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at MintMobile.com slash switch. $45 up from payment to equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only. Taxes and fees extra. Speed slower above 40 gigabyte ct. Welcome to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Anastak Campbell, and we're back in the UK Rory, you're at your home, I'm at mine. We're going to talk obviously about some of the more dive into some of the greater detail on the result itself. Some of the reactions
there have been so far. I'm very keen to talk about some of the foreign policy implications. But I think you should probably start, given some of the stick you've been getting, grossly unfair in my view, with just how wrong did you get it, Rory? Well, I definitely got it wrong. So I projected that Kamala Harris or predicted that Kamala Harris would win comfortably. And in fact, Donald Trump, it now looks like a moment we're recording,
seems to be on track. He's already taken the Senate. He's won the popular vote. He's won the electoral college. So it's going to be present and he's on track to take the House of Representatives as well. So very, very considerable victory. And that means that I was wrong, but it also means that an enormous number of other people who were predicting it was going to be a very close race.
And even the betting markets who've been got a lot of pats on the back were largely predicting that Kamala Harris would win the popular vote, even if he won the electoral college. So it will be a victory that is very, very significant. Quickly on lessons I take away from it. Obviously one big lesson is a massive lesson in humility. I've been reflecting a little bit about how I got it wrong. I think the answer is partly technical. So it's partly that Trump did not
perform very well in 16, 18, 20 and 22. So the question was from quite a low base. And when I say not very well in 16, he didn't do very well in the popular vote. And obviously since then he's underperformed. So the question for me was, had he got stronger since then or weaker? And I reckon you've got weaker. I reckon he'd been damaged by the felony convictions. I thought that his pick of JD Vance wasn't great. I thought that the January 6th insurrection damaged him. So at margins
I reckoned that he'd been damaged. And I particularly thought that women were going to turn out for Kamala Harris and that young men who express support for Trump might be unlikely to turn out. And I was wrong on both counts. Young men who supported Trump turned out in large numbers than I thought. And white women voted for Trump against Kamala Harris by significant margin. So it was a 52-48 margin of women voting for Trump. But most of all I guess I probably got it wrong
because of wishful thinking. I've spent a lot of time with you talking about the rise of populism around the world. And every time we do an event together on us, the somebody sticks their hand up and says, well, where's the hope? Where's the optimism? And in order to deal with this gloomy story of the last 10 years, I've begun to sort of look for these rays of hope and say, well, you know, Poland and Modi and maybe Turkey and the midterms in the US. And so in that narrative,
looking for this miracle and hope, I began to talk myself into a Kamala Harris victory. Anyway, over to you. On that, of course, you didn't mention from a progressive point of view the one that actually should have given people around the world a lot of hope. And that's the UK. But of course, since the UK general election and Labour's landslide, it hasn't felt very hopeful. Look, I was definitely affected by you as well. We were in Chicago together at the DNC,
where I think we both came out of that thinking, they've definitely got their Mojo back. She looks impressive, amazing organization. This thing could happen. But I'll tell you something that kept knowing away at me the whole time. I remember when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. I remember somebody on her team saying, do you know what? The problem was a lot of Americans, they've thought, look, we've put it with having a black guy, Obama, we're not going to have a woman now.
I remember that very, very vividly. And I think that one of the things that's interesting about when you are in America, particularly the powers of America that you and I are most likely to go to, which is not the Alabama's and the Missourish and the what have you, is that people don't like, I think, to talk about racism and sexism. But I think there was a lot of racism and sexism. I think that the fact of Kamala Harris being a black woman, California, that definitely got through.
And the other thing, as we said through the night when we were broadcasting with Dominic Sandbrook and Scaramucci and Marina Hyde, is that she just didn't get the continuity and change right. And the thing that Peter Hyman, my former colleague that kept saying is, Trump's message, although it's chaotic, it's also much clearer. And on your point about the polls, is you keep saying, and I think the polling company is so sort of sensitive and nervous. I think they kept going
for 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, because it made it all more exciting. And I think the media wanted it to be 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, because it made it more exciting for them. So look, I just think it's having had a couple of days to reflect on it. It sort of looks a bit more obvious now than any of the jury felt. I guess it always does in retrospect, isn't it? I mean, I've still seen reflecting on why was I better at being realistic about Afghanistan?
