365. Trump's Mafia World Order
en
January 29, 2025
TLDR: Discussion between Rory and Alastair about possible early signs of fascism in the US, impact of Trump on America's soft power worldwide, and Alastair's admiration for Prince Harry and his tabloid battles.

In the latest episode of The Rest Is Politics, Rory Stewart and Alastair Campbell delve into critical socio-political issues surrounding Donald Trump's regime, the implications for American soft power, and discussions on contemporary figures like Prince Harry.
Early Warning Signs of Fascism in the U.S.
The episode begins with a discussion on potential fascism in America, prompted by a report from the American Holocaust Museum outlining 14 early warning signs:
- Powerful and continuing nationalism
- Disdain for human rights
- Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
- Supremacy of the military
- Rampant sexism
- Controlled media
- Obsession with national security
- Religion intertwined with government
- Corporate power protected
- Labor power suppressed
- Disdain for intellectuals and the arts
- Obsession with crime and punishment
- Rampant cronyism and corruption
- Fraudulent elections
Stewart and Campbell suggest that the Trump administration exhibits several of these characteristics, implying a shift towards authoritarianism.
Trump’s Unique Challenges and Comparisons to Historical Fascism
As the hosts analyze Trump's leadership style, they debate whether labeling him a fascist is accurate or oversimplistic. Campbell argues:
- Trump shares traits with historical fascists but possesses unique aspects that could differentiate him, such as utilizing social media to manipulate public perception.
- The hosts discuss Trump's authoritarian tendencies, asserting he undermines democratic principles and adjusts international relations to serve personal interests.
They also touch on comparisons with past authoritarian regimes, suggesting that Trump's actions could lead to parallels with the ideologies of Mussolini and Hitler.
The Fragility of American Soft Power
Key Points:
- Trump's presidency has purportedly dealt a blow to America's global soft power, contributing to global instability.
- The hosts discuss the implications of potential international military actions, including controversial suggestions about acquiring Greenland and altering how the U.S. approaches international assistance.
- Several actions taken by Trump are perceived as undermining cooperative international relationships, leading to a detrimental shift in how the U.S. is viewed globally.
Prince Harry vs. The Tabloids
In juxtaposition to political discussions, Campbell shares his admiration for Prince Harry and his willingness to battle against media scrutiny and intrusive practices. Key takeaways:
- Prince Harry's legal battles against tabloids showcase a fight against unethical media practices, which has wider implications for freedom of the press.
- The episode draws attention to a broader cultural shift where high-profile individuals challenge systemic media abuse, as exemplified by Prince Harry’s lawsuit against unlawful phone tapping, leading to significant settlements for damages.
Conclusion
This episode of The Rest Is Politics delivers critical insights into the evolving political landscape in the United States under Trump’s influence and reflects on personal freedoms in an age dominated by media. Through intriguing discussions, Stewart and Campbell encourage listeners to contemplate the ramifications of authoritarian leadership and the media's evolving role in democracy.
Key Takeaways:
- The U.S. may be experiencing troubling signs indicative of authoritarianism.
- Trump’s unique approach has the potential to reshape international norms.
- Celebrities like Prince Harry demonstrate that pushing back against media excesses is possible, advocating for personal privacy and public accountability.
Overall, the episode provides audiences with an engaging exploration of political authority and the media's influence over public life, culminating in a call for vigilance against authoritarian tendencies in any form.
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Welcome to the rest of his polities when we ask to Campbell. And me, Rory Schutner, a quick apology to listeners. This is being done from Geneva Airport in Switzerland. So if there's clinking in the background, that's because we've gone really gorilla here. We're trying to record from an airport lounge before my plane boards. And you've got an amazing yellow background behind you.
You've got a Lib Dem head quarters. No, I'm not a Lib Dem head quarters, although I'm pleased that the Lib Dems are finally starting to talk a little bit more about Brexit, and we'll see whether the others follow suit. I guess Lib Dem headquarters presumably would have like bungee ropes and special kind of climbing paddling stuff. They'll have a paddling pool, that sort of stuff. No, let's get serious. We're going to devote most of this episode.
to talking about the £300 gorilla, Donald J. Trump. We're also going to talk about Prince Harry and his battle with the press. And just before I was arriving, I'm actually in an office and on the way up, all the televisions were showing the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I just saw your friend, the king, making a speech. So I actually think that today is a good day to start to assess the extent to which
we actually think that there's a note of fascism in the United States. And as a starting point, Rory, can I just read to you, if you go to the American Holocaust Museum in Washington, there is a yellowing, thinning paper that hangs on the wall, and the headline is the early warning signs of fascism. And as I go through them, can I ask you and our listeners and viewers just to sort of maybe give Marx out of 10,
for the extent to which you might think that we're seeing these early warning signs in relation to what's happening in the States. Number one, powerful and continuing nationalism. Very good. Number two, disdain for human rights. Number three, identification of enemies as a unifying cause. Number four, supremacy of the military.
Number five, rampant sexism. Number six, controlled media. Number seven, obsession with national security. Number eight, religion and government intertwined. Number nine, corporate power protected. Number 10, labor power suppressed. Number 11, disdain for intellectuals and the arts. Number 12, obsession with crime and punishment. 13, rampant cronyism and corruption. 14, fraudulent elections.
