Pulte Purge?

Summary

Amanpour – "Pulte Purge?"
CNN Podcasts | June 23, 2026
Host: Bianna Golodryga (in for Christiane Amanpour)

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Episode Overview

This episode of Amanpour delves into three major stories shaping global affairs:

• The controversial "purge" at the top of the U.S. intelligence community led by Trump’s acting pick, Bill Pulte, and the political implications for national security.
• The Trump-endorsed rightward shift in Colombia's presidential election, with analysis of populism’s spread in Latin America.
• Ten years after Brexit, an assessment of Britain’s political, economic, and social landscape, and what’s been gained or lost since leaving the EU.

The episode also features a thought-provoking conversation about America's upcoming 250th anniversary, focusing on the challenge of telling a unified national story in a polarized political climate.

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Key Segments & Discussion Points

1. The "Pulte Purge": Unprecedented Turnover at U.S. Intelligence Agency

With Kevin Liptak, White House Reporter
Timestamps: [01:04–07:33]

Main Points:

• President Trump's temporary appointment of Bill Pulte (a political ally without intelligence experience) as Acting Director of National Intelligence (DNI).
• Pulte began demanding staff lists and initiating firings even before officially starting the job, surprising outgoing Director Tulsi Gabbard.
• Objective: Downsize and "purge" the workforce of perceived "deep state" opponents to Trump.
• Bi-partisan concerns, especially from top Democrats, about the chaotic and potentially dangerous impacts on national security.
• Tulsi Gabbard had previously cut ODNI staff by 40%, but Pulte's approach is seen as abrupt and politicized.
• Trump nominated Jay Clayton (a more conventional pick) for the permanent post, but then blocked Clayton’s confirmation for tactical reasons.
• Republican discomfort about Pulte’s lack of experience nearly derailed vital surveillance legislation.

Notable Quotes:

• Kevin Liptak [02:35]: "It is clear that Bill Pulte is wasting very little time trying to execute what President Trump has made very clear are his objectives for his tenure atop the office...the deep state firings have begun..."
• Kevin Liptak [05:54]: "Democrats feel discomfort with Bill Pulte, but also a lot of Republicans because he has no national security experience and because what they fear will become a politicization of, of this very critical intelligence post."

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2. Colombia's Trump-Endorsed Rightward Shift

With Daniel Pacheco, Journalist and General Editor, La Silla Vacía
Timestamps: [07:33–18:28]

Main Points:

• Abelardo de la Esprêa, a political outsider and Trump-endorsed populist, leads Colombia's presidency in a tight race.
• Outcome seen as a stinging rebuke to incumbent left-wing president Gustavo Petro.
• Petro and his candidate, Ivan Cepeda, challenge results, making unsubstantiated claims of Israeli interference—reflecting regional trends of leaders questioning democratic outcomes.
• Trump’s endorsement may have narrowed de la Esprêa’s margin, but is expected to reinforce U.S.-Colombia ties on terms of security and anti-narcotics policies.
• Analysis of rising populist right trends across Latin America (e.g., referencing Milei and Bukele).
• Speculation about how much of his hardline agenda—building Bukele-style megaprisons, massive crackdowns, fiscal austerity—he can actually deliver, given Colombia's entrenched challenges and narrow mandate.

Notable Quotes:

• Daniel Pacheco [08:47]: "The main message is a rebuke to the current government... it's the arrival of polarized social media politics and this populist right trend in Colombia, which has been going through all the continent, through all Latin America, led by Donald Trump and officials."
• Daniel Pacheco [12:50]: "I think [Trump's endorsement] didn't help him at the end. Abelardo's lead was wider before the Trump endorsement."
• Daniel Pacheco [14:43]: "We had a previous left wing wave which is being replaced very radically with a pendulum like going very fast to the right in this election."
• Daniel Pacheco [18:18]: "I can anticipate that not many of [his promises will be delivered]...the election was all about like El Tigre, the lights video produced with AI which pictured his opponents in very strange situations. So I think...He seemed more moderate [in his victory speech]...now we are waiting to see how he starts building his cabinet..."

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3. Brexit, Ten Years On: Political and Economic Fallout

With Jonathan Freedland (The Guardian), Gillian Tett (Financial Times)
Timestamps: [20:03–37:57]

Main Points:

• A decade after the Brexit referendum, the UK faces profound economic and political instability.
• Contrary to promises, Brexit has reduced GDP by 4–8%, slashed exports ~12%, and triggered record-high immigration—none of which have delivered where advocates predicted.
• “Take Back Control” led to an era of repeated government turnover: seven PMs in ten years, with little sign of increased stability.
• Popular frustration endures, but so does a kind of political paralysis—few pushing strongly for re-joining the EU, but regret over leaving now widespread (two-thirds now view Brexit as a mistake).
• Populist narratives continue fueling politics, but even architects like Nigel Farage downplay Brexit itself now, shifting to culture war issues.
• Britain’s diminished global role: The “special relationship” with the U.S. is less influential post-Brexit; domestically, politics now described as “like Italy, but without the sunshine.”

Notable Quotes:

• Jonathan Freedland [21:34]: "I remember feeling extremely glum that something hugely significant had happened...the margin was so narrow for such a huge and profound move. All the evidence that's come in the 10 years since has shown that this really was a needless act of self harm for which we're still paying the price..."
• Gillian Tett [23:29]: "It's been desperately damaging in terms of the distraction it's provided as well. And that is an utter tragedy."
• Jonathan Freedland [30:29]: "Nobody can now say, well, the way to keep migration numbers down is leaving the EU—quite the reverse. The immigration numbers absolutely leapt after our exit."
• Gillian Tett [35:18]: "At the moment, the tragedy of Britain is that it looks like Italy in terms of its politics...but without the good food and without usually as much sunshine."

