Americanswers… on 5 Live! Why did Trump walk out of his TV interview with Meet The Press?

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0:38Hello, it's Justin, and you're about to hear AmeriCast. We are delighted to have you with us. And if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. That way you'll never miss an episode. Now, on with today. Hello and welcome to AmeriCanswers. We are answering questions on the pod today, as we always do. And some of these include, why has Donald Trump gone viral for getting up and storming out of an NBC News interview in Wisconsin. But Mr. President - You're one-sided crooked network. Sorry, let's call it quits because I've had enough. And then the Iran war is always a big topic of conversation.

1:10Republicans just voted against him in Congress. Is the president losing control of the war? And is he losing control of Benjamin Netanyahu, the Israeli prime minister? I don't like these endless wars. This is not an endless war. We've been doing this for three months. Much of it has been under the form, a pretty good form of ceasefire. The blockade has been amazing. Our Navy is amazing. Our military is the best in the world. And finally, we hear from AmeriCaster Teresa in Kansas. She is watching as the English national team arrives there, and she has some interesting observations on how the locals are preparing for them in preparation for the World Cup.

1:47It is Sumi, Mariana, and me from Maine joining Matt Chorley on 5 Live. Welcome to AmeriCast. 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. 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.

2:23Now we have a lot to cover, so let's get straight to it. Let's start with a Donald Trump interview from the weekend, which has gone viral. They often do. The president was speaking to Kristen Welker from NBC's Meet the Press. They were in Wisconsin at a big sort of farming event. They were talking about his proposal to set up a$1.8 billion fund to pay people who say they were victims of government weaponisation. This could include January the 6th rioters who stormed the Capitol claiming the 2020 election was rigged. I don't know what's going to happen with the weaponization fund. I love the idea because people like you, the fake, dirty press, the crooked press, people like stupid Biden.

3:08He's not smart enough to know what's going on. But people that surrounded him, surrounded his beautiful, resolute desk in the Oval Office, what they did to the lives of people, they destroyed people. They sent people to jail who did nothing wrong. Just to be very clear, there's no evidence of what you're saying. You're either crooked or you're stupid. You play right into their hands with this rap. You know that these elections are rigged. Your network knows that they're rigged. You know that I won an election in a landslide and I got 94 % bad press. But, Mr. President, you've never presented evidence.

3:46Because you have no credibility. But you've never presented evidence that it was rigged. Let's keep talking about it. I want to talk about Todd Lynch. You have more evidence. There's more evidence than ever presented. Let's talk about. Your elections in this country, we're like a third world country. Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Mr. Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and CNN. But Mr. President. Your one-sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had enough. Thank you, darling. Have a good time. Mr. President, let's please. I traveled all the way to Wisconsin.

4:17I've sat in the rain with you. I know. I've sat in the rain with you for an hour. on and off in the rain, and I've given you enough time. Anthony, you've been there before. You've interviewed President Trump. I mean, it obviously didn't go very well, but there's obviously a tension there, isn't there, that you want the interview to last as long as possible, but if you ask him something he doesn't like, he might get up and walk off. It is. It is a challenge because he is so mercurial, and if you push him too hard, he will just clam up like that. I've talked to him on Air Force One where the gathered reporters, one of us asks something that he doesn't like, and he just turns around and leaves.

4:48Now, Now, to do that in this situation where this was a planned interview on Meet the Press, a sit-down interview, that is, I think, taking it to a different level. But you could tell just how quickly that got off the rails. And it got off the rails on something that Donald Trump talks a lot about and doesn't like to be pushed back on, which is his unfounded allegations of electoral fraud. And you could see he just had had enough of it by that point. It had been a contentious interview all the way through. and you know with that oh that's enough darling and getting up and go he walked up and walked off the set.

5:22Subhi what did you make of it? It wasn't helped by the fact they were in a barn and it was rain hammering on them. Obviously it was quite a weird atmosphere. Yeah and I you know the technological kind of conditions around it were not so easy for both sides I think and there was a lot of rain as you said and you know it isn't that unusual to see President Trump get up and leave an interview he's done in the past and as Anthony said there he's especially done it when he's pressed on those unfounded claims about the 2020 election. This is one that he's especially sensitive about. But I think what was really notable about this was he did seem irritated throughout the entire interview.

