338. Trump beyond America: what’s next?

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0:49Welcome to the Restus Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And with me, Anastakambo, and we're back in the UK Rory, you're at your home. I'm at mine. We're going to talk obviously about some of the more dive into some of the greater detail on the result itself. Some of the reactions there have been so far. I'm very keen to talk about some of the foreign policy implications. But I think you should probably start, given some of the stick you've been getting, grossly unfair in my view, with just how wrong did you get it, Rory? Well, I definitely got it wrong. So I projected that Kamala Harris or predicted that Kamala Harris would win comfortably.

1:29And in fact, Donald Trump, it now looks like a moment we're recording, seems to be on track. He's already taken the Senate. He's won the popular vote. He's won the electoral college, so it's going to be present and he's on track to take the House of Representatives as well. So very, very considerable victory. And that means that I was wrong, but it also means that in an enormous number of other people who were predicting it was going to be a very close race. And even the betting markets who've been got a lot of pats on the back were largely predicting that Kamala Harris would win the popular vote, even if he won the electoral college.

2:00So it will be a victory that is very, very significant. Quickly on lessons I take away from it. Obviously one big lesson is a massive lesson in humility. I've been reflecting a little bit about how I got it wrong. I think the answer is partly technical. So it's partly that Trump did not perform very well in 16, 18, 20 and 22. So the question was from quite a low base. And when I say not very well in 16, he didn't do very well in the popular vote. And obviously since then he's underperformed. So the question for me was, how do he got stronger since then or weaker? And I reckon you got weaker. I reckon he'd been damaged by the felony convictions.

2:45I thought that his pick of JD Vance wasn't great. I thought that the January 6th insurrection damaged him. So at margins I reckoned that he'd been damaged. And I particularly thought that women were going to turn out for Kamala Harris and that young men who express support for Trump might be unlikely to turn out. And I was wrong on both counts. Young men who supported Trump turned out in large numbers. Then I thought and white women voted for Trump against Kamala Harris by a significant margin. So it was a 52, 48 margin of women voting for Trump. But most of all I guess I probably got it wrong because of wishful thinking.

3:29I've spent a lot of time with you talking about the rise of populism around the world. And every time we do an event together on us, somebody sticks their hand up and says, well, where's the hope? Where's the optimism? And in order to deal with this gloomy story of the last 10 years, I've begun to sort of look for these rays of hope and say, well, you know, Poland and Modi and maybe Turkey and the midterms in the US. And so in that narrative, looking for this miracle and hope, I began to talk myself into a Kamala Harris victory. Anyway, over to you. On that, of course, you didn't mention from a progressive point of view, the one that actually should have given people around the world a lot of hope.

4:06And that's the UK. But of course, since the UK general election and Labour's landslide, it hasn't felt very hopeful. Look, I was definitely affected by you as well. We were in Chicago together at the DNC, where I think we both came out of that thinking, they've definitely got their Mojo back. She looks impressive, amazing organization. This thing could happen. But I'll tell you something that kept knowing away at me the whole time. I remember when Hillary Clinton lost to Trump. I remember somebody on her team saying, do you know what? The problem was a lot of Americans, they've thought, look, we've put it with having a black guy, Obama, we're not going to have a woman now.

4:48I remember that very, very vividly. And I think that one of the things that's interesting about when you are in America, particularly the powers of America that you and I are most likely to go to, which is not the Alabama's and the Missourish and the what have you, is that people don't like, I think, to talk about racism and sexism. But I think there was a lot of racism and sexism. I think that the fact of Kamala Harris being a black woman, California, that definitely got through. And the other thing, as we said through the night when we were broadcasting with Dominique Sandbrook and Scaramucci and Marina Hyde, is that she just didn't get the continuity and change right.

5:28And the thing that Peter Hyman, my former colleague that kept saying is Trump's message, although it's chaotic, it's also much clearer. And on your point about the polls, is you keep saying that, you know, the polling company is so sort of sensitive and nervous. I think they kept going for 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, because it made it all more exciting. And I think the media wanted it to be 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, 50, because it made it more exciting for them. So look, I just think it's having had a couple of days to reflect on it. It sort of looks a bit more obvious now than any of the jury felt.

6:05I guess it always does in retrospect, isn't it? I mean, I still say reflecting on why was I better at being realistic about Afghanistan? And I guess the answer there would have been that I spent a lot of time in remote rural areas. So I come back and I say, Afghans are more conservative, more religious, more anti -foreign than people want to acknowledge. And I'm not that surprised that there are people in rural areas who support the Iranian state. In the US context, it's a bit different. I mean, I was out in Montana, and obviously I met a lot of young men with pickup trucks who were voting for Donald Trump.

