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Americanswers… LIVE at Castfest! Who could lead the Democrats into 2028?
00:41:34
The Americast team answer your questions live on stage!
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- [00:00]
Sarah Smith
This is all four AmeriCasters in the same place at once, which is a very, very rare event. With Anthony, Justin, Mariana alongside me, Sarah Smith. And we are in the BBC's Maid of Ale studios doing our first ever live event, I think. So we have an audience of Americasters here to ask us some questions. And even though it's a Saturday, not a Monday, we're going to do Americancers. So whatever questions you have for us, we will attempt to answer. Anyway, once we get on with this episode, just leaves me to say, welcome to AmericasT.
- [00:33]
Mariana
AmericasT, AmericasT, from BBC News.
- [00:37]
Justin
You hear that sound? Oh, I think when I hear that
- [00:40]
Anthony
sound, it reminds me of money.
- [00:42]
Justin
We didn't start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.
- [00:46]
Mariana
This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it.
- [00:50]
Justin
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you. Turn the volume up.
- [01:00]
Mariana
Hello, it is Mariana, aka misinformation, in the not quite worldwide headquarters of AmericasT, but in Maida Vale Studios.
- [01:08]
Justin
And there's Justin sitting right next to her, which we often do, but it's
- [01:12]
Anthony
Anthony right here next to Justin on one side and Sarah on the other here in London. Very excited to be here.
- [01:18]
Sarah Smith
Yep, Sarah here in the BBC Maida Vale Studios as well for this very rare all Americas, all in the same place episode, which is always more fun.
- [01:27]
Justin
Okay, our first question comes from Laura, who's got a question specifically for Sarah. Laura, where are you?
- [01:34]
Mariana
Over there.
- [01:34]
Sarah Smith
Hi, Laura. Hi. I was, yeah, big fan, but I
- [01:38]
Mariana
was wondering, who in your phone would
- [01:42]
Sarah Smith
you most like to butt dial? You famous or not?
- [01:47]
Justin
But yeah, that's what you call a well thought through question.
- [01:52]
Sarah Smith
That's excellent. And so for anyone who doesn't know, the background to that is I phoned Donald Trump earlier this week. I managed to speak to him for just shy of five minutes or so about the King's upcoming visit, what he thinks of Keir Starmer, a little bit about the war on Iran. And then about 20 minutes later or so, he called me back. It was absolutely surreal. Sitting in the office, my phone starts ringing. And he was at that point just saved as DJT in my phone, I could see it was ringing. It's like, did he forget to say something? Has he got another point he wants to make? But when I answered it, it was a butt dial. All I could hear was Fox News playing in the background. We listened to it for a couple of minutes and then thought, you know, we're about to hear some state secrets or something. If somebody comes into the Oval Office and starts briefing him what earth might be here. And so, like, really weirdly, I thought, well, I better hang up on DJT on the phone. So, yeah, so that was the most surprising butt dial I got this week. And then I talked to Anthony on an episode of AmericasT about it. I've saved him as something slightly different now for, yeah, just in case I lose my phone or whatever. But yeah, who would I most like to butt down? Well, I suppose the key thing is what can you then overhear if they don't know that they have called you? And we got a few other senior politicians saved in there, not as many as the likes of Chris Mason or Laura Kuenssberg would have. So, I mean, the America has production meeting after we finish, when Anthony and I go back to our day jobs and this gang are all together in what they like to call the worldwide headquarters, discussing how they think that episode went. That would be quite intriguing.
- [03:32]
Justin
Kash Patel would be a good thing, I think, to Kash Patel butt dialed you, which is not entirely likely that he wouldn't, if you see what I mean. And there were things going on behind the scenes wherever he was at that time, which according to the Atlantic magazine could be anywhere. Although I should say he denies it in his suing. But you know, there are quite a few actually in the White House who it would be good to be butt dialed by, I guess. I once had a phone conversation with Donald Trump in which I was on Doncaster railway station and I'd been at the UKIP annual conference. I was on my way home for the Today program. The business presenter hadn't turned up and they said, could you talk to this New York businessman we've got for the business news tomorrow who's upset about wind farms in Scotland? And it was, I suppose it was 2015, maybe, something like that. So I said, yeah, okay. And I explained to him because I thought there's no way of not doing this. I vaguely knew who he was, but actually only vaguely. And I've been back in this country for a few years. So I said, look, I'm on Doncaster railway station. It's very strange circumstances. I'm actually going to have to get on a train and stand next to the loos now as we go.
- [04:42]
Mariana
How did you have signal?
