110. Trump’s Big Secret: Inside Epstein’s Birthday Book

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Welcome to the Rest is Politics U.S.

I am Anthony Scaramucci.

I am joined today by Steven Sacker, who is obviously a renowned journalist and the former BBC hard talk host.

I met Stephen ominously after my White House sacking.

He was kind enough to bring me on his show.

Of course, I knew nothing about the show,

so he was just punching away.

Stephen was punching away.

I think at the end of the show, I called it BBC Break Balls, and his editors were kind enough to leave it in the show, Stephen.

Your entire interview was a gift to our promotional trails for weeks and months afterwards, Anthony.

It's great to be on your show.

I just hope you're not going to be quite as nasty to me as I probably was to you back then.

No, that was part of your brand.

You plucked a very naive American.

I had no idea what was going on, but I did my best.

But I actually enjoyed it so much that

I've got you on replacing the indomitable Caddy Kay, who's on vacation this week.

So, Caddy, hope you're having a good time.

Although, Caddy has told me she doesn't listen back to our podcast, Stephen, so she probably won't know what we're talking about today.

But you and I are going to get into it.

I want to start with the Epstein birthday book.

Did you get a moment to leaf through some of that?

Obviously, I haven't seen the leather-bound edition that was handed over from the Epstein Estate to the House Committee, but I've seen enough of it, and the press has been all over it so much that I have, I'm afraid, got a sense of what an incredibly disturbing and sordid collection of salutations and messages were gathered together by Ghillene Maxwell for her lover Jeffrey back in 2003.

And of course, you know, the headlines have been made by that drawing, whatever we call it, that Trump is said to have provided for the book.

And we're going to talk about that at length, I'm sure.

But there's so many other horrible, disturbing things that were in that.

You know, there are messages, really weird messages from Bill Clinton, for example, saluting Epstein's childlike curiosity, which is a very odd phrase.

And then a really odd, an incredibly sort of,

how can one put it, syrupy set of messages from Peter Mandelson, ten pages with photographs of Mandelson in his swimming trunks, looking longingly out of a window, apparently waiting for Jeffrey, his beloved Jeffrey, to parachute into his life.

You know, just weird given everything that we know about Epstein's behaviors.

Listen, I did get a chance to leave through the book, and so there's a Google Drive document that the Congress has that

they showed lots of handwriting and illustrations, all this sort of stuff.

But I guess what I want to ask you about, given your journalistic experience, and it's a speculative question, so if you're not comfortable answering it, that's fine.

But is Trump lying?

When you look at the photograph of the drawing and you look at his signature, does it look like his signature to you?

Listen, I'm very happy to say to give you my opinion.

I think he's lying.

He's lying through his teeth.

I mean, you just have to think about his claim that it's not him, he didn't write the words, he didn't sign that piece of paper.

If that were to be true, it would involve such an elaborate hoax that was launched and carried out so many years before we knew that Jeffrey Epstein was a sex criminal and before anybody could have had a clue that Donald Trump was going to end up in the White House.

Who would have had the foresight and the motivation to create such a document back in 2003 and ensure that it went into this weird Epstein birthday book?

You know, it just doesn't make any sense on its face.

And then all this sort of nonsense where the White House is claiming that forensic handwriting experts have announced that they don't think the Donald signature looks genuine.

Well, I mean, I'm not a forensic handwriting specialist, but

I've I've seen other examples of Donald writing the word Donald back in the early 2000s, and it looks pretty damn close to me.

So the hoax notion doesn't stack.

I mean, you've interviewed everybody.

I mean, you've interviewed some of the most legendary figures over the last three decades.

So tell me about the lie, the double down of the lie.

So Trump's thing, I obviously worked with him.

His thing is I'm going to double and triple down, quadruple down on the lie.

I'm going to get Caroline Levitt, the very young press secretary.

She's out there repeating his lies.

And her body language isn't great, though.

The lies are coming out of her mouth, but you can see the body language is very tense.

So again, Stephen, I just want to, not that I'm Sherlock Holmes, but Bill Clinton is in the book.

Peter Mandelson is in the book.

Jess Staley is in the book.

Bill Gates is in the book.

So again, go back to 2003.

Donald Trump, knowing his personality, would want to be in that book.

He was, he liked the coderie of that association.

