ANALYSIS
It is all too easy to compare Britain's new prime minister to President Donald Trump. Boris Johnson has a similar mop of blond hair - he has even said he was once mistaken for Trump - hails from the right-leaning party in Britain and spearheaded a nationalist movement that has rocked the Western alliance. And all signs point to a more simpatico diplomatic relationship than the occasionally rocky one Trump has had with Johnson's predecessor, Theresa May.
But it wasn't always so. In fact, Johnson's past criticism of Trump was at times even more pitched than that of many of the Republicans who derided Trump in 2016, then just a Republican presidential candidate, as dangerous and unhinged - and have since come around to support him.
Much has been made of Sen. Lindsey Graham's , R-S.C., convenient and often-dumbfounding transformation from Trump denouncer to top Trump ally, but Johnson's conversion bears plenty of similarities.
The most-trafficked Johnson quote about Trump came after Trump wrongly said in 2015 that London had "no-go" zones where police wouldn't go because of Muslim extremists. Johnson, then London mayor, said Trump demonstrated "a quite stupefying ignorance that makes him, frankly, unfit to hold the office of president of the United States." Johnson was reportedly the first senior British politician to declare Trump unfit for the presidency.