Are world leaders treating Trump like a useful idiot?

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0:48In case you missed it, Trump is not thrilled after those Israeli strikes on Hamas in Qatar. He's also not thrilled with Putin, who keeps on bombing Ukraine. But apart from not being thrilled, what is he actually going to do about it? Trump talks the talk on foreign policy and nothing changes. Welcome to the News Agents USA. The News Agents USA with Emily Maitlis and John Sopel. It's John in the New South Wales Bureau. As ever. And it's Emily in good old News Agents USA HQ. And no one could criticise Donald Trump for a lack of activity in the field of foreign affairs. He has met Putin in Alaska and rolled out a red carpet for him.

1:41He has had his envoy going off to the Middle East. He has been involved in what's happening on the India-Pakistan border. He's had lots to say about China. But what does it all add up to? And in the past 24 hours, I think you'd have to say not very much. What has he achieved? Probably zero. That you've now got a situation where Putin's drones are flying into Poland, a NATO country, and have to be intercepted by Poland and other NATO partners. and you've got Benjamin Netanyahu attacking Qatar, a sovereign country, to go after Hamas and apparently Donald Trump not really knowing anything about it and sounding mighty pissed off at the end of it.

2:29So far from actually reining people in and bringing peace, he's beginning to feel that the likes of Putin and Netanyahu feel more enabled than ever to do whatever the hell they want, wherever they want, knowing that Trump will do nothing about it. Look, this is a president who came into office promising to end wars. In the last week, he has redesigned the Defense Department as the Department of War. His Defense Secretary is now the Secretary of War. It doesn't particularly sound like an administration that is trying to pull back from war, quite the opposite, in fact. And I think what is telling, the picture that is emerging, and those attacks on Hamas, or on, let's be frank, Qatar, really demonstrate this more clearly than anything else, is that I think he's being used as the useful idiot to people, operators, politicians, dictators, who want to feel that they have free reign to do whatever they want.

3:36This was always obvious with Putin, wasn't it? It was obvious throughout the last administration where Donald Trump ended up siding with Putin against his own security forces at that conference that you always like to reference in Helsinki in Finland. But I think it's become even more obvious this time round that Putin finds Trump a very useful ally, that he can turn up in Alaska, Trump will come and meet him, Putin will say there won't be a ceasefire, and Trump will be, okay, yeah, fine. No, I get that. I get that. No, no, don't worry. I get that. It's fine. And Netanyahu has clearly done the same thing.

4:14It was Netanyahu that wanted to strike Iran, and he found a friend in Trump. And of course, he then found not just a friend, but military support from Trump. Now, whether the nuclear bunkers were ever destroyed by American might, we still don't know. And there is quite a lot of doubt over that. But in terms of getting your ally, getting your girlfriend to go to the loo with you, that's essentially the role that Trump is now playing to both Putin and Netanyahu. And I think what has become clear is when Trump says he's not thrilled after Israel strikes Hamas, this is what happened yesterday, he's tried to condemn the Israeli airstrike, not for what it was, but because he wasn't actually told about it first.

4:59History doesn't relate what Trump would have said if he'd been told early enough about the action. But he's clearly quite pissed off that Netanyahu now feels he has liberty, has the impunity to just go ahead and do it and then go, oh, I'll tell you in a minute. Now, what was Netanyahu doing trying to strike potential Hamas leaders in Qatar? I mean, he didn't get them from what we know. Qatar is meant to be a friendly nation to both the US and Israel. It is part of the core negotiating geography of helping bring Hamas and Israel to the table to try and negotiate a way out for both Gazans and for the hostages.

5:38And suddenly it's coming under fire in the middle of the negotiations. No Hamas leaders were killed. And from what we understand, Israel knew about the people living in Qatar, has known about the people living in Qatar for months, if not years, if not decades. So the actual act makes absolutely no sense at all. But the fact that he wasn't really scared of Trump, I think tells you everything. Yeah. I mean, I think with that, look, American negotiators had gone to Qatar to speak to the very people that the Israeli Air Force were trying to take out. It's deeply embarrassing. And Qatar, you know, a lot of people might find this uncomfortable because the Taliban found a home in Qatar when they were fighting, and so have Hamas.

