365. Trump's Mafia World Order

24:40And as soon as they remove them, they're crippled. Let me take you to another area where I've been actually talking to people in the protective health sector. And again, I think this is something that people should be really, really concerned about. This is one of the orders they've got. Next to no coverage at all. A freeze at the National Institute of Health on meetings, travel, communication and hiring, while they quote review protocols. Executive orders also, halting publication of regulation and guidance documents issued by bodies, including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare, Medicaid Services, and the Food and Drug Administration.

25:17Now, it says that the pause will be temporary. But meanwhile, the people who are in these organizations, one of which I spoke to says that the whole thing has had an absolutely chilling effect. And that for the first week in something like 64 years, something called the morbidity and mortality weekly report, this is something that goes out every week and has them for 64 years. And it explains with real live data health risks to the American people. This week, it did not go out. And the thinking is two things. One, he wants to show them they can be muzzled whenever he wants them to be muzzled. And secondly, he wants to make sure that if there's bad news coming out about health and what have you, the White House can be in complete control of it.

26:06I've got another email read. This I think is chilling as well. I'm interested in NASA when we talked about this with the Mooch. And do you want to know the name of the email and the address that you have to send to? If you see somebody who is not going along with this new DEI initiative to basically get it out, it's called DEIA Truth at OPM .gov. And it says, there will be no adverse consequence for timely reporting of this information. However, any failure to report such information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences. In other words, if you hear somebody saying, well, this fucking DEI stuff, you can bolster that.

26:49I'm not going to get engaged. You're sitting at the next desk. You have got to tell Truth at OPM .gov that you're neighbouring the office. I mean, it's positively or well in the whole thing. Let me come back on, I know I'm being boring on international aid. No, no, it's not boring. I'm still struggling to get the scale of it. Let me just say why I don't think it's boring. Why I think you're right to come back on it. If I remember rightly, we're moving on to the big, big, big players on aid and development were America, the UK, Germany and Japan. Yes. And America the biggest of all. And virtually every country in the world, particularly the poorer countries, organizations that were keeping people alive and that were making systems kind of valiant work suddenly overnight have the plug pulled.

27:36That is really serious. Exactly. So we're in a situation in which the number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa has gone from about 170 million in 1980 to about 430 million today. We have an incredible number of refugees, displaced people, places like Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, faced these repeated droughts and humanitarian catastrophes. And what's happened by stopping it and again, they're claiming they're just stopping for a review is that you are stopping programs now in 100 countries. USID has programs in 100 countries. And they have dozens of programs in each of those countries.

28:18Thousands, tens of thousands of programs have just ground to a halt overnight. And that's everything from vaccination, nutrition training for young children, healthcare and none of the countries know what's happening. So you saw Zelensky saying, oh, as far as I'm concerned, I'm still getting assistance from the United States. Well, it doesn't look like it on the list at the moment. The clarification is exempting only Israel and Egypt from the total cessation of aid. Now, this idea that they're going to review it. How are they going to get around reviewing thousands upon thousands of USID programs?

28:56How long is it going to take them? What are they going to do? What are the judgments they're applying as well? And then what happens is these institutions that many institutions, even with big NGOs, they're often 40, 50 percent dependent on USID for all their work. Now, there's a lot wrong with the international development system. I was to section state for international development. I run NGOs. There is so much nonsense in the development system. But the way to do it, of course, would be to set clear targets, address future contracts, not existing contracts, and provide a very, very detailed, rigorous way of shifting the strategy of USAID.

29:35But stopping all existing contracts and stopping on budget payments, the US government went away from USAID giving money to NGOs to other things to saying, okay, we will support the Jordanian government budget on health and education. Stop that. You're stopping the government providing its own services to its people. Of course, anyone listening to me who's on the Trump side is like, yeah, well, that's therefore why would they rely on American money anyway? Well, sure as hell, they ain't going to be relying on American money in the future. And all the soft power and all the influence that America's built up over 70, 80 years because remember, Jordan isn't just in the way that Trump thinks some sort of neutral recipient of American aid.

30:12They have been the key American security partner in the region. For decades, there's American troops on the ground. American bases. Jordan took a million refugees out of Syria. Jordan was vital for balancing ISIS. Jordan is vital for the security of Israel. Toppling Jordan is not just, oh, well, we were giving them money and Buggerat will have our money back. It's toppling your entire system. Do you know, I find most alarming at the moment. There was a single column on the front page of the Times today about a survey of the extent to which around the place, including the UK. I think it said that half of Gen Z young men actually think there would be no harm in us having a dictatorship in the UK.