Okay, let me just quickly try to get into this because it's obviously, you know, the million dollar questions, whether it's fair to describe Trump as a fascist or not, whether it helps to describe him as a fascist or whether he's something quite unique. I'm actually about to argue a bit later on this that there are bits of him that actually have quite unique that aren't really like the 1920s or 1930s at all. Oh, yeah. But but I guess the obvious things that seem to be there are the beginnings of real
authoritarian leadership, edges of violence and militarism, mass mobilization propaganda. One of the things that might be interesting is this fascist, particularly Mussolini, and to some extent Hitler, although I noticed on Twitter people very keen to say Hitler's not a fascist and they
Quite a lot of the people who are real musk fans are real experts on the the newest micro details of the differences between fascism and art system, and particularly on uniforms and salutes. I got this extraordinary thing where people were like, no, no, no, that's not exactly a Roman salute. The angle slightly off.
and you got to hold your hand at this angle. Anyway, certainly for the Italian fascists who began all this stuff over a hundred years ago, there was a sort of third-way corporatism, wasn't that kind of halfway between capitalism and communism, and the beginnings of this sort of creation of a different kind of economic structure. Where are you on this? I mean, do you put Franco, Spain, Salazar's Portugal in this kind of category? Kind of phenomenon of the 30s, isn't it? 30s and 40s.
It is, but the reason why I've said to you before, I did an interview with Tony Blair for GQ a while back. This is in Trump's first term. And I said, aren't you worried about the parallels with the 30s? And Tony said, I don't be so ridiculous. Trump's not here. The Trump's not starting. But I think if I go down through those 14,
I give him very high marks on the 1st 13, and I think I would give him very high marks on the 14th, which is fraudulent elections, not for the ones that he says are fraudulent, the one that he had lost but says he won, which in its own way is a way of, you know, is fraudulent election. But the talk already beginning that maybe the next election, will it actually happen in the same way? Will they change the rules? Will he try to subvert the Constitution?
and so forth. And I've just been, I'm going to use the Tory word again, rereading, because I read it and proved to give a quote for the cover, an extraordinary book, which is just coming out, I think this week, the Nazi mind by the historian Lawrence Reese. And it's about, you know, like some of his other books, the rise of Nazism and the rise of fascism in pre-war Europe. But honestly, you cannot read it.
And I read it first time before Trump won, and I'm now reading it second time after his won. You can't read it without thinking that, oh, that just happened. And it's the little things, it's the little things that build up and develop. And suddenly they're normalized. And suddenly there was a wonderful phrase that I saw from somebody quoted in one of the American papers yesterday.
talking about this voluntary obedience from people who used to be critics. You're seeing it in the media, you're seeing it in academia, you're seeing it with some of the public figures. They're just sort of thinking, oh, I can't get on the wrong side of it. And that sort of, I think, leads the way for this. I think one of the things that makes the big question with the difference between, I guess, classic far-right authoritarian movements and fascism is the desire for a total transformation of politics, economics, society. And that's where,
for the fascists in the 20s and 30s, that's where the paramilitaries come in, that's where the big corporations come in. And that's where I guess the interesting thing is the ambitions of this new Trump and how very different Trump feels in 2025 to how he felt in 2017. We talked a little bit about this when we were together in Switzerland, right?
So, the obvious things we started with, which we could see before he came in, but there's so much I certainly missed, and I wasn't expecting about these executives. Before he came in, we could see one big difference, right? One big difference that was obvious to us is that,
We've lost a lot of the central, powerful, progressive, liberal leaders in Europe that balanced him in 2017, Angela Merkel's gone, Macron in 2017. Yeah, and if you go through, let's just go through some of the things. So first time round,
in his first term, you know, it's just felt chaotic at the start. Today, I quoted when we talked to Scaramichia the day for the livestream, I quoted this journalist that I've met out in Davos who said he's looking ahead to the next four years with utter exhaustion, because if it's like this,
these first few days, and just go through them and ask yourself whether using any previous president would have done this. So, for example, take the TikTok decision alone. In doing what he's done, he's defined both bipartisan congress decision and the Supreme Court. Would previous presidents have done that? Not sure. Just remind us what the TikTok decision was for lessons.
Essentially, not least because Trump had been calling for it, the Americans decided that TikTok, because of its role in Chinese economic espionage and so forth, that it was effectively to be banned. And he says, no, we're going to get it. And that's presumably partly because TikTok was very helpful in his election. And now he's thinking about whether one of his friends, one of his tech companies, might be able to take it over.
Exactly, exactly. Then you have the stuff like withdrawing the security detail for people who are under serious death threats, John Bolton, Fauci, Pompeo, etc. I'm not sure a previous presence would have done that. The DEI stuff where every government department is being told, not merely the DEI stuff has to go, but if anybody says anything,
that goes against that, complains about and so forth. They will, quote, face adverse consequences, firing the inspectors general, which is illegal. Just again, to explain this, like the national audit office in Britain, these are like the internal auditors for different American government departments were there to try to keep the finances straight.
Well, they're there specifically to guard against abuse, waste and corruption. And the law says that if for any of them to be appointed or sacked, Congress must be consulted, no decision within 30 days. Now, Lindsey Graham, very prominent Republican, was interviewed on CNN yesterday. But look, the law says that. So he's broken the law, yes. And he just goes, well, yeah, but
You know, we're into, it's okay to break that. Well, yeah, but, and then he justified it. Same as Kevin McCarthy did when we talked to him in Davos. Let me throw in a few of my own additions, because it's so difficult following up. Absolutely. Of course, there are many people who, of course, think we suffer from Trump derangement syndrome and are just entirely hysterical and he can't be quite as bad as we make out.
