As Americans mark the 250th anniversary of the 1776 Declaration of Independence, Anthony Scaramucci joins the Spectator to provide his assessment of the health of the nation. As we approach the halfway point of the second Trump presidency, what’s his impact been on America’s reputation? Will the Democrats’ attempts to emulate Trump help or hinder them? And why are American conservatives so obsessed with Britain – or rather, Britain’s supposed decline?
Declaring Trump ‘an ageing queen’ under whom ‘the spirit of hypocrisy lives on’ in America, the former White House communications director joins Freddy Gray and Tim Shipman for this special Coffee House Shots / Americano crossover to mark the 4th of July.
Hello and welcome to this unique collaboration between Coffee House and Americano. I am joined
today by Anthony Scaramucci, former press secretary to Donald Trump and now the magnificent host of
The Rest Is Politics America, and by Mr Freddie Gray, who is the deputy editor of The Spectator
World, our American outlet. Anthony, welcome. We are marking 250 years of the United States,
which is a big moment to talk about what's going on there and the relationship between
the former colonial master and the upstart start-up nation. I was at the US Ambassador's
party on Tuesday evening where he talked about how John Adams, the first US Ambassador to Britain,
had sort of said, we must get back on a good footing, and Adams would be proud of the
relationship as it is today. I think a lot of people who were watching that thought,
well, it's a bit dicier than it's been for a while, old son. Where are we now with Trump and
just give us your reflections on this big moment for America. Is it living up to the
sort of billing of this great 250th anniversary? I'm usually not one to defend members of the
Trump administration, but I do have to defend the Ambassador a little bit. I know him for a long
time. He's a good man. I think he meant what he said. I think what he meant, and I think it's
generally true that Americans love the Brits. We're all basically anglophiles, and hopefully
for many of you, the feeling is mutual. I think it's a problem with one person. It's a relationship
with one person who's decided that he has Vladimir Putin's checklist, and on the checklist is to
berate and belittle and try to emasculate our allies. I think that's it. When he leaves the
stage, which we've all got our countdown clocks on, hopefully we'll begin the process of renewing
and trying to rebuild these relationships. But he's doing a lot of damage. I'm not trying to
underestimate the damage he's doing, and I'm not trying to underestimate the amount of repair that
the Americans are going to need to have to do globally. Let me bring Freddie in here. We were
talking earlier, Freddie. I mean, there is affection between Americans and Brits in both directions,
but you've been reflecting recently, I think, that quite a lot of Americans feel they sort of need
to save Britain. Yes, well, I mean, I talked to quite a few people in sort of Trump circles and
so on, and this recurring theme comes up whenever Britain comes up in conversation, and that's,
you know, you guys are in trouble, we want to save you. And it's sometimes quite irritating
because it's quite to ho on about. And they have this rather exaggerated idea of how bad
things are in Britain, but they're not entirely wrong. That's the thing that I always want to
point out. You know, they are very concerned about free speech in Britain legitimately,
and it actually, they feel an emotional attachment to England, and they want Britain to be a country
of liberty because they feel their liberty 250 years ago was born, albeit in very fractious
circumstances, from an English place. I mean, you know, the founders felt they were saving an
English idea of liberty, and a lot of Americans feel that very strongly. So I do think it's quite
sincere. And I think, I mean, I take slight issue with Anthony on Trump, because I think
he does love Britain, you know, and I know it's all sort of surface music, and he's actually
been quite unpleasant, and the administration has done rather hostile things to the British
government. But it's very sincere, his love of Britain. I mean, he... Well, his mum was Scottish,
wasn't she? His mother was Scottish. He likes his golf courses here. He loves the Parpon
circumstance, you know, that all appeals to him. So no, I think the special relationship is,
you know, always sort of endures in whatever way, and the more you talk about it, the more
meaningless the term becomes. But no, I think, you know, America, I'm an Americophile, I should
make that very clear, always have been. And what I always think about is Sigmund Freud's quote
in the beginning of the century, where he said, in the last century, he said,
America is the greatest experiment ever attempted, but I fear it is not a success.
