Watch your back, Burnham: Trump's nemesis John Bolton on how to handle POTUS

0:02The Telegraph.

0:30Ask your doctor about the Cologuard test. Available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription at Cologuard.com slash podcast. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down. Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants.

1:07Employees get unblocked, and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot. Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

1:42He's the man who crossed Donald Trump and lived to regret it. In this Daily Tea exclusive, we speak to Ambassador John Bolton, who gives his advice to Andy Burnham on how best to manage a US president that does things very much his own way.

2:06John Bolton, former United States Ambassador to the United Nations and former National Security Advisor to Donald Trump. Thank you for once again joining us on the Daily Tea. The big question in the UK now that Andy Burnham has become our latest prime minister, that's the seventh in a decade, can you believe it, is what's going to happen to the special relationship? Oddly and unexpectedly, actually, Keir Starmer got on relatively well with Donald Trump until he refused to give his full-throated support to the war in Iran. I wonder how Andy Burnham is going to fare. What's your instinct, John? Well, they apparently had a good introductory phone call for Trump to congratulate the new prime minister.

2:51So that's better than not having a good first phone call, but I wouldn't put too much into it. I think the shape of the new government's national security policy is very hard to discern at the moment. Burnham himself obviously has been mayor of Manchester and focusing on issues that he's responsible for there, not speaking out on foreign policy, no surprise, but it leaves a big area to wonder. And the foreign secretary certainly has a paper trail, as we say, of things he said about foreign policy that many in Washington are concerned about. But he's not the prime minister. So he will have, obviously, authority, but he's not the ultimate decision maker.

3:43So I think at this point, there's just a lot of questioning and uncertainty. The new foreign secretary will meet with, perhaps already has met with Secretary of Rubio at the ASEAN meeting in Asia. And I'm sure they'll have a chance to go over the pending issues and maybe something will come out of that that'll help inform us. Yes. I mean, we'll get onto Ed Miliband in a moment because some of his ideas and policies aren't exactly something that would endear him to Republicans. But just to remain on Andy Burnham for a moment, I think Donald Trump has used the words very liberal to describe him.

4:22He initially welcomed our new Prime Minister suggesting that they might drill more in the North Sea. Although when you drill into the finer detail, actually, there aren't going to be any granting of new licences. This is just Andy Burnham saying he's going to honour the Labour manifesto on North Sea oil and gas. In general, I mean, how do you see the relationship between the UK and the US right now, that so-called special relationship, it strikes many in the UK that Donald Trump wants dominance over that, and that maybe somebody like Andy Burnham, who isn't that experienced on the world stage, might be easy to dominate.

5:02Well, it's hard to say. I mean, I think the special relationship has survived a number of administrations here, or governments in the UK that didn't necessarily get along on a lot of issues, because I think what drives the relationship is much deeper than who the temporary head of the government might be. But with Trump, it's always a coin toss, how he's going to feel on any given day or how any given conversation is going to go, which is not going to be easy, I think, for a new prime minister with such limited foreign policy experience. As you said earlier, there is a little bit of consternation within the Trump administration about Mr Miliband, who is somebody who has been described by the right over here as a net zero zealot.

5:50He has been very supportive of green energy projects, not particularly supportive of the Trumpian doctrine of drill baby drill. We've got somebody in the senior Trump team talking about him being a point of friction. Again, how problematic is that? Well, I don't think the sort of elite green opinion of how issues like global warming should be handled is going to find any sympathy in the Trump administration or any part of it. So that part isn't going anywhere, that's for sure. The real issues, I think, ultimately are going to have to be decided by the prime minister. You've got a chancellor of the Exchequer now, who is a former defense secretary, pressing for increased defense spending.

6:40I'm sure that will make Trump happy. But I think this is a new—because this government comes into power without having had to go through an election, which is obviously something that can happen under the British constitutional system, And there's just a general lack of understanding in the UK as well as in the US what's going to happen next. And I just think we're in for a period of uncertainty. It's not welcome. But issues that have been difficult under Starmer may or may not get worse, like the Chagos Island issue, which I thought at least we'd finally brought to a successful conclusion. I don't know if that's going to get opened up again.

