If you just listen out, you can actually hear them screaming in
the embassy like this couldn't have dropped at a worse time for
him at the very moment that they've rolled out King Charles
to kind of help the special relationship.
And is it true that the American administration holds Israel
dearer to the heart than the UKI think it probably is the.
Only thing that Donald Trump really wants out of us, You
know, it's not even our air bases.
It is royalty. It is sleepovers in Windsor
Castle. Then you have to ask yourself,
Anushka, does any of that actually last?
Is there a half life here that is longer than a week?
Hello and welcome to Trump World.
I'm Matt Fry in London. And I'm Anushka Astana in
Washington, DC Today we are asking the question, is King
Charles our trump card? And if so, should we keep
playing him? Can he smooth over relations
between ourselves and the US? And then also, we've got some
exclusive polling in which we can drill down a little deeper
into what people here in America really make of Donald Trump
right now and make of our special relationship.
OK, before we get into all the other stuff we need to discuss,
and there's a lot of it this week, as there always is, The
British ambassador, Christian Turner in Washington, relatively
recent to the job after the demise of Peter Mandelson, has
said some things on on the record it seems that are really
quite surprising. And you could say, you know,
bombshells, diplomatic bombshells, especially given the
current visit by the king. Tell us more in Oshka.
I mean, you could say on the record, I don't think he thought
they were on the record. He was doing AQ and A with
students visiting Washington shortly after he arrived here in
Washington, DC And I think he probably thought he was talking
privately, let's be honest. And he certainly didn't expect
the comments to come out in the middle of the special
relationship. Two things are really
embarrassing in what he said. 1 is basically, it's clearly asked
about the special relationship and he's said we're not special
to the US. There's only one country that
the US has a special relationship with and that is
Israel. If you just listen out, you can
actually hear them screaming in the embassy like this couldn't
have dropped at a worse time for him at the very moment that
they've rolled out King Charles to kind of help the special
relationship. The other thing he said, which
is going to be really difficult for him, particularly with
Yvette Cooper on this trip as well, I wonder if they're
discussing it, is that, you know, Keir Starmer had been very
badly damaged by the Peter Mandelson scandal and that he
might be forced out after the, hey, elections.
Keir Starmer's probably looking thinking, who was the guy I just
appointed? Look, yeah.
Privately, do I think that they believe that our relationship is
not the special one to the Americans?
And is it true that, you know, the American administration
holds Israel dearer to the heart than the UKI think it probably
is. Although I should say I do think
particularly to Donald Trump, he has viewed the UK as
particularly special. I think on the right here in the
US, the UK relationship is almost more important than it is
to the left. And normally it's the Democrats
who you question if there's a special relationship with, which
is why I think Donald Trump is so angry with Keir Starmer
because he's like, how? How could the Brits do this to
me? And it's about soft power versus
hard power as well as it. I mean, on the soft power front,
you know, all the cuddly stuff, I think we definitely win.
Not that it gives us much, but I think we definitely win on the
hard power stuff. You know, Prime Minister
Netanyahu managed to bounce Donald Trump into a war against
his traditional foe, Iran. You know, we begged the
Americans to come on side in Suez in 1956, and they said
we're not interested. So I mean, you know, and you
could argue that this is, this is payback for that.
In reality, Matt, everything I go to, everything behind the
scenes, those of course are the type of conversations you're
hearing. And actually I was messaging,
you know, people get frustrated with journalists using anonymous
quotes. The problem we have is that
people don't want to say things on the record.
So if we want to tell our viewers what's really going on
or our listeners what's really going, we sometimes have to
portray and say what people are saying anonymously.
So that's how we kind of, you know, Christian Turner won't be
the only person who's hung a conversation about Kier Starmer
future behind the scenes. Every single member of the
cabinet is having that conversation.
A problem is putting it out in the public like this in the
middle of of this visit could not be more embarrassing of.
Course. But I mean, I guess it comes
back to what you were saying a few minutes ago.
He was speaking in front of a bunch of visiting school kids.
You know, don't ever say stuff in front of kids or students who
don't know about Chatham House rules.
I'm assuming they didn't. I mean, the German was speaking
in front of students just earlier this week where he let
RIP about Donald Trump and how he, you know, he started an
unnecessary war that the Americans never aren't going to
win and how the Iranians have got the upper hand.
