Boris Johnson’s in Miami. Just don’t talk to him about politics — or Cuban food
While former U.K. Prime Minister Boris Johnson can wax poetic about the dangers of unchecked populism and hail the virtues of a city filled with billionaires, he has nothing to say about Florida politics — even while meeting this week with Gov. Ron DeSantis and billionaire Republican donor Ken Griffin.
According to the eccentric, white-haired political figure, his primary reference points for Miami before this year were the movie Scarface and a 1989 Carl Hiaasen novel about a rogue plastic surgeon. The reality during his four weeks in town this spring has been “wonderful,” but “they’re working me hard.”
Johnson has been traveling to South Florida for a week each month this semester as a visiting lecturer and co-teacher in a University of Miami political science class. His designation was largely funded by a gift from Griffin.
In a nearly hour-long conversation and walk across campus with the Miami Herald, Johnson said his time in Miami — which has become a hub of Trump world — was focused on teaching, not politics.
“I’ve been pretty much enjoying myself as a kind of pseudo academic and I’ve just loved it,” Johnson said, sporting a disheveled Hermès tie while stopping for a selfie with a student.
But the image of the jovial professor, divorced from the messiness of the politics of the day after his own resignation in a COVID-era scandal in 2022, didn’t quite square with the reality of his time in Miami.
He said that during his four week-long visits to Miami throughout the spring, he never made it up to Mar-a-Lago nor Trump National Doral. When asked if he’d met with Steve Witkoff, Jared Kusher, Eric Trump, Donald Trump Jr., Susie Wiles or anyone else in the Trump world, Johnson said, “No, don’t think so.”
But, he has communicated with Trump in recent weeks, telling the Herald he’s talked with the president about how he would have handled Iran differently, but thinks Europe should be backing the U.S. anyway.
As to whether there was any politicking in town that he’d acknowledge, Johnson hedged only slightly. “No, no, no, no,” he said. “Hardly at all.”
“There’s a chance I’ll see him later on,” he hinted when asked about DeSantis.
The governor’s office later confirmed to the Herald that Johnson, DeSantis and Griffin met for dinner that night. It was an unadvertised, out-of-the way trip for a governor who held press conferences in Jacksonville Wednesday afternoon and outside of Orlando Thursday morning.
Griffin still has not backed a Republican candidate in Florida’s gubernatorial race, despite DeSantis lobbying him last fall to fund a challenger against frontrunner Byron Donalds, according to reporting by NBC News. The billionaire’s absence from the high-profile race has left open questions about a late-cycle entrant garnering his support.
On Thursday night, Johnson gave a fireside chat for the Miami-Dade GOP. While some VIP tickets were for sale, and included books, party Chairman Kevin Cooper said the event mostly “broke even,” and was not a fundraiser.
Cooper presented Johnson with an award donned with a metal eagle the party called the “International Guardian of Conservatism Award,” which Johnson waved about saying he’d use it to bring down any potential intruder into his home.
In many ways, Johnson’s description of his four weeklong visits to Miami this spring sounded more like Europe than South Florida.
For one, he stayed at Mr. C’s in Coconut Grove — a hotel inspired by an Italian joint known for hosting the “who’s who of European royalty,” according to their website. The best meal he had in town was at Rosemary’s in Wynwood, an Italian restaurant owned by his wife’s cousin, Johnson said.
Throughout his four weeks, he didn’t make it to a single Cuban restaurant.
His level of knowledge about Florida politics — at least, what he was willing to share with a reporter — extended about as far as his knowledge of Miami cuisine. Johnson said he’d never heard of Florida’s leading Republican gubernatorial candidate Donalds or Attorney General James Uthmeier.
He was willing to weigh in, however, on U.S.-Cuba policy.
“I hesitate to advise the United States on this matter. I think the world is generally better when the U.S. is out there trying to make it a better place,” he said. “The difficulty about military regime change is you’ve got to be pretty sure what’s going to happen next.”
It wasn’t the only time he offered a measured response about Donald Trump’s leadership.
On whether Trump campaigned on anti-immigrant sentiments and the impacts of his mass deportation campaign, Johnson said, “I’m not really close enough to the detail of his campaigns to give a really informed comment on that and I really wouldn’t want to stereotype somebody else’s campaigns in another friendly country.”
On Iran, Johnson said he would not have made the same decisions as Trump, but that Europe should back the U.S. anyway.
“I don’t necessarily agree with everything that the president does, as he knows because we’ve talked about it, but I think no one could deny that he’s trying to — this thing in Iran, it’s very far from straightforward right now, to put it mildly. But you got to ask yourself, do you want America wimping out?” he said.
His visit to the private Coral Gables university comes during the wave of conservative takeover of higher education in Florida — from the state takeover of a public liberal arts college it deemed too progressive, restrictions on how teachers discuss race on campus and the establishment of classical centers on campuses.
When asked about whether he saw his lecture series as part and parcel to that project, Johnson noted the lack of protests against him.
“There has not been much argy-bargy,” Johnson said. “In my own student days, they were ferocious. Margaret Thatcher was prime minister and the students would turn out screaming if a Tory minister turned up, they’d disappear under a hail of eggs and God knows what.”
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