5:56Yes, he was being asked tough questions, but he's asked tough questions often. But you get the sense that President Trump felt under pressure a bit on the war in Iran and certainly on this anti-weaponization fund, where he started to see some Republicans turn against him as well. And he's been pressed on this in the last few days but to be sitting on a one-on-one situation there where he really has to answer to that you know that's where you saw him get really irritated mariana i suppose there's a there's a world in which president goes on meet the press it's quite a big deal it's not a massive deal it wouldn't necessarily been viewed by huge numbers of people but the president walking off an interview and standing up to the what he would call the i don't know the washington swamp or whatever it might be the mainstream press and reiterating his point in calling everyone crooked that obviously does go violence and more people end up seeing it.

6:44Yeah exactly and actually it makes you think about the strategy and that you know we don't know here what the strategy was on either side either from the journalist or from Donald Trump but in terms of wanting that interview to get eyeballs you know that the viral clips will often do much better than the original linear television interview and anything that plays into the kind of outrage machine as I often call it on social media that triggers a reaction that gets a strong sort of response from either side, pits people against one another, it will obviously go viral. I mean, we know that even from the source code that was released around X's own algorithm, they say it themselves.

7:20And loads of insiders from the major social media companies who I've spoken to describe exactly this. So in lots of ways, this feels like a very 2026 interview. And you've got the people who support Donald Trump loving that he walked off, and you've got the people that support, who don't like Donald Trump, loving that he was asked the questions he was asked. So why then, Anthony, does he keep doing these interviews with what he calls the crooked media? Is it precisely to provoke this reaction and then get the clips on it? Or is there still part of him, because he is a very TV president, although he's obviously big on social media.

7:53He watches a lot of TV. Is it still that he just wants to be wanted by these outlets? Yeah, I think that is definitely still a part of it. He's still old school. He still loves being in the New York Times. He still loves talking to the big three networks and meet the press, as we mentioned. It is an institution. It is known for being the kind of show that policymakers, influential people watch on Sunday morning. Usually the person who's a guest gets pushed by the journalists, bringing up old quotes and things they've said in the past and using them to press them to try to point out hypocrisy or make them explain their position.

8:31So it's not shocking that this was set up as a contentious interview. But I think Donald Trump does like those old traditions and wants to be accepted. And so that's why he talks so badly about The New York Times, the failing New York Times, as he says. But then he will call and invite those journalists in to sit down in the Oval Office and interview them. That's why he bashes NBC and the mainstream media. But he will still show up and do an interview like this. he's much more comfortable obviously on on Fox News and he does Fox News a lot more than any of the other major television outlets but I think the feeling was that this was this was a prestige appearance and it did go off the rails in part I think because his hearing is not all that great either so the rain played a factor he looked uncomfortable he looked hot and then it just everything snowballed from there that's fascinating that was a great thing for us to get started on but let's move on.

9:25We've got a question now from Finn in Liverpool. Sentence of voice note. Hi, AmeriCast team. I'm aware that Donald Trump's military excursion, as I believe he calls it, has gone on for over 100 days and not the four or five weeks he originally suggested, that Benjamin Netanyahu has ignored the latest demands coming from Trump and that the peace deal the Iranians are supposedly desperate to sign appears no closer than weeks ago. Has Donald Trump lost control of the situation completely? Wouldn't it be better for him to make a deal, even if no better than the JCPOA one, just so he can claim a win?

10:01Thanks. Great question. Thanks for that, Finn. And actually this morning, Donald Trump posted on Truth Social saying Israel and Iran must stop shooting immediately. Assuming that in a way sort of slightly demonstrates his lack of control on this, where he's sort of making public pleas for his ally in Israel to stop fighting. This hasn't panned out as he would have hoped. Yeah, although President Trump did tell journalists over the weekend, he calls the shots. And that includes with Israel as well. And remember last week, we had that phone call between the Israeli prime minister and President Trump, where that was a really contentious phone call, a lot of expletives.