7:27But after some initial missteps, the Trump administration finally got the drift of what was going on. And I think the transfer of sovereignty is now off. At least I hope that's the state of play. I guess we'll find out. Well, weirdly, Andy Burnham says that's a policy he might want to revive when, as you've just said, most of us over here thought that that deal was dead because it wasn't approved by Donald Trump. And indeed, the Conservatives found some ancient international treaty which looked as if it precluded it. The other thing that Mr. Burnham has said is that he thought that our initial support of Israel at the beginning of Israel's assault on Hamas following October the 7th might be misjudged and questioned Starmer's language when he defended Israel's right to defend itself.

8:16Again, that's not the sort of rhetoric that's going to sit comfortably in the White House, is it? No, but I think it's also the kind of rhetoric that you'd expect in certain circles of the Labour Party until it runs into reality. So Burnham is now prime minister. Welcome to reality. Yes. Let's have a look at some of the things that Miliband has said in the past about the US president. In 2016, he wrote, we must do our best at home and abroad to resist the worst of Trumpism. These are dark days for America and the world. There can be little solace right now. Then he told the BBC's World at One, quotes, the idea that we share values with a racist, misogynistic, self-confessed groper beggars belief.

8:58And in 2017, he said Trump had, quotes, lowered the bar for idiocy and later joined a Stop Trump March in London. I mean, Ambassador Bolton, you may now agree with some of these sentiments. I'm not sure. But again, it doesn't really sort of grease the wheels of the special relationship, does it, from our new foreign secretary? Well, not if he repeats them. It did look to me in the Starmer government that David Lammy and Peter Mandelson were able to ditch a lot of what they had said about Donald Trump as well. And sometimes Trump can say, oh, well, that's all in the past if he has a mind to. But I think Miliband now has a very difficult task ahead in figuring out how he's going to explain all that.

9:51Nirav Modi was a billionaire diamond tycoon whose jewellery was worn by Hollywood stars like Kate Winslet. But in 2018, he was accused of masterminding one of the world's biggest ever bank frauds, and he disappeared. This is the extraordinary story of the rise and fall of Nirav Modi. And of how we caught him. He was in the news all the time. Where is Nirav Modi? Why can we not find it? He's one of the most sought-after criminals in India. You owe a lot of people a lot of money, Mr Modi, who would very much like to know where you are. Sorry, no comment. The Indians will think we're a laughingstock.

10:31Here we are seven years later still speaking about this case. They think it's a sham. The Diamond King, a new podcast from The Telegraph. With me, Mick Brown. and me, Robert Mendick. Out now.

10:49This message is brought to you by Cologuard. If you recorded songs off the radio for a mixtape, it might be time to screen for colon cancer. The Cologuard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off, and you start screening right from your home. It's just three simple steps. Set up, sample, and ship. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, Ask your doctor about the Cologuard test. Available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription at cologuard.com slash podcast. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down.

11:27Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked, and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot.

12:08Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.

12:36It's chicken that's just chicken. And their lightly breaded chicken nuggets are free from gluten, dairy and soy. Look for Nature Raised Farms on your next grocery trip and feel more confident about your choices.

12:56Tell us about the environment over in America. You've got these crucial votes at the beginning of August. You've got a self-confessed socialist, I think, gunning to become governor of Michigan. You've got people increasingly turning against Donald Trump because of his foreign policy, because of the war in Iran. The midterms are looking a little shaky. Ambassador Bolton, take the temperature for us over there. Well, I think the sentiment in the Republican Party and Congress now is close to panic at what may happen in November. So they're trying to get out of town for the August recess. They'll be gone at the end of this week through our Labor Day, the first Sunday and first Monday in September.

13:42And then they'll do their best to get out of Washington again to get back and campaign for the election in November. I think it's almost 100 percent the prognostication by commentators that Democrats will win control of the House, perhaps by a narrow margin. But it's the way the House works, even a narrow margin, if it can be held together, would give the Democrats control. And therefore, every committee of Congress would spend the next two years investigating the Trump administration in the areas within their jurisdiction. So it's going to be trench warfare, and Trump's going to have a very unhappy last two years if the Democrats do take control.

