491. Trump at Davos: Rory and Alastair React

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Welcome to The Rest is Politics. Davos special with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. I'm not convinced it's that special, Rory. You're pretty glam, aren't you? That was one of the most horrific events I've attended in my entire life. So just to explain to listeners what you're talking about here. Here is the speech from President Trump that we just heard in the main congressroom. So put in context, I was queuing outside for I guess.

twelve thirty to two thirty, like two hours? Alistair being asked to let me cue for quite a long time and then came and claimed to be my husband or something and joined to be your husband join me in the line. I said you've I pretended. I had my phone. People were very grumpy. I've never seen a such big queue, apart from when we did the O two, obviously.

Anyway, yeah, so we queued for a long time. You managed to get to the top of the queue by jumping up next to me. We got in, sat down. We did have prime seats, so I saw you you know, we were sitting there behind Marco Rubio Al Gore. I think the first thing that we need to convey though to the audience

Is that the very odd thing about it, which you're not expecting, right? If you're me, the language in many ways is if you look at the words, it Very fascist, very populist, you know, reminds you of kind of brutal acquisitions, Mussolini threat. But the delivery is the is very flat, often very boring, very rambling, very mild mannered. I mean the the contrast I think that struck me most is that if you were a a sort of nineteen thirties leader making these statements about

These countries have undone nothing for them. All we want is this that you would be much more aggressive. But he has this very odd demeanour, doesn't he? Yeah, but I think that's part of his humiliation and cruelty of all those people there. Your friend Daddy Rutter, who you gave a little name check, and is Daddy here? And as you say, I saw you tweeted while we were there saying, you know, does Marco Rubio really have to sit through this?

I would probably use the S H I T word day after day after day. But I'll tell you what, no, the reason why I'm so kind of

Horrified by it. Partly the content, which, you know, it was the stuff we've heard a million times. We'll come on to talk about Greenland because obviously news-wise, that's the most important bit.

But the rest was his greatest hits, Ramble of Lies, Misrepresentations, Sleepy Joe Biden, and all the stuff that he does all the time. And and come by the end, people were looking at their phones, they were chatting to each other. Now Rory at least For the sake of my friends in the Lido queue who were saying to Fjoldin this morning, please make sure he heckles.

Somalis it's you know, what do you say? Somali they've e they it's even higher than their IQ, lower than their IQ. At which point you said boom. And then occasionally you were like, No it's not.

That's wrong. And you lost the election. You didn't win a Lancellor. You lost to Biden. But I sensed'cause we were just behind all these worldly. And they kept and they kept turning around and looking at us as though we were eating crisps in a theatre. Exactly. But also they kept chuckling at his little horrible joke.

No, I found myself actually I I caught myself and you caught me laughing at one of them and e part of the is that What he does is he says things which are not going to be a little bit more than So outrageous and self satisfied.

The moment I caught was he said, um people came up to me and they said, you know, Mr President, uh you know, every single up military operation you've done has been perfectly executed. And I said I know. He said I know. And the whole thing is so s and he delivers it like that. So He he uses his vanity as part of his shtick, as part of the joke that he lets the audience in.

And then he's always saying, you know, I I don't think we'd do such amazing things in America in a year, perhaps a year and a month. But the people who've been seeing him day in, day out, they say he's telling this stuff, it's just rambling. And it's been true since twenty sixteen. I I talked to someone who sat round the table with Theresa May and him on his big visit and he set off on one of these things, which he he talked for about an hour.

He's with all his stuff. And literally you can see all their heads kind of collapsing like this. And finally he turned to one of his So what do you think? And the guy was like Woke up or think about what, Mr President? You know, what do you think about and then insert the thing? And the guy said, I think absolutely nothing about that, sir.

And Trump was very pleased with that. But I I think also so the stories he told with N which Barnaby told a hundred times about when he found it with Emmanuel Macron and the and the thing about the glasses as well. He probably knows that Macron had a burst blood vessel and seeing that. What the hell's going on with that? Well so I think to step back for a moment, one of the things that make

dealing with Trump so tricky is this sense that he begins to sort of it's a sort of Stockholm syndrome. You become kinda accustomed or habituated to this stuff. So that when you're listening to it, you and I and many, many other people, ninety five percent of the material is familiar. And you almost lose the energy to fact check. You know, I said to you he's saying they spent three hundred and fifty billion

on Ukraine, which is an and weirdly that three hundred and fifty to figure it's off the side of the bus, right? Uh during Brexit, right? Fat you know, the real figure is probably seventy-five, you could get it up to two hundred, but it's never three hundred and fifty billion, right? Then he had this whole speech about how they don't have any wind.

farms in China. But it's it's it's all a sort of hoax and the Chinese just want to sell them to suckers around the world. And you made it like that. And the whole and the whole reason why we're so weak is because we have wind farms, right? Then he had a story about how Britain in the North Sea was sitting on five hundred years worth of oil. We claim that the oil reserves are depleted, but we don't know because we haven't drilled down. But he knows.