10:39And apparently President Trump said, you know, you're expletive crazy. So we do see some real frustration for President Trump, although he says that relationship with Benjamin Netanyahu is still really good. But look, you know, the question that we heard there is really the point that President Trump needs a deal. He wants a deal, apparently, but he hasn't been able to get the Iranians to move closer on a deal. And you can see that this is a real source of frustration that just when he thinks negotiations are moving forward, you have the Israel-Lebanon aspect of the war, of course, that has been going on, and then Iran and Israel trading strikes again.

11:13And you get the sense that President Trump doesn't still understand why Iran has not made a deal. He really thinks that the conditions that are on the table are ones that the Iranians should have accepted. And secondly, he doesn't see the Israel-Lebanon aspect of the war as really part of this agreement, but Iran does. So it puts them in a really difficult position at a time where you have the American public still against the war, the majority of the American public, and more and more Republicans. Also, you know, that support is abbing as well in Congress. When you're where you are, Anthony, and covering, you know, starting to look ahead to those big midterms races, how much is Iran playing a part in it versus, you know, is the economy stupid?

11:55You know, albeit the two things are connected. I think they are connected. And I was at a Graham Plattner, the Democrat running for Senate here, his event last night, and he made the direct connection. He talked for an extended time about the Iran war, and he put it in the framework of the Republican leaders in Washington being out of touch with the people for starting a war that they didn't know how to end and for no clear purpose. But then immediately pivoting to say that is why your prices have gone up. That's why the price of gasoline at the pump has gone up. That's why things are hurting more.

12:29And it is just another illustration of the Republican leadership being out of touch with the concerns of Americans. And that's something I hear Democrats talk about a lot on the campaign trail. I think they they know that this is an unpopular war. This has been an unpopular war from the start. And the reason has been unpopular is because the Trump administration didn't really do a good job of explaining why they chose to start this. and the economic impact of it because of the price of gas was felt so quickly that it was very easy to draw lines between Americans' concerns about affordability and prices, which they have had for quite some time, and Trump taking steps that are actually making that worse, not better.

13:11Well, we're interested to see, yeah, as we get close to those midterms, how much that plays out. But let's move on. We've got lots of questions. We've got a voice know from Ed in Lewisham. For someone that defines himself so strongly as being America first, why does J.D. Vance insert himself into domestic issues outside of the States? Is there a precedent for this type of comment from American presidents or vice presidents in other countries' domestic politics? And does this apparent contradiction get any coverage in the States? Thank you for that, Ed. Yeah, so J.D. Vance posted on X on Friday that Henry Novak, the 18-year-old who was stabbed to death in Southampton, he said that his death was the result of the mass invasion of migrants.

13:56In response, Downing Street said people were trying to interfere in our democracy, adding that the Novak family had said they did not want his death to be used to create further division. How, Anthony, how unusual is this, this sort of intervention from Vance? Well, it's not unusual for Vance. He is very connected to what people are talking about in conservative circles online, as I think Mariana will attest. And he has this finger on the pulse of what is important and issues that they care about. And this is something that has been kicked around a lot domestically here in the United States among right-wing online circles.

14:37He is also very interested in the conservative movement and the right-wing populist movement around the world. He has weighed in on elections in places like Germany, siding with the right-wing groups there. And Donald Trump has as well. Now, this is definitely a break from tradition for American leaders. They tend to not get too involved in domestic politics in other countries because there are potential knock-on effects, and it could undermine the American agenda, American foreign policy elsewhere. But Donald Trump and now J.D. Vance, perhaps because Donald Trump does it and has been doing it for a decade, feels very comfortable to tell other countries how to handle and to criticise how they're handling their own domestic issues.

