Donald Trump's vice presidential pick recently described the UK as the world’s first “Islamist country” with nuclear weapons.
Mr Trump announced on Monday that first-term Senator JD Vance, who has spent less than two years in Congress, would be his running mate.
The decision came just days after the former President was nearly shot in the head during an assassination attempt at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania.
Footage has since emerged of a recent speech by Mr Vance, who said he and a friend had been joking about which Islamist nation will gain access to nuclear weapons first.
Speaking at the National Conservatism Conference, he said: “I was talking about what is the first truly Islamist country that will get a nuclear weapon.
“We were like ‘maybe it’s Iran, maybe Pakistan already kind of counts’ and then we decided maybe actually it’s the UK since Labour just took over.
“But to my Tory friends I have to say - you have got to get a handle on this.”
Donald Trump's new running mate JD Vance says the UK may now be “the first truly Islamist country to get a nuclear weapon... since Labour took over" pic.twitter.com/wchcPYg2m5
— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) July 16, 2024
The 39-year-old Republican had once been a critic of Mr Trump and in 2016 he reportedly told an associate: "I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical asshole ... or that he's America's Hitler".
But Mr Vance has rallied support for Mr Trump in recent months.
The Yale-educated entrepreneur is behind the best-selling book Hillbilly Elegy, a memoir that followed his blue-collar upbringing in the "rust-belt" Midwest.
Also a veteran of the marines, he ran for the Senate in 2022 with Mr Trump's crucial endorsement.
The senator, who is anti abortion, said recently: "I want to help him (Mr Trump) however I can.”
It comes as a new Times poll suggests Mr Trump is on course to win the 2024 presidential election, and just days after he was shot at a campaign rally.
A bullet pierced Mr Trump’s right ear while an audience member was killed and two other people were left injured during the shocking attack in Pennsylvania.
Thomas Matthew Crooks, 20, was spotted on a nearby roof and shot dead at the scene within seconds by a Secret Service sniper.
The ex-President was given a hero’s welcome from his supporters as he appeared at the Republican National Convention with a bandage over his right ear just two days after the shooting.
