Americanswers! Is Donald Trump behaving like a 'dictator'?

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0:30an award-winning behavioral scientist and author of the best-selling book, How to Change, as she shares true stories from Nobel laureates, authors, athletes, and everyday people about why we do the things we do and how to make better choices to help avoid costly mistakes. Each episode covers the latest research in behavioral science and dives into themes like the power of self-control, shaping your mindset for success, navigating new beginnings, and why starting over can feel so hard. Listen to choiceology at schwab.com slash podcast or wherever you listen.

1:13BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, AmeriCasters. Because of the bank holiday that there was in the UK on Monday, we didn't do our normal Q &A with Matt Charlie on 5 Live. So we're going to be answering your questions in this episode instead. There was some excitement on Five Live though on Tuesday. Mariana happened to be presenting live on air when this happened. A little bit of news to bring you. Taylor Swift has announced her engagement to the NFL star. Oh, see, I do care about that. Travis Kelsey on Instagram. That's like an emergency. If people listen to Five Live and hear us chatting about America on our mini America cast on Matt Shirley, this is the kind of thing that we'd get very much into.

1:57I have been informed though that we are going to speak to a guest about Taylor Swift before 7 o 'clock I imagine it's not Justin Webb, my fellow AmeriCast presenter who really doesn't like talking to me about it I have heard you sort of bringing the youth element to AmeriCast before and Justin doesn't always embrace it, does he? Well, Justin's on holiday so that frees us up to talk about Taylor Swift as much as we like and we'll get round to, I don't know Bruce Springsteen or Billy Joel or whoever he wants to talk about when he's back again. There's plenty of other important news to get to as well, though, like Donald Trump targeting his political enemies, what Ghislaine Maxwell told the authorities when she was interviewed in prison, and why a man who was mistakenly deported to a notorious prison in El Salvador might now be facing deportation again, this time to Uganda.

2:49Welcome to AmeriCansers. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. President 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. We're 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!

3:32Hello, it's Sarah here in the BBC's Washington Bureau. And it's Anthony right next to Sarah here in Washington. Last week, as I'm sure you remember, we had a listener comparing Donald Trump to the Roman Emperor Caligula because of those plans he's got to host an ultimate fighting championship at the White House. Now, we've had this in from Tony in Warwickshire, who has sent us an email asking about the parallels he sees between Donald Trump and Julius Caesar. Here's what he says. Caesar asserted that Rome was under threat and he was the only person who could protect it. He intimidated his rivals and used the military to cement his position of power.

4:06I read that Trump is arguing something similar, that the USA is under threat from violence and disorder and he's the only person who can fix it. He's doggedly pursuing those he considers disloyal, such as John Bolton, and those standing in the way of his objectives, namely the head of the US Central Reserve, Jerome Powell, and more recently, Lisa Cook. I'm just wondering if you see the parallels that I see. The question of whether Donald Trump is a dictator is only we get a lot from our listeners. But before we talk about that, let's focus on Lisa Cook. Yes, so she is a governor of the Federal Reserve, which is the central bank, the independent central bank of the United States.

4:42And we've talked before about Donald Trump's long-running campaign against Jerome Powell, who is the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with whom he is really, really angry because he's not lowering interest rates. Interest rates, of course, are used to control inflation. Jerome Powell is worried that Trump's tariffs, among other things, might put the inflation rate up. Donald Trump is desperate to get it down to lower borrowing costs and mortgage rates for consumers. So if he can't fire the chairman of the Fed, and it's pretty clear he cannot, he's gone after one of the governors instead. He is claiming that she committed fraud on a mortgage application form, claiming that one property was going to be a primary residence and then very shortly after that, applying for a loan to buy another property in another state and saying that would be her primary residence in order to get lower interest rates.

5:29He says that gives him cause to fire her as a governor. And that's very interesting because if he could reappoint another governor in her place, he would then have a majority on the board of governors in favour of cutting interest rates. So this is a shortcut way of trying to get what he wants with the interest rates, but it's not at all clear if it's legal. Right, and if you step back, that is the real purpose behind this. They found a reason in their view to justify firing her with cause. But the goal is to get a friendlier Federal Reserve that will do what he wants. And that's why a lot of people are questioning this move, because it seems fairly transparent.

