Q&A Special: "Live" from Washington DC

This is a global player original podcast. This is a special Friday question and answer live from Washington. It's not live. Okay. All right. I know I know I know but that's live are live ish, okay? In Washington. Just Yeah.

What will Kamala do next? Well let's hope she's got some hobbies. Uh I actually thought a couple of days ago when she spoke that there was just a sense that maybe she was leaving the door ever so slightly open. I thought so. Didn't you? I think it's really tough seeing somebody who's actually relatively in this country politically young suddenly think, what's next? Because she's done, you know, she's done all. She's left an amazing

legal job. She was an attorney general. She was a senator. She was a vice president. She could have just ended there being the vice president that had never run and always going down in history as the vice president. Now she's the person who not only lost the electoral college

She lost the popular vote to Donald Trump. Even Hillary will be happy today that she did better than that. I think it's devastating for her. And I think if she returns to California, which is right now in a terrible state, I don't think she's gonna get a

governorship. I don't think she's gonna get a state local job there. I I don't know what happens. The only thing is I I would say is that I think that there will be and is, because of the circumstances of her run, I think that there will be still quite a bit of warmth towards her in the Democratic Party in the sense that

that she is not blamed. I don't get much sense that she herself is being blamed for this defeat. That she picked the ball up and it's not like her campaign was terrible. I mean yeah there were there were different choices she could have made but at the end of the day she didn't expect to be running. She had a hundred days to decide

She had a hundred days to introduce us after the American public. Yeah, in retrospect, I think it was almost, it was, in retrospect, it almost feels like it was impossible. And so given that she doesn't feel like she's being blamed, I think that if she did want to run for another office, and who knows, maybe, who knows, you know, things that are unpredictable.

If she did want to give it another go, I don't think it is completely impossible, albeit unlikely. She's fifty-nine. How many politicians think it's over, I'm done, I'm finished? Look at Trump. about the Democratic Party offering I think as a whole. I don't think it was a personal thing about Kamala Harris. I think that she acquitted herself reasonably well. I think that she introduced herself to the American people. She could laugh at herself as we said

saw on Saturday Night Live, I don't think she thinks she's done yet. Now I'm sure there will be others who are thinking you've had your chance. It's for me now. Josh Shapiro, Gretchen Whitmer, the Governor of California, Gavin Newsom, I'm sure they're all thinking This is my turn now, the stage is set for me. I don't think Kamala Harris is yet ready to surrender it. Welcome to the news agents. The news agents.

It's John. It's Emily. It's Lewis. And if we take that long over every bloody question, we're gonna be here for the next twenty-four minutes. That was meant to be our headlines. That was meant to be our come in and listen. Can I go to bed now? I'm feeling really tired. Okay, so we have a question here from Sarah who says, Hi news agents, how can the Biden high-res victory?

In a 2020 presidential election, be explained in the context of what happened this week and how future elections will play out. What did the Democrats do right in 2020 and what did they do wrong in 2024? Well the easy answer to that is in 2020 it was Joe Biden.

In a basement in Wilmington, Delaware, at the height of COVID, saying, oh my god, look at the mess that Donald Trump has made of the country over the past four years. And this time it was Kamala Harris defending what the Democrats have done over the past four years. As we've seen in a whole pile of elections around the world, being in office and defending your record is far more difficult than being the insurgent attacker from the outside. I think that is the top lesson. The second lesson is

Some things have been broken this election cycle. One is that sense that you can trust your ground game. The other is that you can trust your ad spend. This has not been about the efficiency of the ground game and it's not been about the billions of the ad spend. Because Kamala Harris outspent Trump on ads, she raised more money than him, and we know that she had more volunteers door knocking door to door in the traditional sense of electioneering. Both of those haven't worked this time round.

