526. Trump's Orwellian Maths and the King's Special Relationship Mission

“And the question now is, is it broken? The threats on Greenland, the tariffs, the continual humiliations and insults from Trump, does this mean that Britain now needs to think about a radically Yeah. And also it wasn't just the fact of the special relationship. The other pillar was our leadership role in Europe. So the problem is that over the last decade, we've there's a risk that we lose both.”

“The reason why I think Der Spiegel calls Charles a wonder weapon is because Trump's vanity and narcissism is such that he doesn't really see Kierstheimer as his opposite number because he sees himself as the king. He wants to be an emperor. He wants to be a, unelected monarch. He behaves like one. He surrounds himself by sycophants in the way that- A medieval monarch would.”

“Option two for Britain I'm trying to think about British options here. Can they be can Britain behave like a Gulf country or a Balkan country? Probably not because we may not have as much to offer, and our political culture wouldn't allow us to debate that. Option two is the kind of Macron option, which is to make great statements and claims about a new world order, but it's not quite clear whether it ever gets delivered. Option three is that you really begin to do the serious work in working out how Britain gets lockstep with Europe and begins to work out how it becomes more independent more independent on critical minerals, AI, nuclear, etcetera.”

“So why does Donald Trump constantly say constantly say that he's cut drug prices by variously 300%, 400%, 500%, and 1200%? And why is that not covered anywhere in the world's media? Kennedy didn't answer the question, but he said he said this, president Trump has a different way of calculating percentages. There are two ways of calculating percentages. He then says he says this. Wait a minute. Ways that my nine year old does that. Daddy, there are two ways of doing the maths problem. There's my way and everyone else.”

“We're like, I sometimes think we're sort of potentially, the whole world is locked in a kind of abusive marriage where, essentially, the Trump administration is saying to everybody else, you can't afford to leave me. You know? Yeah. Okay. You might complain, and I might humiliate you and beat you up, but the fact is you'd never be able to make it on your own. Too expensive, too complicated.”

“There are two types of problem, aren't there? It's very, very difficult, to be honest, for an outsider coming in to Spain or Serbia to ever have the full detailed stuff that a Spanish opposition politician or Serbian opposition politician would have to construct these arguments. But the second thing is we have to make a choice, which is not an easy choice. If you go in in order to use it to prosecute the case that this guy is an authoritarian ruler, then it's a show where you and I are just telling our audience that we disapprove of Vucic. The second choice is to try to let these people speak for themselves and trust that the audience can take on board the fact that we don't approve of this guy.”

“One of the leaders, it's claimed by somebody who knows a lot, gave $20,000,000 to somebody who'd been part of Trump's first administration, believing the guy would get him into the Trump second administration, and feels cheated and ripped off because the individual got a job in a different part of the Trump administration, didn't help him. Another one of the leaders has apparently handed over all the mines in the territory that he controls and in return gets to swagger around in Mar A Lago. The stories about hotels everywhere, you know, this bit of crime has been given.”

“And by the way, can you see people I think people are sick of these gotcha interviews. I just I watched one the other day. It was Lewis Goodall. I think it's really good, but he was doing an interview with Darren Jones, Keir Starmer's chief secretary. It was unwatchable after a few minutes. But it's this whole gotcha thing. You're a bad person. I'm a good person. I'm speaking on behalf of the public. It actually is populist.”