This is a Global Player Original Podcast. How mad do you think President Trump is gonna be when he finds out that Elon Musk said, I'm sorry but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive outrageous pork filled congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it. You know you did wrong, you know it.
Look, the president already knows where Elon Musk stood on this bill. It doesn't change the president's opinion. This is one big, beautiful bill and he's sticking to it. That is Caroline Levitt, the President's spokesperson. Utterly dismissing the criticism, the scathing criticism, the excoriating criticism that has come from Elon Musk. Over the BBB, the big, beautiful bill that Donald Trump wants to introduce that will cut taxes but add massively.
To the federal deficit of the United States. Yes, Trump's calling it a big and beautiful bill, that's its real name. Elon Musk is calling it a disgusting abomination. Does he still have the political clout to derail it? Welcome to the NewsAgence USA. It's John. It's Emily. And let's just take you back to where this all began with Trump's big beautiful bill, which he just passed through the House of Representatives last month. It still needs to be approved by the Senate.
if it's to become law. And in this big beautiful bill, which will add an estimated four trillion dollars to the US national debt. Small change. Small change. Which will cut Medicaid for those at the bottom of America's ladder. We'll cut social security payments as well. But we'll deliver huge tax cuts for the ultra rich.
And Trump has imposed a deadline of July the fourth to pass this legislation. It may very well define his second term. It may very well set the course for the US economy. And he's heaped pressure on Republican senators essentially, who are I'm already starting to be nervous.
at what this package is going to do, particularly to the national debt. I mean that's interestingly the thing that has got people riled and worried. The fiscal conservatives in the Republican Party who don't like it. Into this very delicate cobweb. Who last week left the Oval Office, you know, with his gold key from Trump and lovely words all round saying I've done my time and I'm moving on, and this week absolutely lambasty.
Yeah. So he says it's monstrous and terrible and all the rest of it. But there is something else he said which I think is of much greater significance. Just as you have got. Donald Trump piling the pressure. on these hapless souls in the House of Representatives who kind of grudgingly have gone along with it and voted to pass the bill. It now has to get through the Senate where there are holdouts of people like Josh Hawley from Missouri and Rand Paul from Kentucky who've got their doubt.
But Elon Musk hasn't stopped at saying this bill is a stinking pile of poo. He's gone further than that. He says in November next year We fire all politicians who betrayed the American people. That sounds like a threat. Elon Musk has infinite resources that he can start funding campaigns against senators who vote for the bill. So you've got Donald Trump threatening senators and congressmen in one direction, saying, if you don't do this, then I'll do that to you.
And you've got Elon Musk saying, If you do do that, I'll do this to you. And so you've got a pincer movement now where who do I frigging well fear the most? Do I fear what Donald Trump might do, or do I fear the wealth That Elon Musk could bring to bear in elections coming up. Yeah, I mean to unpick that, why is Musk so set against this beautiful bill?
because he thinks it undoes all his ha ha efficiencies that he made in Doge in the first couple of months of the year he thinks that everything he managed to save there and to be honest the jury's still out on what if anything he's managed to save in terms of spending for the government efficiencies plan. He thinks that this bill undoes all that.
And I guess to be fair to him, you know, he's a fiscal hawk. He doesn't like seeing the deficit grow. He has been sort of consistent on that one place. I mean, I don't know whether his Gutters really into running more elections. He spent a lot of money in Wisconsin and he lost and that was humiliating and I think that was the beginning of the Musk turn. Remember when he was trying to back the Supreme Court Canada in the Wisconsin um Supreme Court and he lost?