campaign was incredibly smart in a way that we didn't always know was going on. They did it through social media, they did it through amplification, they did it through, again, you know, rallies and letting him sort of speak to people

in a way that didn't even really tally with the messages that they were trying to put out in other ways. And maybe he just won because he appealed to more people. Sometimes you you've just got to be honest about these things. That's what happened. The thing about get out of the vote is that there's no doubt

the Democrats have a really really well oiled good machine. But get out the vote and voter targeting only really works or it really only makes a difference I should say with it's a tight election. So get out the vote worked in twenty twenty because actually one of the differences or you say what went wrong and what went right

In twenty twenty versus twenty twenty four. Actually, even in twenty twenty, although Biden won clearly in the popular votes, the truth is he won narrowly and in a lot of states, you know, you look back in twenty twenty, he won Wisconsin by twenty thousand votes, Michigan again ninety thousand votes. So get out the vote work

for him in 2020 but the truth is when there was clearly such quite a big move to the right nationally across every demographic group across every part of the country every region and so on every demographic every age group then there wasn't much you can do

Voters, but you can't create voters from nothing if they don't like it. Exactly right. Mark Appleton writes in and says, Hi guys Sorry, I'm gonna stop you there, Adam. Because Sarah we didn't read her PS. Love the pod and look forward to it every day best wishes. Yeah, it was worth it. Yeah, yeah. And he compliments the idea. I was so pleased you said that. Good. Do you know what? It's quite a long way down from here, Lewis. From this balcony to murder me.

Hey, this is Trump's America now. There are no guards.

Do what you want, John. Do what you want. Right, Mark Appleton. Hi guys, still digesting the election, living in California as a UK US citizen. One thing that puzzled me is what happened with the Gen Z influx that was supposed to make a huge difference.

Of three or four million, where did that go? It's a really, really good question, Mark. And I have to say, the first bit of news, sort of you know, under the radar news, that we should have understood and missed was when the exit polls for Georgia.

Georgia came out, they said that there had been an increase in independent voters for Trump. And I think we kind of didn't understand what that was telling us because many people thought that independent voters basically means, you know, first-time voters.

lot of the time people who are not affiliated with one party or another. And we thought, you know, the narrative was that the new voters would be predominantly going for Harris if they were women. And they predominantly did, to be fair. But when we saw That increase in independent voters in places like Georgia, which Trump then won quite authoratively, we should have realized that actually Gen Z wasn't monolithic.

We're going to rely on the youth vote to get us over the line is going to get laughed at. Because historically, and you think of so many elections where that has been said, young people are going to really turn out to vote this time and they are going to make the difference.

And that is what you need to watch out for. And we did that. They did in the Scottish they did in the Scottish referendum. Yeah. I mean look, we talked about the four hundred thousand people who registered to vote after Taylor Swift came out and said, back this. But look, I mean part of the answer, and this is the thing that Democrats

Find most chilling is that well there were lots of Gen Z who voted, and lots of them voted for Trump. So we can see from the exit polls that, for example, if we look at young women, in 2020, 33% voted for Trump. In 2024, 40%. Yeah. If we look at young men, in 2020, 41% voted for Trump. In 2024, 56% did. I mean that that was the Joe Rogan strategy. Essentially. You know, get people out because they're hearing you and they like you, and if they haven't

vote for the first time but you're talking straight to them. Yeah, I mean there was method in that. So Trump actively targeted young men in particular, which clearly has paid off at least to some extent, and the revulsion that was expected from young women did not materialize. And I wonder

And again, this is speculation, but I wonder whether that there is a there is an argument around that, which is that particularly for the the younger part of that cohort, 18, 19, 20 year olds, they've grown up with this guy. They know this guy. To them, he's actually the norm.

of what a president could be like. And it was quite interesting that actually Harris's support was actually stickiest among voters over sixty-five. Yeah. Who perhaps have a much greater conception of what a traditional normal president would be like. And I think the chilling thing for the future democracy

Frankly, is that a lot of young people growing up in this country looking at Trump and thinking this is what a normal president is and that's how they behave. This one is from Samantha in Aberdeen. Hello, news agents. I've really enjoyed the coverage of the US election. Lewis will look will accuse me of being a tart again and particularly enjoyed watching Emily skewer Boris.