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4. Telling the American Story: Division on the Eve of the 250th

Yoni Applebaum (The Atlantic) with Walter Isaacson
Timestamps: [39:20–54:24]

Main Points:

• As America nears its 250th anniversary, a contested narrative threatens the nation’s sense of shared identity.
• Applebaum’s Atlantic essay: Unlike nations defined by blood and soil, America’s unity relies on a common story—loss of which could be “fatal.”
• The 1619 Project and the 1776 Commission represent dueling extreme narratives: one focusing on America’s original sin and injustice; the other on “triumphalist” patriotic myth.
• The real demand: Americans want both truth and pride—a full, complex history.
• Failure to teach history (a side-effect of “No Child Left Behind” and culture wars) leaves new generations without grounding in a national story.
• Both major parties have failed to create a unifying vision for the anniversary: Biden’s America250 opts for hyper-individualized stories, Trump’s Freedom250 for partisan spectacle.
• Recent monument removals and the Trump-promised “Statuary Park” highlight the ongoing cycle of division.

Notable Quotes:

• Yoni Applebaum [40:05]: "In a nation that is built around an idea, not to be able to tell that story...leaves us unable to come together in any kind of national celebration and leaves the future of that project, I think, uncertain in itself."
• Yoni Applebaum [41:21]: "A country built on an idea...the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal."
• Yoni Applebaum [47:40]: "History became sort of the neglected stepchild of our K to 12 educational system."
• Yoni Applebaum [49:54]: "So if the Democrats couldn't think of any unifying stories for the country to tell itself, the Trump administration has tacked hard in the opposite direction...a narrowly partisan vision and one that excludes many Americans."

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Memorable Moments

• The “Deep State” narrative made real: The Pulte purge at ODNI is cited as a case study for weaponizing administrative capacity for political ends ([02:35], Liptak).
• Colombian populism in the Trump era: The way U.S. narratives get mirrored and recycled in Latin America and the role of AI-driven campaign tactics are discussed ([18:18], Pacheco).
• Brexit Regret: Both economic data and “national mood” arguments convey how what was sold as “taking control” led instead to years of chaos and a “doom loop of frustration” ([25:10], Freedland).
• Anniversary without center: America entering its 250th year divided, with top-down spectacle and bottom-up individualism both failing to bridge divides ([49:54], Applebaum).

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Timestamps of Key Segments

• [01:04–07:33] – U.S. Intelligence Purge (Trump, Pulte, Gabbard, Clayton)
• [07:33–18:28] – Colombia Election: Populism, U.S. Influence, Regional Trends
• [20:03–37:57] – Brexit @10: Retrospective, Consequences, and Political Landscape
• [39:20–54:24] – The American Narrative: 250th Anniversary Challenges

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Tone & Style

• The episode retains the in-depth, fact-driven tone typical of Amanpour, mixing informed analysis with vivid personal recollections (notably on Brexit).
• Guests balance expertise with accessibility, connecting high-level political movements to concrete impacts on governance and daily life.

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Summary

This latest episode of Amanpour is a thorough exploration of the world’s evolving political divides: a U.S. intelligence community in the throes of politicization, Colombia’s swing to Trump-style populism, and a Britain still mired in the consequences of Brexit. Each case offers warnings about the risks of extreme partisanship and leader-fueled polarizations. The final segment on America’s 250th anniversary challenges listeners to reflect on the narratives that bind or break societies—highlighting that the stories we tell (or fail to tell) are central to democratic health.

For anyone looking to understand the dynamics, risks, and stories shaping today’s top global headlines, this episode is essential listening.

Transcript

[A]

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Switch upfront payment of $45 for 3 month plan equivalent to $15 per month Required intro rate first 3 months only, then full price plan options available, taxes and fees extra. See full terms at Mintmobile do. Hello everyone and welcome to Amanpour. Here's what's coming up. Trump's pick, Bill Pulte begins purging the top US Intelligence agency as Democrats warn it's a national security risk. We get the details from Washington and Colombia looks ready to tilt right after a MAGA backed populace leads the race to the presidency. I speak to a reporter on the ground in Bogota then.

[D]

It's about 5:00 o'clock out here. The sun has risen on a completely

[A]

different UK and a completely different EU.

[C]

Ten years since the UK's stunning split from the EU, we look at the political forces at play, the costs of going solo and what could come next. Plus, how to tell the American story. The Atlantic's Yoni Applebaum speaks with Walter Isaacson about bringing the U.S. back to to its founding promise. Welcome to the program everyone. I'm Bianna Golodriga. New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour. Mass firings are said to be underway at the US intelligence agency created to prevent another 911 Donald Trump's temporary pick for Director of National intelligence, Bill Pulte, reportedly showed up at the job before he was actually due to start demanding a list of every employee in the office. Pulte has no intelligence or security experience. Slimming down the DNI office has been a bipartisan issue, but top Democrats are concerned this week's job slashing is chaotic and could pose a national security risk. For more on the details, White House reporter Kevin Liptak joins me from Washington. Kevin, so bring us up to speed with these five that CNN has been reporting. What do we know thus far?