30:53This is what this thing is doing. And this is why, you know, we talked about this to some people in Davos, the left or the progressives. I've got to get their act together in understanding this is an international. This is the culmination of an international campaign that has been going on for many, many years and they are now absolutely on the rampage. So let's take a bit of a break room. When we come back, Keir Starmer's first call with Donald Trump happened last night. And I also watched so that you didn't have to. I watched Elon Musk speaking to the alternative of the Tochland rally in Germany.

31:24Great look forward to it.

31:31This isn't ad from BetterHelp. At the moment, we're getting advice from everywhere. You just have to go on TikTok. Could be Alice's call plunges. Could be my attempts to meditate or the digital detox that I'm doing in Colombia. But of course, one of the things that we know is that it can be incredibly valuable to talk to another human being, somebody who's actually been trained as a therapist, to work through these ideas calmly, objectively and professionally. And as the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a very diverse variety of expertise.

32:07They've got over 5 ,000 therapists in the UK. They've helped more than 5 million people globally and you can join a session literally at the click of a button.

32:18Change hearing yourself clearly, maybe for the first time. So talk it out with BetterHelp. Our listeners get 10 % off their first month at BetterHelp .com slash rest politics. That's better HELP .com slash rest politics. Right now with the Home Depot, you'll find stored solutions made to fit your needs. Grab an HDX tough till to protect your tools. Or keep your sports equipment contained with reinforced snap fit lids. Or stack up and make better use of your space with bins and totes built to last. Whatever your story, we've got the gear to keep it organized and protected at the Home Depot. How do we get more done?

33:10Welcome back to the rest of politics with me, Boris Stewart. And me, Mr Campbell, I love the fact that you're whispering. Is that because there's lots of people pouring coffee and clinking their glasses? Yeah, I'm feeling slightly embarrassed. Are you in the business class lounge? Do you manage to get into the business class lounge? Are there all these people trying to get their beers and get their coffee is going? Okay, tell us about the call with Kierseimer. Can I just sort of preface? I mean, I sent you that thing on the first 20 calls made by Marco Rubio. And it was absolutely staggering. Is there a single European in there?

33:43Basically no Europeans on the list, EU not on the list, UK not on the list, India number one, and then a lot of other countries who you would not have thought were their top priorities. Yeah, yeah. Well, Marco Rubio is definitely going to be going big. I think he's first big visits going to be to Latin America. Trump said when he was on the plane back from Las Vegas that he thought his first visit would either be to the UK or Saudi. But they had a call yesterday and the readout, certainly the readout from the British end was very, very sort of warm. And there was certainly no threats to take the hebrides or to rename the English channel, the American channel.

34:21There was none of that stuff going on. But I think that being said, you know, the government is really going to have some big, big, big choices to make. And I do think this is happening at a time when the Europe debate is changing. And of course, if you speak to the pro -Brexit people say, well, look at Europe, it's a complete bloody mess, etc, etc. Well, it's not a complete mess, but certainly there's got a lot of problems. And you and I, when we're in Davos, we heard from a lot of the American, the big American people in particular, almost contempt for Europe, and I think that's about because Europe still wants to have a rules -based order.

34:57But I think that there's no way that a Labour government in the UK, as it work in ride on the ideological coattails of somebody like Trump. So it's really going to be quite difficult to navigate this. But what I would say from the tone of that call is that you've got the sense that Trump is looking to have a decent relationship, which sits very, very oddly with this kind of Elon obsession. Yeah. And so that was something I did pick up on Davos because I was talking to people who are part of this kind of new Republican, deep and dark mega movement. And they were saying they would be very, very anxious if they were the UK because a story has developed, which Elon Musk has been obviously peddling, which is that the UK has basically been taken over by Islamists.

35:44It's become a kind of Islamic state. And you can see people on Silicon Valley saying to you, oh my goodness, poor you, you live in the United Kingdom, are you okay? Are you safe? You have Jordan Peterson giving this extraordinary and future peers Morgan, where he's just like, what's happened to your country? The whole thing's gone to Hellenhan Basquit. He was one of the people, by the way, named in this survey of young men and he and Andrew Tate, who are named as, you know, role models and what have you. I mean, this thing is kind of off -the -scale map, but it needs a proper fight against it.

