Mehdi Hasan breaks down Trump's RADICAL start to 2026

[YoshidaYui]

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1. Mehdi Hasan... uncorrected autogenerated transcript...

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Right now we have a president who is lawless, who is uh operating an agency which is rogue, ICE, which have which
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have which have detained American citizens, killed American citizens, deported American citizen children. This
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is a guy who doesn't want to go anywhere, wants to be a dictator, said these are his words, I want to be a dictator.
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There are faright fascistic elements, racist fascistic elements that are undeniable, but people don't want to
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listen. She ran them over. Anyone who's watched that video knows that this is gaslighting of the highest order. And
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again, that's another element of fascist authoritarian societies. The government tells you not to believe what you see
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with your own eyes. It's very 1984. So, this is where we are now, where we're celebrating state sponsored violence
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against American citizens. The News Agents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity.
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Medi Hassan, thanks so much for joining us uh on the News Agents. Whereabouts are you at the moment? I'm in Washington DC.
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You're in Washington DC at the heart of everything. Um, this has been a dizzying, even by Trump's standards, Medie. It's felt like certainly from
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this side of the Atlantic, an utterly dizzying start to 2026, both in terms of foreign policy and Trump's actions in
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Venezuela, but also in terms of what's happening internally as well. Has any of it surprised you?
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Um, that's a good question. As someone said on Twitter the other day, what a year this week has been. Um, it has been
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insane. Uh, in a sense, nothing should really surprise us about Trump because he is the person who um, uh, does the
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crazy stuff that we think, oh, he won't do it, but then he does it. And attacking Venezuela was always on the cards and he did it. Did we know he
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would do it on the morning of January the 3rd, 3 days after he told Fox News that his New Year's resolution was peace
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on Earth? Uh, no. I'm not sure we did know he would do it on January the 3rd. And as for the ICE shooting this week,
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again, we didn't know it would happen, but it was inevitable that something like this would happen because he empowered a bunch of uh racist,
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untrained masked goons with guns to intimidate people, including American citizens, on the streets. We'd had near
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misses before. They've already shot at people already, and this time they shot and killed someone. Let's start with the domestic element
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because obviously it's it's it's freshest at the time of recording. Anyway, um obviously uh in the UK,
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British people are they may be aware and listeners will be aware as to what has been going on on a vague level. Can you
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give us a sense of how what it has been like in the United States and United States cities including Washington DC
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where you are in terms of the militarization that has taken place over the course of the first year of the
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Trump administration? Yeah. So, it's been astonishingly fast. Louisa to go back to your opening question. I was one of those people who
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spent much of 2024 telling people, especially on the left, who were very upset, rightly so, with the Biden administration and the Democrats
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complicity and the genocide in Gaza and saying, you know, well, you know, Trump can't be that bad compared to these
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guys. We survived Trump once. And people like me were saying, "No, no, no. Trump 2 is going to be much worse than Trump
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one. Trump two is going to be Trump one on steroids. He's coming in looking for vengeance. He's talked about wanting to be a dictator. He's talked openly. He
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talked in the campaign about using the military against his opponents. None of what he did uh should have surprised us,
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but the speed at which he's done it and the little resistance that he's faced, Lewis, that has been really remarkable.
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I mean, I I tell friends of mine who are not very political, don't follow the news, I'm like, you know, there's three years left and they're like, what? And
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they don't realize because the first year has felt like two or three or four years. He's done this all in less than
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12 months in terms of putting the National Guard on major American cities. Um, in terms of uh, you know, expanding
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ICE, ICE is now better funded than most of the world's militaries. uh the expansion of ICE, the expansion of the
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powers of ICE, the deportation agenda. Just last night, the night before we're speaking, Louis, the vice president went
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on Fox and said, "We're going to go doortodoor to do deportations." I mean, where are we? Iran, China, uh Venezuela,
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this is America where, you know, 20 years ago, Lewis, Republicans were obsessed with individual liberty. They
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were all about the government tyranny. We need to have the Second Amendment. We need guns because we can't have a tyrannical government. Um it was all
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about small government and don't tread on me. And now the Republican party is creating an authoritarian basically
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neo-fascist machinery in front of our eyes in terms of You think it is neo you think it is neoascist? Oh 100% 100%. I think the debate on
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fascism was over before he was elected. It's certainly over now. I actually texted a friend of mine last night, fellow journalist who argued with me for
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the last few years about is it is it or is it not fascism? And I was like you know what's left to debate the last the
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last piece of the puzzle was well he doesn't have domestic militias on the streets. Well actually he does now. ICE is basically a Trump loyal paramilitary
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police force, men in masks shooting not just brown and black immigrants, legal or illegal, quote unquote, but American
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citizens as we saw with Renee Good in Minneapolis. Um, they've been empowered, they behave as his Ptorian Guard. Um, he
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doesn't care about the Constitution. He was told by a judge to pull National Guard out of LA and other cities. He
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said he's going back in. Doesn't matter what the judge says. So, he doesn't care about the Constitution or the law, whether it's abroad with Venezuela or
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whether it's at home. uh when it comes to dealing with immigrants and with US citizens. We're in a very uh dark place
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right now where on every front he is amassing and consolidating power. Uh he is taking over uh different arms of
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government. I mean even even just on the kind of lighter note, dare I call it a lighter note. Like he's slapping his name on everything, his face and
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everything. Come to Washington DC. It's no longer the Kennedy Center. It's the Trump Kennedy Center. Go to the
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Department of Labor. Donald Trump's mug is on the side of the wall hanging down as if we're in Pyongyang. I noticed I
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noticed today um someone was tweeting about um the FDA has just released uh
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new guidelines on what Americans should be eating under Robert under RFK and the
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I was looking through the document and it is strewn I mean this is just a sort of small aside thing but I think it illustrates what you're talking about
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it's strewn with references to Trump and Trump sort of uh suggesting or saying that President Trump encourages you to
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you know eat better and eat healthier and and to and to and to you know we're bringing back in President Trump's name
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we're bringing back the the food pyramid as it ought to be. It's like this susion into even completely esoteric elements
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of American kind of cultural and daily life. Trump is suddenly there. You have to slap his name on. Remember
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this was the Trump business model. Trump didn't actually make or do anything. He didn't actually build buildings. He
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actually stuck his name on things, right? The Trump family business model has always be I'll rent you my name to stick on your golf course in Vietnam or
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wherever it is. And that's the same model he's brought to politics, right? He wants his name on everything. He doesn't actually want to do much, but he
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wants to take credit for things that he has nothing to do with. He wants to put his name on buildings and institutions that he had nothing to do with. And
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separately, you know, this is a man who now again, every time I have this discussion, somebody says to me, well, he said he won't run for a third term.