- [04:44]
Justin
Well, that's why I warned him and he was that he just could not. So this actually goes to your next question, Sarah, because when I talked to him on that afternoon in Doncaster, he could not have been more amiable, more kind of buzzy more up for it. More amused, actually, by the fact that he was talking to this weird BBC guy in Doncaster, which is plenty of place he'd never heard of. But I sort of felt I should explain who he was. So we've had another question. Sarah from Rohit and Karina.
- [05:15]
Sarah Smith
Hello. We were wondering, what is Trump like as a person over the phone? Compared to his public performances, he was remarkably similar. Because I guess there's no formality about Donald Trump, is it? When you see him taking questions from the press in the Oval Office or any of the time he stops to speak to reporters on his way to and from Air Force One or something. I think all of us have a sort of, you know, a slightly more kind of public Persona, don't you, where you're trying mind your P's and Q's, like your telephone voice, as we used to say when we used to answer landlines very, very politely. But there's none of that with Donald Trump. He just is who he is. And so it was, yeah, it was exactly like talking to the TV version of Donald Trump. And he has. He almost has a lot to say, but I think he has familiar things he likes to go to if he doesn't know the answer to the question. So I was, for instance, asking about all the trouble Keir Starmer's in at the moment, and basically, does he. Did he have a comment on that? Did he think that maybe Keir Starmer should resign, as a lot of people in the UK are saying they think he ought to, and he obviously didn't want to get to that point directly, so he went to his kind of happy place, which is wind farms and immigration.
- [06:24]
Mariana
Yeah.
- [06:25]
Sarah Smith
And so you ever ask him about the uk, we get this all the time, say, oh, I tell you, what's wrong with the UK is you don't drill for oil. You've got all that oil under the North Sea and yet you're buying oil from Norway. What you need to do is get rid of all the windmills, as he calls them, and you need to strengthen your immigration policy. And if you did that, Britain could be a great country again. And unless anybody does that, you're doomed to fail, which is actually quite a neat way of not saying that he does or doesn't think that Keir Starmer ought to resign. And so you can kind of predict where he's going to go with difficult questions. So with Iran, you know, if you ask them something complicated about what they would want in an agreement about enriching uranium, he would just Start telling you they're never going to have a bomb. We obliterated their program back in June with Operation Midnight Hammer. He's got a little kind of rehearsed speech that he would give you each time. Anthony and I spent too much of our lives listening to every public utterance Donald Trump makes. So I think we could do a decent fist of being him in an interview now.
- [07:22]
Anthony
Yeah, you predict exactly what he's going to say. You can tell when he's going to go off on one of his tangents, because he does it all the time. And I've covered Trump now for one and a quarter presidential terms, and I've seen him in the Oval Office, at rallies, on the back of Air Force One. And he does, he is the person you see even up close, he's generally friendly. He, he does like reporters. For all the media bashing that he does, and he does a lot of it when he gets in front of the cameras or talking to reporters, he is a friendly guy and generally is pretty nice. Now, sometimes, does he like reporters or
- [07:54]
Sarah Smith
does he like being on TV and reporters are the conduit to that?
- [07:58]
Anthony
I think he likes being in front of the cameras. You know, there was someone, someone told me very early on when I was covering Trump, and one of the things we do is radio pool for the BBC, so we have to record audio. And someone told me, you know, set up your audio in front of the biggest camera because that is exactly where Donald Trump is going to make a beeline to whenever you're in the room. But he dominates a room. He has a presence about him. You know, he's a big guy.
- [08:23]
Sarah Smith
He really is very big.
- [08:24]
Anthony
He has outgoing personalities, kind of like Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in that way. People who, as soon as they walk in the room, you know, he's there and he does, he likes to talk. And there were some times in the first term where we would be in the Oval Office doing a spray with the governor of Texas or some foreign dignitary, and he would just keep talking and keep answering questions for 45 minutes an hour to the point where I was running out of questions to ask him. I had gone down the list of about 10 things. Finally, I was, you know, tell me, what do you think of college football? And, you know, it's a strange experience and he's a different kind of president. But, you know, if you're asking, you know, is he like, in personal, up front, the same as he is on tv? Yeah, I mean, he really is. There's not much Artifice. That's the authenticity that I think a lot of. A lot of voters, a lot of his supporters seem to like Matt Fry.
