101. Trump’s Plan To Humiliate Europe

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Today para sabermás.

Welcome to the Rest is Politics US with me, Katie Kaye, in Wiltshire, actually, staying in the English countryside, which is very lovely, although a little chilly.

Not where you are, Anthony.

You Brits like cold weather in the summer, not me.

I'm in Sicily in a heat wave,

gonna

search and destroy and buy things,

be an American consumer.

With that weak dollar, that's a problem.

You're gonna find that even you might notice the weak dollar.

But are we allowed to reveal where you are?

Yeah, I'm staying.

I'm at the San Domenico Palace, the Four Seasons, and I'm in Tarramina.

I think it's actually only known as the White Lotus Hotel now, right?

Yes.

Yeah.

I am that ugly American watching White Lotus episodes while I'm here, right?

I mean, you know,

you got to own who you are, Caddy.

See, I brought the conspicuous consumption out of you in the last year, which I'm proud of.

You have.

You have, yes.

I think it's a...

Source of pride for me.

I hope that no dead bodies wash up on the beach for you and Deirdre.

This hotel is not even anywhere near the beach.

They made it look like it was, but it's it's miles from the beach, but that's a whole other magic of Hollywood.

All right, what are we talking about today?

Well, talking of Europe, since you're in Europe, while you were flying over to Sicily, we're recording this on Monday morning, Donald Trump arrived in Scotland over the weekend to play some golf, but also fit in a bit of business, and he managed to sign a trade deal with the European Union.

This has been one of the stickiest trade deals

for the United States to get.

Of course, the European Union is a major trading partner of the US, and there had been quite a lot of feeling in Europe's 27 member states of the EU that they should push back against the administration.

In the end, they've got a deal, which I think looks like more of a win for Trump than it does for the European Union.

Tariffs will be set at 15% across the board for goods going into America.

American goods going into the EU will be zero tariffed.

I mean, it's also worth pointing out that Keir Starmer managed to get a 10% tariff deal for the United Kingdom, went first, rushed it, at the time was kind of criticised for going too quickly.

And perhaps the Europeans felt that the UK should have stayed with the EU, negotiated altogether, given themselves more leverage.

But actually for

the UK and for British companies, they have ended up with a better deal because Keir Starmer went quickly.

We can get into some of the details, although they they are a little scant at the moment, which raises concerns about all of these trade deals that are being announced.

But there could be some sectors that get relief or quotas.

The Europeans are hoping, for example, for a bit of relief around

car exports,

steel and aluminium exports.

There was some confusion about whether pharmaceuticals, which is a very big deal for Ireland, would be included in that 15% tariff.

An Irish business contact that I have texted overnight saying that that was what they were looking at in Ireland.

And there is some confusion about, you know, the prospect of pharmaceuticals.

So I think the main thing, though, to say is that when we looked back at this extended deadline, we all thought that it was going to be very hard for the Trump administration to pull this off, to get any of these deals announced by this August the 1st deadline.

And yet here he is, he's got the big one that he needed to get.

This is going to make markets happy.

And I think it gives the Trump administration some bragging rights over, okay, well, we announced all of these massive tariff percentages of 35% at one point that we're going to put against the European Union, but now we've got them down to 15% and we'll take that as a win.

Is that how you think that Trump is going to play this?

Yeah, I mean, listen, I mean, the

pros for Europe, let's talk about what they are.

It prevents the worst outcome.

So, you don't have this 30% tariff that you're mentioning, but a 15% tariff.

It's hard.

I mean, I don't know if you remember the guy.

There was an African-American in New York.

He was campaigning for mayor, and he had a slogan: The rent is too damn high.

Okay, and that was his slogan.

Of course, he didn't win, but he was right about the rent.

And the tariff is too damn high, Caddy.

It's just not a great thing.

It will create a slowdown in demand.

It will generate revenues for the U.S., but remember, American consumers will be paying that revenue.

And

when I go out and talk to people about these tariffs, I tell people: America is is quietly introducing a VAT.

It just happens to be a VAT on imported goods, not all goods.

And this is going to be something that's going to stick.

This is the one thing that Trump does where I may not like it, but the next president is going to leave a lot of these tariffs in place because of the revenue sourced around them.

And it will also reconfigure the way people consume goods in the United States.

Some of the goods are actually going to fall by the wayside.

