Inside the room as Starmer Trumped at Turnberry

0:04The Telegraph.

0:09Donald Trump is back in town up at Turnberry, impressing world leaders with his unique approach to diplomacy. How did he get on with Starmer and has he got the EU over a barrel? We'll be talking to our man in Turnberry, our correspondent Rob Crilly. We'll also be talking to Kurt Mills, a seasoned Trump and MAGA watcher, about just what the Epstein files mean for Trump. And, Camilla, you've been with his best mate, Nigel Farage. I have indeed. Welcome to The Daily Tea with me, Camilla Tominey. And me, Gordon Rayner.

0:50Now, Gordon, I walked into the newsroom today, having been at the Reform Press Conference and we'll get on to that a little later. I saw you. Did you see him on the telly, Bob? I saw the back of your head. Oh, right, great. Thank God I've done my hair today. And we were both taking a little bit of delight in the EU's misfortune right now. And now I say that as an outward Brexiteer. I think you say it as somebody who's had it up to here with Guy Verhorstatt and his constant protestations about Brexit. Certainly with Ramona's, yeah. We've both had it up to here with Ramonas, and now the Ramonas have been silenced.

1:25Were you silent or silenced? Yeah. I mean, I think we just need to take a very deep, warm bath, don't we, in the sheer misery coming out of Europe right now. So Trump has met Ursula von der Leyen at the weekend. He did a trade deal with her, which sets the tariffs on goods from Europe to the US at 15%. It was going to be 30, right? It was going to be 30. Now it's 15. but obviously the deal that he did with Britain was 10 % which means that, guess what, the EU has got a worse deal than Britain. Who would have thought it? I thought we were going to be bankrupted by Brexit. What a relief it is that we're not.

2:02And people have noticed. Well, we're going to be bankrupted probably by Labour, by the way, so I probably shouldn't be gleeful, but go on. Well, but let's just take the winds where we can, shall we? Yeah, so there's been some rather negative reaction to this deal from some European leaders, Camilla. The French Prime Minister, François Beirut, said on X, it's a dark day when an alliance of free peoples united to affirm their values and defend their interests resolves to submission. Yeah, welcome to our world, mate. This is what happens when protectionists meet protectionists. It's then a case of the art of the deal.

2:35And in this case, it seems that the US has got the best one. After all, Hungarian PM Viktor Orban has put it quite succinctly when it comes to describing von der Leyen, the European Commission president. as a featherweight who had been, quotes, eaten for breakfast by the US president. Yes, and Guy Verhofstadt, remember him? Of course we do. He said, the EU-US deal is scandalous, a disaster, with not one concession from the American side, badly negotiated. And he's saying that as a former EU Brexit negotiator. So, again, there's a degree of schadenfreude here, I believe. More than a degree. And we had Georgia Maloney, who would probably be the closest to Trump of all the European leaders, apart from perhaps Orbán.

3:19She's being quite circumspect. She says, I consider it positive that there is an agreement, but if I don't see the details, I'm not able to judge it in the best way. I like that, preserving judgment. And then later she said, a number of elements are missing, referencing key details on particularly sensitive sectors, such as pharmaceuticals and the automotive industry. But isn't Jonathan Reynolds' response the best? So our very own business secretary, as you say, Jonathan Reynolds, owner Valdremana, he said there was no doubt the difference between the deals was down to Brexit. He said, I'm absolutely clear, this is a benefit of being out of the European Union, having our independent trade policy.

3:58Absolutely no doubt about that. Thank you very much indeed, Jonathan Reynolds. Finally, Labour has seen sense on Brexit. John Redwood, leading lever, is not happy, by the way. Former Tory MP says that the deal we've struck with the EU is terrible. But, you know, let's just, as you say, take our wins and we can find them. Quite interesting choreography around today, Gordon. So we have Starmer turning up at one o 'clock. The meeting doesn't get off to the best start when a bagpiper, can I just say bagpiping, is one of my bet noirs. Oh, I quite like a bagpiper. Oh, I can't bear the sound of it. I used to think the late Queen being woken up by a piper every morning.