This is the same Mercer at the beginning of the war was
actually quite positive towards what Trump had done.
And then of course, he and the Germans are very careful, you
know, to, to not to cross Israel in public in any shape or form.
So the health warning is don't talk to kids you know, off, you
know, in a when you think it's off the record because it won't
be off the record. What a shame, hey?
But right at this very moment, if I if I got this correctly,
Christian Turner is probably standing on the White House lawn
waiting for peace. Ceremonial welcome for the King
and Queen. Awkward.
Ox, as my kids would say. The White House is very excited
about the arrival of the King. So many people have told me how
much Donald Trump loves royalty to the extent that a very, very
senior member of his team told British teams who have been
organising this, that Windsor last year, the state visit was
the high point of his second term in his eyes.
So they're very excited. What senior figures in our
government were saying to me is they genuinely see King Charles
as the best diplomat that they have, that he really is their
secret weapon and that the relationship needs a bit of work
at the moment. You mean better than Yvette
Cooper, for instance, or a wonderful new ambassador in
Washington? I'm being, I'm being facetious
here, I think. I think what's really
interesting about, I mean, there are lots of things which I find
interesting about this strange visit.
First of all, the overarching irony that in a year in which
America is celebrating 250 years from turning its back on the
British monarchy on Mad King George the Third, you have a
president who is about as monarchical as any president has
ever been in terms of his behaviour, trying to ride
roughshod over over, you know, so many parts of the
Constitution, which was designed by the Founding Fathers to
prevent monarchy from resurfacing in the Republic.
It was all about the limitations and the divisions of powers and
his Donald Trump, who, especially in the second term,
doesn't really care too much about all that.
I find that rather ironic. I also find it ironic that in
terms of interior design, he really is channelling a monarchy
from a distant era, possibly a distant Galaxy.
I mean, all that fool's gold in the Oval Office, the big
beautiful ballroom, which of course, has now been given added
significance by the shooting in the other ballroom in the Hilton
Hotel, which has a terrible history when it comes to
political violence because that's where Ronald Reagan
almost died in 1982. But I think this whole thing,
this obsession with the monarchy, and I think for Trump,
it's personal. I think he genuinely believes
that he's best buddies with King Charles and he probably thought
that he was really close to the Queen and to to the late Queen.
And, you know, his mother who came from the island of Lewis
and Scotland was a huge royalist.
And when I interviewed him back in the day, he he he spent quite
a lot of time telling me about how much his mother loved the
royal family and therefore he loved them too.
But for us, I think for the, you know, for us on the island in
Britain, it is yet another example of the relative
limitations of our power. Because we kind of know that the
one thing, perhaps the only thing that Donald Trump really
wants out of us, you know, it's not even our air bases.
I mean, he needs them now, but he doesn't really want them.
It's not access to the NHS for for selling medicine.
It is royalty. It is sleepovers in Windsor
Castle. It is hosting the King and Queen
at the White House. And then you have to ask
yourself, Anushka, does any of that actually last?
Is there a half life here that is longer than a week?
Because the last visit went swimmingly in Windsor Castle,
even though they had to get rid of the ordinary people, the
subjects and have mainly beefeaters and maybe a couple
of, you know, exotic animals in the distance.
But after that it was, it was curtains for the special
relationship as people like to call it.
So do you think this will be any different?
Well, I think there is a inevitable shallowness about it
because just sending in the kind of pomp and ceremony doesn't
overcome the reason that there is a division.
And the reason that there is a division is a really substantive
policy point, which is we didn't agree with the president fully
on the Iran war, although it is worth saying.
And I think this is the frustration for all the hundreds
of people who work in the embassy over here.
Britain is actually doing almost everything that American America
has asked after the beginning of the war itself.
Obviously Keir Starmer for his own political, um, life support,
whatever you might call it, is, is giving out the rhetoric of
being quite anti war, saying we're only there defensively,
we're not there offensively, but essentially has given the
president almost everything he wants.
You know, much more so than, say, the Spanish Prime Minister.
And obviously, Pedro Sanchez has also been attacked by the
president. But I feel like there is a
special kind of ire for Kier Starmer.
Yeah. So I find it quite shallow, the
idea that the king can come here and smooth it over with all the
niceties. But as I say, we're not Privy to
those conversations behind the scenes.