14:28Control of the Senate is more up in the air. Right now, it's 53-47. Even if Republicans lost three seats, Vice President Vance could break the tie, and the Republicans would still be in control. But if the Democrats pick up four Senate seats, which is not impossible, then they would control both houses of Congress. And that could be very problematic. Former Republican leader Mitch McConnell has warned for years that if the Democrats got control of the Senate, they would abolish the filibuster, meaning that only 51 senators would be necessary to approve most things. They'd make the District of Columbia a state, which would give the Democrats two more senators.

15:11They'd pack the Supreme Court. I mean, you can see what the parade of horribles might be. So it's a lot rides on Republicans keeping control of at least one House. And I think that's most likely the Senate, all of which is to say that after November, all eyes turn to 2028 when everything comes up, including the presidency. So I think these last two years of Trump's term are likely to be unhappy for him in any case, but especially as more and more people talk about something he doesn't want to talk about, which is who's going to replace him. Well, who do you think might replace him? Initially, we thought, of course, J.D.

15:52Vance was going to be the natural successor. But Marco Rubio appears to be making quite a lot of ground. Well, I think Trump is very reluctant to anoint anyone as the crown prince. I think that's the last thing he wants is for is for that spotlight to shift away from him to somebody else. I do think he understands, notwithstanding what some of his followers want and some of the things he says, I do think he understands there is zero chance he can have a third term, zero constitutionally. But he will want to be able at some point to say, I got the nomination for Mr. X, whoever that turns out to be.

16:33I think it's part of Trump's strategy at this point to look very favorably on both Vance and Rubio. That way, neither one can rest easy at night thinking that they are the heir apparent. Rubio has a harder road in the sense that he has to resign being Secretary of State before he can run for president, whereas Vance, by definition, can remain vice president and still run for the nomination for the top job. So Rubio has to extricate himself from the Trump administration, probably after the end of this year, and still stay in Trump's good graces and then try and mount his campaign. But there's a lot of talk that there are many others out there among Republicans who may want to run for president.

17:22Senator Cruz of Texas, Senator Cotton of Arkansas, former Governor Youngkin of Virginia, Ron DeSantis, the current governor of Florida, and maybe others as well. I think we could have a very full field. And I think the Democrats will have a small army of people running for their nomination for president. The real question on the Democratic side is the current momentum among what they call themselves quite openly, the Democratic Socialists of America within the Democratic Party is really driving events over there. And if the Democrats, as they're perfectly capable of doing, nominate some socialist as their 2028 nominee, that may give it to the Republicans.

18:07The Democrats are often their own worst enemy. And this could be another example of that. Yes, they seem to be riding high on the success, in adverted commas, of Mamdani in New York, perhaps. When it comes to the mood music among Republicans, how are country club Republicans feeling about Trump and how are Rust Belt Republicans feeling about Trump? I note that in the aftermath of you writing a piece on the Iran war, which, let's be honest, hasn't been going as well as Trump might have hoped. Right. Well, I think that at its core, the Republican Party remains a Reaganite party. Party. I think among Republicans in Congress, that's true.

18:48I think they're intimidated by Trump. They're scared of being critical of him, and that's allowed him to continue the influence he's had. But out in the countryside, we'll have to see what the campaign begins to shape up as. Trump is an aberration in American politics. He has no philosophy. Therefore, he has nothing really to pass on to an heir apparent. And I think his base is already beginning to fragment. I don't think anybody will run as an anti-Trump candidate. They'll all say, we're the real inheritor of the Trump mantle because they don't want to face his wrath and be singled out as the only anti-Trump person running.

19:31But it's not going to be a coronation for Vance or really any certainty who could get the nomination because there are so many pieces to the puzzle that we just haven't seen yet. And finally, I must ask you, Ambassador Bolton, your ongoing court case, if you're able to talk about it. I mean, how are you? I was thinking about you obviously have been the victim of a degree of lawfare by your previous boss. You've been heavily critical of him. He's been heavily critical of you. He's posted on Truth Social that he wants you to be dealt with harshly. you've got this sentencing date on October the 28th for this charge that you've pleaded guilty to of handling classified information.

