A year of Trump: terror, territory and tariffs

This is a Global Player original podcast. There's two main things that have really got me up really upset over the last couple of months when this has been going on. The first time was when I saw them Dragging the shackles and the chains around out of the backs of the airplanes. There are these big shackle apparatus that's going to connect your wrist to your waist.

a pair of chains that are maybe a meter and a half long going to go between your legs and your hands and your waist. It's so profoundly upsetting to me. These people are working so hard. They're learning a new language. They're working one or two jobs trying to support their family. Who knows where the rest of their family is? Maybe they're thousands of miles away in another country. They're doing their best. And our government is coming and just taking them and terrorizing them.

For no good reason. They're not criminals. They're Americans just like me, or they're working on becoming Americans just like me. They're doing things the right way. And the government is just ripping them out of our community. And it's so profoundly upsetting. That is Nick Benson. He's a self-confessed plane spotter. And right now, he's making it his life's mission to document for public record every single dark flight that's taking off from Minnesota.

Those flights don't officially exist, but as you'll see, they're carrying manacled, shackled deportees, many of them here legally, who have not seen due process as they're snatched off the streets and bundled out of this country. He and his team count each flight.

And every person who has disappeared without trace. Welcome to the news agents. The news agents. It's John in an air conditioned studio. Of twenty one degrees. It's Emily and we're feeling quite breezy up here at what? Minus one? It's Lewis. Yeah, Emily and I are in Washington. Honestly, compared to

The Arctic tundra of Minnesota. Washington this morning feels almost tropical. Caribbean, we're absolutely fine. Don't you worry we're very happy. They're so hardcore. All of Emily's report still to come, but we've got to start. because it is the first anniversary of Donald Trump's inauguration and he's marked that great occasion with giving Keir Starmer

an absolute battering on his Truth Social, a handsome reward for the year of painstaking sycophancy on the part of the British Prime Minister. The subject was of course Kirstama yesterday saying Donald Trump was totally wrong over his desire to take control of Greenland if the Danish and the Greenlanders don't want it and

Donald Trump has responded by saying shockingly, our brilliant inverted commas, NATO ally, the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the island of Diego Garcia, the site of a vital US military base to Mauritius. and to do so for no reason whatsoever. And he calls this an act of great stupidity on the part of the British Government.

So yesterday you had Keir Starmer thinking, Well, that news conference seemed to go all right. I was n quite nice to Donald Trump, I was quite nice to the Europeans, I didn't offend anybody. Wrong, you've offended Donald Trump. And in the middle of the night, when he was on his way to Davos, he lambed back.

Keir Starmer, and Starmer must be thinking, What the hell do I do now? And that isn't all, because of course uh some presidents perhaps on the first anniversary of their second term or the beginning of the second term in office might you know treat themselves to a bottle of champagne or a nice three course meal.

Donald Trump is deciding to dismantle an eighty year security alliance between two continents.'Cause it's not just with the UK. Overnight, basically we woke up to this in Washington this morning and Europe experienced it overnight. Donald Trump decided while he was in Miami to invite Vladimir Putin to his board of peace in Gaza. Irony isn't just dead, it's about five hundred feet.

Beneath the ground. And Lukashenko, I think, of Belarus. Of Lukashenko of Belarus, also a great peace loving figure. By 1 a.m. he decided to tweet a picture of himself with JD Vance.

and Marco Rubio, wi depicting a US flag on the island of Greenland. He had decided to r publish text between himself and Mark Rutter, the NATO Secretary General, and Emmanuel Macron, the French president, he threatened to slap two hundred percent tariffs on French wine, and then by the end of the evening, John, as you say, to top it off, he decided to com do a complete one eighty on his previous

agreement with the Chagos Islands deal that he'd previously given his support to, and decided instead to ruin Keirstarmer's day. And I think for that reason it is not actually particularly a Keir Starmer problem.

