475. The Budget Backlash – and Trump’s Plan to Profit from Peace in Ukraine

26:37But also in that time when you went through all the points in the Ukraine peace plan, we'll get onto this a bit after the break. But again, the number of people who said, goodness, nobody had actually pointed out to us these commercial financial deals in the Ukraine peace plan. So there's clearly a big problem. I don't think it's just, I think it's partly an anti-Labour problem, but it's a bigger problem of the fact that for whatever reason, editors have decided that the public isn't interested in policy detail. And yet, large members of the public, this isn't just blowing our trumpets, it's a fact, large numbers of the public listen to a pensioner and a middle-aged guy from, you know, your background talk about politics a few times a week.

27:24So I think this is the point I keep making to the general media. I think they are wrong to assume that the public can only cope with one story at a time. And the story this week is Rachel Reeves lied to us. Chris Mason, the BBC, who's, you know, who had a kind of multiple orgasm when the OBR accidentally released the budget live on television. Do your Chris Mason impression like your Chris Mason impression. The rise and rise of reform. um but he said he wrote this long piece and he said in other words this was the end of the analysis nothing she said in that news conference was wrong but and this is the key point we now know she knew something that she didn't share with us that morning what's that saying is basically saying if you tell us something you must tell us everything about everything that we might one they write about?

28:18Look, I'm not pretending that journalists and politicians don't sort of, you know, they're always talking to each other, but it is an incestuous world. There's no doubt about that. They, you know, Michael Wolff, I don't know if one of his books have I read about Britain is this weird place where they're all marrying each other, shagging each other, all this sort of stuff. He had this very, very dark view of our media political complex. But I do think there's something gone very very wrong that I have I've gone across this period and I'm not pretending I was a great journalist I'm not pretending I didn't I wasn't biased I was very very biased pro-labor but to go from a place where in the 80s Richard Stott says to me don't write this crap unless you actually know what you're talking about and you know what's in the budget otherwise just you know write a column but don't present it as news to a place now where news and comment is virtually completely fused okay well listen thank you for allowing me to present that fairly one-sided but i think quite analytical view of the way this media stuff works but you started and i described it as the case for the defense why don't before we go to the break why do you just give the the case for the prosecution, as it were.

29:34Well, let's go back to our interview with Rachel Reeves before the election. One of the most telling things she said when we asked, why do you want to be chancellor, is she said, I think I'd be a good chancellor. And that's really important because what she was saying there is not ideas. This is not my analysis of the economy. This is not the two big principles that are going to drive growth. I'm pitching for the job on the grounds that I'd be good at it. I'm sort of competent technocrat, right? What she's demonstrated is that she's not a good chancellor in that sense. She's clearly, you know, nobody would suggest she's been good at the comms.

30:12Nobody suggests that she's been good at articulating a clear vision for growth. Nobody would even suggest she's been very good at rolling the pitch and handling how you head up to a budget. So that then drives us back onto the question of what are her big ideas? What's Labour's vision for the British economy? And there I think we're in real trouble. I think the most of a clue we can get is probably this figure Torsten Bell, who used to run the Resolution Foundation. And the sense one gets is that Torsten Bell is still very much stuck in fighting the 2010 to 2019 conversation. In particular, the Resolution Foundation was around inequality.

30:54And the big question for Labour is, is this a government about inequality or is it a government about growth? Now, they'll try to say they want to do both. I get that. But in the end, there needs to be a relentless idea driven through government of what the priority is here. My instinct is that actually many of the inequality figures that Torsten Bell was focused on have actually changed over the last few years. and since 2019 there's been a very different type of economic problem british productivity actually 2008 to 2019 was more in line with the u.s than it is now something's happened over the last six years that we don't really understand and we can't really explain and what one needs from this chance i don't care what it is could be right wing could be left wing i mean i'd obviously rather be on the right but could be right than left wing here's an analysis this is what's fundamentally wrong with the country this is what's holding it back and this is what we're going to do to fix it and and it can't be a series of kind of small measures dressed up after the event i mean that's what i feel about the way that reeves and starma do this they reach for what somebody says you know check what we've done over the last uh year and a half and then let's try to make a little speech which ties it together and tries to provide a narrative explaining why we're doing good stuff.

