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Americanswers… On 5 Live! Why has the US been accused of war crimes off the Venezuelan coast?
00:30:49
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has called the claims “fake news”
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- [00:00]
Matt Chorley
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Sarah
Hello all, we are back from Thanksgiving, back on five Live as well, answering your questions, including some mentions of Thanksgiving itself, particularly the travel surrounding it and turkey pardoning as well. We also talked about Donald Trump's permanently pausing migration to the US from those countries he calls the Third World.
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And lots of discussion about what is going on off the coast of Venezuela because we've got the Defense Secretary, or the Secretary of War as he likes to be called, Pete Hegseth, accused of committing war crimes essentially whilst firing strikes at boats off the coast of Venezuela. He denies that he's done anything wrong, but this is becoming a major row in the US So if you stick around and after listening to the 5 live bit, we've got some extra chat on that just for the podcast listeners at the end.
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Welcome to America Answers with me with Sarah and with Anthony and of course with Matt Chorley on five Live.
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Ameracast.
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Podcast Advertiser
Ameracast from BBC News.
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Bob
When Donald Trump calls, they say, yes, sir, right away, sir.
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Anthony
Happy to lick your boot, sir.
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Bob
We are the sickest country in the world.
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Matt Chorley
Oh dear. Are you worried that billionaires are going to go hungry?
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Anthony
Of course the President supports peaceful protests.
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Sarah
What a stupid.
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Donald Trump
Are you still talking about Jeffrey and Epstein?
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Matt Chorley
So, welcome back after Thanksgiving. Sarah, Anthony. Sarah, did you have a good Thanksgiving?
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Sarah
Yes, we had a wonderful time. I didn't travel anywhere, thankfully, because that can be a bit of a nightmare over Thanksgiving period when the entire country seems to be on the move. So we hosted at home for 14.
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Matt Chorley
People and this is basically an excuse to have a second Christmas, big turkey, family dinner.
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Sarah
It's brilliant. Yeah, because. But you don't have to worry about getting people presents. You can just focus on the food and the drink and having a nice time together. I think it's the perfect holiday, as they call it here. It's actually even better than Christmas and I really enjoy it. I think it's one of the best things America has invented.
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Matt Chorley
Anthony, how did you mark one of the best things America's invented?
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Anthony
Well, I went over to a friend's house, I helped him fry a turkey, which was delicious, nice and succulent. Then I watched football, Texas 1 on Friday night, so I was very happy. Deep fry?
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Sarah
Yeah.
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Matt Chorley
Yeah, I'm not sure about that. Is that nice?
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Sarah
Tis a thing, isn't it?
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Anthony
It is, actually. It's not like breaded, it's just crispy on the outside and really juicy on the inside. You boil it in a big vat of peanut oil.
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Matt Chorley
Presumably you marked Thanksgiving.
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Sarah
Yeah, we used to do all these things. I'm envious of them both. Sarah's dead right. This is easily the best holiday in the. That anyone ever celebrates, largely because there's no gift sort of anxiety associated with it, but also for all the other reasons. It does involve genuinely everyone. It's marked by everyone. It brings together families and they have great arguments and things and comings together and all the rest of it. And then there are a lot of sales afterwards and they all go off the shopping malls. I don't know if Anthony and Sarah both do that, but it is a really wonderful thing. And it's just that part of the season where you need a bit of a lift, too.
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Matt Chorley
Now, Sarah mentioned that she didn't go travelling. Now I'm interested to know if it was because of what the Transportation Secretary, Sean Duffy, has been saying, urging air travellers to dress better and be more civil, launching a campaign last week titled the Golden Age of Travel Starts with you.
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Sean Duffy
Things aren't what they used to be. Some would call it the golden age of travel. Let's bring civility and manners back. Ask yourself, are you helping a pregnant woman put her bag in the overhead bin? Are you dressing with respect? Are you keeping control of your children? Are you saying thank you to your flight attendants and your pilots? Are you saying please and thank you in general, the golden age of travel begins with you.
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Matt Chorley
So, Anthony, do you feel like you're living up to all of this?
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Anthony
I do my best, although I feel like cattle in a cattle car when I fly domestically here in the United States. So it's very hard to say please and thank you when you're being squeezed into little seats and waiting with delays and long flights to get to your destination.
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Matt Chorley
I wasn't sure. So if he's just been watching too much Mad Men or something, some sort of 1950s thing, and thought that was so much nicer about that.