And I think, like a lot of what Freud said, he's been proven wrong.
Anthony, I mean, we talked a bit about Britain and America, where are things for Trump at the
moment, do you think? I mean, he's got midterms coming up. At the start of, you know, Trump 2,
it looked like they had a better plan than they had in Trump 1, you know, they would,
they had all these executive orders due to come out. Right from the off, it looked like it was
sort of, you know, purpose in a way that they didn't manage in the first term. But it feels
a little bit like the wheels are falling off. What's going on there? Why is it all beginning
to feel like it's going wrong? It's okay, I just want to add to the
conservative, we're going to say Britain thing, because I want to just give you my insight,
perhaps lack of insight, but let's give you my honest opinion. I think what happens is
the conservatives have decided that certain things are threatening to them. And when they are
threatening, they light those areas up. And so California is a very big threat to the conservatives.
If you really study California, it's the fourth largest economy. It's got everything from
defense to VC, AI, Hollywood, fast food, Disney World, you pick it. And so they go after the
weak spots in California. The process in England is very threatening to American conservatives.
If you read Project 2025, you guys have done a very good job of flattening out your power and
having a lot of checks and balances on the prime minister and shadow governments and all the
different things. The conservatives don't like any of that in this country, at least.
So if you read Project 2025, they want to weaken the other two branches of the government and
strengthen its sort of unitary executive power. So you're in their targets for brand management
purposes. And so that's why they pick on the weak areas. Because ironically, it was you guys that
were supposed to have the balance of power, you're supposed to have the sort of, you know, the split.
Yeah. Well, but the conservatives don't like that. They've decided that that's made us weak
and that's made us a muddled group and that's allowed for seepages of cultural wokeism and
this other stuff. And so the way to eradicate the cultural wokeism is to have a very strong
unitary executive that can do sweeping broad things. And so you mentioned all these executive
orders. And so the president put through these executive orders. He came in with a pretty nice
win. I mean, look at the win. He won seven swing states. His cross tabs were fantastic,
actually. If you really looked at the numbers of, I'll just give you a few of them, you know,
54% of the white women voted for President Trump. Okay. 48% of the overall women. Okay. If you look
to the African-American totals, they were way higher than usual for a Republican candidate.
Same thing with the Hispanic totals. So he came in with a sweeping win. You have to acknowledge
that whether you like him or you dislike him. But what I think they did was they jumped the shark.
And we have a tendency, unfortunately, in this country to do that. And sometimes you get arrogant
and you start making mistakes. I think they overlapped in Minneapolis. Those two deaths
in Minneapolis, I think, really hurt their whole campaign as it related to ICE. And by the way,
I agree with them on the border. I've always said that. I say that on the Restless Politics US.
You can't have a porous border if you have a welfare state. Milton Friedman would tell you
that. You have to protect your border. I'm all about legal immigration. I'm just not about
illegal immigration. I think it doesn't make sense for the American taxpayer. And so I think that Joe
Biden got that so miserably wrong. That was one of the reasons why the president was able to return
to power. But where I think he's made a mistake is he's overlapped on things. So he said something in
the Oval Office you guys should really listen to. When he bombed, when he hit the bunker buster
bombs in June of 2025 into Iran, they put a microphone in front of him at the Resolute
desk and they said, well, what are the philosophies and principles of MAGA? Because you said no more
forever wars. You said you were releasing the Epstein files. The president looked at the
reporter and said, well, the philosophy is whatever I want it to be. And I think that that's got him
into some trouble. I say we don't get it on the nose that often in politics. No, no. But literally
what he said. And so when you're saying he's made a muck of it, to use a British expression,
he's made a muck of it because he's overlapped and he got out of the field of vision of what
campaigned on. So he splintered the group. So whether it's Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens,
you pick the people that were supporting him, the podcast Legion of People, even Joe Rogan,
who's more of an independent and has said, whoa, this is a little bit too much. We shouldn't be
shooting citizens in the middle of the street in the freezing winter in Minneapolis. And oh,
by the way, what is he doing with these crypto trades and how could he have a 927 page financial
disclosure? And you guys probably don't read this stuff, but I have to because I'm on Wall Street.