So let's try to be quite straightforward about pointing out what he's actually done. So, for example, people will be aware that he put out a message on, I think initially, on truth, social telegram, which later ended up on Twitter, where he said that Canada should be the 51st state, America should reacquire the Panama Canal, and that Greenland should become part of the United States.
Now, when that happened, people imagined before the election that this was a bit of sort of bravado and humor. He then called the Danish Prime Minister and in a 15 minute call insisted that Denmark handover agreement. And when the Danish Prime Minister said,
Essentially, you've got to be joking. It's up to the people of Greenland that they want to be part of the United States. He offered money and appeared to be threatening military force. Now, this is something very interesting. And I just want to focus on it. I mean, I could look at a couple of other things and I'd like to move on to them in a second, you know, the cutting of all U.S. international development assistance immediately.
And we talk about that a little bit, and we can talk about his announcement that he's wishes to ethnically cleanse Garza, remove every single Palestinian from Garza, and move into Jordan Eddy's ship. I also want to talk about his silencing of the organization, which releases data on things like bird flu, and down the line, should there be such a thing, a pandemic?
absolutely, and then maybe we can talk about the pardoning of the January 6th rioters and who they are and how many of them are and what some of these people did, and why putting them back on the streets may be a bit dangerous. But let's just focus on Greenland, for example. What struck me most about Greenland, which we honestly, I don't think have seen in more than 2000 years,
of Western history, a ruler doing something like that without pretending to have any legal or ethical justification. Even the Roman emperors, when they went around trying to acquire territory, claimed they were doing it for some kind of reason and tried to get senatorial consent.
The British Empire, at its very worst, always said that it was doing it because, you know, one of their consoles had been threatened or they were defending indigenous people or there was some interest to trade. Even Hitler, right? I mean, this is what's so weird. Hitler did not feel that he could invade Russia and Poland without staging an attack against his troops, claiming that he was acting in self-defense, right? Yeah. So this represents a very, very new culture. I'm sort of interested in
what is it about the modern world, about the world that's been created by social media, by mass communications, by total cynicism and disillusionment, that means that you can now just say, excuse me, I'm going to help myself to territory from a friendly, neighboring ally. And I'm not even going to pretend that the rights of the Greenlanders are being oppressed or that America has a legal trust. When the English kings invaded France, they at least did so claiming that they were the rightful kings of France and they would descend it from San
This is a different universe. Also, you said in your preamble that he said it during the election. But actually, on this one, he didn't say it during the election. He has no mandate for this whatsoever. This came out of a clear blue sky after the election. And you say, what does it say about the world and how that world has developed? What it says about the world
is that people like Trump, Putin, Xi Jinping, probably Modi as well, basically see the world now as chunks. And you have this bit, and I have that bit, and let's see how we can work things out. And let me say, by the way, every day, and I met in Davos, I've told this, and also, I've been talking to people in the Danish government as well, and I've given them a very good idea. Can I tell you my idea?
You basically say, do you know about a Zen pick and we go over the empty obesity medication, right? 90% of we go over goes to America. 66% of those epic sales go to America. And this is a company that is the biggest company in Europe. So what we're going to say is Donald,
Looking at your slim line version, because he's lost about 30 pounds, you're clearly on this stuff. Let me just tell you, you're going to have to get on the black market from now, because we're going to stop all sales of a sempic and we go V to America. And then you think all these guys are serious. What do you think of my idea? Well, it's beautiful. It's beautiful. Can I just develop this one stage further? It's extremely unlikely, but it's not impossible that Trump
begins to tie too much of his ego to the statement. He's not backing down. After this call with the Danish Prime Minister, he did a full press conference reasserting that Greenland should be part of the United States and that he's going to get it. Keep saying he's going to get it. So it doesn't seem to me impossible that he begins to use economic sanctions to make this happen.
Now, what happens? What happens if you actually ended up with a US president who started saying, actually, we're going to help ourselves to green them. And of course, you can begin to see it from the MAGA, the Deep MAGA crowd on my Twitter feed. And now people saying, yeah, they can't do anything about it. We've got the greatest military in the world. We'll just walk in and we'll take it. It's 56,000 people will just help ourselves to green them. I mean, while Xi Jinping thinks,
Well, you take Greenland. We'll take Taiwan. We're going to do that in trouble. So yeah, fair play. And sorry to defend Xi Jinping, right? He has much more right to Taiwan than Donald Trump has to Greenland, right? And at least Xi Jinping and Putin are pretending to have legal reasons, historical reasons for what they're doing, right? So what would actually happen if the US landed troops on Greenland?
I honestly don't know. Well, they've got troops. They've got a base there now, haven't they? If they sort of took it by military force, I just don't know what would happen. I mean, for a start, where does that leave us on Article 5? Article 5 of the NATO Constitution is an attack on one is an attack on all. Right. Denmark is an NATO member. And the reason I'm pushing it, I mean, I'm being a bit silly because I don't think that's likely to happen. But the reason I'm pushing it is I'm just trying to get people to sink.
about how even these kinds of threats and behaviour is now pulling at the most fundamental threads the international system. If you follow that logically to its conclusion, Europe would feel forced to respond. Denmark might even try to fight. Troops might be deployed to try to support Denmark.
