328. Could Russia interfere in the US election?

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0:50Welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Anastak Campbell and with me, Rory Stewart. And Rory, we're going to talk about America. I think it's what we call squeaky bum time. We're going to talk about Moldova and Georgia. That's three elections in which the Russians are busy interfering. We need to talk about your friend David Gork being appointed to review of sentencing in the UK. And we should also touch on the Middle East, given some pretty dramatic developments last week. But, first of all, you're in one of my favourite countries in the world. Are you not? I am. I'm in Melbourne. And I'm following analysis footsteps.

1:22I'm on a speaking tour. So I'm on my way to Canberra and to Perth and to Sydney and to Brisbane. And as I'm traveling around, I keep meeting people who've already met you, particularly a lot of politicians. And it's a really interesting engagement here. I mean, Australia, I hope we can talk about it a bit next week. But there are so many things that are relevant about Australia. Obviously, a very different approach to immigration. An economy which has performed better since 2008 than most of the other democracies. The compulsory voting system and also this preferential voting, which has allowed the emergence of the teal independence.

1:57So a lot of really interesting features was thrown in maybe to deal with next week. But meanwhile, over to you on the US. Let's start with the economy because I just picked up the economist and the front cover of the economist this week is the American economy being quotes the envy of the world.

2:17And I'll just say, in 1990, America accounted for two -fifths of the GDP of the G7. Today it makes up half. Output per person is now about 30 % higher than in Western Europe and Canada, 60 % higher than in Japan. Mississippi may be America's poorest state, but it's hard working residents earn on average more than Brits, Canadians or Germans. And the reason that's sort of leapt out to me is because we keep hearing that one of the reasons why Kamala Harris is not right out ahead and why Donald Trump might is because he's making a debate in the economy being weak. And yet you read this, you think, well, what is the disconnect between economic data and real people's experience?

2:54And do you think it's getting worse? Because of course, your friend Bill Clinton was very much part of this whole generation where it was all about the economy's stupid. But I am always a bit suspicious of this because the big macroeconomic data, a GDP data, inflation data, often conceals how people on low incomes are actually experiencing things. So for example, in the US, even as inflation comes down, inflation has hit very hard, cheap goods, more than expensive goods. So people shopping for basic groceries and warm outs paying for their gas or feeding it more. There's also the sense that compared to where people were in the past, incomes have been stagnant.

3:37So you can see interviews with people pointing out that their daughters are earning $15 an hour working in Walmart and they were earning $15 an hour working in an automobile factory in Michigan in the late 1970s. I think that there is a possibility that the New York Times and the economist will keep writing articles saying, well, we don't get it. The headline data is terrific and that this doesn't really reflect what many Trump voters are experiencing. But anyway, back to you on that. The thing about Trump voters, friend and former colleague of mine, Peter Hyman, who worked with me in opposition and then in government, then he went off to be a head teacher and then he went back for Keir Starmer and he's now, he's engaged in this major project trying to work out how progressives can better tackle populism.

4:20So he's currently traveling around the United States, going into Donald Trump's rallies and interviewing hundreds of people. He's got to be a very funny picture of himself where he can make America great again hat because he feels that's the the only way he has permission then to talk to these people. But he's interviewing dozens and dozens of these people and he sent me a very alarming note to back his experience, which started with the words, I think he will win. That is not an uncommon thing. I'm getting a lot of messages at the moment from people who are really, I said squeaky bum time. I think the Democrats really are getting quite nervous.

4:51Now, that's inevitable. This is close. You get nervous unless you're 20 points ahead in the polls. But Peter makes the point. First of all, this is underlines what you've just said. The inflation has been really, really bad for all the people and it's really damaged the Democrats because they've been in power. Trump still gets marked up because he has this image as a billionaire businessman and the stuff about him going bankrupt seven times, it all just sort of adds to that sense of he's like, you know, he really gets the economy and she comes over as being a lot less interested. He says that all the kind of crazy stuff that he does, it's almost like it goes over their heads.