He's doing trades and breaking the law. And if you read the 2012 Stock Act, the S.T.O.C.K. Stock
Act, you can do that and you pay a $200 fine. So he was making multiple millions of dollars
trading. And so he, I give you an example. He's got the tariffs. He's coming down from, you know,
Mount Evil, like Orange Moses with the tablet on April 7th. I mean, April 2nd, he's got the tablet
in his hand, but he's short the market three days earlier. And then he offers relief on April the
9th, but he's gotten long the market two days prior to that. Okay. So if you're actually
looking at it, okay. And by the way, so those are violations. So he paid $200 fines for those
violations. So you have to understand what's happening in the country is people are
looking at him and saying, okay, wow, he really doesn't care. He's off principle. He's just doing
things to feather his own bed and to take care of his family. And he's trying to antagonize the rest
of us. So that's what happened. And so you guys can push back on me and tell me that didn't happen,
but objectively that's what happened. So, you know, we've got affordability crisis in the country.
Prices are up. We said we weren't going to fight any more forever wars. We're in a quagmire in
Iran. We said we were going to give up the pedophilia ring from Jeff Epstein. I feel bad
for Pam Bondi because she actually believed them. She was like, oh, we're really going to do this.
And he said, Hey, I'm in it. You know, I'm in the Epstein file. I was just kidding about that. Okay.
I just said that I don't want to do that. You're fired. Okay. So that's why his approval ratings
are at 33% right now, as low as Herbert Hoover at the great, at the, at the depth of the great
depression. I mean, Freddie, it, it feels like he's broken with the public over what Anthony's
outlining in terms of what you might call kleptocracy. And he's broken with the MAGA
movement over around. These are both quite serious, potentially very serious and interlinked
too, because you know, Iran is having inflationary consequences. And I think voters might be more
inclined to look past corruption, perhaps not corruption, quite disparaging, but they are
feeling impoverished. The labour participation rate, which is an interesting statistic and
suggests that there might be a serious unemployment problem coming on the horizon.
There's all sorts of worrying signs for everyday Americans. And then they see Donald Trump and a
coterie of his family and billionaires getting extremely rich very fast through means that are
pretty grubby. And so yeah, no pushback from me to Anthony on on the corruption issue. I actually
looked it up just before I came in here. And because I was thinking about 250 years, if you're
an American, and you somehow live to be 250, but you had managed to earn $8.8 million every year
for 250 years, you would have earned slightly less than Donald Trump made last year,
which is a pretty staggering statistic. And I mean, it is, you know, we had the plane this week,
which is, you know, again, people can argue about whether the Qataris gave Trump this $400 million
plane, which the Air Force has spent another $400 million doing up. And he put a big show on it.
And he was on the tarmac. And he said, you can either low key it or you can show it. And you
know, his approach is always to show it and show the wealth. I think a lot of people are starting
to find that a bit revolting. Yeah. And during, you know, particularly in the early stages of his
political career, there was a lot of questioning of whether he actually was as wealthy as he made
out. The point is, he now actually is as wealthy as he's making out. Anthony, what does this mean
for the midterms? Do you think so? You know, I'm writing a book, which is coming out in September,
it's called all the wrong moves, we've created a structural cartel in the country, you have to
explain it to the people. We have a very tight duopoly. These are demo publicans,
or they're republicrats. And they're a very tight political establishment at the top.
And they have strained out the ability to knock them out of office. You know, Chuck Grassley,
I think is probably the great grandfather of George Washington. I think he's been in office
forever. And he'll be here 600 years after the three of us are dead. And he's holding on for
dear life. Okay. And so what happens in this country, is they allow for this thing called
gerrymandering. And so they redistrict to strain out their enemies, and to bring in their allies.