On election night. Did you enjoy that? Well I did. Full stop moving on. Do you I mean I enjoyed election night as a whole. It was a lovely evening. Right, let's get to everything

Let's get to Samantha's question now. Do you think there is any chance Donald Trump has cheated somehow? Beyond of course help from Elon Musk that has already been talked about previously, e.g. the million dollar giveaways and the X algorithms. And if he has, what would happen next? It feels unbelievable. I think the Democrats would be saying at this point, Samantha, that is not who we are. We want to be the party that respects the election, that respects the outcome of the election.

of the American voter that accepts debate that Can play the loser's consent because it is so important to see that transfer of power beautifully done. I don't think he cheated. I don't think there were uh miscounted ballots or miscounted votes or I don't think there was funny business going on.

I don't think there was intimidation at the ballot. I think people voted the way they wanted to. I think on a bigger scale was there a lot of disinformation, misinformation, amplification of false information in this campaign. There certainly was. knew that. I mean we assume they knew that and they decided not to care. I just want to add one thing to this which I think is really fascinating. Th the thing that I've heard, you know, Kamala Harris at the moment looks like she's got 14 million few

Votes than Joe Biden did four years ago. That is convincing a lot of Trump supporters that actually there was cheating four years ago and that it was Biden who somehow miracled up these extra votes to explain why. There has been such a kind of hemorrhaging of support for the Democrats this time round. To lose 14 million votes between two election cycles is absolutely phenomenal. And so you're saying, well, if you want to see why the Democrats did so badly, it's because Biden cheated.

Last time, which again there is no evidence of. It's complete nonsense. But there is um there's no question that there was any cheating in that way. There is a question about this is something that actually to some extent it's both campaigns, but as a result of a series of Supreme Court decisions, the barrier

between active campaign money and these so called super PAC money, these are sort of campaigning groups money and how they can be directed has become really murky. Really, really murky. And there are questions about to what extent the Trump campaign was directing

And the Harris campaign basically directs this money and what role they have. But there is that's just a a wider question about big money in American politics. And ultimately when you've got a win this big, yeah, none of that really matters. I also don't think it I don't think it's helpful to the Democrats to phrase this

Or even start to perceive this as a cheated election because fundamentally the most important thing is for them to work out what they do differently next time round. And if you carry on just blaming the side that's in power as opposed to

Understanding the side that's in power or understanding the voters that put them in power, you're probably not going to improve on your performance next time. But it is like a threadbare one, which is to say that because he won the popular vote, which has shocked

People. Because he did that. Democrats can't sort of retreat to the comfort zone of saying, oh, this is just a kind of electoral college tick. You know, we can't blame the electoral college, blame the system, the system's against us. He won comprehensively, and that doesn't

does mean that you have to, as a matter of fact, just do more intense soul searching and ask yourself deeper questions. And that's what they have now got time and again, not much of a soul time to do. Yeah, I think Lewis, what you said about money in US elections and the sort of

the Supreme Court decision going back years, Citizens United, which essentially meant it was an arms race and there was no limit at all on what could be spent by either side in an election. I mean it was Obama actually that broke it first time round. He was the first billion dollar spender. These super PACs are meant to have no relationship at all to the campaign. I'm just a friend of yours who wants the support, but you don't tell me how I'm going to play.

My money, bullshit. They absolutely are involved intrinsically. They are seen as being part of the campaign and the idea that there is this kind of Chinese wall between the super PAC and the leaders' campaign is nonsense. Imagine. Voters getting upset if somebody had bought Donald Trump sunglasses or Milani or a suit. Yeah. We're a different world away and it's a good different world but it's funny. On the day that Trump got convicted, his

Super PAC received a$100 million donation just out of the blue. And they didn't even know who it was from. And they had to spend some time trying to work it out. In the end, they worked out it was this reclusive billionaire. But it just shows the kind of amount of money and also the kind of how much money is sloshing around. And they're kind of weird as you say John the fact that there are no Chinese walls behind these things. We'll be back after the break.

