Americanswers… Why has JD Vance changed his mind about Trump's intelligence?

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1:14Hello, it's Anthony and you're about to hear AmeriCast. We're 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. Is Donald Trump about to be defeated, not in Congress, but by algae in a pool? That's one of the questions we turn to in this edition of America Answers. We're usually with Matt Chorley on Five Live on a Monday, aren't we? But Matt is unusually busy because, as you may have heard, the UK Prime Minister has resigned. But don't worry, we are still going to answer a range of questions.

1:48Algae is certainly among those questions. So is J.D. Vance and his view on Donald Trump's IQ and that fallout that there has been between Italy's Giorgio Meloni and the president, the two of them fighting on social media. So welcome to AmeriCanswers. 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 arrangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up!

2:34Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmeriCast in London, England. And it is Marianna sitting next to Justin in the worldwide headquarters in London. And it is Sarah here in the heart of it all in Washington, D.C. OK, let's go straight to the questions. This from Graham in Weymouth. Recently, my social media feed, Graham says, has been showing posts about a reflection pool in Washington that Donald J. Trump ordered that either failed or algae is covering as well as costing millions of dollars. What is the truth behind this? Well, it's not just any old reflection pool, is it? Indeed, its real name isn't reflection pool at all, is it, Sarah?

3:10Fill us in on what the thing is that we're talking about here. Yeah, it's known as the reflecting pool or the reflecting pond initially, And it's a body of water right in the sort of ceremonial heart of Washington, where the monuments and memorials are. And it's meant to reflect things like the Washington Monument in it. But it's always been a little bit dingy, blind with grey concrete. Often the waters appeared a little bit dirty. It hasn't really fulfilled its mission of reflecting. So Donald Trump decided, as he has done with so many things in Washington, he was going to beautify it. He was going to fix it in time for America's 250th birthday.

3:44but it hasn't quite worked out like that. Yeah, and so they thought that they had beautified it and then either the paint job wasn't terribly well done or the stuff that they used to kill the algae has also damaged the paint. So there are now apparently bits of the paint, Marianne, are just floating about. Yeah, like chunks of blue paint. It's all desperately sad because we posed, I thought, very attractively next to it, didn't we? when we were making television a year or two ago. Yeah, and it was absolutely freezing cold. It was beautiful. Yeah, it was very beautiful. This was when we were there for the...

4:18I've never... I mean, I've been there a thousand times, but I never really looked into it because exactly as Sarah says, it's never reflected anything really. And I think the idea that Donald Trump could get it reflect was always going to be a bit far-fetched. Yeah, I think it's one of those things that was best left alone and in a slightly more simple state. But as you might imagine, all of the content showing this water going like very green has been all over yeah exactly as graham pointed out all over social media and yeah lots of speculation about exactly why so there's the there's the paint kind of peeling off and then there's also the algae bloom and then apparently officials have been using chemicals including hydrogen peroxide to try to treat the algae and then donald trump posted this thing on truth social saying actually it's none of those things it's to do with vandals he said work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalised reflecting pool.

5:13I just inspected it and could only say to myself and those gathered around me, wow, who would do such a thing? Sick, deranged people, Capitals. We will fix it. Question mark? It's not meant to be a question mark. Have you seen the vandals at work, Sarah? Well, there are all sorts of stories about who the vandals could be. I've even seen mentioned online that it's actually a plot by Antifa to come and destroy the good work that had been done by Donald Trump in the reflecting pool in order to make him look bad. But this story is not just travelling on social media. It's absolutely captivated America.

5:44And you might think of all of the things that are going on in this country. Truly, it's the most important thing whether or not there is algae blooming in this pool in the middle of Washington. But it is being seen as a metaphor for the way Donald Trump approaches everything. He took something that wasn't a huge problem. I mean, OK, maybe it could have reflected better, but it wasn't a substantial issue. insisted that he could quickly and cheaply fix this. He said it was going to take two weeks and cost one and a half million pounds. It has taken considerably longer than that and probably upwards of about 15 million pounds so far as he insisted on doing it his way and making it into what he thought it should always have been.