But senior people in government say he really is genuinely an
amazing diplomat. I mean, in this visit, there are
parts of it which are designed to focus in on King Charles's
love of the environment. And I also would love to be a,
you know, be there to listen in, be a family on the wall, to
listen into their conversations about climate change.
Because actually, when you listen to Donald Trump, that's
one of the things that seems to irk him the most about the UK,
that we don't want to, you know, dig down for more oil and gas.
And we've got those windmills everywhere, which he hates.
So, yeah, I think that will be quite interesting.
And I would love to know how far the king actually takes it in
the background. I mean, just worth mentioning
one thing that kind of ties them is they've both been accused of
in different, very, very different ways, associations
with Jeffrey Epstein. For the king, it's obviously
removed and it's his brother, Andrew Mountbatten Windsor.
There has been a push, quite a big push in the run up to this
to try to get the king to meet survivors.
Very clear to me that officials were worried that that would be
the dominant issue this week. Buckingham Palace says they
can't he can't meet survivors because it could actually
prejudice the cases that are being looked at back home.
I mean, when somebody was telling me that, I was kind of
like, can you can you just explain the legal thinking
there? But that is their reasoning.
And on Saturday, there was a memorial for Virginia Geoffrey,
who obviously took her life last year very sadly, but when she
was alive, accused Andrew of sexual assault, something that
he has always denied. And so I was speaking to the
survivors who were gathered there.
And look, I think they would have liked to have met the king
and queen. I think in this visit there will
be a focus on domestic violence in the ways they think they can
do it. But it is very disappointing for
people. I mean, as part of the kind of
planning for this, I think there were conversations with senior
politicians, Ro Khanna in particular, the congressman
who's been really pushing this issue here on the Hill to try
and say the king can't do this basically, can you lay off?
I don't think he will lay off, but I do think it hasn't become
as big and a controversial an issue.
The the excuse that Buckingham Palace seems to have been taken
just about, although the survivors were saying to me they
do think it is a bit of an excuse and they would like the
King to push for a public inquiry in the UK.
One of the things that always struck me in this weird
relationship between Washington and London is that it can go
from one extreme to another quite quickly.
And fundamentally, I don't think this trip, and I may be wrong
here, and it may be the most brilliant speech he'll ever give
when he addresses the joint houses of Congress.
And it's certainly the most important.
I don't think fundamentally, whatever very elegant phrasing
he comes up with, he can really undo the damage of recent
months, which is so much more fundamental.
Yeah, although what people always say here to me is that
it's, you know, you can't deny that there's trouble at the top
between Trump and between Keir Starmer, but that every layer
below it is still kind of functioning as it was before.
Although, and I'll, I'll come to this, I think there is one layer
that is not functioning as well anymore, which is, you know,
Marco Rubio and Yvette Cooper are still talking behind the
scenes. And and you know, I can imagine
from what I've heard, the type of conversations that are taking
place, which is like, please, please just make Donald Trump be
nicer to Keir Starmer. Please.
Could you particularly layoff attacking the Royal Navy clues
in the name type of stuff. But interestingly, I had heard
until recently that the Pete Hegseth, John Healey, the D the
military link was also very strong.
But I've now heard rumblings that Pete Hagseth, and this
doesn't surprise me, from sitting in his press conferences
where he is so political and so angry with the press, and he's
so repeating the president's mantra on all of this, that that
relationship has broken down somewhat.
And that, he, Hagseth, is really buying into the whole naughty
Brits thing that's coming from the White House.
And if you look at 2 characters that you know that are as
diametrically opposed in terms of their body language, their
actual, you know, their verbal language and their attitude to
life, I'm sorry, John Healy and P Texas literally occupy the two
opposite spectrums of human existence, right?
And just on all the niceties there was, there was 1 moment
yesterday where the king and queen were arriving at the White
House. I was standing in the front of
the White House, actually standing on a box ready to go
live on Channel 4 News. And I was reading like, you
know, here's what they're doing 1st and they said they're
visiting the beehives. And I know this was a big story
that clearly has passed me by, but they were.
I didn't realise that Melania, the First Lady, has put a
beehive on the South Lawn shaped.