6:10Now, Donald Trump actually was asked about this at his cabinet meeting on Tuesday, and here's what he said. You have spoken out very strongly for a long time about what you see as the weaponization of government. Is your administration weaponizing government by digging into the mortgage records of officials you don't like? No, they're public. I mean, you can find out those records. You can go check out the records yourself. And you should be doing that job, actually. You wouldn't do that because that's not the kind of reporter you are. But you should be doing that job. I shouldn't have to be doing it.

6:40If you did your job properly, we wouldn't have problems like Lisa Cook. Go ahead. You were going to say something? It's a favourite trick, though, this accusations of mortgage fraud, isn't it, of the Trump administration, because she is not alone. Adam Schiff, the congressman who was very prominent on the January 6th committee investigating the riots at the Capitol, he's been accused of mortgage fraud by the Trump administration as well. And Letitia James, who you will remember, the New York attorney general in charge of prosecuting Donald Trump for, among other things, fraud in the Trump organization where he was lying in order to obtain lower interest rates on loans.

7:18I mean, there is a delicious irony about this, but Donald Trump seems prepared to just completely ignore that and blithely go on weaponizing the justice system. It would appear in exactly the way he complained about for the last two years. Right. And it's worth pointing out again, this is a criminal referral from the government to the Justice Department for Cook. This isn't an indictment. And this certainly isn't a conviction, which actually Donald Trump was convicted in civil court in New York of this, of inflating the values of his properties in order to be able to take out bigger loans, but then devaluing his properties when it came time to paying taxes.

7:55And that was at the heart of this massive penalty, which I will also note an appeals court just reduced down significantly. The one thing about the Federal Reserve, though, and the central bank, I think, which is going to be interesting to watch, is there's potential consequences of Donald Trump meddling with its independence. The markets won't like it. There's a reason why central banks are independent from politicians. And the one thing thus far that has been able to change Donald Trump's mind sometimes is a market reaction. He doesn't mind the criticism politically. He doesn't mind being called a dictator quite often.

8:27He does mind the bond markets moving against him. And if that was to happen, he might back off the Fed. Yeah, and I was watching the stock markets on Monday and Tuesday when all of this was starting to go down. because I was curious to see whether there would be some sort of a negative response to Donald Trump targeting a federal governor. And there wasn't really. I mean, it kind of responded with a shrug. It's dipped a little bit, but nothing near the massive sell off that we saw when Donald Trump had his Liberation Day tariffs back in April. That was the one thing that really seemed to spook the markets because it was unexpected.

9:02And and the one thing that Donald Trump, as you mentioned, paid attention to. and then backed away from fairly quickly. While I think the markets want to have an independent Fed, want to have some sort of methodology and rational actions behind economic policy, this doesn't seem to be enough to move the needle. We get asked by our AmeriCasters all the time whether Donald Trump is behaving like a dictator, and he gets asked it himself quite often as well, it has to be said. This is what he had to say about it this week. As you all know, Chicago is a killing field. right now. And they don't acknowledge it.

9:39And they say, we don't need him. Freedom, freedom. He's a dictator. He's a dictator. A lot of people are saying maybe we like a dictator. I don't like a dictator. I'm not a dictator. I'm a man with great common sense and a smart person. It's hard to tell if Trump is joking there or not. As a lot of his comments, it seems kind of like a joke, but then it also seems serious. And it is something, as he mentioned, he likes to riff on. If you remember last year, he talked about being a dictator on day one with all of his executive orders. But then he wouldn't be a dictator afterward. But just yesterday in that cabinet room meeting, he talked about how people might be OK with him being a dictator if he reduced his crime.

