64. What is Trump’s Endgame?

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Charlie Sheeton is an icon of decadence.

I lit the fuse and my life turns into everything it wasn't supposed to be.

He's going the distance.

He was the highest paid TV star of all time.

When it started to change, it was quick.

He kept saying, no, no, no, I'm in the hospital now, but next week I'll be ready for the show.

Now, Charlie's sober.

He's gonna tell you the truth.

How do I present this with a class?

I think we're past that, Charlie.

We're past that, yeah.

Somebody call action.

Aka Charlie Sheen, only on Netflix, September 10th.

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Welcome to The Rest is Politics US with me, Katie Kay.

And I'm still Anthony Scaramucci, as far as I could tell.

Did you notice my very chirpy voice to bring us in?

Because it's been...

I'm struggling, i have to say to find people who are still optimistic but let's let's start with a nice little bit of pep to our voices well look caddy look at look at the bright side when when trump puts out an ai video of magazine the magazine strip at least him and bibi had like mankinis on yes that's true they weren't on a nude beach sipping my tais they had their little speedos with their dental floss thong apparel on if anyone has not seen the the Gaza Trump video that Anthony is referring to, I do recommend that you go and have a look at it because it will give you a little moment of levity.

It's a lot of bling, a lot of bling and a lot of gold Donald Trump's wandering through Gaza.

Okay, so it has been a crazy busy week on all fronts.

By the way, AI thinks Donald Trump is fat, just so you know.

Okay, not me.

Not me.

I'm not fat shaming him.

God forbid.

I'm not fat-shaming him here on this network.

I'm just observing that the AI Grok thinks Donald Trump should probably lose a little weight.

It does think he has a very fine head of hair, Howard.

Yes, that's true.

So it goes to show you can't always trust AI.

We're going to start by talking about some of the talk that I have been hearing amongst Democrats about why they may be starting to get glimmers of

hope would be far too strong a word, but sort of a feeling that the Trump-Musk project might hit a brick wall, when that might happen, what it might mean for America.

I have other people suggesting that Donald Trump might tip the country into recession.

So there is an awful lot going on, particularly with Musk and

that fantastic, weird cabinet meeting that he held in the White House this week.

And so we're going to talk about that, the things that are happening domestically.

And then after the break in the second half, we will look at the Ukraine minerals deal.

Of course, it's been an incredibly busy week on the foreign policy front with Emmanuel Macron here and the bromance in the Oval Office-ish, Bromance-ish, if that's a thing.

And Kier Starmer is here this week as well.

We're recording this on Thursday, and he is going to be in the White House.

What can he get out of Donald Trump to help Ukraine?

And then, of course, Vladimir Zelensky is also coming.

So, a lot going on domestically and a lot going on on the global stage.

I mean, I'm going to start, Anthony.

I have never, ever known Washington this busy.

It's incredibly hard to keep track of everything that's going on.

That may be the point of it.

But there is, I'm hearing from some Democrats, and I was given some new data on this by a group called Grow Progress, which is a sort of data messaging group, that is starting to show Democrats where Donald Trump's weaknesses might be and what they could move against in terms of messaging if they were going to try that.

And the one thing that was very interesting about this data that I was shown, and I think I got a preview of it, so I think we're the first people to have this data on the podcast, was that the general public, and this is a cross-section of Republicans and Democrats, are twice as worried that Elon Musk is going to go too far than they are worried that he won't go far enough.

And they are worried about the conflicts of interest.

And one indication I think is worth mentioning of those conflicts of interest is that the FAA has cancelled a contract with Verizon this week and signed one with Starlink.

And that's exactly the kind of thing, the lack of sort of transparency about is Elon Musk benefiting from some of these reforms and people that he's cutting and influence that he's having over the agencies.

And I think there is growing feeling amongst Democrats that maybe the White House is overreaching.

What should Democrats do in response to that?

If it's happening, how long will it take?

What will the impact be?

And there are kind of, you know, different thoughts about that.

Are you hearing similar things that people are thinking that up there in New York on Wall Street, that people are thinking that this project, the Elon Musk Donald Trump project, may not go as well as the President would like us to think it is going?

You know, listen, I mean, if it goes well, what does that mean, Caddy, that they cut $500 billion out of the budget?

Is that what it means?

Or they're saying

they have a trillion dollars to cut out of the budget.

So I think if you do that, there's a demultiplication effect of that.

And I think people on Wall Street, my friend Steve Cohen, who owns the New York Mets, made this reference last week in public remark saying that tariffs are regressive taxes.

And if you're going to take that much out of the government's spending, it will have an impact on the economy.

It will slow down the economy.

It is a form of austerity.

Now, in Britain,

you guys know that you lived under austerity for a very long period of time.

It had a huge impact on the country.

The country's been stung over the last decade by austerity.

And the government's trying to get out of it now, and it's hard.

And the the government's trying to get out of it.