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And then I say, give it some time, and here we are again, just the other day again speculating in a speech, should I
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stay on for a third term? Does the constitution stop me? Hm. This is a guy who doesn't want to go anywhere. Wants
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to be a dictator. Said, these are his words. I want to be a dictator. um just for a day. He said, "I just want to be a
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dictator for a day." And here we are where a woman, an American citizen, is gunned down in the street, and Trump's
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instant response, Lewis, was not just to defend it, but to lie about it. He said the officer was lucky not to be in the
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hospital. The officer walked away fine. He said that they ran Look at the New York Times interview today that they did with him in the Oval Office as it was
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happening. He says they ran her over. She ran them over. She ran them over. Anyone who's watched that video knows
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that this is gaslighting of the highest order. And again, that's another element of fascist authoritarian societies. The
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government tells you not to believe what you see with your own eyes. It's very 1984. This discussion about and since you
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mentioned it, I think it is worth sort of probing slightly. this discussion about the nature of the of the of the Trump administration, whether it's
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neofascist or or not. there is how do you deal with the critique that some
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people listening to this will be making right now as you're speaking that this is something that liberals and liberal
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voices and democrats and people on the left in Britain have been talking about for 10 years perhaps arguably actually
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invoke those terms and those ideas rather too early because then at this point when I agree with you I mean I
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think that there I I've in the past been reluctant to use those terms and and labels precisely because they're so easy
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to dismiss but it does seem to me that in certain characteristics ics at least now as you describe particularly with regards to
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sort of personal militias and all this culted personality there are farright fascistic elements racist fascistic
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elements that are undeniable but people don't want to listen no because well a couple of things one
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is there is the what's called the anti-anti-Trump brigade which is people who are conservatives who know Trump's
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bad but they want to focus their eye on liberals so they become obsessed with policing what liberals and the left say about Trump that has been with us for
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years if you criticize Trump you've got Trump derangement syndrome TDS, this nonsense. It's an evasion to to avoid
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what's happening in front of our eyes. As for using it too early, I can only speak for myself. I used the F-word for the first time on MSNBC in August of
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2020 when the Portland protests were going on and people in unmarked cars were jumping out, grabbing protesters
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and bundling them into cars. That was an early scene of what we've been seeing over the last 12 months on steroids. Um,
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Robert Paxton, perhaps the preeminent American historian of fascism, said from 2016 to 2020, he said, "No, he's not a
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fascist." And then on January the 7th, 2021, the day after the insurrection, she goes, "Actually, he's a fascist."
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Right? That was the pre-minent scholar of fascism who'd resisted using the f-word. In fact, Lewis, we just marked the fifth anniversary of the January 6th
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insurrection, a fascist insurrection. And what did the White House do? They did what every fascist regime in history
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has done. They decided to rewrite history. They put up a website on they put up a page on the White House website
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completely rewriting the whole thing saying the police started the violence. There were only peaceful protesters. It
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was all the fault of the Democrats. a classic neofascist move about what was a fascist insurrection. So I say to
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people, look, if you don't want to call it fascist, don't call it fascist, call it authoritarian, call it whatever you want to call it. But right now, we have
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a president who is lawless, who is uh operating an agency which is rogue, ICE, which have which have which have
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detained American citizens, killed American citizens, deported American citizen children, u which are
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consolidating their power over the media. They now have his billionaire friends just as in Turkey, just as in
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Hungary, just as in India. same model. Trump's billionaire friends are buying up parts of the free press and making
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sure that news anchors are saying, as one did this week, "We salute you, Marco Rubio." It's kind of stuff you see uh in
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North Korea. This is what we're seeing right now here in the US. I know it's hard for people abroad to understand this, but this is what's happening. And
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it's hard for Americans because Americans have always believed that it couldn't happen here. Fascism is something that happens in tinpot
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countries in Eastern Europe and in the Middle East. It can't happen in America. It can happen. It is happening. I think
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that point about the media is obviously central and again I'd like you to expand on it a little bit because this is again
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something that is as in so many things with the politics of Trump now different to Trump one the media environment was
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very different in Trump one it was different in how it operated it was different in how it interacted with him
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and yet obviously for all sorts of reasons which perhaps you could expand on that is different now how is that
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playing out and intersecting with the politics of Trump in the second administration by comparison
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it's a very good point because In term one, you did have a little bit more media. The media has failed on Trump. I my position is the mainstream media has
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failed on Trump both in terms one and two and during his period in opposition between 2021 and 2024. But it's much
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much worse this time because this time he has done as I say what Modi and Orban and Erdogan and others have done. It's
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the same playbook where you have people like David Ellison, the son of the second richest man in the world, Larry Ellison, uh, buying CBS, um, CBS News,
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one of the storied mainstream evening newscasts here. Think of ITV news, think of News at 10. Um, and he has bought
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that and he has installed Barry Weiss to run that, a pro-Israel conservative uh,
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journalist. and she has hired Tony Dopal as the new evening anchor who spent this week causing huge controversy uh because
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he did softball interviews with Peter Hex the day of the Venezuela attack and then did this weird sickopantic little
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segment on Marco Rubio which I mentioned a moment ago. So CBS News is doing exactly what Trump wants it to do. These
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are the same people are also buying Tik Tok with Rert Murdoch to make sure that Tik Tok also sings uh the regime's
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tunes. They want to buy CNN next. They're trying to do a hostile takeover of Warner Brothers. So think about it.
