Americanswers! Has Donald Trump really stopped six (or seven) wars?

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0:24This is our opportunity to talk to you about the things you want to talk about. So it's a range of questions we're going to approach this week, from fighting in the White House through to what happens in Ukraine. Has Donald Trump really ended wars all around the world? And the vital, vital question of mail-in ballots that he wants to get rid of. In other words, changing the entire American voting system, which he may or may not have the actual power to do. Welcome to AmeriCast. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III.

1:02President Trump's message is very simple. We are done being taken advantage of. Mr. President, in the name of our God, have mercy upon the people who are scared now. Are you supportive of these onesies? I'm supportive of vaccines. What is happening? Like, this is not America. This is a terrible nightmare. This is what victory feels like. Yeah!

1:32Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And it's Sumi here in our studios in Washington, D.C. Sumi, very good to talk to you. You've been busy. Sarah and Anthony have gone AWOL, which is a scandal. But you've stuck with it, even after a trip to Anchorage. So thank you. I'm the last one in this bureau. No, I'm kidding. There are plenty of us here. I'm happy to be with you. OK, let's get straight down to the questions. And the first comes from Paul in Harrow, who asks this. Does the team know of any pushback on Trump's no mail in ballots plan from groups representing the infirm or the disabled?

2:10So do we know if anyone in Trump's team, Paul asks, has considered how much they could let such groups vote? Or do they plan to simply disenfranchise all who cannot get to a polling station? He is a big enemy of mail in ballots. He's also an enemy of voting machines, isn't he? But on the mail-in ballots, which he says he can get rid of, he has the power to do it. Where do we stand, Sumi? Well, it's interesting, actually, you know, we saw this come up again this week in Donald Trump's interview with Sean Hannity on Fox after the summit with Vladimir Putin last week. Let's just play a clip of that first.

2:46You know, Vladimir Putin said something. One of the most interesting things, he said, your election was rigged because you have mail-in voting. He said mail-in voting every election. He said no country has mail-in voting. It's impossible to have mail-in voting and have honest elections. And he said that to me. It was very interesting because we talked about 2020. He said you won that election by so much. And that's how he got it. He said, and if you would have won, we wouldn't have had a war. You'd have all these millions of people alive now instead of dead. So, yeah, Justin, as you know, this has been a long running grievance of Donald Trump.

3:20To your question, can he do this? The short answer is no. The Constitution actually says that the time, place and manner of elections are to be regulated by the state legislature and that Congress can make changes to elections or how they're administered. but only if those changes actually are based on congressional or presidential elections. So states, for example, when they hold elections on governors, there is no kind of congressional oversight or changes that can be made by Congress there. And nowhere in the Constitution does it actually mention the president's name in terms of being able to change mail-in ballots.

3:59But, you know, Justin, this is something President Trump has been talking about since 2020 when he has claimed many times without evidence that there was massive fraud leading to his loss in the election, partly because of mail-in ballots. Yeah, so I think the answer for Paul is we don't really think it's going to happen. It's one of those things, you know, if we divide up all the things that Donald Trump says into those that actually are going to happen, and he's certainly done some things and shaken some things up, and those he just says, a bit like reopening Alcatraz, where you think, okay, I mean, maybe it's an aspiration, and maybe it ticks a few boxes that you want to tick and G's up your supporters in this way or that way.

4:39But actually the mechanics of doing it don't seem clear. So I think actually in a way, Paul, that possibly answers your question about the extent to which groups have pushed back. I think a lot of groups probably assume it's right to say don't think you need too much because it's not a kind of urgent thing that is likely to happen. I'm only aware of one actually that has and that is people who are fighting abroad or stationed abroad for the US. And there is a big, you know, they were quite vocal, weren't they? Because one of the things that the abolition of mail-in ballots would presumably entail would be getting rid of the ability of soldiers, airmen, airwomen, etc.