4:35I can't think of anything worse. I would agree with you on lone pipers. But if you listen to massed pipe bands, and especially if you listen to it live, and especially indoors, it's incredible because the noise, it just goes literally physically through you. How many times have you listened to a bagpipe band indoors live? Probably, maybe only once, but it made a big impression on me, I can tell you that. All right, so basically these pipers are playing and nobody can hear a word that Trump is saying as he speaks on the steps outside of Turnberry, which is his golf club in Scotland. Thank you all very much.

5:07Do you have any questions? Are you going to come down on a field in a minute? Excuse me? Are you going to come down on a field? Are you going to go on the water park? No, we're in great shape. The trade deal was made. The UK, the Prime Minister, they did a great job. You know, they've been trying to make that deal for 12 years, and he got it done. Everybody respects it. There's going to be a lot of jobs for here, and great for America. I mean, look, there are probably a lot of people out there who might be quite pleased that they can only hear a bag of piper, and not Trump. But anyway, eventually the bagpiper stopped his piping.

5:41Trump gave some characteristically wide-ranging comments, everything from the Congo to Sir Keir Starmer's wife to nuclear dust. And this is him being asked about the small boats crisis in the Channel. Immigration is a big factor. And I think, frankly, if they're coming from other countries and you don't know who they are, and are they coming from prisons? We have them where they came in from prisons. We're moving them all out. We had a border last June, just recent, you know, last month. We had zero people come into the country. Zero. Other than coming through legal means. If you're stopping immigration and stopping the wrong people, I give my hats off to you.

6:21You're doing not a good thing. You're doing a fantastic thing. So I know nothing about the boats. But if the boats are loaded up with bad people, and they usually are because, you know, other countries don't send their best. they send people that they don't want and they're not stupid people and they send the people that they don't want and I've heard that you've taken a much stronger stance on immigration. Yeah, we've done a lot of work stopping them coming. We just signed an agreement to return them and we've returned 35 ,000 in fact after the first year of this Labour government of people who shouldn't be in this country so we're very pleased that we're getting on with returning people who've got no right to be here.

6:57Well, after that, Trump and Starmer went inside for what's known as a bilateral meeting. That's a posh word for two people sitting down together. And before they had that meeting, they allowed the media to fire questions at them, which Trump very often does when he's doing these meetings in, say, the Oval Office. As part of the press conference, which did go on a bit, Gordon. Forever? There was a moment where they had a bit of argy-bargy about the London Mayor Sadiq Khan, who famously put a baby blimp up on a previous Trump visit to the UK. Will you visit London during the state visit? I will.

7:36I'm not a fan of your mayor. Why not? I think he's done a terrible job, the mayor of London. But the nasty person, I think he's done... He's a friend of mine, right? No, I think he's done a terrible job. But I would certainly visit London, yes. Well, joining us now from Turnberry, on a bus about to go from the venue to Prestwick Airport, is none other than Rob Crilly, our chief US correspondent. Rob, thanks for joining us on The Daily Tea. This originally, today was billed as a day where not much was meant to happen, wasn't it? Because there was nothing pre-agreed before this Trump-Starma meeting.

8:18But the vacuum was most definitely filled, wasn't it, at that sort of impromptu press conference, which went on for an awfully long time. I can tell you it was an hour and 10 minutes because I was stood there awkwardly up against the rope separating off journalists. And yeah, as you say, you know, I spoke to British officials last week and they said, well, you know, we don't even have a list of deliverables. We're not going to have anything to announce off the back of this meeting. It is really a golfing trip for Trump, largely this with the meeting with the prime minister bolted on. But then, of course, that reckons without Donald Trump.

