112. The Real Agenda Behind Trump’s State Visit

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Welcome to the Rest is Politics US.

With me, Her Royal Highness Catherine Kaye.

And me, unfortunately, a commoner.

A commoner from the colonies.

A commoner from the colonies, Anthony Scaramucci.

Oh, my God, Caddy.

What a show.

Don't we do that?

Come on.

I mean, let me tell you,

the UK is now the KU, which is the kiss-up country, right?

I mean, this is really.

Okay, listen, American, being all American about that.

Trust me,

our viewers and listeners are revolted by this whole thing.

I guarantee you, if we did a poll of the trip U.S.

listeners, they'd be like, yeah, this is a little over the top.

But you guys do over the top very well.

That I will confess, okay?

And I am a fan of King Charles, but you guys, it's a little over the top for me.

But go ahead.

Can I just say nobody does pomp and circumstance and shiny brass and little feathers and jumping around horses and men in red coats and furry things on their heads better

than Great Britain.

And we did it damn well today.

That was very good.

We are going to talk about the state visit.

We will get beyond the fashion and the pomp and the circumstance.

And by the the way, Melania's Christian Door outfit, very desirable.

We'll get beyond all of that and talk about the significance of it.

She's wearing the hat, Katie Kaye.

She's wearing the don't come near me hat.

You know, it's the not going to show you my whole face.

And Mr.

T, don't try to move in for the kissy poo because I'm going to block you with the hat.

I guess I'll let you know if Dirty's ever wearing that hat, I better.

start patting i mean this is it's yeah it's like you know i've had enough of you but i will confess that the purple hat is actually matching the purple tie.

Did you see that?

That was interesting.

I saw that.

They've gone full monarchy.

They've gone full royal with the purple.

I like that.

As opposed to the queen's hat, Queen Camilla's hat, which was blue, echoing, by the way, the Queen.

Elizabeth's outfit, I thought from the first state visit.

I think there was a little bit of matching going on there.

Look at the photos.

But her hat is nice and open and you can see her face.

And Melania's hat is, I don't actually want anyone to see my face and I'm probably not going to smile the whole time I'm here.

But okay, we're going to talk all about that and what it means and what the United Kingdom may get out of this fantastic display of what Anthony would like to call ass kissing.

I just said kiss up.

It's a kiss upping exercise, which is

totally, totally.

I understand why they're doing it, but it's completely unnecessary.

But go ahead, keep going.

So before we get to all of that.

We would love to tell you about the series that we are doing on Ronald Reagan for our founding members.

It's been so fun and illuminating for me to do the research on Reagan and his presidency.

And we've just uncovered all these great stories that I think would be fun for our listeners to go about.

And I think we should start, Anthony, by telling our listeners about the time you actually met Ronald Reagan.

Well, I did meet Ronald Reagan.

I was a very young man.

It was October of 1981.

There was a fundraiser

in the Plaza Hotel, and it was the supervisor, the Nassau County supervisor, invited 18 of the high school student body presidents.

Yes, shamelessly, I was the student body president back in school.

And so I went.

Of course you were.

I went to this event.

It was my senior year.

I had my polyester suit on.

I was trying to cover up the zits on my forehead, and I was so nervous, Caddy.

And I remember walking in there and

in Army Plaza, where the Plaza Hotel is, there was huge protests.

You and I will both remember the protests about the nuclear weapons and abolition of nuclear weapons in the 1980s.

And I was standing in line to shake the hand of the president, and there was a gentleman in front of me.

I will never forget this conversation.

It actually fortified me after I got fired from the White House.

I remember looking at President Reagan.

He's taller than me, and you could see his turkey neck from my angle.

And I was like, oh my God, this guy is much older than he looks on TV.

It was my first reaction.

Of course, the gentleman in front of me was shaking Reagan's hand and said, you know, do these protesters and all of this anger towards you, all this negativity, does it bother you?

And Reagan looked at him very quizzically.

I'm in the wrong business if this stuff would bother me.

Of course, it used to bother me, but it no longer bothers me.

And I thought it was just an interesting thing to say to this man.

I remember being so impressionable as a young 17-year-old.

Of course, I shook his hand sheepishly, Caddy.

I wasn't quite the loquacious person that I am today.

I was, hello, Mr.

President.

And that was about the extent of the whole conversation.

So,

but listen, you know, I did, I did get a chance to meet him, and it was very impressionable for me at that young age.