- [09:18]
Justin
He works now for Channel four. He used to be a BBC correspondent, interviewed George W. Bush when I was there with Matt. We were both the correspondents. And he does the interview and it's quite combative. It's at the end of the Iraq war. Everything's going quite wrong. And at the end of it, Bush says to Matt, how'd you like that, Matt? Was that a bit of give and take? Did you enjoy it? And Matt was saying, yes, thank you very much, Mr. President. And he said, before you go, do you want to see the Oval Office? Yes, I'd love to. They go up to the Oval Office. Do you want to see the Rose Garden? They go out to the Rose Garden. Do you want to see the library corridor? And they go down the line and Matt says he actually found himself saying to the President of the United States, look, I'm terribly sorry, but I've actually got to go. And it's, you know, that personality thing, I think does. And often, I mean, these people are. It's just. It's the weirdest when you think of. I don't know what people here think, but if you look in the mirror and you see a president looking out, you're probably quite strange. And that applies to both parties and any individual and both sexes as well, anyone who thinks they can do this job. It's odd. And they are a strange group of people, right?
- [10:17]
Anthony
And once you think that, once you look in the mirror and say, hey, you know, that could be a president looking back at me, it changes you. And you never go back. That's why you see people who run for president once and lose in the primaries. They do it again and again and again because it is so addictive being on the stage and in the spotlight and having the idea, entertaining the notion that you could be the leader of the free world, commander in chief of the American armed forces, it is intoxicating.
- [10:42]
Sarah Smith
And nobody dumb gets to do it as well. I think it's thinking back to Ronald Reagan, George W. Bush, now Donald Trump. A lot of people think, why is this idiot in the Oval Office? Why have we got this fool running America? And there may be many things, they might be wrong, you might disagree with them, you might have moral differences, but they're never done. The testing process that it is to get elected president through the primaries and through the general election filters out anybody who can't hack it. There is nobody Stupid ends up in the White House, I don't think.
- [11:13]
Justin
No, that's true. And there's a sharpness there as well. Also a belief that if you snap your fingers, something will happen as a result of you snapping your fingers.
- [11:21]
Mariana
Do you not think, though, that. And this is to bang on about the kinds of things I bang on about all the time, but in the age of social media, you're going to have a slightly different sort of genre of president. And maybe some of the core things we're talking about are the same, like the charisma or the energy or what they're like when they enter a room. But as we've spoken about lots and lots and lots, Donald Trump is particularly good at the rage bait formula on social media. He's sort of been the kind of the founder, in some ways, of how presidents can do that. He's created the blueprint other people are copying, like Zoran Mandami, for example, who is now mayor of New York. And you just wonder whether social media will. And the algorithms and having to game those is going to sort of create a new genre of president where what. The attention thing ends up counting so much more than anything else.
- [12:08]
Justin
Which is desperate actually, isn't it? Because if it is about attention, the attention economy, and if that is what you have to be the master of, rather than mastering policy or mastering all the other things that presidential candidates have had to master in the back in the past, that's worrying, it seems.
- [12:25]
Sarah Smith
Yeah.
- [12:25]
Mariana
And you think about celebrity, I mean, that's evolved so much. You look at influencers, you look at the kinds of people who kind of shoot to fame in the US who are able. There's also positives about that because you can kind of do it yourself. But there's downsides as well. You just wonder how much that's going to shape which politicians you get. And then also the backlash and everything else that comes with that sort of thing. How much it ends up putting good people off going into politics.
- [12:47]
Anthony
Yeah, it was interesting because, you know, after Trump's first term, we felt like he had totally changed the way politics was going to be conducted. And then Biden came in and ran a very traditional kind of old school presidency. I mean, I can. I asked dozens of questions of Trump in his first term. I never got one with Biden because he was very stage managed. They didn't have the same kind of gaggles that Trump has practically every day. And even when Biden would hold a press conference, he would have a list of about four or five names of major networks, major newspapers. He would tick through that list, then be done, press conference over, he leaves. So I don't know, now that Trump came back and won again, maybe now, I think, and you see with Gavin Newsom and some of the other Democratic politicians who have presidential aspirations, they are trying to be more Trump, like in their accessibility and the way they use social media. So maybe now that Trump's done it twice and it's clear that that is an effective way of reaching an American audience and bypassing kind of the mainstream media filter, he can move on.
- [13:46]
Justin
That should bring us to another question that we've had asked, which I think is exactly along these lines, and it's from Victoria.
- [13:55]
Mariana
Is Trump actually changing the political climate or is he symptomatic of much broader political and cultural changes? That's a very good question. I mean, to build on what we were just talking about, I do think to some extent the reason that Donald Trump has succeeded, certainly with the election, that just, that's just gone the way in which he managed to win it and win it so emphatically. I mean, a lot of it was about issues we've discussed, the economy and so on and so forth. But also he was just very, very effective at getting in front of certain voters, particularly younger male voters. Streamers, we've spoken about it loads, the alternative media kind of ecosystem, podcasts, that sort of thing. And so I think that his ability to game the new media landscape and the social media landscape has resulted in him having the kind of prominence and power that he has. And the way he made MAGA feel cool. Question marks over whether it still feels cool, but certainly at the time he was elected, he made it seem cool in certain circles. Yeah, it's a bit of a chicken and egg, isn't it? I mean, it's. To your point, Anthony, about, like, when he got elected last time around, there was then a bit of a backlash against it, and we had a completely different president. Now we've kind of gone to a new extreme. Do we then go back again? What do you think?