6:24But Qatar sees itself, not topographically, as the Switzerland of the Middle East, i.e. a country where it's neutral, it tries to get peace deals done, it tries to get them over the line. And that is why Hamas, and before then the Taliban, had offices in Qatar, in Doha, as a way of kind of being a place where you could talk to your enemies and try and find a way forward. With the Russia stuff, I mean, how many times have we now heard Donald Trump say, okay, Vladimir, unless you do this, then heavy sanctions will be coming your way. You know, you've got another two weeks before you've got to comply.

7:01And the two weeks comes and the two weeks go and nothing happens and another deadline is set. And that term for Trump, the taco president, Trump always chickens out. When it comes to dealing with Russia, he always chickens out. And we're seeing this repeat itself again and again, so that the people he is trying to rein in are doing the exact opposite now. They feel absolutely free to do whatever the hell they like with the consequences that we're seeing. And Donald Trump seems to be more obsessed with the daily headline. So last week, they took out a boatload of Venezuelan apparent drug runners.

7:42Now, there was no attempt to intercept the boat. They just blew it out of the water. And Trump posted proudly on Truth Social that 11 sailors had died. They were narco-terrorists and we got them. Well, is that the way that America is now doing business? I mean, you know, it was another day's headlines. But was there any strategy in it, which is the bit that I just can't fathom about where he thinks any of this is going. Yeah, I mean, J.D. Vance was asked about that. We know that there were 11 sailors on board the boat. We don't know that they were narco-terrorists. They might have been immigrants.

8:13They might have been blown up anyway. But when J.D. Vance was asked about this, he talked about due process coming afterwards. I mean, you know, he's got a Yale University education and he's like, oh, don't worry, we'll kill them first and then we'll investigate, which is kind of the thing that the IDF says when they shoot people in Gaza. It's this sense that the rule of law comes second to whatever you actually need to do first. I mean, Trump was very clear on Truth Social when he was writing about the Qatar attacks. He said this was a decision made by Prime Minister Netanyahu. It was not a decision made by me.

8:47Well, too right, actually, because don't forget, Qatar has just promised Trump a 400 million pound brand new jet. You know, Trump thinks he's friends with these guys. This is where it gets complicated. Is Trump annoyed that Israel's going off to Hamas, or is it just annoyed that he's annoying his friend in the Middle East, the very guys that are building him the brand new Air Force One? And Starmer, who actually called the Emir of Qatar and reiterated his condemnation of Israel's attack, said it represents a flagrant violation of Qatar's sovereignty and risk fueling further escalation in the region.

9:26So I guess they're on the same page up to a point there. You know, they're both condemning Israel's actions. But what is Trump going to do? It was only two nights ago, I think he said, release the hostages or it's your last chance for Hamas. Maybe Netanyahu hears Trump saying that and thinks, oh, well, great. You know, they didn't release the hostages. So I'll presumably, you know, go with what we all agree then. This is your last chance. It's over. We're taking you out. And that's the trouble, I think, that Trump's rhetoric sort of shoots from the hip. He's very, very good at saying bombastic things before running away from them completely.

10:02Look, how many times has Donald Trump said, we're going to get a peace deal? I'm very confident there's going to be a ceasefire in the next couple of weeks in Gaza. I mean, umpteen times. The advantage that Trump has is that in the United States of America, not that many people are focused on what is happening in Gaza. They're not that focused on what is happening in Ukraine. so when trump says um i've made huge progress with putin they go yeah yeah yeah and get on with their lives and i'm making you know netanyahu's doing exactly what i want and we're going to get a peace deal yeah yeah yeah yeah get on with their lives there is no scrutiny of it but i you'd have to say i was speaking to a diplomat with long experience of dealing with moscow who said to me they can't believe it in moscow they think there is something much cleverer going on, that Trump is playing a game that is much more subtle and much more nuanced.

