FORMER president Donald Trump has praised Rishi Sunak’s U-turn on a raft of net zero measures as “smart” as he insisted the climate crisis is a “green new hoax”.

It comes just days after the Prime Minister confirmed he would delay a ban on the sale of new diesel and petrol cars by five years and weakened targets to phase out gas boilers.

We previously told how a number of commentators from across the Yes movement, all of them under 35, reacted with fury to Sunak’s plans.

Trump (below) took to his own social media platform Truth Social to say: “Prime Minister Sunak of the United Kingdom has very substantially rolled back the ridiculous ‘Climate Mandates’ that the United States is pushing on everyone, especially itself.

The National: Donald Trump interview

“I always knew Sunak was smart, that he wasn’t going to destroy and bankrupt his nation for fake climate alarmists that don’t have a clue.

“In the meantime the US keeps rolling merrily along, spending trillions of dollars trying to do that which is not doable, while at the same time breathing in the filthy and totally untreated air floating over our once great country from China, India, Russia, and parts unknown.

“They are all building coal fired plants by the hundred each year, and Germany, which has almost destroyed itself with its ridiculous form of the Green New Hoax, has just joined in.

“Congratulations to Prime Minister Sunak for recognising this SCAM before it was too late! The Green New Hoax will take down the US, perhaps even sooner than our open border of death. IT MUST BE STOPPED. MAGA!!!”

Responding to the news of Trump’s backing, SNP president Michael Russell told The National: “Says it all really. Trump withdrew the USA from global efforts to combat climate change and is, as his post makes clear, in denial about the reality of even worsening man-made climate-related catastrophes.

“Praise from him should be shunned, not sought.”

READ MORE: Rishi Sunak's net-zero U-turn is 'colossal abdication of leadership'

Sunak has already insisted he is committed to reaching net zero by 2050, but that the transition can be done in a “fairer and better way”.

“Our destiny can be of our own choosing”, the Tory leader said, all while calling for politicians to be “honest” about the costs of green policies on families.