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Podcast Notes: Radical with Amol Rajan - Episode "What's Different About Trump 2.0?"
Episode Overview In this episode, Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson discuss the early months of Donald Trump's second term as President of the United States with Brian Klaas, a professor of global politics and writer for The Atlantic. The discussion highlights Trump's impact on U.S. foreign and domestic policy, the state of democracy in America, and the implications of his radical governance style.
Key Themes and Discussions
- Trump's Approach in His Second Term
- Rapid Policy Changes: Trump has quickly altered U.S. foreign policy, including fracturing the NATO alliance and implementing controversial domestic policies.
- Ambition to Make a Mark: Trump appears intent on making significant changes, with a sense of urgency potentially stemming from his age and the limited time left in his presidency.
- Brian Klaas's Insights
- Undermining Democracy: Klaas argues that Trump's actions are systematically undermining democratic institutions in the U.S., using tactics common among authoritarian leaders.
- Guardrails of Democracy: Discussion on the founding fathers' intentions for checks and balances in governance, which Klaas believes are being tested and eroded under Trump's leadership.
- Institutional Erosion: The conversation suggests that while certain presidential powers have been curtailed, the political climate has allowed for an increase in executive authority that threatens democracy.
- Political Landscape Shifts
- Republican Party Transformation: The Republican Party has undergone a shift from traditional conservatism to a more populist, nationalist stance under Trump.
- Fear Among Party Members: Many Republicans fear electoral repercussions for standing up to Trump, leading to a party largely made up of loyalists.
- Media Dynamics: Trump has also altered the media landscape, favoring a 'fifth estate' of supportive figures and sidelining traditional press scrutiny.
- The Concept of Leader of the Free World
- Historical Context: The discussion touches upon the notion of the U.S. as the "leader of the free world" and how this perception is evolving under Trump's administration.
- Impacts of Trump’s Foreign Policy: Concerns are raised about Trump's alignment with authoritarian figures and how this affects America's global standing, especially in relation to NATO and allies in Europe.
- Economic Concerns
- Vulnerabilities Ahead: The episode concludes by addressing economic challenges that could undermine Trump's administration, such as high inflation and potential recession risks.
Key Takeaways
- Trump's second term is characterized by rapid changes aimed at solidifying his legacy, but these come with significant risks to democratic norms and international relations.
- Klaas's insights underscore the precarious state of U.S. democracy, highlighting how political parties, media, and public institutions are responding to Trump's governance.
- The episode raises critical questions about the future of American democracy and its role on the global stage, amid shifting political and economic landscapes.
Important Quotes
- "Every action by Trump is testing the guardrails put in place by the founding fathers."
- "We are potentially heading towards competitive authoritarianism in the U.S."
- "The notion of the U.S. as the leader of the free world is becoming increasingly outdated."
Conclusion This episode of *Radical* provides a nuanced look at the implications of Donald Trump's presidency, particularly how his second term may redefine both domestic and international politics in profound ways. The insights shared by Klaas are particularly relevant in understanding the threats to democratic governance and the changing nature of political discourse in America.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the Apartment Bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
0:42BBC Sounds. Music, radio, podcasts. We have accomplished more in 43 days than most administrations accomplished in four years or eight years. And we are just getting started. It is hard to escape the feeling, Nick, is it not, that Donald Trump's second term, I mean, this is a guy nearly 80 years old, he feels like a man in a hurry, and he wants his second term to be more consequential than his first. What we heard there was the speech he gave, the longest ever given by a president to Congress, nearly an hour and 40 minutes, and it followed a dizzying first few weeks, which has seen him completely rewrite US foreign policy, and crucially, which we're going to focus on today, rewrite US domestic policy to.
1:30That's right. He's talking about a golden age of America. Doesn't really do modesty, does he? It's not a big part of his feature. But to be fair to Donald Trump, love him or loathe him, he has done an enormous amount in the United States, for good or ill, that we want to analyse today. Because while the world's eyes are particularly on what he's been saying about the world, about Gaza, about Ukraine, back at home. People are looking to what he's doing to federal governments, to the system of democracy in the United States with his cheerleaders. And you heard them cheer there, didn't you? Think he's transforming their nation.
2:09And with the critics who you hear rather more softly muttering that this isn't democracy as they knew it. Certainly. And we're going to be speaking to a man who's written a wonderful and important book about Donald Trump in his first term. Brian Klass, who writes for The Atlantic, is a professor in global politics at University College London. And I've got a feeling that we're going to leave this episode with a sense that, again, we are living through the rewriting of history, an era in which history is being wrenched from one era, one epoch, into something very different. Why are things different with Donald Trump this time around?
2:45Let's do it.
3:01Hello, it's Amol in the Today Podcast studio. And it's Nick here too. Not hugely surprising, was it, Nick, when Donald Trump said, by the way, that meeting, that meeting between Trump and Zelensky. And I know we're going back to last week, and I know we're meant to think about the big picture and look forward. But what an extraordinary thing. I've not had a chance to sit next to you and discuss it in detail. It was like Zelensky was being fired from The Apprentice. And there was very much a sense, I thought, of The Godfather Part 1. With J.D. Vance saying, have you even said thank you? Have you even said to The Godfather that you're grateful for this invitation?
3:36Don't disrespect us. It's all about honour codes. It's all about respect, gratitude, showing. And you would say, wouldn't you, Nick, that Keir Starmer played that game rather effectively. He did. I've been in the Oval Office a few times with different prime ministers. And different presidents. And different presidents and never seen anything remotely like that. Made for television, as you say. Usually it's simply just a few shots. In fact, most of the time you see a wobbly camera work because the guys from the White House are trying to get you out almost as soon as you've gone in. It's just enough shots for the evening news.
4:12Maybe if you're lucky, one shouted question. It's what they call a pool spray in the American media jargon, not a full press conference. And yet here was a moment in which Donald Trump was saying something to the world with the assistance, rather brutal assistance of J.D. Vance. And I think where it's relevant to our wider conversation that we're about to have is that the values that people think are normally imposed on that sort of conversation. respect for your allies, a belief in freedom, a belief that you should be on the side of the victim of aggression. All of that is thrown out the window.