5:30They don't really care and they know that he's a liar. They know I'm quoting him now that he's an asshole. But there's something about him that they forgive him. Also, the other thing that he says that's really interesting is that the whole thing about there were no big wars when he was president and it seems like underbiding. We've got the Middle East, we've got Ukraine and why we always at war. This feeling that it didn't matter what he said or what he did, these people are going to vote for him. Now, these people are going out to rallies. So that maybe is, I don't know, that sort of underlines their support for him.

6:06Peter's a very bright guy. He's very good at analyzing opinion and he is definitely of the view that this has moved away a bit from Paris. So there are I think two things. One is that we know of course that the strong Trump base has remained unmoved and remains very fiercely for him. We also know that as we were discussing in a recent discussion for leading, which we're about to put out with Tim Snyder, he points out that there are many people who just Republican voters and will continue to vote Republican even if Trump is the candidate, which is why we come down to this cliche that the whole thing depends on seven states and might even come down to a few 10 ,000 votes in Pennsylvania.

6:43And why turnout becomes essential. I think it's very difficult for people to know anecdotally on the basis of meeting people what the result will be. Yeah. Because you'll be very familiar with this when you, you know, any of elections that we've been involved in, you'll get people coming back from the doorstep, say, oh, that was terrible. You know, I've just come back and I've just met people voting for the other side, but it doesn't tell you very much. It can shock you. It doesn't tell you very much. I remain confident that Kamala Harris is going to win and win by a comfortable margin. And as I think I've said to you before, I believe this because I think what's happened is the polling agencies are panicked.

7:16And it's not surprising. They're all hovering around 50, 50. They're hovering around 50, 50 because they like to be in a pack and 50, 50 is a pretty safe place to be. I think that the turnout assumptions on Trump don't make sense. I can't see young African American voters who say they support Trump necessarily turning out to vote in the polls. And this is something that the Moody has pointed out that he doesn't really have a ground game. He doesn't have what the Democrats have, which is 300 ,000 volunteers to actually get people to the polls. He's very dependent on his social media status. And he certainly doesn't.

7:49Republicans have no ground game at all in African American communities and central Michigan because those were traditionally Democrat voters. So they simply didn't have any infrastructure there. But you're right. I'm increasingly alone. The voice on this and the economist and most the American newspapers are now saying that Kamala Harris will win the popular vote. But it looks increasingly as though Trump is going to take the key states and win the presidency. I mean, I guess we're at that stage where it's probably best just to ignore everything because as you say, we don't though, the polls have moved that they are so knife edge in these in these swing states.

8:24There was a Washington Post analysis yesterday that said she was going to do really well and she's going to win big on the electoral college, others which are saying he's at opposite. So I guess we're just at that stage now where the important thing is to try and work out what their closing messages are as they zone in on these, as you say, this very small number of swing states. So she's changed her strategy. And one of the changes is that she went out and she did Fox News interviews as talk about her doing more and more conservative podcasts. Having done a bit of a Kier Samma Mingva's strategy, she seems to be now getting out on the front foot.

8:57What was your sense of her Fox News interview? How that went? Tell us a bit about it first and then maybe give us a bit of analysis. I thought it was good. I think you're right that there's been a slight change. And yesterday, she was on the campaign trail with Liz Cheney, the Republican daughter of the former vice president, Dick Cheney, who is according to the Mochis number one on Trump's post election hit list if he wins. Because Liz Cheney was one of the few Republicans to come out very strongly from impeachment after January 6 and has been a very strong critique here. Yeah. And also she did an event with Liz Cheney.

9:30She did three events through the course of the day, but one of them was with undecided voters, which I think is a good thing to do. I think actually not just being seen with your own people the whole time. The Fox News interview, I thought she did well. There was a lot of satire around it because the interview at Brett Baer was like, you know, he was far more aggressive with her than he had been in the Fox News I ever with Trump. But she was very calm, didn't sort of lose her rag in any way, push back pretty hard. I think she has stepped up, but I tell you the thing I do worry about is that and she had this message.