5:22to be able to vote. And that is quite a, that's sort of viewed, isn't it, in America as a really important sacred right for people sent abroad to stick up for the country. It really is. I can say I lived out of the country for 15 years and I cast my ballot via absentee ballot in the state of New York for that entire time that I was living abroad. And there are more than 3 million Americans, not counting, of course, the military who vote, who can vote, or eligible to vote from abroad. So that is just one group of people. But on the other hand, you also have, you know, those who are elderly. You know, my parents vote by mail-in ballot now because they find it much more comfortable to do so.

6:00And I thought it was really interesting to see Florida's governor, Republican Ron DeSantis, say he doesn't think that this executive order would apply to Florida. Florida is a state where you do see a lot of mail-in ballots. Of course, there is a big elderly population there. Florida is not one of those states where they immediately send you a mail-in ballot. It's one of those states where you can request one. And he said, well, since we don't immediately send a mail-in ballot to everyone, I don't think this executive order applies to us. There are eight states plus Washington, D.C. where that is the case.

6:29But, you know, President Trump has been pretty light on the details until now of what he means. But it's really important to a lot of Americans who find it difficult to get to the ballot box on an election day to be able to cast their ballot by mail. Yeah. OK, Daniel in Sheffield, can you please explain how packing and cracking actually works so that we can understand the context of the Texas row over redistricting? hmm, been some developments about this as well, haven't there, Sumi, because they're all going back and it's all going through, it seems. Yeah, exactly. Democrats who left Texas for two weeks are now back in the state.

7:03But to the question of packing and cracking, which, you know, is pretty much exactly what it sounds like. So packing is when you pack together constituents or groups of voters who tend to vote in a specific way. So it makes it likely that you'll have this group of voters cast their ballots for their candidate, But that means their influence in another part is is lessened. And then cracking is literally breaking apart those groups of voters so that their influence is spread out. And the way I think about this in redistricting, if it helps our listeners and viewers a bit, is I always think of, you know, these blue cities in the middle middle of red states.

7:42Let's say, for example, a city like Dallas and Texas. So Texas is a Republican state, a red state. but you have these blue kind of dots within the state like Dallas. So because voters in a city like Dallas will tend to vote more Democrat, you'll get Democrat members of Congress there. Well, what you can do with redistricting in some cases is you can split those voters or that city, sorry, in a way that the voters, their power together to elect a Democrat member of Congress is no longer so potent so that they're kind of moved together with voters from outside of the city, maybe in the suburbs who tend to vote more Republican.

8:20And that takes away some of that power to vote for a Democrat or a progressive candidate within a city. So that gives you, I hope, our viewers and listeners a bit of an idea of how that can work from the Republican side. And the Democrats have done this, as you know, Justin, as well, in a state like Illinois, where they try to reduce the impact of or the power of Republican districts by splitting them, I'm up so that Democrat voters have a bit more power in those same areas. Yeah. And it was quite ironic that Illinois was one of the places they escaped to, wasn't it? The Texas people who didn't want to see it done in Texas, but were happy to go to Illinois where it is done a lot.

8:59My favorite one is North Carolina. It's a congressional district that doesn't exist anymore. But at the time it existed, it was an example of packing, actually. And packing sounds neat, but often results in these districts that don't look at all neat because they're packing of a particular kind of person, often a racial group. And this one was by the I-85 in North Carolina. And it was the famous thing that someone said of it was that if you opened both your car doors and drove down the I-85, you would kill everyone in the district because they'd packed it in such a way that it was just people living right next to the road, essentially.

9:42and it was a particular kind it was actually a democratic constituency because of people close to the road poorer people i think was a racial side to it to it as well and eventually it went this was back in the 1990s that i was sent to look at it but there are all sorts of these things still going on but i mean we should mention as well the kind of hot news shouldn't we because um gavin newson in california the governor there who's been so feisty about all of this stuff is going to go ahead, it seems, with what he threatened to do, which is negate any of the Texas gains. So let's assume they do gain five seats or so in Texas for the Republicans.