4:50But to be fair to Donald Trump, he would say, couldn't have been clear about this. The fighting's got to stop. Peace talks have to start. That means being equally nice to both sides, putting pressure on both sides until they come at the table and they do a deal. And I think one of the things that maybe we're still having to learn about Donald Trump is that if he's not interested in the values that previous American presidents and current European leaders believe in, if he simply believes in the outcome, things are going to be very different. On that point, it's important to remember he is the leader of the Republican Party.
5:28The Republican Party used to be the Conservative Party of America. It's now something different. It's much more insurgent. It's much more national populism. and it used to be the party of free trade and Reagan. But conservatives believe, Roger Scruton, a great English philosopher who was a conservative, believed that social goods, if you like, customs, are easily destroyed but not easily created. And you realise, listening to Trump, that a lot of what we take for granted in politics, the idea that you wouldn't say to your neighbouring country, Canada, that we're going to essentially annex you, you should become the 51st state.
6:00The idea that you wouldn't say about Lesotho, a small country in Africa, you wouldn't say a country no one's ever heard of. These customs, and Conservatives used to have great respect for customs, many still do, these customs Donald Trump doesn't have a huge amount of time for. But he and his allies say they're doing it for a reason because he's getting things done. And in that speech, he gave us a mighty long list of what he says he has got done. Upon taking office, I imposed an immediate freeze on all federal hiring, a freeze on all new federal regulations, and a freeze on all foreign aid. I renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
6:42We've ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity, and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government. Created the brand new Department of Government Efficiency. GOGE. Perhaps you've heard of it. Perhaps other countries have used tariffs against us for decades, and now it's our turn to start using them against those other countries. The media and our friends in the Democrat Party kept saying we needed new legislation. We must have legislation to secure the border. But it turned out that all we really needed was a new president. Well, there is a question of why Donald Trump is in such a hurry.
7:26I mean, he is he is going at an extraordinary pace. There's this construction, which we've to some extent imported from America politics about the first hundred days. Never mind the first hundred days. In the first 45 days, he has been extraordinarily busy. And the question, of course, is how much of this will stick? How much will he change America in the second term in a way that can't really be undone? He gives the impression of someone who feels like he's almost going to run out of time soon. And if he doesn't change the Constitution, American presidents can only serve two terms. and it's generally thought that in their second term, after the midterms, power sort of drains away.
8:02But that's going on the precedent of history and this guy is no follower of history. Yeah, he may well run out of time as people become interested in who his successor will be and J.D. Vance is clearly very interested in answering that question for himself. There's another reason he's got something going for him which brings us to our guest today which is he had a go at this already, then he had a break. So he, and I suspect more importantly, those people who advise him, had four years to think, well, what didn't work last time? What did? What should we change? What can we get right that we got wrong in the past?
8:36So let's turn to Brian Klass now, who wrote a book about that first term called The Despot's Apprentice, Donald Trump's Attack on Democracy, which I think gives away, Brian, that you're not a cheerleader for the president. That would be accurate, yes. Well, just tell us a bit about the attack you're talking about, because, I mean, before you start your argument, it's worth saying, Brian, that, you know, you spent a lot of time writing about American politics. The founding fathers of America put in place lots and lots of guardrails to try to stop a president being a king. What happened under Trump?
9:08Yeah, so the way I would describe the first term was a systematic battering ram testing those guardrails, many of which stood up. But that doesn't mean that the danger has gone away. And I think the second term is significantly more dangerous. And when you think about things like the authoritarian playbook of how autocratic populists around the world try to systematically destroy democracy, many of the red flags exist with Trump, right? The sort of aspects around attacking the press, trying to politicize courts, attacking rule of law, demonizing minorities and blaming them for problems, trying to expand executive power, as well as engaging in alleged criminality.
9:46and you know so when you think about the end of trump's first term he ended it by inciting a violent mob to attack the constant to attack the u.s capital at the same time that there was a systematic plot to try to decertify the election results so he could stay in power after losing the election and many of the things that we sort of sweep under the rug and forget he called the top georgian election state official and asked him to find an additional 11 800 votes so he could win that state. I mean, this is not the behavior of a person who believes in democracy. So that's the sort of encapsulation of the first term.
10:21He says, of course, that he didn't incite the mob. He said things and then other people with violent intent attacked Congress. But let's just try and break down what we mean, what you mean by an attack on democracy. Because I think Republicans would say in answer to your list, hey, look, this is just the kind of liberal elite whinging. You know, They may be the liberal elite in the media. They may be the liberal elite who run the courts. They may be the liberal elite in opposition in Congress. This is just saying we don't like what you're doing. But you're saying something more fundamental than that, are you?
10:56Yeah, so I've studied authoritarianism around the world in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, all sorts of places. And this is not about the policies. It's about the institutions. So political scientists differentiate between what's called output legitimacy and input legitimacy. Output is what the government does. So people can be very upset about policies, the price of food, the cost of living, all that stuff is tied to output legitimacy. Input is the process. And that's the institutions, that's the rules, the checks and balances, things like the press being able to report on the government, things like, you know, the rule of law operating.
11:33And if you eliminate those institutional guardrails, you eliminate democracy. So you can have people who change policy in line with what the popular will is. But if they do that in a way that violates institutional rules, they're still attacking democracy. And that's what many, many countries around the world, from Hungary, the Philippines, Russia, Turkey, etc., they've learned that the hard way, that it doesn't happen in one day. It happens over many, many years, the sort of slow erosion of these institutions, which I think is what's happening in the United States right now. But it's interesting, Brian, you say the slow erosion of institutions.
12:06There are a lot of people would say that aided by technology, what's so striking is the speed with which some of the things that we took for granted in politics and in sort of national life on both sides of the Atlantic seem to have been undone. But just to go back to your point about the slow erosion, what about the slow buildup? Just tell us what, for those who don't know their founding fathers necessarily, what were those guardrails which those extraordinary men at the end of the 18th century put in place to try to rein in presidential power because they felt that the point about a republic is that there should be no kings in America?