And the reason why this is worth saying is that for 70 or 80 years, America has built an international system. It's built international institutions. It created NATO. It created the World Bank, the IMF.
helps to set up the United Nations. It's done these enormous military assistance programs worldwide. It's got bases in over a hundred countries. It has made everything interoperable. So the British military, the French military, can't operate without the US military. When we go into Libya, we need the US. The reason why NATO couldn't stay in Afghanistan when 2,500 American troops were removed is because various vital bits of the whole war fighting machine only America can really do. We can't really operate them.
With countries like Jordan, they have signed 10 billion, 10,000 million dollar aid contributions with six year promises and Jordan has signed up to being part of American security architecture because for 50, 60 years they've been able to depend on and at no point in the last 78 years.
Has America tried to use these things for extortion? When they have shifted changes, they've done it with consultation. They've done it quite slowly. They've done it quite predictably. And they've usually done it in a way that countries can understand. It's been about democracy. It's been about human rights. It's been about American enemies. You can sort of understand over 78 years what the American values were, whether you like them or not. They remained pretty constant between different bipartisan people.
and you didn't feel that you were taking an incredible risk integrating your military with the American military or taking $10 billion of international aid over six years and basing your whole budget on it until now. But if you think about the way that this let's just take it back to Denmark and Fredericks and the Prime Minister, the tone of what's emerged of that conversation of the politics around it is basically it's less diplomacy and it's more kind of mafiosa stuff. It's like, look, Meta, we can do this nicely.
Or we can do this in a way that's going to be really, really difficult. That's your prerogative. Do you want to get hurt? Or do you want to do it nicely? And that's the tone of this. And by the way, the other thing, which has got next to no coverage at all that I've seen, the Department of Homeland Security has put a pause on the programs which allowed immigrants to settle temporarily, including Ukrainians, 10 to 15,000 Afghans who have already been vetted
and approved for immigration to the United States have been blocked, including some who were blocked as they arrived at the airport to leave the other day, right? That's Afghanistan. People who worked for the Americans. Let me just spell out what's happening now with USAID. So the American government gives about $40 billion here, $40,000 million a year in overseas assistance.
25.6 billion through USAID. On Friday, I got a flurry of emails from all the NGOs that I'm associated with or partnering with around the world, because they had all received a message from USAID saying,
all funding stops now, stop your programs. These are NGOs who have contracts with the American government signed contracts. So let's say you're operating in the Congo and you're doing vaccination, you've hired a lot of staff, you've bought your vaccines, you're rolling out your vaccination program, stop. And when people tried to ask questions, there was the most extraordinary email that came back from USAID and I'm just going to read it to you because I think it's
quite a good way maybe of illustrating what must be happening inside the US government at the moment. This is an email from USAID. Dear Grantee, just imagine writing this as a civil servant. We are aware that you may have questions about how the executive order on foreign aid will impact your grant.
At this time, we are coordinating internally while waiting for formal guidance on how to interpret the new executive order on foreign assistance funding. We appreciate your patience and we'll be in touch as soon as we have more information. Now, if you're the Jordanian government, this is your entire education budget, health budget, it's all gone on budget and the money's been stopped on a dime.
So your government basically is bankrupt and can't deliver services. Now, the US government gets to do this once and only once. What Trump has done is one of the great scams of all time. You become a monopoly provider. You insert yourself into the middle of everybody else's military, political and economic system. And then you say, I've got you over the barrel. Give me everything you want. What does that mean? You can't do it again. Nobody's going to let America integrate and their political economic and military systems in the same way in the future.
because they've seen it. It would be like if somebody turned up in your house, said, I'm going to take responsibility for all your heating, electricity, broadband services, children's education, and then turned up and said, by the way, I'm providing all that, I'm going to extort you for, you know, $200,000. Well, you might pay up once, but you're going to get another provider in the future. What do you think this does for soft power? Do they care about soft power anymore? Because I know historically,
the Americans have really liked this idea that they're sort of top of the global soft power. It's usually us and the Americans that are up there. This is gonna damage them so much, but it's so deliberate. And then the other thing that happened yesterday, which the Trump people will say, well, that's good because it shows how strength works. Two planes set off full of Columbians, nationals who are being deported from the United States and the president of Columbia refuses to allow them to land.
Trump immediately announces, immediately, 25% tariffs, 50% in 24 hours, if you haven't reversed the decision, they reversed the decision. So what it shows is that bullying, if you like, works. However, it will also upend whatever positive relationship there is between Colombia and the United States, which actually the previous administration had worked pretty hard to try to repair.
So, this is a sort of deliberate, let's just, everybody's an enemy, we go after everybody, right now he'll be thinking, this is working, I'm getting my way on everything. But there'll come a point where I think there's just backfires. Exactly. I mean, so he can in the short term get his way on anything, because at the recent partly I guess that all previous leaders pretended to have
ethical and legal justification before they did things is that, you know, if you were hit by going to the Czech Republic, you didn't want Britain and France to go against you. So you invented some legal justification to try to give you a bit of cover and hope that some of the people in that country might support you, right? You also wanted legitimacy in the country you went into. So there were a whole series of reasons why you did this stuff. America is now a superpower so enormous that it's not like any of these other powers that had to worry
in the same way about allies and about local populations. America's military is, as I said, so indispensable and enormous. But again, if he starts using American military bases as blackmail, so he started a bit of this in the last administration, you've put a big US military base in some country in the Middle East.
