America vs. The Rest with Alastair Campbell

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It's been, I think it might have been the last time the Mets won the World Series. That's how long it's been, it's been aligned. But these mattresses, avocado green mattress, responsibly sourced organic materials that are built to last. So get an avocado green mattress. Avocado products are made, not manufactured. And thoughtfully crafted with real materials to deliver lasting comfort and support. You're going to experience them in person at an avocado showroom or premiere retailer near you or shop online at avocado green mattress.com/tWS to check out their mattress and furniture sale. It's avocado green mattress.com/tWSavocadogreenmatchress.com/tWS period. Hey everybody, welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is John Stewart. It is Tuesday, March 24th. We are in between deadlines, I think, with Iran. And I wanted to get a sense right now. You know, we talk a lot about, geez, how did we get here? And Trump is just impulsive. He didn't do it the right way. But I seem to remember there were other wars that we've gotten into. That we did get into the right way. But we're equally as full hearty and useless, speaking, of course, of Iraq. And perhaps Libby and a variety of the things that I thought, well, let me get, I'd like to get the perspective of someone that I met years ago who was active in the Tony Blair administration over in the United Kingdom. And I thought he was behind the scenes there. He has a great perspective on the inner workings of how we ended up going to war in Iraq and lots of the other. And I'm sure opinions about NATO and Donald Trump and all kinds of other things. So I'm just going to get to it. I'm excited to talk to him again. It's been a long time. But please welcome an old friend, Alistair Campbell. We are joined thank goodness from someone who can give us the view from across the Atlantic. Our special relationship. It's Alistair Campbell, co-host of the rest of the politics podcast. But obviously, Alistair Campbell writer, podcaster, campaigner strategist, work with Tony Blair, work with every labor politician known to band. And a co-host with a good friend, Roy Stewart. Alistair! John, thank you so much for such a lovely welcome. It was a lovely welcome. It's a delight to see you again. It's been too many years. And I have to say what an exciting time to reconnect as the world we're doing it again, Alistair. Welcome to another episode of the exciting series. Let's go to war in the Middle East. Yeah, well, I remember you once absolutely skewed me at the end of one of you. I would never. You did. It was well done though because I saw, I've got, this is on the daily show. And I thought, and I just published my first volume of diaries, I thought, and I was really on a roll when I was getting through it. And I said, well, this book is just trying to show that in the end, politicians are just human beings. And you just said, like Iraqis, and moved away, and on to the next item. So you did well, yeah, you did well. Right, well, yeah. Well, it was, well, look, famously, you were with Tony Blair. You wrote his speeches. You were his press secretary during that time in the run-up to the Iraq war. So from your vantage point, how does this Iran war differ? How does the relationship between the United States and Great Britain differ in the run-up to this? And what are your general thoughts on what we're seeing? Well, I think the first thing to say is that the, you know, I know that a lot of people will now say because of the way the intelligence planned out that we got it wrong, but there was a genuine belief that there was a growing threat from Saddam Hussein, which I don't believe there was anybody beyond Donald Trump saying there was a growing threat from Iran right now to the United States. The second thing I would say, the big difference is that Congress was involved. And even though there were people in the American administration at the time, notably Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld didn't particularly want to go down the United Nations route, George W. Bush at least tried to get some kind of agreement through the United Nations. I think then the other thing I would say in relation to the so-called special relationship, but I don't even know that John is 80 years to the week that that phrase was first coined in a speech. Yep, in a speech by Churchill. Did you write that speech, Alice? No, I'm only 68. I would have read it. I would obviously have thought of that. And do you know what I think it's really interesting when you go back and read that speech? Is he wasn't saying this is a special relationship from the point of view of an equal. If you read it carefully, you get the feel that he's saying that we really want this to be a special relationship. Now it has been on many, many levels, but it's become a bit of a cliche, the special relationship. So how Wilson famously did not support America with troops in the Vietnam war, and it kind of survived. But I think at the time of the Iraq war, Tony Blair was pretty, he was absolutely sure that if unless there was a fundamental breach on the approach, then we had to be with the Americans. What I think you've seen here is Keir Starmer, the British Prime Minister, who is on record as saying, we have to learn some lessons from the Iraq war. One of them is you have to be pretty sure that you're going into something where you know what you're going into. You have to be pretty sure about the legality. And I mean, Trump has thrown his toys out the prime several times at Starmer because Starmer would not engage in the initial attacks. But I think and he's basically said you can use our bases, but only for defensive purposes, etc. But that has clearly upset Trump. I don't think fundamentally it's upset the kind of meat of the special relationship. My sense is the intelligence agency still work together pretty well, the defense people work together pretty well. But we're in a different era. I don't think we're in a different era because of any change on our side in our attitudes to the United States of America. But I think we're in a different era because of the personality and the character of Trump and this administration. Do you wonder, you know, that's an interesting point because I wonder if we're in a different era because people view authority and expertise and government differently that are adventures in Iraq. So eroded the credibility. I mean, I think you can you can draw kind of a straight line between United States interventionism and maybe even the immigration crisis in Europe and Brexit. And that, you know, it's so interesting because you talk about Blair. I thought Blair and Bush seemed like peers that there was a relationship of, I don't want to say equals because I think the arrogance of the United States wouldn't allow, wouldn't allow for equals. Starmer, bless his heart, who came in on such a rush and whose popularity is now somewhere between Liz Truss and Liz Truss is lettuce. You know, he doesn't seem to be on that same level. And so is the relationship change? And maybe that's because nobody can be with Trump because he won't allow it. He considers himself a pharaoh, so it's impossible to have that kind of relationship. Well, I mean, it was so interesting about this, is over the course of the first part of Trump's second term. The Kirstama seemed to be developing that relationship in that. Now, I always thought it was likely to collapse because, as you say, I don't think Trump recognizes or appreciates or respects anybody above them himself. But Kirstama, who's not a showy guy, but the whole thing of dipping into his pocket and pulling out the letter and the invitation from the king. It was so bad. It felt so obsequious when he said this has never happened before. And when he pulled it out, I thought, oh my god, it's a target gift card. What is that that he's gotten as pocket? It's a letter from the king. A letter from the king. And of course, then Trump's head, Trump basically thinks he's the king of your country. So Kirstama is like bringing this missive from the actual head of your country. So that was even though, as you say, you could cringe at it and you cringed at it and maybe I cringed a little bit. But at the same time, it did the job. And then the state visit came along. And for a while, so for example, take the tariffs, Trump did seem for a while that he wanted to be a little bit nicer to the UK than he was being to others. Okay. Now what seems to really, royally pissed him off is the fact that when he picked up the phone and said, oh, by the way, BB's been on the phone here and we're bombing Iran tomorrow. And it'd be great if you guys came along. And that seems to me was the level of preparation he was expecting a yes answer to. That's right. Kirstama said no. Now where you're also right, Kirstama is not a kind of Bill Clinton Tony Blair, Barack Obama kind of politician. And I think part of the reason maybe why he got a landslide victory here is because this country was sick of people like Boris Johnson being prime minister and people like Donald Trump being dominating the debate the whole time. And therefore, why don't we get somebody a bit more serious, a bit a bit of a lawyer. And that has not in terms certainly if you look at the polls, that has not worked out. Well, do you think that's because, you know, in some