6:23So it was going to be painted blue on the bottom, American flag blue. He said it was going to be done by a pile of his in a no-bid contract, even though this is federal government work, Someone who'd done swimming pools for him in other properties was going to fix the reflecting pool. And then weeks late, what happens is within hours of it being reopened, you've got this green algae blooming all over it. The pool doesn't look blue anymore. And it would appear to be something of a disaster considerably worse than it was before Donald Trump ever got involved in the first place. So while you might think, heaven's sake, you know, we're dealing with Iran and the conflict there.

6:59Why are we worrying about a reflecting pool? Well, people are seeing a lot of parallels. between the way Donald Trump has handled things like the war with Iran and this pool in the middle of D.C. But it's where something quite small and quite simple becomes reflective of a wider thing that people are worried and concerned about and is quite visible as well. I mean, I think that's the thing about the pool, right? It's like the images are very obvious and very shareable and therefore trigger a conversation. Some of the other things we're talking about, including around geopolitics, are perhaps visually harder to depict, not least when there's not really access to a lot of the places where this stuff is happening.

7:30That's interesting when we live in such a visual society too. You talk about this a lot and it really does matter, doesn't it? If we're in a post-literate society, in a more visual society, then maybe things like what happens to the reflecting pool does suddenly take on this extraordinary importance in people's lives. But that's also the kind of irony of all this, that actually Donald Trump knows that. He knows how visual this age is. And that's why he was trying to do what he was doing to the reflecting pool because he wanted it to give a certain impression of the United States. There's another aspect, though, about this reflecting pool, which I think also is illustrative of some of the things people care a lot about during the Trump administration, and that is the way the justice system gets involved.

8:12How on earth, you might be wondering, could that come into the question of refurbishing a pool in the middle of Washington? Well, since Donald Trump said it was vandalism that had caused the lining on the bottom to be breaking apart and this algae to start blooming green. He says it was vandalism and people have been arrested for that with it would appear very little evidence for what they had actually done wrong. One of them who's been interviewed by American media turns out to be an Olympian canoeist who represented the United States several times at the Olympics. Also says he's a material scientist who knows a thing or two about how this could have happened.

8:50He was cycling past the pool, stopped to have a look to try and work out what was going on, touched a piece of the lining that was floating on the surface, but he says he didn't break, dislodge, destroy, harm in any way, any of it. He was arrested, held for five hours and may well be prosecuted for this with a charge that could carry a 10-year sentence. Now, I imagine it's probably not going to come to that because his arrest is being sort of rather widely mocked, but the idea that you've got people being held in jail cells for supposedly vandalising something that's just because the president is upset that the renovation didn't work terribly well.

9:29Well, that's something else that in a very small way tells you quite a lot about how people feel about living in Donald Trump's America at the moment. OK, thanks to Graham in Weymouth. Let's turn to the next question. It's a voice note, actually, from Robert in Malmesbury in North Wiltshire. Hello, AmeriCast team. I have a simple question. I saw J.D. Vance being interviewed last week, and his whole message was how intelligent Donald Trump was, one of the most intelligent presidents in the history of the United States. I was just wondering what prompted him to feel he had to say that. So, you know, obviously I question the message, but why did Vance feel he had to say that?

10:16Well, before we answer that question, let's have a listen to what Vance did say about the president. He was speaking to Stephen Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast. The thing I say about about Donald Trump is I remember this in 2016. And in hindsight, it's just so, so dumb. People would say that he was dumb or that he wasn't very smart. He's super smart. Like he reads a lot. He understands people at an instinctual level better than anybody that I've ever known. But he is a very, very like from a pure IQ perspective, he's a very smart person. And it's interesting that so many people like, you know, if you give Donald Trump an IQ test with the other 45, 46 presidents that the United States has had, I guarantee he'd be either near the top or at the top.

