Americanswers…on 5 Live! Why did the internet think Trump was dead?

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1:38Marianna Spring:BBC Sounds, music, radio, podcasts. Hello, welcome to another instalment of our Monday Q &A, America Answers. I've just come off Five Live with Matt Chorley. There is sadly no Justin, Sarah or Anthony today. They are deservedly on holiday in a way. But luckily, a very good friend of the podcast, Sumi Samaskanda, was with me to talk about a whole range of different things. We chatted about those rumours, unfounded conspiracy theories that Donald Trump is dead. Do you know about the pizza index? Well, soon you will. We spoke about Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his role in reshaping the US National Public Health Agency.

2:16Marianna Spring:There's a bit on tariffs too, Trump's tariffs and India and Russia and China. and what are the Democrats up to or not up to? Welcome to AmeriCanswers.

2:27AmeriCast. 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 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!

3:06And we'll start with, I think this feels like something which is in your wheelhouse, Mariana. This was a big story over the weekend. Story very much in inverted commas. We've had lots of questions about this. Let's start with this one. This is David from Preston who left us a voice note. Hi, AmeriCast. I've seen in the press that Donald Trump unusually hasn't been seen much in the last few days and he's had a suspicious mark on his hand last time we saw him. Does anyone know where he is? Thank you.

3:39Marianna Spring:I knew this weekend that I was going to be talking to you about this. Every time I saw it pop up on my feed, I thought, ah, yeah, more confirmation that this will be on America Answers today. So, I mean, we've got the podcast title sorted. Is Donald Trump dead? That'll never get people clicking. That'll never get through anyone. But the story here, inverted commas story, is social media has been in a bit of a frenzy, as it often is, analysing pictures of Donald Trump. It might give you flashbacks to when Joe Biden was president and people were constantly analysing his health and wellbeing, and it happens with almost every world leader these days.

4:15Marianna Spring:But Donald Trump has been the focus of particular scrutiny because there were images which have actually popped up before that show, you know, this has happened before and they show bruising. He appeared to have bruising on his right hand and then it looked like it had been covered up by makeup a bit. Not very well, I might add. And the White House came out to say, look, this is to do with handshaking. There's nothing going on here, nothing to see here. Obviously, we also know that health in general is a topic that presidential officers don't tend to go close to, don't tend to talk about very much, nor the White House, although they seem to not, they say nothing to see here.

4:52Marianna Spring:But that does not stop the conspiracy theory frenzy and unfounded theories that have been spreading focused on Donald Trump's health. they wondered why he hadn't been doing engagements for a few days but then he popped up playing golf with his granddaughter Kai and seemed you know fine and very much playing golf and there's this thing called I don't know if you've probably heard of this before oh you definitely will have heard of it Sumi but you will have heard of it I expect Matt this pentagon pizza index which was further oh yes we've talked about this on the pod yeah which is this website it actually began as an account on Twitter on X, I think.

5:28Marianna Spring:But it essentially tracks surge in activity in terms of pizza orders. And people have often used it to try and guess when something big is going to happen. Like if they're all squirreling away in the White House in DC trying to come up with a plan, maybe there's about to be some kind of attack or maybe there's about to be some big announcement. And people were using that to suggest that a major incident had taken place relating to Donald Trump. There There was so much about the pizzas. Pizzas are a real focal point for conspiracy theories, actually. I feel like there's something in that. You should do a podcast.

6:01Marianna Spring:I should. Now, on this subject as well, so Bob got in touch on the text. He said, if Donald Trump did die, what sort of changes would we see from President Vance, especially around Gaza, Ukraine and tariffs? Now, I'm aware that he hasn't done, but it's an interesting question for Bob Sumi. It really is. And, you know, of course, this is now wild speculation because, as we've been saying, President Trump clearly is OK. And, you know, they posted pictures over the weekend, as Mariana said. We do know, I should just say, that the White House said back in July that the president has chronic venous insufficiency, which is basically the blood doesn't move through his veins well, and that's why he has, for example, swollen ankles.

6:41But beyond that, as we understand, the president seems to be in good health. But as to J.D. Vance as a president, I mean, there are some things that you can expect to stay along the lines of President Trump, this America First agenda, American manufacturing tariffs, for example. This is something that J.D. Vance has embraced fully, not just because his boss wants him to embrace it, but also because he is someone who has really championed those policies of bringing manufacturing back to the U.S. But look, you know, he has been particularly critical of Ukrainian President Zelensky, as we know, and would likely take a sharper line with him as well.