32:20No, it's the other way around. Start from the, what's the problem you're fixing? Is the problem you're fixing that too much money is going to pensioners? Is the problem that you're fixing that the state has got too big and that there's too much process and there's too much bureaucracy and too much regulation and we need to unleash entrepreneurial spirit? Is the problem that you're fixing that we haven't built enough infrastructure. Is the problem that you're fixing that we have? I don't care. What's the problem you're fixing and what are you doing about it? And that's why I think she's no good, because I still think fundamentally they came into office believing that the problem was that the Tories were stupid, incompetent, and a bit evil, and she would just be a better chancellor.

33:04And what she meant by that is she thought that fundamentally running the economy was pretty straightforward. And if you put a good person like her it would all be fine and that the problem was people like jeremy hunt george osborne were either poorly intentioned or didn't know what they were doing and i think everything stems from that look i agree with some and all of that um i think if what i think motivates her and what she keeps saying this is a consistent theme since she was in opposition is this thing about she goes on you know she grew up in a school where the roofs were leaking and and girls like her didn't really have the chance to sort of make the most of their potential.

33:42I think that is a big driver. But where I profoundly agree with you, I think a lot of the problems this government faces are about that sense of not having the driving narrative that everybody understands. You get the narrative and then you get the policy areas you want to focus on and then you get the policy solutions. And sometimes it feels to me that that's disordered. But I do think, going back to my point about Keir Starmer's speech, If they did manage to fix trade through a proper look at regulation, planning, etc., if they did manage to sort welfare through Milburn, etc., if they did manage to get proper trade relations to the European Union and take all this friction, that would be a big step forward.

34:23The shared disappointment we had about the budget was next to nothing about AI. and actually if you look at the OBR Richard Hughes organisation and the report they published the one place where they actually decided there was going to be economic growth I don't know how they worked this out but the AI was actually the driver of that so they've decided there is something in that but we're not really hearing that since Peter Kyle left we're not really hearing that from the government and I think the risk then to finish is that in her obituary the risk at the moment is my story is I managed to get budgets through in a way that didn't alienate my backbenchers and didn't alienate the markets.

35:05She's not dead, right? No, but I think that framing that you put at the beginning catches very well what they're doing and that's not enough because in fact, Britain's in trouble. So you would have to be very brave. You'd have to pick enemies. You'd have to decide. If you're Polanski, and we'll get onto this when we do an episode tomorrow. You're going, your enemy's the bond markets. If you're on the right, I guess your enemies might be the labor backbenchers. Trying to steer your way neatly between the two without annoying them might work in very positive situation where the economy's growing and everybody's happy with you.

35:42But when productivity's stalled and you're massively unpopular, you've got to take some risk and you've got to make some enemies. Okay. Well, let's not take a risk. Let's take a break. Hey.

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37:10This episode is brought to you by NordVPN. December should be the season of peace and joy, but there are some people, some bad actors, who don't take a Christmas break. So we have to hope that the cyber criminals are visited by the three ghosts on Christmas Eve, but in case they miss out on redemption this year, we can safely protect ourselves from their online crimes thanks to NordVPN. NordVPN's powerful software encrypts your data, a threat protection pro, blocks malicious links, and scans downloads for viruses. And it's not just online safety. NordVPN knows that some online retailers like to change their prices depending on your location.

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38:51As the year draws to a close, it's time for our annual reminder that even in an age of political noise and division, one national consensus still stands firm. Roast potatoes. Oh God, all this British stuff. If you're wondering, however, what to buy, the politically obsessed person in your life this Christmas, might I gently suggest a year's membership to the Rest is Politics Plus? It's the thoughtful kind of present. Ad-free listening, bonus episodes, early access to Q &As, book discounts, and perhaps I think most interesting, it's our mini-series, available only to members focusing on the world's most complex characters and topics.