respects, he gets in on this huge movement towards labor and then he decides my best strategy is what if we guard a governed like a sort of faturism like like we go with austerity and we go and everybody was like, wait, I mean, it really has fueled the more extremes, I think, in England. The way that he's gone about it has Britain, Britain, Britain, sorry, UK, Britain, you can say, England, you say, England, I met UK, I met Britain, I met Great Britain. You met Great Britain. That's what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're right. It has. It has. It has. And you have to, but you have to ask yourself whether that would have happened anywhere in Europe right now. Now, it's interesting. This week is actually been very, very interesting. You had some big elections in France or the weekend for all the mayors. And the far right did not do as well as they expected to. No. You had, you had Maloney yesterday losing a referendum on judicial reform. Here, finally, I think we have through peak forage and he's starting to dip in the polls. So I'm more confident. You can never have peak forage. You know that. John. Now, why is that even forage is backing away from Trump at this moment? Is it that Trump is, although he did visit him at Mar-a-Lago, I think last year. If he didn't see him, he didn't see him. Oh, well, if you can't get an audience with the king. He was stood up. He was stood up by the king. Yeah. You know why? He should have told him, I have in my pocket. And then he would have been ushered in and been given a greeting there. Are we, look, I want to go back to this because you were with, you said something earlier that I thought was really interesting. There was a sincere belief that Saddam Hussein was a growing danger. And that, that is why I don't think there's any question that the Ayatollah in Iran was a danger. But is that the bar that we now look at as intervention? And is it possible that the lesson of Iraq and Afghanistan and now Iran and all the way back to Pico and whatever else we want to take it to is that the West can influence, but they can't control. And that if we don't learn the difference between those two, we are destined for these utterly foreseeable consequences of our kind of cavalier and arrogant interventions. Well, I certainly see this one more clearly in that light than I did Afghanistan and Iraq at the time. But if you, if you look at the Why, why though, Alistair? Well, partly because, partly because I was there and we were trying to, because we did believe what we were saying, because we were trying to build a coalition and there was a coalition of sorts that was being built. But to be absolutely honest, I think because of the motivation of Trump, you know, Trump is such a huge and consequential figure. And if you have a view as settled as mine, that he is a moral, that he is all about himself, that he is corrupt, that he is enriching himself and his family and his friends as he sort of, you know, marauds around the place. Yes. I have to dig really, really deep to find a positive motivation. Now, that being said, that being said, Iran is a horrible regime. But I think what you were saying in your question is actually to the point that maybe given the cost of Afghanistan and the fact the Taliban back in charge, now I would argue Iraq is a better country than it was, but I accept there was a massive cost in life in money and all the rest. But I wonder what you were saying is, isn't it better, unless arrogant, for the West to do what it can to pursue a policy of containment about some of these threats that we see in different parts of the world? And that was what the JCPOA was all about. I think that's exactly what I'm saying. And if you look at, so we have a view that violence can solve any of these issues. We did it in, you know, it wasn't just Iraq and Afghanistan. It was Libya. It was Syria. We were arming rebel groups as we went through there. And we can talk about is Iraq in a better place than it was under Saddam Hussein. I think the question is, is that our decision to make, you know, America seems to forget that enshrined in our constitution is this idea that people would like to be in charge of their own governments, the taxation without representation. I won't get into the whole thing. You may have read about it years ago about. I indeed I have, indeed I have. But this idea that we can say to Iranians, your government is terrible and you're suffering and they clearly are and they clearly hate them and they clear it. And so we're going to make the decision as we did in Iraq and now that you'll be better off. And that's the arrogance that I'm talking about. China, China does it a different way. They say I'm going to influence you through infrastructure or I'm going to flood your markets with cheap goods. But it's certainly different than how the West does it. I totally agree with that. And I think that is a lesson that Kier Starmer was pointing to when he said we have to learn some of the lessons of these past interventions. And I think you're in a place in the world right now exacerbated by the character and the personality of the current incumbent occupant of the White House. You mentioned Brexit earlier. I would argue that Brexit was an indication of a country, our country, for whatever reason deciding to go along with its own decline. I think your choice of Trump for a second term is an indication of America deciding to go along with its own decline. And the arrogance that you talk about when you hear that that vile hexath sort of spring is with stuff from the Bible and telling us about what to believe and all this stuff whilst clearly glorifying in the sense of domination and violence of other people. It's it's almost sexual for him. It almost feels as though it's it's erotic. Wow. I mean, I'm that is a horrible thought that I'd never had before. Oh, you got you got to watch him. You got to watch him more. There's a reveling in it. There is a reveling. No doubt about it. Donning. He came out the other day. No quarter. No mercy. No, like just blatantly saying like, you know, those things that we came up after World War II to try and prevent the horrors. Yeah, we're getting rid of all that. Yeah, we're just going in. Yeah, it makes right stupid rules of engagement. Stupid rules of engagement. When did you ever think of somebody that has some authority over the worst weapons in the entire universe? Never. Today's episode that you're currently listening to has a sponsor. Sponsored by the name of Surfshark VPN. What Breitel is Surfshark VPN? Well, here's the thing. I don't know. what you do on your computer. But chances are, you don't want me to know what you do on your computer. But you know, you're probably thinking to yourself, well, I can't do anything about that anyway. I'm just going to have to, I'm just going to have to deal with it. Whether it's the government or foreign entities or aliens surveillance, whatever it is, looking at what I'm searching for, not that I'm in any way suggesting that your searches are untoward. If that's even a word, but see our sponsor today, Surfshark VPN, they will secure your connection and protect your privacy while you're browsing online. Surfshark, it gives you way to secure your digital life. The VPN ensures your location doesn't even dictate what you can see or do online, again, no judgment. Signal subscription allows you to install and run Surfshark on an unlimited number of devices. Simultaneously, go to surfshark.com/johnstuert and use CodeJohnstuert to check out to get four extra months of Surfshark VPN. At surfshark.com/johnstuert and use CodeJohnstuert to get four extra months. Do you love sharing the name with the UK's top-podcaster? I made mine up completely, so yeah, I do love it. It's submit. I could have gone with anything. I could have gone with your vase. I could have done anything. Well, it's true. Well done. But you know, I quoted yesterday when we were recording this week's podcast, a piece in the New York Times last week by a guy called Phil Clay. He said he's a novelist now, but he was served in the military, and he served in Iraq, and he was saying similar things about the Iraq war that you've just been saying, but he did say at least I knew what I was doing. The American military involved in this, they do not know what they're doing because every day, they get given a different message. One minute is killing comedy, the next minute is nukes, the next minute is ballistics, the next minute is bringing peace to the Middle East, and the one that completely did my head in, Scott Besson being challenged about the rising oil price, says it's worth 50 days of temporary price rises for 50 years of peace in the Middle East. The idea that this is bringing peace to the Middle East is nuts. And the other thing that I would also say is, you know, we start debating sort of the methodology behind how they did it. Like, well, if they had only gone and made a better case or things, without really getting to the question of, should we be doing these things at all, not whether or not we should do it more forthrightly, or we should settle on just one reason, because that's, listen, we all remember Iraq was very well coordinated as far as building a coalition going to the United Nations. Now, it all turned out to be bullshit, but at least they respected us enough to go through the process of lying to us, you know, reasonably well. Now, we're starting