7:19And we could also see some of the ideological changes or ideological differences that he might have with the president on tech policy, for example, move to the forefront. He's someone who does believe in the U.S.'s kind of tech preeminence and ensuring that that continues to have the U.S. first and foremost in the world. And so, I mean, there would be likely some changes, but on the foreign policy front, I think that's where you would see that more aggressive position on Ukraine. and um in fact somebody's just texted in saying uh matt says i thought the president was subject to regular health checks and those were published i mean there's definitely more openness uh isn't there on um on the question of the prime minister's health than anything that we'd get for sorry the president's health than anything we'd get for the prime minister in the uk we don't get published um we don't get the actual published doctor's reports what we do get is what the white house says is a bill of clean health.

8:17So you can read from that what you will. There was a lot of criticism, as you know, in the Biden administration that we kept getting these bills of clean health. And the criticism afterwards, of course, is that the president was not able to do the job at the time. But yeah, it's not that transparent. No, it's a bit like me saying, yep, I've been to the doctor and everything is tickety-boo. Well, so I think we've cleared that up. Donald Trump is not dead. and the conspiracy world that Marianne is in.

8:48Marianna Spring:Conspiracy land, Matt. Sorry, conspiracy land. Copyright. Right, let's move on to an email from Ken, who's emailed americast at bbc.co.uk. He says, Is there any hope that additional US tariffs on India will have any effect other than push India closer to Russia and China? We also had that summit taking place in China this weekend. We continue today with the leaders of India, Russia and China all together. But the world is sort of tipping on its axis here, Sumi. This is a really confounding one, I have to say, on the India tariffs in particular. I was speaking to some Indian economists in the previous week, also to US voices on the economy, who are all really confused as to why the president has singled out India for additional tariffs, because what it would do, as you've seen in these images, is push India closer to China and, in this case, Russia as well.

9:37Of course, you know, the president and his administration say it's very clear this is about India fueling, quote, Russia's war machine. But Turkey buys oil and gas from Russia. China does as well. Why are there not additional tariffs on China? And the answer that we seem to get here is that the president was not happy that in speaking with Prime Minister Modi, the Indian prime minister made clear that it wasn't the U.S. that brokered a peace deal with Pakistan when a conflict between India and Pakistan flared up earlier this year, but that India really pushed forward with negotiations. We know Donald Trump is very keen to be nominated for and win the Nobel Peace Prize.

10:16And so it could be that that was one irritant. But as for what the terrorist impact will do, well, I think it's quite clear. As you see, I saw this image of President Putin and Xi Jinping and Narendra Modi looking really chummy together. And that will be an image that I have to think Donald Trump will not like, not being in the room and not being part of that huddle. Well, thank you. Yeah, suddenly everyone meeting without him. He's sort of feeling a bit left out. Thank you for that email from Ken. Let's move on. We've got so many slightly disparate, random topics. This is Liz, who's in Japan, who sent us a voice note about vaccines and public health.

10:59Dear AmeriCast, for me, one of the biggest scandals of Trump's presidency is in appointing RFK Jr.

11:07Marianna Spring:to be the health secretary, even though he is a vaccine sceptic. The decisions he is making will lead to the deaths of many people. What does the team think? Well, I mean, he's big online in certain corners of the world that you move in, Mariana. and actually because everything moves so quickly you know there was a lot of certainly UK focus on RFK Jr. when he got the job but everyone sort of moves on and talks about other things but he's still there and he's still the health secretary. Yeah and I think you know the thing that there was quite a lot of concern you know as you mentioned Matt there are lots of people who love RFK Jr.

11:45Marianna Spring:online and feel like he represents viewpoints that they hold particularly around this sort of make America healthy again idea at Maha and around issues like diet in the United States and obesity. But when it comes to vaccinations in particular, there has been a lot of criticism of some of the views he's previously expressed. He's been called anti-vaccine. He has said that's not the case. And during those confirmation hearings, when he was asked really difficult questions about what he would do as health secretary, he remained adamant that he wasn't anti-vaccination. He was just worried about vaccines that can, you know, when vaccines cause injury or harm, which is to a small minority of people in most cases.

12:26Marianna Spring:And what's happened since then is that he seems to have made several decisions that reflect a different view towards vaccination. So we've spoken before on AmeriCast about mRNA vaccinations and decisions to discontinue some of the kind of research projects and investment that was going into that specific type of vaccine. And now there's been this kind of big moment, which is that the woman who had only just really started doing this job as the director of the Centre for Disease Control, a woman called Susan Menares, she was sacked or left. And her lawyers have said she was targeted because she, quote, refused to rubber stamp unscientific, reckless directives and fire dedicated health experts.