Right, well we've got a question here from Joseph Elliott who says Do you think it's time the Democrats stop focusing on endorsements from Hollywood? Leonardo DiCaprio lecturing about climate change from his private yacht or Taylor Swift from her three private jets. Tony Blair was obsessed with celebrities. However to Gen Z Hollywood is

dying industry, do they hold that much sway anymore? John thought you don't like this, John thought Taylor Swift was a game changer. However Kumala went on to lose twenty million votes from Biden. Joseph, thank you for your question. Lewis

Stop looking so bloody gleeful. I thought that Taylor Swift's intervention was significant. Four hundred thousand people registered to vote. She was saying vote Democrat. It was not an unreasonable conclusion to draw that that is a large number of people to vote. mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd mewn gwirionedd

The same mistake, didn't they? Hillary Clinton got every single celebrity endorsement she could and it sort of fell flat on its face. And he made that point last time round. You know, I don't need celebs, I've got ordinary people, and they're the voters. It depends who your celebrities are now. Hulk Hogan and Joe Rose.

Rogan arguably did much more than Beyonce and Taylor Swift. But the George Clooney point is that it was essentially him and Obama and Nancy Pelosi who got rid of Biden. Now you can argue about whether that made any difference

At all. Maybe there's part of Kamala thinking, actually I wish I'd never run and I had the field open to me next time round. But yeah, there is still power in what celebrities say, even if it doesn't win you the election. This is from Diane Kaleya on threads. My question is about

Ukraine. What is Trump likely to do to end the war on day one? I'm really concerned for Ukraine. Diane, I think you're right to be really concerned for Ukraine. I'm sure Vladimir Putin was ordering up the best Belukin caviar that rubles can buy after that election night result because Donald Trump and certainly JD Vance think that another dollar spent on Ukraine is a dollar wasted, that there has to be a settlement for peace.

And if there is going to be a settlement for peace, one imagines that it is something along the lines of the border is drawn where it currently stands and the conflict gets frozen and Russia consolidates the gains that it has made with all the implications

that has for European defence and security. It is Zelensky's worst nightmare what has unfolded this week. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right. And y all all Trump really needs to do it's a bit like the argument around NATO. We get sort of trapped into this

argument about whether he would actually withdraw from NATO. Well actually he would need Senate approval to do that and so on. So actually it's not about withdrawing from the architecture. But all he needs to do as president is make clear that he wouldn't enforce Article five, i.e. when he wouldn't come to the rescue

An attack on one is an attack on all. Indeed so. Or at least that he wouldn't do so or he would set qualifications for how he would do so, which instantly basically renders the entire alliance, which is basically a sort of very sophisticated confidence trick, completely moved.

I'm not coming to save you. NATO will still exist, but it basically doesn't have any importance or or use. And the same thing is true with Ukraine, right? Which is that all he needs to do is make it very, very clear, no more money is coming, that he thinks that the war is pointless, and Zelensky

should sue for peace. And then the question is for Zelensky, well there's two questions. What can his remaining allies in Europe do? How far can they sustain the war? Actually probably not for that long because no one can compete with American military prowess and power. And then to what extent

Does that affect the Ukrainian population itself in terms of whether they would allow Zelensky to sue for peace under those circumstances? There is an argument that conservatives are making today, which is, look, everybody knows that the Ukraine war will end in a concession.

of land. Kamala Harris and Joe Biden know that themselves. So the question is whether you want to want to see it happen on day one, i.e. sooner rather than later. But I guess the other way of looking at this is there are many people who believe that Putin's actions and activities were

won't stop with Ukraine and that the cheapest way to stop Putin right now is to throw everything at it before it comes down to more lives lost, before it comes down to more invasion, before it comes down to more sovereign territory. Whether it's Finland, Estonia, you know, the Baltics, parts of Europe that are much close to home, it is easier to end the Ukraine war by helping Ukraine now than to see what happens. That was, I guess, the lesson of 2014.