And so I just submit to you, as a gentleman, is this a real democracy where the politicians are
picking the voters, I thought the voters were supposed to pick the politicians. And so now,
you're in a situation where Trump is very unpopular. But he may not lose the midterms.
I'm a contrarian on this, because I've looked through the data. 181 districts lean Republican
right now. And again, I just want you guys to think about how bad the gerrymandering is. We
have 435 congressional districts in the House of Representatives. We only have 19 that are
contestable. Okay, 19 districts will be contestable. Everything else has already been
due to the redistricting. So the Republicans have won more of those battles on the redistricting
than the Democrats. So even though the president's unpopular, and presidents usually do
lose the midterm election and lose the Congress, he's got a good shot here of not losing the
Congress. Okay. And he's also a smart guy. People always say, oh, he's not smart. He's smart.
Pay attention, guys. He's going to have a midterm Republican convention. Okay, he's going to do that
in the beginning of the fall. And if the Democrats aren't smart, they don't do exactly what he's
doing, which I recommend that they do. He's going to get tremendous amounts of publicity and reach
for that. So I think he'll lose the House. But I don't think he's going to lose the House by
the wide margins that he should have if we had less redistricting and less gerrymandering.
I mean, this sounds like sort of an homage to Britain, Anthony. I mean, those of us with a
knowledge of, you know, 19th century British politics would say this is a rather touching
recreation of the Rotten Boroughs, all this gerrymandering.
Well, this is exactly what Elbridge Gerry did. Elbridge Gerry studied what you guys were doing
in Great Britain, and he redistricted the area north of Boston in Swampscott. It looked like a
salamander. And so his opponent said, this is a gerrymander. This is a gerrymander. It looked
the redistricting. And so but we've really taken that exponential now and it's damaged the system
and it's created this duopoly. And by the way, you know, guys like Tucker Carlson say they're
going to start a third party. Good luck. Not going to happen. There's no way to penetrate that
duopoly unless the American people wake up and they say we've really had enough.
Remember something about America. There's 105 million people, guys, that the most powerful
voting bloc in America votes the exact same way in every single election. It's 105 million people,
and that would be the non-voter. And so just remember how powerful that is. If you have an
entrepreneurial candidate that can reach those non-voters and get them to register and come into
the swimming pool of politics, you could change the entire game. And the current politicians are
banking on their apathy, banking on their indifference not to show up at the polls.
This is something, of course, Elon Musk was looking very carefully at. J.D. Vance talked him
down from it, but he was going to start a third party and go after those people and see if he
could dislodge this duopoly. But without the dislodgement, we're entrenched in this circle.
And again, one other thing very different from British politics is the money. We've allowed
money into the system in a way that is absolutely astounding now. Since Citizens United, when Justice
Scalia said you can let all the money you want into the system, we're up nine and a half times
on political donations. And then go look at the legislative agenda. It's big business, big food,
big pharma, tax cuts for the wealthy. It's corporate welfare. Oh, by the way, you guys
don't like chlorinated chicken in your country? We don't like it either, but it's legally allowable
in our country. We can also put glyphosate, which is a fertilizer. You can leave it in the children's
cereal in this country because these guys have paid the politicians off to rewrite the regulation.
You've got World Cup players that are coming over here saying, this food sucks over here.
What are these people doing? They're trying to get the food shipped in from Europe
so that they can play better. You know this and I know this, and you guys spend time in America.