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40:10Welcome back to The Rest of Politics with me, Rory Stewart. And me, Alistair Campbell. Now, exciting announcement before we get into Ukraine, Honduras and Venezuela. We are doing a live performance on 6th of September, 2026 at the Royal Festival Hall in London. And there will be a presale going live on the 4th of December. These tickets will go very, very quickly. So if you want to gain access to the presale this Thursday, 4th December, become a member of the Rest is Politics Plus at therestispolitics.com. So we've done the UK. Let's go to the US. There's so much going on in the foreign policy field, but I think particularly in relation to Ukraine yet again, and also this extraordinary intervention by Trump in advance of the election in Honduras.

40:51Do you want to start with Ukraine? We talked in the first half about bad journalism. Here's unusually a shout out to good journalism, but unfortunately, it's American journalism. But with a British editor, Emma Tucker. So Wall Street Journal, incredible detailed reporting on what was going on behind the scenes in terms of the Putin plan. So this is the plan that you took upon in our emergency podcast. And what they've pointed to is how deeply this is all a commercial deal. And what they've talked about is both Witkoff's meetings with the head of the Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund, and then many, many other encounters.

41:29Roommates of Donald Trump Jr. bidding for Russian assets, Trump donors bidding for Russian assets, an incredible web of moves where it seems as though the Kremlin policy since January is being vindicated. And the Kremlin policy since January towards the US has been to say, forget about Europe, we will give you lots of juicy deals. We'll give you deals on rare earths and minerals and Siberia. We'll give you access to gas. We'll give you some of our government assets and knockdown price. And American, particular American individuals, some of them close to Donald Trump, will be able to make an enormous fortune and will cut the Europeans out of the picture.

42:13And in return, what we want is basically your recognition that Ukraine is effectively part of the Russian sphere of influence. NATO is going to be driven back and Russia is going to be left alone. And it's an extraordinary move. I'm going to come to you on this. But one of the lines in another article in Wall Street Journal, which really sat with me, is that Putin thinks this is like Stalin dealing with Roosevelt and Truman about dividing up Europe after the Second World War. He thinks he's as powerful as Stalin was at the end of the Second World War, and that his legacy will be to convince the US that he is this giant superpower who therefore deserves to put most of Eastern Europe under his sway.

42:53I think his ambitions in terms of his historical legacy, they go even further than that. He's had this idea that there's Peter the Great, Alexander the Great, and Vladimir the Great. And the great is the Stalin never got that one. Just a sort of side note before we get into the substance of this. Yesterday, and I think we've got to be really careful with how we talk about Ukraine and Trump and Gaza and Trump because we keep, this is like Groundhog Day. So you turn on the radio this morning and watch the television. Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner are meeting Vladimir Putin to discuss the latest stage and the da-da-da-da.

43:28We've been here so many times. Can I just interrupt on the media point here? How is it that, as you say, Rachel Reeves can't get away with anyone taking her budget seriously, but somehow Trump gets away continually with fooling the media almost every day into believing that he's on the cusp of an amazing breakthrough and comprehensive peace deal, despite all the evidence of the contrary. Why are they not as cynical about Trump as they are about domestic politics? Well, they are probably as cynical, but I think there are various things going on. The first is Trump, unlike Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeve, is an intimidating bully when it comes to the media.

44:08Piggy, the woman who got called as being piggy, had another woman the other day said, are you stupid? Are you a stupid person? I actually think there comes a point where the media, if they had any balls whatsoever, they're just all down tools and say we're off. You know, have you have you Marjorie Taylor? I don't know whether Marjorie Taylor Greene's boyfriend is still in the inner circle or not, but keep your little influences and all your sort of MAGA crowd. But the rest of us are off and we'll cover you from outside, which kind of is what the Wall Street Journal are doing. Because you don't forget, the Wall Street Journal is one of those papers that Trump is suing over the story they ran about him and Epstein.