And it's hard because

you have a virtuous circle or a vicious circle.

And when you start deconsuming, then you set up the expectation that people need to start saving more or gird for catastrophe.

And when they're girding for a catastrophe, they create a catastrophe.

And so it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

So one of the negative effects of Doge potentially,

it could tip us into, I mean, it's sort of weird.

Okay, you're cutting, and so you could tip us into a recession, but then you're hitting the American population with tariffs.

It's the double whammy.

It's a double whammy.

That's what people are worried about.

That's what I'm hearing too from Wall Street.

Right.

So you're pulling all the consumption out of the lower and middle income people because you're eating it up with your tariffs so that they can't find ways to spend.

So they get scared and they start conserving.

Companies will start laying people off because they would need to protect their bottom line.

And so all of a sudden, you're sitting here with a different narrative than the ones that these guys really wanted to have.

And I think that's the danger.

I mean, do you agree that the American people kind of directionally

are with Donald Trump on and Elon Musk on the aim of cutting government spending?

We know that the American budget has grown by 50% since pre-COVID days and that that is unsustainable.

And the argument, I think, of people who support the president is that this is a national security emergency.

And you heard Elon Musk say that in this cabinet meeting this week, that the country will go bankrupt, and that is an enormous risk to America.

It can't afford to do that.

And so radical measures need to be taken.

And I think a lot of Americans, actually, the polling even suggests that, do agree with that in principle.

What I'm hearing from people on the Hill, Republicans and Democrats, but some Republicans too, is that what they are hearing from constituents is that people don't like two things.

They don't like the cruelty with which this is being done and the kind of relish of Elon Musk, and we spoke about this last week, waving around a chainsaw.

And they don't like the sloppiness.

So when Elon Musk stood there in the Oval Office and said, well, you know, we're going to make mistakes.

We cut funding for Ebola, but then we found it and we've corrected it.

Fact check, they have not corrected that.

The funding for Ebola research has still not been re-implemented, but it's the sloppiness, right?

That they cut people from the FAA, they cut people from the nuclear safety body.

And I think that is starting to cause disquiet, even amongst people who support the aims of this.

And I don't know, maybe the MAGA argument is, maybe the Trump-Musk argument is you can only do this by being radical.

But when people start hearing, for example, Senator King, the senator from Maine, told me that this week on Monday, seven people were cut from the Veterans Association hospital and five of those people were veterans.

Now, Americans like their veterans.

They don't want veterans to lose their jobs.

And I just wonder if that's where we're starting to see the overreach.

It's not the idea and the principle, it's the method.

I think it's both.

Again, just to be totally candid, I think it's both because let's say it was perfectly done, Caddy.

Let's say that they had a group of forensic accountants in there.

There were Democrats and Republicans, and there were judges, and they were going through it with a fine-tooth comb, and they said, oh, okay, we've got this fraud or that double spend or this or that okay and you're still taking money out of the system you're still withdrawing demand from the system not to overly talk like a wonky economist but but when you take demand out of the system it sets up a multiplication effect and so now people feel it on the street and they tell their shop workers geez i'm sorry take a day off i can't pay you for that extra day your hourly wage or They cut a laborer or they.

We're seeing that in DC already.

Or they say, you know what, I'm not going to spend the money refurbishing my office right now.

I've got to cool out on my spending.

That's exactly the conversation I had with my dentist this week.

This is D.C.'s Detroit moment.

They were going to refurbish their office.

Now they're not going to.

So the other thing is going on.

I mean, you've got Northern Virginia, you've got a lot of federal workers.

And Northern Virginia, you have a big election coming up.

The Republican governor there is going to want to win that election.

It's still a purplish state.

You could have a group of federal workers go after Glenn Young Young

in that election coming up in November.

So there's a lot of consequences.

But because I'm, at times, a shallow person, Caddy,

at times I am.

Never.

Can we just talk a little bit, though, about the cabinet meeting?

Oh, my God.

And I'm going to quote the 88-year-old Maurice Garamucci.

What is wrong with that guy, Musk?

The 88-year-old Italian matrona said.

I said, what do you mean?

What the hell is he doing in the cabinet room with that t-shirt?

Did anybody tell him how to dress?

All right.

And I said, well, what do you mean?

Well, that's disrespectful.

But then he talks like a crazy person.

And by the way, you don't have to be a psychiatrist.

Okay.

So I refute.

Like, like, ask Gary Lineker, our dear friend and partner at Goldanger, if a guy breaks his leg on a football pitch and the bone is sticking out, do you have to be an orthopedic to say, wow, that guy has a broken leg?

Okay, you know, you don't have to be a psychiatrist to know that these people are off and a little crazy.

I mean, it was crazy, Caddy Kim.

It was crazy.

I mean, look at the moment.

I love the moment where Donald Trump turns around to the cabinet and Elon Musk has been, you know, talking and explaining all about his chainsaw approach to government.