And so, but now it's 2025

and his one passage in the book is distinguished by somebody made that up and they put it in the book.

So what say you?

Tell me about the pathology based on your interviews and your experience as a journalist.

Tell me what goes on in someone's mind to be willing to do that.

We have to say that Donald Trump long ago normalized the lie.

You know, he is a liar.

He's told many lies in his life, and he's told some very big and significant lies since he first decided to run.

for the White House.

And he, in his own mind, has gotten used to lying.

He can totally live with lying.

He's not a man troubled by conscience when it comes to veering away from the truth.

And I think, you know, the normalization isn't only in his own head it's also in the political culture and and the american psyche that that america frankly has learned to live with donald trump's lies so whether this particular egregious lie as i see it in my opinion whether this one is going to be his downfall, I very seriously doubt.

And I just want to tell you one thing, you know, I've left the hard talk show, as you know, Anthony, as you were talking about.

And one of the things I'm doing right now is writing a book.

And I'm writing a book about investigative journalism, the state it's in, and the recent history of investigative journalism and some of the people, some of the amazing journalists that I've worked alongside and lived with in my journalistic life.

And I go back in the book to Watergate and I've written a chapter about Watergate, which of course unfolded between 1972 and 1974.

And I'll tell you why I'm mentioning it is because, you know, that was about a very big lie.

You know, Richard Nixon was responsible for criminality, the cover-up of a break-in at the Democratic Party headquarters in Washington, D.C.

back in 1972.

He lied and lied and lied about it.

And it was quite possible he was going to get away with those lies until there was pretty incontrovertible evidence of the degree of his falsehoods.

And in the end, what was significant, it wasn't that the media brought down Nixon.

Nixon was brought down by his own party, who could no longer live with a president who was exposed as a liar.

And I think a really big question for you guys in the United States right now is what has changed so fundamentally in five decades that Donald Trump can lie and lie and lie and be exposed for his lies.

And yet in today's political culture, he doesn't pay the cost.

Well, there's a couple of things that have changed.

I want to get you to react to these things.

Tell me what you think is legitimate and illegitimate.

So thing number one that has changed is the system.

The system is more predictive about outcomes.

So, the Congress could have a 14% approval rating, but the elected official, the incumbent, can get re-elected with a 95% certainty, Steven.

And so, this is a big thing.

They just sit in the Congress and they say, no problem, I can vote on the big beautiful spending bill or not.

But then in comes Trump.

He could disrupt me.

He could primary me from the hard right, knock me out of my seat.

He did it to Paul Ryan.

He did it to Liz Cheney.

He did it to others.

But the point I'm making is that they're like, hey, I just want to stay in power.

So there's no military rectitude anymore.

You know, when you go to West Point in our country, the day of your graduation, there's a little placard on your seat, and it says, remember your oath to the Constitution.

85% of the Congress back in the 70s was tied to the American military.

And those guys fought in the Second World War, many of them.

And they're like, hey, you know, buy Richard Nixon.

You know, we're not going to disavow the Constitution for that.

That is long gone in this country, Stephen, especially for these politicians.

I know that.

But, you know, there are some interesting standout politicians right now.

And goodness knows, they're not politicians that I would normally be sort of saluting their independent minds and their rectitude.

But there are some people deep in the MAGA movement who are making a stand on this particular set of lies that I believe Donald Trump is telling around Epstein.

And, you know, they are people like Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I mean, out there.

extreme MAGA Republicans who on this issue say that she is minded to get the full Epstein files out in the public domain because she, more than anything else, cares about the rights of women

So to your point that the machinery of politics today and Trump's dominance of his party means that there's no real room to believe that the truth will out.

Maybe it's not quite as simple as that in this case.

Maybe there are some people that Trump would have regarded as uber loyalists who are breaking away right now.

Yeah, no question.

I mean, she very famously this week took the drawing and the signatures and took his other signatures and took a placard of it and sort of put it on her wall in her congressional office.

And so

there are others that are breaking from him, you know, and Tom Tillis, who's not running for re-election, he's been castigated by Trump, has come out pretty strongly against this issue, but also what's going on in the Ukrainian war.

But I wanted to start the show with this issue because this is consuming Donald Trump.

I know his personality, and I know he's angsting about this.

He knows that there's a lot of information that can come out in these files that will really hurt him.

And again, I was going through this.