You mentioned the protests, and I remember when I was at high school and university going on some of those campaign for nuclear disarmament protests and how the perception of Reagan from Europe's point of view was really that he was a warmonger who was building up the American military.

You were a fan of Ronald Reagan's, otherwise you wouldn't have wanted to go and meet him, even when you were in high school and college.

What did you learn from doing this series?

I learned a lot about Reagan and kind of weirdly how enigmatic he was that he gave across this kind of incredible bonhomy, came out with these famous quips like when he was nearly assassinated and he, you know, said to Nancy Reagan, sorry, honey, I forgot to duck and ask the surgeons at the hospital here in Washington whether they were Republicans.

I hope you're Republicans.

And the surgeon replied back, Mr.

President, we're all Republicans today as they've wheeled him in for surgery.

And his kind of ability to have those quips.

And I think that's what a lot of people think about him and that he must have been this kind of incredible extrovert and bon viveur and easy with people.

And yet he also had a side to him that was quite introverted and liked nothing better than hanging out with Nancy Reagan and going to bed early and having a TV dinner and watching kind of, you know, soap operas on television.

And people didn't really feel, including his children, that they ever got to know him sort of very intimately one-on-one.

That was something that I learned about him that I hadn't really been aware of.

What did you feel you learned during the series?

Well, I mean, so many, so many things, all of those things, but I guess something I didn't fully appreciate is the commonality, the thread of personality between him and Franklin Roosevelt.

They both had that high level of detachment.

They both had the ability to be warm and sunny and congenial and be popular in the mediums of their time.

But there was also a coldness, there was a ruthlessness there that sometimes I think you need in a president, frankly.

You want the president to be a lover of people, but the flip side, though, is you want it to be tough.

He or she, whoever gets that job, you want it to be tough because you're going up against a lot of different threats to the Western world.

So I enjoy doing it with you.

I think people will enjoy listening to it.

I hope people will

join up.

I guess you can go to the RestisPoliticsus.com, become a founding member.

You can listen to the whole series.

But lots of ties to what's going on today.

And by the way, since we're talking about a state visit, I know you and I will remember vividly the horseback riding that Ronald Reagan did with Queen Elizabeth

when he visited and the gentility of Ronald Reagan.

He was a guy who didn't grow up with much, a very modest upbringing, was a Hollywood actor.

A lot of people made fun of him for that.

But he got on with the Queen.

You could tell he had a savoir faire about him that the Queen enjoyed.

But not just with the Queen, Anthony.

I mean, I think you told that amazing story about the lady who comes to the White House and expects that she can just walk in and see Robert Reagan.

And tell the story.

The Peggy Noonan story, who was, of course, his speechwriter.

But that story I loved because it also revealed how good he was with ordinary Americans, which I think in the end is why he had he left office with the approval ratings he had despite the Iran-Contra scandal, despite everything that had happened, because he was so good with ordinary people, wasn't he?

So, Katie, I'll just tell the story quickly for viewers.

This came out of the book Character Above All.

Peggy Noonan, who loved Ronald Reagan, wrote a lot of famous speeches for him.

She told a story about an old woman from the Midwest who received a form letter.

from the Republican National Committee and said, if you send $5,

next time you're in town, you may be able to visit President Reagan.

Of course, this was a form letter.

She interpreted it as an invitation to the White House.

And so she packed her belongings and she took a bus to the White House and she got online in the security area.

And when she got up to the Secret Service, said, do you have an appointment?

She said, well, I don't have an appointment, but I have an open invitation from the president.

And there was a gentleman in front of her who was actually going to see the president and the secretary of transportation.

And he looked back at her and he realized, oh my God, she thinks this form letter is like a legit legit invitation.

And so he leaned over to the Secret Service, let me handle this.

And he walked over to her and he said,

I see you got this letter.

They're probably not ready for you.

What hotel are you staying at?

And she said, oh, I'm staying at the such-and-such hotel.

He said, well, why don't you go back to the hotel?

If you give me an hour, I'm going to call you at the hotel.

And the woman gave his room number and so forth.

He went in to see the chief of staff and Reagan.

And it was a very busy day in the White House and told the story to Ronald Reagan.

And Reagan was like, all right, well, we got to bring her in here.

So when are we bringing her in?

And, of course, he called her back.

He said, we're going to give you some time with the president.

She marched back to the Secret Service.

This executive actually greeted her at the door.

And of course, the Secret Service graciously had her come in.

And Peggy tells the story.

There was Reagan.

greeting her at the door of the Oval Office with that big glint in his eye, the big smile.