44:40For some reason, Trump has got this hold over the media because they know that he is newsworthy. Whatever he says, whatever he does, people will tune in. When we did the series on Murdoch, one of the points that, you know, digging into the research that it became apparent to me is that Trump outfoxed, no pun intended, Murdoch by becoming more important to Fox News ratings and success than anybody else, including Murdoch. Look, on this one, Alistair, if you were an editor, why would you not be saying all that we know about the last two and a half years strongly suggests that Putin is not going to accept anything short of getting his hands on the whole of Donetsk and Luhansk and ensuring that Ukraine is weakened and NATO pushed back?

45:30so it doesn't really matter what europe and ukraine have just produced and that whitkoff's just set off to russia with he's not he's not going to get it why is it reported as though they're on the cusp of a deal because they report what trump says and they feel they have to because he's the president it goes back to this point we've made a lot that a very abnormal presidency is being covered largely in normal terms so i mean i would say i would suggest that it is utterly abnormal that Jared Kushner's there. He's his son-in-law. We know that when he was very close to Trump in the White House in the first term, he became a multi-billionaire on the back of deals done whilst being responsible for and getting praise from Trump for helping deliver the Abraham Accords.

46:17This sort of fusion of money and power. I was talking to one of the ambassadors who was in Washington at the time. And I said, what was Jared Kushner like? And he said it was completely terrifying. Every time he went in as the ambassador from his country to seat Jared Kushner, who then had an official position in the US government, half the meeting would be about business deals. Kushner would basically say, well, let's stop talking about whatever kind of geopoliticality we're talking about. By the way, I'd like to do this deal. Do you think you could help facilitate my business deal? So the situation today, Putin's there.

46:50Putin, as we've said many times, he hasn't really changed his position at all. He occasionally drops hints that he might. Trump then celebrates and says we're on the cusp of a deal. And then Trump, Putin just pushes in the same direction. And the point you made about Europe, this goes back to what I think was one of the most consequential moments of the year, J.D. Vance's immunity speech. The threat that I worry the most about vis-a-vis Europe is not Russia. What I worry about is the threat from within. Sometimes you've got to take these people at face value. That was him saying, you lot don't really matter to us.

47:23The idea that they're working for peace in Ukraine, in the same way that Kirsten, Merz, Macron think they are, Tusk think they are working for peace, they're operating in a completely different lens. And the fact that Rubio, who has actually, I think, been more sensible, I mean, it was interesting when they met the newly formed Ukrainian negotiating team because Zelensky's lost his chief of staff, Yermak, through this corruption scandal. But he met the new team and it was a pretty high-powered Ukrainian team. And there's Rubio sitting there because he's the Secretary of State, flanked by Witkoff and Jared Kushner.

48:02That was the American team. It's all about the business deals. Wittkoff famously being the golfing partner. I mean, this is the real thing that we don't keep. The reason he's so trusted is that he was one of Trump's favourite golfing buddies. The reason why Wyckoff would be a very good golfing partner is because to be a good golfing partner for Trump, you have to be willing to lose every game that you play. And you have to be able to turn the blind eye when Trump hits the ball into the rough or into a bunker. And then miraculously, that ball moves via the caddy's pocket into the middle of the fairway.

48:37And then you have to say, great shot, Mr. President. And that is what makes you a good golfing partner. And he refuses to use secure telephones. He insists on using unsecure mobile telephones for the most classified details for the Russian negotiations. When one of the European security agencies tried to reprimand him and said, could you please use a secure line? He said, no, I find it very inconvenient that that machinery takes too long to set up. He doesn't inform the US government. When Wyckoff was doing prisoner release, he didn't tell the CIA, which is actually in charge of that type of prisoner release, that he was doing it.

