Watching history unfold in Washington DC from her home in London, Jan Halper-Hayes admitted to being slightly incredulous about the images of Donald Trump supporters storming the US Capitol.
“It was kind of in some ways unbelievable,” says the long-term activist in the Republican party and former vice-president of its UK branch. She claims she has received “good information” to indicate that “Antifa people” were present at the riot.
The unsubstantiated claim that Antifa – a catch-all term used by the president and others to describe anti-Trump protest movements – had infiltrated the mob is one that some of his most die-hard supporters have clung to.
That the idea has made the leap across the Atlantic underlines how the Republican diaspora have not been immune to some of the bitter controversies splitting the party in its homeland.
In the UK, the Trump presidency has taken something of a toll on the local branch of Republicans Overseas, which largely operates as a social circle for expatriate supporters who organise a 4th July party each year and carry out voter registration.
Some members, and particularly young women, previously involved with the group have stepped away since the president’s 2016 election and, in some cases, even voted for Joe Biden.
Halper-Hayes, a former member of Trump’s White House transition team and visitor to his Mar-a-Lago resort, remains loyal nevertheless, insisting that it has never been hard to square support for Trump with traditional Republican values.
“I knew him when I lived in New York, so I have known him through all his iterations. I was on his transition team, and from encounters and observations I can tell you that he is so friendly and funny. It’s a shame that he used Twitter for a nasty side because that’s not who he really is.
“Whether I am in an Uber car or in a supermarket, people love Trump here in the UK. It’s the BBC and the Guardian that take on a different mainstream media narrative.”
Molly Kiniry has a very different take on Trump. She watched his rise both within the party and in national US politics with what she says was “increasing amounts of horror”. She views his most recent conduct as “a manifestation of the mental instability that has been there all along”.
Not that being a Republican supporter in an often left-leaning city like London was ever without complexities. “What I normally say when people express surprise that I’m a Republican is something to the effect of ‘I am, I just hide the horns very well’.”
Casting her US presidential vote for Joe Biden this time came easily, says Kiniry, a former spokesperson for Republicans Overseas UK and now a graduate student at Cambridge who acknowledges that the president and his loyalists would likely regard her as a Rino [Republican in name only].
Like others, she says she is looking forward to her party…
Read More: ‘Kind of unbelievable’: US Republicans in Britain mull over Trump