He brought her in, asked her about her family.

He crossed his legs legs in that very debonair way that he used to do.

And he leaned in and for about 15 minutes, he had a great conversation with this woman, and then he had to apologize because he had so many things going on that day.

But it was just a gracious story about what Reagan was like as a guy.

And Reagan understood, he had that common touch.

He understood that one part of that job is actually love people.

You know, you can love yourself.

I guess most presidents have to do that.

But you really would like the president to love love people more than themselves.

So that's just one of the stories that you'll hear if you sign up to become a founding member and get the whole Reagan series.

And we also, of course, look at all of the scandals around Reagan, the criticisms of Ronald Reagan, the growth of inequality in the country around the time of Reagan's presidency.

I hope you'll join us.

I hope you'll enjoy the series.

We had fun making it.

And it's very relevant, of course, to today.

And the big question that we look at at the end of the series is how much Ronald Reagan has led us to where we are in America today with Donald Trump.

Do become a founding member and sign up at therestispoliticsus.com.

So let's get back to the news of the day and the state visit.

I think you're right, Anthony, that Britain went into this having decided that there is no limit to the amount of, what did you call it, kissing up that it is worth the United Kingdom doing.

And you saw that on total display.

This was the kind of shock and awe, British equivalent of shock and awe.

This is, we don't have your big military, we don't have America's big economy, but we can wheel out the horses and the brass and the music and the people in fantastic uniforms and hope that that persuades Donald Trump to have a better relationship economically and politically with the United Kingdom than he might do otherwise.

And that's the purpose of it.

I mean, for every one of those men in their beef eater hats or riders on horseback or piece of polished brass is the idea that this will produce an outcome for the United Kingdom, a policy outcome in terms of lowering tariffs, in terms of more American support for Ukraine against Russia.

So

it's a calculated move.

I think the big question of this whole state visit, more so even than the state visit, the first state visit of 2019, is whether it can actually deliver those things.

And Donald Trump loves the royal family.

He loves flattery.

But it's less clear that that flattery and that pomp and circumstance always leads to policy results.

And I think that's the test of these couple of days, isn't it?

I think so.

But, you know, I like role-playing on this podcast.

I want to role-play with you.

I'm a student.

I walk in.

You've been teaching me about British social studies and civics.

And I walk in and say, you know, Professor Kay, could you please square the circle for me?

We've got a gentleman by the name of Peter Mandelson.

He's the UK ambassador to the United States.

He was involved with the Epstein fiasco, a result of which he was just sacked by the prime minister.

Starmer sacks him.

And yet we have another gentleman that's also involved in the Ex-Bean situation, President Trump.

And so are we situational?

Have we lost our principles?

Tell me what the pragmatism is here relative to the principles that you've been teaching me about in school.

Okay, go ahead.

Well, so look, student Antony Scaramucci and what a good student you are.

I think that in this case, you have to have from a position of a country and actually a continent that thought it could rely on the United States to be a trade partner and to be a security partner, and now is faced with the reality that both of those expectations no longer hold and that the United States is a friend, but a friend who is drifting away, you will try to do everything you can, including swallowing scandals around your ambassador and scandals around Jeffrey Epstein, in order to try to keep that friend on board.

I mean, if I was saying-I mean, you're just really good at busy.

Oh my gosh.

You have no choice.

So

America is the number two export market for British steel.

It's 7% of our exports.

It's about $500 million a year.

We need to lower the tariffs on those exports.

We need to get them down.

We were hoping we could get them down to zero.

At the moment, they're at 25%.

If we can reduce from 25% to 15%, every single one of those bugle calls and every single one of that bit of brass that's been polished will have been worth it from the United Kingdom standpoint and will have been worth it from the Prime Minister's own political standpoint.

I mean, I think the interesting thing to me at this moment is that the Anglo-Saxon world looks unbelievably weak and fragile.

In the wake of the killing of Charlie Kirk, which we spoke a lot about on Monday, in the wake of the Epstein scandals, you've got a president who is going over to the United Kingdom, leaving a country that feels very divided, very polarized.

Americans hate each other.

America's adversaries love the fact that Americans hate each other.

It's America's greatest weakness, and they're stoking that.

And he's flying to the United Kingdom, where the Prime Minister has had to sack

his ambassador to the UK over the Epstein scandal, where he's lost his deputy prime minister, where he's lost another senior member of his government just this week.

The Anglo-Saxon world, for all of that display of pomp and circumstance, it's a bit of a mirage.