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Sarah
Yes. So much more glamorous than. Or you could think maybe he's just urging American travelers to try and be a little bit more British about the whole thing, just a little bit more polite and buttoned up. But it is true, there is something absolutely awful about air travel inside America, which is. It's actually, it's not just that it's not glamorous anymore comfortable than traveling by bus. You're herded around in such an undignified way. It's not really surprising that temper's free.
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And there's nothing to eat in any of the airports too. Let me add, even really big ones. I was in.
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Matt Chorley
You don't need anything to eat if you've just eaten a deep fried turkey.
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Sarah
Well, that's true. I suppose it's right. But for the rest of us looking for some sort of healthy, relatively healthy food in an airport, even o' Hare in Chicago, where I was relatively recently, it's staggering absence of choice when you compare it to other big airports. Americans themselves notice this. Yeah, interesting. They go to, you know, it's a Singapore or to Dubai or indeed to Europe and to London and just see the difference in facilities. So no wonder they behave badly. There was a great Internet thing during COVID of Americans fighting on planes. Do you remember that? Sarah and Anthony? It was a thing for a bit. People posted pictures of people slugging each other across the aisles.
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Matt Chorley
No, they're both denying.
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Anthony
Yeah, that sounds like.
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Sarah
Yes.
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Matt Chorley
The whole thing reminded me of when I was looking. It was 2010. No, 2010 or. Yeah, 2010. UKIP General Election wanted to introduce a dress code for taxi drivers and soon after that, Nigel Farage disowned the whole thing. So whether or not this catches on, this new polite way of traveling, we'll have to wait and see. Let's get stuck into questions. We've got absolutely loads. Let's start with Donald Trump's approach to Venezuela. Helena in Wanstead has sent in this Question. In light of President Trump's proposed threats to Venezuelan airspace and Hegseth's leave no survivors alleged instruction on boat attacks in the southern Caribbean or Caribbean even, does it look like the president is not sticking to his clampdown on drugs, keeping out of foreign wars in his pursuit of the Nobel Peace Prize? I mean, where to begin with all of this severed? Take us through what is going on and how it might fit with consistency, if that is such a thing in Trump lad.
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Sarah
So there is a lot going on and we're not quite sure what the ultimate purpose of it all is yet. But it seems as though the administration, President Trump, is pursuing some kind of regime change in Venezuela, even if they haven't completely decided how far they want to go to try and make that work. I believe there's a Cabinet meeting here this afternoon, 5 o'. Clock. It's just been arranged to discuss Venezuela, so maybe they will make some important decisions there. Over the weekend, President Trump said that people should just operate as though Venezuelan airspace is closed, but we're not absolutely sure why. And he seems to indicate that he is ready to order land strikes, possibly on Venezuela. So that would be, yeah, definitely getting involved in a foreign war in a way that he suggested he wouldn't during the election campaign. And there have been these attacks on boats that the administration say are smuggling drugs to America. Sometimes Venezuela claims that they're just fishing boats, but there have been over 20 lethal strikes on these boats, blowing them up. It's moving fast and very febrile. What's going on in all of the actions that Trump seems to be taking.
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Matt Chorley
Against Venezuela explain why he's so focused on Venezuela, Justin?
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Sarah
Well, nobody can. I mean, it's interesting. He doesn't like Maduro, and lots of people don't like Maduro. Maduro stolen election, almost certainly, and is from that left tradition of Hugo Chavez, et cetera. So nobody would suggest that he's going to be a pal of Donald Trump. But on the other hand, the whole idea, Sarah was saying, the whole idea of Trump is, or used to be, that he sort of lets people get on with whatever they want to do. So why is he picking this fight? Is it just about drugs? Well, if it's about drugs, why is he also just pardoning a former Honduran leader who was in an American prison, having been convicted of smuggling drugs into the United States? Why is he pardoning him, sending him home? So there are kind of mixed messages, to put it mildly, about what his policy on drugs is, but also what his Wider policy is towards intervening in countries where he feels he can intervene in and get a bang for his bucks. Maybe Anthony knows. I certainly don't really.