And I guess the answer there would have been that I spent a lot of time in remote rural areas. So I come back and I say Afghans are more conservative, more religious, more anti-foreign than people want to acknowledge. And I'm not that surprised that there are people in rural areas who support the Iranian state. In the US context, so it's a bit different. I mean, I was out of Montana, and obviously I met a lot of young men with pickup trucks who were voting for Donald Trump. That
didn't surprise me too much. What I think has surprised me is the number of suburban middle-class white women who've decided to turn out for Trump. And getting to that, I suppose getting to the the truth of exactly what happens with the Latina vote, a 1% shift in this demographic, or that is quite tough across the country's biggest United States. Also, Roy, we all like at the end of big moments like this to say, oh, well, this was the reason and that was the reason. There are
thousands of reasons. Millions of people have their own decisions. But I think when you really tried to drill into it, we were sort of projecting Kamala Harris. And there was a lot of wishful thinking, both of us, I think. But we were projecting the sense of the Democratic party that I think a lot of Americans had already rejected. So we were thinking that Trump was the big, the big sort of bogey man. He was the hate figure. And the because of the hate that was against him,
that was going to seem not when. But actually, I think we underestimated how many people had already written off the Democrats. And not necessarily, by the way, because of the economy. One of the tragedies for Joe Biden's career and legacy, he's actually leaving the economy in pretty good nick. And now, because Trump has said the economy is terrible, he will get the credit, he'll try to get the credit for it. I remember talking to Jamie Rubin who we also interviewed on
leading a while back, who is a very good friend of mine. I've talked to him a lot over the recent times. And he's always been saying to me, you guys don't get just how big this won't thing is. You think you've got it big, but you haven't got it nearly as big as it's happening in our country at the moment. So when we talk about them putting us Peter Hyman, that about $25 million in advertising on trends. Trump talking about kids going in for as boys in the morning and coming back as girls in
the afternoon, the dressing room stuff, all that. I think we underestimated how much that was getting through to people. The point in the night of Farage made to me. He was totally blunt about it when we spoke on whatever day it was the other Wednesday. He said, look, you guys may not like it, but in a world of turmoil, young men want an alpha male leader. Now, well, I've learned a lot looking. I mean, I've obviously got an amazing amount of delighted abuse on X from people who are
triumphantly delighted that I made the wrong prediction. But when I look through the threads, the diversity that comes across reviews is really interesting. So you've got people who are focusing on straightforward issues like cost of living. Then you have a lot of people who are saying to me, the reason we voted for Trump is because he was right to support anti-vaccination. There's a lot of cultural war stuff. So people calling me a misogynist to pervert as sexist.
There's quite a lot of Gaza. You support ethnic cleansing and genocide because you support Kamala Harris. But then there's also no war thing. Exactly. There's no war on the Trump. And then there's, and then there's she placated Islamists. There's, that she supports neoliberal economics. You support slaughtering babies and children, child mutilation and sterilization. Quite a lot of jargon out there. I'm attacked for Androphobia,
Christopherobia and anti-white racism. And then you get some interesting things. I mean, predictably, quite a lot of people demanding to know why I think climate change is real. Quite a lot of people saying, obviously, he was going to win because the previous election was stolen. And the fact that Trump has won now proves that he won in 2020. So there's question why people vote when it's a secret ballot. And you've got tens of millions of people voting.
As you say, is very, very individual and goes all the way from pretty straightforward. I think he's going to be good for my taxes through to this very interesting question of RFK. And then the big one, I think, which was number one and a lot of the exit polls, they were voting for Trump to save democracy. And that was an amazing piece of jujitsu pulled off by Elon Musk on X, which is to suggest that if the Democrats won, this will be the last election ever.
And so where we sit, we sort of can't really understand how that can be because attacking democracy to us means undermining institutions, not respecting the rule of law, not accepting a democratic outcome. So as you say, they've just a bit like Putin does, you just flip it. We haven't invaded Ukraine. We're defending ourselves because NATO is threatening us. And Musk, I mean, I don't know how JD Vance is feeling because the truth is that Musk is the
vice president right now. He is the second most. Did you see in the family photo, by the way, a bar of law? Yeah, it was it was muslims. Yeah. There was no JD person who wasn't to Trump. Yeah, it was very odd. It'd be very interesting to see whether that relationship lasts because I suspect that Musk, who is clearly a very, very strange character. And I was interested in the anti-Scarom Mucci kept pointing out the fact that he was South African.
And those two are not going to get on long term. I cannot see that. Rory, if you started to do so, if you noticed that when I talk about Trump, I just cannot stop my moving my hands. Your hands are really washing works. I'll be brave. The other way I'm noticing brainwashing working is when I look at the abuse on Twitter so much of it,
direct, that me is saying shut up and go away. I mean, basically, there is a real attempt by thousands of people with very, very few followers to say we don't want any
opinions expressed. And the basic, there's something sort of quite fundamental here, which is, am I allowed to say I was wrong to think that she would win, but I'm so right to think she should have won and that her values were better than Trump's and her ideas are better than Trump's and she'd be better for the world than Trump, that the fact that he won doesn't suddenly make him right. And also the fact that he won, that's why both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I think we're right.
Joe Biden said in terms, just because we've been defeated here doesn't mean that we've been defeated. She said you've got to keep fighting. And I think this is what they do. This is what happened with Brexit. That's it. It's done. Will of the people. Well, Trump faces re-election or the demotivate, the Republicans face re-election in four years time. That's how democracy works.