And he says, you know, and is anybody unhappy with what Elon's doing?

Just put your hand up.

And you could see them all sort of shuffling their papers saying, Yes, comrade Donald, I would like a one-way ticket to Siberia and never come back again.

What the hell was that?

It was like, here, we're going to bring in the guillotine wielder, and you're all going to tell me how much you love him.

It's impossible to find anyone who believed that Elon Musk was going to have this big a role.

I mean for me that he has defied all my expectations of what he was going to be doing.

And we still don't know how it's going to pan out, but I don't see Donald Trump ditching him.

He's still singing the guy's praise.

Unless this is all you know Trump better than I do, but is this just Trump smoking mirrors or lovey dovey or you get the lovey dovey from how does he really feel?

No, before you get your ass kicked by Trump, you get the Lovey Dovey.

You know, this is, you know, the Americans that are listening, the older Americans, will remember George Steinbrenner, who was one of Trump's mentors.

George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yankees.

He was a tyrant.

He gave you the lovey dovey, and then the next minute he fired you.

And so Trump is giving the lovey dovey right now to Elon Musk.

Trump's saying in the cabinet room, who's ever not with the guy is him not with the guy.

Okay, he's projecting.

Oh, this is projection.

No, 100%.

100%.

You know, the doubt does protest too much.

And by the way, you know, Michael Wolfe, who's just wrote this

fourth book on Trump, very well-researched book, well-sourced, all or nothing, I think is the title of the book, said to me yesterday that Musk is Bannon.

And I said, well, what do you mean by that?

He said, well, Bannon came in with the crackety crack and Yosemite Sam, crackety crack with the guns blazing.

And everybody said, oh, you know, this is the guy.

He's going to be the co-president with Donald Trump.

He lasted eight months.

He was jettisoned on the 15th of August.

And by the way, a little bit of trivia.

Batten's ass was fired on the same day as mine, but he, you know, he did not want to leave the White House on the same day as me.

So he went to General Kelly, cap in hand, on his knees, Caddy Kay, and said, please don't let me leave the White House with Scaramucci.

I got to at least leave on my own terms, not contemporaneous to Scaramucci.

So they let him leave on the 15th, but he got fired.

Trump dispatched him because he got sick of him.

And this is what happens with Donald Trump, red hot, lovey-dovey, then he's bored and he moves on.

And so Elon Musk is Donald Trump's peach right now.

And the peach is ripening, but you know what happens with fruit like this, it gets stale and moldy very quickly.

So I know Aleister listens to our podcast as I listen to Aleister's podcast.

And so my message to my friend Aleister Campbell, who think Elon Musk is going to last eight eight years, possibly 12 years, Elon Musk will be out of there probably by Labor Day.

Yeah, that's what I'm hearing.

Summer fall.

If not sooner.

If you read James Carvel, who, of course, was the big strategist for Bill Clinton and came up with the famous phrase, is the economy stupid.

He's saying 30 days, that this really all goes pear-shaped in about 30 days.

And he's pointing to the tariffs, to the budget negotiations up on the hill, to the number of people who are being fired, to the disquiet that Republicans are starting to hear at their town halls.

Yes, some of the people in those town halls may be Democrats, but there are Republicans too.

And he thinks that that is

the timeframe that we're looking at.

I don't think it's going to be that quick.

And I think one key here is

when Republicans

start to feel the pain, at what point do they start feeling,

as Senator King said, that veterans have been fired from their local veterans hospital or people have been fired from their national parks And Americans love their national parks, and we're heading into the spring break, we're heading into the summer vacations.

And if you can't go to your national park or the restrooms are locked, will they start to then, you know, turn against this whole agenda?

And that could also be, of course, that's when President Trump might start listening to them.

But one of the things that I heard that was a little alarming, and I've now heard it from a couple of people just recently, is that Republican members of Congress and and Republican senators are getting a spike in death threats against them and threats of violence against them and against their families?

And this is what is making some Republicans and some Democrats also very nervous that we are in a moment where political violence has, we know that there have been

the number of threats against members of Congress has risen fairly steadily since 2016 when Donald Trump was first elected, but it's really spiked in the last couple of months.

And along with the fear of being primaried and Elon Musk's money, and we see Elon Musk pouring money already into races around the country, Republican races, they are genuinely scared about what would happen to them and their families if they speak out about Donald Trump.

And that may delay the process for which we see them, you know, actually taking a stand on this.

I mean,

I've had very chilling conversations with members who

have pointed to that rise in violence.

Synthesize this for all of us for a a second, because obviously the FBI is involved.

The FBI is telling members of Congress these are legitimate and credible threats from people that do commit crimes like this

and so forth.

But then I want you to add to the algebraic equation the Donald Trump Justice Department.

And so now you have people that are willing to do the bidding of Donald Trump.