8:50I mean, before we even went inside the building, as he greeted Zakir and his wife on the steps, he made news saying he was going to reduce the 50 days he'd given to President Putin to end the war in Ukraine before secondary sanctions kick in. He was going to reduce that. He talked about Gaza. You know, he talked about immigration. And that was just on the steps of Turnberry. I mean, we'd heard from Viktor Orban this morning saying Ursula von der Leyen had been eaten for breakfast by the US president. Has Starmer just been eaten for lunch, Rob? Well, I tell you what, I mean, I was very impressed with Zakir's poker face and all his team, because he had to sit there and Donald Trump essentially laid out what he thought was the Labour government's policy on immigration, describing how you win elections by getting tough on immigration, and that Zakir wanted to cut as much tax as possible.

9:44barely a flicker from the government team of four, at least that opposite their American counterparts. But yeah, I mean, look, this was the Donald Trump show, and it was all the British Prime Minister could do not to give away his reactions to some of the more awkward turns. Starmusch became the invisible man, didn't he? Nobody seemed to want to even ask him a question, hardly. Yeah, I mean, but I think that's probably, in circumstances like this, mission accomplished. I mean, you push back too hard on President Trump when he makes some unfounded claim about windmills killing birds. You push back at him on your peril.

10:20And this was really set up as home territory for Mr Trump. I mean, you know, it might be Scottish soil, but we are here at Turnberry, his famous Scottish golf course. And he'd set up the chairs very much in the arrangement of the Oval Office. So we were in a big ballroom, but it was brought down to a very intimate space with two big armchairs at the end with the president and the prime minister. And their teams sitting alongside them very much lined up as if they would have been on the sofas in the Oval Office. So, you know, I think Trump could have turned the table. Trump was very much the host and he could have turned the tables quite quickly on his guest if he wanted to.

10:55What does it say about the relationship between these two unlikely allies, Rob, that he didn't? Yeah, I mean, I asked this question, you know, I mean, And Sikir put it rather diplomatically in terms of two people who believe in their countries and want to make their countries as great as possible. And that just means working together. Mr. Trump, I think, just wants to cut a deal. And, you know, he also talked about his love of the royal family and a real warmth for Scotland. You know, my mother loved Scotland and she loved the Queen. I don't know. I might hurt myself by saying that the monarchists are going to like it.

11:33some other people, but she loved the Queen. Whenever the Queen was on television, she wanted to watch. And she would come back religiously, she'd come back to Scotland once a year with my sister Marianne. So I think there's a real kind of sentimental side of Donald Trump. You don't see very often that Sakhir has been a beneficiary of. And as Sakhir said, it's really two leaders who wanted to get deals done for their countries. There were some definite wins for Sakhir, weren't there, I think. I mean, Trump talked about how America had an unparalleled relationship with the UK. He also talked about Europe and said they've got to get their act together.

12:08Plus, obviously, the fact that the Europeans got this rather worse trade deal than we did. So probably Keir Starmer will feel that he's got some wins in the bag from this, won't he? Yeah. And, you know, there's also some sort of commitment from the US to do more on aid in Gaza. I mean, we pushed the president on whether he was going to get tougher on Prime Minister Netanyahu, and he rather avoided that question. But we know that the prime minister came really wanting to push Trump hard on getting peace talks restarted. That seems a stretch, maybe, but he may have won some concessions on getting aid in.

12:43And then also, interestingly, I asked the president what he thought of Mr Starmer's comments recently that recognising Palestinian statehood was a concrete step towards a lasting peace. And the president said, well, you know, he's entitled to believe that if he wants. I won't be taking a position, but the prime minister can. So I don't know, some really contentious issues where they seem to find some fragile common ground. Final question, Rob. Where was Melania? yes well very much not in scotland i think sort of airship may be beautiful but it's gray and it's damp and she's not big on golf so this is very much not her kind of trip just tell us whereabouts are you going now what's happening next well this is super exciting i'm in a bus here but we're going to drive to presidwick airport where air force one is waiting for us the prime minister is coming with us as well so he's going to get a ride on air force one we're going to fly to the northeast of scotland into loss of mouth the raf base there i think where marine one is waiting and if the weather is good enough that means the prime minister is going to become one of a select few who's been given a ride on marine one wow the press don't get on a helicopter we're actually even more excitingly on an osprey which is a tilt rotor plane and we'll be following along and we'll see them all at the golf course up there all right great stuff rob we're We're going to try and link some of your reportage into our show notes so everyone can follow it every step of the way, because I know you've been updating the live blog every minute and going to be very, very busy until Trump returns to Trump land.