There's a businessman in New York.

I know Joel Paschow.

He's actually a client of mine at Goldman years ago, nice enough guy.

But there's a picture of a check.

He's referencing Trump, and he's talking about showing early talent, about selling a fully depreciated woman to Donald Trump for $22,500.

And again, this is 03 stuff.

And maybe the culture was different and 03 than it is today,

but the stuff is undeniable.

And, you know, I'm not Peter Mandelson's communications coach, and I'm an ill-fated guy in communications, but let me tell you something.

I would get out there early and say, this happened to me in my youth.

Didn't realize the guy's transgressions.

Once I figured that out, I moved away from the guy.

That's sort of forgivable, but the double and tripling down on the lie, unless you're Donald Trump, you get caught, Stephen.

You know, you're in the bear trap.

That particular image you're talking about is one of the most disturbing of all because it just speaks to this sort of complete

commodification of women by these powerful men.

And Caroline Levitt is in, you know, the press secretary at the White House is in such a difficult position right now.

She was asked about that particular image yesterday, and she deliberately missed the point.

She refused to answer the direct question and went on about the fact that oh in that picture you'll see donald trump hasn't signed the check as though that was the point i mean that was a such a bizarre answer because she refused as a young woman in the white house in an extremely awkward position to take on board just how disgusting that image and the message of that image was and so you know I don't know whether I feel sorry for her, but

she is an example of an official who is now caught up in something, which I have to say, years from now, she is probably going to look back on with shame for her role in going out day after day and defending the indefensible.

Let me just ask you, I've got to push back a tiny bit.

Is she, though, or is Trump just invincible, Stephen?

Because we both have seen this before.

People look invincible, and then the surface cracks become foundational cracks, and then the toppling happens.

Is he invincible?

Is this going to bring him down?

And then she will have that shame.

I don't think I'm breaking news, Andy, when I say Donald Trump is not God.

I know there are some people inside his MAGA movement who, frankly, pretty much think he is God,

but he ain't divine.

And I do believe at some point, whether it's after his presidency concludes or not, there is going to be a massive sort of internal national and international review of Donald Trump and what explains his ability to manipulate the system in the way that he has and his own party in the way that he has.

Yeah, no shame.

Tripling down on, you know,

you're writing about Watergate and all the president's men would be a cautionary tale for others.

It's obviously an operating manual for Donald Trump.

You know, some people read 1984 Orwell's book and said, oh, that's a cautionary tale.

Putin read it and said, okay, this is how I'm going to run the government.

Okay, we're going to have a rolling permanent war to keep myself in power.

So these guys take these ideas and concepts.

Trump has told people, hey, Nixon got it wrong.

You double and triple down.

You threaten and intimidate everybody in your party to fall in line.

Yeah, but

you know better than me, Anthony, what happened in 74 was that Nixon was still trying and trying and trying to keep his party in line.

But what I'm talking about is a fundamentally different political culture.

In the end, in the summer of 74, key Republicans led by Barry Goldwater, who was this sort of, you know, the arch conservative Republican senator, you know, he was

led a delegation into the White House and Nixon said to him,

Senator Goldwater, you know, I need you.

I need you now more than ever.

Can you get me the defensive vote I need to stop an impeachment?

And Goldwater said to him, Mr.

President, I can tell you you have five votes.

That is five votes out of 100.

And Mr.

President, one of them is not mine.

Goldwater had had enough of the lies.

So the question today in the United States of America is

how many of Trump's supporters, how many Republicans have had enough of the lies?

And I know you're going to tell me, well, frankly,

it's a non-question because we know they haven't had enough.

We know they'll stick with Trump through thick and very thin.

But I'm just saying they need to think about the long-term consequences, both for their country, for their political party, and for the political culture of your country.

No question.

Before we go to a break, though, I want you to react to this because this is one of my theories of, and it's one of my observations.

So if I'm a political leader, if I'm Prime Minister Netanyahu, I'm like, okay, this guy's very distracted.

They've got him, obviously.

He's ensnared in these files.

He also knows, I know Trump's personality.

Okay, the lawyers are now going to open the kimono on what they have and share it directly with the Congress.

So that sort of like totally negates his defamation claim against the Murdoch family and the Wall Street Journal.

And so now he's wildly distracted.