I'm waiting for the carve-outs.

You may remember in the UK deal,

there were tens of thousands of car units, both for Jaguar, Land Rover, and Rolls-Royce, believe it or not, that were carved out, which is going to help those automobile companies.

But that's number one.

It averts the worst outcome.

Number two, they've got a blanket tariff now.

And so when I read through the agreement, it didn't address the pharmaceuticals, but that should be covered covered under the omnibus portion of the provisions that were in the agreement, at least the stuff that was announced.

That's what the Europeans are saying.

That's what Ursula van der Leyen is saying.

I got a text this morning saying the Europeans do believe that it is in that.

Trump has thrown a little bit of confusion, I think, himself into that because he was asked about this after the deal was announced.

And he said, oh, no, that's not covered here.

So I think that's where the confusion is, but the Europeans are pretty clear that it is covered.

Yeah, it looks like it's covered from the agreement.

But this is one of those things where Trump probably doesn't want to admit that, but it is probably covered.

And this is something I've said when I've spoken in Dublin.

The practicality, people are saying, oh, no, he's going to shut down our pharmaceutical business.

Obviously, the Irish are running a trade surplus with the U.S., but he really can't do that.

The practicality of what's going on in terms of the way this has been set up, he's not going to be able to unwind it without causing a healthcare crisis in the United States.

But just one more quick thing.

This is also the energy component of this, where

the Europeans are going to buy $750 billion worth of energy sounds good as a top line.

They were going to do that anyway

because they've shut themselves down from the Russian natural and liquid natural gas component of their imports for energy.

So they were going to do that anyway.

I guess the thing that I would love to really understand is the investment, $600 billion of investments in the U.S.

And by the way, I went back and looked at some of of the previous announcements of investments, big announcements of investments that have happened from Taiwan, from South Korea, from Saudi Arabia.

In a few of the cases where these big top-number investments have been announced, the reality is actually quite a lot less.

than the initial announcement figures.

So I think that's, again, going to be spread out over a few years.

We would have to see how that actually pans out, whether the $600 billion does pan out.

I had a question for you, though.

One, there was a good article in the Financial Times over the weekend asking the question about whether forecasters have got it wrong on the U.S.

economy, which just seems to be irrepressible at the moment.

And all of the doom and gloom, and we talked about that, that economists were feeling when a tariff war was initially announced.

The tariff regime was initially announced by Donald Trump back in April on Liberation Day.

And the assumption was that this was going to be a real hit to the American economy.

It was going to drive up inflation.

It was going to make it harder for the Fed to bring down interest rates.

It was going to have a knock-on effect on unemployment in the country.

And that was why you saw that initial market reaction.

But this weekend in the FT, they were saying two questions, really.

Did the forecasters get it wrong about these policies and their impact on the American economy?

Or is it just that there really will be a knock-on effect of these tariffs in terms of supply chains and goods coming into the country and therefore inflation?

We just haven't felt it yet, even though we've started to see already that

shipment rates are down, container rates are down coming into the U.S., into U.S.

ports.

Where do you stand on that, Anthony?

Do you think that actually the forecasts of predictions of serious economic problems because of the tariffs were wrong, or do you think we still haven't seen the impacts of these policies?

I'm going to answer it in a way that people are probably not going to like because it's a little bit of both.

And I'm not trying to hedge, but the implications for the economy haven't gone through the economy yet.

So, the tariff, let's call the economy a large Python, and the tariff is the

prey that the Python's going to eat.

It's not gone through the Python yet.

So, it's very hard to tell.

I think the flip side, though, is this is the irony.

Trump would never say this, of course.

But he got left a very good economy from the Biden administration.

And remember, the Biden administration had a lot of measures in place to fix the COVID side of the economy and the damage that was done from COVID.

So Trump inherited a fairly robust economy.

So when I read that article over the weekend, I wanted like three more paragraphs in the article.

And paragraph one would have been that Biden really did a good job, Gene Spurling, others, in terms of understanding what...

corporations needed.

As an example, they're the ones that accelerated all the depreciation.

So corporations are like, okay, we're now going to spend this money, take a one-year depreciation.

So, for example, if I had to buy a piece of capital equipment, let's say it cost me $10 million,

I could write that off of my revenue line, Caddy, and get an immediate tax break on that.