to say, well, why didn't they do it that way? As opposed to, I'm talking about a more fundamental question within the West, which is, don't we have to rethink what danger, as you said, is acceptable in a world of these growing weapons that containment seems to be the only thing you can reasonably do. It's almost as though we're saying, no, the recipe for war is you start to seed it early, that there's a growing danger, then you start to build allies towards what your end goal is, as long as you give Americans a clear distinction of what your three aims are, like once you get to three aims and you've presented evidence, now you've fulfilled your licensing requirements for war, and you may do it. Aren't we making a mistake by criticizing that part of it rather than the actual bombing part of it? Well, I do think on this that it's possible to criticize every aspect of this. Yes, no, I'm not, yeah, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, I generally say, but I find that one of the things I find so stunning about Trump is the extent to it. Your media in particular but Armijo does exactly the same. Treating him like this is a normal president. Donald Trump has said this. Donald Trump has posted this. Donald Trump has said, and we then analyse it and we try to find what we think the thinking behind it might be, and I suspect we're nearly always wrong. How would you treat him as a non-nor? I'm curious as to what that would look like. I'll give you an example. This week, Robert Mueller dies. Yes. So Robert Mueller, we know that Trump hates him. Trump puts out a tweet saying, I'm glad he's dead, okay? With all respect to Robert Mueller, I think that is the story about Robert Mueller's death. But what happens is because we think, well, Trump's just kind of firing one of his mad rants off, we just, we say Robert Mueller has died, the man who investigated Trump over it has died. The normalization of utterly abnormal behavior. For a president, any president, listen John, there are people that I really don't like in the world, and when they die, I won't say anything, right? What I won't do is say, I'm really glad they're dead, okay? It is utterly abnormal. So what I think we do, when you say what would you do with the. It showed growth though, Alistair, because if you saw what he said after Rob Reiner was murdered, this is real growth. He's gone from being kind of a man, baby, to. Now he's in his angsty teenage years. Like, I don't care if you're dead. I wish you were dead. Now he's like a petulant teenager now where he used to be just a giant fucking baby. What was he vis-a-vis Charlie Kirk when people like me who were saying nothing were being attacked on social media by the Magnet crowd for saying nothing, for not saying that he was a saint. He was a hypocrite and a contradictory figure. The point is, we do talk about this. I have to tell you like 24-hour news cycles, but here's how we talk about it. News anchors will bring on a Republican politician and they'll say to that Republican politician, and you've had this game played out. Yeah. Having been in the press and they'll say to that politician, was that appropriate for the president to say that? And then they'll say some version of, I think Scott Besson even said on the weekend shows, well, you have to have some grace for President Trump knowing what we've put his family through. They're basically calling for empathy in an emotional state that is utterly missing from that entirety of that movement. My point is, though, he's the president. How do you have to deal with the reality that we're all facing? And I guess the policy should be, as we're talking about, containment? Yeah, absolutely. Even with him. Totally with him. Here's another example, though. I know he lies so much and he misrepresentations so mild. Right. But it seems to me that most of the media has given up even pointing that out. So now, I know he chooses his own friends. He'll do Fox and friends and he'll phone up his podcast friends and therefore they don't check him. But even even the media that is not normally completely in this pocket, to my mind, they just don't do enough of saying, excuse me, that is wrong. I'll give you another example, Caitlin Collins from CNN or any of those reporters when he suddenly turns on a reporter in one of those press conferences. That's right. Of none of them got the balls just to stand up and say, excuse me, you do not talk to our colleagues like that. No. And if you don't like what I'm saying, kick us all out. In fact, she's on an island in a lot of respects because she's relentless. And she does stay with it. The thing that you're doing, she does, that you're talking about, she will hold them to account. But they don't look, you know this as well as anybody having worked in the press. Politicians learn how to use whatever form of communication. There is against them. When television first came out and politicians didn't quite understand the medium, it didn't know how to use it. There was, I don't know if you remember the Kennedy Nixon debate was a huge, it was the first time it was televised. And politicians didn't understand the medium. And so Kennedy went on television, looking like Kennedy, tanned and rested and buff and dressed and Nixon was like, make up, what do I need make up for? I'm smart. So the sweat came. Right. So he sweated. And if you watched it on television, you said, oh my god, Kennedy wiped the floor with them. And if you heard it on the radio, you said Nixon won. Politicians learn how to manipulate the form. Right. But they did learn. Okay. But my point is, yeah, I sense, not guys that you, the satire is a different world, the satirists, sure, can have a field day. But the guys and put Fox News to one's. - Well, we're impudent. I mean, to a large extent, the frustration on satire is it's an impudent form. - Well, up to a point. But my point, it's less impudent if the guys who are in the room and on the plane, and I know how it works, you're worried that if they call him out, they don't get more access in my view. But look at the credibility of the pentagon. Now, you can talk about Hexoth and all these sort of sexual desires for bombing raids and all that stuff. But the fact is, what those reporters who refused to go by these new rules and walked out, they have helped further to undermine his credibility. - No question. - Down the track, that becomes a problem for Hexoth, okay? Now, my point is with Trump, and by the way, I think the other politicians, I'll give you an example of this, and I'm saying, so let's say when Trump was over here, he was in Scotland, he was doing something with one of his golf courses, Keir Starmer flies up from London, but Scotland, as I reminded you earlier, is part of the United Kingdom. - I understand. - He is Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. Donald Trump was behaving like he was the host. - Yes. - So I was pissed off with that for the start, but then the next thing that happened was wireless, they bring in the press, and he's doing one of his mad rambles, and he starts going off on one at Sadiq Khan, the mayor of London, who he doesn't like because he happens to have very brown skin, okay? So he hates Sadiq Khan, and he never misses an opportunity. So he's sitting in Scotland as a guest of our Prime Minister, even though he's treating him like he's the host, and he starts, now, if I'd have been Keir Starmer sitting there, I would have just lent over, put my hand on his arm, and said, Mr. President, when I go to the United States, I don't attack American politicians, and I don't expect you to do it here. We've got to call this guy out. - Oh, would that have been a moment? - Well, it would. - And by the way, I think it would have enhanced Starmer's reputation and actually done him a world of good, politically, not only would it have been morally right, but it would have actually been politically advantageous for him. - And it might have stopped him doing it again. It might not, but it doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. What I think has to happen, Mark Carney's Davos speech, the principles in that speech are what should be applied now, because there's barely a leader in the world, apart from Donald Trump, who thinks anything other than what he's done in the last month is a catastrophe. - No question. - Economically, strategically, politically, the law. - Well, I think Vladimir Putin would disagree. - I think he's quite excited about what Donald Trump has done. - We could come on to him. I should have inserted the words democratically elected. - There we go, I get that. - Right, but they're all having to deal with the fallout. - Yes. - From what is essentially a catastrophic misjudgment by a terrible president. - Now, I'm not suggesting that Keir Starmer stands up and says, this is a catastrophic misjudgment by a terrible president, but I think all of them should get together and say, we have been put in this position because the American administration has decided to completely upend the world order. We therefore have to start to design and devise the world order that follows this. And if the Americans are on-- - I mean, there have been rumblings of that. I mean-- - Rumblings, rumblings are fine. - But what Trump doesn't rumble, he does the big-bowl brushstrokes. And we need a few-- Kanye's Davos speech was a big-bowl brushstroke. We need more of them. - It's really difficult to accomplish