We're not strong at the moment.

I don't think anyone could argue that either of our countries are very healthy at the moment.

And so you can put on all of the display you like, and hopefully it will get you a little bit of a reduction in the tariffs.

Hopefully, it will get you a little bit more pressure on Vladimir Putin, which is the other big issue here.

But do these countries look strong to you at the moment?

Do they look healthy democracies at the moment?

I think that's hard to argue.

You're just so good at this.

So, let me, for the Americans listening in, let me just say what Caddy said.

Okay, we'll get that.

Have I been promoted from professor to royalty?

Can I get that one by the end of the day?

Yeah, I mean, you're royalty, Ambassador K.

I mean, you've got all kinds of things going on right now.

But the bottom line is, young student, that we are political hypocrites out of need and out of necessity.

It's the same way Churchill Churchill barked about Stalin, and when the war came with Hitler, he said unbelievably nice things about Stalin, flew back and forth to Moscow to curry favor with Stalin so that we could defeat the Nazis.

And so at the end of the day, we do have our principles and we sacked Mandelson.

We can debate whether or not that was the right thing to do or not, because I think Mandelson actually was developing a pretty good rapport with Donald Trump and had access to him.

Despite being negative on Trump, like many of us have been,

he worked his way into the inner circle.

Do you think there was a world in which Keir Stahmer should have kept Mandelson as ambassador to the United States?

On the threadline of what we're discussing, hey, he's in the Epstein file.

He said some terrible things.

It's a weird thing.

I think it would have blown over.

I mean, there was a great, they don't use it anymore.

There's a great website called twoweeksoldnews.com.

They extinguished it during COVID.

But if you, if you, and it was just the point was, well, we were, her hair was on fire two weeks ago about this issue for five minutes, and then it's going to be on fire.

For five minutes, and then it, and then it blows over.

And so to me, I think Trump, rightly or wrongly, learned from his first term, people's hair are going to be on fire,

and people's hair is going to be on fire, Caddy, and people are going to be crazy.

And if I overreact and start firing everybody, it's ultimately a bad look.

But I don't blame Prime Minister Starmer for firing Ambassador Mandelson.

Maybe if the Prime Minister had been in a stronger position...

I mean, I think, first of all, the Prime Minister, you know, wanted to be able to say, this is not acceptable.

I have fought all my career as a prosecutor to try to protect the vulnerable in our society.

So it would have been very hypocritical, given how much more of a relationship and how much more support Mandelson tried to give Epstein after his first conviction.

It would have been very difficult.

But also, Starmer's just in a very weak position.

I mean, you saw those amazing images, right, of the protesters who kind of projected the image from Donald Trump's birthday letter of the kind of curvy lady onto the tower of Windsor Castle and of the pictures of Epstein and Trump.

I mean, this is, I mean, Starma is under...

pressure from the right.

Clearly, we saw those huge protests over the weekend.

We've seen the rise in the polls of Nigel Farage recently.

So he's under pressure at home.

He's under pressure from the left because of his weak performance.

He faces the possibility even

having won with a huge majority last year of a leadership challenge.

I think he just couldn't risk having this hang over him.

Okay, and I understand that.

And he's got to do that at his discretion.

And these people serve at his discretion.

And I understand that as well.

And so there's just, unfortunately for people, there are principles, and then there's practicality.

And they split the baby there.

They fired Mandelson, but they're embracing this convicted felon that's walking through the door at Windsor Castle, who's also in the Epstein file.

And they've done a marvelous job of distracting everybody from the Epstein file.

Of course, the Senate voted yesterday to block the release of the Epstein file.

I think the vote was like 50 to 49, and that was obscured by the Charlie Kirk tragedy.

But, you know,

you're in a situation here where the United States and Great Britain, I agree with you, we appear weaker than we should be right now.

But I do love the fact in a free society, Caddy, a group of protesters can put that up on the wall.

Now, I understand that they were arrested, probably get a slap on the wrist, but

there it is.

You want to be in a country, and I think it's getting a little dangerous now because Pam Bondi is saying, well, listen, we're going to criminalize certain speech.

And if you say certain things in a certain way, we're going to criminalize that.

And

there's hate speech and threatening speech.

I get it.

But if I say, hey, I don't like this person, and here are the reasons why are we going to now criminalize that in our country?

I think it's just a very dangerous place that we're all in

because

we're doing back flips for a very insecure guy that has an orange raccoon on the top of his head.

We're going to do backflips for this guy.