So let's hope of Trump. Well, well, yeah, he'll try to make sure it is. This is what happens on what you know when I've been really shocked by getting back to the UK is seeing I got in a a cab yesterday and somebody had left the mail and the telegraph in there, which, and normally when I get in a cab and the, if the driver has the mail, I say, look, you can have me in the cab all the mail, but you can't have both. But these have been left in the back seats. I couldn't
blame the driver for that. And so, anyway, when I read through them, I got the sense that what they saw as the most important theme out of this is not Russia, it's not China, it's not climate change, it's not World Trade, it's, you know, it's the fact that, well, one of them said that I was leading the lovely, remuner trauma or something that, you know, you and I were both traumatized by this, you know, it was all about, and then this blasting out, everything that every
labor MP has said about Trump, you know, what are you going to do now, Starmer? And that just shows you the extent to which something like this, people, people have an inability to step back and actually see this. That's why I was so good to have Dominic Sandbrook, I've thought on the panel, you've got to try to see what's happening in this historical context. And I do think, I really do think this is one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime anywhere in the world.
Let me have a go just before we move on to the appointments because I know you had interesting things to say about his new chief of staff and stuff. What the big historical phenomenon is here, I believe that what we're looking at here is the fact that we are deeply into an age of populism that really got going about 2014. And this is the consequence of the rise of Twitter and Facebook, this is the consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, this is the consequence of failure in Iraq
and Afghanistan. And it's also the consequence of the rise of China and what that's meant for the legitimacy of these democracies. So that what we're seeing really with Trump is a shift from democracy to populism, a shift from open free trade to tariff barrows and protectionism, a shift from a liberal global order to isolationism. And the really interesting thing is that it's become hypercharged because Biden in 2020 suggested that for a moment it was being held back,
but you get a sense that musk's ex is a much more damaging force than the Twitter of 2020. And that Trump's push for isolationism and backing out of even something as big as Russia and Voting Ukraine is much more powerful than it would have been eight years ago. Yeah, at the airport in New York, I was wondering around the bookshop. Well, I picked up a book by Graham Allison who's a... Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. He was a colleague of mine at Harvard.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And I think he was also an assistant secretary of state ones, but he was a book he's called Destin for War. And it's about Thucydese's trap. And this is when the historian Thucydese said, it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in sparta that made war
inevitable. And he's basic analysis, I'm only halfway through, but he said, over the past half for millennium, 500 years, whenever there has been a rising power, challenging a ruling power, the rising power and I've been China, the ruling power being America, that in the 16 times, and that has occurred historically, 12 of those have led to war, which is why the title of his book
is Destin for War. And so that's why I think we're obviously there's massive focus right now on Trump and America and politics and so forth, but that America China dynamic, I think it remains the thing that is going to define this period of history. Let's maybe just before we get back into that after the break talk about the international consequences, talk a little bit about what we know about his team and what we are beginning to see about his policies. So,
terms of his team, he's appointed Susie Wiles as his team and stuff. He'd tell us a little bit about Susie Wiles. Well, I don't know that much about her and the reason I don't know about that much about her is because she's one of those people who doesn't want people to know that much about her. People who know her, I'd really been interested in what Scaramucci says about her, but people who know her says that she's very, she's quite serious, quite thoughtful. She doesn't actually like a lot of
the way that Trump does politics, the sort of cursing and the insulting and so forth. But she and she's somebody who really doesn't like the limelight. Interestingly, I think when people started to speculate, she might be the chief of staff was because he really gave her a big shout out and asked her to go and speak at the kind of acceptance event. But it's hard to know what it says, given
that he got through chiefs of staff like you get through pret energy bars. But this says to me, she's somebody who's been with him for quite a while and I wonder whether it does say yes, he wants loyalists alongside him. And there's no doubt there's a project 2025 clear out the administration bringing our own people. But it says to me, he's looking for maybe I'm wishful thinking here that he wants serious people there alongside him as opposed to just his family. Just briefly on
while we're on the subject of chief of staff, Rory, I think people haven't heard this already. It's interesting. Jonathan Powell has just been appointed as key to skier's, Starmer's national security adviser who was Tony Blair's chief of staff. Yeah. And in fact, was the British government's first chief of staff in that role? I have to say, I think it's a very, very, very good appointment. I've
known it was coming because Jonathan's a friend of mine and we've been talking about it. And you know, obviously he has you have doubts when you're taking on something as big as that, but I'm really, really pleased that he's done it. And I think it's a good move for Kier's Starmer. I wonder if he was waiting to see how the election pan down. Maybe he actually feels he needs somebody
as serious and there's kind of, you know, experience as Jonathan because it's Trump. Nobody's going to pretend that Jonathan Powell is some kind of Trump because he's not, but he's an incredibly serious hardworking, disciplined foreign policy guy. So I think that's a really, really, really good move. Skyrimut she said, and this has been confirmed in quite a few of the reporting in America that he thought Marco Rubio was pretty nailed on for Secretary of State. I don't know if
that's right or wrong. We've seen Trump say that he's looking to give RFK, Kennedy, a major role in public health. We've seen him say that he wants Elon Musk and if you said Elon Musk seems to be very close to him at the moment, set up for this department of government efficiency where Musk who gave a hundred million dollars to Trump's campaign and whose net worth is up 26 billion now since the election is lined up to slash trillions from the federal budget. That's quite good.