12:44Yeah, so I would agree with your comment about the speed that's happening now. So the second term is very different. But in terms of the guardrails and how they were designed, they are supposed to constrain presidents by ensuring that other co-equal branches of government are able to rein in presidential authority when it gets too extravagant. And so this is where Congress is supposed to, for example, be able to decide whether or not they fund things, whether or not agencies exist. Right. And what you're seeing right now, and this is the stuff that is worrying political scientists like me who have seen this movie before in other countries, is that you basically have a situation where an unelected billionaire, the richest man in the world, is making those decisions instead.
13:22And a pliant Congress, which is unbelievably beholden to the executive in a way that's never happened before in American history and willing to just go along with whatever he says, is abdicating that authority that the founding fathers basically gave them. That's a crucial point, isn't it? Trump surely can say, I've not stopped Congress doing anything. They're just choosing not to do it. Now, I was talking to someone the other day who was very close to a Republican senator who's highly critical of Trump's nominee, now the actual Secretary of State for Defence, Pete Hegseth. Here's why this story matters.
14:04This guy funded a campaign to stop Hegseth getting the job. But when the vote itself happened, he didn't vote against him. And when this guy I know rang him up and said, what the hell's going on? I thought you were opposed to this guy. He said, I can't afford to become a target of Donald Trump. I will get driven out at the next election cycle. I'm picking my battles. I can't have the battle. So are you saying not that Congress has been forced not to do things, they've been intimidated from not doing things? Yes, 100%. And that's where the breakdown of democracy also comes from the political party's reaction to a would-be autocrat.
14:42So what's different between the first and the second term, and this is something that I have been warning about for the intervening four years since Trump left office, is that the party has fundamentally changed. And it's fundamentally changed because the voting base that elects those people has become completely Trumpified. there were people who stood up to Donald Trump in 2017 from the Republican Party. And the overwhelming majority of them have either been purged from the party, have lost re-election in primaries, or have died, like John McCain. And as a result of that, the people who are now in Congress are either true believers, or like the person you referenced, they're people who are so afraid of the electoral consequences that they don't stand up to Trump.
15:23And the reason that happens, by the way, it's just something that a lot of British people, I think, might not understand, is that there are primary challenges in districts that are largely uncompetitive. Most districts in the United States are landslide contests. There are 70-30 race, right? So 70 % for the winner, 30 % for the loser. And that means that the only way you can lose your seat is in a primary where the political party that you're a member of decides to give you the boot so that somebody more extreme is willing to do what the president says in the case of the Republican Party. And so most of these Republicans are making a rational calculation.
15:56If they do everything Trump says, they will not face a primary challenger and they will sail to re-election. If they stand up to him even once, he will single them out either in a speech or on Truth Social, his social media site. They will face a well-funded primary challenger. And like many Republicans who have tried this before, they will lose. And that's the iron grip that Trump has on the party that's made the second term so different from the first. But Brian, just go back to what Nick was saying. Again, one of the arguments that Trump's defenders would say is they control both houses and they control both houses because they won that control fairly and squarely in an election.
16:32No one doubts that he actually had quite a clear margin of victory in the end, Donald Trump. And moreover, as Elon Musk has been saying whilst being accompanied by one of his children in the Oval Office, President Trump has a mandate for all this stuff. It's not like he didn't say he was going to do it. They talked about Doge in advance. They said this is what we're going to do. he's basically now I mean you could argue couldn't you that this is democracy in action he's carrying out the very actions for which the American people in their tens of millions told him you know go ahead yeah I mean this is I think a fundamental misconception about what democracy is because the will of the people is part of the story right but the institutions that constrain executive power so they don't just have the ability to rule like a king or a dictator is also part of the equation and so if you have someone who's doing something after they won an election and their voters are approving of them, if they go out and, for example, commit mass atrocities or if they were to simply ban courts, obviously those things would still be anti-democratic, right?
17:31So you have to have both. Now, I would say that Trump's margin of victory, while decisive in the Electoral College, it was by one and a half percent, right? This is not a landslide victory. And on top of that, it doesn't mean that you can then say the Constitution goes out the window. And this is where the courts are playing a role because things that Doge has done so far are not, in my view, remotely constitutional. Certain executive orders that Trump has issued, like trying to stop people from getting citizenship if they're born in the United States, which is clearly spelled out in the 14th Amendment, is blatantly unconstitutional.
18:06So the tests will be are the courts, which Trump has appointed many of the judges to the highest court, are those courts going to be pliant or are they going to push back as the founding fathers envisioned? And the thing that gives me pause there is there was a landmark ruling last year where it was the United States versus Trump. And they basically said that as long as the president does something as an official act, he is immune from prosecution, even if he engages in crimes. and and that is not something that is equivalent in peer democracies which is one of the reasons why the u.s has been downgraded in most political science index indices so far and in the freedom house rankings for example it's on par with romania in the polity four index which political science use uh scientists use regularly it's been downgraded in the last few weeks to a non-democracy so i think this is not just me saying this there's a lot of people who look at this professionally who have systematically downgraded these scores because of the actions that Donald Trump's making.
19:03Right, Brian, just pause. A non-democracy. You're saying there are political scientists who now believe America is not a democracy. Yes, and I personally think that's premature. I think that what we are heading towards is a framework that political scientists will call competitive authoritarianism, which is basically what you have in countries like Hungary, where you still have the trappings of democracy, you still have elections, you still have courts, you still have a press, but it's not a level playing field. And there is competition in politics, but there's sort of a finger on the scale for the incumbent.
19:36And I think that that's where we're heading in the United States. I think it's quite clear that Trump has absolutely no regard for rules or institutions. I mean, you have to remember also that the reason that he's not being prosecuted for his attempts to subvert American democracy in the first place are simply because he directed the Department of justice to end those investigations, which is not, again, a normal thing that you can do in peer democracies. So I think there's a lot of stuff that superficially, when you look at Trump giving speeches or you hear about, you know, ending foreign aid payments, this all looks like the normal gambit of what democratic states might do.
20:12But the process by which it's happening is not normal remotely. Brian, in your earlier answer, you used a phrase, which is so interesting to me, You said behaving like a king, like a king or a dictator. And one thing you won't necessarily know is that I've got an interesting, slightly passive-aggressive thing going on with the producer of this podcast called Lewis, where every week I try to introduce a thought from one of my heroes, a guy called Walter Badgett, third editor of The Economist, great Victorian intellectual essayist. And Walter Badgett, in his book, The English Constitution, said the thing about the English Constitution is that a republic had insinuated itself beneath the folds of a monarchy.
