The former Labour minister has been named as the next UK ambassador to the US, although there have been questions about whether President Trump will accept him.
Speaking to Fox News, Lord Mandelson walked back his criticisms from the president’s first term in office.
Politics latest: Government announces growth plans
The 71-year-old told the conservative-backing US TV channel: “I consider my remarks about President Trump as ill-judged and wrong.
“I think times and attitudes towards the president have changed since then.
“I think people have been impressed, not just by the extraordinary second mandate that he has received from the American people, but the dynamism and energy with which he approached not just the campaign but government as well.”
Many Labour figures, including the now Foreign Secretary David Lammy, criticised Mr Trump before, during and after his first term in the White House.
Now they are in government and Mr Trump is back in power in Washington DC, language has become more diplomatic.
Read more:
No one is safe in Trumpland
Trump aide calls Mandelson a ‘moron’
Lord Mandelson told the Alain Elkann Interviews podcast previously: “What Donald Trump represents and believes is an anathema to mainstream British opinion.”
He added: “Even those who have a sneaking admiration for Donald Trump because of his personality, nonetheless regard him as reckless, and a danger to the world.”
The likely new ambassador criticised Mr Trump’s attitude to a previous holder of that office, and said the president was “little short of a white nationalist and a racist”.
👉 Follow Trump 100 on your podcast app 👈
Speaking now, Lord Mandelson praised Mr Trump, saying he was a “nice” and “fair-minded person” who could become “one of the most consequential American presidents I have known in my adult life”.
He added: “I think that with the approach he is taking to government, which frankly just seems to us in Britain so much more organised, it’s so much more coherent, he seems to be so much more clear in what he wants to do, we take encouragement from that, that gives us greater confidence.”