Lesson of 2008, which were both ignored, which was you let Putin come in at your peril. But if you actually think that Kamala Harris would pretty much do the same at some point, then yes, I suppose you know there is an argument for saying if it was always going to end.

like that he might as well crack on that is what people around Trump are saying now. The one thing that just a small caveat that I would put in on all of this. I'm sure Donald Trump does want to get this sorted and on day one or day two or you know I mean in the Early stages. He is not going to want to do something that makes it look like a total capitulation and surrender to Moscow and a total betrayal of Ukraine. Because that would portray him as

Weak rather than strong and he hates any portrayal. So I kind of think that he will try to do something that makes it look like Vladimir Putin has had to give something up as well. And I wonder whether it's not you know, I just wonder whether there is a possibility

that he there will be some you know toughness to put into. I just don't think he cares. I think his his base is so against the war. They're extremely radical on those issues. I I just don't know if he cares about that. I think he would he would just present it as a sign of strength. I ended the war. End of

Okay. Little dog on threads. Do you think Trump can or at least attempt little dog? Little dog little dog. What do you want me to say? Little Okay. Do you think Trump can or at least attempt to change the rules to serve a third term and if not, do you suspect he'll throw his weight behind a single successor or will we have an open primary campaign in twenty twenty seven? Well this is uh this is gonna be one of the really

Fascinating kind of subplots, right? Of of this entire term, because we've got an unusual situation where we've had a president elected for a second term in a non-consecutive way, which obviously means they're elected in a sense as a as a lamed up because it can't run again. I mean this question he it's obviously been posited around

I don't think that is a lame duck. I think that is a very active duck. I mean, paddling, paddling away. He's got a lot of stuff to do. Yeah, exactly, exactly. It's interesting. Just on the on the on the Welly With the run again, I don't think there's anywhere. I know this has been a

discussed a lot, you know, he would have to amend the constitution. And and he's got a lot of power but not that much. No, because you would require supermajorities in Congress and you would require three quarters of the state legislatures to approve it. And there is no way, no way that Democrat

state legislatures and states that are controlled by the Democrats are approving a constitutional amendment to allow him to run for a third term. Like in a million years. You'd have to change the twenty second amendment. It's not gonna happen. But there is an argument over whether he serves a full term. I mean he looks knackered. He looks really old now.

He will be 82? Uh yeah, he'll be the oldest president to be inaugurated. Yeah, I mean is there is there a world in which Vance comes in and takes over on year three? Does he decide to crown Vance as his successor? Or does he do a c more sort of good

Game of Thronesy thing where it's like a little bit of a little bit of a little bit. It's gonna be the apprentice. It's gonna be an endless audition. The goal escalator. Exactly. The eye's gonna love it. Also, you know, how many people has Trump not fallen out with? If you look at his first term, the chiefs of staff who

So you don't think Vance will even last? Well, I uh he may last. I mean, you know, Pence lasted until he was at the end of the day. What is really interesting is that all the Trump surrogates that we thought would help to win sort of Senate seats

In Congress seats in 2022 failed. I mean, anyone who has tried to model themselves on Trump hasn't managed to convince the electorate. So it's a really interesting question over whether somebody that Trump endorses necessarily wins the faith of the electorate.

Do you know what that is the Democrats' greatest mistake to believe that there was an anti Trump majority because of midterm election results, when in fact it was just much lower turnout and that the people did turn out for Donald Trump in the general election. But I think that point Emily about weather MAGA

And the movement is peculiar and particular to Trump or whether it can be replicated is basically one of the key question of American politics for the next decade. Because whether, and it has huge implications for the Republican Party and the future, because if

If it is peculiar and particular to Trump, it's a bit like with that question we were talking about on the show a couple of days ago. Then perhaps you can imagine a world where Trump is the kind of aberration and American politics sort of goes back to maybe not where it was, but not a million miles away from where it was. Yeah, yeah. But actually if Magaro,

Is here to stay. If a successor can take it on, then American politics is permanently altered. And I think in a way though, I mean this is another fascinating thing. It's already been permanently altered. Yes, yes. I mean, well that that is the thing, right? It has now ruptured from what the previous Republican Party looked like.