You put on 120 million and you get 26 billion. I mean, I'm not brilliant at maths, but the odds on that are good. I also think this underlines, I mean, Bloomberg did a thing saying that the top 10, the 10 wealthiest people in the world have added some phenomenons. It's 64 billion to their wealth.
I mean, this is what underlines how incredulities that when we talk about Trump's alliance, yes, there will be people from all classes, all age groups, all regions, etc. But he's managed to build an alliance of the rich and the poor persuading the poor that he's there for them. Well, in fact, it is the rich who are going to do best out to him. I mean, that means that Elon Musk made in a day on the back of his guy winning a sort of wealth that frankly would fuel a
quite a lot of national economies. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's something like, be something like 10 times the size of the entire Afghan economy at the moment, maybe in the day. Yeah. Mike Pompeo, who was Trump's head of the CIA, has remained loyal to Trump and maybe in with a chance of being Secretary of Defense. Richard Grennell, who we've talked about a bit because he was Trump's envoy in the Balkans and has tended to be very pro-Serb and has been a big advocate for
concessions to Putin and Ukraine. Looks like he may be in with a shot, possibly at the NSC, National Security Council. Tom Homan, who used to run immigration for Trump, was a great one for separating migrants, children away from migrants, probably coming back in. And Stephen Miller, who was at the heart of his communications machine and was a big person for the mass deportations, probably looks like he's going to come back in. And any other thoughts on on team?
I mean, let me just say, Stephen Miller, that gives me the HBGB. I mean, he was the guy who at that Madison Square Garden rally, who people were rightly drawing parallels with his communication, both the words and the techniques with curples. That really did kind of. He literally had that phrase, a curable saying, you know, we'll build a Germany for the Germans. This is an America just for
Americans. And you've seen this stuff out today, about Anthony Scaramucci's Center's a clip this morning of one of the key supporters saying that even the children born off people who were not Americans, that they should be considered to be part of this mass deportation. I don't know about the team. I think it'll be very, very, I think those names are barely obvious ones.
But I suspect he'll surprise us. I think Susie Wiles is surprised people. On the one hand, you think, yeah, well, she's so close to him during the campaign, she helped him the campaign. But I think a lot of people were thinking she would then sort of fade away. So that I think a couple of people I spoke to in the States last night said they were quite surprised by it because of what they know about her. Because that is a very, that is an absolutely pivotal
position in the entire American constitutional and political process. And he's not somebody, as we know from the kind of Michael Wolf books and all that stuff. He's not somebody who sort of immerses himself in the detail of all that stuff that has to go on between the White House and Congress. But what you said earlier, Rory, so he's the president with a pretty significant win, already got the Senate, looks like he's getting the House, and he's got four years to turn the
Supreme Court even more in his direction. I mean, that is power on an extraordinary scale. Yeah, well, let's take that, go into a break, and then after the break, look at what that power might mean for what he does at home and abroad. See you soon. The new Apple Watch Series 10 is here. It has the biggest display ever.
It's also the thinnest Apple Watch ever, making it even more comfortable on your wrist, and it's the fastest charging Apple Watch, getting you eight hours of charge in just 15 minutes. Introducing the all-new Apple Watch Series 10, now available for the first time in glossy jet black aluminum. Compared to previous generation, iPhone XS are later required, charge time in actual results will vary. Welcome back to the rest of the politics with me, Rory Stewart, and with me,
Alistair Campbell. Let's just have a quick, troch around some of the big issues. Let's start with China. China Taiwan, and then China economy trade, etc. China Taiwan more or less likely. I would have thought China Taiwan more likely. It's difficult to read the whole thing through, but the main thing which is protecting Taiwan is a Chinese perception of American deterrence. That America will ultimately send nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers to protect Taiwan,
and that that will make it much more difficult for China to take Taiwan. I suspect that they will conclude that Trump will be very unwilling to risk American lives on aircraft carriers,
fighting for Taiwan. I think it will also be affected by the fact that if he follows through on his promise to solve Ukraine in 24 hours, and by solving Ukraine he basically means that, considering Putin both in terms of territory and in terms of ensuring that Ukraine, I guess, doesn't become closer to NATO or the EU and Putin has more control over Kiev, then I think it becomes more likely. What do you think? I don't know. I think the thing that's most alarming about Trump,
but also which he tries to turn to his advantage is the unpredictability. He is not predictable. He will do things that will take people by surprise. Sometimes he won't even necessarily mean to do them. What's interesting about the fact that he's now got his second term is that we can look at what he did in the first term as a kind of indication of mindset and travel. So in the first term, the trade war, he put on tariffs of 25% on Chinese imports into the US.