6:39That didn't surprise me too much. What I think has surprised me is the number of suburban middle -class white women who've decided to turn out for Trump. And getting to that, I suppose getting to the truth of exactly what happens with the Latina vote, a 1 % shift in this demographic, or that is quite tough across the country's biggest United States. Also, Rory, we all like at the end of big moments like this to say, oh, well, this was the reason and that was the reason. There are thousands of reasons. Millions of people have their own decisions. But I think when you really tried to drill into it, we were sort of projecting Kamala Harris.

7:20And there was a lot of wishful thinking, both of us, I think. But we were projecting a sense of the Democratic Party that I think a lot of Americans already rejected. So we were thinking that Trump was the big sort of bogey man. He was the hate figure. And because of the hate that was against him, that was going to seem not when. But actually, I think we underestimated how many people had already written off the Democrats. And not necessarily, by the way, because of the economy. One of the tragedies for Joe Biden's career and legacy, he's actually leaving the economy in pretty good nick. And now, because Trump has said the economy is terrible, he will get the credit.

7:57He'll try to get the credit for it. I remember talking to Jamie Rubin, who we also interviewed on leading a while back, who is a very good friend of mine. I've talked to him a lot over the recent times. And he's always been saying to me, you guys don't get just how big this wonky thing is. You think you've got it big, but you haven't got it nearly as big as it's happening in our country at the moment. So when we talk about them, putting his Peter Hyman, did about $25 million in advertising on trams. Trump talking about kids going in as boys in the morning and coming back as girls in the afternoon, the dressing room stuff, all that.

8:36I think we underestimated how much that was getting through to people. The point in the night of Farage made to me. He was totally blunt about it when we spoke on whatever day it was the other Wednesday. He said, look, you guys may not like it, but in a world of turmoil, young men want an alpha male leader. Now, well, I've learned a lot looking. I mean, I've obviously got an amazing amount of delighted abuse on X from people who are triumphantly delighted that I made the wrong prediction. But when I look through the threads, the diversity that comes across reviews is really interesting. So you've got people who are focusing on straightforward issues like cost of living.

9:23Then you have a lot of people who are saying to me the reason we voted for Trump is because he was right to support anti -vaccination. There's a lot of culture war stuff. People calling me a misogynist to pervert a sexist. There's quite a lot of Gaza. You support ethnic cleansing and genocide because you support Kamala Harris. But then there's also no war thing. Exactly. And then there's, and then there's, she placated Islamists. She supports neoliberal economics. You support slaughtering babies and children, child mutilation and sterilization. Quite a lot of jargon out there. I'm attacked for Androphobia, Christophobia and anti -white racism.

10:05And then you get some interesting things. I mean, predictably, quite a lot of people demanding to know why I think climate change is real. Quite a lot of people saying, obviously he was going to win because the previous election was stolen. And the fact that Trump has won now proves that he won in 2020. So there's question of why people vote when it's a secret ballot. And you've got tens of millions of people voting, as you say, is very, very individual and goes all the way from pretty straightforward. I think he's going to be good for my taxes through to this very interesting question of RFK.

10:41And then the big one, I think, which was number one and a lot of the exit polls, they were voting for Trump to save democracy. And that was an amazing piece of jujitsu pulled off by Elon Musk on X, which is to suggest that if the Democrats won, this will be the last election ever. And so where we sit, we sort of can't really understand how that can be because attacking democracy to us means undermining institutions, not respecting the rule of law, not accepting a democratic outcome. So as you say, they're just a bit like Putin does, you just flip it. You know, we haven't invaded Ukraine. We're defending ourselves because NATO is threatening us.

11:20And Musk, I mean, I don't know how JD Vance is feeling because the truth is that Musk is the second most. Did you see in the family photo, by the way, it was musk and he was living his son. Yeah. There was no JD Vance. The only person who wasn't to Trump. Yeah, it was very odd. It'd be very interesting to see whether that relationship lasts because I suspect that Musk, who is clearly a very, very strange character. And I was interested in the anti -Scarom which you kept pointing out the fact that he was South African. And those two are not going to get on long term. I cannot see that. Rory, if you started to do so, if you noticed how when I talked about Trump, I just cannot stop my moving my hands.

12:04Your hands are really washing works. I'll be brave. The other way. I'm noticing brainwashing working is when I look at the abuse on Twitter so much of it, direct, that me is saying shut up and go away. I mean, basically, there is a real attempt by thousands of people with very, very few followers to say we don't want any opinions expressed. And the basic, there's something sort of quite fundamental here which is, am I allowed to say I was wrong to think that she would win, but I'm so right to think she should have won and that her values were better than Trump's and her ideas are better than Trump's and she'd be better for the world than Trump, that the fact that he won doesn't suddenly make him right.