14:13Thank you very much, Rob Crilly. Lovely to talk to you. Meanwhile, Gordon, this morning I was in Reformland. I was at Milbank Tower, where a press conference took place. This is press conference number two of what I'm calling Nigel Farage's Crime and Punishment series. Yeah, hasn't he promised a summer of press conferences? He's just going to machine gun out these press conferences at least once a week, maybe even more often. I'm not sure if we should say machine gun because that would be breaking the law to use a machine gun on the streets of Westminster. Well, you know what I mean. He unveiled a top cop.

14:47Yes. He unveiled Colin Sutton, who was the man who caught Levi Belfield and others. And he's switched to reform. So there's a lot of tough rhetoric on all sorts of things. but obviously Trump featured because they are besties. Except that they're not sufficiently besties that Nigel's been invited to Turnberry, are they? Well, he was asked that by the man from the New York Times who pointed out that shouldn't Faraj be there really because they are besties and he doesn't seem to be a part of the tartan-clad festivities. Did you actually request a meeting and if so, was it declined? And the president has actually been very complimentary about Keir Starmer.

15:26He keeps on saying he's a very good job, which, correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't seem to be your position. Doesn't that indicate that perhaps your influence in the White House, whatever you say, has declined somewhat now? I haven't tried to use any influence in the White House. You know, I am now the leader of the opposition in Britain. Kemi thinks she is, but it's just not true. And as leader of the opposition, it puts me in a damned awkward position when there are so many negotiations going on. All right? I mean, you have your fun at the New York Times, that's fine. But that is the position.

15:59And I'm sure that when the Prime Minister says he likes Keir Starmer, he absolutely means it. I can see that they are buddham buzzes in so many ways. Big personalities, tremendous sense of humour, real-world experience. I fully understand why they are the absolute best of friends. Thank you, everybody. Well, that was what Nigel Farage said. And then at the other end, up in Turnberry, Donald Trump was asked about Nigel Farage. Well, I like Nigel. I mean, Nigel, as you know, is a friend of mine. Nigel's done very well. He's a friend of mine. Then afterwards I saw you were talking to a lady called Ann Coulter who was there.

16:36Tell me about that. Are you familiar with Ann Coulter? Not massively. She's quite an outspoken sort of MAGA Trump type who has got a huge following in America, not least because she makes very many right-wing media appearances. She was there with Richard Tice, the deputy leader. It was pointed out in the press conference, oh, what's Ann Coulter doing here? And then I thought, well, why not just bowl up to her afterwards and start asking her some questions? Now, as you will hear in the following audio, her answer to the first question did leave me a little confused and it required clarification, but let's just have a listen.

17:09Anne Coulter, lovely to see you here at the Reform press conference. Are you a fan of Nigel? Yeah, that was pretty good. Although I prefer the guy who calls them shithole countries and engages in mass deportations. Oh, what do you mean, Rupert Lowe? So he's a little moderate for me. Oh, what, you prefer Rupert Lowe, no longer of this parish? Oh, I have no idea who you're talking about. I'm talking about my president. Ah, OK, so you think he's more punchy in his rhetoric than Farage is? We'll see on act, but he's been pretty great second term, not so much first term. And how do you think Trump's trip to the UK has gone so far?

17:42I mean, we're hearing of him having won the tariff war against Europe. Ursula von der Leyen's been described as being held over a barrel on their deal with the US. Is it a good trip to Turnberry for Trump, do you think? Sure, I'm all in favour of what he's doing on tariffs. I love him attacking the windmills, and after listening to the questions here today, I think he needs to bring up the great Anglo-Saxon tradition of free speech. Oh, my gosh, I can't believe in a room of press people who want more of a crackdown on free speech. What on earth has happened to the mother country? Although we didn't have a crackdown on free speech when we interviewed Trump when he arrived, because GB News' Bev Turner rightly asked him about illegal immigration into the UK.