that when you're not dictator-y, when you're not authoritarian because they aren't-- look, you know as well as I do. You know, Europe couldn't even get a certain package to the Ukrainians because one country hungry that's more aligned with Vladimir Putin had the final say in it. So you're dealing with structural difficulties within democratic systems that make that kind of action much more difficult. The second thing that you're dealing with is the vindictive whims of an impulsive man, baby, who has the full power and backing of the United States military and economic force. And he wields it punitively. And so you've also-- I think he has put you all in a great dilemma through his actions. The thing that I want to sort of get back to is the idea that you can look at Iraq and Afghanistan and Libya as examples of we weren't being run by an authoritarian man, baby. We did go to our allies and make the case. We were working through the United Nations and collaborating with allies and not dismissing them and diminishing them. And we got the same fucking results. - A fair point. - A fair point. That's the thing that I'm trying to get. You know, if we talk to Tony-- I don't know if you talk to Tony Blair anymore. - I do, I do. - Okay. Tony Blair, my guess is, and you can tell me if this is wrong, would be for intervention in Iran or at least would lean towards making the case of the United Kingdom, Great Britain, joining early on in a coalition of our great friend and neighbor, the United States, and taking this military action. Would that be fair? Well, I have discussed it with him because he-- - All right, well, you know that. - Well, because-- I'll tell you why, because our newspapers a couple of weeks ago were full of a story that he was at a private meeting where he said something along those lines. So I said-- - He said something along the lines of-- - Well, the papers said that. He said something along the lines of, we should be involved in this, okay. Since when, since when, I have basically said, Tony, what the fuck? And what he says he said is that, 'cause this was a kind of chatroom house thing. He said that, you know, in an ideal world-- - Off the record, off the record. - Which, as you and I, and I know, does not exist, particularly that level. So he was basically saying in an ideal world, Britain should be alongside the United States and he was saying that around as a terrible regime. So he wasn't quite saying what you were saying, but he was saying enough for those headlines to be written and those headlines were not good for Keir Starmer. So I did something I don't normally do on my podcast. I mildly rebuked my former boss, just a mild rebuked job. - Well, now what does he do in that scenario? Does he, do you end up, does the red phone go off? And you get-- - The red phone got taken away years ago. - Right. - Now, if he says, I wanna do, you know, I think Iran is a terrible thing and maybe we should be joining in. Does he lose his seat on the board of peace? Does that, is that what happens? - Oh, that's a question you'd have to put to your president. I don't know. - When does the board of peace meet to discuss what's going on in Iran? - Well, it has met, hasn't it? - I believe it has. - But not to discuss Iran, yeah. - I believe the board of peace, it was like Uzbekistan and Tony and a couple of other people. But yeah, I do wonder, do you have confidence that NATO can exert the kind of pressure on the United States to contain some of our worst impulses now that this president is in charge? - Whoa, where are you? - No, that's not, that was not optimistic. - Okay. That was all of the air leaving your body. - Well, where your current president, like his several of his predecessors has a point, is the Europe did kind of take American security and the peace dividend for granted, okay? We slightly inhale the end of history and we're all going to be nice liberal democracies, but the Americans have got the, but the Americans have got the big stuff and their American's always going to be big player in NATO and we're all part of NATO. Trump, go back to term one. This is why I was so worried about Trump getting term two and being more organized. He was always unpevelled about NATO. I've reached a, you know, NATO exists as a defensive alliance and through the Cold War, who was, what was NATO's court-based enemy, it was the old Soviet Union. - Sure. - What was Vladimir Putin done, or is he trying to do, he's trying to recreate that sense of the old Soviet Union with, and Russian head Germany? - Now, I have reached a point of feeling, and as we know, Kaskarolin Levit tells us, feelings are very important 'cause he felt. - No, it's in his balance. - He felt something and that would tell him what to do. But, you know, I've reached the feeling that Trump is on Putin's side when it comes to Ukraine. Well, if you're on Putin's side, you're not on NATO's side and the other thing which makes me really worry about NATO is that he continues to talk this nonsense about both Canada and more significantly about Greenland. You know, and in Salt's Danish troops, and in Salt's British troops, they kept away from the frontline in Afghanistan when, you know, substantial numbers of them died. And so, it's hard to, and then you throw it in. We had a guest on the podcast last week, Pedro Sanchez, the Spanish Prime Minister. I mean, you know. So, has seen his profile raised dramatically for doing to Trump exactly what you believe Starmer should have done with a hand on the leg. He did it in a sort of a bolder, more pronouncement of, no, we're not getting involved in this. - He did it in relation to this. I think Keir Starmer's got to the right position on this and he's expressed it in the right way. He's done it in a way that has not offended Trump and it shouldn't. - He's threatening the needle. - Yeah, exactly. Whereas Sanchez is absolutely out there, and if you listen to the interview, he goes even further in saying that all sorts of stuff about Trump that Trump would look like to hear. - But was it accurate? Were the things he was saying accurate? - Yeah, I would say so. 100%. - All right. There you go. But here's the other thing about Trump, because I think, look, you know this, you've studied politicians and you've studied, you know, big characters for a long time in your life. Never underestimate the power of hubris. If you think about some of the things that Trump did in the past, and you think about psychology, it comes in first term, and the whole narrative around it is he's having to be surrounded by grown-ups. And he gets rid of them, and he sets them left, right, sent in the whole senses of chaos. One time around, Project 2025, Stephen Miller, they're much better organized, they know what they're going to do, they're going to just, you know, must with these nonsense with doge and all that. They're going to come in, it's going to be different, and it is different this time. And what I think he, so he's thinking, right, they told me, all these experts, they told me, if I moved the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem, there's going to be, there's going to be fucking mayhem in the Middle East, didn't happen. If I go into Venezuela and chop Maduro's legs and take him out, and it was to be fair, you know, if you're looking at purely militarily as an operation, it was impressive, okay, you get the guy, you take him out, and then you do a little deal with Delce Rodriguez and things calm down. So everybody said to me, if I take out Maduro, there's going to be absolute chaos in Latin America, didn't happen. He then thinks, if I turn, he's got Epstein coming out, Mepstein, Epstein, Epstein, he wants it out of the news. I don't know if that's the motivation, but it's a part of it, I guess. He thinks he's going to do the same Iran. So when he says my message to the Iranian people is, is we do this, you rise up and we take control of your country, he thinks that's going to happen. Then when he sees it doesn't, he has to have a new narrative, so the narrative changes. And of course, he's got the difference between any previous president is he has got a public opinion, a large chunk of it that is going to stay with him, whatever he does. And he said he could shoot somebody on Fifth Avenue and his base would forgive him, I'm afraid it's true. I'm afraid it's true, but I also think that the laws of Icarus will always prevail. And to be fair, he has lived a life of very little accountability for what could ostensibly be considered truly awful actions or irresponsible actions, whether it be through bankruptcies or through personal, let's call them foibles. But there's never been, he's never really been held to account. Look, at a certain point, you run out. Right. Hey, man, run a business. Not easy. That's all I'm going to say. Not easy. A lot of times hard to find good people and all those kinds of things. And if you've got a business, you're feeling, I don't know. Like, I can use some more people, some more people that maybe are good at this and not necessarily bad at this. How do I figure that out? Well, we got yourselves a solution. You got yourselves upwork. It's a one-stop platform. You find higher and pay expert freelancers. Not your amateur freelancers, not your tenderfoot freelancers, your newbie freelancers, experts. So you can find help in web and software, development, data, analytics, marketing, business. Look, I don't even know how businesses