[D]

Well, we don't have a precise picture of the scope of the firings or who precisely at the agency has been let go at this point. But it is clear that Bill Pulte is wasting very little time trying to execute what President Trump has made very clear are his objectives for his tenure atop the office of Director of National Intelligence President Trump has said explain explicitly that he wants Pulte to begin slashing through the workforce with a particular eye to individuals that Trump and Pulte think are trying to undermine the administration. And what one source says is that the deep state firings have begun, which I think gives you sort of everything you need to know about where exactly he will be looking to slash some of this workforce. You know, he has been eager to get into this job even before his tenure was to officially begin. He showed up at the office last week to ask for these lists of staffers at dni, which caught the incumbent Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, off guard. And so you have a picture of how Pulte will be going about this position. President Trump said in a true social post a few days ago that he wanted Pulte to, quote, execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office. President Trump isn't the only person in Washington who thinks that the ODNI is bloated, potentially become inefficient in the two decades since it was founded. In the years after 911, Tulsi Gabbard had already reduced the office by 40%. The real concern you hear is who is going about it. Bill Pulte is not someone who has any national security experience. He's someone who's most known for using his current position atop a housing agency to go after some of President Trump's perceived rivals. And that has really raised the ire of some Democrats. Yesterday, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committee wrote a letter to Pulte saying that given his lack of experience in the national and intelligence communities, that it was difficult to imagine him and, quote, in such a short amount of time. You have already developed fully informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security. Now, President Trump has said that he will only have Pulte in this job in an acting capacity. In fact, he said that only being enacting and not being a permanent would mean he was, quote, less shackled. How long he is in this job, I think, remains to be seen. Just last week, the president pulled back his nominee for the permanent position because he wanted Pulte to have some time in the job to carry out these objectives.

[C]

Yeah, and that is Jay Clayton, who, by any measure, was seen as more of a palatable nominee and pick by both Democrats and Republicans after bipartisan outrage that Bill Pulte would be nominated for this role. As the president has said that this would only be in an acting capacity. Why would he go about naming someone like Jay Clayton, only then to tell him directly not to come to his own confirmation hearing and to wait things out?

[D]

I think it was because the President heard loud and clear from a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill their discomfort with having Bill Pulte in this job. It had threatened the extension of a very important surveillance authority on the Hill. You saw Republicans really digging in their heels saying that they wouldn't be able to vote for this until they got assurances that Bill Pulte would not be in this job for a very long amount of time. And the President coming up with a name in Jay Clayton that many Republicans will be able to get behind. And so that is why I think you saw the president rush to put his name out there. But I think it became clear to President Trump after he named Jay Clayton to this job that perhaps Bill Pulte would not be acting DNI for very long because Republicans in the Senate had fast tracked Clayton's nomination. They had set the date for a hearing. It seemed pretty clear that he could potentially be confirmed within a matter of days. And that is when President Trump last week said, no, no, no, we're going to hold up this nomination for both the Pulte aspect of it, but also because President Trump wanted to lump in this new voting reform law that he wants to see passed. And so it's all kinds of complicated legislative maneuvering. But I think it all boils down to the discomfort that certainly Democrats feel with Bill Pulte, but also a lot of Republicans because he has no national security experience and because what they fear will become a politicization of, of this very critical intelligence post.

[C]

All right, Kevin Liptak reporting to us from the White house in Washington, D.C. thank you so much. Well, now it's all but certain Colombia's next president will be Abelardo de la Esprea. He is a Trump endorsed political outsider who has vowed a massive crackdown on organized crime. With nearly all of the 26 million votes counted, De la Esperia leads by a very small percentage. His progressive rival, Ivan Cepeda is challenging the results this election, delivering a rebuke to the left wing President Gustavo Petro, who had a combative relationship with Donald Trump. Some say this prompted the US President to put his thumb on the scale. But organized crime and rampant violence were also key issues at the ballot box. For more on all of this, I'm joined now by Daniel Pacheco, journalist and general editor at La Silla Vasilla in Bogota. Daniel, welcome to the program. So if indeed Del Esperia is certified as president, this would be a huge shift of direction from the incumbent president, Gustavo Petro. It would be a tight win, but no doubt a win. What message are voters in Colombia sending right now?

[E]

Hi, thanks. It's great to be here. Well, the main message is a rebuke to the current government, the government of Gustavo Petro, and to his candidate, Ivan Cepeda. It was a very polarized presidency. Gustavo Petro was sort of a populist on the left of on his own. So this is a referendum on that presidency and it's the arrival of polarized social media politics and this populist right trend in Colombia, which has been going through all the continent, through all Latin America, led by Donald Trump and officials,

[C]

as we've noted, still haven't declared a winner. Cepeda is contesting some 33,000 polling stations. You have covered Colombian elections, elections for years. Does this challenge at this point have any legal merit?

[E]

No, it does have a legal merit because the election is finally certified by the Consejo Nacional Electoral and that will be done in a couple of days. But we've got some information on the counting on the second count of the vote and nothing's changed. The Las Prejas lead has widened a little bit, but historically the changes between the first count and the second count don't vary much. This is basically the President Petro who has thrown in unsubstantiated claims of fraud, playing politics and the left trying to establish a starting point to a very hard and robust opposition, which we will see in the next four years.

[C]

The unsubstantiated claims of fraud that you mentioned specifically as accusing Israel of hacking into the country and hacking the count to rig all of this and says there's no president until this claim is reviewed. What does a claim like this from a sitting president say about Colombians faith in the vote? How much pressure is put on a sitting president right now from his own constituents when they make unsubstantiated claims like this.

[E]

So we've seen this in other countries. It happened in the U.S. it happened in Brazil, also in our region. Gustavo Petro has been doing this for a long time, but he has also won big election, so he won a majority in Congress. So I think people at this point are pretty set in that Abelardo de la Estrella is going to be the next president. And even his party, the Pacto Historico on the left is already pre preparing the opposition and they know they have lost. So at this Point, it's going to be Petro setting up what might be a heated transition. I don't know how that is going to unfold, but all the basic factors of power, the armed forces, the judicial system, the electoral system, and the politicians and people in general, are pretty well said on that Abelardo has won the election and that there will be a transfer. Friends of power. It might be difficult, but I think people are more interested in the World cup at this point.

[C]

I think Colombia is playing.

[A]

No.