18:26He described it as an invasion, said Europe had to get its house in order. Do you agree with that, Anne? Are we asleep at the wheel on this one? You're committing suicide. I can't understand why anyone would want to wreck this beautiful country. So, all in all, everything seems to be going quite well for Trump in Scotland, doesn't it? But that's not the only thing that's going on in his life right now. Now, there is obviously an awful lot of noise around the release or otherwise of the Jeffrey Epstein files in America. And coming up, we're going to be talking to somebody who is a seasoned Trump watcher who's going to tell us just what it all means for the president.

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19:50So let's talk about Epstein, who is somebody that you and I have both reported on fairly extensively. I remember being sent the Rolodex when I was a cub reporter. Goodness knows when, back in the early 2000s. Basically, this controversy in a nutshell involves Trump, when not in power, promising to release all of the documents relating to Jeffrey Epstein, who was a New York financier who ended up being a convicted paedophile. He procured young girls for prostitution. We know about him in this country, of course, because of his historic relationship with the Duke of York. But that aside, there's been allegations circling for decades now about who might have gone on the Lolita Express, his private jet, who holidayed at the Epstein Island.

20:39And now Trump having kind of escaped all this because quite a lot of the focus was actually on Bill Clinton and his own relationship with Epstein, is back in hot water because having said he will release the documents, now Pam Bondi, who's his Attorney General, has said they're not going to release the documents after all. And it's the lack of transparency that has fuelled many different conspiracy theories online and is now threatening to derail Trump's presidency. Yes, and it's also part of the reason that he fell out with Elon Musk Musk supposedly, isn't it, that Musk felt that he was not playing a straight bat over this, as we say in England, or not playing a straight, I don't know, baseball bat, you would maybe say in America, I'm not sure.

21:22Anyway, Trump has called the whole thing a hoax. He's denied these allegations that he sent this birthday letter to Epstein with the lewd drawing on it. And he's even launched a defamation lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal. And such is the scale of the story that it even came up at today's press conference in Turnberry. I don't do drawings. Sometimes people would say, would you draw a building and I'll draw four lines and a little roof, you know, for charity stuff. But I'm not a drawing person. I don't do drawings of women, that I can tell you. And also, you know, Epstein was always a very controversial guy.

21:58I was at a very high position, you know, pretty much all my life, in all fairness. I've been doing this for a long time. I had the top show on television. I had the number one best sellers. I had everything, right? and I was a very successful business guy. He was a very controversial. Who would do a controversial drawing? Now, with that being said, they say there were many letters done by many people and many big people, you know, big successful people. You know, when you talk about files, I just keep going back and other people too. Even the enemy says this thing is not correct because if we had it, we would have used it on the guy.

22:39Well, joining us from Washington, D.C. is Kurt Mills, who is executive director of the American Conservative. Kurt, thank you for joining us on The Daily Tea. Thanks for having me. We should say you're a Trump watcher and a big MAGA watcher. Can you just explain to our audience, how did Jeffrey Epstein first become such an important issue for Trump and the whole MAGA movement? Yeah, it's interesting. I suppose he used it as a weapon in the 2016 campaign against Hillary Clinton. It's a clip that's now getting resurfaced here in the States ad nauseum, where he said in the primary or in the general election to Sean Hannity that Bill Clinton, the former president, was going to have problems with the famous island, the Jeffrey Epstein Island.

23:22And again, it's a sort of interesting choice of words by Trump, because there's no evidence that Trump went to the island, which was kind of always used as a sort of exonerative or exculpatory piece of evidence that he wasn't really in Epstein's inner circle. He wasn't with the Bill Clintons or the Leon Blacks, I believe. You know, everybody knew Epstein in the elite in New York, but Trump wasn't flying out, you know, out of the country, out of the States to go to this secret island. And so that kind of came big. And then, you know, the Epstein story blew up again for two reasons. And Trump won.