20:48In other words, England's got a monarchy, but the way we've designed things with the crown and parliament is that you can essentially run this country like a republic. And there's something about how Donald Trump runs America where I think you could say it's the flip. It's the inverse. There's a sense in which a monarchy has insinuated itself beneath the folds of a republic. Why do you say that? Because Donald Trump does have a certain kind of kingly deportment. He does have a sense of being the ruler of a court with courtiers, and in him is vested absolute authority, which goes against one of the fundamental ideas of America going back to 1776.
21:27Yeah, no, I agree with you. And he also has tremendous admiration, outspoken admiration for those who are not just behaving like dictators, but are them. I mean, you know, there's the famous, in addition to all the praise that he has for Vladimir Putin, Viktor Orban, Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines, etc. He also famously said, I believe in 2018, that he fell in love with Kim Jong Un and that they exchanged beautiful letters. I mean, this is the kind of stuff that is just, it's not Republican or Democrat, right? This is not a question about partisanship. It's something that no Republican or Democrat has done, certainly in the last century and very likely in modern history.
22:06So you've been clear, Brian, the Republican Party's changed. That's one change since term one. Clearly, the people around him have changed. We'll come to that in just a second. But I don't want to leave the courts for a second. isn't it too early to dismiss the power of the courts? This administration has already lost quite a few court cases around its judgments. Isn't it possible that over time, terrorists, for example, could easily get bogged down in the courts? Because there's a battle, isn't there, between whether it is a presidential right to extend tariffs or it should be a congressional right.
22:40Won't we see more and more cases over time? There's going to be a fight in the courts, certainly, and that's one of the ways in which US democracy will sink or swim. is how the courts behave. My worry is that a lot of the rulings that have happened so far against the Trump administration have been lower courts. And the courts that ultimately decide this is the Supreme Court. And the Supreme Court has illustrated repeatedly it has an expansive view of executive power. It has been willing to rule things that many court watchers did not think would happen like the presidential immunity ruling I talked about before.
23:12And most democracies, this is the other point that I think is so important is that most democracies really try to depoliticize courts. It's one of the reasons why other governments function more effectively and less dysfunctionally than the United States. The United States has an overtly politicized appointment process for the Supreme Court. I mean, one of the things that I say to my students is, how many Supreme Court justices can you name in your own country? Now, how many Supreme Court justices do you know in the United States? Now, that tells you something about the fact that these people become public figures because they're political figures and they're chosen through a political mechanism which is overtly partisan and has become much more so over the last two decades.
23:52So, you know, I and you saw at the speech Trump, you know, basically was very warm with John Roberts, the chief justice, one of the few people in the conservative majority who's been willing to stand up to him at times. But I don't have a significant amount of faith that when all is said and done that they're going to rule against executive power. Well, let's turn And then to the people who are around him, we learned, didn't we, after the first administration, that there were officials who'd literally taken papers off Trump's desk because they didn't trust him to make the right decisions. So simply remove them, threw them in the shredder, in effect.
24:26We learned that his chiefs of staff frequently disagreed with him, which is why he fell out with them when he eventually discovered what they'd been doing behind his back. Like we learned, of course, that even Mike Pence, you know, who looked like a loyalist, did actually stand up to him when it came to that disputed election in 2020. Are you saying there's no one like that left? They've all gone. Yes, it's effectively a series of loyalists. And this is another major, major change. So the way I would describe the first Trump administration selection process was often sometimes unusual candidates, but candidates that were broadly qualified.
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25:01I mean, you think about the first Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson. This person was a serious business leader. They weren't the standard profile for Secretary of State, but they had significant management experience. Now, the current Secretary of State, Marco Rubio, does actually fit the profile. He's one of the few exceptions for Donald Trump's selection process. But think about Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, right? This is a person who's a Fox News host, who was credibly accused of sexual assault in a settlement that happened and has never managed anything in the military. He served in the military.
25:32His main weighing in on military policy in the first Trump administration was to try to get reduced punishments for people who were accused of war crimes. And he's now in charge of the most powerful military in the history of humanity. Just we ought to know, shouldn't we, that Hegseth was never actually arrested or charged. He denies any wrongdoing and he claims the sexual encounter you referred to was entirely consensual. But worth saying in terms of other, shall we say, striking appointments, the leader of the FBI is a guy called Kash Patel, who has views that are hard to substantiate with evidence, shall we say.
26:11And his deputy is a podcaster called Dan Bongino, know someone who's had a pretty interesting career, but who's at the sort of MAGA-ish end of MAGA-ism? I mean, he's sort of out there. He's essentially a podcast, he's never run an institution. He's the deputy director of the FBI, which is an astonishing appointment. Yeah, and this is something where Trump is doing what he said he would do. It's very worrying, but he did telegraph repeatedly throughout the 2024 election that he would have revenge and go after his political opponents. And he has now appointed to the leader of the FBI somebody who in 2023 drew up an enemies list, a formal enemies list of people who should be prosecuted if Trump returns to power.
26:48Now he's in charge of the investigative powers that are the U.S. rule of law. And I don't think he's going to be constrained in any way. In addition to that, the deputy director, as you say, is a podcaster. And this is the kind of stuff where this is not about Democrat or Republican. It's not a question about whether you have a conservative or a liberal worldview, left-wing worldview of American politics. It's basic stuff. Like, you know, should the person who runs the FBI have ever understood how these operations work? And should they be someone who believes that you should have enemies to be investigated for political reasons, right?
27:26Should the deputy director have ever served in the FBI since they're the day-to-day person who manages the organization? There's a British version of what you're describing where the great constitutional historian, Pete Hennessy, Lord Hennessy, describes as a good chaps rule, which is not written down anywhere. But there's a sort of assumption that good chaps behave in a particular way, because you know that the other side might be running things after you. And if you'd hate if they did that with their politics, then don't do it with yours, because one day it will be their turn. You mentioned in the list, by the way, of someone who had had some criticism of Donald Trump before he got into office, Marco Rubio.