10:52And then they realise, no, it really is as stupid as it looks. And they're just bewildered by this. They cannot believe that the lack of knowledge, the ignorance of Steve Wyckoff, who is the special emissary who goes around with his much younger girlfriend, doesn't take a note taker into any of the meetings or a translator. And you just think this is absolutely frigging nuts. And it is yielding absolutely nothing of any substance. And in the Indian subcontinent, America has spent 30 years ever since approving India's civil nuclear program of building a closer relationship with India. And Trump has blown it up in the last two weeks because Modi wouldn't nominate him for a Nobel Peace Prize.

11:34It's almost as though American foreign policy has become frivolous. It's whatever the next headline is. It is performative. There is no strategy, it feels, in anything that he's doing. Yeah, I mean, it's a repeat, dare we say, of the first administration, which was Trump going off to Singapore for a meeting with Kim Jong-un, his rocket man, who he called his, you know, new best mate. I mean, in a way, it's forgivable that last time round, the media, as one, dropped everything because we thought this was going to be a breakthrough. Oh, Trump's got a new way of doing things. You know, he doesn't stick to the rules.

12:09He does things his way. Oh, he's got a much more sort of emotional touch. He's got really good EQ. He gets people. No, of course he didn't. It went nowhere, absolutely nowhere. Nothing happened to neutralise the threat of North Korea. Nothing happened with the relationship between Kim Jong-un and Trump, even after he wrote that lovely letter. there has been no breakthrough on virtually anything related to foreign policy, except for the wars that Trump claims to have ended, where countries say, no, you didn't. That was nothing to do with you. I mean, there's a few of those around, but there has been no foreign affairs success.

12:47I'm trying to work out what you would call a movement that has helped Trump or America in any way for the last nine months? Are we missing something? It's a really good question because it is very hard to look at what the concrete achievements are. Look, America is getting more money from tariffs than it was before. Tariffs haven't had the devastating consequences on the global economy that some people thought they might, although a lot of economists argue there is a long tail on this and it still might. But in terms of relationships that have changed, I mean, the relationship with Canada is in the toilet.

13:25The relationship with Mexico in the toilet. The relationship with Denmark is in the toilet. NATO has pledged to spend an awful lot more money, but will it or won't it? I'm here in Australia. Apparently, Prime Minister here can't get a meeting in the White House with Donald Trump. Australia is a key partner of the United States of America. And so you kind of think, where is this mythical land where there has been this transformation? I thought it was really interesting. You know, when Steve Wyckoff, this guy, the property magnate who is Trump's emissary in all these places and has delivered next to nothing, came under attack from a long piece that was written in one of the magazines in America.

14:05and all sorts of people came out to defend Wyckoff and say how brilliant he was, including, I thought, strikingly, Jonathan Powell, who is the national security advisor to Keir Starmer. Powell said, you know, the thing about Wyckoff is he's able to open doors that no one else can. And you think, well, that's probably true. You know, when you're Donald Trump's person, you can open doors that wouldn't be open. But what do they do once they get the door open? Come in, Putin, have a cup of tea. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And you just think this is going nowhere. And for people looking for American leadership, you get the impression that Trump does want to show leadership in the world at the moment.

14:42I mean, I think he's been much more active on the global stage than we ever thought he would be when he was talking about, you know, it's time to focus in on America and being much more nativist and pulling up the drawbridge and, you know, just concentrating on America first. He's actually been very, very proactive in the international community. But to what ends remains an absolute mystery to me. We'll be back in a moment with the Republican strategist, Doug High.

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15:50The News Agents USA. Joining us now is a friend of the show, Doug High, Republican strategist and former director of comms for the RNC and a man who has bravely made it across this town during a week of tube strikes. Doug, I'm so happy to see you. You know, we could spend an hour on the tube strikes and that's about how long as it took to get here from South Kensington. So which would fascinate our listeners, I'm sure. But there are more pressing issues now. And I want to take you to the adamant denial of Donald Trump that he ever submitted a birthday note to Epstein. We are talking on the day that the full birthday book of Epstein letters, cartoons, pictures, grim stuff was published.