10:18And that potentially means that they might be able to hold the midterm elections in 2026, which is what this is all about. This is what he said about it all at a news conference last week. It's not complicated. We're doing this in reaction to a president of the United States that called a sitting governor of the state of Texas and said, find me five seats. We're doing it in reaction to that act. We can't stand back and watch this democracy disappear district by district all across this country. We need to stand up, not just California. Other blue states need to stand up. Yeah. So that gives you a sense of where Governor Gavin Newsom sees things right now.

10:59He sees this as a bit of a challenge that California has to take up. But that has angered another prominent Californian, the former California governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. He posted a picture of himself on X and it says, I'm getting ready for the gerrymandering battle. And he's kind of pumping iron. He has a T-shirt on that says, a word I can't say, the politician. What does it say? I'm just looking at the same picture. I'm glad you stopped. An unsavory word. The politician is, and then it says, terminate gerrymandering. So that was his response. And then, of course, the former Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, she said at a press conference in California this month that the Democrats here, they don't have a choice because they're acting in self-defense.

11:43We will not let, he's gone too far. We will not let him pave over free and fair elections in our country, starting with what he's trying to do in Texas, countering that. So this isn't two wrongs, as was mentioned. It's not a wrong in what we're doing. This is self-defense for our democracy. It should be said, shouldn't it, Sumi, that what Newsom is proposing is not a permanent return to gerrymandering in the sense that there's an independent commission, isn't there? And what he says is get rid of the commission at least until 2030. Is that the plan? Yeah, that's the plan. And he's hoping he can convince voters in California, which of course is a blue state, a Democrat state, that this is important for precisely the reason that Nancy Pelosi just said, self-defense for democracy, as she put it.

12:36So Gavin Newsom's ploy here is to say to voters, give us this chance to fight back against Republican moves and make sure that we're on equal footing, so to say, for the midterm elections. And then we can talk again down the road because, you know, gerrymandering and redistricting has been seen as really problematic by many states. And that's why you have seen states put in these laws or rules to make so that you can't just slice and dice or pack and crack districts by partisan lines. And the fact that they see now Texas doing this means that they want to kind of dial back some of those rules, at least for the time being, and then revisit it down the road.

13:15Yeah. And all of it, of course, as I was saying, is really about the next election, about the midterm elections and this fight that if the Democrats lose, and I suppose this is the thinking with Newsom being so tough about it, given that he is almost certainly running for the presidential nomination in 2028. Why did I even say almost? I mean, he is running for the nomination, isn't he? Yeah, look at his Twitter account. He's definitely running. Yeah, yeah. Listen to his podcast too, only after AmeriCast. But it is worth listening to, actually. He's positioning himself and doing so really aggressively.

13:51And I think he thinks, doesn't he, Sumi, if he can rescue the party from losing the midterms, in other words, the Democrats who are on course, probably, to win the midterms next year, that would be what you'd usually expect. If they then go ahead and manage to do it, and they do it partly because of what he's done in California, that really does bolster him, doesn't it? And there's another element to this. You know, I've talked to Democrat voters who are so frustrated with the brand of the Democrats. And you can just look at polling across the board that Democrat voters are not happy with their own party.

14:24And one of the big complaints has been that they don't fight enough, that they're not fighting back. And what Gavin Newsom is doing right here is saying, I'm taking the fight directly to the Republicans. And, you know, we talked about his ex account, Twitter account, and the fact that we've now seen not necessarily Gavin Newsom himself, but his press team mimicking Donald Trump's tweets, his posts on Truth Social and the all caps and the type of language he uses. There are some Democrats who will be pleased with the type of strategy that Gavin Newsom is deploying here, saying we need a fighter.

14:55And finally, someone is taking it directly to Donald Trump and his party. Yeah. Early days, very early days. But he's certainly making a big splash at the moment, isn't he? Let us go on to one of the smoothest voices that we ever have in our inbox. Hello, AmeriCast. It's Bob in Minneapolis. President Trump says he is confident in his ability to end the war in Ukraine. According to Trump, this is because he has already settled six wars in the past six months. What were these wars and what actions did Trump actually take to settle the conflicts? Shall we listen to his claim, Tsumik? It came in an interview on Fox and Friends and he actually increased the figure, I think I'm right in saying, to seven.