28:07did either of you notice what Donald Trump said in his speech? You were saying, after he came out of the Today programme on Wednesday morning, I missed this watching, but he sort of had a few words about the votes he'd won. Yeah, what was extraordinary is that virtually every person he named, he said, great guy, wonderful, he's doing a great job, and there was a standing ovation, whooping, cheering. He turns to the Secretary of State. I mean, we're talking like one of the most important people in theory. As it were Foreign Secretary. as it were foreign secretary and he says the words we know who to blame if anything goes wrong looking at marco rubio you made a parallel with the mafia earlier i got the sense brian i don't know if you did that if i were rubio who by the way and maybe this is the reason the comments was made had been complaining and it had been reported they'd be complaining that he'd be marginalized I got the sense that Trump was looking at him and saying you're not long for this world not I think he'll survive but not in his job yeah no but I think there's a series of people like this and I think Rubio is definitely one of them he'll be the foreign policy fall guy I think that Elon Musk will eventually fall out with Donald Trump and he'll be some of the domestic policy fall guy uh you know all these things are part of Trump's modus operandi but I also think you know when you when you understand these figures like Marco Rubio, they privately loathe Donald Trump.
29:34He's repeatedly humiliated him and called him little Marco. They had a spat in a previous election where they talked about their various masculinity in quite crude ways, which you can read between the lines what that's about. And so like this is the kind of stuff where these people are not people who actually think Trump is a good person. They're political opportunists and Marco Rubio, who has previously said that he believes in supporting Ukraine, unequivocally praised Donald Trump's humiliation of Zelensky in the Oval Office. I mean, these are the kinds of things where I think, you know, you see the evolution of the character over time, and it's a very bizarre warping of what people previously stood for.
30:14Marco Rubio is a perfect example of that. Just before we linger on the foreign affairs and foreign policy aspects of this, Brian. There was a remarkable moment at the end of that very tense press conference with Zelensky, where Trump asked for a final question from a quote unquote journalist. And this quote unquote journalist who had less than warm words to say about President Zelensky's decision not to wear a suit. Zelensky is a wartime leader. He troughs around in military garb. It turns out that this journalist was in fact the husband of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a leading female light in the MAGA movement.
30:50And it's not really a journalist. I mean, I don't mean by that, you know, we and me, you and Nick have some special kind of, you know, thing in our wallets, like a kind of passport that says we're journalists and other people aren't. But he's a kind of MAGA mouthpiece. And one of the things that's so interesting about the court of King Donald, to follow your theme, is that the fourth estate of journalists who used to apply scrutiny has been replaced by a fifth estate of often quite pliant, hugely powerful, very online figures. People like Ben Shapiro, people like Joe Rogan. And there is an entire media ecosystem now, obviously all of it amplified by Twitter X and Elon Musk with his 210 million followers, which means that Trump isn't necessarily, though he asks and he answers lots of questions from journalists, he isn't necessarily subject to the same scrutiny that previous presidents have been.
31:34He's also trying to handpick the journalists that are part of what's called the White House press pool, right? So the Associated Press has already been banned from that because they won't say the Gulf of America. And they're trying to handpick now friendly journalists to cover Donald Trump, which again, is a departure from every democratic norm of every president up until now. I think the thing that is possibly hard for people brought up in this media climate to understand is how the power has shifted. You know, that when I first went and was lucky enough to go to the Oval Office to accompany a British prime minister, there's a handful of big broadcasters in the States, in the UK.
32:12George W. Bush, I know, kept saying, why do we keep choosing that arsy guy from the BBC to ask questions? I was just told that's how we do things in Britain. The BBC gets to ask a question. They didn't have that many options. The power has completely shifted. Where if they're ruthless enough, they can just say, we'll marginalise all of you guys. We don't care what any of you think. We'll ask someone else. Instead, there are upsides to that. We get things like podcasts, which are excited. And we get listener questions. as well. And we've got one for you, Brian, and for us. So let's hear it. Hi, Amol and Nick.
32:47I really appreciate your podcast. And I need your help. Because there's a question I've wondered about for some time. And it feels more pertinent now than ever. What is the basis of America's assertion that is the leader of the free world? And in the light of recent comments from President Trump, is this claim still valid and true? I think this is worthy of an Amal thesis. So can you help? Thanks a lot. Ros from Berkshire. He needs no encouragement to yet another thesis, Ros. Happy to provide a thesis. But I think given Brian is our very distinguished and learned guest, we should let him have a go first.
33:25Brian, what's your response to Ros's question? Well, this historic sort of term of leader of the free world, you know, I think it's something that came out of the Cold War. And it's still, you know, to some extent, refers to this idea that the U.S. is the most powerful country in the world. It still has a massive, massive economy, the biggest military, the most powerful fighting force in the world. I think the issue now is whether that moniker is something that the U.S. is worthy of in the Trump administration. And I'm a dual citizen now of the U.K. and the U.S. And I have to say I think in some ways the U.K.
34:03government needs to suit up for the fact that the U.S. is becoming a partial geopolitical adversary, which is just a terrible thing for me to say. And I think, you know, siding with Putin in the way that he did last week, it should give a lot of people in Europe pause because I don't think there's anyone who seriously believes that if NATO Article 5 should be invoked and the defense of, say, Eastern Europe in NATO members is required, that Donald Trump will either jump at the opportunity or even willingly send American help to defend countries that the U.S. has sworn to defend. So I am sympathetic with that viewpoint that this is an outdated term and that there is an opportunity for somebody else to try to take up the mantle of being the leader of the free world.
34:47But it follows, doesn't it, Brian, exactly as you say, from the history of the 20th century, a history that Donald Trump in his inauguration speech actually ended up on. He told a very moving story about the American nation. It was a heroic story in which the character was the American nation. And part of the heroism of America was this idea that this pioneer frontier nation founded by these pilgrims who conquered a continent defeated rival totalitarianisms. First fascism and Nazism, then helped Europe rebuild and then defeated the Soviet Empire. And that idea that liberty could overcome rival totalitarianisms, that was where this idea came from.