Does he really I mean, is he really gonna start coming back? given all the problems that he's got reputationally, given all the problems that he's got with Tesla now, giving all the failures that he's got with his spacey thing that keeps crashing, is he really gonna turn round and go
Yeah, I'm gonna fight Republicans and and get them primaried and and get them removed. I don't know. You don't know what Elon Musk is going to do. He is wired differently from most other human beings. And although he's stepped back
The fact that he's kind of launched this fuselade against Donald Trump's big beautiful bill says that I'm still watching politics closely and I still care about the outcome. What is really interesting to unpick is the reaction of what seems to be the White House and the word going out, which is Well of course Elon doesn't like Elon will be Elon. No it's more subtle than that. It's Elon
Well we're removing the electric you know, electric vehicle mandate so that the subsidies for electric vehicles they're trying to make it sound personal. It's map it's personal. It's because Donald's a bit upset. Because obviously he's going to lose a bit of money from this and
You know, it's just his self interest that's kicking in. Now, I wonder how much Musk will like that sort of messaging. It's not they don't wanna take him on directly. They don't wanna say, Oh look, he's just a drug addled old fool who didn't know what we didn't aim to understand how
You know, hooked he was on all these different tracks. It's about well, it's just a bit of self interest from a very wealthy businessman. I mean it comes a week after the New York Times broke the story about um his alleged drug use on a daily basis, up to twenty pills a day in a little box, and drugs including coquetamine, they said.
which have some very personal details of him confiding to people close to him about bladder problems and all the rest of it. And you have to kind of say, Gosh, like, where did that come from? Was it people around him that he thought he could trust that suddenly he can't trust any more? Is it The White House starting to think, Oh, we'll just show who's got the upper hand here, who's got the handle. You know, we've seen this close up. We just want to put you in your place.
I mean basically this is always the problem, isn't it? That one man's got all the power and the other man's got all the money and the megaphone. Who is in charge? Who's got the upper hand here? So what we have now is something that a lot of people predicted, which was, you know, the falling out, the divorce, the separation, the parting of the ways. That happened last Friday. It's whether it becomes brutal or not.
I think that Donald Trump is hoping to keep him sweet. Let him go, praise him, lord him, but hope that he doesn't turn. His extraordinary financial firepower Against Donald Trump because in their own way, yeah. I mean that old phrase dating back from Teddy Roosevelt about the bully pulpit yes, Donald Trump has the bully pulpit as the president of the United States, but Elon Musk
with his infinite wealth also has his own pulpit and could do huge amounts of damage to the Republican Party and to Donald Trump if he decides to go to war. And at the moment the signs are, yeah, bring it on. I'm willing. And I think the trouble with this row, the Musk Trump row, as ever, is it's taking all the oxygen up. And actually this is a time when Certainly we should be looking at and a lot of Americans are trying to look at the actual implications Of the bill.
this huge disparity between the wealth cuts for the super rich and the real security, you know, and health cuts for those who need it most at the bottom. And one uh senator, Joni Ernst, who's the Iowa Senator, was giving a town hall
uh in the last couple of days and she's talking the audience through what this means and she's trying to explain, look, don't worry about it. This just means we're taking the Medicaid away from the people who didn't deserve it, weren't legally due it in the first place. And one audience member shouts out, Hang on, you know, they're getting more and more upset. We're gonna die. If this happens, we're gonna die. This is Ernst's response.
So when you are arguing when you are arguing about illegals that are receiving Medicaid benefits, one point four million, one point four they're not they are not eligible. So they will be coming off. So w we people are not Well, we all are going to die. So for heaven's sakes. For heaven's sakes, folks. Okay. No. But But well what you don't want to do is listen to me when I say that we are going to focus on those that are most vulnerable.
tone deafness there from someone who, I don't know, was trying to pass it off with Buddhist meditation or levitation or levity, I don't know. But she's doubled down on it. She put out another video saying, You look, we're all going to die at some point. You know, th it's not helpful. I mean I you know, it's not exactly sensitive, is it? You know, if people are genuinely concerned care and as a result of that dying.
you can't say, Yeah, well we're all gonna die But I mean curious figure because she's somebody who's tried to stand up to Trump in the past. Has basically been sh you know, particularly on his Senate confirmation She was the one who stood up and said, We're not going along with this. She got shouted down, she changed her mind, and I think she represents the kind of Republican Senator now, who may very well be on their last legs because they can't work out where they're
moral backbone is on this. They want to stand up to him, they daren't, they end up caving in, then they find themselves in this kind of cringable, excruciating conversation with their own voters.