And you say to that country, thank you very much, you're now going to start paying for my base. You create a whole NATO system which involves selling quite a lot of American weapons. Let me give you that as an example. So when I was the chair of the House of Commerce Defense Select Committee,
One of the most fashionable things to say in those days was, well, why don't we just buy American instead of spending all this time developing our own weapons with VA systems wasting a colossal amount of money. There are these cheap American tanks through these cheap American rifles. They make them at scale. Let's just buy American. Now you wouldn't look so smart, right? Because Trump might well turn around and say, oh,
Excuse me, yeah, you've got the weapons, but if you want any resupply, if you want any of the software updates, if you want any of the missiles, you're going to start paying us four times as much as you were before. And by the way, if you don't use the weapons in exactly the way that we want, we're going to stop spying and we can cripple them.
So all these American systems that they provide, we saw it in Afghanistan. Turned out that none of the American helicopters or planes that they provided the Afghan army could fly without American consultants and contractors doing software updates daily. And as soon as they removed them, they're crippled. Let me take you to another area where I've been actually talking to people in the protective health sector. And again, I think this is something that people should be really, really concerned about. This is one of his executive orders. He got a nice to know coverage at all.
a freeze at the National Institute of Health on Meetings, Travel, Communication and Hiring.
while they quote review protocols. Executive orders also halting publication of regulation and guidance documents issued by bodies including the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Centers for Medicare, Medicaid Services and the Food and Drug Administration. Now it says that the pause will be temporary, but meanwhile, the people who are in these organizations, one of which I spoke to, says that the whole thing is at an absolutely chilling effect and that for the first week
In something like 64 years, something called the morbidity and mortality weekly report. This is something that goes out every week and has them for 64 years and it explains with real life data.
health risks to the American people. This week, it did not go out. And the thinking is, two things. One, he wants to show them that they can be muzzled whenever he wants them to be muzzled. And secondly, he wants to make sure that if there's bad news coming out about health and what have you, the White House can be in complete control of it. I've got another email, this I think is chilling as well. I mentioned NASA.
when we talked about this with the mooch. And do you want to know the name of the email and the address that you have to send to if you see somebody who is not going along with this new DEI initiative to basically get it out? It's called DEIATruth at opm.gov.
And it says, there will be no adverse consequence for timely reporting of this information. However, any failure to report such information within 10 days may result in adverse consequences. In other words, if you hear somebody saying, well, this fucking DEI stuff, you can bollocks that. I'm not going to get engaged. You're sitting at the next desk. You have got to tell truth at opm.gov that your neighbor in the office, I mean, it's positively Orwellian, the whole thing.
Let me come back on. I know I'm being boring on international aid. No, no, it's not boring. I'm sort of still struggling to get the scale of it. Let me just say why I don't think it's boring, why I think you're right to come back on it. If I remember rightly when we were going to the big, big, big players on aid and development were America, the UK, Germany and Japan.
Yes. And America the biggest of all. And in virtually every country in the world, particularly the poorer countries, organizations that were keeping people alive and that were making systems kind of vaguely work, suddenly overnight have the plug pulled. That is really serious. Exactly. So we're in a situation in which the number of people living in extreme poverty in Africa has gone from about
170 million in 1980 to about 430 million today. We have an incredible number of refugees, displaced people, places like Sudan, Somalia, South Sudan, face these repeated droughts and humanitarian catastrophes. And what's happened by stopping it, and again, they're claiming they're just stopping for a review, is that you are stopping programs now in 100 countries. USID has programs in 100 countries.
and they have dozens of programs in each of those countries.
thousands, tens of thousands of programs have just ground to a halt overnight. And that's everything from vaccination, nutrition, training for young children, health care. And none of the countries know what's happening. So you saw Zelensky saying, Oh, as far as I'm concerned, I'm still getting assistance in the United States. Well, it doesn't look like it. On the list at the moment, the clarification is exempting only Israel and Egypt.
from the total cessation of aid. Now, this idea that they're going to review it. How are they going to get around for reviewing thousands upon thousands of USAID programs? How long is it going to take them? What are they going to restart? What are the judgments they're applying as well? And then what happens to these institutions? So many of these institutions, if you look at the big NGOs, they're often 40, 50% dependent on
USAID for all their work. Now, there's a lot wrong with the international development system. I was a sector state for international development. I've run NGOs. There is so much nonsense in the development system. But the way to do it, of course, would be to set clear targets.
address future contracts, not existing contracts, and provide a very, very detailed, rigorous way of shifting the strategy of USAID. But stopping all existing contracts and stopping on-budget payments, the US government went away from USAID giving money to NGOs to other things, to saying, okay, we will support the Jordanian government budget on health and education. Stop that.
you're stopping the government providing its own services to its people. Of course, anyone listening to me who's on the Trump side is like, yeah, well, that's their fault. Why were they relying on American money anyway? Well, sure as hell, they ain't going to be relying on American money in the future. And all the soft power and all the influence that America's built up over 70, 80 years, because remember,
Jordan isn't just in the way that Trump thinks some sort of neutral recipient of American aid. They have been the key American security partner in the region for decades. There's American troops on the grounds, American bases. Jordan took a million refugees out of Syria. Jordan was vital for balancing ISIS. Jordan is vital for the security of Israel, toppling Jordan.