That was something that the Bidens came up with, or the Biden administration came up with, to really help the economy restart after COVID.

Examples like that.

Paragraph number two would have been that the tariffs

are

being absorbed by the corporations.

You You know, GM printed a $1 billion loss in their quarter, and people say, well, what happened?

They said, well, we had to absorb the tariffs.

So Trump got that right.

Okay, so one piece was the Biden administration left it with a great economy.

The second piece was whether you like Trump or dislike him.

Corporations, large and small, are biting in and absorbing some of the tariff costs.

And then just quickly, the last piece of this is we are in a productivity boom.

People don't realize how much of a productivity boom because they're not focused on it.

And we don't even spend a lot of time on it in punditry, business punditry.

But we've got automation, improvements of software, improvements of energy.

We're in a productivity boom.

So all of this stuff is going to offset some of the nonsense associated with the tariffs.

But I just want to make this point.

This was a coerced compromise.

I'm sure the EU economic officials are walking out of this thing saying, woo, we don't have a 30% tariff to deal with on August 1st, but $15 is a heavy price.

And they didn't win anything here.

And by the way, the Americans didn't win anything here either.

It's just going to be a slowdown of some levels of consumerism in America, which is going to slow down the economy.

Trevor Burrus, Jr.: I think on that point about businesses eating the cost of the tariffs, I guess the question with the EU deal, which is a little higher than the UK deal,

it's the same as the Japan deal, is will businesses and therefore the European economy eat these costs?

I mean, the speculation is that this is going to knock, I think, half a percentage point off European growth prospects because of these tariffs, and it's going to be hard for them to pass on to the American consumer.

They're just going to have to take them, which has an impact.

And particularly if you're a country like Germany, which is a big exporter and of whom very much is being asked at the moment.

And when I was in Germany and they lifted the debt ceiling in order to expand their military capacity, one of the things that a political scientist there said to me is, look, you know, the Germans are being asked to basically fund the rearmament of Europe.

They're being asked to fund the armament of Ukraine, at least for a defensive position, over the next few years.

They have to have massive economic reforms in the country.

They've got to boost growth in Germany because growth is moribund.

and they've got to do all of that under the threat of a tariff war from the United States on their primary sector.

And we know that it was the Germans that were lobbying the EU to get this deal done because the uncertainty for the German car sector, a bit like the uncertainty for the UK car sector, was enormous.

So I think it puts a very heavy burden, not just on German automakers, but on all of those knock-on effects that Trump wants European defense self-sufficiency.

He wants European countries to spend more on their defense.

But if you squeeze those European countries too hard and those auto manufacturers in Germany start to feel this, if they start having to raise prices of cars in Germany, if they start having to lay off labor in Germany, the knock-on implications of that for the German population, you're going to make it harder.

to achieve the very things that the United States, it seems to me, wants Europe to achieve.

So

I don't know if this, how much of the long-term gain this is to the kinds of things that Donald Trump is trying to achieve.

Yeah, well, listen, if an American president comes in less MAGA than Donald Trump, he's going to reverse some of this stuff.

This is going to be too onerous for both economies.

And onerous weights have political consequences.

Yeah, no question.

So, but let's go to, and I'm going to probably mispronounce your name, so forgive me, everybody, but it's President Ursula von der Leyen.

Is that how you say?

Ursula von der Leyen.

I want to ask you this question because I've met her.

Former U.S.

Ambassador Phil Murphy, who's now the governor of New Jersey, very close personal friend, introduced me to her, and we had a conversation a few years back when she was being honored by the Atlantic Council in D.C.

She strikes me as a very sharp-minded institutionalist.

I would describe her that way.

She used to be Germany's defense minister, too, by the way, so she really knows the German defense sector.

Yeah, so she's a very smart policy wonk she's a very measured person she's got great diplomatic skills she's elegant person

describe her feelings sitting there in the orange maniac's uh golf course and the buzz saw the orange buzz saw whipping next to her i knew you were gonna ask take me through it go ahead because i'd like you to analyze that for all of us here as i'm sitting here looking at her uh and it's just shaking my head but go ahead tell me what's going on in her head You're so right to point it out.

I watched the video last night of the two of them sitting there in Turnbury, Scotland with a kind of, you know, golf club behind them.