I mean don't tell your own voters that they're all gonna die if they're asking you a serious point about cuts to Medicaid. And let's circle back to where we started, which is about much If Joni Ernst in Iowa or whoever is kind of fearful of standing up to Trump because Trump might run a primary opponent against them for not supporting his bill. And you feel you've got Elon Musk on your side, who will back you because you oppose the bill, you feel a little bit safer.
in going into that territory of defying Donald Trump because the financial firepower of Musk might just help you through the turbulence that will be created. And that is why Musk is still a player in all of this. In a moment we're going to talk about the ultra rich, the super wealthy. We're going to be speaking to Evan Osnos, the New Yorker writer. who has just published the Haves and Have Yots and funny enough he uses the length of boat metric.
I wondered what you were gonna say there. Tri well, that is where he goes. He talks about phallic sizing, in fact. He says that in one generation The number of US yachts that measure seventy-six meters or more has gone from less than ten, fewer than ten, to more than a hundred and seventy. We're gonna speak to Evan. Newsagents USA with Emily Maitless.
And John Soport. Well, Evan Osnos joins us now, and he's just brought out the haves and the Have Yotes dispatches on the Ultra Rich. And I guess to put this in context, In nineteen ninety there were sixty six US billionaires. In the last two years there have been seven hundred what's that? An increase of more than a thousand percent. And you take um Evan, the number
to its logical conclusion and measure for us the average length of the billionaire's yacht. Just take us through um how that metric's working out. Yeah, there's been in a sense, I suppose, an inflation in the size of the yachts, Emily, as much as there has been in the size of the fortunes. I mean it is quite measurable and distinct. These these giant boats, which really are a symbol of our time in so many ways, have grown by a third in length. And actually the sheer
Fact of their existence is also proliferating. There were only ten of these giant yachts about A generation ago. There are many smaller ones, which the industry calls pocket yachts, which I've always thought is a a a fascinating term. But today, instead of ten, there are a hundred and seventy. And they are in their own way a symbol for a creation of a cohort of wealth that is almost literally detached from national borders. from any specific identity in terms of its allegiance to a political
system or party. It is a a world that is collapsing the boundaries around capital and ultimately around political allegiance too. What is really interesting in the book is the way you describe how this level of wealth makes people withdraw from the world. That it's almost a fear. You know, that they're looking for spots in New Zealand or the yacht becomes the place that is not actually connected to land. In other words
The world seems to bring with it a terror, really, of connecting with anyone else, right? Yeah, it is a kind of vertigo, is how I've come to see it. That as you reach the highest stratosphere of prosperity or success, that it actually comes with a feeling of vulnerability. And I think that's for a few reasons. One, as A number of people have said to me, CEOs in Silicon Valley who I interviewed over the years for this book
They would say, I am aware of the fact. I mean, one in particular named Max Lebchen, who was one of the founders of PayPal, is he d he says in the book, I you know, we we know that there will come a point when the public is less satisfied with us. Another CEO says, We know that AI is gonna get rid of jobs. We expect that there will come a point when society turns on us.
And and I think it's also worth noting That when you saw that scene on the inauguration stage in Washington on January twentieth, that kind of indelible image of the world's richest people, the three of them standing next to Trump other billionaires on the stage, that some of them were there because of an ideological kinship and affinity for Trump.
Others were there because of an anxiety, a sense that they have become so rich that they are vulnerable to the anger and the potential retribution of an authoritarian president who they helped empower. Can I just ask you to that point, I mean you've said that you imagine the ultra rich, the super rich fearing that if you like one day they'll get rumbled, you know, by the anger of everyone else.