And so tell me what's going on at the Department of Justice, your feel in the first 35-ish days, and then synthesize that with the death threats, and then let our viewers and listeners know what you would potentially be worried about for yourself and your family if you were an elected official in the capacity of some of these senators and members of the House.

So, a former Democratic congresswoman sent me a couple of things just in the last 24 hours that I thought were worth talking about.

One is that the Justice Department is being used as a cudgel, but also a reward.

So, if you are a supporter of Donald Trump's, and she sent me a story about a member of Congress who was having an affair, a married member of Congress who was having an affair with a woman here in, and the woman here in DC called the police and showed the police her bruises, and the police filed charges against this member for assault, and the DOJ has refused to sign off on those charges.

So we don't know the status of those charges.

And this congresswoman, former Congresswoman, was saying, look, he is a supporter of Donald Trump's and is the Justice Department being used in that way.

So I think there is a kind of supportive thing, but then there's also, I don't know if you saw it this week, the Justice Department is also

reinterpreting the meaning of the pardons that Donald Trump gave the January the 6th prisoners.

And it's not entirely clear how.

The judge who's looking at this case seems to be very frustrated by what the DOJ is doing, but it looks like the DOJ is trying to give kind of blanket pardon to those January the 6th prisoners, either for crimes committed before January the 6th or potentially even for crimes committed after January the 6th.

And so you tie this together and I think the relationship between the Trump White House and the Justice Department and how the Trump White House is potentially using the law to reward its supporters and go after its enemies and throw in this fear of violence and this sort of feeling that one senator said to me there was that if you commit violence in Donald Trump's name, you're going to get pardoned.

Blanket.

I mean, that statement in and of itself is extraordinary.

And this was a centrist senator who said this to me.

That's pretty extraordinary stuff, right?

Let me let me just push back for a second.

So,

Senator, I believe what you're saying is true.

So, what is your response to that sir or ma'am or woman or who?

What is your response to that?

And their response is, well, I'm afraid of Donald Trump and I'm afraid of death threats, so I'm going to keep my mouth shut.

And so there's no one there like Patrick Henry, give me liberty or death.

Nobody.

Joe McCain.

No, nobody's there to say, hey, I'm sorry, this doesn't work for me.

You know, this is literally first grade literature now.

You know, in the first grade in the United States, we learned about the emperor having no clothes.

And we listened to the story and the story seemed pretty cool.

And, you know, finally, there was one young boy that said, I'm sorry, the guy's naked.

He's walking around naked.

And everyone in the court was aghast at this.

And then everyone said, well, yeah, no, he is naked.

And so now we're in first grade literature now in Washington.

And so you're telling me there's no man.

Okay.

It's like, you know, remember Diogenes in the Greek mythology has the lantern.

He's searching for the honest man.

And of course, he's been traveling the world for an eternity, but there's no brave man.

Forget about honesty because we'll throw honesty out the window, but there's no bravery, no brave man or woman said, hey, I'm sorry, you know, this doesn't work for me.

You know, he's putting out AI about the guy.

We've had thousands of people die, you know, tens of thousands of people die, billions of dollars of property destroyed, women and children raped and hurt.

There were Jewish citizens, American citizens, absolute catastrophe.

The guy's putting out AI memes of himself and women with beards and bikinis.

I don't know.

This is not normal stuff.

And I know we want to own the liberals and I understand all of that, but there's nobody in his party or nobody in the other party.

They say, excuse me, can everybody take a chill here and see how wrong this is?

Well, I think one person did do that, right, this week.

We saw Janet Mills, she's a Democrat, the Democratic governor of Maine, in real time call out Donald Trump in the White House.

I mean, this is, there are a couple of things worth watching this week from the White House.

One is that.

cabinet meeting and the other is this interchange with Governor Mills because it was over the issue of, you know, trans women in sports?

So, whatever side of the argument you are on, or whether she is right or whether she is wrong about this, she is,

as far as I can see, the only senior elected official who has stood up to Donald Trump in real time and said, okay, no, we are going to follow.

He called her out.

He called out Maine and said, you're not with us, right?

You're not with us.

And she said, we're going to follow state and federal law.

At which point, Donald Trump says, we are the federal law and she replies she shoots right back i'll see you in court and he's kind of flustered by this and says well enjoy your life after being an elected official because you're never going to be elected again he clearly didn't realize that she's term limited and she can't be elected again now there has been pushback against her in there's going to be a march against her this weekend in maine there's been a petition signed to have her removed from office from maga supporters so she's done this at a certain amount of risk.

But I think Democrats, and we should talk about the Democrats' response generally, I think Democrats have taken a bit of heart just seeing somebody, like you said, it's the emperor has no clothes, right?

If you, if you stand up to somebody who's bullying, just the act of standing up, whatever side of the argument you're on, sometimes the act of standing up is what supporters and Democrats would like to see, right?

Did you watch that moment?

I did.