- [15:04]
Sarah Smith
Yeah, I mean, clearly there is a populist wave in other places as well. And Donald Trump probably, as Marianna says, could take credit for being early on that, starting some of that. But his rise has come at a time when other people like him are on the rise as well. But I think some of it is unique to him because you say, is he changing the rules? So, yes, in terms of what he can get away with from saying things that aren't true to the Trump organization profiting enormously off the back of his presidency, breaking all sorts of rules and norms. But what I don't think we'll know for quite a while is whether he's changed the rules for everyone or whether he's unique and he can get away with this somehow or other. Because people knew that he was greedy and venal and to a certain extent, corrupt. They didn't expect anything different of Donald Trump. So they're not too shocked by what he's done. Does that mean they would allow Zoram Mamdame to get away with the same thing or some other candidate? Very possibly not. I think there's a good chance that Donald Trump can do this in his own way and others cannot.
- [16:06]
Anthony
Yeah, I'll say Trump is a symptom of reflection, however you want to say it, of the state of American politics. And the reason I say that is for the past 10 years, American voters time and time again have been voting for change. They feel like what's going on in America is not working for them. They feel like the system is broken. They want things to be different. And so in 2016, they voted for the change candidate in Donald Trump. In 2018, they voted for Democrats to come in because they were unhappy with the way things were going. 2020, they changed to Biden. 2022, they changed back to Republicans. 2024, they went back to Donald Trump again. They are looking for someone to address the real concerns that they have, and they feel like politics as usual and the establishment and the institutions are failing them, and they want someone to come in and do something differently. And at least so far, over 10 years and now it looks like with Trump, they're feeling this way again, that they're not getting what they wanted. Things aren't changing. Things aren't getting more affordable. There aren't solutions. And they're going to keep doing this and maybe keep finding more and more extreme candidates until they get the kind of change they want.
- [17:14]
Justin
And when it comes to the extremity of the candidates, that in a way, that is a choice that the Democrats are going to have to make when it comes to 2028. And they're going to make that choice, obviously, to an extent downstream of culture and where they think the culture is without necessarily thinking it through. But obviously there are things that they're going to have to plug into. And with Zoramundani in New York, but also more widely as well, there is real anger and anger about what we in Britain call the cost of living. But, you know, that affordability as they call it. Thing is not. It's not being made up. Basically there is a generation who are now angry about the way that they are. And increasingly, I think it seems to me that what Donald Trump, although he is probably sui generis, as they say in Mar a Lago, but he has nonetheless opened the floodgates potentially for a much angrier set of politics and just national conversation that carries on long after he's gone. I think that, in a way, is the risk for the United States. There's this guy, Hasan Piker, who's, I don't know if people have come across him. He streams his life on Twitch, which even Marianna doesn't do that and she's quite plugged into these things. But he's a very angry left wing voice and he kind of. There are all sorts of things that he approves of that, you know, the mainstream Americans probably wouldn't. But he's very forceful and in a sense quite Trump, like in as much as he's able to say things and get away with them. And I wonder whether, you know, so the Democrats will be pulled towards that approach next time round and the more moderate kind of traditional, conventional approach that we're all used to.
- [19:05]
Sarah Smith
Yeah, because how does moderate centrism cut through if you're campaigning on social media?
- [19:08]
Mariana
It doesn't, essentially. And it's interesting when you think about what you were saying, Sarah. Is it Donald Trump and something unique about him, have other people around him succeeded in sort of gaming social media in the same way? Largely, no. I mean, you look at J.D. vance, all those memes of him with like a large head and his tiny face, I'm sure you've seen them. You know, those are people taking the Mick out of him and he's kind of tried to own them, but it hasn't necessarily worked. What I would say, though, and if we're thinking about this point of Donald Trump being reflective or symptomatic of something wider recently when he had to, and we've chatted about it when he had to delete this, this meme of him as a doctor or Jesus, take your pick, that felt like a moment where suddenly everyone was saying, oh, I don't know whether this trolling rage bait thing is actually quite our cup of tea as much as it was before. And I think particularly around the war in Iran, you know, we've seen how the Iranian people who are supportive of the Iranian regime and the government itself have very much sort of succeeded in winning the meme war and all of Those Lego videos and everything else. You kind of think Donald Trump has created the blueprint and now everyone else is copying it, and then does he become less relevant or it all moves on and he's kind of the old thing now.