12:49And also, the fact that he won, that's why both Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, I think, were right. Joe Biden said in terms, just because we've been defeated here, doesn't mean that we've been defeated. She said you've got to keep fighting. And I think this is what they do. This is what happened with Brexit. That's it. It's done. Will of the people. Well, Trump faces re -election or the demotivate the Republicans face re -election in four years time. That's how democracy works. So let's hope it's not Trump. Well, well, yeah, he'll try to make sure it is. This is what happens on what you know when I've been really shocked by getting back to the UK is seeing I got in a cab yesterday and somebody had left the mail on the telegraph in there, which normally when I get in a cab and if the driver has the mail, I say you can I mean the cab all the mail, but you can't have both.

13:38But these have been left in the back seats. I couldn't blame the driver for that. And so, anyway, when I read through them, I got the sense that what they saw as the most important theme out of this is not Russia, it's not China, it's not climate change, it's not World Trade, it's you know, it's the fact that one of them said that I was leading the lovely remuner trauma or something that you know, you and I were both traumatized by this, you know, it was all about and then this blasting out everything that every Labour MP has said about Trump, you know, what are you going to do now, Starrma? And that just shows you the extent to which something like this, people people have an inability to step back and actually see this, that's why I was so good to have Dominic Sandbrook of thought on the panel.

14:26You've got to try to see what's happening in this historical context. And I do think, I really do think this is one of the most consequential elections of our lifetime anywhere in the world. Let me have a go just before we move on to the appointments because I know you had interesting things to say about his new chief of staff and stuff. What the big historical phenomenon is here, I believe that what we're looking at here is the fact that we are deeply into an age of populism that really got going about 2014. And this is the consequence of the rise of Twitter and Facebook, this is the consequence of the 2008 financial crisis, this is the consequence of failure in Iraq and Afghanistan.

15:09And it's also the consequence of the rise of China and what that's meant for the legitimacy of these democracies. So that what we're seeing really with Trump is a shift from democracy to populism, a shift from open free trade to tariff barriers and protectionism, a shift from a liberal global order to isolationism. And the really interesting thing is that it's become hypercharged because Biden in 2020 suggested that for a moment it was being held back, but you get a sense that musk's ex is a much more damaging force than the Twitter of 2020. And that Trump's push for isolationism and backing out of even something as big as Russia and the UK is much more powerful than it would have been eight years ago.

16:00Yeah, at the airport in New York, I was wondering around the bookshop, when I picked up a book by Graham Allison, who's a historian, you know, exactly, he was a colleague of mine at Harvard. Yeah, yeah, and I think he was also an assistant secretary of state ones, but he was a book called Destin for War and it's about through Cicadese's trap. Yeah, and this is when the historian through Cicadese said, it was the rise of Athens and the fear that this instilled in sparta that made war inevitable. And he's basically an Alice, I'm only halfway through, but he said over the past half a millennium, 500 years, whenever there has been a rising power, challenging a ruling power, the rising power and I've been China, the ruling power being America, that in the 16 times when that has occurred historically, 12 of those have led to war, which is why the title of his book is Destin for War.

17:02And so that's why I think we're, obviously there's massive focus right now on Trump and America and politics and so forth, but that America, China dynamic, I think, remains the thing that is going to define this period of history. Let's maybe just before we get back into that after the break talk about the international consequences, talk a little bit about what we know about his team and what we are beginning to see about his policies. So, terms to his team, he's appointed Susie Wiles as his chief of staff. He'd tell us a little bit about Susie Wiles. Well, I don't know that much about her and the reason I don't know much about that is because she's one of those people who doesn't want people to know that much about her.

17:41People who know her, I'd really been interested in what Scaramucci says about her, but people who know her says that she's very, she's quite serious, quite thoughtful. She doesn't actually like a lot of the way that Trump does politics, the sort of cursing and the insulting and so forth. But she's somebody who really doesn't like the limelight. Interestingly, I think when people started to speculate she might be the chief of staff was because he really gave her a big shout out and asked her to go and speak the kind of acceptance event. But it's hard to know what it says given that he got through chiefs of staff like you get through pret energy bars.

18:25But this says to me, she's somebody who's been with him for quite a while. And I wonder whether it does say yes, he wants loyalists alongside him and there's no doubt there's a project 2025 clear out the administration bringing our own people. But it says to me, he's looking for maybe I'm wishful thinking here that he wants serious people there alongside him as opposed to just his family. Just briefly on while we're on the subject of chief of staff, Laurie, I think people haven't heard this already. It's interesting. Jonathan Powell has just been appointed as Keith as key as Starmer's national security adviser who was Tony Blair's chief of staff.

18:59Yeah. And in fact, the British government's first chief of staff in that role. I have to say, I think it's a very, very, very good appointment. I've known it was coming because Jonathan's a friend of mine and we've been talking about it. And obviously he has you have doubts when you're taking on something as big as that. But I'm really, really pleased that he's done it. And I think it's a good move for Keir Starmer. I wonder if he was waiting to see how the election pan down. Maybe he actually feels he needs somebody as serious and there's kind of, you know, experience as Jonathan because it's Trump.