It's not just, oh, well, we were giving the money and bugger it will have our money back. It's toppling your entire system. Do you know what I find most alarming at the moment? There was a single column on the front page of the Times today about a survey of the extent to which around the place, including the UK. I think it said that half of Gen Z young men actually think there would be no harm in us having a dictatorship in the UK. This is what this thing is doing. And this is why, you know, we talked about this to some people in Davos, the left or the progressives.
have got to get their act together in understanding this is an international, this is the culmination of an international campaign that has been going on for many, many years. And they are now absolutely on the rampage. Listen, let's take a quick break. When we come back, Kia Starmer's first call with Donald Trump happened last night. And I also watched, so that you didn't have to, I watched Elon Musk speaking to the alternative, the Toichlan rally in Germany. Great. Look forward to it.
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Welcome back to the rest of the politics with me Rory Stewart and me as Campbell and Roy, I love the fact that you're whispering. Is that because there's lots of people pouring coffee and clinking their glasses and yeah, I think slightly embarrassed. Are you in the business class lounge? Yeah, I managed to get into the business class. There are all these people trying to get their beers and get their coffees going.
OK, tell us about the call with Kia Summer. And can I just sort of preface? I mean, I sent you that thing on the first 20 calls made by Marco Rubio, and it was absolutely staggering. Is there a single European in there? Basically, no Europeans on the list, EU not on the list, UK not on the list, India number one, and then a lot of other countries who you would not have thought were their top priorities.
Yeah, yeah. Well, Marco Rubio is definitely going to be going big. I think his first big visit is going to be to Latin America. Trump said when he was on the plane back from Las Vegas that he thought his first visit would either be to the UK or Saudi. But they had a call yesterday and the readout, certainly the readout from the British end was very, very sort of warm. And there were certainly no threats to take the Hebrides or to rename the English channel, the American channel. There was none of that stuff going on.
But I think that being said, you know, the government is really going to have some big, big, big choices to make. And I do think this is happening at a time when the Europe debate is changing. And of course, if you speak to the pro-Brexit people, say, well, look at Europe, it's a complete bloody mess, et cetera, et cetera. Well, it's not a complete mess, but certainly it's got a lot of problems. And you and I, when we're in Davos, we heard from a lot of the American, the big American people in particular,
almost contempt for Europe, and I think that's about because Europe still wants to have a rules-based order. But I think that there's no way that a Labour government in the UK, as it were, can ride on the ideological coattails of somebody like Trump. So it's really going to be quite difficult to navigate this. But what I would say from the tone of that call
is that you got the sense that Trump is looking to have a decent relationship, which sits very, very oddly with this kind of Elon Musk obsession. That was something I did pick up on that was because I was talking to people who, as part of this kind of new Republican,
deep and dark maga movement. And they were saying they would be very, very anxious if they were the UK because a story has developed, which Elon Musk has been obviously peddling, which is that the UK has basically been taken over by Islamists. It's become a kind of Islamic state. And you can see people on Silicon Valley saying to you, Oh my goodness, poor you, you live in the United Kingdom. Are you okay? Are you safe? You have Jordan Peterson giving this extraordinary and few appears Morgan where he's just like,
What's happened to your country? The whole thing's gone to heaven and hand-basket. He was one of the people, by the way, named in this survey of young men, and he and Andrew Tate were named as role models and what have you. This thing is kind of off-the-scale mad, but it needs a proper fight against it. These people have just been allowed to kind of dominate the airwaves, dominate the intellectual debate,
And it's so dishonest. I mean, Jordan Peterson, I mean, began as an academic, began with his first book, you know, it was a slightly match show. And he used to come and give talks in Britain, which are most the earnest young men listening to him. But, you know, he talked about God and religion and truth and
And my goodness, by the time you see him on Piers Morgan, he doesn't care really about getting his facts right, doesn't care about putting things in context, doesn't care about proportion, doesn't care about pointing out who's been prosecuted or who hasn't when these particular rapes have happened. If you end up being one of these big, big names on the kind of ideological right and this opinion-forming attention economy, it is big, big, big business. You become very wealthy, you become pretty powerful.
Do you want to hear what Musk had to say to the AFD? Yes, okay, so quick reminder for people again, AFD, right wing party in Germany that did surprisingly well in the elections in Turingia and Saxony, Turingia, okay, first. And this matters because the far sides in Austria now dominate Austria and Germany is about to go into an election. And at this particular moment,
Elon Musk has decided not to get behind the conventional sort of equivalent to the Tories, not even behind the equivalent of Nigel Farage, but to go much further out. Remember, he's the guy who supports Tommy Robinson and wants him. He sees him as a prisoner of conscience. Tommy Robinson being this kind of hooligan.
football loon that's on 30 years of football support of a kind of crazy is the most conspiracy theory on repent and propagandists and he's now gone for the active mask is now trying to promote the fd in Germany interviewed their leader and has now appeared on the stage over to you for what he said.
Well, he appeared with this massive enormous hall with four and a half thousand people in it. Alice Vidal, the Chancellor candidate, introduced him. And it was this huge, just his face was about 60 feet tall. And he did his usual kind of slightly geeky, couldn't quite get his words together and what have you. But it was straight on pro-AFD propaganda.
AFD is the best hope for Germany. It's okay to be proud to be German, be proud of your cultural values. If you lose everything in multiculturalism, it dilutes everything, we mustn't become one big soup.
You're an ancient nation, you go about thousands of years. Julius Caesar, he said, his account of meeting the German tribes, how strong and powerful they were. And then he said, you've got to move beyond past guilt. You shouldn't have to live and carry the guilt of your grandparents. Be excited for the future, preserve German culture, protect German people. And then he had to dig at Brussels, which I suspect, I think this is about Brussels. Brussels, as I said earlier, rules-based, online, looking at the regulation of social media companies.