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Donald Trump's billionaire allies could soon have control of Fox News, CBS, Tik Tok, and CNN. And that's not including,
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of course, his other billionaire allies in the social world. Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk controlling Twitter and
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Facebook and Instagram. So, it's a pretty dominant position for him to be in. Completely different from where he was in the first term. And of course,
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these people are not just sick of fans. Some of them are true believers. Look at Elon Musk, the morning we're speaking. What did he do on social media? He went
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on to his own Twitter, his ex site, and he promoted, he amplified, he put hundred agreement with a guy saying if
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white people become a minority, we're going to get slaughtered by non-whites. How is that any different to anything Nick Fuentes or in the UK Nick Griffin
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would say? It's probably more extreme than anything that Nick Griffin. More extreme indeed. How do I mean when we just think about the course of this
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week and this again talking about covering Trump you know you and I anyone covering Trump will will find this particularly in this term which has been
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dizzying but if we just think about some of the things this week um whether that is the the raid on Maduro itself then I
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mean I'm still sort of not quite over the actual true social post from Trump where he you know he quite literally
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basically explicitly says the United States government is turning to a form of piracy and he's just going to extract this oil and sell it and it's going to
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be sold for us and I will decide I me personally as president will decide how the money spent quote unquote to the
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benefit of both people to calling someone a you know someone who's just been shot um without anybody even
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knowing any really any of the facts beyond what we can see on social media calling her a domestic terrorist calling her a domestic terrorist instantly and saying that it was obvious
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that she was a domestic terrorist you know all of this stuff is in one week it is dizzying it is hard to cover it feels
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to me as if one of Trump's greatest weapons from the start but which he has been deploying even better in this term
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is the politics of exhaustion the politics of moving so quickly on all of these things. How could have you ever
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worked out how to overcome it? Because I can't and I'm not sure anyone has. It's a it's a huge dilemma. And when I
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worked at MSNBC in mainstream cable news, it was an issue there. Look, the only defense I ever offer of mainstream
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media is bad coverage of Trump is that Trump is an almost impossible character to cover. Even the media at its best,
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and we don't have a media at its best, but even a media at its best would struggle to cover what you just mentioned. Um Steve Bannon uh Donald
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Trump's former uh senior adviser uh famously said to Michael Lewis in an interview that the real enemy is not the
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Democrats, it is the media. And the way you deal with the media is to flood the zone with and that is what they have
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done for a decade. Uh they have flooded the zone with excrement. They have uh overwhelmed us. Uh they have exhausted
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us. Um they have distracted us. And you know, you didn't mention in your list Epstein. We've had a multiple Epstein
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legal deadlines come and go. A lot of people would argue that a lot of what's going on is a distraction from Epstein that he attacked Venezuela to distract
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in fact he attacked Venezuela Lewis on Saturday January 3rd which was the legal deadline for the Department of Justice
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explained why they had redacted all the names from the files they had released so far. So there's a whole Epstein
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scandal going on Lewis which for any other president would dominate the entire presidency but that's just one of
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17 scandals with Trump in any particular week. And you're right the media in general has a presentism bias wants to
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talk about what's happening today. So when something new breaks, Trump is the master of being an assignment editor for
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news organizations telling them this is what you should be covering today. Um it's very easy for the media to then just go well you know what the Epstein
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thing was yesterday, Venezuela was last weekend. This is today and that has huge benefit to Trump because of course
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there's controversy in the day but he gets to park all the other issues. And I always remember Lewis's graph that Harvard put out after the 2016 election,
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the Harvard Shorenstein study on on the media. They put out a graph of media coverage of scandals of Trump scandals
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and Hillary scandals. Vivid graph and you can Google it and find it. And it's one it's one bar chart. It's one long
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bar chart and it says Hillary emails just one long one. And then you have Trump like 20 stories. Sex scandal,
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fraud, racism, and they're all tiny little bar charts. And that's the advantage of Trump. He has so many scandals you can't give them the same
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coverage that you can give a good oldfashioned politician like Hillary one scandal to cover. I've thought a lot um
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over the course of the last year and I don't know I'm sure you have thought about it as well. It seems to me that the one of the um strengths of the
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second Trump administration is that um and one of the reasons it I mean it continues to exhibit much of the chaos
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in different ways of Trump one. But I don't think anyone could deny that as a political project it has been far
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clearer, sharper edged. It has been something it has clearly got a sort of stronger philosophy in its base and it's
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had a plan. that period of opposition from 2021 to 2025 was obviously
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completely key in forming that. Do you ever think it would have been better if he'd actually won the 2020 election?
