Americanswers… on 5 Live! Can Trump save FIFA boss Gianni Infantino?

0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. It's been five months since the deadliest civilian strike of the US-Israel war in Iran. 120 children killed at a school. Experts say the evidence indicates it was American forces that hit the school, but the US government has not admitted responsibility. I'm Asma Khaled and I host the Global Story podcast on the BBC. The BBC has now visited the site of the school and spoken to Iranians about what they saw. For more, listen to The Global Story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts. Loads of questions and a big range of questions as well that we are about to answer on American Answers.

0:42So Anthony Fauci, the guy who was very much to the fore during COVID, hugely, hugely important figure in the United States, but also in a sense around the world, up before a congressional committee, treated, according to at least one of our questioners, very badly. What's going on with him? We also talk about Iran and what is going on there and what is in Donald Trump's mind when it comes to how he wants it to end and whether he has the stomach for any more of a fight. Plus, what is going on in the state of Maine and more widely with these massively important Senate races that are going to come to the fore during the course of the summer and then, of course, be decided in November.

1:23It looks as if the Democrats are having a little bit of another wobble in the state of Maine, although more broadly, the picture for them is good. So, without further ado, welcome to AmeriCansers on 5 Live.

1:37Anthony Zurcher:AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.

1:49Marianna Spring:This is a big cover-up, and this administration is engaged in it. This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.

2:04And let's kick off today with the situation in Iran. After President Trump said this to reporters yesterday, speaking on Air Force One. We were all set to go, just about at this time right now. and it would have been a massive attack. We're all set to go, but when the Allies ask to call it off, you've got to sort of say, well, let's see. And the reason they ask is they think there's a deal. There's a deal on Hormuz and then there will be a deal on the nuclear, or you might call it the denuclearization of Iran. I call it the denuclearization of Iran. That's what he calls it. Is it actually happening, Anthony?

2:49Anthony Zurcher:That's a really good question. If this sounds familiar, it should be, because this is the same sort of process we've seen time and time again over the months here where Donald Trump warns that there are going to be massive attacks, civilization erasing attacks in one instance. Now this is the biggest attack since World War II. And then he backs away from it because, he says, Iran is interested in negotiating. They're going back to the negotiating table. The deal is very, very close. Of course, one time we did get a memorandum of understanding and a ceasefire, but that has since been abandoned.

3:24Anthony Zurcher:So I would take everything at this point with a grain of salt. We'll see. We'll see if they do return to the negotiating table eventually. And if so, whether there's any kind of a more detailed agreement that might actually stick. So Paul in Stratford-upon-Avon has been in touch saying, am I only the one who's thinking that all these Trump's announcements about deal and no deal are planned to be deliberately affecting global markets on an almost daily basis? Someone must be benefiting. It won't be the first time and certainly it won't be the last that powerful nations made fortunes from the conflict.

3:54Tomorrow he'll be shaking the sabre again, mark my words. Justin, is Paul being cynical? No, I don't think he is actually. I think it's simply a fact that people have made money out of these market movements. It's not a conspiracy theory, or at least if it is a conspiracy theory, it's another conspiracy theory. I knew you were about to say that.

4:16Marianna Spring:I knew you were about to say that. I've often discussed this with Mariana, who's not generally keen on conspiracy theories, until I'd pop up and say, well, hang on a second, most of them are true. But maybe most of them aren't true. But the fact is that there is this, that it happens too often to be anything other than something that genuinely is a feature of life under Donald Trump. Exactly who's making the money in a way should eventually become obvious because the Securities and Exchange Commission and other bodies as well, and potentially the FBI, would all in normal circumstances be saying, OK, this is the deal and we're looking into this person and that person who had access to special information they shouldn't have had access to.

4:58But actually, in the great scheme of things, number one, I doubt that should happen. And number two, weirdly, and it's this weird difference with their system to ours, that actually a lot of people in Congress make quite a lot of money. They don't make the kind of money that Donald Trump has made, make the kind of money his family's made. But actually, they do make money and they're allowed to make money. They keep on trying to stop this, but it never quite is stopped. And some people remember Nancy Pelosi, leader of Democrats, very big woman on the left in American politics, actually oddly wealthy.