Same as Trump in his speech, he said, I like the member states, but he deliberately didn't say Europe. He ended it just by saying, I hope the AFD do well. I hope Alice Vidal becomes Chancellor. I mean, what the fuck does he know about Alice Vidal? That would be very good for Germany. I strongly support the AFD. And then he just went, go!
It's extraordinary. I mean, we talked about fascism at the beginning. I think the guy who really is a proper authoritarian fascist or emerging as such is Musk. I mean, the recklessness now of this man, that stuff that you've just talked about where he says, you know, every country needs to have its own culture, connects directly with this ethnic pluralism phrase, which all of far right in Europe use. And ethnic pluralism, as I said a couple weeks ago, is this theory that
Germany is only supposed to have a limited number of people from other countries. I think they've calculated they're supposed to have exactly 600 Afghans and no more. And I think pluralism, and because it's got its word, pluralism sounds quite liberal. It's not at all. It's the justification, what Musk is saying out there is the justification for this remigration. It's justification for saying German and Austrian citizens who happen not to be ethnically white.
should move out of the country because they come from an alien religion. They haven't assimilated properly. And the most worrying thing of all, I saw into a Jewish friend who was like, well, it's fine. You know, they're only going after the people who aren't making a real effort to assimilate and who are wearing funny clothes and are going to mask too much. Of course, this is very, very dangerous because of course, this was indeed what people said in the 1930s. Oh, you know, maybe they're just going to go after the Jews who aren't assimilating properly.
This is why I refer to Laurence's book, The Nazi Mind. It's got this vibe of, ah, it'll be fine. Don't stop going on about it. Stop worrying too much. And you've still got lots of people thinking, oh, well, at least he's strong. At least he's funny. He gets stuff done, all this stuff. I mean, all he's done so far is sign a lot of executive orders, created a lot of noise. The one thing I really do worry about is the point that the Mooch made on our live stream is that
you know, the descent just seems to be kind of a bit weak. It'll come, it'll come, but you know, honestly. One of the things that's also special in this new situation, which wasn't so true in 2017, is that young men in particular, and this is this is famously, so this task I've given you for the year is our kind of envoy to young men, right?
Yes or no? I'm on the case, don't worry. I'm reading about little else. What are the key points about them? Is they're completely obsessed at the moment with anti-heroes and the idea of the disruptor. And the disruptor is a kind of tech bro who comes in and take the phrase from Silicon Valley, move fast and break things. So famous Elon Musk is willing to take risks that his unmanned rockets will blow up and just keep throwing them up in the air and therefore can get them built more cheaply than NASA can that has all these safety protocols in place.
So somewhere there's a kind of melding between the vision of the heroic anti-hero disruptor who moves fast and breaks things and just gets shit done, which Curtis Yavin, who's been profound in the New York Times, talks about the need for an American Caesar, an American king, an American monarch.
just imagine the difference between if Elon Musk was running the government and a normal kind of liberal democrats running and somehow trump is harnessing that all these executive orders the flurry of it the fact that he's basically saying and you pointed this out a lot of what he's doing is technically
illegal in US law. He's deprived, he's announced one of his executive orders that you can't, by being born in the United States, be an automatic American citizen anymore. That is going directly against the US Constitution. The stopping of all his funding is going directly against all the contracts that the US government has signed. All these countries.
So, eventually, Congress will try to act. People will take legal cases. But what's so interesting is he's behaving as though Congress doesn't exist. The legal system doesn't exist. At no point in the drafting of these executive orders, apparently, is a lawyer involved. Is anyone saying, is this legal or isn't it? Can we actually do this?
It's crazy stuff. Well, doubtless, unfortunately, we'll be talking about a fair amount on the podcast this week, next week, and in many other weeks. But can we close off with a little discussion about the second son of your friend, the king, Prince Harry? Yes, Godman. Now, I'm an admirer, Prince Harry. I like people we guts.
I like people who take on, you know, big, powerful forces. What I want to draw attention to. I want to ask this listeners and viewers and you to ponder. Let's just say, Harriet, taking this case to court and lost. I wonder how many front pages that would have filled and how many pages inside they might have used to cover it.
So just take it back a little bit because not everybody's following the story. So this for internationalists, this was this immense phone hacking scan. Believe me, Roy, Prince Harry gets a lot of international coverage. But just explain the story for us in simple terms. As far as I understand it, what happened is that a lot of the British newspapers were hiring
private detectives and others and what they were doing is they were tapping the phones to celebrities and then the stories that they ran in their papers came not just from tapping but also breaking into their homes, going through their rubbish, doing all this kind of stuff. Prince Harry was one of the victims of this but just probably one of the more famous victims because there were, I don't know what, thousands of victims of stuff, right?
Thousands, thousands. Yeah. And Hugh Grant and others have been involved in cases over many, many years. But what was different about Prince Harry seemed to be that he was saying he was going to take it all to the way to the world because the others have often settled out of court. Is that right? Correct. Yeah. First up, there were loads of cases for the news of the world. And of course, the news international claim, news group claimed that this was just isolated news of the world, not the other papers. The mirror said the same. And the news of the world was then closed. They then closed the news of the world as part of this.