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It's such a good point. I I have actually thought that many and people have pointed that out, including supporters of Trump, that they actually
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benefited from him losing that election, which he still claims he didn't lose because he's insane and deluded and dishonest. Um, no, 100%. Project 2029,
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uh, this massive undertaking that the Heritage Foundation and the Trump campaign undertook, which Trump pretended to have nothing to do with,
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but literally everything he's done has come out of Project 2029. Even even Venezuela, I mean, there's a whole section in Project 2029 about
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rehemisphering, about making the Western Hemisphere ours again. That's in Project 2029, which we've, as you pointed out,
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we've heard from him his post in recent days about running the whole stuff and being Don Row doctrine. So, they had a
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lot of time, yes, to work out what they were going to do next. spent a lot of time to think about who blocked us in the quote unquote deep state and
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government bureaucracy last time. What do we need to do in terms of personnel next time because in DC personnel is
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policy and that's why this time around there are none of the adults in the room quote unquote that we saw in the first administration or the alleged adults in
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the room uh the Jim Mattises, the John Kelly's, the Rex Tillersons. They're not around this time. This time it is RFK
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and Tulsi Gabbard and JD Vance and all all the other and Steven Miller. I mean this is effectively a Steven Miller
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presidency. like that he's he's there's an Atlantic Profile piece out this week that I urge
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your listeners to have a read. Extraordinary piece. He's got his he's got his he's got his fingers in every pie of of the Trump
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administration. Whether it's national security where he's involved in boat bombings and now in Venezuela, whether it's immigration where he basically has
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written the entire script for Trump, this white supremacist deportation making America Greenland as well where
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he was making the case for Greenland and um crime law and order all of these issues. Steven Miller, who's deputy
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White House chief of staff for policy, is basically a shadow president in in many ways. Uh, and I think that we need
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to think about why is it, for example, Lewis, that the Department of Homeland Security Twitter account reads like something from a groper or neo-Nazi
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publication. Why do the images and the pictures they put out look like white supremacist imagery? Because, as you say, this im this administration is much
18:31
more ideological, much more cleareyed about what it's trying to do. Well, I wonder if it's just worth actually just reading a very small section of that
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which has got some attention, but I think illustrates for listeners who aren't that familiar with with Miller. I mean, he's absolutely idologue, but it
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says, um, during debate prep for the 2024 campaign, Miller found himself in a contentious back and forth over
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immigration with a more moderate Trump ally. Finally, a frustrated Trump interrupted the two men. Steven, he
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said, "If you had it your way, and this is Trump, everyone would look exactly like you." Someone familiar with the
18:59
exchange told us. That's correct, Miller said before turning back to continue sparring. And again, that sort of
19:04
illustrates sort of the point that we're talking about, right, in terms of the how far the politics has shifted. I'm pretty sure if that had come out in the
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first campaign, it would have or the first uh Trump presidency, it would have been denied. It would have been
19:16
something that the Trump White House would have issued a shoe from, but they're not doing that now. Quite the opposite.
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They they so they've the Overton window, they've shifted very successfully in this country in terms of where kind of what is outrageous and not outrage. I
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mean, Trump is a master of doing something outrageous. Everyone gets upset for a day and then he waits a bit and then he does it again. Again, to go
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back to your point of exhaustion and the second time he does it, it's just less new. So, it's less newsier and it's less
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offensive to people because they already heard it. So, they take the example of running for a third term. The first time that was ever broached, that's crazy.
19:45
You can't do that. Now, it's part of everyday conversation. Is Trump going to run for a third term? Even though it's insane. It's against the 22nd and 12th
19:50
amendments to the Constitution. Um, if you take the immigration stuff, somebody made a point yesterday that Heather Haer, who was murdered in
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Charlottesville by a Trumpup supporting white supremacist in that famous uh, Unite the Right White supremacist
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gathering in 2017 in his first year in office. Today, the guy who killed her would be a hero on the right. They'd be
20:08
defending him. He wouldn't have gone to prison. They'd been pardoned by now. But look at where we are today. Today, within minutes of an ICE agent killing
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an American, white American 37year-old mother in a car filled with soft toys. within minutes, as you've already
20:20
pointed out, they're calling her a domestic terrorist. And online, everyone from Elon Musk to random MAGA accounts are lining up say, "Well, it's her
20:27
fault. She did it to herself. She was an agitator. She shouldn't have turned the car." So, this is where we are now, where we're celebrating state sponsored
20:34
violence against American citizens. And by the way, it was Republicans who told us for years that this is what we needed to be worried about. This is why we
20:40
needed guns and the Second Amendment. And it's a Republican administration doing this. Can I ask you a question which again I
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wrestle with myself. I was almost turning into a sort of therapy session for covering Trump. But but I'm always I
20:52
personally am always in a slight sort of dilemma and binary when whenever whenever any kind of particular kind of
20:57
policy or political issue with Trump comes up. Let's take Greenland for example or indeed Venezuela this week given it's so topical. I can never quite
21:04
make up my mind and maybe there is no answer and maybe it's a bit of both. I don't know. But I can never quite make up my mind as to whether to spend a lot
21:12