10:18So the line is that I'm a dictator, but I stop crime. So a lot of people say, you know, if that's the case, I'd rather have a dictator. But I'm not a dictator. I just know how to stop crime. And I think that does reflect what Donald Trump believes, which is that oftentimes the ends justify the means. And even if he's taking aggressive actions and he's pushing the boundaries and he's doing things that many people might say, oh, that's going too far if he produces results. If the crime rate goes down in D.C., which initially now it looks like it might have, if undocumented immigration across the border drops, which it has to historically low levels, if homeless camps are disappearing and people aren't faced with that kind of the potential for crime and also the panhandling, then they might be OK with what Donald Trump is doing.

11:09And that is something that Trump's critics are going to have to handle, that he's on the right side on popular issues, even if the methods he's doing aren't necessarily always popular. On this same theme, another question that we've had about Donald Trump is specifically about going after his political enemies. We've had this email from Alan asking us, Hi, AmeriCast. Is the FBI investigation of John Bolton further signs of Trump's desire to get revenge on anyone who crosses him? And is he more likely now to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell for saying nice things about him? So, yeah, where are we with John Bolton?

11:44And our AmeriCast, as I'm sure, know that the FBI were raiding his house and his office at the end of last week, looking for classified documents that for some reason the DOJ decided that he might have there. Yeah, the first thing to explain who John Bolton is, he's a longtime foreign policy hand in Republican circles. He worked in the Bush administration, was a big proponent of the Iraq war. He was hired by Donald Trump to be his national security advisor, served that for several years in Donald Trump's first administration. But since leaving there on less than favorable terms, he's become an outspoken critic of Donald Trump, criticizing what he says is his naive foreign policy, that his inconstant foreign policy.

12:27I've interviewed him before. I'm sure you have as well. And he is an outspoken guy. He likes to be on TV. He's on Fox News pretty regularly. So Donald Trump sees him. He has been he had his home raided. And the justification that the government has given for this is that he might have had classified documents that he kept at home or in his office after leaving the White House. Again, kind of ironic because that is exactly what Donald Trump was accused of having, having sensitive national security and national security documents at Mar-a-Lago after leaving the White House. But of course, Trump is president, was a former president at the time.

13:06Bolton was a staffer. So this search hasn't, we haven't heard what it's turned up yet. It could, in theory, if it turned up classified or censored documents, he could be charged. He hasn't been charged. There have been no indictments. This is all kind of a preliminary step. But there is the potential that he was targeted because of his criticism of Trump. And Trump has actually been critical of Bolton. And he talked about Bolton when asked about this raid earlier this week. I'm not a fan of John Bolton. I thought he was a sleazebag, actually. And he suffers major Trump derangement syndrome. But so do a lot of people.

13:46And they're not being affected by anything we do. I guess his house was raided today. But my house was raided also. called Mar-a-Lago. They went through everything they could, including my young son's room and my wife's area. They went through her drawers, as the expression goes. They went through everything you can imagine. And when she came back, she looked, she said, she's very neat, you know, she's meticulous. And she looked and she said, whoa, this wasn't, this wasn't the way that she had it. So, you know, so I know the feeling. It's not a good feeling. Thank you. It's no surprise that people are saying they think that this was politically motivated.

14:25J.D. Vance was actually specifically denied that in an interview on NBC. But most people assume that Donald Trump and those working for him in the Justice Department know who he would like to see targeted. Ghislaine Maxwell was mentioned in that email from Alan as well. And there's been news about her over the weekend because we've actually heard the interview, haven't we? that she did with the Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche when he went to speak to her about the Epstein case. We heard the interview. It came out on Friday, classic Friday afternoon news dump, as they say, to bury something.

15:02Although I did listen to it, listened to clips of it. I've read articles about it. And she didn't shed a whole lot of new light on any of this. It was interesting. She said that there was no client list that the much alleged document that could show Jeffrey Epstein's clients, his ties in the sex trafficking operation he was running, people who might be embarrassed, people who are influential, powerful, famous, who might be tied to this. She said that didn't exist. She also said that she doesn't believe that Jeffrey Epstein killed himself, committed suicide in prison, but she wasn't able to explain why if there was no client list and no reason for him to be murdered, why he was.