35:22But it belonged to a world where it was American leadership of a rules-based order through multilateral institutions in particular. And America was very much number one. We've moved to a different world, haven't we now, where it's really rival power blocks, much more 19th century, much more Bismarck. and it's much more Donald Trump seeing the world as kind of essentially one in which America's main ally is not Putin and Russia though if you're in Europe it feels rather different especially if you're in Ukraine but America's main rival is the great rising great power to think of this in in the terms that Thucydides would have liked of China that's how he sees it as a problem yes it may be in other words Brian that the the notion of the leader of the free world is a historic one based on the idea of two competing blocks, the old Soviet Union and the free world, two competing ideologies, communism and capitalism, the alleged difference between freedom and the lack of it behind the Berlin war.
36:20Now, look, that's very me. I'm the child of the Cold War. I endlessly tell people on this podcast I stood on the Berlin war when it came down. That's probably the defining moment of my adult life. But for a growing number of Americans, perhaps for a growing number of people right around the world. It's a completely meaningless and out-of-dated concept. You were actually there when it came down. Don't you stop. Yeah, you know, I think that one of the things that also is very striking is that one of the ways that the leader of the free world tried to exert the spread of freedom was through things like democracy promotion, right?
36:52Trying to encourage democracies to take root in the rest of the world. And that has been eliminated by the richest man in the world, right? I mean, USAID is the instrument that you used to do that. So there's no appetite for it in the United States to try to spend money on making the world safe for democracy or spread democracy. And, you know, I think the geopolitical plates are shifting very, very quickly in ways that are scaring Europe, rightly, that the quote unquote leader of the free world won't actually stand up when push comes to shove. Ross, thank you so much for the question. Brian, a final thought, which we talked about on the Today Programme when Nick and I were last presenting together this week, which is the economic numbers coming out of America.
37:35It's just it's thinking about how solid is Trump and how solid is MAGA. And there's a couple of things. One is unless he changes the Constitution, this is his final term because you can't do more than two terms. He's got midterms coming up. And generally speaking, if presidents serve a second term after the midterms, people thoughts turn a little bit to who might replace them. And maybe J.D. Vance is in prime position. So one thing is, has Donald Trump got a kind of, you know, rush because, you know, in two years time, he's going to suddenly find power seeps away from him. But then the other thing is that the numbers I was looking at this after we came off.
38:04The numbers coming out of America are quite worrying for America. Inflation is sticky and high and tariffs could well make it significantly worse. America's economy is powered by domestic consumer spending, which fell in January. And separate to all of that, you've got an increased number of layoffs and a general kind of, not panic, but definite jitters on Wall Street, which is not, you know, could send shockwaves through the economy. Now, whether or not this all reaches the American punter, whether or not they find out about it through the new ecosystem of American media, who knows? But that is a potential fragility in the Donald Trump story, isn't it?
38:38Yeah, I think there's basically two ways that Donald Trump is fragile. One is the economy. And as you say, the numbers are already worrying. The tariffs are going to make it worse. And I think there's a significant risk that in addition to that, all of the cuts of the federal workforce are going to depress spending that will make the recession more likely. And the second thing that I think is a major vulnerability is that a lot of the cuts that are happening to government are courting risks that people don't currently clock. So, for example, if you cut air traffic controllers and a plane crashes, Donald Trump is going to get blamed for that.
39:11And so I think my prediction of the second term is that at some point we're going to find out why government spending exists and we're going to find out the hard way. And that's going to create a political vulnerability for Donald Trump. Brian Klass, it's been a real pleasure to talk to you. Thank you very much indeed. I assume there's a book about the second term being written as we speak. Well, there's a book called Fluke behind you. It doesn't sound like there's anything about Donald Trump that you could describe as a fluke. Is that your second book, Brian? Forgive me, I didn't know. It is indeed.
39:38Yeah. Fluke is the book that just came out in paperback. And it's all about sort of chaos theory in social systems. And one of the best examples of this, by the way, is how different the 21st century would be if there had been a gust of wind on the day that Donald Trump narrowly escaped that assassination attempt. The small details really affect history. And that's what the argument of the book is. Fascinating. Ryan, very good to talk to you. Thank you so much. Thanks so much for having me on the show.
40:09I had a fascinating conversation on the programme. I hope it was fascinating for people listening, but for me it was fascinating. And as you know, we often have to do these interviews the second we walk in the office just after four o 'clock in the morning with a guy's head of CPAC, that massively powerful Conservative conference that Trump spoke at this year, has for years gone by, a guy called Matt Schlapp. And I mention it now because when I introduced him, I realised that he'd worked for George W. Bush. And I thought pretty much everything that he would have stood for then has been ripped up or turned on its head.
40:45So I put it to him. Hold on, you're a free trader now in favour of tariffs. You're opposed to the Kremlin. Now you're a cheerleader for a guy sucking up to the guy in the Kremlin. What's happened? And he thought I was accusing him of lying. And I wasn't doing anything of the sort. I was trying to get my head round how people have made this transformation. And sometimes it's fear and weakness, as we've heard described. But I think there's a bigger thing going on here that we've alluded to over recent episodes of this podcast. A feeling that those things that Brian thinks matter, democracy, rules, institutions, values, shared assumptions, they didn't deliver.
41:24Didn't deliver for ordinary working people. Didn't deliver the will of the people against the elites. So, hey, let's rip them up. Who cares? And how's it come to be the case, Nick? I mean, it's funny, we take the mickey gently out of your Cold War recollections and the Berlin Wall. But how's it come to be the case that the former Conservative Party of America is the one that's ripping up democratic norms? You know, Brian talked a lot about the importance of institutions. And in fact, the recent winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, Daron Asimoglu, was a co-author of a book called Why Nations Fail.
41:59And the central argument of that was the nations that succeed have got strong institutions. The nations that fail have got weak institutions. And it used to be the Republican Party, even pretty recently, the Republican Party of John McCain, that war veteran, of Mitt Romney, that hugely effective capitalist and Massachusetts governor, the Republican Party of Ronald Reagan that believed in the Western alliance, that believed in standing with Europe, that believed very strongly in democratic norms. And yet all around the world, it seems now to be parties of the right that are ripping up customs, ripping up democratic norms.