And the Supreme Court is doing backflips.

Roberts has told people, close to Roberts, okay, Justice Roberts, Supreme Court Chief Justice, he's told people, hey, he may not listen to the court.

Let's say I rule against Trump, which hopefully maybe on the tariffs he will.

I don't know.

The law is clear on the tariffs, so maybe he'll rule against Trump.

But he says, you know, if I end up ruling against him and he bites my hand off, we're in a full-on constitutional crisis, right?

Jefferson didn't do that, Marbury versus Madison.

Everyone's afraid of him.

Everybody's afraid of him.

So we're now down the slippery, we're slouching towards a constitutional fiasco.

We're slouching towards an equivocation domino effect where everybody knows it's the wrong thing to do.

Everybody's shrinking.

I guarantee you, okay.

I don't know Prince, I don't know King Charles, but I guarantee you he is going to like take a pressure hose shower tonight.

Okay, be like a high pressure hose on the guy.

Okay.

And it's like, you know, just bring in the hand sanitizer and shit.

It's,

I mean, just guarantee you.

Okay.

Now he's dealt with.

The king is a pro.

The king is a pro.

He will do what needs to be done.

He's a total pro, and I give this guy an enormous amount of respect.

And this is not the first lecture in the king's midst, and he's handling it with great grace.

Listen, the royal family knows that it is there.

to serve the best interests of the country and they have dealt with leaders who, you know, give them a a lot of credit care a lot more dodgy than uh the american president but you know king charles if you're listening don't scald yourself tonight okay just your medium temperature in the shower but i know it's going to be a long shower tonight after this fiasco we're going to take a quick break and come back and talk about what the us might actually give the united kingdom as a result of this

So he gets all the pomp and circumstance, Anthony.

What else does the United Kingdom actually get out of this?

Because I was reminded this week by somebody who said to me, Look, the Qataris gave effectively Donald Trump a beautiful new plane worth a hell of a lot of money that he is going to be able to use once he leaves office.

So it really is a gift to Donald Trump, not to the United States.

And then when the Israelis go and bomb Doha to take out a Hamas building, the Hamas negotiators, what does the United United States do

to support the Qataris?

Nothing.

So

you can flatter Donald Trump all you want, and Donald Trump clearly likes the royal family.

Does it actually lead to him saying, okay, we're going to drop the tariffs to zero on steel, as had been hoped for in the original trade negotiations?

Does it lead to him saying, okay, we are actually going to put more pressure on Russia or give more support to Ukraine?

maybe maybe we get a of those two the most likely is that we get some kind of a reduction in the steel tariffs i think uh maybe the americans feel the president feels he has to give the king something for this extraordinary display of um admiration that the brits have never before have they rolled out quite as many troops and horses and bling uh for a state visit but i'm not sure that the brits understand that flattery to Trump always gets you what you want anyway.

It's the price of entry, but it's not necessarily the actual deal sealer.

So let's let's workshop both those ideas.

So it's two months from now.

There's been no conciliatory concessions.

There's been no diplomatic gestures by the president or his trade representatives.

Was this a failure of diplomacy?

And I would say no.

It's still a good idea.

It was still

worth it.

So it didn't cost anybody anything.

Apart from the money that it costs.

It may cost Starma with the British public because

a recent poll shows that 70% of Brits dislike Donald Trump.

Yes, we saw that big rally of 100,000 plus people.

And The Economist had an interesting piece this week about how Brits don't like Trump, but they kind of like Trumpism.

They like the anti-immigration stuff.

They like some of Trump's policies.

But it could cost Starmer if he looks like he, as you said, sucked up to or kissed up to somebody who's unpopular amongst the vast majority of the British public and he doesn't get anything in return.

So it could cost him a little politically.

Okay.

I'm going to take the other side of that and I'm going to say that

even the people that dislike Trump and there's a 70% disapproval rating and there are protests in Parliament Square, etc., I think they recognize that Starmer likely dislikes Trump, but he's doing this for the reasons, the very transparent reasons that you and I are discussing on the show.

But

I want to go in a different direction for a moment and ask you about this.

So

we're now,

let's say, three months from now, and there's been no movement.

You have a new ambassador from the UK, and there's been no movement on NATO.

You see, because I don't want to sound so cynical, but I could turn to you and say, well, if the king and Starmer had something on Trump, then he's going to flex for the King and Starmer.

Because listen, we're one month out, Caddy.

We're one month out from the Alaska peace summit with Vladimir Putin.