[C]

Are they playing today? Tomorrow? Playing soon. Today. Okay. We're rooting for Colombia today. Abelardo del Esperia got a complete and total endorsement. That was the post from President Trump. He posted that he won big in all caps. We said, though, that this was a rather tight election. When it came down to the final count here, he came in far under the five to seven points that had been predicted. So how much of a factor in his win was President Trump's endorsement?

[E]

You know, I think it didn't help him at the end. Abelardo's lead was wider before the Trump endorsement. The way that Trump talked about the election, it shows that he doesn't really know what happened in Colombia. But we are expecting this alliance with the United States, which Colombia had historically very strong ties to Washington in the region before the Gustavo Petro presidency, will become even stronger. And they will unfold in different terms around this Don Roe Doctrine, which is basically the Monroe Doctrine, in which the United States had defined Latin America as its backyard, in which it could interfere with the Donald Trump addition or addenda, which means that he will intervene in the issues that he finds important, which are drug trafficking, migration, and in general, security. So that is going to be an important factor, mainly because there are a lot of friendly presidents aligned to Trump in the region. So it will be interesting to see how much interventionism we will see, how much pushback against the growing influence of China and Russia in the region, and how effective they will manage to be fighting the perpetual drug war against cocaine, which has yielded very few results on the ground here in Colombia.

[B]

That's right.

[C]

We see Milei Bukele cast. This is seen as a shift to the right within the region. Is this an ideological new wave that we are seeing or is this just constituents who are frustrated with the incumbents and are basically casting a vote for anybody but the same?

[E]

You know, that is a great question because we had a previous left wing wave which is being replaced very radically with a pendulum like going very fast to the right in this election. I think there is Something they have tapped into. It was present in 2016. You guys went through it with the Brexit. We did also with a referendum around the peace accord. So I think that there is a part of Colombians who are identified and who really think that there is an ideological shift. I think it will be key to see what happens in 2028, when the US elections are coming and when we will actually see if that leadership that stems from the United States is able to have a second presidency and if that influence manages make a cohesive ideological bloc in the continent. It will also be very interesting to see what Abelardo de la Espreya finally turns out to be, because he hasn't had office previously, he has no experience. And Colombia is a hard country to manage. We have armed groups, we have a very strong opposition. You know, he won very narrowly. We have problems with the health system, we have fiscal problems. So it will be very interesting to see if he can be the leader of the new right in Colombia, which has had a leader, a very strong historical figure, in the presence of Alvaro Uribeles, which maybe you might remember.

[C]

De la Esprea is a novice politician that is important to note. He was an attorney before that and a controversial one. He was somebody who'd spent his entire career defending paramilitaries and even a Maduro money launderer. And now he's basically vowing to dismantle these very networks that he was defending. And let's just talk about some of these promises. He campaigned on a 90 day crackdown, peace talk, scrapped, megaprisons to be built. He would model on the Bukele fashion that we've seen and basically take a chainsaw to government spending. He won by the narrowest mandate, if not one of the narrowest mandates in Colombia's history. How much of those promises will he actually be able to deliver?

[F]

We'll see.

[E]

I can anticipate that not many of them. You know, Colombia has not built a mega prison in the last decade and he vows to build 10 in his four years. So those were like the main points in a program of government that was not important in the election because the election was all about like El Tigre, the lights video produced with AI which pictured his opponents in very strange situations. So I think we have some first signals, which were his victory speech. He took a very stark turn in his victory speech. He seemed more moderate. And now we are waiting to see how he starts building his cabinet and that will give you a sign of whether he will be a true populist. A hard right populist, or whether he'll be co opted by the right leaning establishment which has governed Colombia with successes and not so many successes for many decades.

[C]

Yeah. And we'll be obviously watching his record on human rights as well going forward. Nonetheless, a significant shift in politics in Colombia today. Thank you so much. Daniel Pacheco will be rooting for Colombia at the World Cup. I know that's what you'll be watching closely. Okay. Okay. All right. Stay with cnn. We'll be right back after the break.

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[C]

We turn now to the UK Again as the country reels from the Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation, plunging the country into uncertainty. The nation is also marking a milestone 10 years since Brexit.

[F]

Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent United Kingdom.

[C]

In many ways, a historic referendum in which Brits voted to leave the European Union can inform this current moment in British politics and how we got here. From political instability to the rise of populism. Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson rode an anti establishment wave urging voters to take back control from the EU in Brussels with false promises of hundreds of millions of pounds extra for the National Health Service. But while 52% of the population got on board and opted to leave 10 years on, the cost is clear. Independent economic analysts estimate that the hit to the GDP is anywhere between 4 to 8%. So let's bring in two journalists well placed to unpack all of this. The guardians, Jonathan Friedland and Gillian Tett of the Financial Times. Welcome both of you. Let me start with you, Jonathan. Just to take a walk down memory lane and get your perspective on where you were that day 10 years ago when England officially voted to leave the EU.

[F]

Yeah, the whole of the UK were taken out by that vote. I was in the newsroom at the Guardian newspaper in the dead of night, all through the night, because I was in charge of our opinion coverage that night. And we saw it turn because even Nigel Farage, who we saw there just as the polls closed around 10 o' clock at night, said, I think we've lost it, and, you know, consoled his supporters. And then it turned as the night went on, as soon as actual results came in, you saw the areas that were traditional Labour heartlands, post industrial areas, many of them had voted to leave and voted in huge numbers. And so by dawn it was very clear this had happened. And I remember feeling extremely glum that something hugely significant had happened, that the country I love had moved to sever itself from its nearest neighbours and that this was against the will of so many people. The young were hugely against it. Scotland voted against it, you know, big cities voted against it. So the margin was so narrow for such a huge and profound move. And I think, as you said in that introduction, more or less all the evidence that's come in the 10 years since has shown that this really was a needless act of self harm for which we're still paying the price, of course.