11:03And the entire American media in 2016 had convinced me, at least, that he was not a smart person. Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it? Because the question from Robert was, why did J.D. Vance feel that he had to say that? And I think he almost answered that for himself, which was he was trying to explain why he himself had changed his mind so much from going from saying that Donald Trump could be like America's Hitler, which was his criticism of him before the 2016 election, to obviously now serving as his vice president and bigging him up the whole time. So I think that's got as much to do with how bright he thinks Donald Trump is with also sort of trying to justify his own intellectual position there.

11:47But I think he has a point, not maybe that Donald Trump is the most intelligent president the United States has ever had, but that people underestimate Donald Trump. They think he's stupid and that he's really not. I think that the bit that actually stood out to me of I listened to some of that Stephen Bartlett episode. So Stephen Bartlett is, I would say sort of in the kind of he's not the same as but he's probably Joe Rogan adjacent in the UK for people that don't listen to Diary of a CEO. And he has a similar format, which is interviewing people in these quite sort of discursive, discussion-y type ways.

12:18and when I was listening to it, the thing that actually stayed with me was this sort of understanding people on an instinctual level. Like a lot of what feels clever about Donald Trump is his ability to game or read situations and people and end up sort of, manipulate is maybe the wrong word, however you want to call it, sort of strategising in such a way that they end up coming out to his advantage. I've had exactly that experience with a senior British politician I was talking to who's been in the room with Donald Trump and we were talking about Trump, this was a year or so ago, I was talking to this person and they said he spots in the room who's powerful and who isn't, instinctively.

12:59And presumably who he could get to respond in the ways he'd like, etc. Which is so much about emotional intelligence more than anything. That's right. And this person was saying he has to be advised, kind of whispered in his ear almost literally, what's actually going on in terms of world affairs. But they absolutely understood who he could get to do what in the room and what his instincts told him was the right thing to do. And this whole discussion about, I mean, I agree with Sarah, the whole discussion about whether he was dumb or not, whether he is dumb or not, just seems itself a dumb discussion, actually, in a kind of a place that his opponents should not ever have got themselves into because he represented a strand of thinking.

13:43even that first time when he didn't win a majority of the vote but he still obviously did incredibly well and beat Hillary Clinton and all the rest of it. So the idea of, oh, what, are you saying that Hillary Clinton is cleverer than he is? Well, who knows? Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. Does it matter? No. He won the election second time round. And, of course, Sarah, really clever presidents often have to pretend that they're dumb, don't they, in order to ingratiate themselves with the American people. Yeah, and it always comes across as incredibly inauthentic as well. Whereas with Donald Trump, he communicates in a certain way.

14:16And of course, it doesn't sound tremendously highly educated or very erudite or eloquent, not like Barack Obama, for instance, who couldn't have been more different in his style in office. But that's been very helpful too. I mean, I think it's deliberate as well as instinctive, because then he doesn't sound as though he's part of an Ivy League educated elite who have nothing to do with the electorate he's appealing to. You know, a lot of this, I think, has been instinctively but carefully crafted around appealing to a certain segment of America who felt incredibly left behind, whom Donald Trump does not belong to, never has, never will, but yet is able to make common cause with in a way that other presidents who you might automatically consider to be terribly, terribly intelligent or intellectual were just fundamentally unable to do.

15:01When it comes to J.D. Vance saying this, I mean, one of the things that always interests me is how much, obviously, in this context, he was referring to what he sees as misconceptions about Donald Trump. But I always wonder how well Donald Trump actually responds to this slightly like sycophantic, like, he's the cleverest person ever in the whole world. Because you sometimes feel like, think of, for example, Donald Trump and Mandami. He almost has a sort of more of a respect for people that don't try to suck up to him and be like, you're the cleverest person ever. But then also he absolutely hates if people don't say that.

15:31It's a bit of a no win, isn't it? Like a bit of a double bind. What are you supposed to do? So was he impressed or not? Because we should play this clip of him at a press conference on Wednesday. So this is a joke that possibly Robert in Malmesbury is important for the answer to your question, because this is a joke very much about Vance and about what would happen to Vance if the Iran deal fails. You send the vice president. If it works out, great. You'll look like a genius for sending him. And if it doesn't work out, it's the vice president's fault. I like that idea, sure. This way, if it works out, I'm going to take the credit.