And there she is sitting in her kind of, you know, off-pale grey jacket, just

looking like, I mean, sort of sphinx-like in her refusal to show any emotion as Donald Trump is describing what is going to be incredibly difficult for the European Union.

It's not a win for the European Union, talking about what a great deal this is and how no one else could have done it.

And she kind of, she has her legs crossed and her arms crossed in her lap.

And you can see that she has just decided to go in there and not take the bait.

That she has watched, we know this because the Europeans went and spoke to all of the Japanese negotiators just in the last couple of days, that she has watched every other world leader.

And what she's thinking is, how quickly can I get out of here?

How quickly can I get out of here and get away from these cameras?

Because these situations with Donald Trump in front of the cameras are very dangerous situations for foreign leaders.

That was my reading of her expression.

I have a follow-up question.

A follow-up question.

So the only thing that we're talking about in the United States is the Jeff Epstein file and the very famous Elon Musk description of what's in the file.

DJT, you're in the file.

Thank you and have a good day.

Okay, so we know he's in the file and we know they're going to try to cover this up.

And we, you know, there's speculation here that they're meeting with just Lane Maxwell to see if they can get her to say that he's not in the fire i don't know what they're trying to do but there's a full-faced open cover-up going on and donald trump said he was in a bad mood okay there he is he's sitting at his golf course he's showcasing his golf course 10 million dollars of u.s taxpayer money to to to park his ass up at his golf course to showcase it uh and to bring these world leaders up to him But he's in a bad mood, Caddy.

Why is he in a bad mood?

Oh, do you think it's because he's been accused of cheating at golf?

That was one possibility.

Do you think it's because he cannot get rid of this Epstein story?

We do call it the Trump foot wedge here.

You know, it's like, you know, you know, British football, Trump has a foot wedge.

He like kicks your ball into the sand and he kicks his ball into the fairway.

And of course, you know, Trump's golf cart is moving at four or five miles an hour faster than yours, so he can get down the fairway ahead of you and start doing his shenanigans.

Everybody knows that that plays golf with him.

And so they just roll their eyes and say, okay.

And there were like little video of that from this weekend.

All right.

So I think that's expected.

Everyone knows that's expected.

But

the heat's on Donald Trump a little bit, right?

I mean, again, I think he's going to survive him, survive it, but

it's on, right?

Or no?

No, I think as we spoke about in the episode on Thursday that we recorded on Thursday, as I said, the heat was on him more than I expected.

That I don't think he can think that he can go away and suddenly the phones are going to stop, that people are not going to be ringing in about this.

The story has followed him.

He was asked about it by the press corps.

As he landed in Scotland, he says, again, there's nothing to see here.

This is boring.

Let's move on.

But people are not moving on and they aren't going to move on.

And I don't think interviewing Ghylaine Maxwell, just even having Ghilaine Maxwell's name back in the press in the way that it has been over the last few days because of the deputy AG's meeting with her doesn't help this story go away.

And members will come back in September and we'll still be asking about this story.

I don't think it brings Donald Trump down.

I mean, I don't know what's in the files.

There's going to be lots and lots of names.

Apparently, Vera Wang's name is also in that birthday book.

She also sent a message to Jeff Epstein in that birthday book.

So there are a lot of powerful people in New York who will also have their names in that birthday book.

And the fact that Donald Trump's name is in the files doesn't mean he's on some list as having done something nefarious with Jeff Epstein.

But this is hanging around him and and he's clearly not happy about it and it's following him to Scotland.

But what, okay, what did you make of Ursula van der Leyen sitting there?

I want to channel the guy, okay?

Because he's obviously hangry.

He gets hangry in moods.

He's not being lathered in praise.

And he's got a lot of concerned aides around him.

Now, they're trying to flatter him the way they do every morning.

Oh, you're great, Mr.

President.

But they're also trying to talk to him about a way to cover this thing up or to, let's say, tamp it down.

And he's very, very annoyed by that.

And so he's sitting there in his own mind saying, I'm getting these big historic wins for the U.S.

There was one thing in that deal.

And I went through the deal last night in preparation for this.

I just want to remind people that we got an exemption.

The United States got exemptions on certain elements of the chemical industry.

all of the aircraft industry, which means Boeing for us, and which is going to help Boeing in the EU and quite frankly help Boeing stimulate growth around the world.