I watched the moment, and it was typical Trump.

He got flustered, and then he got...

He did get flustered.

I thought he got flustered, yeah.

Yeah, but then he doubled down on the bullying and

gave his uh brutish reaction to it but i guess what i'm saying and i guess this is something that is frustrating me is there's nobody that i can turn to you know in the united kingdom they have a shadow government and maybe they have a shadow cabinet and there's a uh there's a cogent at times perhaps not at all times opposition and there's a narrative to me if i were the democrats and i'm not but i would just be like okay how do we how do we break this how do we think like entrepreneurs and break it and what I would do is I would team up with Christie, and I would team up with Haley, and I would team up with Kissinger and Cheney, and

I would go and say.

Would they do it, though?

Would they team up with Democrats at the moment?

I think that they would, because I think the narrative is we're pro-democracy and we're pro-American.

And if Senator King is correct, we're in a perilous situation.

We have to put down our arms against each other and even our ideology.

And we are all the supporters and defenders defenders of the Constitution.

Let's quibble and argue about policy and ideology after we defeat the current Whig Party.

Now, I know this is not the rest is history, but let's just go into it for a second.

Donald Trump decapitated the Republican Party.

That is not, that's a golem now.

That's not the Republican Party.

That's the MAGA party.

That's the Trumplican Party.

Okay, it was a hostile takeover of that party.

And he doesn't really have as big of a base of support as you think he does.

What he does have is he has the hold your nose support.

I don't like the other side.

Let me hold my nose and I'm going to vote for these people.

He doesn't have

strident, you know, like he says, landslide-like support.

And so if you created a new coalition, think of Clement Attlee and Winston Churchill during the war.

They were ideologically opposed to each other, but they had to defeat the Nazis and they got themselves together and formed a coalition government.

But the problem is that the ego is in here.

You know, it's like Will Rogers once said, you know, I belong to this disorganized mess.

I'm a Democrat or something like that.

You know, or Obama, I think, once said,

I've belonged to six disorganized parties.

I'm a Democrat.

It was like a take on Will Rogers.

You know, my point is, is that, like, I can't team up with Chris Christie.

He once supported Donald Trump.

So that's a non-starter for me.

I think you could see people like J.B.

Pritzker,

even Gavin and Newsome,

the people who kind of in the Democratic Party think we should fight, as opposed to those a bit in the sort of Jared Polis, the governor of Colorado, Greg Whitmer,

the governor of Michigan, who kind of think we should accommodate a little bit more.

I think there are some people starting to emerge who want to fight, and I could see them getting in bed with like-minded Republicans on the Trump issue.

Remember what happened?

We had the Democratic Party and we had the Whigs, and then the Whigs wanted to keep the slavery in place.

And so a new party was formed.

The Republican Party was formed in 1856.

And they went after Whigs that were abolitionists.

And they went after Democrats that were abolitionists.

And they formed a new party.

And Abraham Lincoln became their nominee and went on to become the first Republican president.

of the United States.

But that party is now dying under Trumpism.

Okay.

It's just a different party.

Right.

And so I would suggest that the people that were formerly with that party, that were acolytes of McCain and Reagan and the Bush family, join forces with the Democrats, hold your nose, and the Democrats should hold their nose.

Reform a coalition and beat these people's brains in at the ballot box and snuff out the MAGA party the way the Whigs died in the late 1850s.

About 55 minutes ago, our producers asked us to go to a break.

So we're going to do that.

Before we do, there's a pop quiz, and I'm going to give you the question.

Should I say say one more thing then, right?

You should not.

I'm going to give you the question and we'll think about the answer when we come back.

Who, this is no longer a politics podcast.

This is now a movie podcast.

We're joining our friends in the rest of entertainment.

Rest is entertainment.

Who will be the next James Bond?

We're going to take a break and come back with the answer.

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So it has been the hunt of the last however many years, ever since my very favorite James Bond of all time, Daniel Craig, announced that he was retiring.

Okay, even I admit, who adores Daniel Craig, that it was time.

And we know there is a hunt on for a new James Bond.

So who's it going to be, Anthony Scaramucci?

Do you know who it's going to be, or we're just...

We're speculating.

Speculate.

We're speculating.

My hunch.

Okay, so since Bezos has now taken over the thing from the broccoli family, I think the person has to have an orange tinge to them, okay?

Because Mr.

Bezos is now tinging orange.

He's tinged orange the Washington Post.

He gave $40 million to the First lady.

And so I'm going with Damian Lewis.

He's a ginger, and he's suave enough, and he's orange enough to pull this off.

I love Damian Lewis.

I think he may be a little old because the next James Bond has to have at least five movies in him, right?

So we've got to have somebody young.

So how about this?

The name is Bond.

Baron Bond.

Baron Bond.

You see, look, it's all in the family.

It's the direct payback.

Jeff Bezos has two problems.