I do think it's probably time we stopped wanging on about the Monroe Doctrine or the Donro Doctrine or whichever US foreign policy doctrine history feels it should be throwing at us right now and start thinking that Maybe we will look back in years and come to realise with some sympathy that we are actually witnessing the first stages of mental decline and delusions like the madness of our own imperial King George. uh what will actually surface throughout all this. And I think it

It sort of makes it very easy for Keir Starmer, and I was listening to Darren Jones this morning, who just remained extraordinarily calm. There is nothing that he needs to do. There is nothing he can do. Frankly, in what world could he stop Trump invading Greenland and Venezuela and Canada and Cuba and Mexico? In what world could he sort of start imagining how he would respond to the dismantling of NATO? And I think truthfully it's up for those around Donald Trump.

Who are his allies, who are his team, who are part of his party who could actually see their own seats, their own electoral battles being lost if they don't stand up to him. That's what we're We're looking for now. We're looking for people around Donald Trump who are who are ready just to put him back in a noise-proof room for a while. But I think that the chances of that happening... seem to be absolutely remote.

When you have got to snarling attack dogs around Donald Trump who are threatening to destroy anyone who criticises Donald Trump and Stephen Miller plays that role as the Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy.

roll perfectly well when he kind of attacks anyone who dares to go near Donald Trump. People have j joked about the twenty fifth Amendment, which is that amendment in the US constitution where you can say someone is mentally unfit to carry out the role and if the cabinet vote for it and it's approved by Congress then off he goes. I I just don't see it happening yet. And I think that Donald Trump is threatening the alliances. I think Donald Trump is doing all these things.

Where you're talking about the end of NATO and as Lewis you say and the idea of Lukashenko and Putin being on the Gaza Board of Peace. is just extraordinary and it looks like Donald Trump is actually trying to remake the United Nations in his name, maybe call it the Trump United Nations or something along those lines, because it seems Surely that's the role of the UN to try to do this sort of stuff.

Look, I think what we're dealing with here, what European leaders, including Kistarmer, are dealing with, is trying to grapple with how you dismantle and move on from an eighty year old security alliance that has been the pillar of our European security and trying to work out how to do that basically in a matter of of days. Now I think that that is a mistake because I think, you know, frankly, many, many people have seen this coming. We should have seen it.

coming. I'm old enough to remember, by the way, just in terms of our own domestic political position, I'm old enough to remember when we were being told that Joe Biden and Barack Obama were anti British and that Donald Trump was gonna be a great boon for British security. I'm old enough to remember when We were being told that Donald Trump was gonna restore order.

on the global stage. I'm old enough to remember when we were being told that Brexit was a great idea because it would allow us to deepen the transatlantic alliance. And all of those same people aren't turning around now and saying You know what, fellas, we got this one wrong. Half of these people are so shameless that they're actually praising Trump, some of these people, for slapping Starmer around.

the room and saying that, you know, that he's really shown him, you know, who's who and what's what. These are the sort of plastic patriots that we're dealing with. And Keir Starmer, look, I've got criticiz I think I think Keir Starmold's always going to run out of road with his approach to Trump because Trump is becoming, I think, I mean you're right, more increasingly adult.

I mean we've always I think there's always been a danger of overintellectualizing Trump. He's basically a wriggling bag of political urges and sort of instincts. That is more true today than it has ever been before. But I think it's a good idea. So appalling and unimaginable. Vladimir Putin in the Kremlin is rubbing his hands with glee. But the truth is, is that we if we defuse him today.

That set of urges, that unpredictability will be back tomorrow. And I'm just gonna I think there's one other thing as well. Mike Johnson, the Speaker of the House of Representatives, is in London today, basically giving first ever sitting US House Speaker to be giving an address to Parliament.

Don't worry. Basically the US sort of state, the rest of the Republican Party is here. We will try and calm this down. There have been moments in the past when Donald Trump has been receptive to other bits of the American state, the Republican Party, and so on.

I don't think he's receptive to any of that anymore. And I say that partly because I think the one thing that Donald Trump has always been receptive to has actually been US public opinion. He's been quite alive to that in the past. He has had a raw political instinct. Everything that we are seeing now, whether it's what's going on in Minneapolis

Whether it is what is going on in terms of using economic warfare against allies, threats against allies, potential military invasion of Greenland, this actually unites American voters on the left and right. They are all against it by massive margins. Donald Trump is showing no sign whatsoever of caring. And I think that that is a massive difference between Donald Trump at this stage of his presidency, in this presidency, and his first term. There is one person who is calling this out.