10:02And I think this was a very deliberate message, but my administration will not be a continuation of Joe Biden, which I understand why she's saying. But I think that there hasn't been much defense of the record. And that's what's allowed Trump to sort of make this claim that the economy is not doing well that people aren't better off than they were. At least you had a sense of her with a closing strategy. So far this week, all we've really got about from him is that he's obsessed with the size of Arnold Palmer's penis. That was a really, really weird one that he was just an Arnold Palmer, the golfer, his family of combatants he didn't like Trump at all.

10:36And then yesterday this really weird visit to MacDonald's where he got so triggered by the idea that she worked at MacDonald's or said she didn't. He then said she didn't. So now he goes over to MacDonald's, but it turns out that the place was closed down. The people who were customers in quotes were all sort of vetted by the campaign. So they came along pretending to be totally surprised. Oh my god, Donald Trump certainly did. Donald. It was a fascinating one that because I thought about it because I thought that I once tried to do this in Cumbria. And certainly I was told by my local MacDonald's franchise that I wouldn't be allowed to do it because I hadn't passed the food safety training.

11:13So I was very intrigued watching this whether in fact McDonald's would permit him to operate the friar. I guess it's just this thing that he likes just to be talked about. Yes, and I think there's another point to this which you've pointed out in the past, but which is really important, which is that all these trivial things, Arnold Panmas penis or they're reading the cats, they're reading the dogs, they're reading the pets, the people of that are very good ways of distracting from bigger allegations. For example, from one of his former most senior aids coming out saying that he believes that Donald Trump is being blackmailed by the Kremlin.

11:48Yeah. Is suddenly put on the same level as were the people getting the fries from him actors or were they real people? So it is literally this dead cat strategy again and again, even when it comes down to the triviality of him doing the cat stuff that you just can't distinguish with any of these people that sort of, well they're firing chat, aren't they? Just on the Russian, the Compromat thing, which comes out of this Bob Woodward book. So he's quoting, well seems to be quoting senior generals, people who are part of the military establishment who are essentially saying that Donald Trump is kind of under some sort of weird influence with Putin.

12:23I can't for the life of me understand why the Harris campaign hasn't at some point persuaded these people to go out and do a big event, to do a press conference to call in the world's media. If you put together all the people who work for Trump, most of his cabinet might pence ex -chiefs of staff, people like Scaromucci worked in his coms team, you put all these people together. Just imagine the effect you could have, not just doing stuff on social media, but a massive press event to get the world in and have these people saying this man is a threat to America, he's a threat to America. You're absolutely right, and it would be very powerful, wouldn't it?

12:57You could almost set she summon his whole cabinet because his whole cabinet has turned against him. You could have the whole cabinet with an empty part of the end and they could all talk, frankly, about what he'd been like to work for. Now maybe they won't do it, maybe Liz Cheney is the only one that's kind of, you know, got the guts to go and do it, on a Russia because I think this is a good way of moving on to Moldova and Georgia, but, you know, we hear a lot about Russian election interference, and it's often quite non -specific, but if people are interested, Microsoft's threat analysis center has released details, this is September 17th report that I'm reading, on specific accounts from Russian bot farms.

13:42So which has put out videos depicting an attack which pretends to be Harris supporters attacking someone at a Trump rally, and then another uses an on -screen actor to claim that Harris was involved in a hit and run accident and was lauded through a website, masquerading as the local San Francisco media outlet. So there's so much sort of strange conspiracy theory about this and it gets into the realm of watching homeland, but it's worth for people who are interested in the details, reading these Microsoft accounts because they actually specify how these videos are created, who's creating them, and the fact that they're getting millions of views.

14:16And of course, some of the stuff, not those in particular, but other pretty implausible stories are of course circulated very easily by Elon Musk, so you'll often get millions of views on stuff that he's sharing, and he's now relentlessly using his enormous platform on Twitter. This way, I think he's almost like a media barring from another age using that platform to promote Trump again and again and also promoting conspiracy theories, pushing fake stories about Harris, pushing fake websites, and also this incredible thing where he's giving out a million dollars a day to people who sign up to this super PAC thing that he's got on the first and second amendments, and very, very hard to understand why that is not akin to buying votes.