He's got to get closer to Donald Trump than Elon Musk, and he needs to find a new James Bond.

He's already played 40 million to Melania for her documentary series.

There you go.

Get six foot nine Baron Bond on board as 007, and he is right in the White House.

You got me there.

You weren't expecting that.

Yeah, because he's not a Brit.

But now that we're

talking business here, we're talking money.

But he's definitely...

tall enough.

More importantly, he is Donald Trump's son, and Donald Trump would then love Jeff Bezos for the rest of his life.

So you know, I mean, listen, I'm not one of Jeff's faculty advisors, but if I was, I would say, Jeff, you did good.

Okay.

You gave the family 40, 50 million bucks.

You're probably okay now, you know?

Yeah, and by the way, you've also made the Washington Post say we're only going to have one line of editorials, which is exactly in line with what Donald Trump is going to promote.

you know, liberty and free markets, which most people I'm sure in America would like anyway, but that is it.

We became the Murdoch Washington Post.

But, you know, I had a journalist say this to me, and I want you to react to it before we move on to another topic.

A journalist said to me, so Bezos has got a $500 million yacht.

Is it just not enough?

Is he a little jealous of Elon's relationship with Trump?

Or is he just scared shit, Katty K,

where he's like, man, this guy's going to come for me because he wanted me in the first term and he went after me in the Washington Post?

I mean, this is the paper that lost Khashoggi, right?

Yeah.

That lost Khashoggi and had the banner headline, Democracy Dies in Darkness, Darkness with Jeff Bezos signed off on.

Okay, so now we're here now.

But why are we here?

Is that he wants to get closer to Trump or he wants to get further away from Trump, meaning he doesn't want Trump to predate him?

I know people who have worked closely with Jeff Bezos, who were senior in Amazon, and they say that they have seen a political shift, a genuine political shift in Jeff Bezos.

That he has become more Republican, more pro-Trump, and that he genuinely believes that.

But there's undoubtedly a money interest in this.

And getting closer to Trump through Melania or through our new unlikely MI6 hero, Baron Bond, would be a pretty good way to do it.

Could he have made Emmanuel Macron, the new James Bond?

I mean, you know, there's that, that little bromance that we saw play out in the Oval Office.

Macron played him.

He's gone back, because I know Trump.

He's gone into that study off the Oval.

He's got everything recorded and he's watching that.

He's going back and forth with the clicker.

I watched him do it.

He go went back and forth with the clicker.

He got played.

See, and by the way, since we're talking MI6,

I'll say something rhetorically.

You don't think every intelligence service has personality profilers and psychologists that have put dossiers together on Donald Trump?

And the French dossier was: treat him like a petulant child.

And so when you treat him like a petulant child, you never argue with a child, you praise the child, and you try to guide the child to your your way.

Okay, so there was no disciplinary action by Macron in that body language drama or the sentences, but there was, like a child, he was explaining to the American public and the world that Donald Trump is wrong.

Vladimir Putin started the Ukrainian war, and he did it the way a parent would do it with a petulant child.

Now, I know Trump well enough to know that Trump didn't like that.

Now, it worked for the media and it worked for Macron.

And I guarantee you, the ambassador, French ambassador, said to Macron later on, well done.

And you did exactly what we would want you to do.

But I'm telling you right now, Trump is shape-shifting again.

He doesn't like that.

Okay, because it made him, it made him look like a baby, made him look like a child.

Right.

And when he kind of corrected him in public about the amount of money that the Europeans spend and whether they are getting that money back, whether it's a loan or whether it's a grant.

And he put his hand on Donald Trump's arm and said, you know, frankly, that's not correct.

I don't think Donald Trump would have liked that.

You could see, again, it was a little bit like that moment with Governor Mills, Anthony, where you could see him getting a little flustered.

He's not used to people coming back at him in real time in public.

Yeah.

And he's like, I mean, could you imagine somebody like Marco Rubio saying, hey, man, can't take this anymore.

This is the load of horse.

You know what?

I'm sorry.

Marco Rubio may well be feeling, I suspect.

I i mean his body oh my god his body i would love to get a body language person on his body language i mean he's like okay i want to squirm on this couch right now but i'm not gonna i'm gonna please god don't make me squirm or don't make me give up squirming as i'm sitting here so you've got the europeans you've got emmanuel macron kier starma basically both going there kier starma saying here are my gifts for you we are going to raise our defense spending by 0.2 percent over the next two to three years i've been told that probably it won't wash.

It's not enough.

Trump wants more than that.

And we're going to cut foreign aid spending.

Probably Trump will like that.

It's sort of, you know, anti-woke.

But they're both going in there with the same message.

Can you give some kind of a security guarantee or at least back up the Europeans with some sort of security guarantee with intelligence sharing, with the kind of support that we would need, even if it was European boots on the ground in peacekeeping in Ukraine?

And they're going in there with the same message, both of these Europeans.