He knows that if you were to drill down, you would discover there's five hundred years worth of reserves down there. So at some point Um one just ceases to fact you have to do that. And then then the question is what is the point? of statement after statement. He claimed, I think, at one point, that he was spending a hundred and fifty trillion on the US military. I presume you got his trillions and billions.

Well, let's just get through it. So let's just say on the big picture because we know you and I have now in person, very close up, seen a total narcissist. Okay? People are doing very well. They're very happy with me. Well the polls actually are not good for him, right? His stuff on living standards was untrue. He said quotes virtually no inflation, extraordinary high growth, no country has ever seen anything like this before. Not true.

Secured commitments for record breaking eighteen trillion investment, never done before, not even close. And even the White House own website. Does not have that figure. It has nine point six. Probably not true. I think the bigger question is amongst all of this stuff is to dig down to the fundamentals. And the fundamentals was astonishing contempt. America has done everything for the world.

Nobody's done anything for us. One statement he kept repeating is I don't think NATO would ever help us. Well, at that point I shouted nine eleven. Right. Because of course, actually when the United States the only time Article five has ever been triggered, it was triggered by the United States. and wheel deployed to help the United States after nine eleven. And Denmark lost more soldiers per capita than any other country.

So this whole framework which is we saved Denmark from the Germans. You kept saying you'd all be speaking German and Japanese if it wasn't for me. I mean and people that was do you know what? That was the turning point from the chuckling into the either Total silence or a very, very small number of people like me who couldn't sort of contain themselves. I was getting so many messages. The thing that stuck me I think was y you know we bumped into Al Gore, good name drop.

On the way in, he was sitting right up at the front and I said, You know, you've got a great place to heckle from here. And he said, I dunno, I don't think that's the way to go about it. So he put me off my stride. I think he probably thought I was thinking about him doing it, but he was just saying I don't know that's the way to deal with this guy. But I honestly felt'cause what I'll tell you what will happen.

Somebody the guy sitting next to me showed me the Wall Street breaking news headline from the speech and it was Something like markets rise as Trump rules out military force for Greenland. He didn't rule out anything. He just as part of his rambling on Greenland said, I don't need to use military force. Why? Because I'm going to do a mafia shakedown. You either do what I'm saying and I'm happy or you don't

And I remember And of course'cause this is Davos, everyone's obsessed with the markets, right? So the markets were down two and a half percent and everyone thinks okay, he's gonna come in. And in fact, we got that from a very senior uh Democrat senator said he's gonna be worried about the markets and he's gonna turn the thing and change markets. So what he said is that the other thing is.

I'm not going to take it by force, but we want Greenland. Give us the point is that repeatedly Denmark has said you are not having Greenland. The European Union has said, You're not having Greenland, right? And instead of coming and in any way changing the posture, he just reinforces he could not have said more frequently, we're having Greenland. Except he didn't just say we're having great then. He repeatedly said, for much of the speech, we are having Iceland.

We want Iceland. Now, I don't want to get too deep into the weird psyche of Donald Trump, but That concerns me too. Because you don't think that was a sip of the tongue. Where is this Iceland thing bubbling up from? Well, if we get Greenland and give us Greenland And we realise the truth, which is that we think Europe is completely pathetic

totally impotent, can't do anything at all, they've got no options. Whatever we do it to them, they'll lap it up. Well, why don't we have ISON two? I think'cause I mean there is you know, there is the case to be made. for a sort of quite a lot of senility going on there. I think that's another observation I made, sort of just watching the whole thing.

No real sense of what the audio how the audience was feeling or reacting. I think that was a slip. You could be right. I think he meant agreement. I would genuinely But that is terrible. But remember the US ambassador to Iceland made a joke saying he was going to be the governor of the fifty second state.

So this Iceland thing is bubbling away somewhere in the back of these people's minds. And I think this is the problem with the appeasement strategy. Because the appeasement strategy, if you're if it's all about performance, if it's all unbounded

And he thinks this is my number one chance to expand the territory of the United States. Which he was clear about. There will never be a better chance in world history. America is more powerful than it's ever been. I'm the only president with the nerve to do it.

Why not go for bus, get as much land as you can? And and just interesting on the appeasement,'cause as I was coming out, I was grabbed by a journalist who said, What do you think? and I just said sort of not a lot and and he just sort of shrugged and went, It was kind of the it was kind of appeasement in the hall, wasn't it? So there's one point where Trump actually insular he sort of insulted a group of leaders.