- [20:18]
Sarah Smith
I don't have a name on the back of here, so apologies to whoever wrote this Question that I will read out instead is a good one. Will the Trump presidency be effectively over if the gop, the Republican Party, lose the midterms? Anthony?
- [20:33]
Anthony
Yes. I mean, there are things that a president can do without the help of Congress, and we've actually seen that over the past two years, year and a half, because Congress hasn't done a whole lot. And Trump has been able to push things through via executive orders, obviously, he's been able to launch wars. The terrorists he tried to do without any kind of congressional authorization, and there have been checks on that. But if the Democrats take back control, it's not only going to be no Republican Congress letting him do that. There are going to be Democrats who are actively trying to stop him, and maybe they can pass legislation that would become fights with them over funding, and we could see more government shutdowns. Certainly, you're not going to see any kind of an agenda that Trump wants passed via legislation, more tax cuts or more spending on immigration enforcement or more military spending happening. The other thing that's going to happen if Democrats take over is the investigations and oversight are going to be pushed up to 11. They're going to be committees looking into Donald Trump's business empire and his family. There are going to be committees looking into his immigration enforcement, into every single cabinet appointee he's picked to have been involved in any kind of controversies. It's just going to be nonstop. And if you remember in 2019, when Democrats took the House of Representatives back after the first two years where Republicans and Trump had control of the Congress, that was January of 2019, and Trump was impeached in October. So 10 months, and impeachment hearings were underway. And there are already Democrats who are saying we need to come up with a plan to be able to start impeachment proceedings on him on day one of 2027. And I think there's going to be this push to try to hold him in, hold him to account, and to investigate everything in a way that when the Republicans control the committees, they wouldn't have been able to do.
- [22:24]
Justin
I mean, I think you're obviously right. Legislatively, it's over. But what does he enjoy most? He enjoys the fight, and he enjoys, you think of the reason he's president again, the incredible effort that was made to do him down through the courts, et cetera, which he fought against and actually enjoyed the fight against. And I think if they go down this road that Anthony's just described, which they will particularly win the Senate, it's a trap, actually, because they then spend that whole period talking about Trump and the past, which is what he likes to talk about, and they were not talking about the future, and they're not sort of preparing the ground. It seems to. That's the trap for them, is they're not preparing the ground for 28. They're talking about Trump, and Trump likes talking about Trump. He does nothing.
- [23:11]
Mariana
Donald Trump probably doesn't really want to.
- [23:12]
Justin
And he always wins. I mean, up to now, he always wins these battles. He always wins these battles.
- [23:18]
Mariana
And also, this comes back to a question that we've chatted about, I think, when we were doing one of our time capsule episodes. What does Donald Trump want to achieve when it comes to this presidency? Like, is it the vibe that he leaves, a good vibe in the end? Is it that there are specific aims he has? I mean, the world peace thing, what is the goal of it? And I think ultimately, yeah, you might reach a point where he kind of cares less about what happens in the midterms anyways. He just cares about the overall impression that he leaves in his presidency. And then the Republicans are left sort of fighting, fighting it out.
- [23:51]
Sarah Smith
It's normal, isn't it, for the sitting president, for his party, not to do well in the midterms and often lose control of the House and the Senate. And that's why they pivot to foreign affairs in the last two years, because you don't need congressional approval for a whole bunch of things that you can do, including launching a war in Iran, for instance. So, you know, we may see him more tempted to meddle overseas if he can't do domestically what he wants to.
- [24:11]
Anthony
Yeah, and that's part of the legacy thing, too. If you can find some sort of a major peace deal to broker, then it can be kind of a feather in your cap when you're talking about
- [24:19]
Sarah Smith
war to start or worse, and then peace deal.
- [24:22]
Anthony
I haven't done a question, so I'm going to do one because we were talking about the Democrats earlier, and we have one from Chris Peterborough about the Democrats. Yeah, I was just going to say, I love the podcast. Yeah. I mean, we hear a lot about who could follow from the Republicans at the next presidential election, but who are the front runners of the Democrats. Any chance of Jimmy Kimmel standing? Thank you. I mean, I mentioned Gavin Newsom. Clearly he wants to run for president. He's positioning himself. He's the governor of California, which is a prominent spot to run off of. He has gotten support, a little more support from the Democratic rank and files since he became very confrontational in his dealings with Trump and his masterminding the California redistricting measure, which essentially is redrawing the lines of congressional districts in California, which will make it more likely that Democrats can pick up seats from that state in the House of Representatives, which, as we just discussed, the House of Representatives is everything in this fight. And if the Democrats take it back in November, it's going to change the dynamics of politics in the country for the next two years. J.B. pritzker, who's the governor of Illinois, another one Shapiro, governor of Pennsylvania. It's going to be a big field. Pete Buttigieg, who ran in 2020, who was the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, but was transportation secretary under Biden. He is very sharp witted, very quick on his feet. Also, potential, I mean, Kamala Harris named comes up again, although I'm not convinced that Kamala Harris is going to go to run. I think she just like keeping her options open, though.