19:31Nobody's going to pretend that Jonathan Powell is some kind of Trump because he's not. But he's an incredibly serious hardworking, disciplined foreign policy guy. So I think that's a really, really, really good move. Scaramut she said, and this has been confirmed in quite a few of the reporting in America that he thought Marco Rubio was pretty nailed on the Secretary of State. I don't know if that's right or wrong. We've seen Trump say that he's looking to give RFK, Kennedy, a major role in public health. We've seen him say that he wants Elon Musk. And if you said Elon Musk seems to be very close to him at the moment, set up for this Department of government efficiency where Musk who gave $100 million to Trump's campaign and whose net worth is up 26 billion now since the election is lined up to slash trillions from the federal budget.

20:23That's quite good. You put on 120 million and you get 26 billion. I mean, I'm not brilliant at maths, but the odds on that are good. I also think this underlines, I mean, Bloomberg did a thing saying that the top 10, the 10 wealthiest people in the world have added some phenomenons. It's 64 billion to their wealth. I mean, this is what underlines how incredible it is that when we talk about Trump's alliance, yes, there will be people for all classes, all age groups, all regions, etc. But he's managed to build an alliance of the rich and the poor persuading the poor that is there for them. Well, in fact, it is the rich who are going to do best out to him.

21:02I mean, that means that Elon Musk made in a day on the back of his guy, winning a sort of wealth that frankly would fuel a quite a lot of national economies. Yeah, I mean, it's something like something like 10 times the size of the entire Afghan economy at the moment, maybe in a day. Yeah. Mike Pompeo, who was Trump's head of the CIA, has remained loyal to Trump and maybe in with a chance of being the Secretary of Defense. Richard Grennell, who we've talked about a bit because he was Trump's envoy in the Balkans and has tended to be very pro -surb and has been a big advocate for concessions to Putin and Ukraine.

21:44Looks like he may be in with a shot, possibly at the NSC, National Security Council. Tom Homan, who used to run immigration for Trump, was a great one for separating migrants, children away from migrants, probably coming back in. And Stephen Miller, who was at the heart of his communications machine and was a big person for the mass deportations, probably looks like he's going to come back in. Any other thoughts on on team? I mean, let me just say, Stephen Miller, that gives me the HBGBs. I mean, he was the guy who at that Madison Square Garden rally, who people were rightly drawing parallels with his communication, both the words and the techniques with curples.

22:26That really did kind of, he literally had that phrase, a curable said, you know, we'll build a Germany for the Germans. This is an America just for Americans. And you've seen this stuff out today about Anthony Scaramucci's centres of clip this morning of one of their key supporters saying that even the children born off people who were not Americans, that they should be considered to be part of this mass deportation. I don't know about the team. I think it'll be very, very, I think those names are fairly obvious ones. But I suspect your surprises. I think Susie Wiles is surprised people. On the one hand, you think, yeah, well, she's so close to him during the campaign, she helped him the campaign.

23:02But I think a lot of people were thinking she would then sort of fade away. So that I think a couple of people I spoke to in the States last night said they were quite surprised by it because of what they know about her. Because that is an absolutely pivotal position in the entire American constitutional and political process. And he's not somebody as we know from the kind of Michael Wolf books and all that stuff. He's not somebody who sort of immerses himself in the detail of all that stuff that has to go on between the White House and Congress. But what you said earlier, so he's the president with a pretty significant win already got the Senate, looks like he's getting the house and he's got four years to turn the Supreme Court even more in his direction.

23:48I mean, that is power on an extraordinary scale. Yeah, well, let's take that, go into a break and then after the break, look at what that power might mean for what he does at home and abroad. See you soon.

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25:13Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart and with me, Alistair Campbell. Let's just have a quick, dropped round some of the big issues. Let's start with China. China Taiwan and then China, economy trade, etc. China Taiwan more or less likely. I would have thought China Taiwan more likely. It's difficult to read the whole thing through, but the main thing which is protecting Taiwan is a Chinese perception of American deterrence. The America will ultimately send nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers to protect Taiwan and that that will make it much more difficult for China to take Taiwan.

25:53I suspect that they will conclude that Trump will be very unwilling to risk American lives on aircraft carriers fighting for Taiwan. I think it will also be affected by the fact that if he follows through on his promise to solve Ukraine in 24 hours and by solving Ukraine, he basically means conceding to Putin both in terms of territory and in terms of ensuring that Ukraine, I guess, doesn't become closer to NATO or the EU and Putin has more control over Kiev. Then I think it becomes more likely. What do you think? I don't know. I think the thing that's most alarming about Trump, but also which he tries to turn to his advantage is the unpredictability.