If I'm Netanyahu,

let me hit the terrorists in Doha.

Let me do things that I would not normally do in a normal situation with an American president.

If I am President Putin, okay, the guy's very distracted.

He's not on his game 100%.

He wobbled over to me in Alaska, and I'm just going to double and triple down in my own way on prosecuting this very vicious war, irrespective of what the President of the United States is going to say to me.

He has no teeth, and so on and so on.

And so, I guess, my question to you, or I'd like you to react to it,

how much trouble is that going to get us all in, this looming distraction?

Nixon had the distraction with Watergate.

Trump clearly has it right now.

How much trouble?

A whole heap of trouble on different fronts.

And I mean, your analysis is correct, that Netanyahu and Putin, I think, both in their different ways understand Donald Trump very well.

And both of them, in their different ways, know how to play Donald Trump.

And right now, I have to say in both of those theaters, Trump is being played and Trump is looking weak.

Now, whether he is fully aware of how weak he looks, I don't know because, you know, unlike you, I've never worked inside a White House.

I don't know how much insulation you get from the deep negatives.

But, you know, he clearly expressed unhappiness with Netanyahu's decision to strike in Doha.

He talked about how he felt so very bad for the Qataris.

So it's embarrassing and is acknowledging, you know, his own failure there to, you know, sort the situation out in the way that he wanted.

But frankly, it's nothing more than a wrap on the knuckles to Netanyahu.

And Netanyahu is acting with a level of hubris right now, which I think tells us that he doesn't care.

He doesn't even care if he's pissing off the President of the United States, because in the end he kind of knows that Trump is not gonna dare to break with him in a significant way.

I mean they had a fallout over Israel's determination to keep bombing Iran.

They patched that up.

Donald Trump has made it plain that in the end, whatever Netanyahu chooses to do in Gaza City, in this massive new assault on the Palestinians in Gaza, whatever he chooses to do, Trump fundamentally is with him in this notion that they can fully destroy Hamas.

So Trump really has no cards to play.

And then, you know, very quickly when it comes to Putin and your analysis there, yeah, for sure, I think Vladimir Putin believes that Donald Trump will not take significant, significant action against him, however hard he pushes his new level of intense offensive on Ukraine.

Putin is pushing and pushing and pushing, pretty darn confident that Trump's reaction is going to be a bit of bluster and not much else.

Yeah, of course.

Well, that's all it's been.

And I think Putin's right about that.

So you were the BBC Washington corresponder for a few years.

I think way back during the Clinton era, early part of the George W.

Bush era.

How has Washington changed from your vantage point today?

Well, you know, I always

sort of feel a little leery of investing too much in one particular character or individual, but I would suggest to you that Donald Trump has changed America's political culture in ways that no other president of our lifetimes has changed Washington.

You know, there was a pretty toxic political culture when I was covering Bill Clinton, because let's not forget, you know,

thanks to Monica Lewinsky, he was a president who underwent an impeachment.

Newt Gingrich and the Republicans were out for his blood.

And, you know, things were nasty, pretty darn nasty in Washington when I was there.

And when George W.

Bush came to power, the Democrats went after him, too, and dismissed him as a, you know,

mentally impaired idiot.

So the political culture and the language being used was

pretty intense and nasty.

Something's changed since then and changed for the worse.

That was about, in the end, the Democrats and the Republicans jockeying for power in ways that they'd done, you know, for decades and decades and decades.

What we see today is something different.

We see an individual who, in essence, has taken over a party.

You know, the Republican Party doesn't really exist anymore.

It is the Donald Trump Party.

And that changes politics in a fundamental way toward a much more, you know, frankly, authoritarian style, because it's all about the power invested in one man and his coterie.

And that's why I think you can't compare the nasty politics of the late 90s and early 2000s with the truly screwed-up politics of America today.

Listen, I think it's well said.

Okay, we're going to take a break.

This is a last point for our viewers and listeners.

The Department of War, we've had had that term before, but back in 1947, Harry Truman, they decided to change the name to the Department of Defense.

They were trying to send a message to the global society about what America was trying to be.

And so it's unfortunate.

But 78 years later, we have this pompous

group of people who are massively insecure, Stephen.

I mean, you don't need to change the name of the, you know, they, and also when I watch Pete Hacksack, that he uses the the word war fighters as opposed to soldiers.