And during this campaign, he's been talking about tariffs as high as 60%. And that's at a time when China's economy is on the downturn. As you've said many, many times, slumping property prices, local government debt, youth unemployment is rocketing. And he's also talked. I didn't know this until somebody told me this night, and I don't know where he said this, but apparently he said that one of his rallies that if they try to do Taiwan, he'll put tariffs on of 200%.
Now, that, of course, as people try to explain during the election, the idea that that is only a punishment of China is wrong, that that actually will lead to higher prices for Americans and others as well. So the word that people keep talking about in relation to him and China and in all other foreign policy, he's a transactional leader. So is he sort of saying, okay, you do Taiwan and you get higher tariffs? We'll have to wait and see. I just don't know, but I think if you're a
Taiwanese right now, you're probably a little bit worried. But equally, most of the commentary about Xi Jinping suggests he's not as happy as maybe some people think that Putin we know is absolutely various than Trump as one, okay? But Xi Jinping, I think, is much, much more balanced. Yeah. One of the things that's going on in China at the moment is that Xi Jinping is pushing the narrative that the reason that China is an economic problem is because the US doesn't want China to rise.
And so as the tariffs go up, he will be trying to blame the US more and more for China's economic problems, which, as you said, have a lot of different sources. They're not all about the US at all. But that means that for working-class Chinese who can't pay for their housing, for the many, many millions of, tens of millions of people who haven't got jobs, he will be trying to direct their anger against the US. And there are two readings on what that means for whether that makes
conflict with Taiwan more likely. Some people think that with economic problems at home, he's not going to want to foreign adventure. Other people think that with economic problems at home, he may be looking for a distraction, a kind of nationalist adventure in order to take people's mind off the economy. And of course, it's difficult enough predicting anything in the world. But in the case Xi Jinping, it's much more difficult because a bit like Putin, he's increasingly isolated, he's
now in for life. He doesn't have a big polypura around him. You're having to read the mind of one man rather than the whole system. I wonder whether the other thing Trump might try to do is a little bit of divide and rule within the China-Russia relationship. Because of course, under Biden, it's become absolutely clear, very bad relations with Russia, very bad relations with China.
Trump, good relations with Putin, which people like you and I find pretty repellent, but they're a fact Xi Jinping, less so, and I think he might be a little bit worried about the fact that China has got closer to Russia during the last four years. So whether he tries to do that, there's a kind of divide and rule, okay, Mr. Xi, you've had your fun with Vladimir now, but if you start to get too close there, that's a bit of a problem for us. We just need to watch that.
So we have to understand, this is the lesson from his first four years. Whatever he is doing, he's motivated by how it relates to him, how he is seen, and he loves doing deals. And that's why Zelensky is probably as worried as he is, that he will just try to do a deal that upends what
Zelensky has been trying to do with Biden. Well, let's maybe move on to Ukraine. So Ukraine has been under a lot of pressure on the front line from Russia and received $50 billion or more of US support, which has been completely vital this year, in order to protect it from middle-level air raids in order to respond to Russian artillery. And in order to hold that front line, they will be expecting, or were hoping for a large amount of American money next year. And that was dependent
on Kamala Harris winning and the Democrats keeping the Senate. We can be pretty confident that whatever else Trump's doing, he's not writing a $50 billion check to support Ukraine next year. So Ukraine will be in very significant problem. And I guess the question for you is, am I right in being a bit doubtful that Europe will step up and fill the gap if America doesn't provide the money?
Well, I thought that yesterday's meeting of the European, this new European organization, the EPC, that Macron established, and that if you remember, Kierstarm, a chaired early in his premiership. So there was the meeting yesterday in Budapest. And I don't if you had time to watch it, I sent you an extract from Macron's speech. He had this wonderful phrase. And before you asked, no, I didn't help him with this speech with my friend, Emmanuel Macron.
But he said, you know, it was obviously, everybody was talking, not necessarily out the meeting, but in the margins, everybody was talking about Trump. I've talked to a couple of people who were there and said it was just like every conversation was about what do we do about Trump, etc. But Macron made this point. He said this thing, you know, and he was with all the leaders there, and in French. He said, you know, are we here because we want to read history, read the history
of Trump, read the history of Putin invading Ukraine, or do we want to write history? And what I think he meant by that is that this, okay, he didn't say we can no longer depend on America, but that's the kind of that's the backdrop. And interestingly, I hadn't realized just talking, you just went back for a second to Taiwan. Trump apparently has said Taiwan needs to quadruple
its defense spending. And he said to NATO countries, and this is the one thing you and I agree that he would write about in his first term, that Europe has for too long sort of piggybacked on European defense thinking it's going to be there forever. So I think what Macron was saying is we've got to get serious about European defense and European foreign policy. But let's just think about the challenge there. So Macron makes these very grand statements.