15:21Marianna, is this a sort of further proof of this, of MAGA in particular, being just incredibly online? You know, the British right online is having a big discussion about something that's happened here in the terrible Henry Novak case, eventually the American right will sort of pile in because it's all sort of connected. Yeah, totally. I mean, social media, as we know, has no borders. And therefore, a lot of the kind of topics of discussion are, you know, people will be talking about events occurring miles and miles from where they are, but because they align with their values or because they're concerned about them or what have you.

15:53And we've seen this happen quite a few times now where, particularly around the UK, Elon Musk, who owns X, obviously, will get really, really stuck into the political debate and express support for often figures on the right and their arguments, for example, posting comments that are anti-immigration. And then J.D. Vance often seems to follow Elon Musk. So Elon Musk will get really, really involved in a particular case. You know, we saw this around the killing of the little girls in Southport and the riots that then unfolded in the UK. hey, Elon Musk got super stuck in to that and super stuck into the response to that and allegations of people being censored or not being able to express their opinions and that sort of thing.

16:29The counter argument is obviously, hang on a second, some of the stuff being posted is either misleading or not true, or in some cases, they're also accusations of racism. And I think that one of the reasons why all of these kinds of sagas on social media provoke such a strong reaction is because people do feel like someone who lives in a country that is, you know, speaks the same language, but is quite different. like if we compare the UK and the US, is getting stuck into British politics. And, you know, that those kinds of comments will be rewarded on social media, they will get the views and the likes as per the point about the rage machine.

17:00I think it's worth saying as well, that this certainly doesn't just happen on the right, like we see it happen with Elon Musk and J.D. Vance, but we also see it happen on the kind of far left of American politics as well. And issues, again, that people in the UK will be concerned about and people in the US will be. So it's the the kind of lifeblood of the commentators who position themselves sort of further at the political extremes to post about specific cases, especially ones that are shocking and emotive, like the case of Henry Novak, or we've seen it around other cases, like a young woman who was killed on public transport in the US, for example.

17:32Well, it's fascinating. Clearly, the British government has decided to use it as an opportunity to push back. Let's move on. We've got Teresa live on the phone. Hello, Teresa. Hello. Where in the world are you, Teresa? I live in Prairie Village in Kansas, which is about a mile from the Missouri border. Excellent. Tell us what your question is to the AmeriCasters. Well, my question to the AmeriCasters is like, is the English football team going to bring it home? You can't jinx it, Teresa. You can't jinx it. I know. I mean, they're arriving on Saturday here in Prairie Village. And it's big excitement.

18:14Places have flags up, coffee shops. I actually went to a bar yesterday, which I very rarely do, about once a year. And I was asked, oh, are you here for the World Cup? And oh, my gosh, the English are here and everything. And there are signs in all the houses. Welcome England and three lines on the little signs and things. So it's pretty exciting. And they're not even playing a match here. And what's happened? What did you spot in the shops as well? Ah, yeah, that's what's really exciting. And I've been telling all my friends. They've got Hobnobst and they've got Marmite. There's HP sauce. There's Bird's Custard, but I don't like Bird's Custard.

18:56I bought a Lion Bar and a Crunchy, which is very exciting. So they've got little, you know, English things. and I've told all my friends go down Teresa Anthony famously hates Marmite he tried it once my nemesis I mean it's all part of the brand the chap at the shop said to me oh they also had jelly babies and I bought some jelly babies and the man at the shop said should are they better you know the jelly beans I said oh my gosh yes and he said I'll buy some he said should I buy some Marmite I said no absolutely don't buy oh I love a bit of Marmite oh no I do but I said they're not actually expecting Jordan Pickford to pop out for a packet of Marmite sarmie.

19:37Well, this is exactly what I've said for my friends. Even a fan presumably isn't going to go back to the hotel where we start making custard. Presumably lots of British fans are going to want to try American. They're going to want to go to American places. But Mariana, why would a British fan come here? Because you're not actually going to see England play. I mean, you have got some mega fans who kind of follow where the team are. and I guess maybe like relatives or family members. But I'd be very surprised if the Wags enjoy Marmite and a Crunchy, but maybe I do. I'll tell you what's going to happen.