I think it's like a

Fox News buzzword that these guys jump around like Mexican jumping beans over.

You know, I just find it hard to believe that we've become this insecure that we now have to turn our Defense Department into the Department of War.

What say you before we go?

I agree with you.

And when it comes to Heksith, I find him

the most sort of inappropriate guy to be put in in charge of the most powerful nations on earth security.

But I would also say that there's something much deeper going on.

Just as Trump and Higseth are signaling about their bellicosity,

their fierceness, their determination to project America's power, something really significant is happening behind the scenes, which is going in a very different direction.

You will have seen all of the talk in the last week about the latest revision of the United States national security doctrine, which in essence appears to be saying that the United States no longer wishes to project the level of military power in Asia, which would necessarily

force China to back off

any attempt to take over Taiwan, that America does not seek conflict or will not even project the power to make conflict a possibility against China because the new doctrine is all about the Western Hemisphere, about securing the homeland and ensuring American supremacy in the Americas.

Now,

that fits with a geopolitical reality where Trump sees Xi Jinping and Putin as geopolitical power players with whom he will do business and to whom he can relate very easily.

But it's not about America being the nation that, you know, through its military power, is going to project its

will on the world anymore.

Trump is backing away from that.

He may talk about the Department of War, but he's backing away from some of the military commitments that the United States has been making for decades.

All right, didn't think it was going to happen in my lifetime, Stephen, or your lifetime.

All right, we'll take a break.

We'll be back.

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Welcome back to the Rest is Politics U.S.

I'm Anthony Scaramucci.

I'm joined with Stephen Sacker, the famed BBC correspondent, also the host of BBC Hard Talk,

which I've been blistered on, Stephen Sacker, but that didn't affect our friendship, by the way.

I have a huge amount of respect for you.

I want to talk about the U.S.

economy, but before we jump back into the episode, I want to do a shout-out for our brand brand new series.

And it's all about

one of my favorite presidents, Ronald Reagan.

This is exclusively available to members of the Rest is Politics U.S.

So if you want to hear the entire series, just sign up at the RestisPoliticsUS.com.

Katy and I chose Ronald Reagan because there's so many ties to what's going on in our world today from 40 short years ago.

Lots of breaks in conservatism.

Some things things that Reagan put into place are working in overdrive now.

But this is a really fun series.

Last week, we had episode one.

We talked about Ronald Reagan's childhood, Reagan as a Hollywood actor,

his time as a union leader, which is an interesting thing, a Republican president being a union leader.

Then, of course, the Red Scare with Joe McCarthy and the impact that it had on Ronald Reagan's future in American politics.

Upcoming, in episode two, we're going to discuss Reagan taking up the Republican mantle in the state of California.

Yes, a very blue state today, but was quite a red state back in the 1960s, particularly during that sort of hippie movement in Northern California.

Ronald Reagan ascends to the governorship, which is an upset.

He takes out an incumbent by the name of Pat Brown, and now he's plotting his move to the American presidency.

A lot of people don't realize this about Reagan, but he ran for president three times.

And he ran in 68.

He again ran unsuccessfully in 1976.

And of course, at the age of 79, he gets elected our 40th president.

It's a fascinating story.

It's a great human story with real ties into what's going on in our political situation today.

So hopefully you guys will tune in to hear the rest of this series right now.

Just head to the restspoliticsus.com.

Now we'll get back into the podcast.

We'll talk about the state of Trump's economy.

The economy is slowing down.

Even Jamie Dimon yesterday said it's slowing down.

The unemployment rate is still decent at 4.3%,

but you can see surface cracks in the economy in terms of the rate of change of job growth in the United States.

We got an anemic 22,000 jobs added in the month of August, and this is after revisions downward in prior months.

And so I guess, you know, for me, as someone that's worked on this for 40 years, this is a very predictable outcome of the tariff strategy that Donald Trump is deploying right now,

where

the people in the corporations are trying to absorb the price increases.

They're not trying to share it with the consumer.

They can't do that anymore.

What do they do?

They have to cut people in order to maintain their profit margins.

So this soup is starting to happen.

And I guess my question, I guess my first question for you is, what do you think, in addition to this slowing down the U.S.

economy, what effects do you think it's having globally?

Well, you know,

always when the U.S.

economy looks like it is heading into choppy waters, the world economy begins to feel those waves lapping very quickly and gets worried very quickly.