of time trying to kind of intellectualize and find the philosophy and the politics behind what they're
21:17
doing. For example, with Greenland and Venezuela, you know, you can spend a long time talking about them wanting to achieve dominance in the Western
21:23
Hemisphere and this being a return to kind of 19th century politics. And we in economics we start talking about oh he
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wants to be like William McKinley and he's looking at tariff policy and and and whether to try because there's such a clamor particularly from
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audiences to try and get that sort of a slightly deeper understanding or do we simply overintellectualize what is
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basically a kind of set of quite kind of a kind of kind of sort of set of
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competing urges basically a kind of like wriggling bag of urges within Donald Trump's mind and it's just passing fancy
21:51
from today to today and then he makes us look stupid because we've spent all this time basically suggesting that there's a great vision
21:58
and philosophy. What do you think? No, no, you're 100% spot on. It's a dilemma that I had in the first time and I've tried to drop it now because we all
22:04
want to do that, right? You and I don't want to be the people being like, well, he's just an idiot or he's just crazy or he's just a racist. But unfortunately,
22:11
that is often the simple answer to a lot of things. Yes, of course there are people in the background, Steven Miller and others, pushing ideological ends,
22:17
but Trump himself is a vessel for those agendas. He has no strong views of his own. This man was a Democrat 15 years ago. This man was pro-choice and
22:23
anti-guns 15 years ago. The only thing consistent in his life is racism and chasing after women money. That's that's
22:30
basically the only consistent things you can find. How do you account? I mean because there again people listening going in terms of
22:35
the racism point and indeed there is a long strong long 1972 is the first time we came across Donald Trump when he was refusing to
22:41
rent apartments to black people and how indeed so. And then how do you reckon with the facts and again you would have reckoned with this and
22:46
thought about this over a lot over the last year. he continues or at least in 2024 he built or started to build anyway
22:52
the multithnic workingclass coalition that Democrats have been talking about for years
22:58
and then he dropped it as soon as he came to office. Have you looked at his numbers with Latino voters? They've absolutely gone down the toilet. And
23:03
again, you talked about media looking stupid. The media has looked stupid. I read pieces saying Republicans are now
23:08
the party of young voters. The Republicans are now party of Latinos. Have a look at his numbers with young voters and Latinos right now. Gone. With
23:14
Donald Trump, he will always throw everyone under the bus, including people trying to make sense of him. In recent days, Lewis, you've seen people trying
23:19
to make sense of his Venezuela policy, and he throws them under the bus. Marco Rubio went on TV Sunday morning and said, "No, no, he didn't mean we're
23:25
going to run Venezuela." He meant we're going to do a blockade. And then in the evening, Trump goes on Air Force One and tells journalists, "Yeah, I really
23:31
shouldn't say this, but no, I'm running Venezuela. That's exactly what I mean." And this is always a problem with people trying to kind, as you say,
23:36
overintellectualize. Let me give you one example. People don't want to hear it because we're not used to a politician like this. I didn't want to hear it, but
23:41
I've been doing this for 10 years. As I try and tell people, it is the truth. Uh New York Times reported on the weekend
23:47
that one of the reasons Trump went after Maduro is because Maduro was doing these dances and mocking the Trump
23:53
administration. Two people told the New York Times that Trump got annoyed and that's why he pulled the trigger on attacking Maduro. Now, you might say
24:00
that's ridiculous. That's just Trump derangement syndrome. Why would How can the president of United States attack him because he was dancing? That's
24:05
ridiculous. And guess what? Trump comes out and says in a speech this week, "Yeah, he was dancing and making fun of me." Oh, classic Don. just comes out and
24:12
says the quiet part out loud. This happens again and again. Did he Why did he not put Machado? The logical move for
24:18
any American Republic administration would be to put Maria Machado, the Nobel Peace La Democratic opposition leader uh
24:24
supported by the Americans, pro-Israel that ticks all the boxes for an American administration. Why did they not put her in in power? Reporting emerges from the
24:32
Washington Post. Well, he's pissed at her because she won the Nobel Peace Prize and she should have turned it down. And you think that can't be true.
24:38
No one would really. No, that is Donald Trump. That's exactly the kind of stuff that motivates him. Not geopolitics, not
24:44
democracy, not even kind of, you know, oil prices. And of course, Machado, we see the absurd scene, Lewis, where
24:49
Machado then has to go on Fox News prime time this week and say, "I would love to share my Nobel Peace Prize with the
24:54
president of the United States." I mean, that is the insane world we live in now. People are having to do and say this kind of stuff to appease this kind of
25:01
clownish figure in in the White House. And I I get it. I get why people in Britain and Europe don't want to take
25:06
this seriously and say, "Well, you know, this is TDS." But he, this is who he is. I don't know how many times Donald Trump
25:12
can tell you, "This is who I am. This is all I care about before we try and add all these extra agendas." Remember,
25:17
Louis, he spent an entire three years saying, "I'm going to be the anti-war guy. I'm the anti-neocon guy. I'm the
25:24
anti-George Bush guy." And people wrote long essays about how Trump was going to redefine foreign policy, isolationism.
25:30
It's going to be a different type of administration. Voters fell for it. They said, "We're voting for Trump, not Harris, because we don't want any more
25:35
foreign wars." and he comes and he bombs seven countries in his first year in office. He appoints Marco Rubio Hawk as
25:40
his national security adviser and secretary of state and he bombs Venezuela and does regime change and says we're going to run the country
25:46
ourselves. Something even Dick Cheney didn't say uh about Venezuela. So again, think about all the people who've made
25:52
fools of themselves writing long long pieces about Donald Trump's new intellectual anti-war foreign policies. A lot has also been written precisely on
25:58
that subject suggesting that this will um this turn towards a more sort of
26:04
traditionally hawkish uh neoonservative kind of position or attitude on foreign
26:10
policy will divide the MAGA movement perhaps fatally undermine it. Do you buy that? No. I think that's been exaggerated by
26:15
people on the left and in the media because the MAGA movement fundamentally is a personality cult. So of course there are people on the fringes. There
26:21
are, you know, there's your Tucker Carlson's and your Marjorie Taylor Green who was a loyalist who's just stepped down from Congress. There's your Candace
26:26
Owens and there's these these people have high profiles in social media. So, they always get talked about. Wherever I go, I get asked about Margie Taylor
26:32
Green, Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, right? I get it. They have big followings and they make a lot of noise. But fundamentally, look at the polling.