So there were a couple of nice things in there for the U.S., and he's not getting any credit for that, and it's bothering him.

And so we know that about his personality.

We know that about his nature.

But the Epstein thing is going to linger here.

Dan Bongino, deputy FBI director, put out an ominous tweet.

He said, the stuff that I've seen in this file has changed my life forever.

And people are betwixt there.

It's like a Sphinx-like statement.

So is Trump in the file or is Trump not in the file?

Trump's former buddy, Candace Owen, who's been very critical of him, said, you know, come on, Dan, we all know what's in the file.

I mean, just spill the bean.

So listen, Trump is going to probably get away with this.

I think we've maintained that.

Of course, if we're wrong about that, I'll come back on the air and say I got it wrong.

But I just think that he survived so many things like this.

It would be hard for me to see him fall from this.

Before we go to the break, I have to ask you to address one other thing because the great man of distraction put out a picture of O.J.'s Bronco.

Just to remind people what that is.

OJ was accused of murdering his wife.

Him and his buddy got in a white bronco and were riding down the freeway, and the cops were chasing them.

And so now we have this meme of Donald Trump in a cop car

chasing Barack Obama down the freeway.

But interestingly enough, in a secondary cop car was J.D.

Vance.

And of course, J.D.

Vance's picture was the big fat J.D.

Vance, the big meme, the cabbage patch doll of J.D.

Vance, where his head looked like the size of a pumpkin.

Now, of course, J.D.

is

laughing about that on the internet.

But trust me, Katie K, he's crying on the inside.

He is not liking that.

Yeah, Trump is humiliating J.D.

Vance in that meme.

So go, you give me the analysis of that.

Epstein distraction, but that's another half of a leg in the wood chipper for J.D.

Am I wrong?

Yeah, it's the Epstein distraction, and it's a reminder to JD that don't start getting ahead of yourself.

Don't start counting the, you know, measuring up the drapes in the Oval Office because I'm still the president.

I'm going to survive this one.

And remember which side you want to be on.

And it's also a reminder to J.D.

that you came out a little slowly in support of me on this.

There have been a couple of moments in this scandal where JD was conspicuously silent and it took him a bit of time to come out in defense of his boss.

And I think Donald Trump doesn't forget that.

Okay, we're going to take a quick break, come back and talk a little bit about Gaza, which we have not spoken about on the program yet, which is a huge issue here, I'm sure in Italy as well, where you are.

It is in the UK, and it is now actually cutting through in the US as well.

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Welcome back to this Monday edition of The Rest is Politics.

And we're speaking Monday morning, UK time.

And later today, the Prime Minister Keir Starmer will be meeting with Donald Trump.

And on his list of things that he wants to talk about, we are told, are, of course, trade.

Ukraine, he wants to talk about, but he also wants to talk about the situation in Gaza, specifically

the famine that is happening in Gaza right now.

And it's been interesting, Anthony, being in London for the last few weeks, because this has been a story that has been...

all over the British press, is getting a huge amount of tension in the UK.

But I think also in the last few days has started to break through in the US as well.

It's been on the front pages now.

The pictures of people starving in Gaza has been on the front pages of American newspapers.

It was on the front page of the Washington Post, on the front page of the LA Times, that awful picture of the little boy, the story of Zainab Abu Khalib, who was born five months ago and has now died of starvation at 4.4 pounds.

She weighed two pounds less when she died than when she was born five months ago.

And these kind of heartbreaking stories of children not getting food in Gaza and of the starvation that is happening there, I think is now actually starting to change a little bit in America.

I mean, the American press, understandably, we've spoken about a lot, has been totally absorbed with the Epstein situation.

But just in the last couple of days, I was texting with a member of Congress over the weekend who said to me that her constituents are starting to ring in about it.

She's seen a noticeable pickup on calls and constituents raising the famine with her.

So I wonder if it's now they're away.

Obviously, Congress is in recess.

But I don't know if you feel that having just been in the U.S.

last week, whether now this is something that people are starting to talk about.

And the big question, of course, is does Donald, when Keir Stahmer raises it with Donald Trump, does Donald Trump want to do anything about this?

How much pressure is he going to put on the Israelis to make these temporary aid deliveries that the Israelis have just announced, these temporary ceasefires to have aid deliveries actually work?