I think, you know, we look at

the situation in the U.S., at the application of tariffs, and the fact that now inflation looks much stickier than, you know, the Fed would like it to be, and the jobs numbers don't look great, and many, as you said, many corporate leaders are now sounding a little bit anxious about the future of the economy.

And, you know, outside of America, people are saying, well, yeah, duh.

What do you expect?

You know, Trump's vision of how tariffs were going to be this sort of wonderful booster for the US economy, it never made sense to people outside of the US.

And at the same time, it clearly was potentially deeply harmful to

international players who trade with America.

So I think there's a sort of sense of inevitability about the sort of growing underlying pessimism that I'm seeing, feeling, and hearing from business leaders in the UK, around Europe, and the rest of the world.

And there's, frankly, not much surprise about any of this because most people outside of the U.S.

look at Donald Trump's sort of economic nationalism and don't see it as something that is good for either the U.S.

or the world economy.

I want you to put your BBC hard talk hat on for a second.

And I want you to channel the following conversation.

Secretary Scott Besant is on Meet the Press.

He's being asked the following question.

Are the tariffs a tax on the American people?

He very flatly says in the conversation, no, they are not.

Now, how do you follow up on that?

So it's obviously a blatant lie.

Trump says repeatedly that the countries are paying the tariffs.

Stephen, I've talked to MAGA supporters in the country.

They look at me with three heads when I say, well, you know, the taxes or duties at the port, the American consumer and the American businesses are actually paying the tariff.

They look at me like, what are you talking about?

Donald Trump has told me that the country, China, is paying these tariffs,

the UK is paying these tariffs.

But when a Secretary of Defense on a show like your show

says something like that, how do you respond?

Like, what do you say?

I say,

Mr.

Secretary, just pretend I'm not Stephen Sacker.

I'm a farmer in Iowa, and I want to buy a new new tractor.

And the new tractor is, I don't know, 10, 15, 20% more expensive than it was three months ago.

You explain to me, Mr.

Secretary, why that is.

And, you know, we'll wait and we'll wait and we'll wait and we'll see if he provides an answer which includes the words tariffs.

But if he doesn't, then I'll say, well, Mr.

Secretary, you don't even seem to understand your own policy because we know why that tractor or that fertilizer is more expensive today.

It's because of the tariffs you've imposed, which are being paid by your farmers.

Okay, so now you and I are

in the cloakroom.

We're in our network's cloakroom.

And

I say to you, Stephen, I'm just exhausted.

I interview these guys from the Trump administration.

They flatly lie every 15 minutes.

Should I just spend the entire time when I'm in the interview fact-checking them?

Donald Trump is on pace to tell 40,000 lies in his administration.

In the first six months, he's told 5,000 lies.

So, Stephen, we're in the cloakroom.

I'm asking you for advice.

I'm a fellow journalist.

What do I do?

Besides, gonna lie to me.

Lutnick, I mean, this guy, you know, I call the guy Butlick.

I mean, this guy's unbelievable.

He'll lie about anything, anything.

And he gets to the microphone.

He thinks Trump's watching him and he smiles.

And I mean, it's some revolting stuff at this point.

But go ahead.

Give me some advice.

I'm a journalist.

I need some advice on how to follow up.

Follow your point is well made and and you know frankly audiences do get bored with monotonal interviews which really in the end become formulaic you know you're lying you're lying about this you're lying about that here's the truth da da da it it's important to fact check people um and it's important that journalism generally not just the interview format but in all of the journalism that we see facts and truth should be adhered to.

And I still, I'm one of those sort of weirdos who believes that there are such things as facts and that there are universal truths.

So, you know, let's not lose sight of that importance.

But

in terms of the advice to doing an interview that can hold people's attention and be compelling and not utterly formulaic and tedious, I would say you just, you know, like maybe I just tried to do with you when explaining how I might approach this tariff subject with

a U.S.

U.S Trump administration politician who doesn't want to engage with the reality of tariffs.

Try to humanize it.

Try to tell stories which get to real people's experience within the format, within the question framework.

It's not about the indignant journalist just sort of airing his maybe small L liberal dislike for the Trump administration.

It's what's actually happening to real people across the United States of America in terms of the real impact of the tariff policy.

