Americanswers…on 5 Live! Will Kamala Harris (and Donald Trump) run for president again?

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0:36Welcome to another episode of our Monday question and answer session with Matt Chorley on Five Live. I was at Milbank with Matt. Anthony came live from Tokyo as he travels with the president on his tour of Asia, during which he has presided over a ceasefire between Cambodia and Thailand. There were some rather provocative questions on this edition, including will Kamala Harris run again for the presidency in 2028? After brokering that next ceasefire, is Donald Trump going to formally say that he has ended another war? And lots of you are asking about the president knocking down the east wing of the White House.

1:12He's building a ballroom there. Is it really worth more than£200 million? Welcome to AmeriCansers on Five Live. AmeriCast. AmeriCast from BBC News. When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir. Right away, sir. Happy to lick your boot, sir. We are the sickest country in the world. Oh, dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry? Of course the president supports peaceful protests. What a stupid question. Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?

1:49So we've got Justin in the studio and Anthony is in Tokyo. Anthony, why are you in Tokyo? Well, I'm in Tokyo because Donald Trump is now in Tokyo. It's the middle of a three-country Asia trip that he has been on. He was in Malaysia earlier. He is in Tokyo Tuesday, and Wednesday he flies to South Korea, where he is going to be at the APEC, Asian Pacific Economic Conference. And then on Thursday he's having a meeting with Xi Jinping, the Chinese leader, before flying all the way back home to Washington, D.C. and you get in about Thursday afternoon, just a little after by the clock from when he leaves.

2:28And what does he hope to get out of it? Well, I think the Xi Jinping meeting, there have already been some talks between this Treasury Secretary and Chinese officials to lay out a framework for some sort of a trade deal to prevent these export controls that China has been threatening to put on rare earths and convince China to start buying American agricultural exports again, particularly soybeans, and in exchange, Trump will drop his threat of 100 % tariff on Chinese goods. So if he can get out of this trip with an agreement with China, I think that will be a big win. He's also talking to South Korean and Japanese officials about trade deals.

3:09And when he was in Malaysia, he had a new peace deal he helped negotiate and get signed between uh cambodia and thailand so add that on to the list of of peace deals that donald trump likes to talk about brokering well we'll see how that trip unfolds he's been talking as well um uh donald trump on air force one which we shall come to i suspect but first the most popular topic in the americast inbox has been the ongoing destruction i suppose it is ongoing isn't it seems to be taking quite a long time to tear it down of the white house east wing to make way for a new ballroom. So a week ago, or a few days ago, Donald Trump said his big, beautiful ballroom wouldn't disrupt the original structure of the historic building.

3:56So that was on Monday. Then on Tuesday, he began celebrating the demolition. You probably hear the beautiful sound of construction to the back. You hear that sound? Oh. That's music to my ears. I love that sound. Other people don't like it. I love it, Josh. I think when I hear that sound, it reminds me of money. in this case it reminds me of lack of money because i'm paying for it so it's the opposite number one he's not paying for it and that's a source of some controversy as anthony will um will say as well who is paying for it well not the taxpayer but a load of um private individuals and companies are paying and there is a question there about what they get in return obviously and actually goes in a sense to China policy.

4:44So are they able to influence the deals that he does? Is it going to make Trump more pro-China than it otherwise be? Because a lot of these big companies, particularly the tech ones, want to be able to do business with China very easily and with other parts of the world as well. So in a sense, for those who are true MAGA people on the outside, that wing of the party that wants toughness against China and all the rest of it and doesn't think much of big business, in fact, abhors big business, this isn't great, actually. because he's having this stuff done, essentially paid for, by a load of people who want something in return, presumably.

5:18The flip side is the taxpayer isn't paying for it, and if good-natured, deep-pocketed Americans want to get their chequebook out just to have something nice, that is a possibility. Anyway, we've had so many questions on this. Tom in Sheffield has emailed three alone. He says, how is Trump able to do this to the White House? Is the building not protected? Is there any precedent of a privately funded extension into a public government building. And the ballroom has been referred to as the Donald J. Trump ballroom. Is there a procedure for the naming of buildings or monuments? I'll let you pick your way through those, Ashley.