Our food system is a catastrophe because the politicians have been bought off and they've
allowed the chemical industry and the food industry to corrupt the food. At some point,
the Americans are going to say, hey man, we had enough of you guys. Chuck Grassley,
you're 700 years old. You're going to have to step down at some point. At some point,
we're going to get upset about all this. I mean, Freddie, the picture Anthony paints
there of this almost like, it's a bit like the uni party here, this establishment that's all
in it. But the Democrats, they loathe Donald Trump, but they seem to be trying to emulate
him now. There's a lot of talk of them running ever more extreme and populist candidates of
their own. I've heard people tell me in Washington, oh, maybe they'll run AOC at the next
presidential election. It feels like the techniques are being copied on both sides,
even if the politics isn't. Yes, and just in the way that Trump ate the Republican Party
in the 2010s, I think, you know, you can make a credible argument that the Democratic Socialists
of America are in the process of eating the Democratic Party. The DSA was a fringe group
until very, very recently, really. And then, you know, they had certain victories, AOC
won in, was it 2018, Anthony, AOC won, I forget. Yeah, AOC won in 2018. Remember, guys,
she dropped her pronoun off her Twitter feed after the 24 election, right? So she's a very
smart woman. She's very smart. A lot of her constituents voted for Trump. And they said,
what the hell did you vote for Trump for? They said, well, we hate the culture. So she said,
okay, I'm going to become less woke as a result of this. Don't underestimate her either. She's
another very clever person. No, I absolutely don't. But for some of these DSA-backed candidates,
Mamdani-backed candidates in New York, we had another in Denver recently. AOC is considered a
bit soft and moderate. You know, they are really defund the police, abolish ICE, ban all immigration
enforcement, you know, foreign policy to the left of some of our Gaza independents over here.
And so, you know, as I was saying earlier, I think the choice of America in the midterm seems to be
kleptocracy with Trump or communism with the Democrats. It's not particularly enticing.
Can I just say something to both of you guys? Because I was in the UK last week, somebody said
to me, well, who runs the Democratic Party? I said, well, I know who runs the Democratic Party.
Really? Because we don't know who runs it. Who runs the Democratic Party?
Donald J. Trump runs the Democratic Party, okay? Because he has made them crazy. He is the white
cue ball on the billiard table, and he shoots himself into them, and they go all over the
place in totally different directions from each other. And what Jimmy's saying is totally true,
because now this democratic socialism, they think this is the way back into power.
And guys, I don't know, you guys spend a time in this country? The country doesn't want that. I
mean, New York may want it. Maybe there's pockets of coastal cities that want that. But the buckle
of the Bible belt in this country, trust me, does not want that. And Trump is laughing at these
guys. You know, he props up Mondani. People say, well, why is he propping up Mondani? Hey, dummies,
he wants Mondani to be the poster child of the Democratic Party coming into 26 and 28
so that they can stay in power. Anyway, I'm sorry, guys. I just had to get that in there,
because you have to understand what I'm living through, because I'm here in New York dealing
with this stuff. Well, we've both had some madness for the last decade. I mean,
in that sense, who Trump decides to select as his successor becomes quite an important decision,
then, doesn't it? Because it sounds from what you're saying like you think that person would
have every chance of winning the presidential election. Who do you think is winning out of
Vance and Rubio? And is there anybody else we should be watching in Britain that we're not
really sort of on our radar? So this is such a good question. But remember, two years in America
is like, you know, 200 years. But politics are going to change so dramatically if he doesn't
restore his political support. And again, don't underestimate him. He's capable of doing that.
He's in a low right now, but he's a very talented politician. I mean, and I submit to you guys,
I don't like him. I've been very candid about that. But he's the prejudice political figure
of the first quarter of the 21st century, not just for America, but for the world.
And he's cast a very large shadow over all of us. But if he doesn't get his political support
up in the country, the person that he anoints may not do well. You have to remember,
he's blowing himself up with his podcast buddies who helped him win this sort of bee swarm of
people. He's blowing himself up with those people because he's reneged on every single thing he said
he was going to do in this term. And remember, if we're sitting here at $7 gas prices in 2028
with the Strait of Hormuz closed, I don't care who he anoints, it's going to be very tough.