15:00Exactly. The point is the first and second amendments are code for supporting Trump's position, and so you're basically getting yourself involved in the Trump campaign, and this lottery pays out to one person a day a million dollars. So there's now very serious attempts to challenge him for breaking electoral law for doing this, but this is big money. Let's say that Trump narrowly wins in the electoral college, and we know that if Harris wins, even if she wins big, Trump is going to challenge the result, refused to accept it and provoke all sorts of trouble on the streets, et cetera. But let's just say Kamala Harris challenged that, and narrow Trump went, then this could become the Musk interference.

15:39And I notice he's now sort of trying to backtrack slightly and say he's actually, he sees this is making them ambassadors for his path, and that's why they need to be paid. It's like a salary. There must be lawyers all over this at the moment, and the thing about Musk, I think this is what happens with these sovereign individual types, is that they think they are above the law. So he probably won't even have sort of worked through whether there might be legal problems in what he's doing. Before announcing that the whole thing is terrific, yeah. I mean, I think it's an interesting transition, this question of Russian interference in the US election, which is relatively muted, compared to what they have been doing in Moldova.

16:13So brief reminder of what's just happened in Moldova, there's just been a referendum to, on accession to where a victory in the referendum means that an addendum to the constitution will commit Moldova to push ahead with its EU exception. And Moldova, December last year, and the last year, began its accession negotiations with the European Union, meaning that there are now a group of countries, Montenegro, Serbia, North Macedonia, Turkey, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, and Bosnia, which are theoretically in accession negotiations to join the EU. It's leading them into an election, presidential election for my ascending, the pro -EU leader of Moldova, and then parliamentary elections next year.

16:59Give us a bit of a sense of my ascending, because I believe you know her, and maybe a little bit about Moldova, yeah. Well, Moldova, one of the smallest and poorest countries in Europe, she's very very smart, very clever, from a banking, from a well -banked background, so would be very much put into the sort of globalist camp, and looks a bit like Rachel Reeves. She does look a little bit low. Yeah, and Eastern European version thereof, but she's in her early 50s, she founded this party, party of action and solidarity. I don't know her well, but I've spoken to a couple of times in relation to the campaign that she's been running, and I hadn't, when I first spoke to her, and she talked about the way that Russia was essentially trying to sort of take over the campaign of her opponents.

17:46I'd wondered whether there was a little bit of kind of exaggeration or even paranoia about that, but this has been quite incredible. So in a country of just over two million people, they have spent its reckoned about a hundred million dollars in trying to influence the outcome, both of the referendum and of her presidential election. The Russians threw a Olegark, called Elan Shaw, who's a Moldovan Russian Olegark, who's now, I think, in refuge in Moscow, and Moldova for people who can't imagine it on a map, is a sliver of territory between Romania and Ukraine. So in a sense, it's sheltered from Russia by Ukraine, from Russian tanks, riding through all those.

18:28It has this transcendistria, this sliver around the down the side, which essentially is a breakaway, where there are Russian troops present. Exactly. And Transnistria, again, there are people Moldova who speak Ukrainian, people who speak Russian, and people who speak Romanian. And the Transnistrian bit has tended to be more pro -Russian. There are genuinely pro -Russian factions within Moldova itself, which adds to the complication of the whole thing, back over the thing. The thing is that they reckon around about 130 ,000 Moldovans. That was about 10 % of the turnout. Essentially, were bought.

19:03And it nearly worked. We talk about 52, 48 in the Brexit referendum, being very, very close. The yes vote to change the constitution got literally just fraction over 50%. Where I think it becomes much more difficult now, though, is that Maya Sandu won the first round. She topped the election first round with 41%. But her opponent is this guy, Alisander Stoyanoğlu, who's a former prosecutor. And he is very much the Russian camp. And a lot of the smaller parties who have been eliminated in the first round are likely to come behind him rather than her. So it's not impossible, even with that 15 % lead in the first round.