[C]

Thanks for that correction. I said England. It was the United Kingdom as a whole that voted to leave by a narrow margin. Forgive the American here, Gillian. It was 10 years ago that one of Brexit's leading campaigners, Daniel Hannon, who made this promise about what leaving the EU would mean for Britain and its future. Listen to what he said.

[F]

The British people will be the chief beneficiaries. We will benefit from getting our democracy back, our laws back, our borders back, and above all, we'll be able to trade with the whole world and be a global country, pursu its maritime and global vocation.

[C]

Ten years on. How much of that promise, Gillian, has been delivered?

[G]

Well, it's very hard to hear those words without feeling a tremendous sense of bitterness, because that has not played out at all. I was in New York when the Brexit vote happened and was very shocked. These days I'm both writing for the Financial Times, but I also oversee King's College at Cambridge and we just had a big conference on Brexit and one of the interesting facts that came out of that is that 2/3 of British people now think it was a bad idea to leave the European Union. But Only one third actually want to rejoin. And the reason is that in some ways, Britain's gone through the equivalent of a protracted divorce for the last 10 years, where you have two parents who are so focused on arguing with each other all the time that they actually forget to look after the kids. And in this case, there's been such a sense of political poison around the word Brexit and endless arguments about it that many of the key structural challenges facing Britain have simply not been addressed to do with productivity, infrastructure, education, things like that. So Brexit's not just been damaging in terms of the economic cost of losing those trade links or having to reformulate them. It's been desperately damaging in terms of the distraction it's provided as well. And that is an utter tragedy.

[C]

And, Jonathan, one of the promises that the Brexit supporters had run on and campaigned on was taking back control of the country. They promised stability. Here we are ten years later, Britain is about to see its seventh Prime Minister in ten years. Is that chaos Brexit's doing, or is it just bad candidates?

[F]

No, it is certainly related because Britain didn't used to change prime ministers at anything like this regularity, as you say, it will be seven in 10 years. Before then, you'd have to go back 40 or 50 years to have had that number. So it definitely did release a kind of poison into the system, but also a volatility. But I think above all, what it did was that it was both symptom and cause of this instability. Symptom in the sense that there were huge numbers of voters who were just desperate to see a change in their life. Wages stagnant, really. Since the crash in 2008, as somebody, one commentator puts it, the country hasn't had a pay rise in sort of 20 years. People wanted to do something that would change things, and therefore they thought leave meant leaving your current reality rather than staying in it. And so they voted leave. This, of course, didn't bring that promised change. If anything, actually, it's made it worse because the economic circumstances are even harder. And so therefore, this frustration and this need for change is constantly looking for another outlet, another lever to pull. And each time it only breeds more frustration and more impatience. And I think that's what we're seeing in our political cycle now is a kind of collective national impatience. Right, We've tried that. It didn't work. Next. Who can come along next time? But that desire for huge change, I think, was the driver for Brexit, which raised all these false hopes. You Heard it there with Daniel Hannan. The disappointment itself has become this kind of doom loop of frustration and impatience and it's just getting. The cycles are getting narrower and narrower.

[C]

And Gillian, Brexit supporters were also promising that leaving the EU would jumpstart the economy. They were predicting that the UK could turn into Singapore on the Thames, that without all the regulatory hurdles and the red tape imposed on from Brussels, that you could actually start to see free markets and the economy and trade thriving. So then why are we now disputing whether this was actually a net negative for the economy anywhere, losing from 8 to 2% in GDP growth over the last 10 years?

[G]

Well, there were always two contradictory views of Brexit presented by the pro Brexit camp. One was for the equivalent of Singapore on the Thames, a very open, free market international economy without too much regulation, etc, etc. The other was for a much more backward looking, paternalistic little England model, which had a very different vision of how Brexit would play out. Out the hedge funds and others who backed the idea of Brexit, once the first model in practice, the politicians who came in have been aiming more for the second. And one of the bitter ironies of Brexit is that in the intervening 10 years, in some ways Britain's actually become more European, both in terms of our political system, because we now have not just two main parties and a third minor one. We've got basically five or six parties competing with each other, very continental European, although we don't have the coalition and building traditions of continental Europe, unfortunately. And the economy as a whole, or the direction of policy has gone more and more, if you like, European and being sort of quasi socialist in many ways. And that is very, very, very ironic indeed. And to get out of that, Britain's going to really have to think very hard about how it unleashes animal spirits with a, you know, much more dynamic set of economic policies. They desperately need it right now. But the destruction of Brexit and arguing about that has prevented the government from finding those.

[C]

And Britain's exports of goods and services have been reduced by about 12%, agriculture and food exports falling about 30%. But there has been some upside as well. When we talk about the investment in artificial intelligence, let's say, and even renewed interest in financial services in the United Kingdom. When you're weighing the pros and the cons, are there any benefits economically that we have seen transpire? Gillian?

[G]

There are benefits for sure. Certainly having a more flexible and nimble AI regime could potentially be very Helpful for the UK if it took a really full advantage of that. It's worth pointing out, though, that France has also got a very extensive tech and AI sector, even within the the eu. So you can't just say that being inside the EU kills off your tech and AI industry at all. So that's one advantage for the uk. And again, having more freedom around the financial services could be a major advantage. But the signs are that the population doesn't want massive deregulation of financial services or indeed, almost anything else right now. And that's part of the problem.

[C]

And even a burgeoning AI industry in the UK pales in comparisons to what we're seeing in both the United States and China. Jonathan, let's talk about something else. Something else that voters were promised and that was control of immigration. Instead, arrivals hit record highs. Has anyone been held to account for some of these false promises, whether it's the NIH seeing an increase in revenue because of this or a promise to really clamp down on immigration?