Why do you think I mean it's the m most impossible to answer question of our time, which is that Trump is a billionaire who wears his billionaire status so sort of regally and so happily. Doesn't seem to engender. Any of that sense of resentment. Why is that? Well you've hit on on an essential idea.
important to understand in my mind and to explore this question of how do Americans think about elites. I came to the view ultimately that Americans really don't like the noun, the elite, but we love the adjective. We love elite Navy SEALs. And what I mean is In a sense, we are congenitally suspicious of the idea that there is a world beyond our view, beyond our reach. The American idea at its core is this let's acknowledge it is a mythology, but it uh it is an essential mythology that we
can climb our way into any room in the world that with enough grit and determination and so on. Now we know the reality is that social mobility in this country has ground really almost to a halt. But Donald Trump tapped into that gap. between the the imagined America And the experienced America. And he said to people in one form or another, You can be me. If you if yeah, if you line up with me, not only will I give you the chance to be like me.
But I actually in a strange way believe it's possible. I heard this over and over in places like West Virginia, where I've been doing reporting over the last decade that People actually said, Look, I there's a lot I don't like about the guy, but he thinks I can
do better. And look, I would be the first to tell you I think that that is a tragic fallacy. I don't believe that Donald Trump actually believes people can live like him, but the the idea of Trump as Enlivened in the apprentice on the television show, which became so durable, really did become an idea that Americans wanted to attach themselves to. the suggestion that they have a sense of vulnerability.
these billionaires. If you look at Musk and his behaviour recently and we've kind of you know, the fathering of fourteen children, the endless drug taking allegedly, that the New York Times has reported. Every impression is given of being inviolable that they have impunity, that they can do what they want.
And also you look at the way the Trumps are behaving at the moment that, you know, trade deals are being negotiated at the same time as a member of the Trump family is in the country negotiating with the government over the building of a new hotel. That will i enable the Trump organization. It suggests there's a behavior that they can do whatever the hell they like without any consequence. I think that you're absolutely right. Look, there there is a a language on there.
that goes back quite a long way, in fact to the U Gilded Age. I mean, there was a time when Louis Brandeis, the Supreme Court justice, described the problem he called the curse of bigness. Which is that when you get big enough, either as a corporation or an individual, that you can resist any challenge in the courts, any challenge in politics.
that you become essentially sovereign. You become beyond the reach of ordinary political governance. And that is what Musk is. He is the curse of bigness made real. And You know, this was Brandeis' argument for breaking up trust. But there is an there is a case to be made and frankly it's the you've hit on the central thrust of the book, which is
that because we are now in an era in which there are fortunes beyond anything that we've had in our political history, that is not an overstatement. That's a fact, even in relative term. that because we have fortunes so large, that they are truly beyond control of ordinary government. Now I will say though, that doesn't necessarily contradict the point that people can still be afraid. In fact many of these very, very powerful figures would attribute their success
to healthy paranoia. They will tell you, if I hadn't along the way been afraid of threats, competition, people who are trying to take me down, then I wouldn't be where I am. And Musk in some ways this strange combination of being both hyper confident, but also determined to destroy any threat that comes after him. But this I mean, I guess you could sum it up as the too big to fail theory, couldn't you? When you get bigger than
governments, that is quite serious. I mean, we've talked to legislators here who have said, Oh, I'm gonna call Musk to heel, you know. We're gonna get him to appear before the UK Parliamentary Select Committee and you're like, yeah, good luck with that. And it's a real question of whether teeth are now. Who controls the billionaires? Well, you know, I have Tried one of the things that really interested me was understanding if this was This cohort of figures
are similar to the ones we had in the days of Carnegie and Rockefeller, or are they actually different? And I started talking to some archaeologists. Say put this in larger context for me. I mean the Really uh help me understand you've studied inequality back to the Neolithic period. And as One archaeologist said to me recently, he said, I think the people who built the pyramids were living in a less unequal society. Now
What that means is and that was not an abstract description, he was describing it on the basis of relative wealth inequality. And I think what's amazing about that is it means that we are now at a point when It's not an ordinary problem. We don't have an ordinary political problem.