And all we have seen is the further destruction of Ukraine.

We've even bombed an American factory now in Ukraine.

We've seen drone attacks across the border in Poland.

So here you go.

Here's their juxtaposition.

I've got a Western leader who doesn't have anything on me, and I'm going to roll them and humiliate them and spend my time doing that because it makes me feel good temporarily.

But I've got a Russian leader that I won't do absolutely anything about.

So now we're three months out.

We're sitting here around Christmas time.

Let's say Starmer is in office.

He's calling Macron and he's saying, okay, what are we doing as a group of people now related to Ukraine?

We're going to enter another

big year in the Ukrainian war.

It's going to be four years in February.

What are we doing?

And what's the answer to that, Caddy?

Are we leaving the U.S.

behind, Katie?

Well, I don't think they can use the U.S.

behind for lots of reasons that we've spoken about on the show before, that even as the EU is trying genuinely to ramp up its military, at least to be able to give Ukraine the ability to hold a defensive line with European supplies, it still needs American intelligence.

It still needs the American coordination.

There are

American planes that are needed.

So I don't think that that's an option to leave America behind.

And I think the interesting question is still, and I think Starmer is grappling with this, as are other European leaders,

is how to get Donald Trump over the line and why has Donald Trump, I know all of the kind of theories about does the Russians have something on Donald Trump, but why is Donald Trump proving so reluctant?

And again, this week, he said he won't support the sanctions bill that eighty-five members have signed up to in the Senate and that is ready to go until NATO countries stop using Russian oil.

Well, in the case of Turkey, which is the third biggest importer of Russian oil, that's just not going to happen, or Hungary and Slovakia, which are allies of Russia, that's just not going to happen.

I had a really interesting meeting this week with a senior ally of the President's

who said that he believes that I mean, it's sort of a mystery to many, even in the Republican Party, but he believes that Trump has just found this much more difficult than he thought it was going to be.

He genuinely came in and thought this would be easy.

And

he doesn't know what to do now.

He doesn't know how he can resolve this conflict that he had said he was going to resolve in one day.

And he is seeing this as a confrontation actually between America and China, Russia's big backer.

and he doesn't think he can take on China over Ukraine, doesn't want to take on China over Ukraine anyway.

He's in a kind of cul-de-sac.

He's kind of run out of options when it comes to Russia.

And so he's just having this kind of delay process.

Well, we're not going to, we'll do more in two weeks, or we'll bring him to Alaska and, you know, then we'll get a meeting with Zelensky and it doesn't happen, or we'll put on the sanctions bill only when,

you know, the NATO countries and the EU countries stop importing any oil and gas from Russia, which just isn't going to happen.

He's right that the Europeans should do more.

But I think it's a recognition that he's kind of out of carts when it comes to Russia.

And that's the reality that Starmer is going to have to deal with when they have their press conference and when they have their private meetings, which is actually the substance of all of this visit.

Well, I mean, again, I'm going to push back on this as well.

A real American president would not be concerned about that.

A real American president would call President Xi and say, listen, I know we're talking about these spheres of influence, and I've got this imbecile who's the Secretary of War now.

We used to call it defense, we'll call it war, and we've got this imbecile talking about the sphere of influence.

President Xi, listen, this is post-World War II stuff for me as a historical leader, and I've got to keep the liberal democracies in the West

vibrant, and I've got to check Vladimir Putin at the door here in Ukraine.

And I want you to step back a little bit.

It'll help our economic relationship.

It'll help the relationship with the U.S.

and China.

If you do that, same with India.

And Vladimir, by the way, Vlad, you're over the line here.

Okay, so we're going to push you back.

And if you continue to do what you're doing, we're going to send more missiles.

We're going to operationalize more intercontinental ballistic missiles into Russia.

You're not going to drop a bomb on us.

We don't want to drop a bomb on you, but you've got to cut this out.

Okay, and I know you got to talk to the political leaders in Russia about this.

So take 15 days, tell them what we're doing, but you got to cut it out.

Because if you don't cut it out, we're going to escalate because I have to defend the West.

Okay.

And that's what he could do.

And he could do that very, very simply, but he's not doing that.

Do you think he has any

interest or any kind of historical context of believing in America's central role in defending the West?

Or do you think, as J.D.

Vance has suggested on his visits to Europe, they just think they've been had and that they've paid too much money?

No, no, no.

We've had a group of, we've got 500 million people in Europe.

There's been a group of freeloaders on the back of the United States, and that's what it is, and it's enough now.