Do you think they've got anything out of Donald Trump?

Do you think he's going to waver?

Because the only thing I've heard is that the,

and this was Senator Lindsey Graham told me this at a thing at the British Embassy where Keir Stahmer was on Wednesday night, that there could be a 10-year arms deal between the United States and Ukraine, and that Trump apparently really wants this to be seen as a fair deal for Ukraine.

It doesn't look to me, though, like like this is a very fair deal.

First of all, I think it's a mistake for these leaders to be in his presence.

That's just my personal opinion because they're not gaining anything by being in his presence.

If anything, I would just have distance from him and I would have my staff work with his staff on lots of things.

Because Kier Starmer coming, he can only get hurt.

by Donald Trump.

I don't see how he gets helped by Donald Trump.

Macron, I guess, played him okay, but still, I think there's some soreness in Trump's mind about what happened there.

And so you've only got downside when you're interacting with him, unless you're hard-hitting confronting him.

So like if someone like Carney got the prime ministership in Canada, Carney would knock heads with them.

It would be like two rams battering each other on a mountain because Carney's got the intellectual toughness and Kearney also has the patriotism of Canada behind him.

But these guys don't need to be doing this.

I would have recommended them not to even go.

But I want to ask you this question, if you don't mind, because I want you to role play for me now.

You're the communique between Trump and Vladimir Putin.

And what are the communiques telling Putin about this minerals deal?

And how does this minerals deal shape up with the way Vladimir Putin wants the war to end in the Ukraine?

So what does Putin want?

What is Trump willing to give him?

And then square that with this minerals deal that apparently they'll be signing in the Oval Office.

So Putin clearly wants Ukraine to have zero security guarantees from the United States.

He wants to keep the land that he's already taken from Ukraine.

And he would like to end up out of this deal in a position where it might take him two or three years,

but he can rebuild his economy and rebuild his military so that if he wanted to have another go at Ukraine or somewhere else, he could do.

That's what he would like out of this deal.

Now,

what Donald Trump wants is payback, clearly, and he's even phrased it like this, for the amount of money that America has already spent.

From what I heard from Senator Graham, they would also like to have a market.

for American weapons.

But he doesn't want to give Ukraine any kind of security guarantee.

And he's made that very clear, and it doesn't look like it's in this document that Zelensky is going to sign.

I did think it was interesting that Senator Graham told me that he wants this to look fair.

It doesn't seem to look fair, so why is he hung up on it looking fair?

But those are the two sides, right?

That's what they want.

Well, first of all, I mean, with all due respect to Senator Graham, he's...

bent himself into like a Dutch pretzel.

Yeah, whatever.

I'll take what he's saying with a grain of salt.

Let's see that that arms deal when we actually see it.

Exactly.

But now, though, I need to workshop with you what is the resolution of the war.

So we're going to give land to the Russians, and then we're going to take mineral rights from Zelensky.

We're not going to give him really any security guarantees, but we're going to offer him to pay for arms with the minerals.

I guess it's arms for minerals or something like that.

It's arms for minerals.

It's arms for mineral rights.

Yeah.

And maybe the Europeans will have to pay for some of those arms too, I guess.

And how does that protect Ukraine going forward?

Well, their argument is that it's not a security guarantee, it's an economic guarantee.

And the very presence of American multinationals exploring for and extracting those minerals will in and of itself be a form of guarantee that America is not going to want Russia to attack Ukraine.

As somebody said to me, somebody from Capitol Hill said to me, the best thing that Zelensky could do is build two Trump golf courses in eastern Ukraine, because then Donald Trump will want to protect them.

I guess, you know, it's their argument is we have American interests.

I mean, I think the counter-argument, I heard this from somebody who'd worked in the first Trump administration, is that the risk is Trump is setting up generations of Ukrainians who hate the United States because they feel they were fleeced.

Yeah, of course.

Well, yeah, that's the big problem now.

You know, the United States is going to create sore feelings all over the world by a lot of the things that they're doing with the trade situation.

But let's go back to Putin for a second.

I'm not a Putin whisperer.

Can I just put that on the record that I am not a Putin whisperer?

No, but I've discovered now because you never worked with Trump.

You're not tainted by him.

And you've lived in America now for 26 years, so you have this unbridled optimism about America.

I'm looking at it from the angle of, wow, this MF is crazy, and he's got really crazy people around him him that are going to let him do crazy things.

You know, like, you know, remember the non-crazy people that he brought in the first time were like, whoa, we're not doing that.

But now he's gotten jettisoned all those, and we got crazy people in the mix.

They're going to let him do crazy things.

And so I'm more pessimistic about it because I see the handwriting.

I see the direction that it's going.

But you're the optimist.

So tell me the Putin angle of this.

Go ahead.

So Trump is going to tell Putin, what?

Hey, you can have all the land that you took.

We're going to do a minerals deal.

Zelensky is going to have an election once the war ends.

