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A confrontation between a Maryland congressman and the head of the UK’s Reform Party grew heated on Wednesday as the right-wing party leader refused to hear any criticism of Donald Trump uttered in his presence.
Rep. Jamie Raskin and other Democrats were in London this week as part of a bipartisan congressional delegation to discuss the Online Safety Act. Members of both major US parties believe the act violates First Amendment protections for US companies and unfairly targets American tech firms by extension.
Raskin is one of the Democratic Party’s most skilled communicators in the House and was an impeachment manager during the second trial of Donald Trump in 2021.
A longtime foe of the US president, Raskin’s opening remarks touched on the Trump administration’s wide-ranging assault on the First Amendment, which top officials have contended (falsely) does not apply to noncitizens, including legal green card holders.
Those remarks drew a furious response to the congressman, according to Raskin, from Nigel Farage — leader of the U.K.’s conservative Reform party who, in 2024, was a vocal supporter of the third Trump campaign as he’d been for the president’s two prior runs.
“We’re not here to talk about Donald Trump,” Raskin quoted Farage as scolding him.
According to the congressman, the conversation devolved further from there, with Farage labeling him “pig-headed.”
The Maryland Democrat said he responded: “This is why we had a revolution against you guys.”
The congressman went on to tell Politico that Democrats believed there were good and bad aspects to the Online Safety Act, and were eager to discuss it with UK lawmakers.
“We thought there were some very good things in the Online Safety Act, and there might be some problematic things,” he told the news outlet.
Of Farage, he added: “I think the intervention of Democrats who don’t have a dog in that fight was maybe too much for him to handle.”
A handful of other Democratic representatives confirmed the exchange to Politico. Two of them, Reps. Jasmine Crockett and Eric Swalwell, labeled the Reform Party chief a “manbaby” in their own statements to the outlet.
“This manbaby was not feeling it. … He was gonna pigeonhole the conversation into only things that he wanted to discuss, and anything else was gonna be shut down, because that’s what free speech, I guess, looks like to him,” Crockett told Politico. Swalwell added that Farage appeared “unhinged” in the meeting.
Raskin’s ties to the Revolutionary War are more direct than those of his colleagues. His district includes Montgomery County, a jurisdiction named after Revolutionary War general Richard Montgomery, who was Irish-American. Maryland, in general, retains a number of town, city and county names closely tied to British monarchs and aristocrats.
The congressman even quipped to Politico that one of the Republican members of the delegation told him afterwards he enjoyed Raskin’s quip at Farage.
Raskin underwent treatment for cancer in 2023 after being diagnosed with diffuse large B-cell Lymphoma. He was one of a successive chain of Democrats who sought in various bids to challenge the party’s “old guard” for leadership in the Trump era; in 2024, he launched a bid for the top-ranking spot on the Judiciary committee against Jerry Nadler.
In a sign of the strength of his ties to both party leadership and progressives, the elder Nadler stepped aside and Raskin took over with support of Nancy Pelosi backing his leadership bid.
Separately on Wednesday the Maryland congressman announced a lawsuit against the Trump administration for blocking legally-permitted congressional oversight visits of ICE detention facilities, joined by a dozen other House Democrats.
