406. Biden, Springsteen, and Trump: Dancing in the Dark

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1:24Welcome to the rest of politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alice Campbell, and just to remind her to those who might have missed it on Monday, we've already done a fairly chunky half hour on the UK EU summit, Dammit on Monday. That one have gone out to members in their feed yesterday if they missed it. And anybody else who wants to catch up, it is there. We may touch upon it in the second part of this one anyway because we're going to be talking about the spate of European elections that were over the weekend. But in the first half, we're going to talk about the United States and both the current president, but let's start with the former president, Joe Biden and the news of his health, Rory.

2:07Yeah, very sad. So he seems to have been diagnosed with what looks like quite advanced serious prostate cancer. And at the same time, there have been a series of reports and now a big book out saying that his cognitive decline was very extreme and was concealed from people, including one very colorful claim that people may have come across, which is that one of the reasons that George Clooney decided not to endorse him or call from a step down is that having known Biden very long for many years, it became clear to him that Biden didn't recognize him. I had heard that actually from a UK cabinet minister who at the time saw me to secrecy, but said that he'd been in a meeting with Biden and Biden had come in, said hello to the mall, sat down, been taken out by his staff for a few minutes and then re -entered the room five minutes later and reintroduced himself again to all the same people as they never met him.

3:05And that was about 12 months for the election. Yeah, I think the thing that brought it to a head was the Trump TV debate when Trump, as ever, was, you know, what if you think of him incredibly energetic and there was that killer moment when he said to Biden, I don't know what he just said, I don't think he knows what he just said. I don't know what he means and I don't think he knows what he means. There's no doubt now that lots and lots and lots of people were seeing him who were saying to each other and saying to others outside, he's not in a good way, he shouldn't run. But what the book appears to be saying is that he had this very tight circle, including part family, part advisors who felt they could keep the show on the road.

3:52I think it also maybe puts into, on the illness and as you say, reading between the lines, I mean, I've drafted and read quite a lot of sort of dealing with health issues for politicians is always very, very difficult. But reading between the lines on this one, it looks quite serious to me. I also really wanted to just, I mean, let me just read you this post from Donald Trump yesterday. Maligny and I are saddened to hear about Joe Biden's recent medical diagnosis. We extend our warmest and best wishes to Jill and the family. And we was Joe a fast and successful recovery, which is the sort of thing that the president should say.

4:34Okay, but it sits so badly alongside his relentless ranting about Joe Biden pretty much up until yesterday. Yeah, well, I mean, it's this interesting message isn't it, because it shows that he can occasionally do the normal thing. I was expecting it to lead, to lead on to him saying, but like a happy Easter message, which begins happy Easter and then attacks Joe Biden and everybody else. Yeah, we have that situation on the the episode we did on Monday on the on the Kierstarmer of On the Lion Summit, where somebody said that Nigel Farage was living inside my head, it's very easy to get inside Donald Trump's head.

5:17Did you see his tweet about Bruce Springsteen? Absolutely amazing. So Bruce Springsteen. Pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, yeah, have you got the text from me? I've got it. Yeah, I've got it. Yeah. So Bruce Springsteen's on tour at the moment. He started, he's kicked off the touring Manchester, that's Manchester, England. And he basically stood up, and I thought it was brilliantly done. He basically said, he told about the need for people to stand up, rise up, speak out, because my country's been taken over by corrupt, incompetent treasonous administration and then he went on. Anyway, Donald Trump says as follows, I see that highly overrated Bruce Springsteen goes to a foreign country, in us, you people in the UK, to speak badly about the president of the United States.

6:01Never liked him, never liked his music or his radical left politics. And importantly, he's not a talented guy, just the pushy obnoxious capital letters jerk, who fervently supported crooked Joe Biden, a mentally incompetent capital's fool and our capital's worst ever president, who came close to destroying our country. This is the guy's hoping gets well soon. If I wasn't elected, it would have been gone by now, whatever that means. Sleepy Joe didn't have a click on the country. Sleepy Joe didn't have a clue what he was doing, but Springsteen is, quotes, dumb as a rock. Couldn't see what was going on or could he, which is even worse, question mark.

6:45This dried out quotes prune of a rocker, Brackett's, his skin is all atrophied, ought to caps, keep his mouth shut until he gets back into the country. That's just standard fare. Then we'll see how it goes for him. I mean, that is inside your head living of, I mean, well done Bruce, I say, well, the boss is the boss. And he is right inside DJT's head there. And it's all same. Fascinating that you can, I mean, you don't need to be a sort of great, kind of French critic to pull out the fact that the same themes come up in almost every person. Absolutely. So, there's the sleepy Joe. There's the I'm the president of the United States.