5:52Well, first, let's talk about the numbers here. It's a$300 million construction project, up from$200 million that Donald Trump first spoke about when he envisioned this. And I can say, looking out the window of my plane as I was taking off from Washington National Airport and looking down at the White House, the east wing of the White House is totally gone. It has been totally leveled all the way up to the edge of the executive mansion, the original White House building itself. Now, can Donald Trump do this? Is it legal? Well, interestingly enough, there's a federal law, the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966, that has all these kind of requirements for what you can and can't do to federal buildings.

6:35But the White House is exempt from that. And there are boards that have been instituted to approve and review construction projects in Washington, D.C. If you want to put an extra building onto the Pentagon, for instance, or change the footprint of the State Department, there is a long process. But Donald Trump has appointed all of the members as a majority on these boards, and they are expected to sign off on this project. So, you know, the long and the short of it is that Donald Trump can do this. There's no one out there who can stop them. There's been one lawsuit filed, but that's considered unlikely to have any kind of success.

7:15And then the question about whether it's legal for him to raise money from private sources to pay for this. The federal government has done that before for construction projects, but usually Congress sets out in the approval process for this construction project that private donations are allowed. they have and Congress hasn't said anything about what Donald Trump is doing at the White House, but it's kind of a legal gray area, which kind of is typical of Donald Trump operating over the past eight months. He finds a way. No one has any kind of grounds to stop it. He operates in kind of breaking norms, but he does it and then no one can really say no.

7:55It's funny, isn't it? You have a written constitution and so much about America we think was set in stone by the founding fathers and actually all they need to do is just look at the text. And, I mean, we might talk later about whether it'll run for a third term. There's all sorts of things that you think are certain until someone like Donald Trump, or in fact Donald Trump, comes along and doesn't do them or does them a different way and suddenly you're allowed to. And we should point out, and this is no disrespect to you, Anthony, but this building we're talking about was only built in 1942. It's not, you know, if you're not part of a British government building, you'll be hundreds of years old.

8:29I was going to say, with due respect to Anthony, the White House is nothing much, frankly, to be aware of. I mean, the West Wing's a complete dump. It's wonderfully glamorous simply because of what happens. And not least because now he's painted it all gold, which is why it looks so nice. Let's move on then to the topic which... It's a regular topic, but there's a reason why it keeps coming back because it keeps on being talked about. Steve Bannon is the latest, Trump's former advisor, floating the idea of Donald Trump running again for a third term in 2028. Here's Steve Bannon speaking to The Economist.

9:04He's going to get a third term. So Trump 28. Trump is going to be president in 28. And people just ought to get accommodated with that. So what about the 22nd Amendment? There's many different alternatives. At the appropriate time, we'll lay out what the plan is. But there's a plan. We had longer odds in 16 and longer odds in 24 than we got in 28. And President Trump will be the president of the United States. and the country needs him to be president of the United States. We have to finish what we started. Which prompted a question from Hannah in Oxford. On the back of The Economist's interview with Steve Bannon, she says, where he states the inner circle has a plan for Trump to hold a third term.

9:41Any thoughts on how likely this could be and what the response would be of the American people? Yeah, he was asked about that and what he thought of 2028. He said he'd like to be president in 2028, but he says he doesn't think about it that much. And he shot down one of the theories about how he might do that, which is running as vice president with some sort of a placeholder presidential nominee winning. And then that nominee would or that that new president would resign and Trump as vice president would elevate into that. And he said that was too cute. And he didn't think the American public would buy it.

10:15No, you'd be allowed to do that, but I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I think it's too cute. Yeah, I wouldn't rule that out because it's too cute. I think the people wouldn't like that. It's too cute. The weird thing about it is that when you look at the 22nd Amendment, it says you can't be elected twice, doesn't it, Anthony? But what it doesn't say is you can't be president more than twice. And what I think Bannon is getting at is if you're really super keen Trump liking lawyer, you can find some wiggle room there because it doesn't actually say you may not be president twice. It talks specifically about being elected.