- [26:06]
Sarah Smith
She's keeping her Democrat conference last week looking like a presidential contender.
- [26:11]
Anthony
You know, and I go back and forth over this because again, as I said earlier, once you look and you see a president looking back in the mirror, it's very hard to let go of. But I think if she ruled out running for president now, no one would pay attention to her. And she's got, you know, books to sell and things to do. As long as she keeps that option open, she is going to get attention and people will follow her around breathlessly. I mean, is there anyone else? I mean, who are you seeing online? Marianna I was just going to say
- [26:34]
Mariana
that actually, I think Gavin Newsom's really interesting because I actually think that a lot of his trolling of Donald Trump and he will write in capitals and does this kind of satirical type stuff ultimately is really super serving an audience who already would vote Democrat and don't like Donald Trump very much. I don't think you're really seeing anyone at the moment who is succeeding in reaching the people who are all in the middle. And I think of, for example, Gabriella, your favorite one of my undercover voters, my fictional characters with their social media profiles across the main sites. Gabriella is the voter who is not that fussed about politics she's not really seeing anything from the Democrats. None of them are succeeding in reaching her. And in fact, really kind of interestingly, the only content that she's seen in recent months that's come from anyone kind of Democratic on her feeds that I've spotted has been Zoram Mamdani. Even though she's not in New York at all, she's actually on the other side of the country, which is interesting because I think that the reason his social media strategy was so effective, I mean, not least because he was serving an audience who probably were kind of keen to buy that message, is because he made it kind of seem quite normal and authentic. I think the issue that a lot of these people you've just listed face, Anthony, is that they are too politician y like, they seem still too politicianly. They seem like politicians trying to be funny or interesting or whatever. And that doesn't seem like it's in line with necessarily what they've always been like. They've been quite serious and quite traditional and proper. Donald Trump has benefited from the fact that he wasn't perceived to kind of be any of those things, even if he's very much of the establishment. And so I think really what the Democrats could do with is someone who kind of emerges out of nowhere.
- [28:04]
Sarah Smith
And that's a generational issue, isn't it? I mean, the reason Zoram Dami can do that with authenticity is he's much, much younger. Younger. And all the people Anthony mentioned are well, our age or older.
- [28:15]
Justin
Yeah, well, yeah, your age, not mine. Although. Yeah. So two things. Number one, I think you're right. I think Gavin Newsom is too Californian. He's too slick, too slick, too politician, and too focused on doing down Trump to go back to what we were talking about before. So Gavin Newsom is good at hitting back at Trump, and that's why, in a sense, at the moment, he is the front runner in the Democratic Party, because he has really stuck it to him really successfully and a lot online, but just generally he's been sort of ballsy in doing that. The issue, though, is that the next presidential election is not going to be about Donald Trump, or if it is, you know, the likelihood is that the Republicans win it again, because it all becomes a sort of confusing maelstrom of, well, hang on a second. What are you promising us in the future? The next election? Next presidential election has got to be about the future. And to do that, you've got to be able to focus on the future. The one name that I'd Add to the ones that Anthony came up with is what's his first name?
- [29:14]
Anthony
And Beshear.
- [29:15]
Justin
Yeah, Andy Beshere. So he's an interest. So he's the. We mentioned him on the pod the other day and the fact that I can't remember his full name suggests that he's not, you know, necessarily right at the top of everyone's. And he's not, you know, he's not a nationally, massively nationally known figure. And that, I think is a good thing. I think it is a good thing for him. He's hugely popular in Kentucky. Where have you. Oh, let's hear it then.
- [29:39]
Mariana
Oh, have I got it.
- [29:40]
Justin
Hang on a second.
- [29:41]
Mariana
I might have it. Is this the Mitch McConnell one?
- [29:44]
Justin
It's almost as if we planned it without planning it. Here we go.
- [29:48]
Guest from Kentucky
Well, it's because I lived and worked in Kentucky for a number of years and I'll be there in two weeks time, so I have a fairly decent understanding of the politics of Kentucky. So what's happened is that Mitch McConnell, as you know, is retiring and he was, of course, you know, he ran the whole operation for decades, actually. And then we've got Bashir, who is the youngish and Democrat, and I lived in East Kentucky, which to be honest, mostly votes Democrat these days. My question was, do you think that with Mitch McConnell going and Bashir being actually really quite popular as a Democrat, that the voting pattern in Kentucky could change to the point that they would no longer be a Republican in the Senate?