There's those guys there, they're sitting there, they can't they can't decide whether to look at me. You know, th and he was suggesting they were scared of him. Which of course they probably are. So there's that sort of public humiliation going on. And I thought if that had been a a British audience, we talked recently about Tolie Blair being slow hand clap by the Women's Institute.

I think if that had been a British audience they wouldn't obtain it. No, and they would have walked too. But then of course the other thing which maybe the audience aren't aware of and I wasn't aware of until we got here today is and of course I've been with American presidents and I've seen how big the operation is around them. But this was of a different scale. And I think a lot of that's performed too.

Making people cue for two hours. The whole sort of having all these dozens of overflow rooms, most of which probably don't have anybody in them. Walking back from the main Congress Center to here, it's amazing. We left before he finished. I mean it was by the QA beginning. people were falling asleep. And so I th I just feel I feel terrified that that is

The person to whom the rest of the world is pandering. And then finally, I think what what the speech is is a reminder of his world views. So on tariff, A strong reminder that a lot of these tariffs are personal vindictiveness. So he said that the Swedish Prime Minister had not been polite to him and Swiss Swiss sorry, Swiss Prime Minister had not been polite to him, and so he just knocked up tariffs.

He said that he had this whole theory about any form of trade deficit was the United States being ripped off. He had these extraordinary stories about industrial investment. And a very, very simple narrative, and the narrative effectively seemed to come down to because sleepy Joe Biden was fooled by the green scam and started started investing in wind turbines. Energy prices got too high, the American economy collapsed.

uncontrolled migration and he has defied every expert in the world to find the real secret source. Secret source is high tariffs, forget about renewable energy, push all migrants out, secure the borders. shake down and threaten all of America's allies in order to get as much money into the United States as well. And this will be record economic growth and the thing for which he will be remembered forever. Well, the only other speech I've actually been in the hall for was Mark Carney's yesterday.

And I thought it was very interesting that Trump today, his tone about Carney, said to me that he takes Kearney a lot more seriously than these guys who have pandering. Because he basically he talked about his good the g we're getting Greenland for the golden dome, okay. And that's to protect

America, Canada, and the West. Okay. And he put them in in like that. And then said, I watched your speech, Mark. And you need to remember the next time you speak that, you know, we've done a lot for Canada. But in in terms of the sort of scale of nastiness, of the leaders and the countries that he was talking about, I felt that felt that he'd taken a bit of a hit yesterday and something had sort of embedded.

And that I think is what the other leaders have got to learn. And the de total narcissist. The deference is unbelievable. So some of the Middle Eastern states falling over themselves to be super polite, present Cisi of Egypt in his speech.

basically was not talking really about the interests of Palestinians at all, massive praise of President Trump again and again and again, just laying it on. Got that from some of the Gulf. But What's so shocking is the extent to which So many of the American businesses, so many of the big tech companies, so many of the European leaders, these texts from Mark Rutter suggests that it it isn't just authoritarian states.

That believes that the way forward is just to flatter and grovel. But that all America's allies, these people who used to, I suppose, see themselves as part of a a an a a multilateral alliance. But that surely is why Mark Howland's message is right. You've got these two massive parts.

America and China. They're the sort of, you know, think they're the big threat to each other. And we thought we were part of this and Mark Carney was the best symbol this week of, you know, we may have to adapt quite a lot. But he's surely right. that if you put what he called the middle powers together, There is a lot of power. Right, and then the question for Kirstama

And the question for the European Union is are they prepared to line up together? Right? Because That's what I've done. Right, together you stand, divided you fall. And exactly what Trump tries to do is divide people. That's why he's putting different tariffs on different European Union member states. It's to try to separate people off from each other. And what we need is joint statements.

Not well, you know, I uh Macron may have said this, I'm gonna say something else. And the European Union needs courage, right? The problem is that This is the moment where the European Union needs to think about what do they do for Iceland? Is this the moment to accelerate membership for Iceland? Yeah. Is this the moment to really think, let's and maybe this is what Trump's changed in twelve months.

Maybe instead of waiting for all those countries in the Western Balkans to tick every box over ten years. Flip it round the other side. Do enlargement now, say you're members, and when you tick the boxes you get different bits of the membership package, but you're into the EU. Yeah. And that's what I'd love to see Starmer trying to do. uh see that imagination, that sense for multilateral picture. Why does he seem so timid? Why does he seem so

overly cautious? Why is he unable to think this is a new geostrategic moment? Because I think he thinks that if he goes down the route that Mark Carney's gone, that we will get punished far more. And even though he won't sort of

reverse the whole Brexit madness, we are much more isolated because of that. So I think he thinks he has to go the path he's going. Though while we were in the queue, I was just following it, I got the sense Uh just from reading what people were saying about it and reading the the B B C uh sort of instant coverage of it.