Like the White House? And as I was, as I was reading
where they were going to start, I saw a picture of it and I
started laughing so hard that I almost fell backwards off my
live spot just as I was about to go on air.
And then look, it's so bizarre working in this country, isn't
it? Like this comes on the backdrop
of a weekend which you couldn't make up.
I mean, the, you know, White House Correspondents Association
dinner, 2 1/2 thousand people, you know, most of the Cabinet
diplomats, loads and loads of journalists.
And obviously there was this shooting incident upstairs in
the Hilton Hotel. And then I find myself in the
White House briefing room watching the president in black
tie with half his cabinet, Caroline Levitt, the press
secretary, giving this press conference like an hour or so
later. It was just kind of so bizarre.
And then at one point he starts making the argument for the
ballroom. As our colleague Gracie Jerome
said to me, doesn't matter if we're talking about Iran, it
doesn't matter if we're talking about an assassination attempt.
He always manages to bring it back to the ballroom.
You know, the other thing he manages to bring it back to is
how attractive all the Secret Service agents looked.
And there was this. I mean, he's, you know, there
was this extraordinary moment. I was watching it, you know,
online. I wish I'd been in the room like
you, but I was watching online. And there was this thing where
he says, you know, these Secret Service agents, they were coming
out of everywhere. And they looked amazing in the
way they do their guns. And they were so attractive.
I mean, it's such a strange thing to focus on when your life
is supposedly in peril for the third time.
You know what really surprises me?
And I've been to, you know, half a dozen of these White House
Correspondents dinners and, you know, it's, it's, it's rubber
chicken and you push it across the plate.
But you do meet lots and lots of people, which is quite
interesting in this massive Boreham.
But what surprises me is that to get in to that event was the
heaviest security I've ever seen for any social event.
It was extraordinary. So how come this guy, the the
suspect you appeared in court on Monday, was able to kind of
check into the hotel a few days earlier with his armoury of
weapons, you know, without getting fleeced or searched?
I mean, you would have thought that, you know, everyone knew
what this hotel was hosting at the end of the week, that
there'll be some kind of check there.
I find it astonishing that this heavily secured country where
everyone, every second person that owns a weapon of war allows
these kind of, and there's so much secret services, you know,
everywhere in Washington, they allow these lapses to take
place. I find it astonishing, but
clearly, you know, the guy had done some of his homework and
realised that he might be able to get away with it.
I mean, big questions for Secret Service for how they operate.
I think probably more of the voices this time suggesting that
things went right in as much as he didn't get through that
barrier, unlike in Butler where, you know, the person had got
onto the roof. That said, talking to people
about the kind of way it was laid out, he didn't get very
far. Somebody, you know, senior
politician was saying to me last night, we were very lucky that
he tripped, um, as he was running through.
Um, so, yeah, serious questions about that, serious questions
about political violence. Um, I think we're going to come
on to talk about some exclusive polling we've got and also focus
group that we've all got done for us by public 1st and we'll
talk about some of the results. But one of the things just to
say, just listening right now to what people were saying, these
Trump voters from 2024, just to put things in perspective, one
of them said, yeah, I've not heard much about that shooting.
Don't think. I think there's only been one or
two stories about it. And it suddenly kind of occurred
to me that, you know, I'm not saying that most people might
will have heard about it quite well, but people consume news in
a kind of different way than they used to.
And some of them in large parts of America, you know, not
voraciously at all from what I was listening to.
From what I can gather, that's all they ran because it was a,
you know, the comics were involved.
I mean, Wolf Blitzer from CNN kind of appeared as the hero
because he, I think he was quite close.
He was closer to the shooting than most other correspondents
because he'd gone to the bathroom.
He'd gone to relieve himself. And on the way back, you know,
he was told to get down by one of the Secret Service agents.
And then I love the fact that in this, every single
correspondent, and there were hundreds of them of our ilk in
that room, immediately started not as filming feelings, but
doing a selfie or doing a little camera under the table.
And of course, we all love the guy, The New Yorker talent agent
who carried on sitting at the desk eating his barada, his
salad, maybe asking for some more salt.
And then there's the woman who was pictured, you know,
minesweeping the wide. I'd say I'm with her.
If you've survived that, you're allowed, you know, you're
allowed to take some of the booze that you've actually paid
for, you know, and these tickets are not cheap as you know.