19:46It's not impossible in the second round. She could lose. And of course, you know, and she essentially is saying she is absolutely clear that this has been criminal groups working with the Russians to try to buy the election. The BBC had a reporter out there who actually came across a woman who came out to the polling station and said, where do I pick up my money? Because she said she'd been promised money to vote. And the guy who promised it was, you know, miraculously disappeared. But she's incredibly brave Maya Sandu. And it's a tiny country, very, very poor. And she has absolutely been standing up against this relentless campaign run out of Moscow to basically to Topola, which I guess brings us to the biggest strategic picture, which is that the European Union has a big strategic choice, opportunity, challenge in how to deal with many of these countries, which are hovering on the edge of Russian influence.

20:47And to some extent, they've let down more over because they haven't provided enormous economic support. They haven't provided the economic stimulus that could have really allowed Maya Sandu to demonstrate real economic success in Moldova. Wouldn't be very expensive actually in a tiny country like that. My friend, Geralt Knaos, who I keep quoting from the SI, has been pushing for Moldova to be allowed into the single market along with Ukraine and the Balkan states because EU accession is getting more and more complicated. So joining the EU fully, getting more and more complicated. But it would be possible to grant them the four freedoms of the single market.

21:22That's free movement of goods, capital services, and above all of people. That's people being able to move back and forward. And that's precedent. That's what Finland, Sweden and Austria got before they joined the European Union. If it were already the politics then were so different. And those countries were so, so much more economically and democratically advanced. And by the way, Moldova's are leaving Moldova since Ukraine. They've been leaving in vast numbers. So I think politically that would be very, very difficult to do. In effect, we've got free movement from Moldova and Ukraine at the moment.

21:55And as you say, a lot of these countries are quite small. I mean, the population movements will be quite small, but I agree with you. The politics unbelievably difficult. And this just comes down to is the confidence in Europe, is there leadership in Europe? And do they want to take these kind of risks with domestic voters and others in order to balance Russian influence? Just before we leave Moldova, just on that point, Vonder Lyon, the commission president, has put forward this near two billion euro financing package recently. And they're going to be receiving trenches of the money every six months, conditional on making the changes necessary for recession.

22:30So I think, belatedly, they are addressing that point. Yeah. I think the European Union is in a very difficult situation because there, of course, big anti -immigration moves. A lot of hostility, obviously, towards Turkey joining the EU largely because they don't many countries don't want Turkish migrants coming in. But at the same time, a lot of people and Brussels understand that EU membership is the single biggest incentive they can offer to people to enter the more Western liberal democratic orbit and detach from Russia. Which, again, as I say, just brings us to Georgia. So, Georgia is a country on the other side of the Black Sea.

23:08So, on the northeast edge of Turkey, the top right of Turkey. And there we are also going into an election in which the Georgian Dream Party, which is the ruling party, which is financed and run basically by a man called Ivanshvili, which is pro -Russian, is running a very anti -NATO campaign in which it's basically suggesting that the opposition will drag Georgia into some war. They show big posters of Marriapol in Ukraine, shattered, and saying this is what George will look like if these guys win. The likelihood from the polls, although we're all pre -skeptical polls, seems to be that the Georgian Dream is likely to be defeated, but they again are up to real monstrous stuff.

23:54So, the bodyguard of Ivanshvili, a real sort of thug, has now been put in charge by the party of supervising the elections. And both parties are playing for EU accession, but the Georgian vision of EU accession from the Georgian Dream, from the pro -Russian party, yes, will join the EU, provided the EU as much more like Viktor Orbán's Hungary. Yeah, although there was an incredible pro -EU march in the Georgian capital to Bliese over the weekend. I mean, huge. It was a really dramatic, wasn't it? Yeah. And it's a country of just, you know, fewer than 4 million people. I mean, the Georgian Dream in a way, they try to, if I may quote the Richard Johnson, they try to have their cake and eat it.