23:57Number one, the reporting that, you know, precipitated Jeffrey Epstein's second arrest in 18 to 19 happened while Trump was president. Epstein's death or suicide happened when Trump was the president. His attorney general, weird connections, his attorney general at the time, Barr. His father had been, I believe, the principal at the prestigious Dalton School in New York, where he had hired Jeffrey Epstein. And then Trump's own labor secretary at the time, Alexander Acosta, had been the original U.S. attorney that had cut a kind of sweetheart deal with Epstein in the 2000s. So there were all these weird connections.

24:34Epstein dies. COVID happens. Everyone kind of forgets it. And Trump is swept out of office. when Trump is storming back to power, it's arguably an even more anti-establishment effort than the first effort, especially because the president had been indicted, you know, scores of times. And a lot of his surrogates, not so much him, but a lot of his surrogates, including his son and the now vice president, J.D. Vance, specifically flagged the Epstein as something that they were going to unveil. And then additionally, transparency in general was far more part of the vibe of the second campaign, the second successful campaign.

25:12RFK Jr. thinks that his family was a target of intelligence agencies or something. Joe Rogan, the podcast kind of contingent, Elon Musk. These were all critical celebrity linchpins in the appeal. And so for the administration to try to shut down summarily the conversation suddenly, even for a base that's very loyal like MAGA, it's a bit of a volt fast. And then additionally, because the leading theory on Epstein is that he's perhaps Israeli intelligence, at a time that the US is as close with Israel and arguably doing Israel's foreign policy on its behalf, this has raised the scrutiny here in the summer in Washington.

25:53So Kurt, I mean, many would argue sunlight's the best disinfectant. If you've got nothing to hide, than just release the files. But then you're touching on this idea Epstein's in Mossad. You know, was he murdered in prison? Did he actually commit suicide? We are then entering the realms of conspiracy theory. And from that perspective, you can understand the White House not wanting to touch some of this stuff, even though there may be something buried in the files that does implicate Donald Trump. They don't have to touch it. They could just say the investigation is incomplete. they could release what they have, they're touching it by trying to shut down the investigation.

26:33That's an active move. And yeah, yeah, you're right. It's technically speaking a conspiracy theory. But what is not a conspiracy theory is that, number one, nobody really knows how this guy made his wealth. I mean, in terms of major clients, we only know one, the Wexner person in Ohio. Number two, there were significant ties to prominent Israeli figures. And number three, The president is behaving pretty strangely, given that most of Epstein's friends were Democrats. You know, I mean, like Trump has, especially as the years have gone on, has been a partisan par excellence. He'll use anything, you know, against his enemies.

27:05Fair or not. His politics is a context for it. And so why is he running such vigorous interference? Now, it could be very possible, like the explanation is embarrassment and vanity. That there are pictures out there, that there are body emails or letters. Basically, Epstein and his friendship, so far as we understand it, extended basically from the dissolution of his first marriage in the late 80s and early 90s through to the early 2000s, when the two of them had a real estate dispute and or Epstein became sketched out by Trump's money, which is, you know, pot calling the kettle black. But it was, as far as we can tell, about a 14-year relationship, 15-year relationship.

27:42And we don't know if it was that close. Epstein himself in audio recordings claimed that he was Donald Trump's best friend, which again, you can see why the White House does not want to talk about this. But it's not working. We are talking about it. So their approach, even if they had something to hide, is counterproductive. Kurt, people here will have been very interested in the fact that last week, the Deputy Attorney General, Todd Blanche, questioned Ghislaine Maxwell in prison. Why did that happen? Well, Blanche is also the president's personal attorney and like old school kind of fixer. I mean, for one, there is the actual technical matter of getting her to cooperate with authorities.