15:46But the thing to remember about Jelaine Maxwell is that she has been convicted of perjury. She continues to profess her innocence. She says she didn't know anything about anything that was going on with Jeffrey Epstein. And there's a substantial amount of evidence that ties her to all of this. But it was still interesting to listen to her and hear her own voice and hear her be interviewed with Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney, who is now a high ranking member of the Justice Department. And everything she said, Anthony, I think we can agree. Donald Trump will have been pretty pleased to hear, I would imagine, particularly this bit.

16:22President Trump was always very cordial and very kind to me. And I just want to say that I find I admire his extraordinary achievement in becoming the president now. I actually never saw the president in any type of massage setting. I never witnessed the president in any inappropriate setting in any way. The president was never inappropriate with anybody. In the times that I was with him, he was a gentleman in all respects. A lot of conversations about whether Mr. Epstein maintained a list of people, like a book of famous people that he knew. Did you know the existence of any such list? There is no list.

17:06We'll start with that. The genesis of that story I can actually trace for you from its absolute inception, if that is what you're interested in. What's really interesting about this is that you can also hear on the tape Todd Blanche saying that he's not making any promises to Ghislaine Maxwell in return for her testimony. And then yet, surprise, surprise, less than a week after this interview, she's moved to a minimum security federal prison camp that's much, much more comfortable than where she was being held before. And she's serving a 20 year prison sentence. Of course, she would love a pardon or a commutation from Donald Trump.

17:46And I'm sure she knows exactly what to say in order to please him and better her chances of getting that pardon. What I don't entirely understand is what's in it for the Trump administration, because they've got themselves into this mess where during the election, they bigged up the Epstein files and said there was all sorts of secrets contained in there. and when they got into power, they would publish them and reveal what the Biden administration was keeping from the public. They got into power. They've decided not to publish them for whatever reason. They had a real backlash from their own base about that.

18:16And somehow they think interviewing Ghislaine Maxwell and releasing those tapes is going to get them out of this hole. But does it, Anthony? I don't think so. It doesn't settle any questions. I think that people are still going to be demanding to have public access to all of the Epstein files. And there is still movement in Congress that will keep this story going forward. There's a committee investigating has gotten access to some of these files. It is issued a subpoena for all of them. At some point, I think we'll start to hear leaks maybe of what's in them, if there's anything new in them. There's actually a push by a Democrat and a Republican, Thomas Massey, Republican from Kentucky, Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, to force a vote in the House of Representatives to publicly release all of the Epstein files.

19:02That seems to be preceding apace. They might be able to pull it off. It seems like there's a majority in the House that are willing to support this. So these are all things that are going to crop up in September. And the idea that they could just go on recess for the month of August, and when they come back, all this would go away, even if they release this audio transcript, even if they tried to get the grand jury interviews, which they weren't able to get publicly released. I think that was a pipe dream. This is still something the public cares about. And it's still something that politicians understand they might be able to get some traction with when going after Donald Trump on.

19:37Well, and I've had conversations behind the scenes with grown up political operatives who are not given to the kind of crazy conspiracy theories that, say, some in the MAGA base attacks to the Epstein files. And what they're saying is, look, there's something in there that they won't publish for some reason, because if it was all completely innocent and as boring as they say, they would just have it out. So they're saying, well, it's not about Donald Trump. But so who is it? Is it a foreign leader whose name's on the client list? Is it somebody whom they need to do business with? Who is it that could be so important that they're protecting him from being attached to the Epstein scandal?

20:14And yet that you're having these conversations in sort of rather grown up surroundings, I'm finding intriguing. Yeah, the one thing that we said from the very beginning is that the Trump administration is handling this poorly. And they're handling it in a way that seems suspicious. It seems like they have something to hide in. And that may mean nothing, but it's not going to get people to stop paying attention to it. And the more they behave this way, the more it's going to prompt people to keep asking questions. I mean, initially, I was dismissive of all of this. It's a nothing burger. but uh but you know i'm starting to think maybe there's some some meat here and uh and it certainly is is exacting a political toll on donald trump it's a distraction uh it might explain some of the the more aggressive things he's done elsewhere uh as a means of changing the subject which he has done temporarily but it's clear that no matter what he does whether it's send troops to washington in D.C.