16:38And Donald Trump has insisted this is all a Democrat hoax. Is there a chance that it isn't him, that he didn't contribute? If there's a chance, it is the slimmest chance possible. And if you look at what the Wall Street Journal did in its initial reporting, it was very lawyerly. Clearly, the lawyers looked at it to be clear on what the Wall Street Journal could say and couldn't say. They didn't want to get sued. Obviously, they have. But now that we've seen this document, which looks to be very authentic, clearly the Wall Street Journal is in a better place. And one of the things that I find very curious about Trump in his adamant denials on this is part of the rationale of why he didn't do this is, well, he would never do this.

17:18He wouldn't do anything crude like this. Well, we know that Donald Trump talks crudely, you know, locker room talk. That's the Access Hollywood tape all over again. And that is so factored in on all things Trump. If he was able to win after the Access Hollywood tape, this document shouldn't really be a problem for him. It's the denials and the fact that it doesn't placate that hardcore, real rock ribbed support that Trump has from a real small part of his base that has questions on this that never go away. So if you were his director of comms now, where would you be? What would you be telling him?

17:53I'd be saying the same thing all along. It's all going to come out. Let's get it out in a way that we can control how it comes out instead of denial, denial, denial. And what we see with Trump, and we've seen this so many times, where it starts with a denial, then it's, well, yeah, I did it, and it's not so bad, and then an attack on you. We'll see if he goes through that process here again, but he's made this a bigger story than it needs to be. And obviously this has artwork and artwork drives things. I can tell you when I've worked on scandals at the RNC, especially, journalists would say, well, the artwork is so good on this.

18:28It's going to lead the news for the next week. This is a perfect example of this. If you knew that this was there, even if you didn't remember every word, which you probably didn't, get it out as fast as you can so you can move on. But he's already trying to sue Rupert Murdoch. I mean, he's taking the Wall Street Journal to court over this and saying, it's libelous, saying it's defamatory, saying it's not true. Well, that's why if you go back to the initial story, the Wall Street Journal was very, very careful in what they said and what they didn't say because they didn't want to get sued or have a suit that had real standing.

19:01The release of this document shows there's probably not much standing here for Donald Trump. And we know his willingness, if not eagerness, to use lawsuits as a weapon. So this is not designed to win a big settlement with the Wall Street Journal. It's designed to show that he's fighting. Yeah. I mean, in that book, we should also say we've got a bit of a letter from Bill Clinton. We've got Peter Mandelson. We talk about him on the Daily News Agents today. We've got 150 other people who haven't denied that they've been part of this birthday book. So it would be odd if there was just one fake in the whole thing.

19:37Absolutely. And that's part of, I think, the trouble that Trump puts himself into. He puts himself into a corner unnecessarily where very clearly if everybody else is now admitted to this, even if they have regrets, like we saw with Lord Mendelsohn, Donald Trump's the outlier here. And one of the things I found very interesting is if you walk in Washington, D.C., anywhere, you will see stickers and posters up any mailbox that they can put them up, any lamppost they can put them up on about Trump and Epstein. And usually it's Democrats who used to really like Bill Clinton. So there's some irony there.

20:08But Trump should be able to use that to his benefit. And instead, everything is. What do you mean? How? Lump himself in with Bill Clinton. Make it harder for those Democrats to attack him because very clearly another former president was friends with him too. And Bill Clinton does have, even today, even if his standing isn't what it used to be, still has a sort of likability and even lovability factor with a lot of voters who look at him fondly, even though he behaved badly, embrace that part of it and say, yeah, a lot of us knew this guy and we didn't know that. The problem for Trump is the weird language in that note.

20:48Maybe he didn't know what was going on, but that was some weird language that, OK, inside jokes are always sound different to people who don't know the inside joke. But we know what happened. And that language is problematic for him there. And obviously, the way without getting into too technical here, the way that signature is placed also as well. It's interesting. I mean, you know, we've talked for 10 minutes and we haven't mentioned the victims who obviously lie right at the heart of this story. And there are some curious groupings now in Congress between Republicans and Democrats who are both actually putting Epstein's victims central to what they're trying to do now.

21:27Ro Khanna for the Democrats, who has really made a big deal of hearing the victims' voices in this. And he's joined by Marjorie Taylor Greene. She of the kind of Jewish space lasers conspiracy not so long ago. But she's saying she'll side with the survivors of Epstein's sex trafficking operation. And she can use congressional immunity to walk into the Capitol and on the House floor say every damned name that abused these women. I mean, she's going to do that. She could do that. She could do that. We don't know that she will. You know, again, a lot of Trump world, and she still is a part of it.