13:13Marianna Spring:And we've seen how RFK Jr. has already, for example, changed the makeup of a committee that looks at vaccines and vaccine safety and stuff like that. And the person who's temporarily been brought in to replace her is a guy called Jim O 'Neill, who is someone who is very supportive of RFK Jr. He's served as deputy to him and is certainly allied with him in terms of their views about public health. he's not someone that has a background in for example microbiology that Susan Minares had again triggering quite a lot of criticism of people saying whoa actually um is this the right person for this job um this was what the press secretary Caroline Leavitt had to say about the decision to fire Minares which people were also very critical of what I will say about this individual is that her lawyer's statement made it abundantly clear themselves that she was not aligned with the president's mission to make America healthy again.

14:05Marianna Spring:And the secretary asked her to resign. She said she would. And then she said she wouldn't. So the president fired her, which he has every right to do. It was President Trump who was overwhelmingly reelected on November 5th. This woman has never received a vote in her life. And the president has the authority to fire those who are not aligned with his mission. Which raises the question of I know that was a long kind of preamble of what the actual story is. But to answer what it's good, it's good to have the Well, exactly. And to answer what you were asking, Liz, I think a lot of people are concerned about what that mission now is, because RFK Jr.

14:37Marianna Spring:seemed to have kind of rode back a bit on some of his anti-vaccination ideas when he was being sworn in. And people thought, oh, OK, look, actually, some of his ideas about public health are in line with medical and scientific, you know, the body of evidence and advice. Some of the stuff he's doing appears to be flying in the face of that a bit. And this stuff can have really serious implications for public health. So when we talk about vaccinations, we rely on herd immunity. A lot of people have to have vaccines for them to work and protect people. And we've seen outbreaks of, for example, measles in Texas, which we've spoken about before, which seem to be correlated to low uptake in the MMR vaccine.

15:11Marianna Spring:And he has come out, RFK Jr., and encouraged people to get that vaccine in response to that crisis. But there's just something that is of concern to quite a lot of doctors and scientists about the decisions he's making about who he wants to be making the decisions. Other people would say this is actually a really good thing, like Stephen Miller, who's the deputy chief of staff, and said, you know, RFK Jr. is a, quote, crown jewel of this administration. I should also caveat that by saying this is just a decision about who's in charge. We don't know what he was asking Morales to do, so we don't quite know what the consequence of it will be yet.

15:47So, I mean, to what extent do we read into the sometimes chaotic output from the Trump administration. Is Donald Trump doing this because he's got to, you know, he is completely aligned with RFK Jr. on vaccines? Is it just the turmoil that happens in government generally, but this is a bit more colourful because the spokesman comes out and sort of, you know, adds fuel to the fire and all of that sort of stuff? Or is this fundamentally different to what's happened in previous administrations? Because there's a slight danger that whenever Donald Trump's administration says or does anything, everyone says, oh, this is completely unprecedented.

16:26I've never seen the like of it. But is there something different happening here, specifically on public health? Look, I think in general, what's important to understand is what is fundamentally different in this second Donald Trump term is that his administration is far more streamlined and far less chaotic, even though it may look chaotic to some people on the outside. In his first term, he had people with him in his administration who would push back on certain policies. and the president would then, you know, fire some people. There was this truism that whoever the last person was to speak to the president was the one who could shape his ideas on certain policies.

17:03What's different this time around is these policies, particularly on public health, have been shaped over the last four years, really, when Donald Trump was not in office and many were hoping that he would return. And RFK Jr., you know, he is pretty close to the president. You just speak to him regularly. And he's talked to him about his Make America Healthy Again message and his strategy. And part of that involves vaccines. You know, some of us do forget sometimes that it was President Trump's Operation Warp Speed that actually got vaccine development going here in the US. So he was someone at that time who was championing vaccines.

17:37But, you know, to President Trump's mind, if you look at what RFK Jr. has said, he believes that there are real questions about vaccine efficacy and safety. and he has been able to, it appears, convince the president that the moves that are happening on public health are important for making America healthy again. And, you know, if you look at what we're actually seeing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, it's not just that RFK Jr. is saying, look, there won't be vaccine mandates. That was a big, you know, lightning rod of controversy for the right, as we know, during the COVID pandemic.

18:13They're also making access to vaccines more difficult. So it's almost going kind of the complete opposite direction. And I do wonder if there the president might not actually be fully aligned with RFK Jr. Hard to say because we haven't heard him speak on it. But on making vaccines more difficult to access for people who think they might need them, that really is, you know, troubling to a lot of people in the public health space. Well, it's a great question. And hopefully we've fleshed out a bit of the background to that. Thank you to Liz in Japan. Now then, we inevitably talk a lot about Donald Trump on AmeriCast, but there is the other side as well.