7:27There's the foreign country. And then there's the threat on borders and immigration. Just you come back to this country. There's also the obsession with skin. I mean, his skin to require the level of makeup that he wears. I mean, the moochers, the scribe to us, the process of makeup, apology of Trump. And the mooch really understands skin, doesn't he? That is, I thought strange. And he also had last week Taylor Swift, since I, since she came out for me and I called her out, she used to be hot. She's now not hot anymore. He's gone off her and he now fancies Amadal Sharra. I was talking to somebody the other day, Roy.

8:03Who? Who? Who? I was like, well, I just basically said he was hot. I'm sorry. I'm going to say this because I think it's important. I heard this story about Trump. Trump does sort of, he tells, he likes telling men how handsome they are and how good looking they are. Apparently, he went up to a couple of guys who were at Mar -a -Lago, just said, went over to them. Said, you're beautiful. Can you just stay there forever? Now, the thing about the thing about the, the post when about Joe Biden's illness, let's just, let's just accept for a minute, maybe it was sincere. Let's just assume that. It's hard to know because of what he said about in the day before.

8:43This same person who knows Trump land really, really well said that one of Trump's really big motivations is a pathological fear of death that he's really, really, really scared of dying. And he even took this to the next level and said that there's lots of reasons why he kind of likes to treat with pew and with pew and and juicing ping. Obviously, the fact that they're powerful people, they've got, you know, they basically run their countries like the extension of themselves, etc, etc. But he actually said to me this guy and he's, and I'm talking about somebody's quite serious per route. Well, very serious person said that actually part of it is this fear of death because they've got a lot of modern nukes.

9:27And this kind of, you know, a lot of what he's about is just making sure these guys don't use nukes on America because he really doesn't want to go like that. What do you think of that as? Yeah. I like it. I mean, I've sort of sort of kind of, um, meta point, which I'm becoming increasingly obsessed with, which is that we talk all the time about Trump's psychology, don't we? You know, he's obsessed with death, you know, he likes rich people, he's worried about his skin. And this is what happens when somebody turns from being an Alexa president in a normal democratic system, which checks and balances into a, a king.

10:08I mean, this is what used to happen with Louis XIV. People spend their whole time kind of trying to get into his head. Yeah. And the court, and the court are all just hovering constantly analyzing their relationships with each other through the context of how is this going to appeal to him. So you saw that with Mike Waltz. Mike Waltz was his departure as National Security Advisor, would have been accompanied by endless maneuvering by vans and hexa, and all these other people in the orbit. And now he's gone. And they're still there, but they might be less. And it's also, it's also weird that the psychology doesn't really help anybody, even people who know him reasonably well to actually predict what he can do.

10:45I mean, we can also say he's unbelievably unpredictable. Yeah. But you will see, you know, people who know him well, predicting that he'll only put up with Musk for a day and then he puts up Musk weeks, or they'll predict that he's never going to put up tariffs. And then he puts up tariffs. And then when he's put them up, they'll predict and never bring them down. And he brings them down. And we just saw the same just to segue a little bit onto the Middle East tour, because we talked about that Middle East tour. And it's all been happening between the last podcast. And now, so just remind people he, he went to re -ad on Tuesday, the 13th of May, where he signed a $600 billion investment deal apparently, or it was agreed, it wasn't signed, and 142 billion arms deal.

11:24Then he went to Doha, next day, 1 .2 trillion economic exchange was talked about Abu Dhabi, 200 billion and stuff on AI, and then back to Doha again. And one of the things in it, which was really startling, which we trailed in the last podcast was of course this decision on Amad Al -Shara. When we went to see Amad Al -Shara, the conventional wisdom was this man is an international terrorist. He very recently had a $10 million price in his head, and nobody should be dealing with him. It was very controversial. We even interviewed him. Now, President Trump has said, as you say, that he's hot and he's lifted sanctions on him.

12:03And it's very interesting he's done it because again, two weeks ago, I had a lot of people explaining that he would never do that. And they had two explanations. One of them was that he was very influenced by Israel, and Israel does not want sanctions lifted on him. In fact, they want him gone. They want Al -Shara gone. So he ignored Israel. The second is he ignored a whole series of power players in his own administration. This system section is state, for example, and a man called Gurdkha, who again is a very, very powerful, was supposed to be a very powerful player who was really against lifting sanctions.

12:36And Trump's ignored the morning. Instead, he's gone. It seems, roughly, with what Mohammed bin Salman once had, and what the Catries wanted, which is the sanctions being lifted. And he met Al -Shara, a very, very unusual thing for a present to do. So I just want to get to this because it's all part of, as we look at the next three and a half years of this roller coaster, how unbelievably difficult it is even people who think they know, well, like Gurdkha and the Middle of his administration, to know what he's going to do in two days' time. Well, the current episode of leading, which I really, really, really read.