26:38
Trump still commands 8090% spent support of the GOP base. Look at the way he's able to just click his fingers and
26:45
people switch their positions. So, Venezuela is a classic example. The same people who spent months saying we shouldn't be doing regime change. we
26:51
shouldn't be going into Venezuela. We shouldn't be uh nation building since Sunday. Where are they? Have they criticized Trump? Nope. They've all
26:57
fallen in line. Tulsi Gabbard, who is on record saying we should not touch Venezuela. We should not do any kind of
27:03
regime change. Came out and kept her job in the administration saying I stand with Trump. This was the right thing to do. MAGA voters are all over my social
27:09
media telling me that this was great. We should do more of this. We should take more countries. Next, we should go after Colombia and Cuba. Literally, literally
27:16
last week they were telling us the opposite. So Donald Trump is a man who's been able to always just click his
27:21
fingers and MAGA base will switch with him. If he says I'm anti-tariff, they'll switch to anti-tariff tomorrow. Lewis,
27:28
tomorrow morning, if Donald Trump wakes up and says tariffs are bad, the MAGA movement will switch with him instantly.
27:33
No one will say, but you told us tariffs were good for the last four years. They will say tariffs are bad. I'll give you
27:38
another example. Um he famously said in his 2016 race, I could shoot someone in
27:44
the middle of the street and not lose a single voter. that was put to the test. Do you um in terms of thinking about
27:51
what might happen this year? Now, there's been so much talk about the midterms, do you think the midterms will actually, it's not so much question of
27:57
will they go ahead. Do you think they will go ahead in a free and fair way? I don't know the answer to that question. Um there's a high chance that
28:04
they won't go ahead in a free and fair way. He even speculated about cancelling elections in his speech this week and
28:09
people will say, "No, Medie, you're he said I won't cancel elections." But think about that statement. No one asked
28:15
him whether the idea that you were even thinking that you have to deny cancelling elections. Where does that come from? Trump doesn't just throw
28:20
things out there. That means something's marinating in his uh in his head. Um so the fact he has no other previous
28:26
president has had to state it. Exactly. Has had to do a denial that no one asked for. So one is are elections
28:32
going to go ahead in 26 and 28. Two is if they go ahead are they going to be free and fair? We already know what they're doing on the gerrymandering front. They are gerrymandering openly,
28:39
brazenly like crazy. I.e. just for people who don't know the term, they're they're changing the boundaries of the districts to make them more favorable to
28:45
Republicans. Much more favorable. Of course, the United States is the only country in the Western world where politicians get to
28:50
pick their voters. Voters don't get to pick their politicians. In the UK, you have the boundary commission. In other countries, independent impartial people
28:57
draw up the the the nature of the the constituency. In the US, um, state legislators can do it. So, wherever the
29:03
Republicans control states, and they control a majority of states, places like Texas, they can say, "We are redrawing the maps." And they are
29:09
redrawing the maps. So instead of it being, for example, eight Republicans and two Democrats in that state, they make it nine and one or 10 and zero
29:16
because they draw the maps brazenly uh in a way that favors themselves. That's going to help them in the midterms. But look, if the Democrats, if it's a
29:22
freedom for election, every poll tells you and history tells you Democrats will win. The opposition party tends to win a
29:28
midterm. And especially right now where Trump's poll ratings are collapsing, uh they're on course to take back the
29:33
House. The Senate is much more difficult. If they don't take back one or both of these chambers, then Lewis, I
29:38
really do worry about 2028 because there will be nothing to stop him. There are no checks on Donald Trump right now. A
29:43
man who is so led by grievance and impulse and narcissism. There are no checks on him. He controls the Supreme
29:49
Court, both chambers of Congress, vast swaths of the media, and of course, law enforcement and the military.
29:55
Do you ever, and this is again something else I've I've wrestled with myself, do you ever um when you're watching him, do
30:01
you ever still laugh at him when laugh when he says stuff? Because this is my dilemma because because this is this is the thing about Trump, right? And this
30:07
is why he make he makes such a sort of arresting beguiling weird political personality. It is. I was watching him
30:12
in his you know speech to Republican stuff earlier in the Republican um gathering earlier in the week and
30:17
repeatedly I mean at one point he actually had me in hysterics right because he is genuinely
30:22
despite it all his presence and political vitality continues to astound
30:29
you know his thing that surprises me I don't know about you the thing that surprises me in a way even for myself is like how has this stick this not got old
30:37
you know it's like 10 years of this stuff and yet somehow he can still make me laugh which on some level I'm sat
30:42
there thinking I appeal this guy's politics really I app what he's doing I recognize it I basically see this guy like you in some respects is being
30:48
neofascistic and yet here I am laughing at him how do you wrestle with that so so I kind of half agree with you I
30:54
mostly I'm laughing at him not with him and I'm if even if I'm laughing with him I'm you know I find it hard to differentiate whether
31:00
I am with or at but it's more like you know a drunk in a bar will tell a story that you enjoy doesn't mean you want to put him in
31:05
charge of nuclear weapons and make him lead your nation so um you know there are certain things you know you can't look away from like rubbernecking. I
31:12
watched that speech he gave this week where he did the weird uh orgasmic noises as he impersonated a transgender
31:17
weightlifter. It was insane. Like no other politician in the world could get away with that. He does. So in that sense, it doesn't get old. I mean it has
31:23
gotten old for some of us who have watched him non-stop for 10 years. It's certainly gotten old. I know all of his ticks and all of his oneliners. Poor me.