15:38Let's listen. I've solved seven wars. We ended seven wars. I thought this would be one of the easier ones. And this is turned out to be the toughest one. India, Pakistan. I mean, these were big ones. And also all big ones and some going for 31, 32 years, one for 35 years. The Congo, think of that. The Congo and Rwanda for 35 years. I got that one done. Your thoughts to me. Yeah, let's go conflict by conflict. I think that's probably the most helpful way of doing this. And I have the list here in front of me because a lot of people have been putting those questions to the White House's press team to say, which conflicts is he talking about here?

16:16How did this number go to seven? So if you start with Armenia and Azerbaijan, this was just a few weeks ago that you saw the leaders of both countries in the White House. And what President Trump was able to do, and this is really significant, we have to say. This is a long running conflict that that dates back to the 1980s and one where Russia was traditionally seen as a mediator between these two countries. But Russia, as we know, is continuing to wage its war in Ukraine and so has less bandwidth, if you will. And President Trump was able to bring these two leaders to the table and they signed a joint declaration to end their their war, their conflict.

16:53So, you know, that is really significant. On the other hand, you know, observers of this region say that hasn't solved the underlying crisis there or the underlying conflict and issues between these two leaders and their two countries. But what it has done, of course, is stop kind of the hot phase of their conflict. And I think that is indeed significant. I mean, we have to say that that's an important development. We're giving that one to Trump. That's right. That's one in his column that we have to say is one that President Trump was instrumental in. OK, big tick for that. What about the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda?

17:27Yeah. So we also saw leaders of both those countries at the White House. This is one that President Trump, you heard him in that clip there say, you know, there's a conflict running 35 years. That is true. Really significant that he got both representatives from both countries to come to the Oval Office and they signed a peace agreement aimed at ending the conflict. Again, here, though, the details are important. And that is that, you know, They haven't actually resolved the dispute between these two countries. And we have seen just in reports that violence is still continuing. So even though Donald Trump has kind of ticked off this conflict, it's one where a lot more work would have to be done to really ensure that arms are laid down.

18:08What about India and Pakistan? I mean, that's a bit more clear cut, isn't it? They were having quite a serious conflict. It wasn't quite a war, was it? But it was pretty serious conflict. Yeah, nuclear armed neighbors. And Caroline Levy, the press secretary, said, you know, we were close to a real all out war between these two nuclear armed neighbors. That is true on the one hand. On the other hand, India says that, yes, the U.S. did play some role in getting these partners to talk to each other. But India says that it directly negotiated a peace agreement with Pakistan there. So it kind of is downplaying the president's role.

18:41Although the Pakistani side, I mean, I remember this from interviews and other programs that I do, and both of us do other things for me as well. But I remember talking to a Pakistani official who said this is down to Trump. And I think I'm right in saying that they are among those nations proposing Trump for the Nobel Peace Prize. So yeah, there may be all sorts of reasons why they're doing it. But certainly from one side in this conflict, they think he was useful. Yeah, that is true. The Pakistanis have said that and they have developed a pretty solid relationship with the Trump administration.

19:14We have to say that tariffs there and the threat of tariffs do play a role and have played a role and I think directly did with Pakistan here. Anyway, we're only halfway through. Israel and Iran. Well, we saw the U.S. carry out the bombings of the nuclear sites in Iran and then announce a ceasefire between Israel and Iran. And that has seemed to mostly hold. When it comes to Iran's long-term nuclear ambitions, however, there hasn't really been any progress there. So, you know, the two sides here are not exchanging fire at the moment. So we can say that the U.S. played a role in bringing that to an end.

19:47And that was a serious concern, wasn't it, that we were covering, Justin? But at the moment, it remains to be seen whether Iran will actually continue to enrich uranium and rebuild its nuclear sites. because there hasn't been progress on engaging Iran on a diplomatic front. And that is something that hasn't really been a priority for the White House at the moment, as they've been dealing with other conflicts and hot wars. Cambodia and Thailand, I mean, I just feel that they took an interest in a part of the world and in a conflict that you would not have expected them to take an interest in necessarily when they came to power and actually did do some good.