36:16These people have just been allowed to kind of dominate the airwaves, dominate the intellectual debate. And it's so dishonest. I mean, Jordan Peterson, I mean, began as an academic, began with his first book, you know, a slightly match, show, and he used to come and give talks in Britain, which mostly, Ernest Young men listening to him, but you know, he talked about God and religion and truth and my goodness, by the time you see him on Pearson Morgan, I mean, he doesn't care really about getting his facts, right? Doesn't care about putting things in context, doesn't care about proportion, doesn't care about pointing out who's been prosecuted or who hasn't, when these particular rapes have happened.

36:51Yeah, I mean, if you end up being one of these big, big names on the kind of ideological right and this opinion forming attention economy, it is big, big, big, big business. You become very wealthy, you become pretty powerful. Do you want to hear what Musk had to say to, um, to the AFD? Yes, okay, so quick reminder for people again, AFD, right wing party in Germany that did surprisingly well in the elections in Turingia and Saxony Turingia, okay, first. And this matters because the far right in Austria, now dominate Austria and Germany's about to go into an election. And at this particular moment, Elon Musk has decided not to get behind the conventional sort of equipment to the Tories, not even behind the equivalent of kind of Nigel Farage, but to go much further out.

37:36Remember, he's a guy who who supports Tommy Robinson and wants him, sees him as a prisoner conscience, Tommy Robinson being this kind of hooligan football, loom, I mean sorry, maybe that's unfair to you as a football supporter, but I'm like, a kind of crazy Islamist conspiracy theory, unrepentant propagandist. And he's now gone for the AFD, Musk is now trying to promote the AFD in Germany, interview their leader and has now appeared on their stage over to you for what he said. Well, he appeared with this massive, enormous, a hall with 4 ,500 people in it, Alice Fiedel, the Chancellor, Canada that introduced him.

38:07And it was this huge, his face was about 60 feet tall. And he did his usual kind of slightly geeky, couldn't quite get his words together and what have you. But it was straight on pro AFD propaganda. AFD is the best hope for Germany. It's okay to be proud to be German, be proud of your cultural values. If you lose everything in multi -cultures, I mean, dilutes everything, we mustn't become one big soup. You're an ancient nation, you go about thousands of years, Julius Caesar, he said, his account of meeting the German tribes is how strong and powerful they were. And then he said, you've got to move beyond past guilt.

38:46You shouldn't have to live and carry the guilt of your grandparents, be excited for the future, preserve German culture, protect German people. And then he had a dig at Brussels, which I suspect, I think this is about Brussels. Brussels, as I said earlier, rules based, online, looking at the regulation of social media companies, same as Trump in his speech, he said, I like the member states, but he deliberately didn't say Europe. He ended it just by saying, I hope the AFD do well, I hope Alice Vidal becomes Chancellor. I mean, what the fuck does he know of Alice Vidal? That would be very good for Germany.

39:18I strongly support the AFD. And then he just went, go. It's extraordinary. We talked about fascism at the beginning. I think the guy who really is a proper or a chair in fascist or emerging as such is mask. I mean, the recklessness now of this man, that stuff that you've just talked about where he says, every country needs to have its own culture, connects directly with this ethnic pluralism phrase, which all the far right in Europe used. And ethnic pluralism, as I said a couple weeks ago, is this theory that Germany is only supposed to have a limited number of people from other countries. I think they've calculated they're supposed to have exactly 600 Afghans and no more.

39:59And I think pluralism, because it's got this word pluralism, sounds quite liberal, it's not at all. It's the justification, what mask is staying out there, is the justification for this remigration, it's justification for saying German and Austrian citizens who happen not to be ethnically white should move out of the country because they come from an alien religion, they haven't assimilated properly. And the most worrying thing of all, I listened to a Jewish friend who was like, well, it's fine, you know, they're only going after the people who aren't making a real effort to assimilate and who are wearing funny clothes and are going to mask too much.

40:32Of course, this is very, very dangerous because of course, this was indeed what people said in the 1930s. Oh, you know, maybe they're just going to go after the Jews who aren't assimilating properly. This is why I refer to Lawrence's book, and that's your mind, it's got this vibe of, it'll be fine, don't stop going on about, it's not worrying too much. And you've still got lots of people saying, I will at least be strong, at least be funny, get stuff done, all this stuff. I've been always done so far, I've signed a lot of executive orders, created a lot of noise. The one thing I really do worry about is the point that the mooch made on our live stream is that, you know, the descent just seems to be kind of a bit weak.