42:31And strangely, the flip side of that is that if they're the ones ripping up democratic customs, it's the parties of the left and centre-left that look almost like they're the conservatives because they're kind of in the position of seeming to say, actually, this whole thing about the rule of law, which you guys used to champion, maybe we want to do that instead. This whole idea of a free press, maybe we want to be the people that do this. So there is this strange way in which politics in our time seems to have completely flipped. It's inverted, isn't it? It's because the right increasingly believe that the law, the media, officialdom, bureaucracy as it's called, has produced a set of values that overturns what they think is the will of the people.
43:10and they think they're therefore entitled to rip it all up. We could do a programme about this. We should try this sometime.
43:19If you want to send us a voice note like Ros did, it's always good to hear from you. The WhatsApp number is plus 44 330 123 4346. That's plus 44 330 123 4346. Or email us today at bbc.co.uk. Time for Moment of the Week. I like, I really, it's Moment of the Week because the thing is it makes me reflect. And I've got a feeling I know what your moment of the week is. In fact, I've got a moment of the week on your behalf, as it were, because I rather enjoyed it. We should do this. We should do the other person's moment of the week, shouldn't we? I've got a weird one, but you know what? It was my moment of the week.
43:53And so in the spirit of honesty and frankness, which I bring to all my public endeavours, I'm going to say it. I went to a friend's 40th, and it was a little dinner in a wonderful restaurant. And I'm not going to name him because it might have been a private thing. But anyway, I really wanted to say a few words, Nick. And you know me. shy, retiring wallflower that I am. Somehow you overcame that. Somehow, do you know what? I was thinking, is it the right thing to do? I've not prepared anything. I don't know what I'm going to say. And I was getting a bit nervous about it. And you know what? I was going to, I had to leave early because I have to be presenting the stay program and you and I are very disciplined about that.
44:24So everyone else was staying late. And I thought to myself, am I going to say a few words? Am I going to say a few words? And you know what I did? I went ting, ting, ting. And I stood up and I said what was on my mind and as I walked out, it felt good. and I've had a few messages today that make me feel like I made the right decision. So overcoming my nerves to tell someone that I love, a friend of mine, that I adore him in a small but public environment, that was my moment of the week. The truth is people like you and me who are used to speaking to quite large numbers of people find it quite intimidating to talk to small numbers of people who really know you.
44:58Exactly. Much more scary. Much more scary. And also doing it proud. You know, you're talking to your friend's 40th. You want to say meaningful stuff. You know, you want to say something really pertinent. And anyway, I did. So I'm rather happy about myself. You can give a speech for my next birthday. I'm very happy to. My moment of the week on your behalf might involve a magnificent get, which is the first interview with the most powerful British Asian in modern history, which is me. Almost. If only. No, it's got to be your magnificent get, and it was with Rishi Sunak, which, you know, just because of the nature of these things, I haven't had a chance to listen to yet, but I'm going to spend two hours today listening to.
45:38Two hours. Now, there's a thought, isn't it? Well, I hope I can get the two hours. Yeah. No, the reason I say that, though, is because there'll be some people thinking, my goodness, two hours without any politician. Do I really want that? And I'll be honest with you, when it was first suggested to me that Rishi Sunak didn't want to do a conventional interview, didn't want to come on at 10 past eight on the Today programme, he didn't want to do even my normal political thinking podcast length, which is about 40 odd minutes or so. He wanted to do two at one stage, three hours. I thought, really, good gracious.
46:09I mean, nobody's going to want to listen to that amount of time, are they? Yes, they are. I'm a convert, actually, genuinely. And I hope people who listen to it, who've got the time to listen to it at full length, BBC Sounds, or even a boiled down length. There's an hour on BBC Two, an hour on Radio 4 as well. We'll think having a longer conversation like that did produce, produce, I think, quite a lot more. Yes, I was able to test him on the obvious mistakes and challenges around policies that didn't work, stop the boats, embarrassments, the D-Day, the standing outside in the rain and all that sort of thing when he announced the election.
46:45But I was able to discuss things which we wouldn't have got time for in an normal interview, which is, as the first British Asian Prime Minister, as a man of faith, not just a Hindu, but for whom his Hindu values are very important. He talks again and again about a concept you will know, but many who are not Hindu may not, Dharama, the concept of duty. And it's very interesting in his case, because it becomes clear that the way he gets through what he describes as a very lonely job, a job he also says that he can't really remember a time he enjoyed, was that sense of duty of which you tell me he explained disconnects the idea of doing what you ought to from the idea of any reward for it any outcome is to do it for i would say don't mind duty obviously it's not a literal translation as duty something like public spirit and it's this idea that what you do you do it in a non-transactional way you do it because it's an end in itself uh you know you should serve the public good or you should feed this family or you should feed the poor as an end in itself not because you in any way spiritually or morally benefit.
47:54I mean, the editorial content is a thing that I'm obviously intrigued by. It's just worth saying on the length of podcasts, I only listen to very long podcasts. Most recent podcasts I heard by coincidence was Mark Zuckerberg, one of the most powerful men in modern history, on the Joe Rogan podcast, two hours and 25 minutes. Previous episode, but one was three hours and 13 minutes. So I think that very long conversation is becoming the norm and very powerful people are getting used to that. But what I, just from the clips I've seen on Instagram, the cut down we heard on the Today programme, what is it, Nick, that means that politicians, when they leave power, they're so much more relatable?
48:33And, you know, when he talks, I don't want to give it away because it's your podcast, but he talks about how he got Stop the Boats wrong. And, you know, you and I talked to him and to others on the Today programme for months saying, why are you calling it Stop the Boats? Why are you being so emphatic? You're not going to stop the boats. You can't get it down to zero. aren't you overdoing it? And he says, no, no, we're going to stop the boats. And you listen to him now, thoughtful, reflective, ponderous almost. I said, yeah, it's your scoop, as it were. But he says, yeah, I think we got it wrong.
48:59I think the communication was wrong. I don't think there would have been a big political cost to saying earlier, you know what, maybe we have got it wrong. And I do think that these long-form conversations... In office, yeah. I mean, there would have been some political cost. But I think the norms of political communication, people have become accustomed to from the 20th century and the start of this one are gone. And I think that doing these podcasts, these long conversations are revealing a way in which politicians can communicate that genuinely just makes them quite likeable. Their fear, though, is that that just gets boiled down, whether it's two hours or 28 hours, to Sunak does U-turn, Sunak admits mistake, Sunak admits he couldn't deliver.