That's why I've been doing a lot of reading in the last few days.

My dad is a farmer.

Well, he's passed away, sadly, but my dad was a farmer in the UK.

I know how...

totally vulnerable farmers are to significant shifts in, for example, commodity prices or the prices of key materials, whether it be tractor parts or fertilizers.

And I've just been doing a lot of reading about what's happening on farms across the United States of America as a result of the tariff policy.

So I would say to you, if you want to humanize this, if you want to make it real for people and try to get under the skin of these Trumpy

defenders who are trying to, you know, sort of disguise the truth of tariffs, tell real stories.

Tell human stories.

That's what counts.

Yeah, but I mean, you're bringing this up.

So I'll just mention that the farmers have been devastated.

Lots of them voted for him.

The tariffs have devastated them.

Grassley, the senator from Iowa, went to his constituents and said, oh, no, the tariffs are going to be good for you.

There'll be more aggregate demand in the U.S.

Just hasn't been the case.

So we've lost sight of the intricacies of the global economy and the interconnected nature of the global economy.

Anthony, have you lost faith?

in the notion that there is at the heart of U.S.

democracy a sense of accountability and that people like Chuck Grassley you're talking about will ultimately pay a price for defending something which his own constituents are increasingly finding indefensible.

Are you saying the system is so broken that accountability has disappeared?

Not fully, but I'm saying yes, substantially.

So just hear me out.

The process of gerrymandering in the House has made it much easier for incumbents to stay in power.

The Senate, you can't gerrymander, of course, but they've got something else called Citizens United, where they can go to their big companies in their state or even outside of their state, and they can get endless amounts of money into their campaigns.

And so if you look at the tilt of money that goes to incumbents versus the money that goes to challengers to the incumbents, you know, Grassley, I don't know, he's probably like 500 years old at this point, Stephen.

I mean,

he's going to stay forever.

He was on Capitol Hill when I was the correspondent in Washington, and that's

yeah, yeah, he's just got a hill.

And and long after, you know, it'll be him, Keith Richards, and Willie Nelson, okay?

Those will be the people that we will have left the planet to.

So we have to be nice to all three of them.

But

my point is, yes, I do think the legitimacy of what you just said, that we can take them out at the voting box, has been blunted by the tools that they have at their disposal now, endless amounts of money, and lots of protections in terms of the way they handle themselves as incumbents.

So again, the big, beautiful spending bill, 38% of the country wanted it.

It's down to 32%.

Congress didn't care.

They voted for it anyway.

You're right.

And, you know, goodness knows you're a guy who understands the machinery of U.S.

politics.

But fundamentally, biggest of big pictures, if the U.S.

economy is screwed over the next couple of years and it is transparently connected to Trump's policies, he and his party are going to pay a price.

I mean, there is still something pretty fundamental about the notion that the U.S.

voting public primarily are concerned, you know, with their pocketbook, with the state of the economy, the state of theirs and their families' material lives.

And if that goes downhill,

a price will be paid, however much I buy your notion that, you know, politics has been disconnected from...

Yeah.

Well,

look, that's the bet.

I mean, that's the pliability, the plasticity the neuroplasticity of america i'm hoping that that happens i'm hoping they'll make some changes uh before i let you go sir what are you working on today you got you're writing a book whatever i'm writing a book i am uh doing a bit of broadcasting here in the uk for a rival to the bbc because i've left the bbc

uh and i'm also

and you and catty are going to love this bit i'm also still pondering the idea and i've got a few people who are interested in working with me uh of launching a podcast.

So,

you know,

watch this space.

Good for you.

Hopefully, you invite me on.

I believe in podultery.

This is what the goal hanger guys say, you know, I believe in transgressing and going on other people's lives.

Is there such a thing

without any apology?

I don't think polyamory is a thing, is it?

Exactly.

Yes, I guess so.

I mean, you could say it that way.

It's a little weirder when you say it that way, you know, but that's okay, too.

I really want to thank you.

I want to thank you for joining us and being here, and hopefully, we'll get you back at some point.

And I wish you great success on all these new ventures that you have.

Anthony, it's been an absolute pleasure.

I would love to come back whenever you'll have me, and I wish you all the best, too.

Okay, guys, that's a wrap on the Rest is Politics U.S.

this week.

We'll see you next week.

Thanks so much for joining us.