The news that was then closed, a tactical move, I would argue. The settlements and the legal costs up to now have cost news group newspapers up to 2 billion. And so what's happened with Prince Harry the other day, they were literally minutes away from the start of an eight-week trial. Now the problem is with our legal system,
There is a danger that if you are offered a settlement and you don't settle, but then you go through with the process. And even if you win, if you're awarded less than the settlement that you could have had, you can end up paying the costs, even of the people that you've defeated. So it's a stupid system. And that's why, for example, Hugh Grant said that that was why he settled. And ultimately, I think that's one of the reasons that Harry and Tom Watson, the former Labor Deputy Leader, settled as well.
That's the reason that they settled on this occasion. However, what Prince Harry managed to get as well as a full and unequivocal apology was an admission by news group of law-breaking. On their behalf, they said it wasn't their journalist, it was all these hundreds of private detectives and what have you.
However, what this has opened the door to is the possibility of perjury because these are people who have stood up in the Levison inquiry, which is under oath, who've stood up in previous court cases, said they had no knowledge, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And the other thing, the reason why, and this is not going away, Tom Watson stood outside the court and said he'd be handing over dossier to the police because we're talking about literally millions of emails that have been deleted.
lost from evidence. And by the way, this after a court case had been sort of put in train as it were. And I was sent yesterday, we should maybe try and get a version of it into the newsletter. I was sent this extraordinary document setting out since 1999, the incidents in which the police had been informed of, you know,
Serious, clear evidence of serious allegations against the press and have essentially ended up with saying no further action to be taken right through dozens and dozens and dozens of these. Can I ask a sort of really awkward question? I mean, you were a journalist with the Daily Mirror, like a tabloid newspaper for many years.
You had nothing to do with this and you didn't see any of this, you want to wear the stuff was going on. I was a journalist, I stopped being a journalist in 1994, so I can't remember when the whole sort of mobile phone thing became. There was a case, I was involved in a court case where we were somebody who'd been
tapping somebody's phone brought in some information. And we ended up in court and we were told we couldn't use the information because of the, we'd argue that it was in the public interest. So that was the only time I had any kind of sign of this happening. And just the culture of it makes sense. I mean, was it just sort of almost inevitable that the whole culture of newspapers had become so kind of cynical and brutal that it was almost inevitable? This kind of stuff was going to happen.
totally, totally. Well, what makes me what's extraordinary is that so when we were in government, I had a settlement because they'd been, you know, getting into our stuff. I was actually a witness in the Prince Harry thing because they I was used because they wanted to show that just because it didn't lead to a publication of story didn't mean that the law wasn't being broken.
to get information. And this is what these private details were being used to get into my bank account. And that sort of went nowhere. But so, no, I think you're right about the culture. And it's the culture. We're back to this point that we keep talking about the whole time of impunity. They think they're above the law. And the thing that's happened since Harry's case
is the, and as I said to you at the start, if Harry had lost this case, it would have been, we'd still be talking about it. The papers would still be full of it. He's finished, he's gone back to, you know, Diana will be turning in her grave, all this sort of stuff. Let me just give you some examples of this. So, The Spectator, now edited by Michael Gove, Brackett's Rupert Murdoch. In the end, right, The Spectator, Harry folded. He's much bally-hued case.
which was due to beginning the High Court last for eight weeks has concluded much ballyhooed. I mean, I'm more dismissive. The male barely reported it, and they didn't mention the fact that they are currently involved in a case which is coming to court next year. The son, the paper at the heart of it, it was kind of tucked away on page six. The Times, Sister Paper, it was on the bottom of page 12, alongside a story about Judy Dench being worried about her eyesight.
The May from the Mirror buried away and the telegraph, to be fair to the telegraph Rory, it was on the front page, but guess what the headline was? Harry climbs down after eight figure payout and the Sunday papers, it was as if nothing had happened. It's all gone away. And so this is how they get away with it. But I think with this one, I think I've got a feeling this one could go because we talk about perjury.
We're talking about the destruction of evidence and so forth and it's very rare that I would quote Kelvin McKenzie former editor of the Sun favorably at all But I do think he he had a lot of I read a transcript of an interview He did first of all he pointed out that this was happening on the watch of Rebecca Brooks She was editor. She's now the chief executive of the entire shooting match and he said this if this was the BBC BP or John Lewis and
with a CEO involved in a scandal like this, they wouldn't last 10 minutes, the criticism from the press would be unbearable. But he says that basically, he says that the media in Britain has got an NPP, which is a no-pissing pact. In other words, they don't piss on each other. And so I just think, you know, how guilty must they feel to have spent £2 billion not going to court?
No, it's beyond a matching. It's beyond a matching. And I'm glad that the rest of his politics is not signed up to the NPP, but we're actually prepared to call this out. We're prepared to call it out. I'm also going to shout out. You mentioned Hugh Grant. That's what I mean about it. There's a guy who is very, very famous. He's very, very wealthy. He would acknowledge, I think, that he's had a few issues in his past that he properly regrets. But he's got guts.
Because I, you know, I know to take these people on, you have to have a lot of courage. And I also, I'm a great believer in organized campaigns on stuff like this. And I do think hacked off. I understand why the press hate them because they keep going for it. And so I want any, anybody who wants to, who does have information about the legal activity and their relations with the police and all that stuff, just get in touch with the hacked off inquiry. And they'll, they'll, they'll, they'll lead you down the path of righteousness.
Very good. Thank you, Alison. Well, lovely to talk to you and well done on making it work with this rather chaotic background. Thank you. Yeah, well, I enjoy whatever you're going to go and get from the buffet. Thank you. See you later. See you later. Bye-bye.
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