49:10The US Treasury only found out about the fact that he was deciding to suddenly lift sanctions on this man, Kirill Dmitriev, who was banned from visiting the US to bring him in after the event. It's the British that had to tell US officials what Whitcoff is up to in Moscow sometimes. I mean, and Kellogg, who is the general, serious figure who was doing the Ukraine stuff, has announced he's out. And as you say, poor Rubio has become this figure, a bit like Rex Tillerson, who was the Secretary of State in the first Trump administration. Rubio is on the right of the Republican Party, but he is becoming now and is being sidelined because he's seen as the voice of the establishment, because he's at least listening a little bit to the State Department, listening a little bit to the CIA, listening a little bit to experienced generals, trying to make the normal arguments that America has made for 80 years.

49:57And as a result, he's treated as a joke. I thought one of the most interesting moments, though, in that meeting the other day was when Rubio used the words sovereign and independent about Ukraine. Wyckoff looked physically ill. The social media was flooded with these pictures of Wyckoff just looking like he'd been forced to eat the most disgusting food imaginable. But then who wins in that? Nobody. It's just the next chapter, just the next chapter in the show. Exactly. And presumably Trump, given a decision to choose between, I don't know, Rubio and Wyckoff, or let's say Rubio and an extraordinary series of wonderful rare earth and mineral deals with what he believes is the great superpower of Russia, will choose the latter, right?

50:39One day, this war will come to an end, because in the end, all wars do come to an end. But it will only come to an end if both sides decide that there's nothing more to be gained from fighting. We're nowhere near that yet. Nowhere near it. And the idea that that plan is the basis to stop it is just completely for the birds. there's also some very interesting reporting on drones again and the way that russian is currently using new generation of fiber optic drones so you can't jam them through electronic warfare because they're literally linked by a fiber optic cable which they're buying by the hundreds of kilometers from china at the moment to push much further behind the ukraine front line so ukraine's still doing a really good job at drones right at the front line within about 12 miles you can't pop out without being hit if you're a Russian.

51:25But the Russians are now able to hit much deeper into Ukrainian territory and take out the drone operators themselves. So this is a moment where Russia, which was behind in the drone story, now seems to be getting ahead. One final point on that, Roy, I think it was really interesting this week that the Ukrainians have been hitting the Russian shadow fleet a fair bit as well, because that's been a very, very important part of Putin's economic strategy. So listen, the war is still going on, And I think we're kidding ourselves if we think that we're quotes on the cusp. I would love it if we were proven wrong, but I don't buy it.

51:55Right, Honduras and Venezuela. Very quickly on this, two stories which you've been looking into a bit and I think are fascinating. One of them is Venezuela that we have talked about in the past. But essentially, there are more and more American troops now gathering around Venezuela. Huge US aircraft carriers, strikes against Venezuelan vessels. The report is that there was a single strike on a Venezuelan boat on the 2nd of September, in which nine people were killed, leaving two alive. And then there was a second strike, which killed the two survivors. And the story is that Pete Hegseth had given orders to kill everybody on board.

52:30The defense secretary is distancing himself from that and saying that the admiral who commands Special Operations Command has his full 100 % support, thus implying the admiral sort of done it without him. Meanwhile, US lawmakers are demanding answers and Senator Chris Van Hollen said it's very possible there was a war crime committed if Trump's construct of an armed conflict with drug gangs is to be believed or plain murder if it isn't. And meanwhile, Rory, in another very, very suspect move, Trump did another post announcing unilaterally that all pilots and all planes should regard Venezuelan airspace as closed.

53:07And then we have this question around Honduras where Trump has again followed in his new pattern, which is of picking winners in other people's elections and threatening the population of Honduras and saying, if you don't vote for my candidate, I'm going to cut economic assistance. Over to you. Yeah, and related to that, shortly before the election, Trump announced on a Truth Social post that he was planning to pardon the former president of Honduras, Hernandez, who was serving a 45-year jail sentence in an American jail, having been convicted by an American court of charges related to flooding the US with drugs, hundreds of tons of cocaine.