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Anthony
I mean, there's certainly some people within the Trump administration, Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State in particular, who have been Venezuela hawks for quite some time. Obviously there's a large population in Florida, where Marco Rubio is from, that are expats from Venezuela and would love to see the government there toppled. So maybe that has Donald Trump's ear and that is pushing him towards some sort of military confrontation. But to go back to our question, I don't think it will help a Nobel Peace Prize campaign if, while on one hand you're brokering peace deals in the Mideast and Ukraine, on the other hand you're instigating the beginnings of military strikes on a neighboring country. So it is complicated terrain for Donald Trump. It's not really clear what military airstrikes would do, whether that would really destabilize Maduro enough to topple the Venezuelan regime.
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Matt Chorley
Well, it's a great question. Thank you for that. Let's broaden it out a bit wider on international diplomacy and Donald Trump's approach to the word generally. We've got Terry in Ripley on the line. Hello, Terry.
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Caller
Hello, Matt.
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Matt Chorley
Good to have you with us. What is your question for the Americas?
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Caller
Well, I was just wondering how President Trump's more transactional and business focused to international diplomacy is viewed in Americ, and in particular whether his base welcomes this as a genuine attempt to grow the U.S. economy and address unemployment.
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Matt Chorley
Good question there, Anthony, because sometimes it's important to remind ourselves of how things might be viewed by Americans in America who might have voted for Donald Trump. So how is it that his international diplomacy is viewed?
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Anthony
You know, I was just over in Tennessee, in Nashville last week, covering a congressional special election, and I did speak to Trump supporters there out in the middle of the country. I asked them about trade policy and whether they like what Donald Trump is doing with tariffs because there are a lot of agricultural factories, soybean farmers, meat packers and things in Tennessee. And they viewed this transactional kind of trade policy as a way of getting the best deals for the country. They understood that there was short term pain. They seemed fairly willing to tolerate it as long as it was in a larger goal of getting deals that would make other countries treat the United States the way they view the United States treating other countries. Now, whether that is sustainable, if prices keep going up, if people start feeling kind of the pain in the economy, whether it's directly resulting from these tariffs or not, then they might start to split away. Although once again, Donald Trump's MAGA hardcore supporters pretty much believe in him through thick and thin and believe that whatever he does, he's doing in their best interest.
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Sarah
And it's worth adding to that that this is a kind of bipartisan thing. I mean, there is Anthony's dead right about Trump supporters, but actually it goes wider than Trump supporters. There is a kind of strand of left thinking in the Democratic Party that also thinks that trade should be transactional and actually regrets the opening up of world trade, the allowing of China into the world trade system, et cetera, et cetera. That led to all the changes that there been the kind of globalization that there was in the early 2000s that actually they think that has led to a loss of jobs, it's led to a loss of income for American. And that is not merely something on the American right. It is also felt quite across the board. And the other thing, the really important point, a kind of global point about it all, is that we tend to see the United States through rather British eyes when it comes to trade. And I think I'm right in saying our trade. So our GDP is roughly a third of our gdp. This certainly used to be the case is dependent on exports. For America, it's about 10%. I mean, and 10% matters, but doesn't matter. Hugely, hugely huge. So you think the American economy at the moment is growing 3.8%. I don't know what ours is. It's, I mean, one.
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Anthony
One and a half.
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Sarah
Yeah. I mean it's not even one, is it? It keeps getting downgraded or regraded. It's a percentage of a percent America manages still even in these tariffs filled times to buck every obvious economic hurdle, if you can buck a hurdle that is put in front of it and that really America is just a different kind of economy and it's a different size of economy, but also frankly, it's a different strength of economy.
- [14:14]
Matt Chorley
Great question. Thank you for that, Terry. Let's move on because I want to try and get through as many as we can. Let's turn attention to the National Guard shooting. You may have seen this. You almost certainly did. Last Wednesday, two members of the National Guard were shot and seriously wounded just blocks from the White House. One died, another remains in a critical condition and the suspect is an Afghan national who's in custody. It was then announced that the US will permanently pause migration from all third world countries. Well, AmericaST favorite Bob in Minneapolis is on the line. Hello, Bob.
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Bob
Hello, man.
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Anthony
How are you?
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Matt Chorley
I'm very well. It's one of these situations I suspect you're going to be able to, you'll probably know the answer to your own question, Pop, but go on. What is your question for the AmericasT?
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Bob
Well, it's been said that when a difficult issue arises, politicians can do one of three things. They can ignore the issue, they can take steps to understand and fix the issue, or they can exploit the issue. And within that context, I'm curious to know what your team thinks or how they would describe President Trump's response to the shooting, again, within that context.