Make sure they get to the right people because it's not just about putting in a whole load of flour and rice and bread.

These kids are so severely malnourished that they need specialist treatment.

They need nutrition paste.

They need nutritionists.

They need specialist doctors to get to them.

Is Donald Trump prepared to put the pressure that is needed on Netanyahu to make that happen?

Well,

I actually think he is at this point.

But I remember Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is a representative from Georgia, on the buckle of the Bible Belt.

And I think it's very important for non-American listeners to understand this.

The American evangelicals believe that the Jews should control the state of Israel or what's known as Jerusalem, Bethlehem, etc., whatever you want to call it.

Some will call it Palestine, others will call it Israel.

But the American evangelicals believe that in order for there to be a second coming of Jesus, that has to be in place.

And so they are strident and ardent in their views of the support of the Israeli government.

But there's cracks in that now.

Marjorie Taylor Greene last night put out a tweet saying, I am in support of the Jews and in support of the state of Israel, but I am no longer in support of the travesty that's going on.

And I think it's very important that to say this to people, you can be a critic of the Israeli government and what they're doing now in Gaza and not be anti-Semitic, Caddy.

I don't think that that's fair to characterize people.

If you've got 74

malnutrition deaths in the World Health Organization, it is saying 74 kids have died, 60 plus of them in the month of July.

And if you're now, UN agencies are now saying that the 2.3 million people that are living in Gaza are now all facing a famine, and you're going to sit there and allow that to happen.

Yes, I understand the tragedy of October 7th.

I'm not trying to understate that.

But there is a disproportionate response going on right now.

And people have to unravel that.

And they have to to say, hey,

they're either going to start to pull back or they're going to start to adjust themselves.

Now, let me channel Netanyahu for a second.

Prime Minister Netanyahu will say, well, I've asked for the hostages back.

They won't give us the hostages.

They want this sort of travesty to unfold to make the Israelis look bad.

But I'm in a war and I want my hostages back.

And so I'm not going to stop until I get my hostages back.

So there's spite going on on both sides, right?

So the political leaders of Hamas are like, let's let it go, even though our citizens are dying.

This is going to make the Israelis look really bad if they continue doing what they're doing, if this intensifies.

So to me, this is a catastrophic humanitarian crisis of epic proportions from two very spiteful, very prideful groups of political leaders.

And it's going to require now the United States or others to

intervene, Caddy.

And again, I'm going to channel Thomas Hobbes for a moment, where he wrote in the Leviathan, and we get our greatest level of peace, where there's one hegemonic power that can descend down upon the tribes and break up the internescent tribal conflicts.

This is one of those great moments in history where it's the EU, the United States, the Chinese.

You pick a superpower or a relative superpower, and they've got to get in there now and stop this from happening.

This is a tragedy of epic proportions, Caddy.

I do think there has been a bit of a sea change in the U.S.

where actually

the vast majority of the American political body certainly is sympathetic to Israel's right to defend itself and to the actions that were taken against Hamas after the octs of October the 7th.

But you are seeing a shift in public opinion.

It was interesting that Ross Duthert, the influential influential conservative columnist, used his

weekend column, which reaches a lot of conservatives, to say that the Israeli war is now unjust.

And I think that they have the argument that he's making is that

Israel had the right to defend itself, but this is now disproportionate, that there is a tipping point in Hamas's degradation that has happened.

There are really, as the Israeli military has said, there are really no more military targets in Gaza anymore.

And all that is happening is that Israel is prolonging the war.

As Israeli journalists have said to me, Netanyahu is good at starting wars, he's not good at finishing them, and is he prolonging this for his own ends.

But I think we should focus on the people that are starving and the starvation that is happening.

The New York Times did a big report on this, saying that there is no evidence that Hamas has been

systematically stealing this food aid.

And we know that people going, children included, that going to the food aid aid points have been shot at by the IDF.

So I think the quantifiably different thing, the story that I'm hearing now in the United States compared to what it was even two or three years ago, and Ross Duthet's column is making this point out, is that whatever the original sin that was perpetrated against Israel, Israel now bears responsibility for the fact that there is starvation, mass starvation happening in Gaza and that babies are dying of hunger.

And Israel has to take that responsibility and Israel has to fix that.