53:48now here's the thing trump's stated reasoning for taking out these boats from venezuela is that they're flooding america with drugs literally on the same day he is pardoning or saying he's going to pardon a man who's been convicted for 45 45 years who was told when he was convicted that the judge expected him to die in jail and trump says he's going to be let out And worse than that, says unless Honduras elects the part of this guy, Nasri Tito Asfura, who is the conservative presidential candidate in the party of Hernandez, then America will stop supporting Honduras in any way at all. Am I getting this right?

54:34So Trump's policy is essentially I want to kill you because if I don't kill you and you get arrested and convicted by a US court, I'll pardon you. I don't think it's quite that. I don't think these Venezuelans. And here's the thing about we shouldn't really laugh because this is look, they may well be drug dealers. Well, the point is, we don't know. They've not been tried. There's no evidence put forward. And they're just being killed. They've not been named. We don't know who they are. We're now we're now close to 100 people that we know of. We don't know of them. We don't know who they are. But the numbers we're into the 80s of people who've been killed whilst at sea by American forces.

55:13And as you say, in some instances, including when they have turned backwards. And again, to remind people that you are not allowed to conduct extrajudicial killings of this sort, right? The whole international legal system broadly was built to resemble the principles that we have in our own countries, which is, you don't get to, in Britain, for example, send vigilantes down the street or even policemen down the street and just shoot people saying, well, we thought they might be drug dealers, right? You arrest them, you bring them to trial, you convict them. They're innocent until proven guilty, etc.

55:48But overseas, it's even more extreme because this isn't your country. These are not your citizens. So in order to be able to assassinate the citizens of another country, The US Congress, very controversially after 9-11, authorized laws which were about protecting America from clear and present dangers to the US. Essentially, terrorist attacks, imminent terrorist attacks against the US. It was authorized. You could kill an Al-Qaeda person if you could argue that they were about to mount some new 9-11 in the US. But at no point does the legal system exist to say, you can just go around randomly assassinating other people's citizens on the grounds that you think that they're carrying drugs, right?

56:28And although the administration is now saying they're acting legally, J.D. Vance, of course, is on the record when challenged about legality of this to say, I don't give an F. I don't care. I don't care about the law, right? So we're now in a position where the head of special operations, this admiral, is not just attacking these boats, but it seems as though they have also been killing the survivors of these attacks. So 11 people on a boat, nine of them are killed. Two of them survived the first attack and are presumably bobbing around in the water, waiting to be rescued, and then they're killed too.

57:02The other thing is that Venezuela, and I'm not defending Maduro, a terrible human being, and he rigged the election and all that. But Venezuela is not as big a source of America's drugs as, say, Honduras. The court case that Hernandez was involved in, which ended him going to jail for almost half a century, as I say, they talked about how he'd opened a superhighway for cocaine between Honduras and the United States. and I think what this is what this is indicating and the message that this sends and it's the same with Netanyahu remember Trump went to the Israeli parliament spoke in the Knesset and with his usual sort of half jokey half serious way pointed to the president pointed to Netanyahu and said come Mr.

57:45President just give the guy a pardon he's got a water fight and now a few weeks later Netanyahu who formally asks for a pardon from the president of Israel. What Trump is doing here is signaling that if you are part of his gang, his political tribe, you're Millay, you're Netanyahu, you're one of his crowd, you should be entitled to do anything you want. And that goes up to and including flooding America with drugs. As long as you're my guy, it's okay. And this election that's taking place now while we're speaking rory on tuesday morning they're saying that the the ruling party you've only had one term on the hondurian constitution the candidate for the ruling party is in a very distant third place the two candidates are literally they are locked virtually in a tie while the voting is still going on it's a few votes either way i mean it's literally what you'd literally be asking for a recount wouldn't you correct when you start staring at ballot papers.