21:11or have a summit in Alaska with Vladimir Putin. It's not making this story permanently disappear. It just keeps popping back up again. We have had a voice, though, on a different topic from Pete, who is in Mill Hill. Hi, AmeriCast. Just a quick question. What is motivating the administration's reaction to the deportation of Abrego Garcia? Is it that they genuinely believe he should be deported or that they can't admit to making a mistake or they're using him for some other political purposes. So a reminder on Abrego Garcia, the latest news is that a judge has blocked him from being deported, at least temporarily.

21:52He was being held in a prison in a jail cell in Tennessee pending a criminal indictment of him. The judge there ordered his release, but now he's back into deportation proceedings. And they apparently offered him a choice, which is he can choose to admit that he was guilty of human trafficking, which is what the Justice Department accuses him of, and be sent to Costa Rica, where he would be granted asylum status. It's in Central America. It's close to his home in El Salvador. If he refuses to do that, they will deport him to Uganda. And it's unclear whether he would be detained in Uganda, whether Uganda would just ship him to El Salvador, where he says he feels he's not safe, or what would happen to them.

22:37It's kind of a tough choice. It's the kind of choice you see with prosecutions where they offer you a sweetheart deal if you cooperate, but they'll throw the book at you if you don't. But now it's being used in deportation proceedings. So this week, we're waiting to see what the Justice Department what the immigration services do next, whether this judge will decide that he should be allowed to stay in the United States. But it's an ongoing saga. And I think what our questioner gets at here is the reason why the administration is playing hardball with him, because they truly believe he's a dangerous criminal or because he's an embarrassment.

23:12They shipped him off to El Salvador initially without crossing their T's and dotting their eyes and now they had to kind of suck it up and bring him back and they're trying to find a reason to justify that initial mistake. Well now that he's back in Maryland we heard from him himself on Monday and he was speaking with a translator outside the immigration office in Baltimore.

23:48When I was detained, I remembered memories with my family, going to the park with them, going to the trampoline with my children. Esos momentos me darán fuerzas y esperanza para seguir luchando. Those moments will continue to give me hope to continue in this fight. So that takes us to the question, which is a really, really good one, I think. is this a political case or do they believe that he is genuinely dangerous and therefore ought to be deported out of the country well i mean he was here illegally it's just that a judge has said if he was to be deported it couldn't be to el salvador and that's where they sent him by mistake so i guess at some point of principle the administration probably does believe that he ought not to be in the country because he's not here legally but i just i think this case has become such a political football, hasn't it?

24:44It's a kind of a combination of them not wanting to admit they're wrong, not backing down, but also just digging in to make a political case out of this where they can be seen to be taking tough action. Right. And if you listen to Justice Department officials, Pam Bondi and everyone else, they say he is a violent criminal, a human trafficker, you know, where he doesn't they don't want him to spend one minute on the streets out of detention here in the United States. I think they have no evidence, of course, for the idea that he's that he's a gang member or any of the things they initially accused him of.

25:15Yeah, I mean, they presented evidence. What they said was evidence. A judge so far didn't see enough of it there for him to be held in jail in Tennessee. There's still criminal proceedings going against him in Tennessee, but that will be for a jury to decide ultimately if this case actually reaches trial, which I would be surprised if it does. And I think this is the bottom line. They could deport him. Like you said, they could deport him. They could have gone through all of the proper legal steps to deport him. They may just start doing that now and be able to do it. But now it almost seems like they want to make an example of him because Democratic politicians rallied around him.

25:53He became kind of this figurehead for what the critics of Donald Trump's immigration policy were saying was the cruel, callous disregard for proper procedures and for the human beings involved in this. That gets to the heart of this Abrego Garcia case. Is he one of the violent offenders? Is it an example of getting someone, a mean guy off the streets who was human trafficking? Or is this an example of the administration going too far? And both sides point to this as a case that illustrates the argument they're making, which is why the administration's fighting so hard to prove that he's a bad guy.