Kyriakos Mitsotakis is the prime minister of Greece and John Kiriakou’s answer to a viewer who asked, on 25 February 2026, which world leader he would put in Donald Trump’s place.
He did not need time to think about it. “Oh, that’s an easy one for me… Mitsotakis. This guy has proven to be such a terrific leader for Greece.”[1]
(The transcript renders the first name as “Konstantine” — the name of the prime minister’s father, Konstantinos Mitsotakis. The reference is to the sitting prime minister and the artifact is preserved here as spoken.)
The admission attached to it
What gives the endorsement its weight is that Kiriakou volunteers having been wrong about the man. “I will admit that I did not vote for him the first time. Uh but I have been very pleasantly surprised.”[1]
The aside also documents something the corpus otherwise records only obliquely: that Kiriakou, who holds Greek citizenship, votes in Greek elections.
Why he rates him
His supporting evidence is partly a compliment paid at Trump’s expense. “When he came to the United States during Trump’s first term to meet with Trump, the Washington Post commented that his English was better than Trump’s.”[1]
And partly credentials: “He’s got a bachelor’s degree and a master’s degree from Harvard and a PhD from Oxford. And he’s been a terrific prime minister.”[2]
The judgement sits alongside a much harder one Kiriakou gives elsewhere about the same government — that it is “solidly pro-Israel” against the grain of Greek public opinion, for reasons he traces to the gas under Cyprus. He does not reconcile the two, and both are preserved here.