28:24So like she could incriminate herself further, which is the last thing any lawyer of a person incarcerated is going to allow them to do. So there is the actual technical if they're going to try to be more transparent, giving her, quote, limited immunities, but apparently what she's been granted. But number two, there is the fear that Trump could pardon her and release her from prison in exchange for her silence. There's no evidence for that other than the fact that he hasn't ruled it out. Or presumably in exchange for her exonerating him in some way. Is that part of the conversation? Yeah, I mean, the sort of, you know, gadfly, but, you know, not specifically falsified Trump chronicler Michael Wolff.

29:07He says that effectively that Maxwell is intimidating the Trump team by that basically Ghislaine's family. This is his reporting. This is speculative as far as I'm concerned. That Ghislaine's family is giving Rupert Murdoch information. And of course, the Rupert Murdoch Trump relationship, as I think all Murdoch's relationships with powerful people in our country and yours, are hyper complex. But it's not the worst theory, especially given that the Journal printed it. And by all reporting, the White House begged them not to. Yeah, although the counter-narrative to that from our press perspective would be, Maxwell has been absolutely hauled over the coals by the British press, including The Sun and The Times and any Murdoch-owned media empire.

29:53Her father was associated with their arch rivals, The Mirror. It's all slightly strange. How damaging can this be for Trump, Kurt? Because we've got the congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, usually a massive Trump fan, questioning his approach to this. We've got the right wing activist Laura Loomer also having been critical. Steve Bannon saying, again, the Oval Office needs to change tack. Is it going to be something that might seep into the midterms? How damaging is it? It's possible. The forensic way or the tactical way that it could sweep into the midterms is that if the scandal crescendos to such an extent, that they have to appoint a special counsel, which has already been talked about.

30:32And again, Trump is dredging up Russiagate as an example of this is an unfair inquisition. And I agree with him. Russiagate was an unfair inquisition. And it completely sublimated my presidency because the special counsel goes, it could take two years. The Mueller report took two years, 17 to 2019. So that's the easiest way it could go to the midterms if they have to appoint a special counsel. But the reality is, again, to repeat myself, like they might not be in this situation if they hadn't tried to shut it down sort of irrationally. As for his political coalition, I think the reality is that the sort of transparency, outlaw, anti-establishment feeling to his second campaign or second successful campaign was so critical in getting these celebrity endorsements, Musk, Rogan, et cetera, et cetera.

31:20And so just to turn tail on that, combined with, you know, the impression here, especially in sort of anti-establishment media, that he's doing the military industrial complexes bidding, you know, he's accelerating the war with Russia, he's accelerating the war with Iran, he's accelerating the war, you know, with Gaza, with Hamas. There's a dispiriting mood. It's not so much that, like, people within the coalition, I'd say, regret it. It's just like this administration does not have the energy that I think it had in March or April. And that matters. And additionally, you know, Trump himself has a gets a lot of nontraditional Republican voices.

31:57And so if those people stay home or if they revert to the Democrats, that's a problem. I'm not saying that Trump's, you know, support will capsize. But if you have an administration that's operating in the 30 percent approval rating, as I believe Gallup had 37 percent last week, that's the danger zone. That's the kind of zone of George W. Bush around Hurricane Katrina. And, you know, the George W. Bush second term remains the sort of horror story possibility of a second term for Republican presidents where the economy collapses, the military ventures don't work, and domestic credibility capsizes.

32:31You say that you're not saying that it's going to capsize, but do you think there is the potential there for this to have some sort of catastrophic effect on his presidency, maybe even end his presidency early? yes so i mean if i had to score it i would say if one being uh complete fake scandal that will do nothing and it can even help the administration and 10 being like a mortal imminent like direct in you know inescapable threat i would i would grade this about a seven and i'm someone who was an enormous skeptic of russia gate i did not think would force him from office for me russia gate was like a three so i think it's bigger and i don't know why they're acting uh so secretive and i I think additionally, because the prime suspect, I say suspect, not proven, because the prime suspect is Israeli intelligence, as long as the U.S.