I don't know how much pressure, you know, if you hear Congress people and I've had other people in the Senate have reached out to me saying that senators are also getting calls about this and they're getting fed up with this, how much pressure there is going to be put on Benjamin Netanyahu not to have any more of these images.

You've already got members of his far-right cabinet saying any pause in the attacks on Gaza is just capitulation Tamas and should not be happening.

So he's caught between the far right keeping his government alive

and those voices, the growing international voices that are now saying, okay,

this is disproportionate response and it needs to stop.

Unfortunately, it's coming too late for little girls like Zaynab.

Play Secretary of State Marco Rubio for a second.

What do you recommend?

I mean, if you're Marco Rubio, your number one job is to channel Donald Trump.

So you have to find out, first of all, what Donald Trump wants.

And that's what Keir Starmer is trying to do in Scotland.

And it's not not very clear.

We know that actually, Donald Trump doesn't like images of starving children.

Donald Trump is affected by images of children suffering.

He didn't like the images of children being separated from their parents in the first administration.

He has sympathy for the dreamers, for the kids who were brought to America by their parents and have grown up in America, but have been here illegally.

He does have sympathy for that.

I think he genuinely didn't like the sight of the bombs falling in Kiev and Ukraine from the drones.

So I think Donald Trump does respond to that.

And seeing these pictures, that's why it's so powerful that these pictures are on the front pages of American newspapers, not just European newspapers.

I wouldn't be surprised if he comes out of the meeting with Keir Stamer saying that he is going to call up Benjamin Netanyahu and make sure that aid has to get through in the way that it was getting through earlier in the war to the people of Gaza.

The question is,

How consistent is it?

How long does the peace hold?

Do they manage to do some kind of a deal?

The Americans just last week came out of Doha saying there is no deal to be made.

Hamas is not serious about a deal.

But Benjamin Netanyahu, now the onus is on the Israelis to try and make sure that there are no more children in Gaza who die of starvation.

Sorry, I didn't really answer the question because I'm not quite sure what Marco Rubio does, because Marco Rubio just has to channel Trump and we don't know what Trump wants yet.

Yeah,

but I think it's fair.

I think your answer is actually a fair assessment of how difficult his job is.

But just quickly, Caddy, let me go over a few things and get your reaction to them.

Okay, so if you were him, right, so let's go over the things.

You want to secure a ceasefire, and obviously you want to secure a hostage and prisoner exchange.

Will that happen, Caddy?

Or do you think that that is,

you know,

both sides have drawn a line, right?

Like the Hamas has said, well, until they completely withdraw and declare a ceasefire, we're not doing that.

And the Israelis are saying, well, we're going to pummel you into the ground until you release the hostages.

So

that, I think, is a stalemate.

Would we agree on that?

There's going to be no movement.

I mean, unless you told me that the UN, the US, the EU, NATO, and maybe even Russia, everybody jumped in and landed in Gaza at the same time, okay, and told the Israelis to knock it off and descended aid upon.

But it's just it's not politically, if we're just being honest with people, it's not politically big enough for these big superpowers to get involved like that.

Okay, so number two, you got to lift the blockade and surge the humanitarian aid.

I think we both agree with that.

I think this is a real stain for the Israelis.

Am I wrong?

I think it's a stain for the Israelis, yeah.

And it's really rapidly turning public opinion.

I mean, public opinion...

has been turning.

We haven't really spoken about this very much recently, but public opinion in the United States has been turning against Israel.

It was turning against Israel amongst younger Americans even before the attacks of October the 7th.

There was a poll in March of that year, six months before the attacks, that showed that a majority of Americans under the age of 30 actually sympathized more with the plight of the Palestinians than with Israelis.

And that's a huge change.

Now, those people will get into power, they'll get into office, and they will change American politics towards Israel.

And Israel knows that.

Benjamin Nantati knows that.

And part of the reason that the sea change is happening, that the change of opinion is happening, is the only thing younger Americans have known is Israel led by Prime Minister Netanyahu, who they don't like, and they don't like his policies.

Like you said at the very beginning, you can be supportive of the Jewish state without being supportive of the actions of the Israeli government.

And these photographs single-handedly will change minds in America.

That's the kind of thing that changed.

They're very powerful, these photographs.

So, you know, look, I mean, the airdrops are not going to be enough to feed 2.3 million people.

The UN is saying you need 500 trucks moving in and out of the area immediately

in the locations where the people are starving.