These are sovereign fortunes of such scale that as you say, I think Emily, you're absolutely right. I mean, we don't really have um a facility in our politics in the United States or in other countries that are very successful at at bringing people. Under control. Now I will say though, history is very eloquent on this topic, which is that They tend to be their own worst enemy. There is a pattern that it tends to be that
people who succeed in one domain, often and and they are, let's say, unmolested by disagreement. They're surrounded by people who constantly tell them how brilliant they are. They tend to overreach, they bite off more than they can chew, and they begin tumbling down. And you've seen this over and over. It's in fact there's literature on what's known as authoritarian backlash, which is that they become so convinced of their own genius.
They fall out of touch with the public, the public rises up, and they are dislodged from that prime position. And that is, I would argue, exactly what we've just seen with Elon Musk. misadventure in Washington. Billionaires and their impact on the political system as well, where money has always been close to power. I mean in Britain, our last Prime Minister, Rishi Suna.
was more or less one of his main problems was that he was wealthy. He was too rich. He was too rich and people thought it was like the word cloud set above his head. It was like it was an insult. It was an insult, not a compliment. I just wonder what you
fathom from that about different societies because, you know, if you were a billionaire in British politics, it's the last thing you'd want to admit. Right. I'm so glad you raised this, John, because you know, I'm a dual national. I was born in London. In fact I have some kind of sense of affinity for both of these very distinct cultures. And I think it gets to the national idea.
You know, look, Americans are allergic to talking about class in an overt way. It's it's just it makes people uncomfortable because it clashes with our founding mythology that there's no rigid boundaries. There are no such thing as as class boundaries. And I think that that that is why Donald Trump was able to ride on this.
and of bridge making for ordinary people. Whereas of course in the UK there really was a distinct sense that no, maybe Rishi Sunak is a representation of the things we are actively trying to unwind and avoid rather than celebrate and reify by putting into power. This is where I think that the deep trend here, the thing that I think it will be felt.
on American history and and arguably on world history, when we look back on this period Is that the United States is moving in a direction, and I I don't mean to overstate it, but it is moving in a direction that looks more like the oligarchic experiences of places like
Russia, like the Philippines in the 70s and 80s under Ferdinand Marcos, where you have what the scholars call a sultanistic oligarch in power. That is a term that refers to one oligarch who becomes, in a sense, the leader of the others. They all consent. to support him or her. And they say, we think you will do the best at defending our interest.
And that's what Putin is. That's what Marcos was. And it doesn't end well for those countries. They end up typically the economy fails, they blunder into self interested financial misjudgments and on and on. And I think frankly it's a healthy thing that the UK ultimately decided we're not comfortable
reifying oligarchy as an idea, I worry that the United States by re electing Donald Trump has has inched closer to the Putinization of our politics. Let's give it a real application, real life application, with Trump's big beautiful bill. that he just got passed through the House of Representatives last month. It still needs to be approved by the Senate.
I mean, I I'm kind of thinking back to twenty twelve where Mitt Romney slipped up by talking about what was it, the forty-five percent and it sort of suggested that he was out of touch because he sounded too rich. And now you've got a president who says I have no shame. In fact I'm I'm reveling in massive tax cuts for the rich.
at the expense of Medicaid. Is this gonna get through his party? Well he is betting on the big lie. Frankly he is betting on the idea that he can persuade people that it's not I mean, as you just described it, that is the fact of the matter. But if you look at what Donald Trump is saying and doing, he is insisting in the White House. In its own Lockstep way is amplifying this message.
that there are no Medicaid cuts there because as they said yesterday, people who are getting Medicaid who don't deserve it are gonna be removed. That doesn't qualify as a Medicaid cut. Now I will tell you That's gonna last exactly as long as it takes for somebody to not get their Medicaid check or to not get their social security check. At that point,
Then the lie becomes real. And that's when you begin to see the power of civil society, or to shall we say, to test the power of civil society. I mean, that is my great my own learning from the history of these kinds of moments is The rubber meets the road when people get into the streets. And you've seen it already this year actually. I mean the fact that the protests in For instance where I live in Washington D C earlier this year we're five times the size of what the organizers expected.