18:50And AmeriCaster, James Kidwell, has been in touch with a question about what the Democrats are up to. Hi, AmeriCast. What interests me is how do the opposition, in this case, the Democrats in the United States, organise themselves to be an effective opposition? Obviously, in the UK, we have the situation of a shadow cabinet and shadow leaders, and people have their own individual briefs. There doesn't seem to be that kind of level of organisation in the US. Obviously, it's different when there's a presidential candidate and a running mate. But up until that point, I'm curious to know how, in general, the opposition might organise itself.

19:36Thank you very much for your consideration. I mean, this is a thing that British listeners in particular struggle to get their head around, that there is no organized opposition. And so to some extent, it can appear there's no opposition at all. Well, I'd like to say to James that Democrat voters are also concerned that their party is not at all organized, that they have been complaining the very same. And in fact, polling numbers, and Mariana knows this as well, because we've talked about this in the past on this podcast, polling numbers for Democrats are really at historic lows, even though, you know, Democrats might not approve of Donald Trump, they don't see their own party as a vessel for reaching what they want to achieve.

20:14But that being said, look, when you have one party in control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate that is in the White House and also has a conservative majority on the Supreme Court, the way that the American political system is organized just means that it is very hard for the opposition party, in this case, the Democrats, to actually make their voices heard. What are they doing in terms of organizing themselves? Well, you know, they are, for example, trying to message on a number of topics, figuring out which messages stick best. So is it the economy? Is it, you know, the immigration raid snatching people off the streets?

20:52Is it, you know, the move towards authoritarianism? Is it all of the above? But the reality is all they can do is really message and try to get their voices heard. And I found it so interesting. The last time I was in the UK, I was speaking to an American there who was a Democrat voter abroad. And she had said to me, well, why are the Democrats not saying anything about the Epstein files or Medicaid cuts? And that was fascinating to me because here in the U.S., you hear Democrats speaking about this every day on their social media profiles as well. But clearly that message is not cutting through.

21:23And that includes to, you know, Americans as well. So I guess the long answer to that question, James, is they are organizing themselves and simply biding their time and trying to step in where they can, where they see, you know, an opportune moment to contradict the president on a number of his policies. But what can they actually do legislatively? Not much. Mariana, where are they online? There used to be this whole sort of feeling that, you know, the Democrats, particularly under Obama, were, you know, absolutely bossing the internet. I'm aware that's 10, 15 years ago now. But, you know, and things have moved on.

21:54Marianna Spring:If you ever use the phrase bossing the internet again, I might have to sanction you. Sorry, are you trying to police my language, Mariana? Interesting. Joking, joking. It's a really good point. Because justice is not here. You know, isn't it? It's a good point. And I think that particularly, yeah, in the years of Obama, for example, they were seen as being just like really good at connecting with audiences and getting their messaging out there. Yeah, they were bossing the internet. Bossing the internet. Although that was kind of, it was a very different stage of the internet, wasn't it, to the one we're in now.

22:21Marianna Spring:And I would say that Donald Trump is certainly at the moment and over the past year seen as the person who is especially good at doing that and has been good at really getting his message across and out there. Not to plug AmeriCast when you're already listening to AmeriCast, but we did do a really interesting episode about Gavin Newsom, the governor in California and the way that he's kind of trolling Donald Trump on social media and how much that is or isn't cutting through with voters. The other person that I think it's worth us mentioning here, who I would I would say when I look at the undercover voters, my fictional characters with their profiles across the main sites, the hidden the hidden voters, as Matt calls them.

22:59Marianna Spring:The person who's cut through the most of any person connected to the Democratic Party at all is actually a man who slightly came out of the blue for a lot of people. Zoran Mamdami, who is running to, who's one of the candidates for New York mayor and his content, like these Instagram live videos and stuff he was posting around all sorts of issues, including like rent freeze and bus fares. Obviously that's on a local level, but that actually was, and also talking about the war in Gaza, that cut through in a way that none of the content really connected to Democrats has been. And maybe that, if you were a Democrat listening to Matt Cholley's Five Live program, you might consider taking a leaf out of his book, perhaps.

23:38Marianna Spring:Although that's to a very different audience of course, it's New York, not the whole country. Which is, yes, it's a good point and I promise I will try not to say bossing the internet again. I like it. I'm going to put it on a T-shirt. I use it all the time because I've said that. I should never have said that. On the sort of specifics of where resistance might be coming from or what position they're from, Chicago's leaders were speaking out over the weekend, ramping up resistance to Donald Trump What should we make of that? The mayor of Chicago signing an order saying how the city would resist any potential immigration crackdown by the Trump administration.