work. So I'm just naming departments. You fill them in, however you want to fill them in. But you can do that with upwork, thousands of growing businesses trust upwork. To hire these flexible, high-quality freelance talent from one-off project, ongoing support, and it's free to sign up, visit upwork.com right now in post-your-job for free. That is upwork.com to connect with top talent ready to help your business grow. That is UPWORK.com. So Alec, do you have an idea if Trump is for Putin and I don't disagree with that. But I also think it's not necessarily that it's NATO and Putin. It's that the United States and Trump right now favor right-wing populist government. If the old world order was communism versus democracy or capitalism versus communism, the new world order in their minds is woke versus unwoke. It's that sense of a conservative, let's face it, Christian governing body, where those things are melded together. They are more ideologically aligned with Putin than Macron. They are more ideologically aligned with Orban than they are with Starmer, that the idea that we can lead liberal democracies in any kind of capacity kind of goes out the window when the operating system that they would like to run is more authoritarian and more nativist. And so we're no longer natural allies within that regard. Yeah, well, just this week Netanyahu went to Hungary to back Orban in this upcoming election on April 12th. Clearly. Yeah, JD Vance, JD Vance is reported to be heading there, Donald Trump has done a video backing Orban. I mean, all the rules of diplomacy have gone. JD Vance went to Germany and suggested back the AFD and back the AFD and said how dare you censor, meanwhile, they don't say a word about Putin, they don't say a word about, you know, whatever sensorious or authoritative or any of those kinds of things occur in those countries. Not at all. Not at all. And look, I think you're right, and this is why I talked about with the way that the immediate treat Trump as though he's a normal president, but also Trump's allies treat him like he's a normal president. And I think we've got to stop doing that. But you're calling for courage. I certainly. I'm calling for something that is in, it may be in shorter supply right now than oil. Maybe. Let me show you this. Yeah. I was at Davos and I was in the room for, I only went in the room for two speeches. One was Trump where I regret to say that my mild heckling didn't catch on with all the people around me and there was no, there was no courage in that room, right? And allow us in for car needs. Now, the thing is, I have it on very good authority that since Kanye's Davos speech, Trump has phoned Kanye more than Kanye has phoned Trump. And I think that that is a response to bitter courage. It is true that Sanchez, who has really gone for Trump, will probably pay a price. Trump will find a way of making him pay a price. But I think in doing what he's done, I'll tell you one thing is done. He's made himself a side more popular in Spain than he was, which is not important when you're the prime minister of Spain. So he's an interesting cat because now he goes out and he sort of nationalizes, I guess, 500,000 refugees or immigrants or something, which you would think goes counter to what the general movement in Europe is, and certainly on the populist right. But let's face facts, the populist right is it's not a fringe movement by any means when it comes to Europe. But yet he stands up to Trump and do those things offset or are they part of the same kind of no, we're not going to follow? Does it put him in threat to right-wing populism in Spain? It may do certainly that right-wing populism in Spain, the Vox Party campaign pretty heavily on emigration, but he's also showing courage in going out and making the case for immigration. And he did it in our interview. He basically said there was a moral case and there was an economic case and I'm making them both. Right. And I think we need to hear more of that. Well, certainly need to hear more of the economic case and there was a study, I think it was by the Cato Institute here in the United States, which is by no means a liberal organization, a libertarian, you know, libertarian right. And they made the case that economically this type of immigration is actually much more of a net positive than it has been given credit for. That doesn't mean that it will be politically successful, but very few, part of the problem we have in the United States is very few people take the time because of the attention deficit of the populace, you know, you said earlier that they normalize Trump and they don't say that he lies. They do say that he lies, but they use a shorthand. What they don't do is show their work. So you very rarely will see, you know, this happened a lot in the election. There was, the phrase was the big lie. And the big lie got coined to describe Donald Trump's complaint about the 2020 election that he lost, but said that he won, because they were talking about, this is the big lie. What they didn't do very often is walk through why what he was saying was incorrect because our news has taken on the circadian rhythms of social media. It all goes, there's very little room to breathe. But there's also the characters who are taking it over are largely particularly motivated. I mean, that is. Idealogues. Yeah. No question. No question. So I don't think you can really say, would you really say America? I was a free, fair media today. You're free to do what you do, but as a whole, does your media do the job that it was doing in the. I can't imagine a war to gait, I mean, you know, it is worse than war to gait ten times a day. I think certainly the algorithm and the bifurcation in the media has made it more polarized. And certainly, look, the whole point of Fox News was Roger Ailes worked for Nixon. And Roger Ailes is the one who founded Fox News, along with Rupert Murdoch, by the way. Thank you for him. He's done such good work here in America. He really appreciate it. He's an Australian, but he made his bones. He's actually an American now. He's an American citizen. Oh, is he really? Yes, he is. Otherwise, he wouldn't have been able to join Fox News. Good, good for him. So he's on you. I agree with you. He's been. Net negative. Net, net, net, net, negative, negative, negative. Terrible. Gavin Newsome was on our podcast a few weeks ago. And tell me if you agree with this. He said, without Murdoch, there is no Trump. I think that's probably correct. I would say without Murdoch, there's probably no George Bush without. But that being said, I think what they did is intentional. They intentionally created those things to buffer their politicians from that sense of accountability because they viewed that accountability as merely left-wing, posturing, and left-wing virtue signaling and left-wing. And so now you see that Fox News is not right enough for Trump. That's the thing about Trump is he's insatiable. But let me ask you. You had Newsome on. So here, Newsome is obviously. He's one of the few politicians that can compete in an attention economy in the way that Trump does. He's created this sort of trolling persona. What was your sense of him? The way that I process him is like, man, that dude is thirsty. And it's hard for me to move past that in some respects. What was your thought process with him? What does that mean? The. The receipt? Yeah. He wants it. He wants it in a way that is more ambition than. Conviction. Conviction. Conviction. Okay. It's less principle and more politics. I didn't get that impression. Okay. There you go. Two reasons. Two reasons. But then again, you worked for Blair. So I'm going to take it all with a grand assault. Well, hold on. Tony Blair is a man of conviction. Yeah, ambition and conviction. He's still got both. Oh, fair enough, fair enough. And I will defend him to my grave for normal and peace process alone. All right. Fair enough. No, I liked Gavin Newsom a lot because I'd kind of only seen the kind of, you know, the hair and the teeth and the suits and why have you. Yeah, yeah. And he looks like a kind of pretty identity to get American politician, right? Yes. But I found him to be very charming, very clever. And he's got courage. He's got courage. He's got courage. He calls things out. He's really going for this. The one thing that he said that I, he said at the end, I said, are you definitely going to go for it? And he said, the only people who've got to vote my wife and my children and some of them like it, some of them are keen, some of them are not. And I thought, hmm, he's going, I mean, I thought I thought he's definitely going for it. Yes. I got the sense that his view of the California thing is that it's a big bonus while he's getting the nomination. And then it becomes a bit of a handicap. He's got to work out ways of dealing with that. I think that's right. But I, I found him pretty compelling and pretty tough. I thought it was tough. I liked him. Okay. Well, fair enough then. But thank you for for being candid about those various things. I want to revisit just a moment. We sort of talked about NATO's role and all this and how Trump really is ideologically aligned more with these strong men and certainly seems to prefer them to anything else that he does. But I want to also ask during your time in office what your experience was with the Middle East powers because Netanyahu has so, I think for my money, I believe