Is a tell. I I've gone to these Bernie Sanders rallies recently. The crowds are vast. And they're not diehard Bernie people. These are just frankly scared Americans, some of whom don't agree with Bernie Sanders on a whole lot, but they say, I don't know what else I can do, so I'm here. Many of them told me I'd never been to a Bernie Sanders rally before.
So I look I I think the bill is going to pass in some form because the Republicans have no choice but to do so. They done nothing else in this Congress. They won't be able to run on anything if they don't. They'll end up having to twist and turn and prune it and so on.
But this you know, the little divide here you've seen just recently between Musk and the Republicans is a sign that he's exploiting the gap between reality and political nonsense. I just wondered as a final thought uh and I'm really fascinated by what you say about Bernie Sanders and the huge numbers of people turning up. He's an old man now. But is a Bernie Sanders type figure
the alternative option in American politics. Because in American politics it's always been you've had the Republicans who've been a little bit further right than the Democrats. You know, it's not like British politics where there's Labour and Conservative. Both parties were broadly pro-capitalist, pro-capital parties. Is the alternative now going to be much starker? That you're gonna have a Republican MAGA style candidate in twenty twenty eight and someone of the left?
really of the left, Democratic Socialist, who'll be the candidate for the Democratic Party? I think that we've seen that we are at a moment when a candidate of the left could actually build a constituency in this country. And it wouldn't necessarily be people who had traditionally defined themselves as being of the left. Take West Virginia, the state I mentioned earlier.
Amazingly, if you go back to 2016, Bernie Sanders won all 56 counties in that state in the Democratic primary. Every single county in West Virginia, one of the, which is now quite literally one of the reddest. trumpiest places in the country. There is an appetite for that. Now I will say though, I don't think that that person necessarily is going to be
AOC, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, because she has been defined very consistently by her opponents, by Republicans, as a kind of agent of the cultural left, which is very unpopular in this country. So I think there's an opening I think there's a real opening, John, for somebody to come out of this.
centrist tradition and declare themselves a truth teller who can say, I am somebody who I am not a radical by disposition, but these are times that require radical solutions. I wouldn't be shocked. And you're beginning to see You know, I've just noticed the last few days. Keep an eye on those bearded Democrats, people like Pete Buttigieg and Chris Murphy, who are beginning to ally themselves with working class voters of every stripe.
And uh you may find that one of them finds the lane to identify more clearly with a politics of the left. I knew you were gonna say Pete Bridge. Um l let me ask you Evan,'cause you are the O G Biden biographer from twenty twenty. Um Have you been shocked by what you read, I presume you read, in Jake Tapper's original Sin, or do you feel you knew all that? Was there a place for Democrats to speak out when they didn't?
I I think the shock for me certainly was the scene on the debate stage in in June of of that election. That was the moment that was a genuine shock. I remember I was on you know on TV that night and we got K they came right afterwards and I just said that is a person who is clearly not the person that's a little bit of a the country elected uh four years ago. And and I think the question for him at the time was how long could he pull that out? And you know, it took a few weeks.
I mean do you feel do you feel as just as an American citizen that the wool was pulled over your eyes that the people who surrounded him that this very tight teen of Don Larr and Ricketti and all the rest of it have got questions to answer for now. Well I think that's what the book is doing, is trying to hold them to account. I I tend to see it less as an
as an elaborate deception, because after all this played out on television screens every day. I mean, we were and there were constant stories about whether Biden was too old. I think it was more of a group delusion, frankly. I think it was more of a
consistent denial of reality. I mean, the last time I saw Biden for an interview in January of of twenty twenty four, I remember writing afterwards that he was betting his entire legacy, his entire name on the idea That he could persuade Americans that he was up to the job in the face of the reality that was, at least as people experienced it. It seemed impossible. And if he was wrong, he would be judged harshly by history. And I think that's what
Jake's book is essentially the first draft of that judgment. It's a tragic story in its way, I think. Isn't there also an element in which Joe Biden became Donald Trump in that. Donald Trump said only I can save America and Joe Biden took the view that only I can save America from Donald Trump and kind of put himself up as this man of destiny. when actually he was totally ill equipped in twenty twenty four. I think that's you run against Trump, you mean? I think look, I think you're right that
he did embrace a really damaging, heroic self narrative that he was the one. And I think that came from over reading and in many ways misreading his own life lessons. And he had gotten to where he was in l in life by essentially refusing to ever accept that when people told him he was bad or done or couldn't do it or whatever, he would get up, right? That was his central mantra was get up.