- [30:28]
Justin
And just to make it clear, Kentucky at the moment you think of as being a Republican state, it certainly voted for Trump overwhelmingly. Beshear, though, is, I think, around saying this because we had Jim Messina on the other day who said that this was the case, is the most popular Democratic governor of any state.
- [30:47]
Guest from Kentucky
That's correct.
- [30:48]
Justin
Which is extraordinary in itself, isn't it? Yeah.
- [30:50]
Anthony
I've interviewed Andy Beshear. He doesn't come across great on television. He comes off a little stuffy, but in person he's very friendly, very kind of down to earth. He is a popular governor. His dad was a popular governor in Kentucky. He was Attorney General. When I interviewed Andy Beshear, that's another
- [31:08]
Justin
weird thing about America. It actually is an aristocracy, whatever they say about us. Yeah, it's an aristocracy.
- [31:14]
Anthony
Yeah. Yeah.
- [31:15]
Justin
And you should hear what Anthony's dad did in the BBC.
- [31:19]
Anthony
My dad was a professor in Texas
- [31:22]
Justin
and hers as well.
- [31:25]
Anthony
But the Democrats have won in Kentucky, but they've only won the governorship because it doesn't affect national Politics. And Andy Beshear's dad, I believe, ran for a senate seat maybe 15, 20 years ago and was considered to be, you know, a possible winner there. And he wasn't able to do it. Just wasn't able to get over the hump. And there have been some very talented Democrats who have been able to do all right in state politics in Kentucky, but haven't been able to break through. And it is because it's different. And so you see people like Massachusetts electing Republicans. So you see states sometimes go with another party to run their state because it doesn't impact the national politics. It's a lot harder to win statewide in a Republican state if you're a Democrat and a Democratic state if you're Republican because of the stakes of it being in Washington. But I think going back to what you say, he has got potential as a presidential candidate. He's centrist, but he presents as centrist. But he does still kind of defend liberal values and has vetoed bills. There's a transgender ban in Kentucky that he vetoed. So he's been willing to take stands, but has still managed to stay popular in that state. So he'd be an interesting if he can just be a little more comfortable on the stage and connect a little better. I think he has the potential. The other one we haven't mentioned yet is Alexandria Ocasio Cortez, who is now old enough to be president. Mariana, you're going to get there at some point, but she is 35, so she is now old enough. And I'm really watching in this 2028 race who steps forward as the progressive candidate. Because without Bernie Sanders in this race, for the first time in it'll be 12 years, that window, that pathway is open. And clearly there are, there's a desire among Democrats for someone who is out there espousing left wing quasi socialist programs, health care for all and free college education, all the things that he ran on. And I mean, it could be aoc, it could be Ro Khanna, who's a congressman from California, who has taken a very prominent kind of position on the Epstein files, working with Thomas Massie, the Republican from Kentucky also. So who steps forward? There is going to be. And if there's someone who isn't quite as polarizing as Bernie Sanders was, is it someone who could win as a full throated, Zohran Mamdani style left winger could win that nomination?
- [34:00]
Justin
Except the interesting thing there is that Bernie Sanders appealed to working class Americans. He had this ability to combine the kind of Politics that you think of as being in the senior common room at a university with actually something much grittier and that really got through to people. And when you talk to saners, you realize there's something about. He has this kind of authenticity thing, doesn't he? Which is why he was so popular with young people on social media.
- [34:28]
Mariana
He's a really good example of someone who sort of has almost blossomed in a social media way after the fact.
- [34:34]
Justin
He cut through. I mean, frankly, I think, you know, if they'd not picked Hillary and they picked him, he would have won and history would be different. But that's kind of. That's neither here nor there now. But he had an ability to combine the progressive left stuff with something else that sort of almost appealing to Trump voters, really. And I just wonder, what do you think, Anthony, this time round that that is going to be so aoc? I don't see doing that. Does AOC combine the two in a way that appeals?
- [35:01]
Anthony
Like, it's interesting, if you listen to AOC these days, compared to when she first came up, she is focused much more on working class issues and on minimum wage and on unionizing and on getting people low cost housing and things like that. Things that Mamdani very effectively used to win in New York City.
- [35:23]
Justin
She got rid of her pronouns on
- [35:24]
Anthony
X. Yeah, I mean, she moved away from some of the cultural things.
- [35:30]
Mariana
AOC and Sanders both, when Mandami was elected, made a big point of being like a part of that, didn't they? They were like on, you know, there was a. There was a whole thing. So it wouldn't surprise me if AOC was the one who kind of goes for it, not least because she's really good at popping up on people's feeds and being quite punchy.