22:04She'll still be at Mar-a-Lago and, you know, other things like that, or Mar-a-Lago North, you know, the White House now. She'll still be invited to those things. They want to keep her in the tent so she can threaten these things. If she does it, that's a different matter because that could blow things up. And we are seeing a lot of different alliances. You know, Ro Khanna is very smart, very shrewd. And when he finds an opportunity, he really seizes on it. This is a good example. The line that you hear about Ro Khanna is because he hasn't been in Congress all that long. He's Californian. California Democrat is unavoidable for comment, meaning he's going to have a comment on everything.

22:37Yeah. And he's going to get in reporters spaces whenever he can, whatever the issue is. This is an issue that just doesn't go away and is a perfect political opportunity for him. And if you're siding with victims, what's better? Yeah. Where do you think this goes? I have no idea, but I don't think it goes away. And that's for a few reasons. One is conspiracy theories never go away. You know, there are still people who think Elvis is alive. There are still people who think that the moon landing was faked and all of this. And once you go down, you know, conspiracy road, whether you turn left on conspiracy road or right on it, you find yourself trapped in a neighborhood that you can't get out of and you just get further and further down.

23:16And, you know, as an example, last month, I was in Lake of the Ozarks, Missouri at a friend's lake house. And in the town of Lake Ozark, there's a strip of restaurants and bars and what have you. And there was Teresa's Trump shop, huge American flags and every bit of Trump paraphernalia that you could find and probably the last existing Let's Go Brandon t-shirts and things like that. And I walked around for a couple of minutes. And in fairness, I don't know if I spoke to Teresa herself, but I asked the one behind the counter, do you have anything mixed in with the Donald Trump is Rocky Balboa and Donald Trump as a gangster rapper and all of this.

23:53Do you have anything, you know, bumper stick or anything on the Epstein files? And she said, no, I wish we did. And I sort of joked, like, when are we going to find out, you know, who was in the files? And this woman whose business on a day-to-day basis is based on Donald Trump said, what's the holdup? And so when I first heard about this letter, my first thought was, I wonder what the woman at Teresa's Trump shop thinks, because that is so core of a base for Donald Trump. And at Lake of the Ozarks is a very Trump area. You will see Trump flags flying. You'll see Gulf of America flags flying, even though it's a lake, that somebody who is that personally bound to Donald Trump, not just voting for him, has doubts about the files, tells me this doesn't go away.

24:40Does any of it add up to any real electoral difficulty for Donald Trump there. I mean, we are, you know, still, what, 14 months out from the midterms. I guess a lot of people who vote in the presidential elections don't actually turn up to vote sort of in the halfway elections. I mean, are you seeing anything that suggests this is affecting polling, favorability? No. How are we saying? No. No, but most voters, they'll talk about this. You hear about this issue a lot, but then you'll be at a restaurant. It may come up in conversation, but that meal ends with, I can't believe how much dinner cost.

25:18And those issues of inflation and affordability, whether it's food and groceries, housing, all these things that are tied to the economy, that's going to be the driver for the election. And where that stands Labor Day of next year, I think really tells us where the midterms will go. And there will be other issues that flare up. But we should also just remember history here. History tells us that the Democrats should win the House, potentially even the Senate. That map is different there and always more complicated. But, you know, you see so many stories right now, Emily, of the Democrats have no message and their polling is the worst it's ever been, all of which is true.

25:59But I remember this time, 2009, when Republicans had Barack Obama in the White House at 60 % approval at this point. Time magazine put out a cover story with the Republican logo and labeled us an endangered species. 18 months later, we pick up 63 House seats. Now, Democrats aren't going to do that. There just aren't enough open seats for that. But they should win the House just based on historical trends. This issue, by taking Trump's eye off the ball of where it should be, is a problem, but it's not a voting issue. I mean, it's interesting, Doug, you talk about historical trends, but you could point to the deportation, the use of masked immigration officers on the streets, rounding people up.