31:30
Yes. Sadly, I moved to the US months before he declared his candidacy. My entire time in this country has been following Trump 24 hours a day, sadly.
31:37
But look, um, what's interesting is the only advantage to the fact that he has this weird, uh, narcissistic charisma
31:43
and and reality TV stardom. You know, he is the guy, he's the only president of the United States who was on Home Alone 2, right? See, the only the only good
31:50
thing that about this is that it's not replicable. So, this idea of Trumpism
31:56
after Trump is a great debate to have. I don't know what happens when he's gone, if he's gone. I mean, there's a
32:01
different issue whether he even agrees to leave, but let's say he does leave the scene. um who comes after him on
32:07
their side because JD Vance has the charisma of a wooden chair. Um none of the other pretenders to the Trump throne
32:13
have anything like him in terms of the cultish uh control over the party or the kind of ability to command the news
32:19
agenda with whatever you want to call it. Entertainment, charisma, stupidity, insanity. So in that sense that is one
32:26
advantage to us. It's kind of it's kind of makes me feel a little bit better about the future of this fascist which
32:31
is very much tied to him. Well, because I was listening to John Bolton the other day. I mean, obviously Bolton worked for him in the first term and you know, he
32:38
was talking about Venezuela and he said at the very end, he just sort of said because he was talking about, you know, what advice he might give to Karma and
32:44
European leaders and his main sort of message which I've heard him talk about before which is, you know, just sort of hold on and in three years time America
32:51
will get back to some sort of political normality. Do you buy that? It feels to me that it feels to me that the the the
32:57
forces that Trump has unleashed certainly within the Republican party alone, never mind the rest of politics,
33:02
feels to me it's impossible to imagine that suddenly they'll just be put back into Pandora's box. So, a couple of things. One is if you're
33:08
taking advice from John Bolton, you know, go see a shrink. Uh number two, Bolton himself has no credibility. Remember, he's one of these many
33:13
Republicans who went to work for Trump thinking that they could control Trump. How did that work out for John Bolton? He's now being prosecuted uh by the
33:20
Trump administration. could go to prison, ironically, not for Iraq, but for other things. No, we don't have time
33:25
on our side, Lewis. Let me give you one example. In the middle of the show around the killing of an American citizen, the Trump administration, Rubio
33:32
announced that they pulled out a 66 international treaties, multiple UN organizations. They just did that
33:38
yesterday. The kind of damage that they're doing to America's standing in the world, to our institutional architecture, to international law, to
33:44
precedents and norms, to our culture, that can't be undone. You don't just put that genie back in the bottle. This will
33:51
take decades to undo, if it's even possible, to undo the damage Trump is doing to the democratic cultural social
33:57
fabric, not just of this country, but the international arena. There's already many Trumps, copycats, mimics around the
34:03
world. I do a show for Alazer. As you know, I noticed in 2017 2018 when I was interviewing foreign government officials from Asia and Africa and you
34:10
that they all started sounding like Trump. They're all taking their lead from Trump. I don't think you can put this back in the box. I think we are
34:16
going to have to live with the consequences. Just take the Supreme Court in this country for example. Trump made that Supreme Court. It is a Trump
34:21
court now for decades to come. He may appoint another in 30 He may appoint another God help us all and make it 72. In 30 40 years time,
34:29
Trump will be long gone. Trump's children will be gone. We'll still be America will still be living with the consequences of the Trump Supreme Court.
34:35
Um just thinking about British politics a bit obviously something else you know extremely well. Um when you're looking at British politics right now, do you
34:42
see do you see the glimmers of Trumpism of Magarism? Do you see a scenario in
34:48
which we're going down similar sort of path because I mean you know one of the things certainly of over the last year
34:54
which has been so striking has been the emergence of what feels to me to be a sort of fullyfledged sort of Anglophere
35:01
US UK political conversation dominated by the US but it's not entirely one way either. I mean, I've been surprised when
35:06
I've been in the US talking to MAGA people. Their sort of unbelievable knowledge sometimes of quite esoteric UK
35:12
political stuff, you know, kind of little miniourse celeb on the British right here, sort of travels over over
35:17
there. You know, every single time, certainly the start of last year, Musk would tweet something or whatever, it would make huge huge waves over here.
35:25
Correct. It feels as if increasingly there is a shared US UK political space, which is new.
35:31
Yeah. So, I mean to go back to your original question, I see more than glimmers. And I think Trumpism is very much taking hold in the British
35:37
Conservative Party, in the British right-wing movement. Obviously, Nigel Farage was the first person, remember
35:43
when Trump got elected first time, he was the first person to go out there and meet Trump before and that seemed very, very eccentric at the time.