5:29So her opponents would say after dealing in stocks while she was in or having stocks dealt for her while she was in Congress. And that sort of is not against the rules, but that sort of ability of American politicians to make money perfectly legally kind of muddies the water a bit as well, I think.

5:48Marianna Spring:Just on that point about conspiracy theories, totally, totally agree with you, Justin. No, totally agree with you that some kind of theories end up being true. I guess when we talk about conspiracy theories, usually we're talking about the really extreme stuff, like people saying something is a hoax or staged or whatever. This kind of thing, you can see why people are asking these kinds of questions and quite validly, not least because, and we discussed this on a recent episode, they're looking to introduce or there's been talk of Truth Social introducing this kind of premium subscription thing for Wall Street so that they can get a bit of a heads up about, you know, how the markets might move, essentially.

6:21Marianna Spring:like it would be a good advert for that if Donald Trump keeps posting things that do shift the markets, right? But there's a question over whether Donald Trump's posts would even be included in that and all this sorts of stuff. But I think that, yeah, I would say that that is kind of Mariana Spring approved and not conspiracy theory content, Paul. That's a big conspiracy theory. Well, yeah, what we really need to know is who's behind Mariana Spring if she starts hosing down that conspiracy theory. Trust me, have a bit of a Google search of that and you'll get all sorts. No, I'm not doing that.

6:57We had loads and loads of questions about the... It's on-off-ness. Stuart said, is this the same talks which were already in advance stage yesterday that are now starting today? Somebody else said it was taco Sunday. So AmeriCasters are following it closely and perhaps cynically. But let's move on, because I'm sure, you know, we could do the same question next week. Let's move on to Anthony Fauci, who I'm sure listeners remember being the advisor to Donald Trump during the COVID pandemic. He became the face of the US medical directives during COVID times in the US and then around the world. Well, he refused to answer questions at a punchy US Senate hearing about COVID after excerpts from his personal diary were made public by the Republican Senator Rand Paul last week.

7:47He continued to invoke his rights under the Fifth Amendment, which got senators increasingly frustrated. On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. What color tie are you wearing? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. What color is the carpet in front of you? On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment. Well, we've got Richard on the line. Hello, Richard. Good afternoon.

8:22Richard, what colour's the carpet in front of you? I reserve my rights. What is your question then, Richard? I come to AmeriCast for a bit of a 30 ,000-foot perspective, hopefully, because from inside my soft left media bubble, that hearing held by Rand Paul with Dr. Fauci was a pathetic attack on a noble public servant who perhaps made the mistake of recording a few bouquets from Julia Roberts or phone calls from Barbara Streisand in a diary that turned out not to be so private after all. Are Senator Paul and Moreno and the Fox Network, are they portraying this as a total vindication and a true gotcha of Dr.

9:04Fauci? And are they still maintaining that he belongs behind bars? Anthony, how has it gone down?

9:10Anthony Zurcher:Well, certainly on the right, the people who brought him to that hearing view this as him being evasive, that he has something to hide. There's been talk among some conservatives in Congress that they might find a way of prosecuting him for contempt of Congress for asserting his Fifth Amendment rights. That seems unlikely because the Fifth Amendment rights are enshrined in the Constitution. but it hasn't put any of these questions to bed and the conspiracy theories around Fauci are going to continue. If anything, the video of him refusing to answer questions is only going to fan those flames.

9:48Marianna Spring:Yeah, I was going to say that I have been tagged in all manner of posts. I mean, you know, there's two different things here, which is there can be valid and legitimate questions and criticism about Fauci and the general handling of the pandemic, whether lockdown measures, well, they didn't have lockdowns in quite the same way, but whether, you know, restrictions and various measures that were introduced were proportionate, whether they were prepared enough, all that kinds of stuff. And whether the comms and advice was always correct or valuable or that kind of thing. And then there's really extreme conspiratorial stuff.

10:17Marianna Spring:And you might remember we actually had, we spoke to Fauci for the podcast, for On America's before. And, you know, he's experienced a huge volume of online abuse and threats that go way beyond valid criticism, right? You know, death threats, really extreme stuff, and lots of conspiracy theories that are clearly not true, suggesting that he, like, you know, invented Covid or was trying to kill millions of people with a vaccine and so on and so forth. But you can see how him refusing to answer, which his reasoning for that is that he basically denies any wrongdoing and calls the allegations, quote, simply preposterous.