41:09It'll come, it'll come, but you know, honestly. Well, one of the things that's also special in this new situation, which wasn't so true in 2017, is that young men in particular, and this is, this is famous see, also the task I've given you for the year is our kind of envoy to young men, right? Yes, I know, I'm on the case, don't worry, I'm reading about the gel. Anyway, one of the key points about them is they're completely obsessed at moment with anti -heroes and the idea of the disruptor. And the disruptor is a kind of tech bro who comes in and take the phrase from Silicon Valley, move fast and break things.

41:43So, fantasy Elon Musk is willing to take risks that his unmanned rockets will blow up and just keep throwing them up in the air and therefore can get them built more cheaply than NASA can that has all these safety protocols in place. So somewhere there's a kind of melding between the vision of the heroic anti -hero disruptor who moves fast and breaks things and just gets shit done. And which Curtis Yavin, who's been profiled in the New York Times, talks about the need for an American Caesar, an American king, an American monarch, just imagine the difference between if Elon Musk was running the government and a normal kind of liberal Democrats are running going.

42:22And somehow Trump is harnessing that. All these executive orders, the flurry of it, the fact that he's basically saying, and you pointed this out, a lot of what he's doing is technically illegal in US law. He's deprived, he's announced one of his executive orders that you can't by being born in the United States, be an automatic American citizen anymore. That is going directly against the US constitution. The stopping of all, stopping of all his funding is going directly against all the contracts that the US government has signed. So eventually Congress will try to act, people will take legal cases.

43:06But what's so interesting is he's behaving as though Congress doesn't exist, a legal system doesn't exist at no point in the drafting of these executive orders apparently is a lawyer involved. Is anyone saying is this legal or isn't it? Can we actually do this? Crazy, crazy stuff. Well, doubtless, unfortunately we'll be talking about in a fair amount on the podcast this week next week and in many other weeks. But can we close off with a little discussion about the second son of your friend the king Prince Harry? Yes, I'm an admirer of Prince Harry. I like people we guts. I like people who take on big powerful forces.

43:42What I want to draw attention to. I want to ask these listeners and viewers and you to ponder. Let's just say Harry had taken this case to court and lost. I wonder how many front pages that would have filled and how many pages inside they might have used to cover it. So just take that a little bit because not everybody's following the story. So this this for internationalist, this is this immense phone hacking scan. Believe me Roy, Prince Harry gets a lot of international coverage. Okay, but just just explain the story for us in simple terms. As far as I understand it, what happened is that a lot of the British newspapers were hiring private detectives and others and what they were doing is they were tapping the phones to celebrities and then the stories that they ran and their papers came not just from tapping but also breaking into their homes, going through their rubbish, doing all this kind of stuff.

44:30Prince Harry was one of the victims of this, but just probably one of the more famous victims because there were, I don't know what thousands of victims there's stuff, right? Thousands, yeah. And Hugh Grant and others have been involved in cases over many, many years, but what was different about Prince Harry seemed to be that he was saying he was going to take it all to the way to the way because the others have often settled out of court, is that right? Correct, yeah. First up, there were loads of cases for the news of the world and and of course the news international claim, news group claim that this was just isolated in the news of the world, not the other papers, the mirror said the same.

45:03And the news of the world was enclosed, they then closed the news of the world, there's part of this. The news of the world was then closed, a tactical move I would argue. The settlements and the legal course up to now, of course news group newspapers up to two billion. And so what's happened with Prince Harry the other day, they were literally minutes away from the start of an eight week trial, okay? Now the problem is with our legal system, there is a danger that if you are offered a settlement and you don't settle but then you go through with the process and even if you win, if you're awarded less than the settlement that you could have had, you can end up paying the costs even of the people that you've defeated.

45:43So it's a stupid system and that's why for example Hugh Grant said that that was why he settled and ultimately I think that's one of the reasons, but Harry and Tom Watson, the former Labour Deputy Leader, settle as well. That's the reason that they, I think settled on this occasion. However, what Prince Harry managed to get as well as a full and unequivocal apology was an admission by news group of law breaking on their behalf. They said it wasn't their journalist, it was all these hundreds of private detectives and what have you. However, what this has opened the door to is the possibility of perjury because these are people who have stood up in the levy's inquiry, which is under oath, who have stood up in previous court cases, said they had no knowledge, etc, etc, etc.