35:49
That seemed exactly. And now it's here we are, Nigel Farage could be the next prime minister of the UK and God help us then with a Anglo-American alliance. Um,
35:56
I think the UK has always been, you know, a country where, you know, America sneezes and the UK catches a cold. It's
36:02
always been a place where our political developments have followed pretty closely whether it was stature Reagan and Blair Clinton and you know the
36:08
examples are are many and I think I worry that that is where we're heading now. If Trump is back for a second term is there going to be a British uh mini
36:15
me I do worry that this Labor government is doing everything possible to make that happen. I mean if you could I could if I was on the British right I couldn't
36:22
ask for more than what Starmer and the Labor government are doing. Um they're a perfect foil. Um, and I think, you know,
36:27
it feels like we've gone back in time where you got a Labour prime minister thinking, I've got to be tough on migrants. That's the only way to fend
36:33
off the right. Didn't work for Tony Blair. I don't think it will work for for Star. And the rhetoric um that's
36:38
coming out of the British right. You know, in Trump's first term, Lewis, correct me if I'm wrong, you live there, I didn't. The British right pretty much
36:44
resisted a lot of Trumpism. They were happy to distance themselves. I remember Boris Johnson condemning Donald Trump when he was mayor of London. There
36:50
weren't antivaxers all over the British conservative movement. Um, now you've got this conspiratorial,
36:57
you know, uh, uh, white supremacist great replacement. I I hear I hear British politicians now saying deport,
37:03
deport, deport. That wasn't part of British political culture when I lived there. Even stuff like, I mean, you you've got the housing secretary, Steve. I mean,
37:09
it's obviously far more innocuous, but it's just very telling and interesting. You know, him turning around and going build, baby, build, you know, like the sort of, as you're saying, the kind of
37:15
almost the sort of reflexes of our own politics being rebuilt. Invasion. Do you remember calling immigrants and invasion was once something Nick Griffin did? Then it was
37:22
Sella Bravo and now it's just kind of consensus across the board of the right. And even last night I was asked to go on news night to talk about the shooting. I
37:28
couldn't make it. I was stuck in traffic. But I did catch the clips online. They had some guy from reform immediately just defending uh the
37:34
killing of an America. But there's a British politician sitting in the UK defending uh uh the American government killing a citizen. So that is there
37:40
reflexively. The Trumpism on the right in the UK is definitely growing and festering. Liz truss an embarrassment to
37:46
our country. um just kind of you know telling Trump to go after the UK. The way that I mean history books are
37:52
written. Lewis Elon Musk will play a big role uh in that transatlantic movement. He's elevated Tommy Robinson. He's
37:58
elevated the Reform Party and Rert Low. Uh he he you know he tweeted yesterday, Lewis, you can't make this up. He
38:04
tweeted yesterday or or or early this morning. I can never when he's whenever he's in up in the middle of the night. He tweeted Britain is a police state
38:11
now. It's like, imagine tweeting that on the day that the country you're in just killed an unarmed American woman in her
38:17
car in cold blood. But that is the kind of propaganda I think if I don't think people in Britain realize, Lewis, if you
38:23
talk to anyone on the American right here right now, they think Britain London has fallen to borrow a Hollywood
38:29
movie. They think Britain is some uh run by Muslims uh and communists and just
38:35
prosecuting innocent conservatives. like it's hard to exaggerate just how much they have a complete misunderstanding.
38:41
And that's Elon Musk. Just finally, I mean, we talking about your um your time in America and you going over there and and becoming a very
38:47
prominent figure on the American left. Um do you ever regret it given the sort of 10 years of Trump in your head as you
38:54
say and and clearly it is exhausting. It's not just exhausting, but it's it's psychologically debilitating covering
38:59
this stuff and you have, you know, been at the absolute forefront of that. Do you ever regret moving to this country?
39:05
Trump relatedly, yes. Not in terms of take Trump out of the equation. I mean, I love living in the US. That's why I'm here. I would leave if I didn't. But it
39:12
is it is frustrating to me. I do sometimes think I moved here in I think it was May, April, May of 2015, and he
39:19
came down the elevator, I think a month later, down the golden escalator, and my time here has been marked by Trump
39:25
becoming this public figure. And as I say, not just politically, but like I'm a Muslim immigrant trying to bring up
39:30
kids in the US. Like his impact, the impact of Trumpism on this country. has become a more racist, more abusive, more
39:37
violent society and that all of it. Of course, it's it's upsetting. It's do you feel that you experience that
39:42
daily on a daily basis or on a not on a daily ba? Well, online definitely on a daily basis. No, not in everyday life. On a daily basis, but you
39:48
know, I wake up yesterday and Elon Musk is calling me a pathetic weasel and says, "Game is over for me." And then I
39:54
get threats off the back of that. I do public events, especially after the Charlie Kirk killing. I have to have security wherever I go in public events,
40:00
as do many of us journalists and political figures on left and right. Um, it's a real problem and of course nobody
40:06
wants to live like that. I said to my kids the other day, I feel sorry for you that the only political figure you've ever known in your lifetimes is Donald
40:11
Trump. You didn't get to grow up in a normal time. Uh, and I think people have understated just how much psychological,
40:16
as you say, damage has been done to the populace as a whole. But also, you know, to those of us who cover this stuff, it is exhausting every day. There's I I
40:23
made a joke last year to people who said, "Oh, we can't have Harris as president. She did the genocide." I said to friends of mine on the left and the
40:29
Muslim community. I said, "At least Caris will give us a day off. At least we'll have a day to recuperate, rethink,
40:35
regroup, reorganize with this guy as we started our conversation. Like, do we want to talk about Venezuela or do we
40:40
want to talk about ICE or do we want to talk about Epstein or do we want to talk about corruption? There's never a day of rest right now. They have, to use your
40:47
phrase, just absolutely exhausted us. And we can't let them exhaust us because when they win in the exhaustion battle,
40:53
they win in the fascist battle. Mehdi, thanks so much for joining us. See you soon. Thanks, Louis. the news agents. This is
41:01
a Global Player original podcast. [Music]