At Davos this morning, and that is Gavin Newsom who talks about complicity, and I think that's a really important word to try and understand. How most of the world leaders are responding at the moment. I can't take this complicity. People rolling over. I should have brought a bunch of knee pads for all the world leaders. I mean, handing out crowns and handing I mean this is pathetic. Nobel prizes they are being given away. I mean it's just

pathetic. And and I hope people understand how pathetic they look on the world stage. I mean at least from an American perspective. It's embarrassing. It's time to buck up. It's time to get serious and uh stop being complaining. It's time to stand tall and firm, have a backbone.

I you know, it's uh I've seen this in the United States, the Supine Congress playing both sides, you know, saying one thing on a text or a tweet and another publicly. It's time to have principle. It's time to stand tall, tall, it's strong. Does that be more?

Time to stand united. You make that determination. I don't make that determination. When you say stand united. Collectively. Oh, this is diplomacy with Donald Trump. He's a T-Rex. You mate with him or he devours you. One or the other. And you're people need to stem.

No, the Europeans could be if they continue to down this path and process. They need to stand tall, stand firm, stand united. Don't want look you sa this a year ago we should have been having this conversation and they didn't. Okay, and now you're paying the price. Exactly what anyone objective observer would have anticipated we'd be where we are today. Well that's Gavin Newsom talking about how supine.

Everyone is being and and Lewis the point you were making about this he is a bag of urges. I watched a piece last night on the BBC talking about the intellectual underpinning for why Donald Trump wants Greenland. And nowhere did it talk about

He wants it'cause he wants it. I know.'Cause he can have it. Because I will take what I want to take. And none of that was present and I just thought that is something that is so absent from all of this. But you know, as you were saying about Keir Starmer, look This is the lowest point for the special relationship since the Suez crisis. I can't think of another occasion when relations had felt so fraught between the UK and the US.

And then you could say, well, the Suez Crisis, it was ridiculous imperial overreach by the government of the day. And of course Eden would have to go and America threatened to bankrupt the Bank of England unless it halted this kind of action that it was conducting with the French and the Israelis. I mean, today, what can you say that Kirstama has done wrong?

What other cards did he have to play? And I just think that there is an inevitability that even if we get over this crisis, even if the Supreme Court might save us and say you can't impose these sanctions Another thing will come along and do the damage And a rethinking of that whole relationship.

has to be going on right now. The Suez Crisis looks like a wordle by comparison today, doesn't it really? It almost doesn't do to be too parochial about this because we're looking at the the reordering of of the global order and certainly the Western order. It makes no sense now I think after this week to talk about the West.

in a way that we might have done for the the previous decades. What on earth can that possibly mean when the United States is effectively under its president acting like a rogue state with a rogue leader. I don't think in any way if we just think about the sort of pillars of our

Foreign policy, right? What we used to talk about in the UK. We used to talk about the three pillars. We used to talk about our transatlantic relationship. We used to talk about our European relationship, our member of the European Union, and the Commonwealth. The Commonwealth was always the sort of weakest bit of that.

But the transatlantic relationship as we've known it, I think it's basically gone, at least for the time being. And the European relationship, as we used to talk about it at that time, as gone. Britain now feels a complete bit player all of this. We've got to try and reorder and reassemble what is left of our foreign policy. Because right now, you know, if we think about the United States as an ally, it's not an ally politically.

Because we saw in the national security strategy that they literally think that European governments are decadent, weak and facing civilizational erasure and they want to back far-right parties to displace mainstream European parties.

They are not an ally militarily, because they're threatening to invade Greenland. They're not an ally strategically, because they're increasingly aligned with Russia over us and Ukraine. And they're not an ally economically, because they're whacking us with tariffs. It does not make any sense at this point for the time being and it pains me to say this.

as someone who's you know always valued and believed in that transatlantic alliance but it doesn't I think make any sense and Trump to in for at least the coming years for us to talk about the United States as the ally that we have known it to be. It is at the very best

a strategic competitor to us in Europe. He's not an outright foe. I think your caveat was right though, for now, because everything he's doing at the moment is taking him to a place where he will not look forward to the midterm elections, I imagine. And that doesn't necessarily spell success. for a future Republican or should I say a future MAGA form of government in the years to come. It may be that this all self combusts to a place where

I don't know. The world reshapes itself, not in the same way, but in the way that does reinclude us and many others as allies again.