And these freeloaders need to get off of our back.

But that is totally disconnected from what the vision has been, the successful vision has been for the United States.

And the success to the United States of that leadership role in terms of trade access.

No question.

And also, let's just lay it out for people the vision because I think it's important because Trump has garbled the vision.

He's hurt the vision.

But the vision is very simple.

We're in it together.

There's 5.7 billion people that live under levels of authoritarianism around the world.

The free world is in it together.

We're the most powerful economy, still with the most powerful military.

Help us with our domestic economy.

Help us with the disposable income of of the lower and middle-income people, and we're going to help you guys with everything else.

And

it's a very clean message.

And by the way, it's also a message for the Chinese.

You know, President Xi, I got to get disposable income up in these middle and lower-income houses in my country.

If I do that, there'll be less populism, there'll be more peace and tranquility.

And oh, by the way, that's a positive flywheel of consumerism, which helps you guys out because you're basically the Saudi Arabia of manufacturing.

Okay, That'll create more urbanization

of your population and a more burgeoning middle class for China.

So all of this stuff is very workable, Caddy, but you've got a bellicose guy who is in a

mean, rough, bullyish personality.

And he doesn't want to work it, and there's a reason for it.

And we don't know the reason 100%,

but there's a reason for it.

You know, MI6 knows that there's a reason for it.

Our own intelligence agency knows there's a reason for it.

We know, because this is not normal presidential behavior as it relates to all this.

So, yes, Starmer, I applaud him for trying this.

I also applaud him and Mandelson for going first with Trump and getting a 10% deal when everyone else is shaking out between 15 and 20.

I think the King is a very elegant guy, and I think the King has done a very, very good job here.

And I applaud him as well.

But I'm just saying, you don't have leverage on Trump the way Putin does.

And so, you know, you could get rolled.

I'm sure the Qataris were disappointed when they got the response from the Trump administration related to that attack.

And I'm sure that the King and Prime Minister Starmer are going to end up being disappointed by Trump in the ensuing months.

And then the real question is, what is the European vision to protect themselves?

And let me tell you something, okay?

Trump said it was accidental.

Caddy, do you think it was accidental that those drones ended up in 200 miles at the poll?

I heard this from a senior Republican this week that that was Russia testing the United States.

And the Trump administration, unlike I think what the Reagan administration would have done since we started this talking about Ronald Reagan,

has just let it pass.

And

it didn't get as much news attention to what you were saying earlier about, you know, our two-week news cycle.

It's not even two weeks, it's two minutes.

It didn't get that much attention because the focus shifted to the Charlie Kirk assassination.

And so somehow it hasn't been that much of a focus.

But that was Russia testing NATO and specifically testing the United States.

And the Trump administration decided to

sit back and say, okay, we're going to let them win that test.

We're not going to do anything.

I go back to where we started that this was an amazing display of historical grandeur and royal grandeur but it came from

a alliance of the united states and the united kingdom that is looking a little fragile both at home and internationally at the moment um and i think America's adversaries like China and Russia will look at what they're seeing in London and Windsor and they'll say, wow, that looks great.

But look at the fractures in the United States at the moment.

Look how easy it is for us to feed Americans' capacity to hate each other and fuel their hatred of each other.

And that is what is going to make the United States weak.

And America has to find some way out of this spiral.

of

internal hatred.

I don't think it's leading to a civil war.

I don't buy that argument, but it's certainly going to make the country weaker.

I remember Bob Gates, the former Defense Secretary, saying to me, there are three big problems, crises facing America's national security.

There's a rising China, a declining Russia, and America's own internal hatreds of each other, internal divisions.

And those are the three biggest national security crises.

And the only one of those that it's very easy for America to fix is its hatred of each other.

And what's it doing?

It's just stoking them.

And we've seen this week, everybody's retreating into their defensive crouches.

It's super depressing.

And I keep getting told,

and I'm sure you would do the same, well, history has shown us that there have been bleaker moments in American history.

I wrote about this for the BBC this week, that there have been bleaker moments in American history.

And America's got out of them.

That's right.

They got through the Civil War.

They got through the 1960s when a president was shot and his brother was shot and a civil rights icon was shot.

But I think Governor Cox of Utah has it right.

You didn't have social media then.

Social media is the cancer that is fueling these divisions.

And until something is done about that, and nothing is going to be done about that, like nothing is done about gun control in the country, then I don't see how America gets out of this.

Okay, but Caddy, something could be done about it.