Yeah, but I guess if you were a cynic sitting in Germany, you'd say this guy is always making grand statements and he's posting us a kind of mini-lui that 14th on Napoleon. On your analogy about the duck, Biden and the duck with not a lame duck, duck with no legs, how would you assess Macron's legs as a duck? Well, exactly, not great at the moment, I mean, yeah, I mean, remind people a little bit about where Macron's political position is in
France. Not great. I don't know what his ratings are right now, but they're very, very low. He's been to some extent disempowered because he called that election and he's now got this government led by Michel Barnier, who's basically operating day-to-day. Operating day-to-day very well. He's doing a good job, Barnier, but at the same time, Macron is not as powerful as he was. And then we've talked about these elections in Europe where far-right populists who had
a loss of the Trump rhetoric have prevailed. So Austria, where they came top in the polls, Netherlands, where they came top in the polls, Germany, where the AFD performed very well in some of the state elections. And most of those forces are people who like Viktor Orban, do not want any continuing confrontation with Russia. And this is also true, I think, of the
far left in Germany too. So then, I guess, the challenge for Europe is that all those politicians, the sort of centricrown politicians in some of that Germany are going to be worried about the fact that a lot of their voters are defecting to parties that don't want any more support for Ukraine against Russia. So I don't quite get how Macron makes the coalition for Europe to really
step up and fill the gap if Trump steps back. What I didn't see yesterday, because it was the cameras on Macron the whole time and the bits that I saw, I imagine that Orban would be sitting there, who was chairing the meeting, would be sitting there smirking. We're probably talking the main podcast next week about the German government, which is in a state of crisis because the ample coalition is breaking down. Le Pen, we've talked about, as you say. So I think it'll be much harder. This is
where I really do think. And again, this one, please Jonathan Bowles in there now. This is, I think, where Britain has to step up. I read a huge piece in Foreign Affairs magazine this morning about how the world's going to change under Trump and that. Britain wasn't even mentioned. Europe was mentioned, the European Union was mentioned, but we're not even in that debate. So we've got to get into that debate. And the same goes by the way for trade. And if he goes ahead on this tariff stuff,
that's going to have a massive impact upon us. And we're not going to be in the same place. Now, the Brexit here is saying, oh, well, Britain's in a great place now because they can do their own thing. But what is doing their own thing in a context where he's operating with USA, China, Europe is the sort of three big power blocks. I also think on Ukraine, some of the people that they're talking about in terms of his, who might be his advisors on Ukraine, they're basically
pro-puters. Yeah. They're not just pro-Pi-ten. I mean, I think this, it won't finish with Ukraine. Because once Trump has signaled strongly that he doesn't mind very much what Putin did. And remember, I think we see if we've become a bit like a frog and boiling water, we're sort of forgetting the fact that before 2014, it would be completely unimaginable since the Second World War for someone to try to invade and occupy a neighboring country. Basically, since the Second World War,
these borders have been respected. Once it becomes okay and normalized for Putin to do that in Ukraine, then I think the chances go up very, very strongly of things going wrong with Serbia in Republic of Serbsk and Kosovo and Richard Grenel, who is Trump's super-envoy, has made public statements very, very supportive of a Serb Nationalist position. I think we can expect as a by-jarm to start flexing its muscles and what it calls West Azerbaijan, which is part of Armenia.
I think we can start worrying about Moldova and the Baltics countries are not at all complacent about this. I mean, we feel... Well, they are increasing as bad defense, badly, big time. If we got on somebody from Poland or Estonia or Latvia or Lithuania, they would say, letting Putin control Ukraine is not the end of it, it's just the beginning.
The other point that he is likely to make in relation to any deal that he tries to do between Russia and Ukraine is for it to be accepted that Ukraine will never become a member of NATO. I mean, all these pro-Putian people are referring policy around Trump, they've been pretty clear about that. So if he gets that sort of sense of neutrality imposed on Ukraine, as you say, that's going to send a pretty shocking signal right around the place.
And we'll also mean that the other things that Putin wants logically follow, so Putin also wants to make sure that Georgia and Moldova don't become part of the European Union. I mean, they're theoretically on their path to joining and he will say, no, these are former Soviet states. They're within my sphere of influence, they can't have anything to do with them. Let's just sort of continue to develop this one more stage. Israel is very interesting.