16:06If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming J.D. You better be careful, J.D. He's going to turn his plane around and get the hell out of here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think it's a good idea. Thank you very much, everybody. I know, but it's astonishing, isn't it, that you would think that that would sink him. And he said something very similar even before he returned to the White House about the 2022 midterms, that if the Republicans do well, he'll take all the credit. And if they don't, then he'll accept none of the blame. But it's one of these other Trumpisms. You wonder if anybody else could get away with it.

16:37But people love him for it. Well, a certain section of the electorate love him for it. Other people are pretty contemptuous of it. but they're not people who were ever going to agree with Donald Trump in the first place. And part of it also, I think, is another mistake people make. They underestimate his intelligence, but also they don't understand the joke. And it works two ways. It's appealing to those who already like him and, you know, reinforcing his bond with them, whilst really, really, really irritating people who don't like him. So he manages to make a joke and score a troll all at the same time.

17:11And in Trump world, that is, as he would say, a big win. Isn't this also just the eternal curse of being the vice president? You are the one lumped with all of the rubbish and being particularly the vice president of Donald Trump. It's kind of like, well, you are a very conveniently placed scapegoat, should you be needed. I'd also say of Vance to further answer Robert and Malmesbury's question about why he felt necessary to say it. Number one, he's got to say it because he's got to suck up to Trump, etc., etc. But number two, I wonder if Vance was also answering a question that wasn't asked in that way that politicians do, in as much as he's talking an awful lot about his intelligence.

17:53But as Sarah reminded us, what he'd originally said all those years ago was effectively that Donald Trump seemed evil to him. It's the question he didn't answer is why he seems to have changed his mind. On his moral compass rather than his intelligence. It's on his morality. So it's fine to go into this great screed about how clever he is or not and his IQ and all the rest of it. But actually, it's a way of avoiding the central question, which is why did you think he was a bad person? Why did you think he was evil and now you think he's great? Yeah. OK, on to our next topic on the Discord. There has been a lot of chatter about the Italian PM, Georgia Maloney and her row with Donald Trump over the weekend.

18:34So this all started with Donald Trump and Maloney being, they were pictured in close conversation at this G7 summit. And then on Friday, Donald Trump did a phone interview with an Italian TV channel in which he alleged, quote, she begged me to take a photo with her. I felt sorry for her. And then Maloney was not having any of that and she hit back with this video on Instagram.

18:59She's speaking in Italian, but what she's saying is, So some things deserve an immediate reply. Donald Trump's comments are completely made up. I'm frankly appalled. I don't know why the President of the United States behaves that way with his own allies, not that it's the first time it's happened. I can only say that it's a pity he doesn't have the same resolve when dealing with the enemies of the West, with the enemies of the United States and with their leaders, with whom instead he shows himself to be much more amenable. But he needs to bear one thing in mind. I never beg, and nor does Italy.

19:29Well, it's not a bad line, is it? And I think Giorgio Maloney thinks this is not going to do her too much harm in Italy, which is, of course, what matters far more to her than how she's seen in the White House. Because she also in some other posts said, look, that in fact, it hadn't been that helpful to her politically to have been seen to be particularly friendly with Donald Trump. And, you know, they were ideologically aligned on a number of things. It was a fairly natural relationship. And he used to say how beautiful she was as well, how much he liked her. I'm not allowed to say it because usually it's the end of your political career if you say it.

20:02She's a beautiful young woman. Now, if you use the word beautiful in the United States about a woman, that's the end of your political career. But I'll take my chances. Where is she? There she is. You don't mind being called beautiful, right? Because you are. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it. She wanted to be here and she's incredible. And they really respect her in Italy. She's a very successful, very successful... But she doesn't seem to think that there's much jeopardy in falling out with him. And I think we're starting to see this right across Europe, that leaders who worked incredibly hard in Trump's first term in office, Keir Starmer included, to stay on the right side of him and think that that meant that they could get things done.