- [35:45]
Justin
But can she pop up on Gabriella's in Kentucky and get people? Yeah, that's the question.
- [35:53]
Anthony
What you were saying, Marianne, about like, no one's really pitching, like, trying to broaden the tent and expand and reach voters who are not hardcore Democrats. The thing is you've got to win the Democratic primaries first before you get to the general election and can do that. And the person who is going to be successful in the nominee is not who could appeal to the widest variety of Americans, it's who can appeal to Democratic primary voters in South Carolina and New Hampshire and Nevada and all of these early states. And that is going to be the real test now.
- [36:24]
Sarah Smith
So one last question will come from Neil and Sam. Ah, there we go.
- [36:28]
Neil or Sam
Yeah, thank you for the Merit cast Today I'm really enjoying myself. It's a bit of a rambly question, but I shall talk fairly quickly. For most of America's history, the Constitution and the Founding Fathers have almost been revered. For example, you have the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial. Now, it seems that Trump has driven a coach and horses through many of the constitutional safeguards. So once he is out of office in two or three years time, 2028, will America, does America have the capacity, the establishment, to work on constitutional reform to give it a more stable platform for the future? And it seems that the Founding Fathers idea was that the Constitution should be a work in progress to a more ever perfect union. Has America, will it have the capacity to do that in future?
- [37:28]
Sarah Smith
Well, we know who has to answer that.
- [37:30]
Anthony
Okay, I'll take a first shot at no. I mean, it's a very important question and I think it's something that Democrats need to get their head around and address if they do come back to power is how do you rebuild some of the constitutional safeguards, some of the legal safeguards that were in place, unwritten rules, norms and traditions that were set up that everyone seemed to follow that Donald Trump has said, well, this is not written down. I can't do this. So I'm going to do something differently. If I want to rename buildings after myself, if I want to tear down part of the White House and build an arch across the river in Virginia, I'm going to do that. And Democrats have to figure out ways to codify that, put it into law. And they tried a little bit during the Biden years. If you remember, they passed an election reform act that changed the way elections are certified because they saw that there were loopholes and some vagueness that they would have to clarify because Donald Trump took advantage of that in contesting the 2020 elections. But they're going to have to go through and figure out and maybe even work with some Republicans who have not been saying this publicly but have been feeling very uneasy about some of the things Donald Trump has done and some of the boundaries he has pushed over the past year and a half to to start putting those guardrails back up. Now, whether they can do it or not is going to take political will, it's going to take planning and it's going to take persistence. And I'm an optimistic heart. And we're celebrating our 250th centennial in the United States this year. And I feel like America has stuck around this long and that the people are fundamentally good and they believe in the goodness of America and that, you know, it may be my naive, but I optimistically think that things can be made better and some of the shortcomings can be addressed.
- [39:21]
Sarah Smith
But it tells you everything I think you need to know about the state of America now that the 250th anniversary of its founding will be celebrated at the White House with a UFC fight in the grounds of the White House
- [39:31]
Anthony
hosted by Donald Trump and a Formula One race.
- [39:36]
Justin
And also, it's worth saying, the Democrats, there are plenty of Democrats who, or they would like to see the Constitution altered. They want to alter it in a way that is as controversial as anything Donald Trump has done. For instance, packing the Supreme Court, getting, effectively getting rid in one sweep of the conservative majority that there is at the moment statehood for Puerto Rico. I mean, there's a list, isn't there, Anthony, that would benefit the Democrats in the longer term. And that is the risk going back to what we were saying right at the beginning. The risk is that everyone now thinks this is all about what's in it for me and my team and that that whole business of America and that rather beautiful speech that Anthony has just made is not really what a lot of people who are driving politics on both sides anymore believe.
- [40:24]
Anthony
Leave it to the Brit to throw some cold water on my hopeless optimism. Well, we got through a lot of your questions there. I know there are many more and I appreciate that we aren't going to be able to answer all them, but maybe we can use them in America answers in the future because there are some very good ones, some ones that I think will last.
- [40:42]
Justin
We will do that. Thank you all.
- [40:43]
Mariana
Thank you.
- [40:44]
Anthony
Bye.
- [40:59]
Sarah Smith
We hope you enjoyed that. And if you want to hear our other episodes, you can get them wherever you get your podcasts. And if you want to get in touch, we read every single piece of correspondence we get on email. AmericaSTBC.co.uk send us a message or a voice note via WhatsApp to 443-301-23-9480. Chat to you soon. Bye. Bye.