There, people will remember that Trump brought together the Abraham Accords, which led to UAE and Sudan providing recognition for Israel in return for what was supposed to be concessions for Israel towards a path towards a very limited version of a two-state solution. And Trump's messaging around all this is very confusing. On the one hand,
he was a big supporter of moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. He seemed to, as part of the deal, be prepared to accept Israel annexing a lot of territory, including the Jordan Valley. But on the other hand, he also said that he wasn't happy with expansion settlements, and he got very angry with Netanyahu because Netanyahu congratulated Biden on his victory. So, you know, you talk about the unpredictability. Generally, people assume that he's going to be
much more pro-Israeli. But within Israel, it's a slightly more mixed story because they're not quite sure what he's going to make of things like settlements. Netanyahu is, as we said, on the live stream. I think it was the first major leader out there congratulating him in very, very, very full-sum terms. So I think people feel that this is emboldened Netanyahu. Netanyahu feels even stronger now than he did. And don't forget, we now have this transition period. So you've got your,
can't get my analogy of the duck without the legs. You've got the transition. You've got Joe Biden and Anthony Blinken still trying to push Israel and to try and get this thing resolved. You've got Blinken still sort of going backwards and forwards. You've got a situation in northern Gaza at the moment. They're utterly horrific. They're now being told they can't return. Well, I think if that was happening, if that had been happening in Bosnia in the last century,
I think we know what we'd call it. Meanwhile, the other thing that one of the State Department people I spoke to said is that Netanyahu will feel emboldened. But this could also strengthen Trump, vis-a-vis Putin in relation to Putin who seems to be dependent but is relying on Iran's support in relation to the war in Ukraine. So they're saying maybe Trump could offer to sort of restrain Netanyahu as part of that broader bargaining. So let's now move on to climate.
So Trump took the United States out of the Paris Climate Agreement in 2017. He's referred to climate change as a hoax. He was a big one for deregulation of the environment to protection agency. And it's very interesting this idea of supporting fossil fuels to give the US global dominance. Drill, baby, drill. And so we are in a real situation in which the new statesman to put it mildly
said Donald Trump is a climate disaster. And by the way, in North Carolina, where they had those terrible, that hurricane, they had a lot of life, they had homes being ripped out of the ground, and his support went up. And by the way, I think we can be critical here of the democratic. I don't want to be too critical of Kamala Harris because I think she's getting enough criticism. Most of it undeserved. I think she fought a good campaign, but she lost and therefore
we have to try and work out one of the reasons. I actually think it was a failure of Biden and Harris that they didn't put the climate into this debate because that's where the world needs leadership. You know, when you read, as I have this you know, when you read the project 2025 manual, which some people are saying, this is Heritage Foundation, America first approach to government. And one thing, the other thing somebody told me is Trump is not cooperating with the official
transition process. He's got these his own team and the Heritage Foundation people and he's going to decide that he's even saying he doesn't think that people who he wants to employ should be subject to FBI checks. They should be subject only to the team Trump checks. So you know, he's really going to change things. But I think on the on the climate, I do find this pretty terrifying. That story Marina Hytold about her friend who's a marine biologist who worked in the government
who's not allowed to use the phrase climate change. The 2025 document talks endlessly about the climate change alarm industry. It's another piece of what you call the jiu jitsu. Climate change isn't the problem. The problem is the people who talk about climate change. So I think it's not just that you'll take America back out of the 2515 Paris Agreement. Remember Biden put the back in and the inflation reduction act, which of course is a massive environmental thing.
Investment in green energy. Exactly. But also they might, you know, there are other international arrangements that they may pull out of. And this is going to come up very, very quickly because the next cop is I think is next week. So again, that's another place where they're just all going to be talking about what the hell will Trump do. Let's then finish with the final three things, which I
think are more domestic. One of them is tariffs, which you mentioned. So if he goes up to 60% tariffs against China and 20% tariffs against rest world, which is what he's been talking about, we can expect a real impact on global trade. I mean, US has set a quarter of the entire global economy. Big problem for some like Britain, which of course has left the European single market and customs union hoping that it's going to find all these opportunities with China and the US and others.