10:56So, for instance, I don't know, could you be Speaker of the House and somehow kind of get in from some other way? It all sounds incredibly far-fetched, doesn't it? But it is interesting that the 22nd Amendment, when you look at it, doesn't actually say, no way, Jose, you're not going to be president more than twice. It's sort of slightly ambivalent. Or am I now reading too much into it? So this is what it says. This is what it says. Oh, here we go. Section one. No person shall be elected to the office of the president more than twice. Elected. And no person who has held the office of president or acted as president for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected president shall be elected to the office of the president more than once.

11:39So that's if you do the... Yeah, so if you're vice president and you come in and you do that for more than two years, you can't be then elected more than once. So it sort of counts towards it. I was struck actually So on Newsnight, on Friday night, we spoke to a, I don't know what we call him, confidant? So Rabamani, anyway, from Unheard, is a sort of friend of J.D. Vance whisperer. And he put forward the idea that the reason that Steve Bannon was saying this is that Steve Bannon wants to run himself. And at this point, being seen as the ultra-Trump supporter, being so pro-Trump you're saying he's going to have a third term, was the way to outflank J.D.

12:18Vance on the pro-Trump side. So then when it's a contest between J.D. Vance and Steve Bannon, Steve Bannon's more likely to get the Donald Trump... Are you still following this? More likely to get the Donald Trump seal of approval, which is presumably actually what this is all about. I don't know if you've seen Steve Bannon and listened to him speak. He's not exactly a charismatic persona. He's not a natural politician, so I would be shocked if he actually ran for president. Donald Trump's actually been talking up who his successor might be. And J.D. Vance is one of the names he likes to mention.

12:51The other one is Marco Rubio, interestingly enough, his secretary of state and his former rival when they both ran for president in 2016. Little Marco, as Donald Trump called him, and he got kind of acrimonious there. But apparently he sees Rubio as a potential contender. We've had a question actually from Edward in Swindon about the 2028 election. Hi, AmeriCasters. Here's a question for you. Do you think it's likely that Ivanka Trump or Jared Kushner could be put forward as candidates for the 2028 election to continue the Trump dynasty? Yeah, Justin, they've already got the hats. If it's Ivanka, they've got Trump 2028.

13:28Yeah, I mean, they're not that keen. I think they're keener on... Jared Kushner's certainly been involved, heavily involved in what's been going on in the Middle East, and it seems rather successfully involved too. But it's off the back of his business interests, and Ivanka seems to have zoned out a bit of politics. politics. I'm not sure they're really keen. I think it's much more likely that the sons, the Trump sons, go for it if it is going to be a family thing. Well, we'll see. It's a good question, though. Thanks for that, Edward. Right, we move on to the other side of the aisle and the Democrats and what they might do in 2028.

14:00Kamala Harris has been speaking to Laurel Koonsberg on Sunday. She's been asking about the prospect of Kamala Harris running again. In terms then of what is next for you, you write very powerfully about the differences that many women have made to your life, whether that was your meeting with Angela Merkel or the experience of growing up with your extraordinary mother or the stories of your baby nieces, Amara and Leela. When are they going to see a woman in charge in the White House? In their lifetime, for sure. Could it be you? Possibly. Have you made a decision yet? No, I have not. So, we've had a question from Stephen on the Discord.

14:40He says, the Republicans in the US must be overjoyed at the thought of Kamala Harris running for president again. From this interview, she clearly has no awareness of why she failed last time. And somebody else is texting, Kamala Harris, surely she can't believe there's a chance of running again. If so, why should she remain so silent now, other than her book? And where are the Democrats in challenging Trump now? There is nothing from them. I mean, Anthony, my main takeaway was that Laura Koonsberg did her best in slightly trying circumstances of trying to get to the heart of the issue. Asking Kamala Harris, she said she needed more time to run, more than the 107 days.

15:17And then she said, well, if you'd had more time, would you have won? She said, I'm not getting into that. It was all a bit trying, which is sort of points apart the problem of Kamala Harris as a candidate, wasn't it? Her ability to answer questions and connect in a world where Donald Trump will answer any question on almost anything. Right. Very cautious, very meticulous in answering, never really opening up. And that raised questions about, you know, whether she was authentic, whether she was being a little too programmed in her answers. And, you know, I think she probably does still want to be president.