Embedded, for sure. And I think that I mean this is a fascinating thing is that another way in which he might be kind of an active duck to use your term is the sense that you know normally is normally an incumbent president would still at least care about the future of his party.

want his legacy to be continued. We don't think he does. Trump, I mean like Trump I I actually think in some ways, Trump would be quite happy if Magorism died with him. He would be quite happy to see the Republican Party fail without him because it would just prove that it was all about him and it wasn't about anything else. So

He's not going to care about the future about the Republican Party in any kind of way, and that will mean he's particularly unbridled and to use Boris Johnson's term, unleashed. Right, one final question that we've got, which comes from Ms. Mountbank.

What next for the Democrats, Governor Shapiro question mark. Governor Shapiro is the uh Govern Governor Shapiro is quietly having quite a good week because he he's looking down and saying, I think I could have helped you on the Pennsylvania question.

Look, the wipeout was so total that it's unlikely that changing out the VP for Shapiro rather than a wolf would have made any difference at all. But my favourite response to this is a post from Mark who says I think Pete Bushic could save the Democratic Party and win the presidency in four years if he continues to debate in his clear and level-headed way and becomes straight and more racist.

In in a way that is the perfect because as you started that I was thinking just having seen what's just unfolded, there's no way that America is gonna vote for a a gay man. There were bits of racism, there was bits of misogyny in the vote for Harris. I don't think enough

to have changed it but it was there. And I just think that that's absolutely spot on. What's next for the Democrats is a bloodbath and it's already happening. It's gonna be a bloodbath between the Biden camp and about the Biden camp, the Bar Obama, Pelosi and all

All of those people who had when we went to DNC John, we said they were being held together by the adhesive, the gel that was the fear of Trump and this veneer of party unity. That is all gone now. There will be a live autopsy that is taken by the

The body of this campaign will be dissected day after day after day and it's gonna sever personal relationships, it's gonna be absolutely toxic. The left will say, we saw Bernie Sanders saying yesterday, if the Democratic Party abandons working-class people, don't be surprised if working-class people abandon you.

Is just gonna be bloody, nasty, interneeside. So does the Democratic Party go Bernie Sanders left? That's the question. I guess it depends. I mean, fundamentally, sorry to be boring, but it depends how the Trump administration handles this. I mean if they actually bring down

immigration, then they get another chance. You've just quoted Bernie Sanders. I'm going to quote you Richie Torres, congressman from South Bronx, who says the popular explanations for the outcome of the election seem to include white supremacy, patriarchy, and misogyny. I'm going to state the obvious here.

Vilifying voters of colour as white supremacists will not attract them back to the Democratic Party. It will drive them further into Trump's camp. And he goes on to say that slogans like Defund the Police or From the River to the Sea or Latinx are just alienating historically.

historic numbers of Latinos, blacks, Asians and Jews from the Democratic Party. That is the question now. The Democrat the Democratic Party is gonna have a huge fight about whether it should move left, whether it should move right, and on all those questions around culture wars how they should respond. That will engulf the Democratic Party. Thank you. This is Emily is now going to sing We're Leaving on a Jet Plane. Go on. Leaving on a jet plane.

Do know when we'll be back again because hopefully it will be for inauguration. Just putting that out there on tape now. I kid you not. I've cancelled my hotel booking for January the sixth. Yeah.

Exactly, there's not gonna be an insurrection this time round. Listen, it's been a fascinating week. It hasn't been the week that I don't think many people predicted or the kind of shape of it and Donald Trump winning the popular vote. Something is going on in America and I think that it's profound.

found and I think that it has huge consequences of course for the United States of America but for the rest of the world and the way people see democracy. And that was his final thought. To quote the late great Jerry Springer. Bye for now. Bye bye. Bye bye. Mobile Player Original Podcast.