49:40That's what they fear. And that would be worse in office, because, of course, it's in the interest of the opposition. It's in the interest, arguably, of the media who want a good headline in order to do that. And if it's critics on social media who then want to clip it. But yeah, it's an interesting question about whether you could, if you did it more often and talked at greater length, you could get away with it. I'm going to make a weird parallel with the subject of this podcast, which is Trump. Now, Trump clearly doesn't do these long, discursive interviews in which he's candid. He does long, boastful speeches.
50:15but in a way by talking endlessly at an almost length he's actually taught people to discount a lot of what he says so in other words to get a sense that oh look don't worry about that phrase or this you know if something will change by tomorrow you get a sense of his direction you get a sense of what makes his heart beat faster what he cares about but you don't get that literal sense that those exact words are precisely what he means and that if he ever deviates from those words, it's an incredible embarrassment. But on the question of podcasts, which we should talk about because this is a podcast, Rishi Sunak wanted to do his first interview after an absolute drubbing in the election, absolute drubbing, big mistake to call it.
51:00And he wanted to do a podcast. And people will see when they watch it on the TV that it's a conversation across the room, like a kind of coffee table thing. and he and his people, presumably James Forsyth, who works with him, have made a decision that he should do, his first intervention, which frankly, 15, 20 years ago, might have been on the news or whatever, Panorama Newsnight. He wanted to do a podcast and he wanted to do a podcast for a different tone. Why didn't he want that tone while in office? I'm not sure he thought he could achieve it is one of the reasons. And I don't think he thought he could get away with it.
51:37One of the things I learned from the conversation is the extent to which he felt a prisoner of the Conservative Party's warring factions. They changed Prime Minister three times in 50 days. There were five so-called warring families. These were rebel groups who were named with a smile. I don't think he put a smile on Rishi Sunak's face after the New York Five Mafia families. And he admits in the podcast when I say to him, why weren't you more like Trump? Why wouldn't he just decide it? Why wouldn't he even more like Boris Johnson, who kicked people out of the party who disagreed with him about Brexit?
52:13He said he thought it was his job to bring about stability, but he concedes it's a reasonable question. Perhaps he could have done it, should have done it in a different way. I don't think he felt that he had any space, any latitude at all to be kind of open and honest about some of those tradeoffs, not least because he lacked a personal mandate. not only had there not been a general election, there not even been a Tory leadership election. And the story that will stick in my mind pretty much forever, which, to be fair, was in Tim Shipman's very good book, one of his many very good books, but hearing him relate it directly, was Sunak, who, remember, has lost the Tory leadership election to Liz Truss, is now a backbencher.
53:00It's over. He is taking his kids bowling in Teesside, near his constituency in Richmond. And after bowling, they go to TGI's to have ribs, I think it was. And he gets a phone call saying, Truss has gone. And he has to think, do I want to be Prime Minister? Because he was the obvious candidate to do it. And he clearly had doubts. Or he says he had doubts. But people around him say he had doubts. Four days later, he's Prime Minister. four days Nick I would say that you I'm more excited about listening to your podcast chat with Rishi than I've ever been excited about any other podcast in history this is I mean you've given that one hell of a so I'm going to go and listen just final final thought for me because obviously your podcast I've got to talk about it I mean just worth making a note he is obviously a remarkable man he is obviously an extraordinary figure to be Britain's first British Asian Prime Minister for it not to be that big a deal.
54:01He had a very successful career in business beforehand. I think it's worth saying he's generally regarded as an extremely hardworking, pretty decent sort of chap. He is a historic figure. And for that reason, and also to hear your voice, which I don't sadly hear nearly enough of, I can't wait for that podcast. Thank you very much. Political thinking on BBC Sounds, thank you for that amazingly generous puff and plug for it. That's it from us. The Today podcast is out every Thursday to make sure you don't miss future episodes. Just search for us on BBC Sounds and hit subscribe. Thanks for listening and bye.
54:35Bye.
54:39A billionaire Christian family is building a huge collection of artefacts for their Museum of the Bible in Washington, D.C. During that time, there were 30 ,000 items probably. But a scholar turned super sleuth starts asking questions. The magnitude of what I found out is incredible. I'm Ben Lewis. I investigate the darker side of the arts and antiquities world, but nothing prepared me for this story. Something truly, truly wrong was going on. Looters, forgeries and a scandal of biblical proportions. From BBC Radio 4, Intrigue, Word of God. Listen first on BBC Sounds.
55:29If journalism is the first draft of history, what happens if that draft is flawed? In 1999, four Russian apartment buildings were bombed, hundreds killed. But even now, we still don't know for sure who did it. It's a mystery that sparked chilling theories. I'm Helena Merriman, and in a new BBC series, I'm talking to the reporters who first covered this story. What did they miss the first time? The History Bureau, Putin and the apartment bombs. Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.
From the publisher
In the first six weeks of his second term Donald Trump has rewritten US foreign policy, fractured the Nato alliance, dismantled parts of the US government and signed various presidential orders on everything from border security to diversity programmes.
In this episode Nick and Amol are joined by Brian Klaas, professor of global politics at University College London and a writer for The Atlantic magazine, who thinks Trump is undermining democracy and global security (07:44).
And Nick tells Amol about his exclusive interview with Rishi Sunak (44:36).
To get Amol and Nick's take on the biggest stories and insights from behind the scenes at the UK's most influential radio news programme make sure you hit subscribe on BBC Sounds. That way you’ll get an alert every time we release a new episode, and you won’t miss our extra bonus episodes either. GET IN TOUCH: * Send us a message or a voice note via WhatsApp to +44 330 123 4346 * Email today@bbc.co.uk The Today Podcast is hosted by Amol Rajan and Nick Robinson who are both presenters of BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. Amol was the BBC’s media editor for six years and is the former editor of the Independent, he’s also the current presenter of University Challenge. Nick has presented the Today programme since 2015, he was the BBC’s political editor for ten years before that and also previously worked as ITV’s political editor. This episode was made by Lewis Vickers with Nadia Gyane and Grace Reeve. Digital production was by Grace Reeve. The technical producer was Jonny Baker. The editor is Louisa Lewis. The executive producer is Owenna Griffiths.