- [15:16]
Sarah
Well, I don't think anybody would be terribly surprised to hear that Donald Trump would pounce on an opportunity like this to exploit or manipulate an issue to suit his own agenda. But, I mean, first thing to say is, I mean, this was truly, truly shocking, an absolutely awful thing. Regardless of how you feel about the National Guard being on the streets, many people are very opposed to it. This really, really did shock people and bring everybody up pretty smartly. But of course, the administration is now launching a whole series of different policies for limiting visas for people coming from about 19 different countries, pausing all asylum applications. And this as a way to review the immigration status of quite a few people who've even got green cards already in the United States, while at the Same time sending 500 more National Guard to the streets of Washington. So, I mean, there's absolutely no retreat from having them here patrolling the streets. A real doubling down on this issue, which is probably not surprising given that immigration is such a very, very high focus of the administration and a massive blame game going on now, because this guy, the gunman, was granted asylum this year under the Trump administration. But they're working very, very hard to try and make it look as though every decision to allow him into America and to allow him to stay was all taken by the Biden administration as well, because the last thing they want to do is admit that they would make a mistake like this and allow somebody who did turn out obviously to be very, very dangerous to give him asylum to stay in the US And.
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Anthony
I just want to chip in here because when Donald Trump says permanent pause in migration from third world countries, those are Donald Trump's words. That's Donald Trump's definition, Third world countries that this migration is being paused from. And he is yet to really explain what constitutes a third world country, which countries are included in that, although they point back to previous decisions of a list of countries that they might be Pausing from.
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Sarah
I'd say it's 2 and 3 of Bob's list, isn't it? I can't remember what the precise categories were.
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Matt Chorley
Ignore the issue, take steps to understand and resolve the issue. Or they can exploit the issue.
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Sarah
Yeah, he would say they would say they're taking steps to resolve it in as much as they're pausing. Asylum. And if they do pause asylum, of course, in kind of world terms, that's a very big deal. And blaming people using it as a wedge issue, even down to the language, third world. I mean, Anthony's quite right. It's not language we'd use, but it's very much language that Donald Trump would use and it gives him an opportunity to use it again.
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Matt Chorley
Bob, how would you answer your own question? As an American.
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Bob
I would think that. I'd like to think they're trying to do something, but problem is, the response came so quickly, before we really knew the shooter's motives. And just because of the broad scope of the proposals, I'm afraid I'm looking at it as some exploitation.
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Matt Chorley
Bob, good to speak to you. That's Bob in Minneapolis. Now, we started off by talking about Thanksgiving. A big part of that was obviously turkeys. Well, Trump has been talking turkey, but particularly Joe Biden's turkey pardons, saying that they were invalid because of alleged auto pen use.
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Donald Trump
Terrible situation caused by a man named Sleepy Joe Biden. He used an auto pen last year for the turkeys pardon. So I have the official duty to determine, and I have determined that last year's turkey pardons are totally invalid, as are the pardons of about every other person that was pardoned, other than where's Hunter?
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Matt Chorley
Hunter Biden, obviously being Joe Biden's son. Donald Trump went on to say he had retroactively pardoned last year's turkeys, Peach and Blossom. Well, Steve in Portsmouth is on the line. Hello, Steve.
- [19:07]
Caller
Hello, guys. Lovely to be on board as well. Thank you.
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Matt Chorley
It's great, Great to have you, Steve. I mean, where to begin, really? What is your question? I might have some question of IO.
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Caller
Okay. It's just literally, I mean, I saw this, this message that popped up about it was on Truth Social, which I occasionally drop into just for a laugh. But it's just about the way that Trump seems to say, you know, we've got Truth Social, I've got the auto pens. How can he just overturn everything just because the auto pen's been used? And I think even Trump has used an auto pen. It's been going for years. I know Barack Obama used one quite happily, and it's been going for about 1930s. Is that legal? Is he allowed to do this? That's my question to the team.
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Matt Chorley
Really, Sarah, first of all, can you explain for listeners who don't know what an auto pen is and why it seems to be at the center of everything in American politics?
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Sarah
If you get a Christmas card from Sarah, this is what happens.