13:08I know we always plug the leading, but I think of this one, if you don't listen to leading, please listen to this week with this guy, Arab Barguiti, whose father, Ma 'wan Barguiti, is in jail, has been for over 20 years, but he's reckoned by many Palestinians and by moderate Israelis to be the guy who could be the key to trying to help get Palestinian and Israeli relations into a better place. But we talked to him about Al -Shara, and he made the point. He said, I've thought ever since Trump came in, that his unpredictability might actually lead to better prospects for Palestine. And you and I, both of us before the presidential election, we said, look, Netanyahu is basically just waiting for Trump.

13:55Same as Putin, it's waiting for Trump. But actually, Trump not least has shown, not least by going to the Gulf without going to Israel, and all the other things we talked about last week that he's done, though, who's he ran. He is not conforming to type, he is not following the narrative that every else is set for him. And the Syria and the Al -Shara thing, because when we talked to Al -Shara, he was not sounding confident about getting sanctions lifted at all. One of the reasons he did the interview with us was actually to try and get the message out into a European, British European context, that why it was so important the sanctions got lifted, but he didn't sound at all confident.

14:39And it's happened like that. Let's just sit also step back. I was talking to our friend, Gerard Russell, the small who's the Middle East expert, former diplomat, former foreign officer diplomat. And he was raising the question of what an unusual presidential trip this was. How conventional president wouldn't have gone on his first big trip to the Gulf. And if he had, there would have been a much bigger a general story. The president would have been trying to get much more out of it. He would have been able to have some big breakthrough on Israel or Iran. So this was this sort of interesting thing.

15:16I mean, it's, you know, he, Trump gave a lot in this trip. You know, he gave concessions on AI to UAE, which will have worried people. He gave concessions on Syria. He seems to have accepted the plan from the catarge. Oh, I forgot, I forgot that. What is that? Sorry, sorry, sorry, is that a concession? Reluctantly, I'll take 400 million pounds worth of a plane. Yeah, I'm not sure about that. And I suppose to some extent, maybe he thinks that trouble free looks good, enjoyable. And there's this talk about money, but very little of that money is actually signed sealed and delivered. And I, I wondered in the back of my head whether he might not have been hoping for a bit more, you know, did he hope that actually he could have got a ceasefire out of Israel Gaza or even more ambitious sea?

16:09Could he have made a little bit movement with the Abraham Accords? Was he hoping to do something with Iran? Was there something that didn't quite happen on the trip? Or was it never about that in the first place? Well, I don't know. But the way they set the trip up was very much about money and about business. I saw French TV discussion of the night. They were talking about the visit. And this guy said, I've totted up all the deals that at various points Trump said had been done. I've totted up all the numbers. And he said, he's, if these deals all came off, bracket is very large if the, the combined total is greater than the size of the entire French economy.

16:52So that's quite a lot of deals, right? So I think there was, I think the other thing, don't look, we, as you say, we do talk a lot about his psychology. And I'm, I'm very strongly of the view now that he's motivated by a desire to be the most famous person in the world, the most powerful person in the world and the richest person in the world. I think he sees that as a, as a pretty good triptych to go for if you're him. And so I think a lot of this was about about money and about showing his power. And I just think he likes being in places where everything is glitzy, gold is everywhere. He talked endlessly about how beautiful these buildings were and the carpets and the sofas.

17:32And I just think they know how to play him. They play him in, in, in that way. Well, the one was marvelous moments weren't there. MBS literally drove, Mohammed bin Salma and the Crown Prince said, he'd be literally drove him around a golf cart, didn't he? Yeah. I'm playing YMCA. It's like gay anthem. But it happens to be sort of, they come off the stage to YMCA and he's thinking, oh, well, I've been, it was going on here. But, you know, I, so I, I think a lot of it is about that. And if you think that you mentioned Jarrah, Jarrah Russell saying that this is an unusual first trip. Historically, the first trip of most presidents has usually been to Canada or the UK.

18:13Well, Canada at the moment, he keeps saying he wants to be the 51st state. So that's unlikely to happen. And the UK, we've done this kind of tarot deal. Just on Canada briefly, the one thing that this guy was talking to, and I wish I could say it was because then you'd have a really good sense of why I'm sort of quite confident in this. But he said of all the kind of stuff on the foreign policy stuff that he, that he kind of puts out there. He said, Canada, we shouldn't take that seriously. There's, they've got no intention of Canada being the 51st state. That's just, that's, that's going to disappear.

18:46But the one you should really watch out for is, is Greenland that, that is, that is serious. Now, I don't know if you've heard that as well, but it does make sense. I mean, taking Canada would be close to impossible with a Canadian population that is massively against it. You've got 20 million highly armed people in an incredibly wealthy country. Greenland is 50 ,000 people and it's not as a surprise. But it's Denmark, which is NATO. Canada's NATO. But if you were, if you were trying to plan the logistics of one or the other, I'm afraid, you know, Canada, he'd be facing bloodshed and not in Greenland.