33:18is so close with Netanyahu and this war is so controversial. I mean, like the Gaza thing is just blowing up. Number one, it's affecting his ability to get anything else done. I mean, all my sources within the administration says it's all Epstein Gaza all the time. And there is a lot of consternation that he's not doing enough with the border, which is basically his key issue. And additionally, if that's all they're talking about, it's just kind of, it's the motivating. Now, I would say to his advantage, the Democrats are way more demoralized than they were in 17, 18. They don't have a clear standard bearer.

33:52They're divided, perhaps in echo of the sort of fights between Starmer and Corbyn in the UK. The left itself is divided in that sense, feckless. So that's his ace in the hole. But right now, he's not managing his own defense as well at all. Kurt Mills, thank you very, very much indeed for joining us today on The Daily Tea.

34:15It does remain the big mystery how the hell Epstein amassed such a vast fortune and such influence. Yeah, it does. I was slightly surprised at how much he lent into the idea that this could actually end the Trump presidency. I thought he would sort of be slightly dismissive of that. But let's see. I mean, I suppose this is good news for J.D. Vance, isn't it? Because I don't think he's tainted by any of this. If Trump did topple, then Vance would take over. And obviously, Vance is the seenest candidate for next time around. And as Kurt said, the Democrats are still in disarray. So if I was J.D.

34:53Vance, I'd be keeping myself ready. Although you wouldn't tell it from today's performance, would you, by Trump that he's in trouble at home? I mean, in Scotland, he seems at home and quite happy with himself, but they have it. maybe we don't connect as much with the Epstein and other saga as our cousins across the pond. Shall we just have a little moment of celebrating what it means to be English? Yes. I say that specifically, not British, but English, as the Lionesses have after their amazing penalty victory over Spain. World champions, absolute favourites. Goodness me, they threw the kitchen sink at it.

35:27And I wrote that in a piece today and somebody said I was being sexist. I actually put that in to make a kind of girly reference. I think men do washing up and do things at kitchen sinks as well. I know. Well, I tried to make my piece quite girly and isn't this a thing for girls and for football mums and dads of daughters? And then I was like, people are like, why are you making this about gender? I'm like, well, female footballers have historically been completely underestimated and they've just won two successive Euro finals. Yeah, and I thought one of the points you made, which really struck me, was the fact that perhaps it's still being undersold in a way.

36:03It's not very long since these big women's matches were being played in sort of non-league stadiums. I thought it was quite striking that the stadiums that they were using for the Euros, they weren't that huge. I mean, I think the final was played in a 35 ,000-seater stadium. There were no other venues that were 30 ,000-seaters. Some of them were less than 10 ,000. I wonder if the next time around, when it comes to the next tournament and the tournament after, they need to be playing these matches in the same size stadiums that men's football is played in, the same stadiums, because it feels as though they would probably fill them.

36:35And how quickly has that come on? Well, also optically, this is going to have a 2012 effect in terms of creating more British athletes. This is going to create more English female footballers. I've got three kids. Son plays at a quite high level. The girls both play. I got them into it because when I was a girl, Gordon, this may surprise you actually, but with my two older brothers who constantly put me in goal, flat football, pair of dad's gardening gloves, used to say, can I shoot? They're like, Mil, girls don't shoot. And I accepted that as a child and I didn't play at school and I would have loved to.

37:10I met some European girls at university and they were like, yeah, we all play football. I was like, God, I wish I'd done that. I'd done lacrosse. You can't play that age 40 or indeed 47. Yeah, but maybe those girls that you met didn't have brothers. I'm afraid that the dynamic between brothers and sisters is probably not going to change. But what I'm saying is that my little youngest, who was watching it yesterday with her eyes wide, you know, like a budding lioness, this is inspirational stuff for the gen alphas of this world who can see the likes of Bronze, Williamson, Beth Mead and want to emulate them.

37:45And that will make us as a nation better at female football. Good. Well, we can all say amen to that. Shall we blow the whistle on this episode? Yes. We shall be back tomorrow. It'll be another game of two halves. There won't be any extra time, though. 5pm.

38:22Thank you.