15:49I mean, once you run for president, once you look in the mirror and then you see a president, a potential president looking back at you, you never let that go. You that will stay with you for the rest of your life. So, you know, she might decide to to run again. You have to remember, though, she ran in 2020 and lost and really didn't do a very good showing of it. So there's no guarantee that if she ran again in 2028 or whenever that she would be able to put together an effective campaign. I mean, she got the nomination essentially handed to her in 2024. And there were trying circumstances. And I think she did a decent job of the campaign.

16:26But that may have been her best shot. In 2020, she didn't even get to Iowa. I mean, that's what people forget, isn't it, Anthony? She didn't even get to Iowa because her campaign just fell apart. Explain the significance of what you want. So Iowa is the caucus. You remember, in January, in Iowa, in the presidential election year, they all gather. Actually, they might not next time around because the Democrats have changed their dates. But this is what has happened for decades now. They all gather in the snow. And it's the initial kicking off thing. And it's the thing that Obama won. And it sent him into.

17:01And you can lose in Iowa and still win the presidential election. But it gives you this kind of kickstart. So getting to Iowa is like the first step of any serious presidential run. And she didn't get to Iowa. She ran out of money because people were saying, what's the point of funding this? Because we don't really know what she's about. And given that that was the case then, and given the fact that the next Democrat is going to have to be very, very critical about the party, because that is almost certainly the way you're going to get the nomination next time around. It's just inconceivable, really, I think.

17:33Not that she'll run, because as Anthony said, you kind of once you've seen a president in the mirror, you are going to run. But I can't see the run getting anywhere. What is the precedent? How far back do you have to go to find someone who lost an election and then came back? Aside from Donald Trump. Adelaide Stevenson was the Democratic nominee several elections in a row in the 1950s. so I mean it is possible but to be the nominee to be the person who won the nominee, ran for the President of the General Election and then lost, nothing since then, it's really hard, usually you get somebody who'd actually been the candidate, lost, been rejected once and then come back, with the exception of Donald Trump, he'd always been President before Yeah, no that is quite a long time ago That's a good pub quiz question there, and on the question of, which we do get this quite a lot this question of like the the democrats are invisible is that just because the democrats what they're up to doesn't travel across the atlantic in quite the same way as as donald trump does for for listeners in the uk as they always it that they aren't taking the fight to trump in a way that actually some democrats would like them to well you know they don't have a platform they don't have power right now you know without any kind of power in washington it doesn't give them any kind of uh ability to stand up to trump and the ones who have been standing up to Trump are the ones who have been getting at least some national attention in the U.S.

18:58And that's Gavin Newsom in California, the governor of California, J.B. Pritzker, the governor of Illinois. Both of them are potential presidential candidates. So I think you could see you could see attempts at resistance and some now with the shutdown and Democrats in the Senate digging in and not reopening the government in order to try to get health insurance subsidies renewed. But it's a tough spot the Democrats are in because when the other party holds all the levers of power and the other party has Donald Trump who dominates the scene, it's difficult to get your voice heard. They're also fabulously unpopular.

19:36I mean, it is really amazingly so given that Donald Trump himself isn't particularly popular. He sort of polls at around 45 percent of approval rating. But actually, the Democrats as a party have really shed a lot of their kudos with the American people, not just in the last few years, but in a sense, further back than that. the party itself has been flailing and what they absolutely can come back but they've got a lot of soul searching to do and a lot of self-discovery to do and this is the moment that they're doing it so it's it's not a surprise really that they're not really heavy hitters at the national level just finally then um we've had a very interesting message in from beth so let's take a listen to a message and then we'll try to pick through what it actually means this is beth in leicester on the White House website.

20:24Hi there, AmeriCast team. So of all the things that have happened with the Trump administration and the White House in the past week, the one that has astonished me the most is the new updates that have been made to the White House website. On there, they have a historic moments timeline, which now not only includes the history of the House and various things that have happened in regards to development and major milestones, but there is also now updates on the new ballroom and some giant flagpoles. but more interestingly they have now chosen to include sections on the bill clinton scandal obama and the muslim brotherhood and cocaine i actually can't quite believe that it's real and would love to hear your opinions on it and if you think that it's an appropriate thing to have on the current official history of the white house so i've looked at this and beth is quite right And on the website timeline page, there are a series of, as she points out, events recorded, which includes what's called the Bill Clinton scandal in 1998, Barack Obama hosting members of the Muslim Brotherhood in 2012.