I got the sense that he'd been tougher in terms of the message about Greenland, but equally pushing back on the idea, I think against Ed Davy, that he needs to be more mackerel, more carnage.

So he's in that place now. I think is a very vulnerable place. I actually do think sometimes when you're in the room you can feel the power of a speech and an argument. The great thing about Carney's speech, it was an argument.

It was a world view. And and written by Carney, who talking to his team who I try to give him credit and say well done and they've absolutely pushed back and they said no, he wrote a hundred percent of it. And one of them also told me and somebody I know who said that they have been because they've been to Qatar and China. They'd been on planes for twenty six hours, and he worked at his desk for twenty two hours.

He didn't look exhausted like you and I look and feel. I thought that was a real moment. I didn't think today that was a moment. I thought that was the same old Trump. And the world has got to get its act together in understanding, as Carney said, this is not a transition, it's a rupture and he's the guy who's doing the rupture. And this is uh a blithering, slightly senile flaccid, loose, dishonesty. But it's an account of basically what people like Vance believe.

of what Stephen Miller believes, a lot of the MAGA bases believe. Yeah. And and therefore let's not just think we just wait out Trump, get to the midterms, everything's gonna be fine. except that this monster is inarticulately rambling his away around things that is believed by, I don't know, thirty, forty percent of the US population

and an entrepreneurial Trump successor could win again on this mad message. Okay, and who? Well turn on their Fox News news tonight and it'll be the the clips where he's delivering the line that's been scripted for him about Greenland.

It'll be a couple of the sort of the MAGA attacks and then there'll be shots of people clapping. And the what not fortunately of you and me clapping. No, there was and also what I thought was very interesting, I mean the applause when he came in was I would describe very tepid. Such that when it came to the end, I spotted some of the official American delegation starting to get a standing evasion going and they just sat down very, very quickly'cause people was leaving.

People were just leaving and turning to each other and saying God was As George W. Bush would have said, that was some weird shit. So the question is will Britain and Europe step up? Or are we what America thinks, which is weak? Divided, pathetic, which he couldn't have been clear about. He didn't say a single positive word really about the UK apart from the fact that his mum came from Scotland.

He made that hideous joke, despite his dad being, as he said, being German about you know if it wasn't for us, he'd all be German and Japanese by now. That was a moment where people should have said, you know, fuck off. So I don't know. I thi if we don't I think we're I think we're living in a really dangerous mindset and I I just think Carney hit the note absolutely. And be very cautious.

of the Mark Rutters of this world who are beginning to say, Well let's not talk too much about Greenland, let's talk about Ukraine which you think. Where he said which by the way he said was a long way away above a beautiful ocean, it's not our problem. And cautious of the Boris Johnsons as well who are beginning to make what they call jokes, saying, Well, why don't we give him Greenland in exchange for his support in Ukraine?

What's supporting Ukraine? How can we trust Trump? What complete nonsense. You sell sovereignty, you appease this man. And then what do you get? What do you get? What what guarantee does Boris Johnson think he's gonna get for Ukraine from Trump by trading our sovereignty? I'll tell you the other thing, just watching the whole circus today.

Somebody who follows the circus the whole time and is sort of semi-part of it. I won't name the characters because it's pretty libeless, but he was basically pointing to some of the characters. These guys knew they were gonna take the markets down, they knew the markets were gonna go up.

he pointed out that you can see money that was made with the Venezuelan intervention. That they're all trading it up, trading it down. They knew that if Trump said, I'm not gonna use force and green and the markets will go up again. And when it suits him and he wants to short again Yes, we're not going to be able to do that. Remind us ourselves what we said in the main podcast about Mo Moises Names, three Cs crime, corruption, cruelty. We saw a lot of the cruelty today and

I f I w I wish more people in that room had been as horrified as I was. And in a sense of performance of cruelty, which is almost more cruel because it's so half hearted, boring, dull, inept. And will you at least tell my friends in the LIDAQ that I I tried? Absolutely. You did, you did. We heard your voice. I've heard one of them, but I've heard the boo. We're leaving today and entering a world of Mickey Mouse Waving, Princess Meeting and Greetings, right?

Twilight Zone Tower of Terror drop in! Fanshee flying! Space mountain! Launching Galaxy Rewinding the whole deck of Galaxy Rewinding Fireworks Igniting Worlds of Other Worlds for whatever you love infinite world. Place honor. Walt Disney World.