20:18I mean, do you look back and just bitterly regret having anything to do with Donald Trump? Well, some might say that was my biggest mistake going to work for him in the first place. Unfortunately, I really can't talk about the case. I'd love to be able to do it. I hope at some point I can. But for now, I just have to leave it at that. In general, as you're watching the second Trump presidency, do you think those around the president are disappointed with how it's going? I mean, he sort of started on the crest of a wave, didn't he, of an overwhelming election victory. And as you say, two years in, things aren't going as well as he might have hoped.

20:56Yeah. Well, it wasn't such an overwhelming election victory. And he tried to do much of what he wanted to accomplish through executive order, because he knew he couldn't get it through Congress. So by definition, if a Democrat wins in 28, almost everything can be swept away simply by rescinding the executive orders. His tariff policy has been as disastrous as I think most people predicted. The economy is doing very well because of tax cuts and deregulation. Think how much better it could be doing if it weren't for the tariffs. So I think there's a lot of dismay and splintering within the party and within Trump's base.

21:38And I suspect that his last two years are going to be very, very frustrating for him, not only worrying about all these congressional hearings, but looking for things that he can actually accomplish. A lot of what he's tried to do has been struck down in the courts, including his opening round of tariffs. And I think the courts have shown that they remain independent. He can intimidate members of Congress, but he's not intimidated the courts. So it's still two and a half years to go, and there's still a lot of damage that could be done. But I think it's important to keep in mind how resilient the Constitution has proven and And that whatever the difficulties are, we will continue to function as a democracy within the constraints of a constitution after he's gone.

22:27And finally, Ambassador Bolton, on Iran, is it a case of right idea? Nobody wants a murderous dictator in an ayatollah to flourish, but at the same time, wrong execution. How much will the Middle East inform what happens at the midterms? Well, I think the question of prices, prices at the pump of gasoline and other things are going to be important. I'm not sure the war itself will be. I don't know what Trump's objectives were when he started out speaking today. I still don't know what his objectives are. This is a big problem. If you don't have objectives from a strategic point of view, it's hard to measure whether you've accomplished anything or not.

23:09But the lack of preparation, the lack of effort to see whether regime change would be possible has put Trump in a trap of his own making. And now he can't decide how to extricate himself from the trap. And that could cost him, more importantly, could cost a lot of Republicans in November. Beyond watch your back, what advice would you give to Andy Burnham in handling Donald Trump? Well, he needs to understand that Trump has no philosophy. Trump has been described as transactional. I think that's the only way to approach it. Starmer has used up one state visit and meeting with the king and going to Buckingham Palace.

23:51Maybe there's another state visit in that bag of tricks somewhere. But he needs to think of things like that. And he needs to understand that Trump is motivated fundamentally by what's good for Donald Trump. Ambassador John Bolton, thank you very much as ever for joining us on The Daily Tea. Well, thanks again for having me.

24:33This message is brought to you by Cologuard. If you recorded songs off the radio for a mixtape, it might be time to screen for colon cancer. The Cologuard test is non-invasive, requires no special prep or time off, and you start screening right from your home. It's just three simple steps. Set up, sample, and ship. If you're 45 or older and at average risk, ask your doctor about the Cologuard test. Available by prescription only. Learn more or request a prescription at coligard.com slash podcast. I'm Jake Stouck, co-founder and CEO of Serval. We built Serval to automate the IT work that slows companies down.

25:11Onboarding, password resets, access to applications, my laptop stopped working. While employees wait for help, their real work is put on hold. IT desperately wants to automate this work, and that's why they need Serval. You just tell Serval what you want to automate in plain English, and it's built. No drag-and-drop workflows, no expensive consultants. Employees get unblocked, and IT teams go from drowning in tickets to building what actually matters. With Serval, IT becomes the AI engine powering the entire company. This is a new way to run IT. We guarantee you'll automate 50 % of all tickets, and we'll prove it to you in a free four-week pilot.

25:52Go to serval.com slash tickets. That's S-E-R-V-A-L dot com slash tickets.