And of course, what we know about this sort of move is that it sparks trade wars. China can't have the US put up tariffs against China without responding in kind. And the global economy is so intermatched in very, very complicated ways. This will also have a big effect on climate transition because, you know, there are 110% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles now in the US. So if you buy an electric vehicle for $45,000, got a sell it in the US for more than $100,000. And we can continue
to develop this. Then second thing that he's talked a lot about is mass deportations. So the idea of deporting 11 million illegal immigrants. And he will do something on that. Whether he's going to do 11 million remains to be seen, but he's definitely going to do something very dramatic early on in order to demonstrate that he's serious about that. And we can express some pretty violent imagery as SWAT teams go into to get people out of the country. What was the number that
anti-discarmage is that it's about 88 billion? Yeah, but Trump saw someone record saying he doesn't care about the money. It's not a question of money. When people challenge him about the 88 billion, he says, fine, no problem. But they're all, you know, I wonder whether this will go into the, like the wall never got built. Hillary Clinton never got locked up. Will there be stuff like this? Yeah, well, this is the question isn't it? And, you know, he's also a lot of pressure from
March retaid Green and others to pardon the January 6th writers. And he's on the record saying some of the people put in jail shouldn't be plunge up. Well, that's the end of the rule of law. That's the end of the rule of law. Yeah. And I think my instinct is that he will be tougher this time. I mean, having watched what happens when people are out of government come back into government,
they usually in their years out of government become tougher and more determined. And Trump felt that last time he was in that the civil service were trying to block everything he wanted to do. Famously, he would say, I want troops out of Syria in a year later that still be troops in Syria. And he was sending out angry tweets. And that wolf book that you quoted at the beginning of our podcast is basically a detailed description of how the civil service tried to stop
him again and again. I think he will come out of that experience now very, very determined that he's going to drive stuff through. And that this is going to be his big legacy. So I'm expecting a more radical version of Trump, not a softer version of Trump. Now, one other area for in policy, right? How many times in his first term do you think that Donald Trump visited Africa, the Caribbean, and Ojiyana? Oh, go on then. What's the answer? Zero. Pretty amazing. So Africa, which will have
40% of the global population will be in Africa by the end of the century. One in 10 children will be born in Nigeria by 2050 and he's not visiting. And he probably will visit. I think I'm right. The G20 is in South Africa next year. So presumably he might go to that. And also he traveled, you know, when he was president, he traveled less than any American president since the advent of the Boeing 747. I mean, when he says, you know, this is what you've, you've got to say,
when he says America first, he means America first. Yeah. And that's what we've all got to, we've all got to wake up to wake up to it. Wake up to it as a real wake up call on America, because as I think we said, as nauseam, voting for him once in 2016 when he was untried is one
thing. And he didn't win the popular vote to vote from a second time and deliver him this enormous mandate with the Senate, with the popular vote, probably with the House representatives, despite January 6th, despite the felony convictions, despite all the stuff we know about him,
really suggests that a particular vision of liberalism, democracy is in trouble. And if we add to that, all these trends that you've been picking up in Europe, the trends we're seeing in Latin America and populism, the trends we're seeing in India, the trends we're seeing in Turkey, this is about without being too glimmy about it, the worst case scenario, one could imagine for this year. You know, on the one we're doing the livestream with Marina Hyde and we read out Kier
Starmer's comment on when it was known that Trump was going to be president again. And I said, you know, I'm most fascinated by these simple acts of diplomacy. The truth is Trump probably will read maybe five or six of these statements that get put up by world leaders, but every single leader in the world pretty much has put me now. And there is a book to be written on a really close
textual analysis of the different, the different way. So if you look at the, I read a piece this morning about all the African leaders and what they've been putting out, there's one guy, for example, who's currently under sanctions and his response was, well, at least the sanctions are going to come off with our Trumps in charge. So there's the personal stuff like that. But there was just to give you an example of how this sort of, you know, this change will affect the diplomacy,
a virtually every country in the world. Kevin Rudd, former Australian Prime Minister, who's now the ambassador to Washington. And this, this was my favorite statement, Eliza, in his previous role as the head of an independent American-based think tank, Mr. Rudd was a regular commentator on American politics out of respect for the office of President of the United States and following the election of President Trump. Ambassador Rudd has now removed these past commentaries from his personal
website and all social media challenges. This has been done to eliminate the possibility of such comments being, misconstrued as reflecting his position as ambassador, at bay, stage of the views of the Australian government. Ambassador Rudd looks forward to working with President Trump and his team to strengthen the US, Australia alliance. Meanwhile, Dutton, who you got to see a bit when you're in Australia, the opposition leader, he's basically out saying, Rudd's got to come home kind
of thing. So, yeah, Trump has changed every government in the world. I'm afraid right now is having to analyze and assess and answer the question, what does this mean for us? That's why I say, this is a really, really consequential election. The one phone call I'd love to have been on this week in the two place was the one between JD Vance and Angela Rayner. I would have enjoyed that.
That would have been an amazing thing. Well, let's just finish then by saying we're not giving up that optimism and hope still matters, that it's humans that created this mess were and humans can get us out of this mess. He won, but he won in the end by a few hundred thousand votes, and there are every reason in the world to believe that his economic policies are
daft and damaging. His vision of the world is going to lead to more conflict, that he's a challenged democracy in the root of law and that he's going to be found out, and that we can still build a better world. Well, Roy, that was the kind of optimism and the kind of hope that led you to say, have a Harris is nailed on, she's going to walk in the
lecture college. So anyway, let's not agree with you. There's no point, I think so many people, I'm also going to go back to London, I admit so many people, it's like, you know, really is like, they've, when you meet people, they've had a death in the family, but you're right. You've just got to keep on fighting for what you believe in and keep on having faith that one day these massive
problems, the world faces might be in a better shape now now. You're an example of this. Listen, I mean, if people had said to you in Northern Ireland in the early 90s, you could have put in a brilliant narrative on why everything was doomed and gloomy and there was never going to be peace. And in the end, there was a good Friday agreement, and in the end, a part-identity in South Africa, you know, miracles can happen. I don't think we just have to say the whole world's going
to have a handbar skit and because Trump's one, democracy is over. Here, I'm into that. See you soon. Bye-bye.