[F]

No, I don't think anyone has really been held to account. I mean, only in the sense that perhaps one of the big faces of the Leave campaign, Boris Johnson, was elevated, became Prime Minister, which in some ways maybe was his goal all along, but he was driven out of office, but not because of this. He was driven out because of his breaking of COVID lockdown rules rather than his broken promises. But people do refer now to the Boris wave of immigration. So here was the guy heading up a campaign that was really fueled by and driven by fears and antipathy to immigration, and yet the numbers rocketed, as you say, in the years after Brexit. I think that has changed a lot of the politics around this issue, because nobody can now say, well, the way to keep migration numbers down is leaving the eu. Quite the reverse. The immigration numbers absolutely leapt after our exit from the European Union. And I don't want to sort of trade poll numbers too much with Gillian, but I think she said, you know, only a third favoured rejoining. There is a steady stream of polls that actually show a settled majority of British voters would favour rejoining and a huge majority would favour much closer elections. They don't necessarily put it high on their list of issues. That's definitely true, but they have come to that view that it was a mistake and if we could rejoin, we should. The question is how you turn that into a political issue. At the moment, the politicians are way behind. They don't want to touch it because it was so divisive, so polarizing. But I think voters, particularly younger voters, the next generation, are ahead of the politicians on this and they do think that if a country makes a hugely wrong decision, then then the best thing to do is to unmake that decision. And I think in the next five, 10, 12 years, you're going to hear more and more about that.

[C]

That is an interesting point to make because those who you're arguing opposed Brexit are not touching it right now, even though the polls show that perhaps even the majority of those in the UK now would favor rejoining. But even those who were its strongest advocates, like Nigel Farage, he's rarely defending it at the same rate and the same enthusiasm level that we saw at the time as well. Yet Reform UK is stronger than ever. So how do you explain that? Is it just other social issues, Jonathan, that he's been able to grasp onto?

[F]

Yes, indeed. You've analyzed it exactly right. He has moved as an issue away from Brexit. He hardly speaks about it anymore. It's as if it's a sort of embarrassing secret from his past. He barely talks about it. He moved on to migration. That's harder now because the numbers are coming down, but he still goes hard on that. And with looking over his right shoulder where there is a far right party breathing down his neck, he's going deeper and deeper into those cultural issues, culture war issues, even, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, trying to inflame opinion here after a young white man was stabbed and police didn't go to his aid and he called for cold, pure rage. I think he's trying to ignite divisions, exploit divisions, feast on greedy, but not really talk about Brexit because that is embarrassing. He's the guy who ran the restaurant where everyone got food poisoning. He brought to the country Brexit, and we're choking on it now still. So he doesn't talk about that. And I wonder whether his party is, when you say stronger than ever. There's some indications that it maybe was at its peak six, nine months a year ago, but it's fallen short in two or three, what Americans call special district elections, these small parliamentary elections for individual seats three times in a row now, they were expected to win and didn't, or could have won, but didn't. So I'm not sure about whether we've passed peak Farage. We may have done, but he doesn't want to talk about what has been his signature contribution to British politics, huge, which was taking Britain out of the European Union. I think even he and his own Supporters know best not to talk about that.

[C]

And he may even be facing a challenge from an even farther right party as well at this point. Gillian, a lot has changed in the last 10 years. The world looks quite different. We have Russia's war in Ukraine, obviously. We had the war in Iran October 7th. Some things, though, have not changed. And that is who was in the Oval Office just a few months after the Brexit vote. We saw the election of Donald Trump here, and some had perhaps naively assumed that if the UK had separated itself from the eu, which the President of the United States we know has long viewed negatively, that perhaps the relationship between these two countries, countries could be stronger. How do things look now?

[G]

Well, there's been a very nasty awakening, I think, for the British people because they believe the whole rhetoric around the special relationship for a long time. And yes, you know, in ceremonial, symbolic terms, it's still there. King Charles did a truly fantastic job when he went across to America, you know, a few weeks ago and managed to really feast on that special relationship meme, that symbolism. But the reality is that Britain is pretty small in American eyes. Many Americans I speak to around the White House are pretty scathing both about Europe and about Britain as well. You know, there are many other bigger challenges to focus on. And Britain's strength has traditionally been acting as a hinge, if you like, between the US and European Union, and actually as a hinge for other bilateral relationships as well. And, of course, being out of the European Union makes it harder for the UK to do that. So the first, you know, key for UK to win respect in the US will indeed to be creating an economy that's vibrant, to have a military that's vibrant, not starved of money as it currently is, and to have some sense of political stability. I mean, at the moment, the tragedy of Britain is that it looks like Italy in terms of its politics, or looks like Italy used to be in terms of its political upheaval and turbulence. But without the good food and without usually as much sunshine, it's very sunny right now.

[C]

Listen, do I need to defend the UK Now? I do think that the food and the restaurant scene has quite improved. I actually love eating every set of sense. I'm also. I'm also. Sorry, what did you say?

[G]

Yes, if you are an investor right now in the gilt market in the uk, it's very hard to use the models they used to use to actually game out what's going to happen politically or economically, because there are now so many parties jostling with each other. And because we have a first pass system for voting, it's not like continental Europe. You know, small swings in the vote can have incredibly big impacts in terms of the composition of the next parliament. Parliament. And that's really hard for investors to try and mount or model or predict.

[C]

Yeah. I mean, I think that there could be another way to sum up what these last 10 years have been like. And you'll recall that there was great fear in the EU that this would cause a domino effect, that other nations would want to follow suit. That didn't happen. So perhaps there is your telltale sign that this didn't go according to plan. Jonathan Friedman, Gillian Tett, great to have you on. Thank you so much for joining. Joining.

[G]

Thank you.

[F]

Good to be with you.

[C]

We'll be right back after this short break.

[D]

Craig Ferguson is going coast to coast to unpack what it really means to be an American today.