10:48Marianna Spring:But you can see how him not speaking then further fuels the people who say, well, he's hiding something because why doesn't he want to answer these questions? Yeah, I mean, following on from that, two things can be true, can't they? that he has absolutely been produced by people and treated incredibly badly and death threats, as Mariana says, and all the rest of it. But at the same time, that he has questions to answer that he hasn't fully answered. And I think one of them, and it kind of goes to the wider picture, and here it's so that this is my effort to help our questioner slightly go outside his media bubble, but there is a sort of, there is a legitimate question about why it was that the entire scientific establishment, including Dr.

11:28Fauci, was very keen, very early doors to shut down any discussion. And they really did shut it down viciously, aggressively, and really unpleasant attacks on fellow scientists who created any kind of suggestion that maybe the COVID originally came from a lab rather than from the wet market. And that has never been fully explained. And the suggestion from Rand Paul, from the senator is that the explanation is that they, Fauci and others, were involved in this thing called gain of function research in Wuhan, paid for by the Americans, where they were toying with viruses and trying to work out whether they, you know, whether future generations could be made safer by altering those viruses, see what happened to them, et cetera, et cetera.

12:19And that actually to protect what they were up to and what they had funded, they were suppressing proper discussion of where it came from. So that is, I think, a legitimate question about Dr. Fauci. I don't think it's an illegitimate question to ask. And I don't think it has been completely, fully answered. And the other just brief thing is the idea that actually during the lockdowns in the States, schools stayed closed too long, people lost their jobs who wouldn't take vaccines for perfectly legitimate reasons sometimes, and that a whole class of people kind of avoided the lockdowns, didn't have to wear masks, and another class of people did have to wear masks, lost their jobs, often lost their lives.

13:08And that anger then looks to those sort of lanyard-wearing classes who were around at that time. And Fauci, unfortunately for him, is the absolutely epitome of that.

13:20Anthony Zurcher:Fauci didn't really have any power. He made recommendations, but it was the states and state by state. There were determinations on how this all played out. So a place like Florida, you know, I was there in 2021 in February and no one was wearing masks. And Ron DeSantis, the governor, was very much intent on opening the schools, opening businesses. You go to a place like California, New York, it was a very different sort of thing. It's kind of the nature of the United States is that states have a lot of power and different strokes for different folks kind of a thing. And also, I think Fauci would say that the debate, the discussion over where COVID came from in those early days was beside the point.

13:57Anthony Zurcher:The reaction and handling the spreading pandemic was the more important thing to focus on. And at this point now, there's still an open debate about where exactly the virus came from. And it's not conclusive. There are compelling scientific evidence that it wasn't hatched in a lab or an accidental lab leak, but there's also questions about where it did come from. Thank you for that, Richard. Great question. Good to reflect on what's happened with Anthony Fauci. Let's move on. We've got Dave in Devon. Hello, Dave. Good afternoon, Matt. How are you? What is your... I'm very well. What is your question for the AmeriCasters, please?

14:31Has Donald Trump ruined the life of Gianni Infantino?

14:37Marianna Spring:Mariana. Well, very helpfully, not only have I been sort of keeping an eye on everything World Cup and more on social media. But also, I was presented five live today, so I have been talking a lot about Infantino. So for AmeriCasters who don't know, there's a lot of pressure right now on FIFA's president, Gianni Infantino, because news broke last week or was leaked that suggested he was going to sell sort of stakes in the World Cup, essentially, and everyone got very upset. And there was a lot of pressure from the different footballing bodies led by UEFA, who have now said that they might even take legal action, a threatening legal action against FIFA.

15:11Marianna Spring:And then you've had the Welsh FA and the English FA come out and be like, oh, we do not have confidence in Infantino. We do not support Infantino as FIFA president anymore, essentially, for him to kind of continue in the way that he is. And I think that is a really good question and an important one, because what happened and the kind of amount of noise and controversy about this whole selling stakes thing. I mean, it would have caused uproar anyways, but I think it's particularly off the back of the World Cup and the perception of Infantino and the perception of his relationship with Donald Trump.