21:29That's followed by Melania Trump installing a tennis pavilion in 2020. And on and on it goes. And then something about cocaine being found in the White House. I mean, I suppose this is just what happens when Donald Trump is president, Justin. Yeah. I mean, was it Churchill who said history is going to be kind to me because I intend to write it? Yeah. Words to that effect. And he's taking that literally, isn't he? Maybe from the man himself. I think there is something about Trump. We were talking about the buildings and all the rest of it. And you look at his diplomacy and everything that he does.

22:04It's outside the normal. It presses against all the normal ways of doing things. And I think this is just another of those. It's Donald Trump and the Republicans in the White House trolling Democrats. I mean, one of the central premises of their movement is owning the libs, trying to stick it and anger Democrats and people on the left. And this is another example of it, obviously, totally not in keeping with the way the White House website has been managed up until now, but definitely in the same vein as I don't I don't know if we talked about the presidential portraits that lined a colonnade near the White House and they replaced the portrait of Joe Biden with an auto pen.

22:45I mean, this is, you know, they're just trying to get a reaction. They're trying to needle the opposition. And then and then what happens is the Democrats go into a total spiral for 24 hours about it, which means they're not talking about. I put the Steve Bannon stuff in the same bracket, actually. It's owning the libs is so upsetting and annoying people that they have absolute fits and meltdowns. and you feel yourself to be winning and it takes yeah it can take you off the serious stuff as well and it means people talk about it you know people think about it and talk about it and rather than other things that might be less helpful that has been part of the style of government and let's be frank um to a large extent seems to work uh before i let you both go um lots and lots of listeners have been in touch to mention richard nixon uh who lost in 1960 and then won again in 1968 um who we all failed to oh yeah of course remember i'd forgotten about nixon yeah yeah but i mean the big the big thing about biden i'm not sure i'm not sure uh carmela harris necessarily wants to declare i'm doing a nixon well yeah there might be some problems a campaign slogan but the the the thing about someone of the longevity of biden which is so so huge going right back the early 70s when he was first a senator.

24:02You've got this kind of sense of yourself as part of the establishment. And if Kamala Harris sees herself also as part of the party establishment, that is what is failing for her this time round. Because where it was useful for Biden, in the end, he managed to get there because they needed that kind of candidate that time round. Next time round, that kind of candidate they don't need. Somebody who comes in and has a fight with the party and is seen to grab it by the scruff of the neck, it might be able to do a Donald Trump.

24:38OK, we're off the air on Five Live with Matt Chorley. Anthony's still with me. I tell you what, let's talk a little bit more about that Kamala Harris interview because she's been in the UK, as we were saying, promoting her book, Talking to Laura Koonsberg. Big sort of set-piece interview and a range of questions. Laura asking her as well. Let's hear the response to this. She asked her whether she thought Trump was running a fascist authoritarian government. I was asked if he was a fascist and I said yes. And the reason is that I look at what is happening right now. And again, it is what I predicted.

25:14He said he would weaponize the Department of Justice. He has done exactly that. He has used the United States Department of Justice, which should be an independent agency that makes decisions based on fact and law and not personal vengeance of the president of the United States. You look at what has happened in terms of how he has weaponized, for example, federal agencies around going after political satirists who he didn't—his skin is so thin he couldn't endure criticism from a joke and attempted to shut down an entire media organization in the process. I mean, those examples are certainly true.

26:03Donald Trump has used the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. James Comey, John Bolton, Letitia James are some of the examples. He has definitely ramped up immigration enforcement and has now billions of dollars to spend on paramilitary forces to round up undocumented migrants. Now, going from those examples to, does that mean Donald Trump is an authoritarian? Obviously, Kamala Harris says yes. Trump and his side will say no. That's just meeting his campaign promises, the promises that he ran on in 2024, and voters said, yes, this is what we want and elected him. Yeah, that's exactly what I was thinking.