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So it's a device that will moves a pen automatically. It's like a robot signing your Christmas cards or your pardons or your documents with a replica of what the president's signature would have looked like. And it has been used for generations and included, and also by Donald Trump. But he has taken to claiming that Joe Biden used it all the time, that he barely ever signed anything with his own hand because he was too old and feeble, according to Donald Trump. And he likes to say that anything that was signed that way, like a piece of legislation, and now he's claiming pardons are invalid because they weren't signed personally by the president. And so, yes, he announced that every pardon, including that of the turkeys, was being overturned. Now, he cannot do that is the truth of the matter. And he also tried to say every executive order that was signed by Otto Pen under the Biden administration is also automatically overturned, and he cannot do that either. But he loves going on and on and on about the auto pen as a way of undermining the whole of the Biden presidency. Essentially, he's set up in the white, this walk of fame where along a long corridor, there are photographs of every single president going way back and portraits of other ones. But in the place where Joe Biden would be, where the 46th president is, there's just a picture of the auto pen. So this entire gallery has been arranged just to mock Joe Biden and his use of the auto pen. It's one of Donald Trump's favorite themes.
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Matt Chorley
Does it make any difference, Anthony? Is it. Is it just a bit? Is it just a gag by Donald Trump? Does it actually hold up at all?
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Anthony
It's going to be difficult for this to hold up, definitely. I mean, There was a 2005 opinion by the Department of Justice. So that was during George W. Bush's presidency, a Republican that said that a president doesn't have to physically sign every piece of paper because some of these commutations, some of these pardons where you're pardoning a thousand, several thousand people for minor drug offenses, the president's not going to sit there and sign every single one of them. So Trump can post on Truth Social that all of these previous auto pen signed Biden orders are null and void. But that doesn't change anything until he actually tries to enforce that. He tries to ignore something. He tries to nullify a pardon that was enacted by Joe Biden, and then there'll be a lawsuit and then the court will look at it and likely the court will say, no, this is, this is Joe Biden. He actually did intend to do this. And Biden himself, who has still said that he intended all of the pardons, he intended everything that was auto pen signed. It wasn't like there were people maneuvering behind his back to get things signed that he had no idea about.
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Matt Chorley
So sometimes it might be because there's lots of these things aside, or I was looking at one of the times was Joe Biden was traveling and something needed to be signed because otherwise there'll be a lapse in some regulations or whatever. There's what seems to be a perfectly straightforward explanation as to why these things might be used.
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Sarah
Yeah. And in a way, the actual explanation doesn't matter to Donald Trump, does it? It's a wider point that he's making that he's energetic and Joe Biden was moribund when he was towards the end of his presidency. In fact, he would say throughout the entire presidency. And he has a point, doesn't he, Joe Biden? There was a lack of vigor, let's put it that way, in the last year or so of Joe Biden's presidency. And anytime that Donald Trump can remind Americans of that, he wouldn't.
- [23:36]
Matt Chorley
And so if we're having an argument or a conversation about auto pens, what exactly perfect is reminding Americans that Joe Biden, in the view of Donald Trump, was not up to the job and needed to use an auto pen because he could barely pick up.
- [23:47]
Sarah
And if what Anthony's just said comes true, which it could do, I suppose, if they tried to put someone back in jail, had been pardoned by Bernard, I don't think they would. But if they did, and it did go to the Supreme Court, I doubt the Supreme Court actually would even take the case. I think they probably wouldn't bother, but it would do the work, the political work that Donald Trump wants it.
- [24:04]
Matt Chorley
But most importantly, although he said the, the, the pardon for Peach and Blossom, the turkeys was now invalid, he's now retroactively pardoned them again. So that's. Yeah, that's the most important thing.
- [24:15]
Anthony
I think they're on a farm somewhere now. So I, I'm sure They're very relieved.
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Matt Chorley
As long as they're not in your deep fire. That's the way.
- [24:21]
Anthony
Not yet.
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Sarah
We've just come off air where we were on 5 Live with Matt Charlie answering some of your questions. And we can carry on a little bit, wee bit of bonus content for podcast listeners because I think they've got more questions to answer. So we were talking about Venezuela and the action that the Trump administration has been taking against boats emanating from Venezuela that they say are carrying drugs to the United States. And this has actually become a really, really big and important row in the US at the moment because of the possibility, as it was reported in the Washington Post, basically, that there was a second strike on one of these boats specifically to try and kill everybody on board, even though the boat had already been struck and the two people who were left were in the sea clinging to bits of wreckage of the boat that had already been hit with a U.S. missile. Anthony, I mean, this really has the potential, doesn't it, to do quite a lot of. Of damage to the reputation, not just of this campaign, but of the way the Pentagon is being led by Pete Hegseth because of the accusations that are being made against him. Right.