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What could possibly go wrong?

[D]

CRAIG ferguson, American on purpose. New episodes now streaming on the CNN app. Go to CNN.com Washington to subscribe or log in with your TV provider.

[A]

I'm Dr. Sanjay Gupta, host of the Chasing Life podcast.

[F]

Dr. Darby Saxby is a psychologist at

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USC who has been researching what happens

[B]

to men as they become dads.

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How do their brains change? How do their hormones change? What happens to their mental health and to their other relationships?

[C]

Men are built with the brain architecture that can adapt, adapt to parenthood. I think of caring and parenting not just as traits that you're born either being good at or not, but as skills that you can hone through time and repetition and practice. And so women are really socialized to expect to occupy a primary parenting role. And we don't necessarily raise our boys with that objective in mind.

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Listen to Chasing Lunch streaming now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[C]

Well, America's 250th anniversary of independence is approaching. And when it comes to celebrations, the rivalry between President Trump's Freedom250 group and bipartisan nonprofit America250 signals a fray in the country's unity and founding ideals. So how do we tell the American story when we can't agree on a common narrative? Yoni Applebaum is the deputy executive editor of the Atlantic, and he examines this question with Walter Isaacson.

[B]

Thank you, Bjana and Yoni Applebaum, welcome back to the show. Thank you. We're about to celebrate our 250th. Why is it important that we have a narrative, a narrative of our history in order to celebrate our birthday?

[A]

You know, this was a country built on an Idea that we are each equal to each other and. And that we are committed to a common project. And in a nation that is built around an idea, not to be able to tell that story, not to be able to call back to that common past, a past that even new arrivals to this country are able to adopt as their own, leaves us unable to come together in any kind of national celebration and leaves the future of that project, I think, uncertain in itself.

[B]

Well, you talk about us having a narrative that's sort of based on values rather than being a nation that's based on land and heritage and common backgrounds. Let me read you a sentence from the piece you wrote in the Atlantic. You say a nation defined by blood and soil, built around a shared religion or ethnicity, can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though, and bound together by a shared understanding of our history, the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal. I mean, fatal, that's a punch of a word. Why could it be the death of us all?

[A]

I think that you can look back at previous crises in American history, most notably the decades leading up to the Civil War, where there was a radical disjunction in the stories that Americans told themselves about what the country was and what it stood for. Those. Those can be really hard to resolve. I think a lot of Americans and. And I number myself among them, are worried about where the country is at present concerned. That increasing number of Americans no longer believe in this nation's promise, no longer see themselves as part of a single common project, but instead are concerned that there may be more than one narrative that has taken root, that they may be at odds with each other. And that's an incredibly difficult thing to resolve.

[B]

So tell me, what is, in your mind, the national narrative? How do things become coherent?

[A]

You know, I think that there are. There are three narratives that are out there at the moment. The one that I think most Americans still subscribe to is one that emerges over the last 50 years, and it says, look, America is a country founded on a set of ideals. Those were. Were good ideals. They are timeless ideals. It's also the case that we have seldom lived up to them, that the 250 years of the American past are a continual struggle in which we measure ourselves against those ideals. On the whole, we've moved forward, and sometimes we have moved backwards. We've applied those ideals unequally to different groups at different times. But the project, the grand American experiment, remains worth pursuing even if. If, like most aspirational ideals, we don't always Live up to the founding vision.

[B]

And that was what I think was taught in the 60s, 70s, 80s. Why did that unravel?

[A]

You know, it's come under attack from both flanks at once. On the left, there's a revolution that happens in the study of history. The doors to the academy widen. Women are able to enter the historical profession in large numbers. Members of Harris Minority Group Center. This is a wonderful advance for the country. They set about telling many of the forgotten and neglected stories. They set about weaving in to the fabric of American history many of the darker episodes that had received insufficient attention. That's a positive development. But as time goes on, instead of those being the contrapuntal notes in sort of in national tune, they become dominant. They become the only things that are pursued and taught by some scholars.

[B]

Are you referring in some ways to the 1619 Project, then? Because I know you write about it quite a bit in this piece.

[A]

That is an element of the 1619 project, that it looks back and says the defining moment in American history is the start of slavery, not the Declaration of Independence. And it comes out of a scholarly tradition that has flourished in the previous 30, 40 years that says the things that are distinctive about America are its wrongs, its sins, that these are the things that differentiate America from other lands and other nations.

[B]

So when you talk about the 1619 project, let's make sure people understand that it was a project done by the New York Times and others, a whole group of people that had a big impact in the past five or ten years. Right. Explain who did it and what she now says about.

[A]

About was put together by a journalist at the Times named Nicole Hunter Jones. What she did was put together an assemblage of scholars to contribute essays that wouldn't just be about the black experience in America, but would try to rewrite the American narrative, centering the black experience, not telling a separate story, but retelling the national story from that perspective. In many ways, it reflected the fruits of this new flourishing of scholarship that we get as the diversity of historians who are telling, telling the American story increases. There's lots of really good history in that project, but on the whole, the frame is that America starts in a dark place and remains a country defined by its injustices. That is the overall thrust of the project. And it provokes a furious backlash from the right, which has in any case been pushing back against this sort of history for decades, and which says, no, you're getting America all wrong. Wrong. This is a nation that was conceived with godly purpose and to the extent that we have sometimes deviated from our high ideals, that's a matter for the footnotes that the key notes to sound about American history are only the triumphal ones. If we have deviated from our ideals, it's not to say that those conceptions were ever flawed or that the men who made those mistakes shouldn't be taken to be representative of the American project. We should focus on the things we've done right. And. And that triumphalist narrative, sort of a hyper American narrative, comes to take root on the right. And President Trump in his first term, in response to the 1619 Project, launches a 1776 Commission that will try to advance a patriotic history. Instead of emphasizing only the bad in American history, it will try to look only at the good. And so you get this sort of downward spiral as the right and the left put forward to diametrically opposed versions of history. And neither one looks anything like what Americans tell us they believe about the past or want to learn about the past. Overwhelmingly, Americans say our country is complicated. I want to know the bad and the good. I want to grapple with the complexity. I want the full picture. I want the honest truth. That's where most Americans are. It's not the narrative that you can find on either extreme at the moment.