And of course, the Israelis are not going to let that happen.

So this is one of those things, Caddy, where in the Second World War, people like to say, well, you know, the Holocaust would not have happened in the age of social media and in the age of this mass distribution of communication, because the public outcry would be such that it would stop it from happening.

And yet we're watching something happen that is absolutely devastating from a humanitarian crisis.

And again, I'm saying it's both sides or have elements of blame to what is going on.

But why is the public outcry not bigger, Caddy?

In the UK and Europe, the public outcry is big.

It's not big yet in the United States because

the media culture is very monolithic.

It's been very focused on Jeffrey Epstein for the last couple of weeks.

That has been the only subject that people have been talking about in the U.S.

It's hard for other things to break through.

But I say to you today, I've seen members of Congress stand up on the floor before they went home and try and put forward measures in Congress to address specifically this nutrition issue for starving children.

I've had senator text me just over the weekend saying that he wants to talk about this on air.

about this issue, that they are getting a lot of calls about it.

So I think actually you've seen a change just in the last few days because of these awful, powerful photographs.

I think this could be the moment of that Vietnam photo of the little girl running down the street with the napalm behind her.

These photos are changing minds.

Let's see what happens in terms of a change of policy.

You know,

it's a tough one, man, for it to be the American president here because his base, staunch supporters of Israel, Israel, no matter what.

The humanitarian crisis, I think, is deepening and will hurt him.

And as you say, it is impacting evangelical Christians.

They don't like these photos.

What I'm just going to suggest that the American president should be doing is he should go to Netanyahu and say, okay, if you're not going to completely knock it off,

we're going to unilaterally impose a 15-day moratorium on hostilities so that I can get food into the area.

So I'm sorry, man.

You're going to stop doing what you're doing for 15 days, 30 days, whatever it might be.

And we're going to get the UN or some neutral organization from the Arab League to truck food into these areas.

Okay, so it's a weird way of saying it, but you got to call time out here to get the food into the area.

Well, and the American threat would be we are not, we're going to have a pause in arms flows.

That's what you're saying.

Yeah.

Well, look, if the American threat will be, we're going to have a pause in the arm flows, and then I'm going to get out on social media, Twitter, X, whatever.

I'm going to start denouncing you, which you're not going to want because

you're losing allies by the minute, okay, by what you're doing.

So you got to, and Trump should get to a microphone and say, listen, I can't control this son of a bitch, but I've got him to agree to a 30-day moratorium, a 15-day unilateral moratorium where the army, the Israeli army, is going to help us get food into the region.

It's just an idea that I haven't seen proposed anywhere.

and that's something I would be recommending here.

And this is a very callous thing for me to say, Caddy.

There's 50 or so hostages remaining.

We don't know how many of them are dead or alive, but you got to say, Bibi, you got to knock this off.

And even though you don't want to knock it off and you want to eradicate Hamas from the area, it's looking more and more like

a situation.

Let me say it this way.

And I'm trying to be delicate about it, but 50 years from now, the same way we look at the incarceration of the Japanese 80 years ago, the same way we look at the Holocaust, somebody 50 or 80 years from now is to say, my God, what were these people doing and what were they thinking?

And it is time to knock it off.

And what was America doing at that moment?

And it was interesting to hear Senator Graham over the weekend double down in favor of support of Israel, saying Israel just has to wipe out Gaza.

Bring Gaza down was his expression, like we did with Japan and Dresden.

What a stupid thing to say.

And he would not be drawn on the issue of the people who are starving and of the pictures of starving children.

I mean,

I'm ready to give money to the hard-right primary opponent of him.

I mean, the guy running against Leslie Graham is like an author of Project 2025.

I'm ready to fund the guy after saying something that stupid.

What a stupid, stupid thing to say.

And really didn't express any

empathy worth expressing for the people who are starving there.

Okay, we're going to leave it there, guys.

We will be back on Thursday with our regular episode, and of course, on Sunday for our founding members, episode two.

If you are not a founding member and you'd like to join us, it's therestispoliticsus.com.

We have a lot of fun answering your questions.

And we do have coming up soon a new mini-series, which will be for founding members.

So that's worth joining up for as well.

Thank you, everybody.

Thanks so much for listening on this Monday.

Thanks for listening, everybody.