In a moment, we'll be looking at those dark deportation flights that we have witnessed ourselves taking off from the airport in Minnesota and the thousands of people that are now being disappeared without name, number or trace. Welcoming the Leader of the Opposition, Leader of the Conservative Party, Kevin Bayton back to the studio. Listen on our free. LBC leading Britain's conversation.

The news agents. In yesterday's show, we talked about the moment that the ICE patrols confront people mainly of immigrant communities on the streets in Minneapolis. and what happens to them after they are detained, many of them without the chance to even go back and tell their families what's happened to them. Today we're going to bring you the story of those people deported in shackles, in manacles, often in their work clothes, in an Amazon uniform or in a construction worker's high-viz vest.

It leaves families wondering where they've gone. and not knowing how they'll ever get them back. This is the story of Nick Benson's work. He took us with him as he documented publicly, for the record, every single flight that is taking off now. We've just been picked up in the car from downtown Minneapolis by Nick Benson and I'm gonna let Nick explain to you now what he does because it is honestly quite jaw dropping. So I am a A plane spotter and uh

That's kind of morphed into keeping track of the ice flights that are operating here at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport now. So right now we're on our way to Terminal One. at MSP, the main terminal here, and we're going to go up in the parking ramp to get an elevated view of the private jet terminal here at in Minneapolis where these deportation flights load.

And what we'll see uh on the other side of the runway will be an airplane that'll come in, a convoy with some buses and a few vans, and we'll see several dozen Shackled deportees hobbling up the stairs and onto the airplane and are shipped off to detention centers probably in Texas. El Paso seems to be where most of them have been going. How do you know about these flights?

Deportation flights have been operating here in Minnesota for years. You could look and you could see the charter airline that was coming in and operating these flights. And this spring in April they stopped showing up on the schedule and I got interested in why that transparency had gone away. And uh the number of flights started increasing and the way we know about these flights now in most cases is we just have to look on these independent flight tracker.

that doesn't censor their data and doesn't follow the uh FAA's privacy list program. And we can see where those airplanes are in real time. Once they're up in the air, this morning we had a hunch that just from looking at what historically had been doing That we were probably going to get an airplane out of El Paso this morning is what we were expecting. And so we were keeping a close eye on that flight.

And sure enough, it was pointed towards us here in the Twin Cities. And we've been doing this long enough now that I know that it takes two hours and 20 minutes for a 737 from El Paso to fly into Minneapolis. So we can see when it took off. From that, we can figure out an estimated time of of arrival. I think this is going to be like the 27th flight this month. And so far this January

I think one thousand seven hundred and eighty-seven people have been deported out of Minneapolis so far and plus whoever we see today. You said that these people are shackled as they get on the plate. These are criminals, presumably. These are people that have been rounded up and found to have criminal criminal convictions and they're being deported. The government would say that they're the worst of the worst.

In my experience doing community observation in my town, these are grandmas and grandpas. Uh women as well. Women and from the statistics that DHS has sent out, most of them do not have any criminal conviction. And we also know of instances even at the airport where airport employees who are here working behind security, you know, so they've been vetted thoroughly by TSA because they're working on in the secure portion of the airport. Even those people are subject to being snatched up.

and deported. If you are not a citizen, that seems to be the only distinction right now is uh even if you're doing things the right way and have a legal status even if it's pending, they're taking people away and it's really uh it's really frustrating and abhorrent and it's on American. We're a a nation built on largely on immigration

And the fact that they're just rounding people up and terrorizing our communities is gut wrenching. A couple of days ago we saw someone who was still wearing their Amazon uniform as they were boarding the plane. Presumably was just out making deliveries. And is now

On his way to a detention facility somewhere. It's terrible. In my extended network here in the Twin Cities right now, we ha have friends who are working on the legal side of all of this and they say they've had cases where they've had a client who's been picked up in the morning and are in El Paso that evening. I don't know how there's possibly time for the due process that everyone on American soil is supposed to be guaranteed. You're really upset as you're s speaking to me now. Oh yeah.