But I love the fact that the, the the agent, I can't remember
his name, but the agent who sat down having his barrata salad
while everyone else was either climbing over tables or lying
underneath them and said that he couldn't get down because his
back is so bad. And had he got down, it would
have involved several Secret Service agents just to lift them
up to his feet again. So he just stayed there and
watched the whole proceeding, which I thought was I'd rather
cool. Speaking about the special
relationship, I saw someone post that how you reacted to the
woman taking the wine showed whether you're British or
American because British people were basically like legend.
So public first, who are a research company I've done work
with before have done two things for us.
They have run a poll, a kind of cross country poll
representative, but we can break it down by different groups so
we can look at what people are thinking.
Looked a little bit at the special relationship, which I
thought was kind of quite interesting.
You know, although lots of people still think the UK is one
of the America's greatest allies, or at least one of a
number, there are not insignificant minority who think
we're not important at all. And, you know, 1/3 of people
support criticism of Keir Starmer here in the US But the
stuff that I found really interesting was kind of like,
what do you think of the Trump presidency so far?
Now, overall, his approval ratings are pretty poor.
We talk about that quite a lot. 47% of people say their views
about Trump have got worse or much worse over the last year.
Only 25% say better. And 50% think the presidency has
fallen short of expectations. But when you break this down,
what you do see is there's still pretty high approval among
Republican voters. And there's particularly high
approval among people who are call themselves MAGA.
So, you know, for example, 23% of non MAGA Republicans say they
have a negative view of him, while just 4% of MAGA supporters
feel the same. So there is this split.
There are still lots of people who really like what Trump is
doing. And I just couldn't get a good,
couldn't believe this 20%, 20% of people think that he should
be able to run for a third term, even if it means changing the
Constitution. Now, many more say the opposite.
64% say not. But that is one in five people
who would like to see Trump run for a third term.
It rises to 37% if you just look at Trump's 2024 voters.
And the biggest reason they give for wanting that, Matt, is they
think he needs more time to deliver his MAGA vision.
And, you know, I've just been listening to a group, a focus
group of all Trump voters from 24 from around the country.
And it is just fascinating because they are so divided.
They all think that he is treated unfairly.
Some of them really think that actually, time will tell that
he's going to, you know, he's doing a good job here.
That said, I do think they were kind of unified on.
They don't really like his tone, they don't like the way he goes
about communicating things. And some of them were absolutely
furious and thought this second term was nowhere near as
positive as the first term. And the economy was the big
itchy for all of them. You know, it's fascinating what
you say about that, poll, Anushka.
And actually, some of it I think resonates with what I, you know,
discovered in in the first Trump administration, which is that
people, Republicans on the whole, didn't like his abrasive
language. They thought he had bad manners.
They wouldn't want him, you know, at their Thanksgiving
dinner table, You know, there was none of that stuff as, oh,
is he the kind of guy you'd like to deal with, which was always
one of the litmus tests for all previous presidents.
But they did like the fact that he took action, that he, you
know, that he leant forward into a problem, as, you know, you
might put it politely and and if you have to make that omelette
and break a few eggs and so be it.
But I think, I think maybe this time the disillusionment is
different because of the war of choice that he started.
I think that is something that really fundamentally rankled
with the MAGA base, like few things did when he was president
the first time. And by the way, astonishingly,
something like 2/3 of Republicans after the 2020
election agreed with him that the election had been stolen.
So I wondered my question to you is whether you could glean from
this poll or anything else for that matter, whether the base,
the MAGA base of supporters has swelled in number or is it still
that bedrock that we've always been talking about, which is
kind of roughly, you know, 30% or so?
I think it remains A bedrock and some parts of it, who are the
more purest ends of it, obviously are very upset about
the war in Iran because it very much feels like it's different
to what he said he was going to deliver.
But it has always been the case that his brilliance as a
politician, if that's the right word, in, in winning these two
elections was to bring together the rest of the Republicans to
do enough to bring them on board.
And, you know, when you look at the breakdown in the polls,
there are some issues which everyone really likes him for.
And in fact, that was the same when I was listening to the
focus group. I think that he's doing, you
know, good stuff on the southern border and stopping, you know,
illegal immigrants from coming across the border.