15:44Marianna Spring:Like Donald Trump has been very effusive about him. Infantino has been, you know, has praised Donald Trump. And there were several controversies during the World Cup. The most notable, this whole red card thing where Balogun, the striker for the US, got a red card and then they basically delayed the red card so that he could play in this game against Belgium. that was a big deal. Belgium won anyways. But this idea that Donald Trump had intervened, like called up Infantino and been like, hey, can you sort this out, please? This is annoying. Which obviously red cards are annoying, that's the whole point.

16:14Marianna Spring:Sparks kind of widespread discussion and outcry and outrage. And I'd say over the course of the World Cup, this image of Infantino as, and he would deny this and reject it, but as someone who is, you know, not playing fair and square, that is doing to football what a lot of people don't like and, you know, is aligning him. Actually, do you know what? But it really reminds me of what we were just saying about Fauci, which is during the pandemic, I think that quite a lot of scientists and doctors suffered from the relationship they ended up having with politicians, certainly in the UK as well, where you'd see the scientists and doctors often speaking alongside the politicians.

16:47Marianna Spring:And the perception was that they either kind of agreed or disagreed with those politicians. I think the same thing has happened with Infantino here, which is like, I mean, much more explicitly so, but it's like he's side by side with Donald Trump. people perceive that they are close, which they've kind of said, and therefore people who don't like Donald Trump very much very much don't like Infantino. But more broadly, and it's not about liking or hating Donald Trump, it's actually about the idea that football is being politicised or that there's corruption on a level that people are uncomfortable with.

17:18Marianna Spring:And that is the kind of overall criticism and allegation that's being levelled at Infantino, essentially. And I think you're right that the Donald Trump relationship has not helped that case. Which Donald Trump would also say, well, hang on a sec, I'm not corrupt, so that's not fair. But that is the... It could lead to an amazing new career, couldn't it? I mean, I see him on the Board of Peace for Gaza, maybe, or I don't know, King of Greenland or something. That would go down well, wouldn't it? Just spend the rest of time just giving each other peace prizes. Fine, then, let's end with a question about Nixon.

17:46We've had an email in from Richard in Yorkshire, says, is the current rehabilitation of Richard Nixon? Because recent events make his crimes and flaws seem rather small compared to President Trump? Or is it the reverse, the acceptance of Trump's behaviour, that Nixon was not wrong after all?

18:02Marianna Spring:Do we need to do a maxing explainer here? Do people know maxing? Justin, could you explain maxing first, and then we'll do Nixon maxing? Oh, God. I think you might need my help here, Matt. There are two sorts of maxing I know about. There's looks maxing, which I practise, and there's Nixon maxing, which many people on the American right practise. And I assume we're talking now about Nixon maxing. So, yeah, I mean, look, we had Chris Rufo. We did a special edition the other day with a guy called Chris Rufo. He is a Nixon maxer, as he told us, extraordinaire. And he's on the right. He's an opponent of diversity equity.

18:37But he was saying he was telling us that Nixon is really back in with the kind of young people on the American right that he regularly talks to. And I think it's a combination of things. I think it's a sort of there is something about Nixon that is quite compelling as a story that there were all sorts of aspects to him that later history rather put on the back burner because of the little matter of Watergate. But in many respects, his longevity, his ability to come back from disaster politically and personally as well. the fact that he did come from pretty humble beginnings, the idea as well that he was actually, and in a sense, this is the Trump thing, that he managed to, I mean, he was in some respects right wing, but he was also, didn't he set up, Anthony, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think he set up the Environmental Protection Agency.

19:28In other words, he sort of picked policies, didn't he, from across the aisle, which at his most successful, I think Donald Trump probably has as well. So yeah, he is certainly on a comeback. Plus, of course, presidents are always more popular once they're like prime ministers. Is this really a thing? Is this really trending, Marianna? Or is this three posts and then a feature in one of the papers?

19:52Marianna Spring:No, it actually is. There have been millions of views on these clips. It's kind of the meeting of two different trends. One is the kind of maxing thing where you kind of love something you talk about all the time. And then one is the sort of montages of politicians, particularly like old ones. Like you see, I mean, not nearly as, not as old as Nixon, but there's loads of like Tony Blair and Gordon Brown mashups to like Charlie XCX, like that kind of thing. So I think it's the extension of that trend. If we're now back at the early 70s, are we looking at Ted Heath maxing? Is that what you're suggesting?

20:21Yeah.