I've also been doing some of the community patrol or observation work. where we're out and we're looking at the communities that are at risk, apartment complexes, mobile home communities that have a high immigrant population. And when you're in those places there's two main things that have really got me up really upset over the last couple of months when this has been going on. The first time was when I saw them

Dragging the shackles and the chains around out of the backs of the airplanes. They're these big shackle apparatus that's going to connect your wrist to your waist. A pair of chains that are maybe a meter and a half long going to go between your legs and your hands and your waist. And that bothered me a lot.

The other thing that really bothered me that I've seen when I was doing this community observation was when I was at an apartment complex where there was a family there That was just in a panic and they were driving around in a circle in the parking lot going around their apartment complex over and over again.

At first we were concerned that maybe they were ice also because they were acting suspiciously. They were just driving in circles like they were fishing for someone. But we stopped them and asked them what's wrong. And it turned out that they were looking for a family member who had been taken. They found their car was parked in an unusual parking spot. We imagine because ice

detained them and blocked them in and and moved the car to that parking spot. And they were just in a complete panic because their loved one had been snatched up and they had no idea where they were. what they could do, what resources might exist to help them. And they can't trust anybody because their own government is not helping them at all. And they were just terrified. You know, these were two adults. Think about the kids who are having these same experiences.

who they don't know if mom and dad are going to be home tonight when they get home from school. And it's so profoundly upsetting to me. These people are working so hard. They're learning a new language. They're working one or two jobs trying to support their family. Who knows where the rest of their family is? Maybe they're thousands of miles away in another country. They're doing their best. And our government is coming and just taking them and terrorizing them.

For no good reason. They're not criminals. They're Americans just like me. Or they're working on becoming Americans just like me. They're doing things the right way. And the government is just ripping them out of our community. And it's so profoundly upsetting.

If the president were here in this car with us, he'd say, I told you I was going to do that, and I put it on the campaign trail, and Americans told me that's what they wanted and I'm fulfilling what I said I would do. What would be your response to that? Well, Minnesota didn't vote for him. I sure as hell didn't. And it's a damn shame that our society is allowing this to happen again.

We are driving by the southern side of signature aviation right now as we make our way into the airport. This signature aviation is the private jet terminal where they're going to get loaded here pretty soon. The convoy that's going to bring them in isn't here yet. We're going to sit in a parking spot here and we'll see if we can see the the convoy of prison vehicles coming in here and Uh at a bare minimum that will give us a a rough expectation of how many people

might be getting boarded on this flight. So we just pulled into a lay-by, we parked for about two minutes and then we saw a convoy, a couple of minivans, small buses. carrying the people that we think we are expecting will now be deported. We are essentially watching a deportation happening in in real time now and Nick is trying to work out the numbers from Yeah. Yeah and we'll

We'll actually we'll go and count them now. If the snow doesn't get too thick, we'll try to get an actual count of how many are on there. But yeah, probably two dozen on each of the buses. maybe nine or so in the large van and then

I I'm gonna guess three or four uh probably women in the minivan that went by. So that's I can't do the math and the narration all at the same time while I'm driving here, but that's uh that's gonna be our rough estimate of what we would expect to see today. So you film every one of these. Yeah, or I take a few pictures at least. These are the only numbers we have on what's actually happening here. There's no accountability otherwise. The federal government won't tell us.

The airport isn't telling us, so it's up to us to do this. The local and federal government are failing to serve the people, so we need to do it ourselves. And it's uh it is what it is.

The plane that's just landed behind us doesn't have a name or a number. It's a dark plane. It doesn't officially exist. And it's about to take deportees down to El Paso in Texas. We're now waiting for the people on those convoys that we just saw in shackles. board that plane. They don't know where they're going, they don't know if they'll ever come back. And many probably haven't had the chance to even tell family members where they are.

