UK, Liz Truss is largely ignored. The shortest-serving Prime Minister in British history who morphed into a conspiracy theorist with a podcast when politics didn’t quite work out.
But in some parts of the US, she’s held up as a voice to be listened to about the state of the United Kingdom, even if her perspective is built on deception and fear-mongering.
She was among the speakers this week at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), a Conservative event attended by big names in the MAGA world such as Robert F. Kennedy, Dr Oz, Linda McMahon, Steve Bannon, Matt Gaetz and more from the US hard-right.
Truss used her time on stage to “lie” about the state of the UK, claiming the growth of Islamism is the country’s “fundamental problem”.
“I have called for a Trump-style revolution,” Truss told an audience during a panel event.
“That is what we need in Britain. That is what we need in Europe, because most people in our country don't agree with all this stuff.”
She claimed that this was to blame for people not being able to buy “a nice car” or take a holiday.
“They want to live in a Christian country. They don't want their country taken over,” Truss added.
The ‘complete lies’ of Liz Truss
The UK, and London in particular, has become a target for the far-right in the UK – with Lewis Goodall previously saying in August 2025 that the multicultural successes of the capital make it a target for right-wing conspiracy theorists, because it “proves their politics wrong”.
It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now, despite Truss’s attempts this week to perpetuate this tired myth.
She refused to speak to Lewis, who also attended CPAC, when approached.
“Liz Truss doesn't want to talk to us, despite the fact that she's been going around the last couple of days – including at this conference – saying that Islamism is backing the government, for which there is no evidence,” Lewis says.
“She says that there is Sharia law in Britain, and that's a problem – that's also a complete lie.”
Lewis describes Truss as an "ideological warrior who doesn't want to talk to anyone who disagrees with them".
But she is welcomed by America’s right-wing because it supports MAGA’s own view of migrants and outsiders.
"The UK/US relationship was once an article of faith on the American-right," Lewis adds.
"Now, they are looking at us through a mirror darkly, and they don't like what they see."
Does MAGA hate the UK?
That ‘special relationship’ we have heard so much about in recent years (never more so than under Trump 2.0), currently seems more rocky than ever.
Keir Starmer’s initial refusal to support the US and Israel in the war in Iran made the UK Prime Minister a target for Trump’s criticism.
And with events such as CPAC catering to the president’s hardcore supporters, it makes sense for speakers such as Liz Truss to support those views.
Attendees at the event told Lewis, a Brit, that the UK is releasing pedophiles from prison to make room to jail people for Facebook posts, and that the country has been "overtaken by the Muslim brotherhood".
“This might seem weird and eccentric, and in many ways it is,” Lewis says.
“But in another, it is not, because this is MAGA in transition, suddenly uncertain itself, thinking perhaps about a post-Trump future.”
With Trump’s popularity declining as a result of the Iran war, he adds, MAGA is now left “uncertain” of what it stands for if not his cheerleaders.
“But as we've discovered at this conference, they are absolutely certain about what they are not and what they dislike, what they politically abhor – and the answer to that is the UK.”