58:47And also, and this in an election where there was very little focus on policy and a lot of focus on the other side are going to try and rig it. So this is absolutely made for Trump to come out at some point and say, my guy's won, this is being rigged by the other lot. And what's interesting as well is that they're both, the two who are leading, they're both essentially on the right, they're both right wing. But he's decided his guy is the one who is the successor to Hernandez, this guy Astura. And Astura, by the way, because the Hondurans don't particularly like, there were massive celebrations in the streets when Hernandez got jailed.

59:24So Astura's thinking, I've got to distance myself from this guy. So, I mean, Trump may have helped, he may have hindered, but it's so close, it's impossible to work out. Final one is the way in which the traditional allies of Venezuela, so particularly Russia, China, Cuba, Iran, Nicaragua haven't really come to Venezuela's defense. And if you were going to explain what's going on here, it is that Trump has got Russia thinking they're about to get a great deal from him in Ukraine. So they're not going to go out on a limb for Venezuela. The Chinese are in the middle of these huge tariff negotiations.

59:57They're not going to go out on a limb for Venezuela. Iran, of course, nobody came to their assistance when they were struck by Israel and then by the US. So this sort of axis is really not holding together at all. And in the short term, this very, very disruptive, aggressive behavior of Trump around the world, with these very unpredictable and frequently unjust resolutions, is working in his favor in relation to leaving Venezuela exposed. But the other thing is, when he does these things like say, I'm going to pardon the guy, do you think he or anyone in his team even bothers to go and look at the evidence in the case?

1:00:32because what he said he was asked about it on air force one he said well a lot of people whose judgment i trust they told me this was a bit of a political fit up like biden did with me okay but when you go and read the evidence of this case i mean this guy hernandez he was in he was in league with el chapo el chapo is one of the most famous drug dealers in the world and the whole thing got triggered because hernandez's brother was arrested whilst taking a million dollar bribe. Other cartel leaders gave evidence of how they were giving, in some cases, quarter of a million, in other cases, more, some cases less.

1:01:12They were just giving this to the president and his family as a payment for not being prosecuted. And the reason this is so nuts is that, as you say, it was an American court, because normally what Trump is claiming is that the courts in Latin American countries are biased against political opponents. That was the case that he was trying to make in Brazil about Bolsonaro. But in this case, it's a US court with unbelievable detailed information on exactly the issue that Trump claims to care about, which is governments involved in narco-trafficking. And clearly what's happened, presumably, is if you're smart enough to employ the right kind of lobbyist who can get to Kushner or can get to Donald Trump Jr.

1:01:51and pop a word in his ear, all you have to do is say to the president, this is another one of these Biden things. Would you mind pardoning this? And off you go we know he said trump trump is on on the record statement given to the new york times trump said many friends many friends had asked him to pardon anandes they gave him 45 years because he was the president you could do this to any president in other words this is never going to happen to me because i'm going to make sure that it doesn't happen to any of them what you'd love though rory i read um extracts from anandes statement when he was setting out why he was the victim and it was a very very long statement but you'll be pleased to know he quoted the bible martin luther king jr and edmund burke ah there we are in his defense well done you on reading the statement gosh you've really been doing a lot of work on this one okay well i think on the off your mastermind subject i think we're going to come to an end on that but maybe we will return when we get the result from honduras and look forward to speaking to you tomorrow and in question time we're going to talk about zach polanski we had so much feedback about our interview on leading rory zach polanski the leader of the green party in the uk with his radical economic policies for those listeners uh who are not right in the heart of the british system and more more importantly our current episode out on rest is politics leading we're going to talk about your party that's not your party the tories that's the jeremy corbyn zara sultana party we're going to talk about climate change so we're going to talk about the horrible tragedies in sri lanka and in Indonesia.

1:03:22Yeah, and we're going to talk about my secret campaign to get back in the European Union. Very good. Looking forward to speaking all about that. See you soon. Bye.