20:07In a month's time, we're going to have a phone call from a shopkeeper in Kansas asking, how can I shift this job lot of custard? It's worth saying, by the way, there is a special box set of AmeriCast on BBC Sounds where we teamed up with Newscast and the Football Daily to talk all about the World Cup. And there are three episodes.

20:31We've just come off the air with Five Live. And before we go, before I head out into the countryside of Maine looking for a lobster roll to eat, there's another story we haven't talked about. And that is the big news around the firing of CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley last week, also former CBS News television presenter, and the reaction to it and what it says about the American media environment at this point. So I think, I guess, first of all, Sumi, let's explain what 60 Minutes is, because it is an institution here in the United States. And for Scott Pelley to be fired, who had been there for quite some time, it's kind of a remarkable development in what has been an ongoing story about what is happening at CBS News under its new ownership.

21:15Yeah, Anthony, this is a highly influential TV news magazine in the U.S., 60 Minutes. It's been running since 1968. 1968. It is considered really the standard for investigative journalism in the U.S. It has won countless Emmys and Peabody Awards and all sorts of awards, including the correspondents themselves, of course, have also won countless awards. I mean, I grew up watching 60 Minutes. It has this kind of very iconic open, a ticking clock, and then you hear the correspondents all say who they are, and then they go through the stories of the week. And 60 Minutes really has been credited with breaking and covering some of the most important stories in contemporary American history.

21:55I mean, Andy, I think it's fair to say that Scott Pelley was kind of at the moment the face of 60 Minutes, and to see him being fired and really pushing back against what he sees as this news magazine kowtowing to the Trump administration, I think is a real rupture for that program. Right. And why he was fired was because he was criticizing what had been other layoffs that were taking place, other firings that were happening within 60 minutes, three correspondents, an executive producer, an executive editor, other key staffers were replaced, all part of this kind of wholesale change that has been going on in CBS since David Ellison took over with the new ownership of Paramount, the media company that owns CBS News, and the appointment of Barry Weiss to lead CBS News.

22:41Well, Scott Pelley actually spoke about the experience. He sat down with the New York Times interview podcast over the weekend. Our senior staff wiped out after a triumphal year. Let's remember that. If the ratings had collapsed or there was some journalistic scandal about a story, then OK, we deserve it. But we had a triumphal year, so this is incredibly difficult to understand. There are people in that room who go to war zones when they are pregnant.

23:18Newsrooms are sort of like the military or the police or the beautiful people at the FDNY down the street. It is a life-threatening job in many instances. And very strong bonds, very emotional bonds are found or are developed in that kind of setting. And to have people running CBS News who don't know that, have never felt that, and don't understand it, is a tragedy I never expected to see. Really interesting to hear that emotion and Scott Pelley's voice there. And I think, you know, the first part of that clip where he talks about we don't see the reason for this. I mean, as you were mentioning, Anthony, I was looking at the numbers and 60 Minutes was averaging around 9.1 million viewers, which is pretty good for a pretty traditional news magazine.

24:19Now, at the same time, we've also seen President Trump very critical of 60 Minutes when he said Scott Pelley was part of a gang of crooked, stupid people that don't care about our country when he was speaking to The New York Post's Pod Force One podcast. So you've seen the pressure on those institution programs and the main networks. Right. And of course, Donald Trump had sued 60 Minutes last year about an interview that they did with Kamala Harris prior to the 2024 presidential election. And a lot of people kind of dismissed that lawsuit, saying that it wasn't a sign of bias the way they edited that interview.

24:56But Donald Trump ended up settling with CBS for millions of dollars. And it was viewed by many to have been because of the oversight that his administration had on Paramount's takeover bid. of CBS and that this was the smooth the way for it. So there had been evidence of 60 Minutes being in the spotlight and being the focus of Donald Trump in the past. And then just last year, there were there was that story about the Seacott prison in El Salvador that got put on hold by the new management, including Barry Weiss of CBS, because they wanted to have more of the administration's perspective presented in that, and that segment did not air for weeks after it was supposed to, and that was kind of the controversy.