[B]

You talk about how both sides of the far left, the far right, have tried to grab the narrative and make it their own in different ways. And that's caused part of this problem. But you also write about another cause of this problem, which is we quit teaching history. Why did we do that?

[A]

You know, it was one of the remarkable things I found researching. This was sort of an unexpected downside of the educational reforms in the Bush administration that the no Child Left behind reforms. These were intended to make sure that schools throughout the country were not failing their students by imposing national standards and testing rigorously to make sure that schools met them. They agreed on standards for math, they agreed on standards for English. They shoved history to one side, not because they thought it was unimportant, but because it was so fiercely contested, it threatened to sink the entire endeavor. And the I suppose predictable result was that schools that started struggling on math or English to meet the standards would cut the classroom time devoted to history and social studies on average by a third in the years right after NCLB passed that high schools, which had often athletic coaches who it needed to find full time jobs for, move them out of English and math classes classrooms and into history classrooms where their performance wasn't going to be evaluated in the same way the school's funding wouldn't be tied to it. History became sort of the neglected stepchild of our K to 12 educational system. And that's not to say that there aren't fine history teachers out there. There are many who are laboring mightily in America's classrooms. But it is sort of the ironic result of history having been so important to everyone that they couldn't agree on what we should teach is that history has fewer resources. History instructors are much less likely to have a degree in the subject that they're teaching than teachers in other subjects. It has become something that really gets short shrift in the educational system.

[B]

And so now, as we go into the 250th, give me some examples of where you see the abandonment, these are your words, the abandonment of the effort, effort to tell the American story. And could we have used, I think we missed the chance. Could we have used this anniversary celebration to restore that?

[A]

You know, we've had two presidential administrations involved in planning the 250th in a heavy way, the Biden administration failed in one direction. Rather than create tentpole unifying events or really try to put any kind of narrative behind the celebration, it leaned in sort of an almost caricature nature of the progressive approach to these things. It launched a big oral history initiative to ask every American to tell their own story. It created sort of downloadable kits that local organizations, museums, historical societies could use to brand the things that they were going to be doing anyway. Every individual, every community was encouraged to tell the story for itself, but there was really no ability to pull together anything common for fear of what would be exclusive, who would be offended. And so there was a total abdication. On the other hand, the Trump administration has come in and it very much loves spectacle. It has wanted to create big events. What it has not had any desire to do is to create unifying events. These events that we've seen so far, like the UFC match on the South Lawn, have been semi partisan spectacles that put the president right at the heart of the that he's now scheduled to kick off a big state fair here in Washington, D.C. with a speech putting again, a more partisan valence. It's a group he personally controls which has taken over much of the celebrations. A group called Freedom250 has really seized the funding and the mantle from the congressionally chartered America 250 Commission. And so if the Democrats couldn't think of any unifying stories for the country to tell itself, the Trump administration has tacked hard in the opposite direction. It has a story it wants to tell, but it is a narrowly partisan vision and one that excludes many Americans. And so we're left with really an absence of the kind of unifying spectacle. And that's really strange. It's often been the case that these anniversary years have come about in really difficult moments. It's not as if this is a unique challenge. It is a unique failure.

[B]

One of the expressions of the partisan forces ripping apart history came with the monument removals and then the backlash to the monument removals. Why did that all occur and what effect did that have?

[A]

The protest movements that began by targeting the Confederate memorials took the classic tack of the left through most of American history and said there are things that are not living up to American ideals. Erecting a statue of somebody who took up arms against this country is a betrayal of basic patriotism. That was the initial argument and it garnered broad public support for the removal of those Confederate memorials, but very quickly spun well beyond those bounds. And instead of leveling that same critique, it resulted in the removal of many other statues of historical figures for various sins they were said to have committed. And at that point, it sort of jumped over into the kind of narrative of the American past that stresses the sins above the triumphs, that says to the extent that any particular historical character can be tied to wrongdoing, that then that person is no saint and shouldn't be memorialized. But all of our founders were not saints. Very few of us are saints either. And so the holding down in the spasm of iconoclasm of many, many statues left, I think a great many Americans feeling as if their own understanding of themselves and their country was being threatened. And we saw a sudden and dramatic ebbing of support for that movement and a backlash against it. And now Donald Trump is promising a Statuary park with 250 great American, including statues of many folks who were removed in that spasm of iconoclasm. So again and again, we see the cycle of action and counter reaction instead of an effort to bridge the chasm and to find the common things that we can rally around.

[B]

Yoni Applebaum, thanks so much for joining us.

[A]

Thank you.

[C]

And finally, World cup fever is well and truly here. And not even a two hour storm break in Philadelphia could stop the party. I actually watched this game yesterday. France fans are seen here celebrating and singing following their national team's rain soaked victory over Iraq. And Algeria claimed their first victory in the tournament against Jordan. It's a win that's not only brought great joy at home, but also a shared triumph for Lawrence, Kansas, home of the Algerian squad's base camp. It's a small college station city that's embraced the team as its own. Some have dubbed this tournament as a giant international sleepover. In seeing these scenes, it is hard to disagree. Best of luck to all of those playing in coming matches. England's playing today, I believe in Columbia as well, as we noted in the show earlier. All right, that is it for now. Thank you so much for watching and goodbye from New York. Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling spreadsheets?

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