One of the things that's upsetting about the shackles in addition to just how inhumane it is is when you think about this from a safety perspective. These people have their ankles are chained together. and their hands are chained to their waist at their hips. And there's been reporting from Pro Publica that has said

that the flight attendants on these flights have been told that the detainees are not their problem to deal with. They can evacuate the plane and uh the detainees will fend for themselves. You can see some people are moving around the back of the airplane now. That's where they'll uh open the cargo hatch and that's where they'll uh the shackles will come out and

bags of personal effects will be loaded on. I believe each D port T I believe is allocated something that's on the uh a handbag or a grocery bag, perhaps sort that sort of a volume of things that they can bring with them. So the first DPOT has just boarded the flight here at MSP and uh now begins the process for me of keeping an eye on this lens and keeping a count going.

with my fingers like I'm calling balls and strikes for baseball, but I'm counting my neighbors that are going away here. It's uh terrible. Now we just had one get on and we're having a little bit of a pause. It's hard when it's cold like this because your breath uh freezes on the uh on the on the gear. Again, an example that looks like a construction worker, they're wearing their high viz, their bright green bright green uh hoodie. Seven. Thirteen. Fourteen, fifteen. So 20, 21. Twenty-six.

Another guy wearing green construction worker type of garb. 34. Another construction worker. It's 38. Thirty nine. Forty. Forty-one, forty-two. Forty three. They might be done getting people now it looks like they might be uh getting the shackles picked up off the ground right now and they're gonna get yeah, if you so if you look right now you can see them handling the shackles.

Between the engine and the air stairs there you can see them picking the shackles up off of the ground. So are the people shackled as they're getting on? The people are already so I believe what happens is the people are already shackled when they arrive. And then what happens is the shackles get sent back up.

in the cargo hold of the airplane and they'll get loaded on the van for the next round of people is what I I believe is happening. The shackles that we're seeing now were shackles that other people have worn previously and were loaded in cargo in the airplane So, you know, they need the shackles back here to send the n for the next round of people, I think is how is how it works.

It almost looks to me like we might have someone coming off of the plane now. It looked to me like there were two people who just got off of the flight here. So we had 43 people. get onto the airplane and we had two people come off. Detainees you mean. Correct. And why would that be? I would hope that it's because their lawyers and their family uh were able to get in touch with them.

And get them to uh undo the mistake that the government had made by shipping them away from Minnesota in the first place, would be my guess. So we had forty three deportees get on the plane and we had two come off and I need to write that down so I have Uh so I can remember that. So Nick has counted some 40 or so detainees, deportees getting on that plane that he reckons is now heading to El Paso in Texas. We've been standing here watching the operation for about an hour.

In minus sixteen degrees snowing. And I have to say it's one of the most dystopian, chilling things I think I've ever witnessed, which is a deportation happening in real time. Now, we don't know who those people are. It is possible that amongst them there are criminals, there are people who shouldn't be here, there are people who

were told by Trump when he was elected that they would be removed. But to see the numbers to see the operation and to see normal life going on around it with commercial flights, Delta, American Airways just landing oblivious to what's actually going on here, is something I don't think I'll ever forget.

At around the time of the American Civil War We had an incident here at Fort Snelling where there was a concentration camp here right on the other side of the property from where we are right now where several hundred Native Americans were rounded up after a mass hanging had happened in Mankato. And they were put in this camp here on the other side of Fort Snelling.

And more than a hundred of them died over the winter and then they were shipped out in steamboats out of Minnesota, away from their home. Many of them were here at Fort Snelling because a bishop had advocated on their behalf so they would not also get executed as many of their other family members were in Mankato. And there's a monument to this in Fort Snelling now. And I strongly believe that years from now we'll have another monument here.

in this area that's commemorating the fact that we allowed this to happen again. Nick has done his homework with the rest of the sort of crowdsourced aviation community. They know exactly where these flights are going. They have people who watch them land, they have people who watch them come in. And the one that we saw take off on Sunday was going to El Paso. A detention centre there has been in the news recently because three people have died there in the last few weeks.

As I think you heard from Nick, as he was explaining These flights used to take off as a matter of course. Every Wednesday they would take off with people who were being deported because the legal process had found that they should no longer be in the US. He didn't have a problem with that. Many Americans don't have a problem with that.

Where they do have a problem is once the flight numbers and names are no longer being made transparent. And as you heard, We have now documented through him 27 of these flights taking off. were up to nearly two thousand people. Their family members don't know where they are. They don't know if somebody that they saw last week is one of the dead now in El Paso detention centre. And I think Part of this remarkable work that Nick is doing and it is

chilling and it is ugly and it is un American as he said. But part of the work is just to try and keep a number on what is actually happening because the government itself tells its own people, its own American voters, nothing.

