What was claimed
Nigel Farage said Donald Trump’s comments about NATO troops during the war in Afghanistan were “correct”, adding: “The Americans fought and died on the front lines and the British-led NATO armies consolidated the ground taken.”
Our verdict
This is not a real quote from Mr Farage, as far as we can tell. Reform UK has said he never said it.
Widely shared posts on social media include an alleged quote from the Reform UK leader Nigel Farage, in which he supposedly said Donald Trump was “correct” when recently making widely-condemned claims about the role of NATO troops during the war in Afghanistan.
As far as we can tell, this quote has been fabricated. When Full Fact put it to Reform UK, a spokesperson told us “he has never said that”, and Mr Farage is on record saying he disagreed with Mr Trump’s comments.
The posts feature an image of Mr Farage beside these words: “We must be absolutely honest here. Donald Trump is correct, in that our troops were in support roles, The Americans fought and died on the front lines and the British led NATO armies consolidated the ground taken. [sic]”
This appears to be a reference to comments made by the US president last week, when he said that NATO troops in Afghanistan “stayed a little back, a little off the front lines”.
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His comments were condemned by parties across the UK political spectrum, including by Mr Farage, who said during an event at the World Economic Forum’s Davos summit that he objected to what Mr Trump said.
In a post sharing his response to the US president’s comments, Mr Farage wrote: “Donald Trump is wrong. For 20 years our armed forces fought bravely alongside America’s in Afghanistan.”
We couldn’t find any credible reports of Mr Farage making the comment attributed to him in these social media posts.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because there’s absolutely no evidence Mr Farage ever said this.
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