20:30That is true. I mean, there was this flare-up in fighting, and there were more than 40 people killed in this flare-up in fighting. And so there were real concerns. And the White House was being asked about this in some of the press briefings. I think there was some attention paid to it. But again, the underlying issues are still there. The disputes are still there. And that is something that hasn't yet been solved. But you have to say, to President Trump's credit, that fighting, which was really a source of concern for everyone in the region in particular, did stop. Yeah. Egypt and Ethiopia, this is over a dam, isn't it?

21:06And it wasn't really a war either. That's right. And this is one where really isn't clear that President Trump has been able to make much progress at all. The dispute is still there. And I believe that Ethiopia announced recently that it actually finished the dam. And there hasn't been any progress on their dispute over the dam. And this is about power. And this is Africa's biggest hydroelectric dam. So there is a dispute between these two countries over the control of this dam. But President Trump's diplomacy here hasn't actually resolved the issue of control. I mean, it's kept both sides, if you will, from a hot war, from this descending into an armed conflict of any sort.

21:47But still, I'm not so sure that this is one that President Trump can put in his column. OK, well, it's a mixed bag. I think we're saying the Trump administration, I'm assuming, has been more involved than you might have thought in some disputes around the world, but not exactly. I think that's a fair assessment. Yeah. Let us go on to this, which is a really interesting question from Betty in Birmingham. Trump has been seen by many MAGA voters as the saviour who fulfil their dreams. But we're now seeing a growing dissatisfaction around rising prices, involvement in foreign wars and Medicare. It's actually Medicaid, I think, more than Medicare.

22:23But anyway, what happens, Betty asks, if that disillusionment grows? Will there be a large group of Americans who move even further towards the anti-government survivalist position? Really interesting, actually. I sort of should we sort of take it in two steps? Number one, are we saying definitely that Trump's popularity is going down? Well, if you look at the polls, that is the case. even on the issues where President Trump has performed pretty well so far in the second term, immigration, for example. His numbers have been sliding on that front as well, as you've seen some dissatisfaction with the mass deportation program and some of the ICE tactics and raids that we've seen.

23:07So it is fair to say that we are seeing growing dissatisfaction with President Trump, particularly on some of the core issues that he said he would deliver on, like the economy. Prices still have not dropped. And President Trump has sold it as a real win for his administration that he says inflation is almost zero. That's not true. It is not almost zero. It's still hovering around, you know, 2.7 percent-ish. And, you know, even though numbers have come down on some gas and energy and egg prices, for example, which President Trump is keen to point to, prices are still fairly high and have not come down as quickly as many voters might have hoped.

23:51So you do see some dissatisfaction there. Yeah, and also dissatisfaction. This goes really to the guts of this question, doesn't it? Dissatisfaction with the way in which the Trump administration, actually going harking back to the last question, has engaged with the outside world in a way that a lot of MAGA supporters genuinely hoped that it wouldn't. believed that it wouldn't, were told that it wouldn't. And the crucial thing here, of course, is Ukraine and this sense that you get over and over again from MAGA supporters that Donald Trump is being pushed towards a position that is much more conventional, mainstream, and in their view, disastrous, where he is involved in a way that he doesn't need to be.

24:36So let's listen to, I suppose He's the most prominent, isn't he, of the MAGA voices. Steve Bannon talking about his reservations about U.S. involvement in Ukraine on his War Room podcast recently. I'm just lost how a game, how us, how the United States offering an Article 5 commitment for a security guarantee to Ukraine is a win for the United States. I mean, this war started because of the globalists at the EU, the European Union and NATO forcing the hand of the Russians over years and years and years about Ukraine's joining the EU and joining NATO. Yeah, Justin, I think it's important just first of all to kind of push back on that claim from Steve Bannon because it completely rejects any agency on the behalf of the Ukrainians who were aspiring towards EU and NATO membership.