46:27And the other thing, the reason why, and this is not going away, Tom Watson stood outside the court and said he'd be handing over dossier to the police because we're talking about literally millions of emails that have been deleted, lost from evidence. And by the way, this after a court case had been sort of put in train as it were, and I was sent yesterday, we should maybe try and since 1999, the incidents in which the police have been informed of serious clear evidence of serious allegations against the press and have essentially ended up with saying no further action to be taken right through dozens and dozens and dozens of these.

47:17Can I ask a sort of really awkward question? I mean, you were a journalist with the Daily Mirror, like a tabloid newspaper for many years. You had nothing to do with this, and you didn't see any of this, you want to wear this stuff was going on or... Well, you could remember, I was a journalist in, I stopped being a journalist in 1994. So I can't remember when the whole sort of mobile phone thing became. There was a case, I was involved in a court case where we were somebody who'd been tapping somebody's phone, brought in some information, and we ended up in court and we were told we couldn't use the information because of the, we'd argue that it was in the public interest.

47:53So that was the only time I had any kind of sign of this happening. And just the culture of it makes sense. I mean, was it just sort of almost inevitable that the whole culture of newspapers had become so kind of cynical and brutal that it was almost inevitable this kind of stuff was going to happen? Totally, totally. Well, what was the extraordinary is that so when we were in government, I had a settlement because they'd been, you know, getting into our stuff. I was actually a witness in the Prince Harry thing because they, I was used because they wanted to show that just because it didn't lead to a publication of story, it didn't mean that the law wasn't being broken to get information.

48:31And this was what these private detectives were being used to get into our, into my bank account. And that sort of went nowhere. But so, no, I think you're right about the culture. And it's the culture. We're back to this point, we keep talking about the whole time, impunity. They think they get above the law. And the thing that's happened since Harry's case is that, and as I said to you at the start, if Harry had lost this case, it would have been, we'd still be talking about it. The papers would still be full of it. He's finished. He's gone back to, you know, and Diane will be turning and agree with all this sort of stuff.

49:01Let me just give you some examples of this. So the spectator now edited by Michael Gove, brackets, Rupert Murdoch, in the end, right, the spectator, Harry folded his much balli -hood case, which was due to beginning the high court last spring, it was, has concluded, much balli -hood. I mean, I'm more dismissive. The mail barely reported it. And they didn't mention the fact that they are currently involved in a case, which is coming to court next year. The son, the paper at the heart of it, it was kind of tucked away on page six. The times, since the paper, it was on the bottom of page 12, alongside a story about Judy Dench being worried about her eyesight.

49:42The mafe and the mirror buried away. And the telegraph, to be fair to the telegraph, Rory, it was on the front page, but guess what the headline was? Harry climbs down after eight figure payout. And the Sunday papers, it was as if nothing had happened. It's all gone away. And so this is how they get away with it. But I think with this one, I think, I've got a feeling this one could go, because we're talking about perjury. We're talking about the destruction of evidence and so forth. And it's very rare that I would quote Kelvin McKenzie, former editor of the son, favorably at all. But I do think he had a lot of, I read a transcript of an interview he did.

50:20First of all, he pointed out that this was happening on the watch of Rebecca Brooks. She was editor. She's now the chief executive of the entire shooting match. And he said this, if this was the BBC, BP or John Lewis, with a CEO involved in the scandal like this, they wouldn't last 10 minutes. The criticism from the press would be unbearable. But he says that basically, he says that the media and Britain has got an NPP, which is a no pissing pact. In other words, they don't piss on each other. And so I just think, you know, how guilty must they feel to have spent two billion pounds not going to court?

50:58Now, it's beyond a matching. It's beyond a matching. And I'm glad that the the rest of politics has not signed up to the NPP, but we're actually prepared to call this out. So thank you for that. We're prepared to go. And also, I'm also going to shout out, you mentioned Hugh Grant. You know, that's what I mean about I, there's a guy who is very, very famous. He's very, very wealthy. He would acknowledge, I think, that he's had a few issues in his past that he probably regrets. But he's got guts because I, you know, I know to take these people on, you have to have a lot of courage. And I also, I'm great believer in organized campaigns on stuff like this.

51:36And I do think Haktoff, I understand why they press hate them because they keep going for it. And so I want anybody who wants to, who does have information about the legal activity and their relations with the police and all that stuff, just get in touch with the Haktoff inquiry. And they'll lead you down the path of righteousness. Very good. Thank you, Anna. Well, lovely to talk to you. And, and, and, well done on making it work with this rather chaotic background. Thank you. Yeah, well, I enjoy whatever you're going to go and get from the, the buffet. Thank you. See you later. See you later.

52:09Bye. Bye.