But if you said, okay, who's he anointing? It's clearly Rubio over Vance for right now. But I'm
going to tell you something about Marco Rubio. You better get out of that administration after
the midterms because Trump is a Shakespearean figure. He's an aging queen. He's an aging
dowager. And he'll shoot Rubio before Rubio can fully ascend because that's what Trump does.
He eats his young. And if you don't believe me, ask Pence, ask Pompeo, ask Nikki Haley.
And he's already put Vance in the wood chipper, like that Fargo wood chipper. Vance has already
gone through the wood chipper. And he'll come after Rubio before Rubio can leave the nest.
And so if Rubio's smart, he'll say, hey, this was great. I'm running for president
and I'm resigning from my post as Secretary of State before Trump fires.
And is there anybody else we should be watching? I mean, are there any governors who are coming up
on the rails or is Nikki Haley coming back for another go or what?
There's no chance. There's no chance. I mean, if those two guys flame out,
then we can talk about that whole cast of people. But remember, the Republicans are
very different from the Democrats. They anoint and then they get around each other. Trump was
an unusual figure there because they were trying to anoint Jeb Bush and he came in and crushed
everybody. But he's a different beast than these other people. Remember, he had the media
personality. Your fellow Brit Mark Burnett helped him out. These guys don't have that and they don't
have his scale and they don't have his influence over the base. Look at what he's done to these
establishment Republicans this year. If you voted for him 99 percent of the time like Cornyn and
Crenshaw, he blew you out of the party. Now, interestingly enough, he's not blowing Susan
Collins up because he knows that he doesn't have a replacement for Susan Collins in Maine. So he
hates Susan Collins. But due to political expediency, he's not saying anything about her.
But in Texas, because it's a red as red can be state, he blew those guys up. Look what he did
to Cassidy in Louisiana. So Trump is a very powerful figure in that party. They're
very afraid of him. And, you know, I predict that that will stay the course until 2028.
Remember, he also did something no other American president has done. He raised $400 million for his
PAC. That is a message to all those guys. If you're not falling in line with me,
I'm going to use this money against you, even though you're in my own party.
You love this guy? I mean, this guy's a piece of work. I mean, this guy is a really,
I mean, he's the highest grade level of narcissism. It's almost like weapons grade
narcissism. You know, it's in a weird way. It's like very impressive.
I know we haven't got you for much longer, Anthony, but are there any,
what do you said he can turn this around? Are there things he might do? What might a sort of
Donald Trump with two years left do? What might he do on Ukraine? What might he do on Iran? What
might he do with the Chinese? Is there anything that you think might sort of shake the world
He'll do nothing on Ukraine because he's a slave to Vladimir Putin. Putin's got something on him.
We don't know what that is, but he just goes down the Putin checklist, berate the British
prime minister, attack the French president, do nothing for Volodymyr Zelensky, belittle him in
the Oval Office. I mean, he goes right down the Putin list of everything that he needs to do
to satisfy Putin. So nothing will happen in Ukraine. The Ukrainians and the Europeans will
have to figure that out without Trump. I think the Middle East is a different beast.
I think he'll try to negotiate a peace there and get the straight open. The bad news for America
is he'll be paying more money than the JCPOA, the deal that Obama negotiated, but he'll get
the straight open and that'll hopefully lower prices. And then he'll have a productivity boom
in the US because of all the ascent of all this new technology. And that could help him because
prices go down. He's got the name brand and that could help him. But just remember, guys,
I want to leave you with a thought. Obama was wearing a tan suit and Fox News went crazy. I
mean, every anchor set their hair on fire over Obama's tan suit. I want you to imagine Obama
starting a war and creating a quagmire that's going to cost the country several hundred billion
dollars. I want you to imagine Obama trading in his personal account to the tune of two point
two billion dollars. I want you to imagine the right wing outrage at Obama for doing stuff like
that. And yet these guys are all falling in line. So on our anniversary, our 250th birthday,
the spirit of hypocrisy lives in the country. OK, because if Obama did this stuff, my God,
they would have gone crazy on him. But they sit there and they're like, hey, yeah, no big deal.