he is not interested in diplomatic solutions to almost anything and that he has found his lane in violence. And he can all he wants about well, we were attacked and understood and I'm not diminishing that. But you can't, there's a difference between capability and ambition. And what he's trying to do is bomb the ambition out of people. He's trying to bomb their will away and I don't think that's something you can do. That the more people are resilient and they will fight that you may be able to diminish their capability but in doing so their ambition becomes even more resolute. I mean, again, going back to the Sanchez interview because Spain and Ireland are the two countries in Europe that are very, very pro-Palestinian and the first to recognize Palestine state et cetera. And he said, I said to him, do you think Netanyahu is a war criminal? And he said, well, that is not, I'm not a judge, but he said Israel is more isolated than it has ever been. Now, I don't think, as Netanyahu is thinking, I think as long as he's got Trump for now, he thinks he's fine. Why find terrifying about recent events is that what is happening in the moment in Lebanon is barely on the agenda. The settler violence and the West Bank at the moment is off the scale, but it's barely on the agenda. By the way, what are the settlers even doing? How can you justify if your goal is just the security of your state and only, why would you ever be annexing other territory, which obviously is going to take a lot more money and resources to be able to defend, and all it does is bisect land that is clearly not yours. But that is the strategy to make it this. But that's, but, but, right. So that's my point. Totally. Is how can you say I'm looking for an equitable and just solution when your actual goal is to just eliminate the problem for yourselves? There was a, there was a briefing, I read quite a lot of the Israeli press and there was a briefing in, right, one of the papers the other day where they, they literally said that the military strategy, they were going to be pursuing and targeting Hezbollah in Lebanon was the one that they used in Raffa. Now Raffa was basically raised to the ground. It was flat, completely flat. Yeah. So I, and the thing is that he can look, we now do seem to be living in an era of impunity. We have to hope that when all this is through, that there will not be impunity. But it's coming from the supposedly elevated countries of the world, the United States and Israel, the ones that live with moral purpose and yet, and yet here we are. And by the way, where is Saudi Arabia in, in all of this? Where is, you know, we've sent them more weaponry than almost anybody else. What is, is, is, what is their role in this? What is their role in defending the Palestinians? What, what is anybody's role in this? I, I, I, I'm so confused, but you're not, you're not alone. I mean, we're all confused and, and I think that you see, I, what Trump's supporters, and I don't want to put it all on Trump, but a lot of it is on Trump. But what, what his supporters continue to say is, ah, the trouble with you guys is you don't understand he's all about strategic chaos and strategic ambiguity. But you just get the thing, he's, he's literally making it up as he goes along day by day. And that's why, that's why I do worry. I was, I was at an event meeting recently with some of the kind of different European intelligence people. And one of, and, and one of them said, you know, do you think this might be leading us into the third world war, and another one said, well, what if we're already in it? And what the, the thing that really worries me is that the, the, the, the level of hubris, the ego, alongside, you see, I think you're right, Ben Netanyahu, Netanyahu, he wants to survive politically. Do you know, by the way, he was, he was the first Israeli prime minister we met back in 1997. He was, he was there then as prime minister. So this is a guy who knows how to survive. He wants to survive right now, based on the, the approach he's taking around because he got to understand it's much more popular in Israel than it is here, you know, in the UK or in the, on the US, he thinks this might be the way to winning the next general election. He's, he's got Trump completely. And then all the golf powers there, you, Saudi is obviously a very, very interesting question. What's happening with their relationship with the other golf powers? Well, it just came out today they said, uh, Mohammed bin Salman has been calling President Trump and urging him to finish the job that this is a unique opportunity. opportunity to reshape the dynamic of the Middle East. I mean, obviously there's the Sunni Shia Rift and as Iran. And this is in no way excusing the mullahs and the actions that they've taken on their own people and through Hezbollah and Hamas and all those other bad actors. But if Mohammed bin Salman is calling up Donald Trump and saying finish the job, well, you've just bought $15 billion of the highest tech weaponry. Any country can possibly possess. What are you doing? And as far as the Palestinians, you know, I think they've spent more money on sport. You know, they gave more money to Phil Mickelson than they did to the Palestinian. Like I don't understand any of the dynamics over there or what we're hoping to achieve. Well, that is the, that is the problem that we're all wrestling with right now. And the thing that I find terrifying is that Trump is so powerful, but that power comes from the stability and he's destroying the very foundation. That's my point. That's my point. Right. But he's, these countries that have invested hundreds of millions in projecting themselves as safe, as stable and that safety and stability has been based on the fact that they've developed this relationship with the United States and the United States and now destroyed it. And meanwhile, they're all looking at each other and thinking, you know, he will try, he'll be, Trump will now be trying to divide and rule. The Israelis will be trying to divide and rule. We're not going to hit that one as hard as we're hitting that one. You know, they're not as bad. And so look, it is absolutely terrifying. And the answer to the question, I was tended to agree with the guy who said, well, maybe we are already in Third World War. And that is why this is all about, this is where values have to be reimposed. And I think what's happened since Trump's second term began is the eradication of any sense of there being values at the heart of this. He doesn't talk about, you know, he talked about the people rising up, but he never talks about democracy. He's not interested. At least George Bush used to talk about, let's try and create a stable democracy in Iraq. Is democracy no longer an operating system, you know, we used to say like what we're going to bring democracy and that sort of was coupled with a kind of prosperity and stability and a rule of law and all those other things that created the power of the United States that, you know, we so randomly squander at so many different times. Do you think that democracy still has the credibility as an operating system or has it, as it's so been tainted by the mistakes that were made in Iraq or the mistakes that were made in immigration policy or the inability to solve some of the bureaucratic issues that occur within, you know, the EU Brexit is an example of a rebuke of that system. Yeah. You know, do we need to also shore up the results that democracy can deliver for their populations? Well, the one that you didn't put in there, which I think is the biggest of the lot, is the fact that we've, we've had a generation growing up with no guarantee whatsoever that they're going to be better off than their parents generation. Right. I think that is what's driving a lot of us in Europe. I think that, look, there are various things. There's, I think if you go back, this shit has gotten dark, Alistair. We're going to have to somehow find a way to pull out of this, but we're getting dark here. Oh, sorry. 