And the problem was in that final essential test, that final battle, when the world was telling him, We're done with you, we don't need you anymore. He took that as a challenge to carry on and ignore reality. And that that was a mistake. And the people around him, no question about it. propped him up in that idea. And that's not a frankly, I don't think that's a big
I don't think that's a a big revelation. That's what political teams do. Look, part of the problem of politics, and I find this to be one of the gruesome facts of it, is you talk to people on a campaign on a Monday and they say my candidate is the greatest thing since sliced bread. That candidate drops out Monday night, you talk to them Tuesday, and they say, I knew all along that this was doomed. And that just you guys know this was a a an intense version of that.
And one ultimately that will be quite damaging to Joe Biden's legacy, no question. And just let me ask you this when you saw Biden in January twenty twenty four. What did you think of how he was, th the way he moved, the way he thought, the way he expressed himself? Uh he he was obviously slowing down. His voice was very clotted and and he was
he was using, as I put in the New Yorker at the time, you know, he had a a note cards that he was using, which we all saw. I mean, this is the thing that was so curious about it. It was all It was all visible. It was on TV every day. There were stories about the note cards. There were stories about the about him him looking so much older, taking the tiny steps, shuffling along and so on.
And I think that then what happened was you had the State of the Union. Remember that. That was in its way a it kind of shifted the narrative and people all of a sudden said, Oh, you know, maybe he can maybe he can do this.
This is when he seemed just to tell people it hadn't seen very pumped up. He was taking on Marjorie Taylor Green. Exactly. He was look I mean, people even said w had he taken stimulants ahead of it because it was such a different character. I mean, did you get to the bottom of that? What do you think did happen? I think that I I I suppose any of us who has had an older person in our lives deteriorate over time, you you get used to this idea that they have their
They have their good days and their bad days. And so it creates this jagged line in your mind of a kind of look, aging and deterioration is not linear. It has these moments of success and failure. And what we then saw on the debate stage was such a dramatic demonstration of deterioration that it just made the point so clear. I I think though it's it there are people around Biden who were not lying when they
said that they s saw that debate stage scene and were shocked. It there's a telling detail in in Jake's book, which is that on the day of the debate, remember his staff had kind of moved up the date. to make it happen, which was an indication that they might feel confident about it. And then they walked in that day and they looked So relaxed, as he said. They looked so confident. I think that's interesting. That for me is a sign of delusion rather than
Deception. But it will be, you know, that's a question that will it'll take more books to sort out. Really good to speak to you, Evan. Thank you so much. Thank you. My pleasure. Great to be with you. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopal. And before we go, and sticking with our theme of the Super Rich, we thought you'd like to know about the planning for Jeff Bezos's modest.
uh second wedding uh when he's going to marry his fiancee uh Lauren Sanchez. Essentially he's taking over Venice. Venice is going to become a kind of tourist free zone and only for Bezos and his guests. Five Five star hotels have been totally booked out. Yeah, he's spending ten million dollars. Engagement ring costs I think two and a half million. And all the all the water taxis.
Have also been booked by All booked up. What I love is that Venice doesn't like tourists at the best of times. So imagine what those poor people are gonna go through on june the twenty fourth when Bezos et al come to town. Oh it's gonna be unbearable. Unbearable. Venice at the height of the season is always unbearable. Oh my god, it's gonna be so much worse. Anyway, good luck, Jeff. We wish you much happiness with Lauren. Bye bye. Global player original.