It's fine. Freddie, it feels like whatever he does or doesn't do, everybody's either embracing
it or pushing against it. And that sort of is going to define things as long as he's around.
I think I think he's quite right. Trump is the titanic figure of American politics and world
politics at the moment. I do think that, you know, in some of his remarks, there is a little
bit of the kind of not quite Trump derangement syndrome, but certainly that sort of hatred
of Trump overwhelms everything. And he does. He makes it very hard to see the wood from the trees
because he just occupies so much of everyone's emotional bandwidth and so on. So it's very hard
to talk about America at 250 without talking about Donald Trump. I just think on that one
key issue, immigration, he is the one politician who, using executive power, has done things that
lots of Western governments would like to do. And he has succeeded. And the insults he gives
to the British leadership, where he says you've got it wrong on immigration and you've got it
wrong on drilling the North Sea. I think there's quite a lot of conservatives in Britain would
agree with every word of that and would quite like someone to listen to him. And maybe it's
not the case that coming from Trump, it's likely to be persuasive here. But he seems to be profoundly
correct on both of those points. If a British politician could bring down energy prices and
stop immigration, they would be extremely popular. And Donald Trump has done that.
And it's not clear.
Well, until Iran.
I mean, Keir Starmer has not done that. It doesn't look like that's going to be a priority
for Andy Burnham. Trump's made a few comments about Burnham. How on earth do you imagine that
relationship going?
I bet what will happen is what always happens. Like when Donald Trump met Bandami, everybody
says, oh, there's going to be fireworks. And then they meet. And Donald Trump says, he's the
greatest guy I've ever met. You know, I love him. I love his voice, or something. You know,
he'll say that. And that's what Trump always does. He's very nice.
Trump likes black t-shirts and bomb jackets. He does dress properly.
I think, yeah, Trump might struggle with that. He didn't like it in Zelensky, did he?
Yeah, exactly. This is not the kind of kit you wear to the White House.
This is, let's hope Andy Burnham puts on it.
Maybe Burnham will stick a tie on for the occasion. But he's already effectively said,
you know, foreign policy, I'm going to leave that to maybe David Miliband and Jonathan Powell.
And I'm not going to try and suck up to Donald Trump. But this relationship,
it's 250 years of, you know, kind of symbiotic kind of existence with the Americans. It's not
a luxury that a British prime minister can afford. It's very, to just go, I don't care
about the American president. That's not, it's not, it's not on the cards.
And the extent to which our future growth, you know, tech, obviously,
such a huge area. And, you know, we were discussing in conference this morning,
this worrying sort of slightly Luddite thinking in a lot of what's coming out from Burnham and
his camp, that, you know, we don't want to be, what were you talking about, unfettered,
unfettered technological...
Optimism. He doesn't like that.
He doesn't like that.
Doesn't think the public likes it.
What he's really talking about is economic growth, which again, is the one thing
the British people really, really need.
Yeah. And if you want to spend a load of things on socialist projects,
it kind of helps if you've got some money to spend.
Well, quite.
There seems to be the missing piece in all of this.
So on energy, tech and immigration,
Trump has, gives a lot of things we could learn from, from his president.
And do you ever sort of, you've got any predictions of the next sort of,
let's forget the next 250 years, but the next 250 days, I mean,
Antony's view on the midterms is a little away from the mainstream, I think.
Yeah. And my view, I mean, Antony may be right,
but my view is that they will lose the House in the midterms.
And I'm beginning to think the Senate at the moment,
but I think that's going to be pretty tight.
And so after that, then you're just going to get lawfare again.
I think you're going to get Trump being impeached.
There'll be a lot on all this corruption.
It's going to be a very difficult final two years to his presidency.
And unless he can sort of magic the American economy to sort of
up magnificently again and make the whole public think that he's giving
them this golden age that he promised, I fear it's going to end badly.