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The first is Seattle, where globalization, China was brought in and lots of trade unions and lots of working class people said, no, no, no, this is a mistake and the global organizers and I would include myself in that were basically, no, no, no, you got to bring China in and this is the way to do it. Right. Then the second is about when they invite a China into the WTO. Into the WTO. Yeah, yeah. And so the economic and social consequences of that, the second one he cites is the Iraq war without putting up taxes. In other words, saying we can have this massive war, but don't worry, you won't have to pay for it. And then the third one is bailing out the banks. So that he's putting the 2008 financial crisis, right? The crash. Yeah. I'm going to add, I'm going to add COVID to that. I'm going to add what people consider to be the government's arrogance during the COVID crisis. Okay. Okay. Well, all of these things and you're right, by the way, but the, the, the, and you'll go back to the question you asked is is democracy up to dealing with this? The problem is the China, less so Russia, because Russia is, you know, the separate country. But China is definitely looking at our democratic systems and saying, there you're problem. There you're problem. You can't, you can't do stuff like we do stuff. I saw a Chinese diplomat not long ago and I was going on about, yeah, well, in the end, we're all going to, you know, do this down the other and people will still believe in democratic values and why have you? And we were talking about infrastructure and he said, he said to me, I think you do the answer. He said, because I think he'd heard me say this somewhere on the media, he said, when was the first discussion that you had about building a third runway at Heathrow airport? And the answer was 1998. Wow. And we're still talking about it. Wow. And he was saying, I've lost count of how many airports we've built since then. So they're much more open about saying your problem is your system. Democracy's not working. Putin, why does Putin have a certain following amongst the kind of hard right AFD, forage and these guys? What they like to say is, well, say what you like about him, but he gets things done. Right. What he gets done is, you know, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths. See, it's so interesting that, because I actually think you've got a much better case to make with she and China in that regard. And they certainly have their state run capitalism. However, they want to do it. Then you do it Putin, because Putin actually doesn't get things done and makes incredible and is unbelievably clubbed to critic and corrupt. And what a terrible example. And I would say they would never align themselves with the authoritarian nature of China, but they would with Putin. And the reason is they view him as a defender of what they call Western civilization. Not the Western civilization that you and I define as the enlightenment values that create the foundation of democratic societies, but Western civilization along the lines of racial and religious lines. Yeah. That's actually why they align there. And also certainly can't point to results. And also views on gaze and views on abortion, views on women. Exactly. Manosphere thing is wrapped up in this megastar so no, listen, Putin and Trump, I mean, look, I know there's the whole theory about what was Putin got on Trump and what he's got anything to be. Well, I think what he has on him is jealousy. I think the Trump wants to be rich. He wants to be as powerful and he wants to be a authoritarian within his own country. You know what's incredible, 15 minutes before Donald Trump announced that he wasn't going to be bombing Iran's energy infrastructure after all, the stock market insider traders made millions. And that's where. we are. Yeah, that's what so in some respects, we are turning into just this explicit cleptocracy. Yeah, but why is that not on the news every night? Why is the media so quiet and so scared? I think it's on there. I think it's a harder, you know, look, we have enough trouble, as you said, from the 2008 financial crisis, insider trading, polymarket calcium. I think they're overwhelmed. And unfortunately, rather than sort of a more strategic news day, what you find in our news day is a redundancy. It's every hour after hour is the same rhythm of stories. So we're going to go down to the airports and see the TSA line. And then we're going to go, so they don't have an opportunity to delve into the types of analysis. They leave that for podcasts like your podcast and worry stewards. But what about what about documentary makers filmmakers? I just got a note from here and news organizations now partner with these prediction markets. So they're also corporate media and they're also invested in profit and they're also consolidating so that pretty soon we're all going to be working for the same one individual. But the point is they don't, it's not that they don't have the resources. It's that they don't apportion them in a way that strategically fights the corruption that you're talking about. Yeah. Well, it is a fight that has to be had because, and I mean, it's happening before our eyes. He doesn't even hide it. It doesn't hide at all. The scary point to me is, you know, you could say, you know, great Britain has a much more responsible media. And yet ultimately, your country ends up making the same stupid decisions we do. So you begin to wonder, well, what is the, you know, what is the solution? Let me end on this because hopefully it's a more hopeful, you know, Alistair in your experience and looking around. Where do you see green shoots of a new, more robust defender of liberal democracy and the power that it should hold and the rule of law that can, again, create this kind of stability and prosperity. Where are the green shoots in your mind? Don't pause like that. Don't pause. No, no, no, I was going to say the first, the first obvious name that comes to mind is Mark Karney. I think Mark Karney in Canada is doing pretty good job. I think you, our attorney general, Guy Call Richard Hermu, who's very close to Kierstammer. He's made a speech this week. We can speech this week, which is very much this is the time now to fight for human rights, fight for international law, because the run of threat is never before. Just had a great guy in Australia just won a landslide in the South Australia election. Guy call Peter Melalauskas. He's a Labour candidate. He's absolutely wiped out the opposition pretty much. I think that those results I mentioned in France, in Italy, I think I could be wrong, but if the election is free and fair in Hungary, all bound will lose. There is a fight back. And I'll see where I get hope. I wrote the last two books, I wrote with kids' books about politics, and I'm now going to loads of schools. And it's true that you'd get some teenagers who are totally locked up in the atmosphere and all that stuff. But my sense of the younger generation is that they get how bad this is, and they know that it's going to be on them to get us out of it. So I'm still broadly positive. I think the other thing I would say is it's very hard not to allow, if you're on the progressive side of politics, not to allow Trump to do your head end every day. I understand. Right. It's really hard not to do it. It's important to try and to go out and find the people and find the arguments. I say in London every day, the Magical crowd, they've got this obsession with London because of said it can't. Yes. There's a whole industry develop saying that. Although now, you know, Zoran Mamdani has taken a little bit of the heat off of. A little bit, yeah. Okay. But there's a whole kind of industry across social media and across parts of the right wing media, in the states, basically saying, "I literally have a friend's phone up saying, is it safe to come to London?" Right. Because they see all this shit. Right. When you do come to London, you see probably still the greatest city in the world. Hey, hey, hey. What? Come on. When you're moving here, by the way, it's obvious you've got to move. You've got to move here. Don't do New York City dirty. Come on, let's just. Listen. It's a beautiful city. I happen to love London very much. Yeah. But the point is, what is it within the mega crowd other than the skin color of our mayor that has led them to this relentless? This goes back to your point about the no longer being our allies. Well, it's incentivized monetarily as well. You have to understand that. For sure. For sure. But when you have an American national security strategy that talks about European civilizational erasure, right? Well, that's. I would argue. I travel around the European countries a lot. Lemma let you know, Secret John, it's nicer than the United States of America. Hey, hey, hey. Oh, yeah. Better culture, better scenery, better everything. Yeah. We're just better off here. Well, that's better. And Bren will be better off if we were still not. Then what you're saying is Europe shall lead us out of the wilderness. That they have heard their lesson through intimacy and fighting. And that is all over. And they will lead the democratic liberal establishment out of the wilderness, a reaffirmation of the Magna Carta and the Enlightenment values. And we shall do it there. Last question. Is the antidote to authoritarianism morality or competence? You got to have both, but I would say it's the values bit. It's the big part of the foundation. 100%. What sort of people are? What sort of countries do we want to be? And I think that is what has been. That's what Trump is driving out. You talked about Netanyahu trying to bomb the will out of people. What Trump does every day with his kind of genius level of crazy communication. He's trying to drive the. He's trying to drive the good out of us. He's trying to drive the morals out of us. He's trying to basically say, you know, let's all be as bad as each other. Right. Let's all be realistic about just how terrible we all are. Yeah, exactly. It's not very Christian message, is it? It doesn't appear to be, although that's not my jurisdiction, so I wouldn't. No, no. No, no. But thank you so much for being fascinating as always. Alistair Campbell, co-host of the rest of his politics podcast, and obviously a vast career as an author and stuff. Medicator and all those other incredible things. Alistair, please give my best to Rory, and I hope to see you guys soon over there and in that beautiful city of yours. See you soon. Bye, sir. Man, that got dark. They all do. I will say this, though. I think if anyone was going to narrate the end of the world, it should be a British version. 