The news agents. Welcome back to Washington. We were here a year ago, Emily, for the second Trump inauguration, exactly a year ago, and it is dizzying uh if not a little bit disturbing even to consider that Donald Trump is merely twenty-five percent of the way through his second term before it expires in twenty twenty nine. And when you consider the dizzying changes.

that have been brought about. A sort of frontal political assault on the senses on a daily basis that we see both at home in the United States. and abroad, it is something to consider where we might go in the remaining seventy five percent. And just a way that I think

I sort of increasingly think about this second Trump term in the round. Again, both at home and abroad. It links what we've been talking about and reporting on in in Minnesota, Emily, and what we've been talking all about today. The big question that remains for me in this last three-quarters of the term is the frontier is the extent of Trump's personal power. It feels to me that Trump

both domestically and as I say in terms of foreign policy, is pushing every day that goes by, he's pushing and pushing and pushing just to see how far he can push. You've just been talking about those I illegal flights those blacked out flights effectively, Emily, under enough previous American administration, that would not have stood. We would not have seen the unilateral dismantling of what we're seeing of America's eight decade old security alliances. Because

As one of the founding fathers of this country put it 250 years ago, this is a country of laws and not of men. The big question for me for the remainder Of the Trump term is the extent to which that is still true. I it's hard to quantify. Just how much has changed? over the past year. I mean we've at the top of the podcast we talked about the international order, but within America itself, the assault that has taken place on civil society, the intimidation

of the media, the subjection of the universities to kind of dictat rule by the White House, it goes on and on. Wherever you go, you can see that Donald Trump has had a real impact. And has fundamentally changed the relationship. between Washington

and the country about states' rights, which was also a fundamental thing two hundred and fifty years ago, that the states should stop an overmighty Washington. And as you guys have just reporting from Minneapolis over the past couple of days, Donald Trump shows no respect

For what is happening in a state, if he wants to go in there, he will. And you know, look, the midterm elections, if Donald Trump loses the House and loses the Senate the second half of his second term becomes a very different thing because there will be Endless inquiries, endless investigations into his activities, the kind of monetization of the presidency by the Trump family, all of that will be on the table. And so I'm left with this kind of nagging worry.

That this is an election that Donald Trump cannot afford to lose. in the midterms. And what does that mean? And what might he do to make sure that he doesn't lose these elections? come November because that is the really scary bit. I mean we've talked about the eighty year old relationship with Europe. Let's talk about the two hundred and fifty year relationship which you know Alexander Hamilton called the Great Experiment with self government because That too. Could be in some jeopardy.

The the big one really, who is Trump now speaking to and who is he speaking for? And I I had this really strange encounter last night. I have to say, I always have strange encounters in this town, to be fair, but it was with the face of Magger Greenland, a man called Jorgen Boersen. He's a a Danish Greenlandic political figure. He would call himself, I think, native and Inuit Greenlander, former bricklayer.

turned Trump pal. And he sees himself now as the push for Trump's Greenland. And he's over here right now. He wouldn't tell me which character brought him over. He was very sort of subtle about that. But he he basically is over here because the administration want him to drum up support for a project and show the world that this is something Greenlanders want.

You know, he he's a bit showbiz. He he came over and introduced himself to us. I know, because Greenlanders don't in the main want this and Danish people clearly don't. want this and the point he was making and we you know we try and always find the sanity of reason in this, he said, Well, you know, Greenlanders have got a very high suicide rate and

they were never given the the option to sort of self define or self govern. There was a referendum in two thousand eight where they're allowed to self govern but there's very few of them so they won't be an independent country. But it did strike me that the fact that this kind of larger than life figure is being pulled over to to sort of be the MAGA face of Greenland now suggests that there is a a shrinking coalition of people, that Trump is

is able to persuade about that right here. Now, there will always be the MAGA hardliners. We know that. But the coalition that he won with in twenty twenty four was more subtle than that. It wasn't only MAGA, it was kind of begrudging Trump voters. It was people who probably wanted Nikki Haley but didn't want Biden. It was people who thought he was gonna do fantastic things for the economy. It was some of the young men

The sort of the podcast bros we've talked about on the podcast before. And a lot of those constituencies, it seems to me, are not. They're in the numbers that they were in 2024, which leaves you with, you know, the MAGA Heartland and the guy from Greenland.