So let's just talk about what it could be done.

It could be done, but it's not going to be done.

Well, because of the money.

But if you had great leadership, the leadership would say, guys,

it's the same thing with the robber barons.

Roosevelt, Teddy Roosevelt brought him into the White House and said, we got to cut this out.

Otherwise, you know, we're going to lose the people.

You bring those big tech into the White House and say, okay, we've got to redevise this.

This is not working for America.

It's not working for our country.

Our adversaries are taking advantage of it.

Trump won't do that because he likes them in that big, you know, circle.

of sycophancy in the dining room there praising him left and right.

So he's not going to do it.

But it does need to get done.

By the way, once again,

talk about taco.

The TikTok thing is unbelievable.

So the courts said, get rid of TikTok.

The Congress said, get rid of TikTok.

It's weapons-grade intelligence gathering.

It's weapons-grade propaganda in the country.

And Trump is like, now, no problem.

I've got a new deal with them.

Oracle, Sapphira Cast is giving me a lot of money for my campaign.

They'll run the cloud for TikTok.

And the Chinese can have the algorithm.

Okay, where we know that's not in the national interest of the country.

And the two other articles in the Constitution, which is the judiciary and the legislative, has ruled against it.

But again, we're doing backflips or the orange maniac and we continue to do that.

But I'm not going to sit here with you and tell people that listen to us that this isn't fixable.

It's fixable.

This isn't changeable.

It's changeable.

It is.

It's the question is whether the country has the capacity to do it.

Who's going to rise?

Who's going to rise in the country and speak sense to the American people about these issues?

How bad does it have to get before Americans decide to vote for somebody who is prepared to reach to the middle and be that conciliator and be that leader, as opposed to somebody who is going to take the bait and play to the base?

While we're talking, there's a state lunch going on right now.

And there's a scaled-down red arrows fly pass going on right now, Caddy.

And by the way, this is the shit that Trump loves.

This is not the cabinet ass kissing.

This type of pomp and circumstance, Trump is eating this up.

He thinks this is fantastic.

Remember, he's an image-oriented guy.

This is a good show.

Oh, this is, and he had a Scottish mother.

Oh, my God.

He thinks this is the greatest thing.

It would be like me having my ear cue tipped by my nana in like 1969.

That's how good it is for Trump.

Okay, I have no idea what actually that means, but anyway, I love the idea that that's the same.

No, I mean, you know, when your grandmother was taking care of your hygiene, you know, it was always, yeah, very nice.

Okay, weird.

Can I do my little pop quiz before we go?

Go ahead.

Let me hear your pop quiz.

In the first state visit in 2019, what did Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II serve to Donald Trump at the lunch?

Was it beef Wellington?

It was doughnuts.

All right, there you go.

Smart lady.

It wasn't quite a McDonald's, but it was as close to American fast food as she could get.

I'm sure he was wolfing them down.

Mulvaney told me a great story.

I know we got to go, but Mulvaney, the former chief says, told me a great story.

He was sitting next to somebody in Buckingham Palace at the dinner, and he's a big wine official.

I don't know.

He looked at the wine list.

Oh, this wine list is fantastic.

And the guy said, well, the queen looked at the wine list at the state dinner in Tokyo, and she said, well, I've got stuff in my cellar that'll blow the doors off these people.

And she brought out the big guns.

They were drinking 82 Lafitte, all this kind of stuff.

Unfortunately, that is wasted on the president who doesn't drink.

Yeah, the president doesn't drink, but trust me, his staff was guzzling away.

They will know, and they will tell him.

That was the good stuff, Mr.

President.

Okay, sign up, guys, for our next episode of the Reagan series.

If you'd like to listen to that, we'd love to have you join us.

It's therestispoliticsus.com to become a founding member.

And thank you, everybody, for listening.

We'll be back next week on Monday.

Can you call King Charles for me, Caddy?

Next time I come to the UK, I would like to have one of these

scaled-down red arrow fly pass.

Could you do that for me?

Charles, Your Majesty,

that's okay.

Antony can get that fly pass.

Great.

He'll be super happy.

Yeah.

And maybe he'll give us, he may give us a couple of Bitcoin.

Would that be good?

Okay, I'll do the deal.

And when we're reviewing the troops, okay, I promise not to step in front of them and break protocol.

I know.

And actually, and he and Deirdre will curtsy to the queen.

Okay, amen.

Of course, she will.

Thank you, Your Majesty.

Done.

See you next week, guys.

Thanks, guys.