19:21Maybe, maybe before we go to the Great War, I should, I should play, I've already mentioned that. I've seen the whole thing now, so I'm going to plug it again because it's, if you, if people need a bit of light relief amidst all the kind of horrors of the world of Trump and Ukraine and Gaza and climate change or that, Joe Leicester's, the United States of Birmingham is one of the funniest, best things I've seen on TV for a while. Joe Leicester, the comedian from Birmingham, he goes to every Birmingham in America, which includes Birmingham, Alabama, big ones, but also these tiny hamlets called Birmingham.

19:53And he gets every single mayor in every single place that he goes to or governor whatever it is to sign a historic, it's beautifully done. And it's basically become the United States of Birmingham, which could become a replacement for later. If the worst, if the worst is to happen, it's, it's, it's, it's very gentle, very, very nice. This, this is what I like. I mean, given I failed to convince the First Minister of Wales to even support me in my idea of teaching Welsh and English schools, his ability to get all his work and prayers to sign up. It was brilliant. It was absolutely brilliant. I, as you know, I was quite supportive of your idea.

20:33I'm up for anything that, that keeps languages alive. And I even had a bit of the football weekend, a couple of Scots fans going on about all the gallic signs everywhere. Keep them, I say. Keep them. They're very, very important. Welsh, you take a break and then come back with Europe. Absolutely. Absolutely.

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22:04Welcome back to the Rest Politics with me, Royce Jett and me, Anastakambal. We have quite a few elections over the weekend, Romania, Poland and Portugal. So if I may really cheekily, can we please start with Portugal? Happily, happily. Because the niche listener to the restless politics, those loyal listeners who've stacked up thousands of hours listening, will know that we've actually done quite a lot on Portugal and one of the reasons we on quite a lot on Portugal is there was in fact an election in 2022, 2024 and now there's been a third election in 2025. And the big story behind it is that yours truly believed to myth, which has now been completely exploded, which is that Portugal didn't really have populism.

22:42There was in fact a very grand academic theory called Iberian exceptionalism that said because partly because Spain and Portugal had right -wing dictatorships, they were kind of immune to populism and that all seemed to be pretty much true until things began to become a part sometimes sort of in the middle of Covid. Anyway, since then things have changed very quickly and let's just give you the figures on this. So we started as quite fans of Mr Costa, the prime minister, who managed to take with his socialist party 120 seats and 41 % of the vote in January 2022, 41 % of vote. And at the same time, an eccentric man called Ventura sort of part -time law professor, part -time football commentator moved from one seat, which is what he'd got before, to 12 seats, but still only 7 % of the vote.

23:32And the big party still dominated, so there was this big left -wing party and then there was the right -wing party. There was then another election and Venturian Chagga began to creep up. He only crept from 7 % of the vote to 10 % of the vote but he hopped up to 50 seats. Meanwhile, our friend Costa managed to get himself involved in some bewildering corruption scandal involving payments from the Portuguese airline and lithium factories and goodness knows what and reside. We should point out, Roy, that is despite that, he maintained his own innocence but accepted responsibility for other people's failings.

24:03Despite resigning those circumstances, he went on immediately to become the same Antonio Costa that we talked about as one of the two European union leaders alongside Keir Starmer at the press conference on Monday. Oh my goodness, yes of course he's the guy that we saw with Ossi and Online, you're completely right. So that's right, well done. Well, that's a good, there's a future for all of us. Because his final days were a little bit, I had say Boris Johnson, he had 11 set retreats of state, finally resigning on him before he decided to do the honorable thing and maybe thought it was a time to move on.

24:35Anyway, second lecture we talked about and then in the latest election, just to cut to the chase, lace selection, a Costa's party, the socialists, now down to about 23 % vote 58 seats and the far right Chega up at exactly the same numbers 58 seats, about 23 % of the vote. Meanwhile, the other party, the sort of mainstream right wing party has come top but will not be able to form a government and is refusing to do a deal with Chega and therefore is like to have another minority government. So we could have another relation fairly soon. It's a bit of a mess. So Chega is a proper, proper far right populist party.

25:17It's a party that it's discussed things such as removing ovaries from women who have abortions. It's got a very strong Catholic base. It talks about false sterilization, life and prism, events, adventurer has made very inflammatory comments about the Roma, Gypsy Roma community, big reduction Muslim immigration. One of the members of parliament whose family originates from Guinea -Bissau had made a statement about returning Portuguese colonial looted artifacts back to the countries they came from and Ventura said, when are you go back to the country you came from? So it's a proper proper proper proper far right party.