But I think that and I I think that what links exactly all of the things that we're talking about is the extent to which at this point Donald Trump any n any longer cares about public centres. Yes, exactly. And uh and I think that it goes back to your point, John, which is look, we're sat here in Washington, as we both alluded to, it's a two hundred and fifty

Ith anniversary of the creation of the United States in seventeen seventy six this year, right? It's gonna be huge fanfare, there's gonna be endless sort of highfalutin talk about the sort of, you know, birthplace of this remarkable republic and democracy, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. And yet the irony is

that that will all be going on and that language will all be being uttered against the backdrop, as you rightly say, John, about for the first time in the history of this republic, a credible and it's not conspiratorial, an entirely credible idea that a set of elections will neither comprehensively be free or fair and that therefore the legitimacy of this democracy will be called into question.

Under the 45 men who've been president of the United States, that has never happened before. It is happening under Donald Trump and that tells you everything you need to know about this second presidency of Donald Trump. I feel that every time I sit on this balcony, I always say the same thing, which is, shall we do a sweepstak?

Shall we should we bet between the three of us? Grand National. Something like that. Do you think that I mean does anyone do any of us think that the midterms will actually be cancelled? I have to say I I don't. I don't think they'll be cancelled, but I think the the question is whether that they go ahead uh without interference. I. e. exactly without the other.

Texas. Is that interference or is that legit? Insurrection act Ice. What we've been talking about this week. You know, you suddenly say, look, um we think there are loads of illegals voting in, say, Minnesota.

We're going to send a load of ICE agents to go to the polling stations and you basically suppress it. So intimidation. Intimidation, yeah. And do you think that soaps? Yeah, I do. I think the insurrection act, it was the kind of It was the least surprising thing Donald Trump said last week when he said, I might have to invoke the insurrection act and thought, Oh yeah, here we go because that is the obvious way where you can put federal troops wherever you like States, cities can't object.

The federal troops come in, they place themselves at a polling station. And are you gonna go and vote if someone's pointing a rifle at you and says, I want I need to see your papers, I need to see your passport before you can go into the polling station? Might you just think about it? If you feel you're gonna be taken off the streets if you're gonna end up in those shackles that you've been reporting on, Emily. Which is why I believe it won't but I think the trouble with Trump is that he

He does this whole thing of the joke that isn't a joke. So he said even in the past few days, Oh, we don't r really need the elections, everything's going so well, we don't need the midterms and you can hear all those sort of around him kind of

Hollow laughing. What is this? Do we laugh? Do we not laugh? Do we do we talk him down? What happens now? As I say, I think it is early stage stuff. I I think there's two things, John. I think you've already alluded to it.

which is that Donald Trump remembers what happened when he lost the House and he lost the uh midterms in twenty eighteen. And what happened? He got impeached twice, he was bogged down in endless institutional wrangling, there were endless shutdowns, And he ended up in a position where he was every single department and he himself

And he's not a very good idea. He doesn't like losing. And he remembers that and how he will want to avoid that at all costs. And again, he is not acting. There are Republicans in this city who are not going to be able to do that. Desperate for him to stop talking about Greenland. They are desperate for him to stop talking about the Board of Peace. They are desperate for him to stop randomly imposing tariffs on allies. They would love him to be talking about cost.

of living which is the number one issue for American voters. And he is singularly failing every single day to do so. And again, that makes me think that this is a man who is not too concerned with his party's prospects. That might be because he just doesn't care about the Republican Party now, maybe, or maybe he's got a slightly different plan for those midterms. We'll be back, sadly not from here tomorrow, but we will be back.

If all goes well. As if as if we survived the plane. That that will be that will it will be going well if we survive, that is true. And presents for the team who stayed behind, please. Thank you. Many presents. So many presents. Our cameraman has just discovered the US eight finger Kit Kat. There is no bounds to his joy. They say this country's finished. We'll see you tomorrow. Bye bye.