The problem he's got, particularly with the Iran war,
is everybody associates rising gas, petrol prices with the Iran
war and therefore with him. Even with Biden, who was blamed
for the economic hardship, you couldn't say Biden caused COVID.
I think you can quite safely say the Iran war wouldn't be
happening if it wasn't for Donald Trump.
And therefore the Strait of Hormuz wouldn't have been closed
in the way that it had been closed.
And that issue, the rising oil prices, was top of the list of
things that were worrying even, you know, MAGA supporters.
And so when I was listening to the focus group and people
really worried about the economy, even those who liked
him were basically saying affordability is such a big
issue right now. One of them who liked him on
everything else said, I just can't believe the tariffs
because they're really hitting me in terms of prices.
Just a couple of other comments. This lady, Judy said.
He's not the same president as he was for four years ago.
Something's changed. She didn't want to say that he
was losing it, but she's sort of leaning that way.
He's angry. I mean, he's dropping F bombs on
on social media, you know, the, the all the Jesus Christ stuff
picking if I were the Pope. I mean, I'm sorry, this is just
not what Americans do fundamentally, although, you
know, you might get shot dead, you know, on the for walking
down the wrong side of the street or whatever.
America remains, in my experience, a polite nation.
They don't like cuss words and he's used a hell of a lot of
them in public, so it's unpresidential.
And then the other thing, just on the issue of the Pope.
So we've put in questions on this, in particular, whether or
not the row with the Pope, Trump calling Pope Leo weak, Trump
portraying himself in that picture where he looked like
Jesus Christ, and then the Pope criticizing Trump over his tweet
where he suggested a civilization would die.
We asked people whether any of those three things had made them
feel more negative about Donald Trump.
Overall, 47 percent, 54% and 45% for each of the three of them
said yes. But even among those who voted
for Trump in 24, between one in five and a third of people found
those things had made them feel less good about the president.
And particular, in particular, that picture that he posted of
himself and then later deleted, saying I was just portraying
myself as a doctor that had gone down.
Very, very Bradley. I had dinner then last week in
London was some senior Republicans and what they all
said, and they wouldn't say this in public, but in private, what
they said is that the really toxic alchemy this time around
for Trump is a combination of the affordability crisis,
inflation, which he is not taking seriously enough, even
though it has been made worse by the war that he started.
In combination with all these vanity projects, which, you
know, just create these symbols of indulgence, you know, and
then the family as well, you know, making money on the side.
And, and then of course, all his rich mates.
And and by the way, while they're paying more of the pump,
his friends in Houston, TX who run oil companies are absolutely
minting it. I'm surprised the Democrats have
made more of a link between those oil executives who went to
see Donald Trump and Mar a Lago before the election and
basically promised him tons of money if he would further
deregulate the oil industry and what's happening at the moment
because of his war. But you take all those elements
together, ordinary guy gets hit at the pump.
Tick, tick, tick. This is this for me, would be
fertile territory for the Democrats.
And this for me, would be the Achilles heel for Trump, you
know, not just in the next year, but maybe in the next two years.
And it's worth saying, Republicans are seriously
worried. At the Garden Party, I was able
to speak to quite a few Republican Congress and
senators, and particularly for the House, they think they're
going to get really badly hit the midterms.
Senate What about the Senate? I think they still are hopeful
that there is a chance to hold on to the Senate.
And actually, it would take a lot for the Democrats to take
control, but they're worried about that as well.
You know, even the kind of most hawkish people on Iran who were
saying to me, we don't think there's any chance of a
negotiation. And we're clearly in his ear as
well and wanted to see more military action there.
We're still saying you kind of want to hit really hard and then
get out. It was also really interesting
to hear some of them talk about Trump's views on Vladimir Putin.
And there's clearly a bit of a push within the party to try and
persuade him that, you know, Putin's the bad guy, not
Zelensky, when it comes to Russia, Ukraine.
Well, Anushka, after all that, we still have, let's face it, a
special relationship. This is the most special special
relationship in the world of podcasts, and there's never
nothing. Whatever you say about me off
the record or on the record, nothing condemned that.
As Donald Trump once said in front of the king, special
doesn't even come. Doesn't even do it justice.
All right, on that note, as ever, from Trump world, from the
labyrinthine Trump world, in the middle of a royal visit, that's
it. See you next week.