100%. Easy, you into it a bit more. I think my favorite moment was you defining the word "thirsty" for him. Yeah. Definitely as well. I was going to bring this up. Did he not know "thirsty"? Yeah, he did. He said, "What do you mean by that?" Probably not in the colloquial sentence. I imagine he knows the feeling of having thirst. That's right. He'd probably think of himself like, "I am a bit parched. It is nearing tea time." I did like you trying to get more information for us about the board of peace. Nothing. He gave. Nothing. He almost seemed as he was unaware of Tony Blair's role. Yeah, we moved past that pretty quickly. Yeah, yeah. Now, we moved past that and I love the whole, you know, it was something that we never quite reconciled on this, which was, you know, he kept saying, "Trump is doing this the wrong way." And I kept trying to get him back to right, but we supposedly did a rock the right way. But when are we going to start thinking that maybe we shouldn't be doing any of this shit at all? Yeah. We're kind of still hung up on the lies portion, I think, of it. The news media, us, the reasons for why it's happening, all these things were still stuck just on that beginning part. But I guess because the lies are so abundant and quick that there's not too much room to move on. And I also think, you know, look, hindsight is obviously, you know, and to say, and you know, he seemed to be pretty clear about like, "Look, we believed what we were saying there. Maybe that's true for what was going on there." I don't believe that's necessarily true for America. I don't, I do think there were some real believers in that neocon movement, but I think a lot of them knew they were manipulating things cynically just to get what they wanted. 100%. Out of that. Yeah. Thank you, Jillian. Yeah. I think we've all come to terms with that. We've all accepted it. What they wanted were the goals for them. That's right. We've all accepted those sorts of things. Did you, are you familiar with this Spanish Sanchez? We should reach out. We will. Yeah. Could do it. Sounds exciting. Guys got some balls. He literally was like, "You're not using our shit. I'm not giving it no." I love it. This thinks, this is stupid. It's impressive because, you know, not too many leaders are willing to be so open about their dislike of what's happening. As he was describing Starmer, you know, threading a needle with what he says and does. It's nice to see some authenticity. - Right. - It was interesting when he said about Karnie too, which is that, I mean, whether or not it's true, that like Trump has been calling him more than he's been calling Trump, since he showed a little bit of courage. And it's like, I don't know. It's kind of similar to what you said is about Katelyn Collins ones, which is that he kind of has respect for people that push back a bit. - Mom Donnie. - Right. - Exactly. - Yeah, that's exactly right. Those are three very good examples and I do think that there is some of that. And I can believe it because Donald Trump is, if nothing else, a 12 year old with a phone, like he's just, he's on, he's on with everybody. But Brittany, what are the kids wanna know this week as we move on? - Yes, all righty. John, with one of the most consequential midterm elections in U.S. history coming up. - Maybe, what? Okay. - Does anyone really want Schumer or Jeffries as their starting quarterback? - Oh, I don't. First of all, the idea that you would even consider them quarterbacks is like, I put them maybe on the O-line. - Kickers? - Yeah. - Yeah, maybe a ponteur, special teams going through there. I mean, look, I don't understand the idea of Schumer to begin with his passivity in the face of these really kind of existential crises that occur is, is beyond me. And the, and even the subtle adjustments that he makes, given the frustration of the democratic constituency writ large is, I'll curse more. - Mm-hmm. - Like, even that is all show and not, and it's frustrating. - Incredibly. They're so, we have removed from, I think, the day-to-day that just cursing seems like it will hit our hearts. - We're, we're fucking, oh, we're not. We're fucking fighting back. We're gonna fucking these motherfuckers. - Yeah. - Have to be. - That's pretty good. - Thank you. - Why doesn't he step down? - Oh my lord. Why doesn't he seed power? (laughs) They don't, these guys don't ever seed power. They run, look, it was remarkable when Dick Durbin at 82 was like, "I don't think I'm gonna run again." And you're like, "Yeah, of course not." - That's selflessness, yeah. - Fucking 82 years old, stop. - But isn't there a way for us to like, I just get frustrated because like, isn't there a way for us to hold them accountable and make that happen somehow? Like, building. - I mean, it's, it's such an internal, you know, the internal politics of Washington insiders is something that is slightly impervious, unfortunately, to the voters. But the one thing I will say that the Democratic party could do is their system rewards only seniority. And so if you want to get anywhere and you want to get any kinds of plum assignments and all that, you just, they only reward longevity. At least the Republicans don't even do that. They give them, I don't know if it's two terms or three terms on certain committees, but they don't allow them to just ensconce themselves in these offices until fucking moss starts to grow up their legs or should I say, fucking moss? (laughing) But I think the performance of these leaders has been so apparently missing an action that I'd be surprised that whatever new group, but maybe their, you know, their other senators and representatives feel beholden to them. I really tied. - Yeah. There was reporting, I think over the weekend that there's like a signal chat, but like Chris Murphy, Elizabeth Warren, and maybe a few others are in where they're talking shit. Oh my God. So they're trying to, they're plotting against Schumer. So they're like, you know what's great? Let's get a signal chat, that always goes well. - I'd write, is that, who would ever find out about that? It just, it blows my mind that that's the like, 'cause that is something that you would see in like a high school tromity that's like, there's a chat and some of the teachers and students around it, like you just imagine, it feels as what, kind of Alistair was like nearly like, it feels so lacking in courage. - Yes. - Yeah, absolutely. - I'm gonna set up a little social media chat for us and we're gonna talk about all the things we would do if we had the balls to do it publicly. - Yes. - Let me fuck down. Brittany, what else we got? I'm gonna talk about it. - All right. - Where else we're going here? - If you were a ghost, what would. - Wait, what have they heard? (laughing) - What would be your go-to casual haunt? - Well, first of all, I am slowly becoming what? (laughing) As I become more translucent through hair color and lack of power, I would haunt old music clubs that still allow smoke that my fondest sensory memories are from bartending in old like punk clubs where the heady aroma of cigarette smoke stale beer and violent tendencies. (laughing) Feel that like that. I love that aura. And I think I would probably, that's where I would end up. Well, I don't know, where would you guys end? I'd Jillian, who would you haunt? - Would you haunt? - Yeah, I'd be like, courtside Madison Square Garden. - Oh, so you would naturally be haunting. - I'm using it for the seats. - So you guys are haunting for good. - I know, this is very like positive. I have a list of situationships that I'm gonna go and torture. - Oh, Brittany, you're going full of addictive. So you're going kind of, you're more poltergeist. - Yes, I'm gonna haunt the shit out of people. - Okay. - Yeah, I do that. - I was just thinking more in terms of like, what kind of atmosphere would I like to exist in as opposed to like, who could I fuck with? - Yeah, I'm getting paybacked. - Lauren seems also in the payback mode. - I'm just, we are in a crazy moment and we got this question. And all I'm thinking is, like, how do I mess with everyone who's messing with, you know, our sanity right now? - Oh, so you would actually. - You would say, this is interesting. I went, I went bar. Brittany went, personal vendetta. Julian just wants to see good basketball. And Lauren went, halls of power. So you're haunting, could have some real efficacy and an improvement. - Or just make me smile, you know. - Personal thing. - And it's not always good basketball. Sometimes it's just basketball. - Yeah, it's a good point. Depending on what year it is, that's a good point. How do they keep in touch with us? - Twitter, we are with Lee ShowPod, Instagram Threads, TikTok Blue Sky. We are with Lee ShowPodcast. And you can like, subscribe and comment on our YouTube channel, the weekly show at John Stewart. - And you should. What's stopping you? Haunt us for God's sakes. As always, thank you guys very much. Really enjoyed that conversation. Lead producer, Lauren Walker, producer, Brittany Memevedek, producer, Gillian Spear, video editor and engineer, Rob Vittola, audio editor and engineer, Nicole Boyce, who we're doing, Yomans work today. We were working inter-connectedly across the seas. And they were making it work as Alistair's camera kept trying to fly out the window. They had to, they had to make adjustments as the whole thing was going on. And our executive producers, as always, Chris McShane, Katie Gray. Thanks so much guys, and we'll see you guys next time. 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