And, you know, you're hopefully going to get your fingers in there and manipulate the election.

So you'll get a Putin puppet in place in Ukraine.

And I'm going to get a minerals deal from you.

And maybe there'll be a little bit of side action for you because you like money the way I like money.

Is that what's going to happen?

Do you speak Russian?

I don't speak Russian.

Do you speak Russian?

How good is your Russian?

I barely speak English, Gaddaque.

I'm doing the best I can.

Doing the best I can.

Hang with you.

I'm with me.

I don't speak anything.

My colleague Steve Rosenberg at the BBC had this great face.

He said, I don't know if there, he speaks fluent Russian.

He said, I don't know if there is a Russian word for this is 25 Christmases all in one day.

But that is basically what Vladimir Putin is thinking.

This is exactly what he wants, right?

This is everything he could possibly want.

And the European leadership says, okay.

The The European leadership, I don't know that they say okay.

So this is this is why you've got them all here.

This is why they've been holding emergency meetings.

I mean, the only

silver lining, if you are kind of in phrase in, you know, favor of sort of European democracy and strength and health and Western strength and health rather than Russian strength and health, is to think that this really does galvanise Europe to take its defence spending seriously and that it unifies Europe around a common enemy?

And that actually Donald Trump has done that for Europe by clearly saying, right, that's it.

We're not doing this anymore.

No more calling up America whenever you need help.

But I don't know that Europe is unified enough to do that.

I think

they are worried, though.

They're worried, Anthony.

I mean, they're worried in a way that they haven't been before, and they realize there is a need.

I'm going to role play with you.

I'm a European leader.

Yeah.

Okay.

Which one?

Which country?

You know, I don't want to necessarily say, because I love all the countries in Europe.

I'm a pan-European leader.

Okay.

You're the.

I'm in a very nice villa somewhere overlooking the Mediterranean.

And you're my, I'm not Berlusconi.

Let's just put it that way.

But you're

my advisor.

And I turn to you and I say, Katty Kaye, is this America that we're witnessing right now a permanent?

Is this a direction that America is going in that's permanent?

Is this a personality aberration by Donald J.

Trump?

Does J.D.

Vance really believe this BS?

I can tell you, I don't think Marco Rubio does.

Or is this an aberration?

And should I just sit tight and sweat this thing out for the next three years and 10 months?

Oh, they should be calling up all those Democrats who are wondering exactly the same thing on both sides of the Atlantic.

That's the question for everybody.

How do you manage this?

If I was them, I'd say, look seriously at your budgets and try and boost your defense spending to 3%,

possibly even 4%,

because you're not getting America back in the way that it has been since the Second World War.

Ever.

Whoever takes over.

Even if a Democrat takes over from Europe.

Even if a Democrat takes over.

Okay.

So it's a permanent change.

So I think it's a permanent change.

Okay.

And that Europe is waking up to that.

And maybe it's the wake-up call Europe needs to be.

I know we have to end this podcast on something optimistic.

And you and I had dinner this week in an undisclosed location.

Were you going to raise that situation?

Yes,

we had dinner this week in an undisclosed location.

And I probably talked too much during the dinner.

I was very worried because you were so silent.

So it was.

We've learned something about me that I can actually breathe through my ears.

I can continuously talk without having to take a breath.

We've learned that about me.

So we're going to give you the last word on this podcast and this episode.

So So you have the last word.

Say something optimistic about what you see.

Tell me something

about

where we're going, where someone will shut this off

on their iPhone or their Samsung phone and say, yeah, okay, that's a bright spot.

Guy, what is it?

So we're living in a moment of extraordinary change, more rapid political change than I've ever seen in this country in the 25 years that I've been living here.

We're also living in a moment of extraordinary technological change.

We don't know exactly where AI is going to take us, but it is possible that we've had this rather stultified

organs of government and that has meant that people have lost their faith in democracy and in the democratic process over the last 10, 20 years.

And out of this change could come

the

revolution that democracy needs to re-inspire people to believe in the project and to get out and to vote for what they believe in.

And on both sides of the Atlantic, that is clearly what is needed.

People need to get involved in voting for and protecting the democratic process.

And I think the amount of turmoil that we are going through is shining a light on that and is making people wake up to that need.

How was that?

That was kind of slightly Rory Stewart-esque, wasn't it?

The Calvary's coming.

You're basically

saying the Calvary's coming and the side of righteousness will prevail.

And these shock and awe events are going to cause that adaptation.

Yes.

Action and reaction.

Newton's third law.

Okay.

In action.

Okay.

Thank you very much, everybody, for listening.

We'll be back, of course, on Sunday with our founding members' question and answer session.

Do join us for that.

We'll be back next Monday because there is so much going on that we feel we should give you a little bit more of the crazy news from Washington, D.C.

But for the moment, thanks for listening.

Thanks for joining us.

Thanks for listening.