20:43They wouldn't be able to if they had fallen out with him. Seem perfectly happy now, actually, to have public disagreements and even to fuel public spats with him, because obviously they think that is more politically helpful than being seen to be on the same side. Boy, that's a change, isn't it? I mean, it's really fascinating that you could now have over the course of the next couple of years, particularly if everything goes wrong in the midterms for the Republicans, which we think they probably will, well, certainly in the House of Representatives and possibly in the Senate as well. if Donald Trump's presidency is really on the ropes, the extent to which people turn against him, other world leaders turn against him, just say openly, and had enough of this nonsense, I no longer need to kowtow to you, I regret doing it in the past.

21:27That's the other thing, Sarah, isn't it? It's the extent to which people begin, I don't know if Keir Starmer is yet in a position to write his memoirs, but there are all sorts of things that could come out, are there? Did you see Donald Trump's post about Keir Starmer? Yeah, I was going to say, given how indiscreet Trump is about them, and that's not the first time he's done that. It's just before Keir Starmer resigned. He posted on Truth Social, didn't he? He posted on Truth Social saying he's going to go. He's going to go and he's kind of a loser. Sorry about that. Which is an extraordinary kind of lapse of diplomatic form, to put it mildly.

21:59But he's done it before, hasn't he? He's posted messages he's had from people before. Yeah, and I think it's going to be really interesting to watch which issues matter the most, because I think what we learned with Keir Starmer was you can be charming and flattering to Donald Trump, as Keir Starmer was, and he became known as the Trump whisperer, as they enjoyed this extremely unlikely bromance for like about 18 months or so when they were going around being best friends, even though they couldn't be more unlike each other in personality or in policies. And then it all fell apart over the Chagos Islands and Iran effectively.

22:34So yes, you'll probably have to try and charm him personally, because personal relationships matter a great deal to Trump, but issues will be important. And you've got Donald Trump in that Truth Social that he posted on Sunday night saying that Keir Starmer failed badly on two important subjects, immigration and energy, brackets, open North Sea oil. That's what Donald Trump goes on all the time about what's wrong with the UK, how it's being run badly. That's not something that any UK Prime Minister is necessarily going to take lessons from Donald Trump about. Then there's the key issues about defence spending, obviously, you know, at the heart of a row in the British government at the moment, that matters to Donald Trump, because the commitment of NATO member countries to spend 3 % on GDP on defence is very, very important to Trump.

23:23And he was very critical of British Armed Forces and its defence posture when Keir Starmer initially refused to allow US bases to be used in the war on Iran. So you've got really sensitive defence issues, plus these other things where Donald Trump thinks he can tell the UK what his immigration policy should be. It's not a comfortable place for a new Prime Minister to wade in and try and find their way through this relationship. Do they need allies, Sarah? I suppose that's the other question. I mean, Georgia Maloney was such a big one. She went to the inauguration, didn't she? She's so important, seen as so important in Trump's outreach to Europe or Europe's outreach to Trump, whichever way around it is.

24:02And if that bridge is now burned, does it really matter? Well, I think that's something that Donald Trump is testing, isn't it? Whether or not the US can operate without allies, because he has, as we know, an expansive foreign policy that he thinks he can operate without any of the normal courtesies or alliances, whether it's from his threats to leave NATO or his threats against Greenland, that, you know, I don't think he's entirely given up on his idea that he wants to take over Greenland or at least increase the American footprint there. And he's been trampling over alliances and destroying America's soft power around the world.

24:37He's got clients there. So in Venezuela, you could say, oh, well, you know, he's got a very firm ally there. But that's because he put Delcio Rodriguez in charge of that country and probably thinks that he controls her fate. It's, you know, things are working out very differently for Donald Trump in the second year back in the White House than they did in his first. And I think he maybe came away from the lesson of the first 12 months being that, no, he didn't need any allies. He could say what he wanted to other countries and he could manage without them because America was the greatest and strongest nation on earth.