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Anthony
And you gotta remember Pete Hegseth, he's written books about how the military should be less bound by these kind of humanitarian concerns and worries about following the letter of the Geneva Conventions and more focused on lethality. So there's all of this kind of background to what happened. And if this is as the Washington Post described, that the United States struck what it has deemed to be a military target, it's designated these military combatants a military target. And then there were survivors who were wounded and clinging to the boat. Then it violates military law, violates Geneva conventional laws of war, to specifically target, with the second strike, people who were injured in that first strike. So, so that's what's generating bipartisan concern. You have Republicans as well as Democrats in Congress who are saying they're going to engage in oversight, going to hold hearings to look into what exactly happened and whether this was some sort of a violation because, say, Americans in war, if they were injured, you wouldn't want an enemy force targeting injured Americans on the battlefield in this similar sort of way. I mean, what goes around comes around. And the United States does have global standards it wants to uphold.
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Sarah
And it's interesting to me that Hegseth and Trump seem to be suggesting at the moment that they are upholding those standards. In other words, they haven't said, you know, Anthony, says Hegseth has written books about how to be more lethal, et cetera, et cetera. What they're not saying, interestingly, is let's tear up all the rules. Let's just go for it. You know, all the things that might excite at least the more radical online wing of their base. Let's just do what we want to do. We're Americans. They're not saying that at all. Hegseth himself has denied that things unfolded in the way that has been alleged on that boat. And those two survivors. And Donald Trump, I thought, was quite mild when he also seemed to suggest that he wouldn't have wanted that to happen. And then, as you say, Anthony, as well, we've got bipartisan concern. We've got Republicans breaking ranks yet again. It's this story that we're beginning to tell now, aren't we, about people raising their heads above the parapet and suggesting on the Republican side that they're not completely happy with everything the administration is doing. So there's sort of a mix of things going on there that make this a really interesting and potentially quite impactful story.
- [28:02]
Yeah. Because it's worth saying Pete Hegseth denies that he had ever given an order that nobody be left alive in these strikes. And when President Trump was asked about it, he says he 100% believes what Pete Hegseth says. But he also said that he wasn't happy about there having been a second strike. He doesn't think it was necessary. He was very happy with the first strike, which was lethal enough. There was no need for a second one. So there's going to have to be some investigation about how that second strike came about, whether it was because of an order that had been given by Pete Hegseth or not. And it comes at the same time, as we were talking last week, remember, about that video that was put out by six Democrats, all of whom had served in the armed forces, saying that people shoot, refuse illegal orders. And one of the things that they were aiming at when they were making the point that anybody who's serving in the US Military should refuse an illegal order was the fact that they think that the legality of the strikes on these Venezuelan boats is very, very dubious, if not entirely wrong. So it plays into what could well become a wider argument about whether or not all of these actions from the Trump administration are legal. Right.
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Anthony
An illegal order would be shooting surrendered military combatants, going up and shooting a combatant who is injured on the battlefield and unable to fight, which is what this would fall under. So this puts that video in a different light. If this didn't happen the way that the Washington Post reports it did. And it was very interesting, as Justin points out, that Donald Trump didn't exactly jump to Hegseth's defense. He said he didn't think that Hegseth said that. And he needs to find out more about this. And it would be bad if there was a second strike. I mean, that's not the kind of response we've seen from Trump before, where if someone presents something to him, he's like, yeah, totally did it. That's fine. We were just being aggressive or standing by or doubling down. He did not double down on this. He backed away.
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Sarah
And Anthony, it was only in the last hour or so I've noticed that there's a cabinet meeting been it looks like kind of hurriedly scheduled for today and seems to be about Venezuela. That's pretty unusual, isn't is?
- [30:10]
Anthony
These are not officially confirmed by the White House. Last I checked. This is reporting saying that something is planned this evening at the White House to discuss the future of Venezuela, discuss future actions in Venezuela. So it does feel like the White House is pulling together and trying to figure out what direction to go because right now it seems like everything is heading in a straight line towards a military conflict. And is this what the Trump administration wants or are they trying to find some sort of a way to de escalate at this point right here?
- [30:43]
Sarah
That's just about it for now. We will of course be back very soon from all of us, Bye bye, bye, bye, bye.
- [30:51]
Podcast Advertiser
Ameracast Ameracast from BBC News.
- [30:55]
Sarah
Well, look, thanks for listening all the way to the end of today's AmericasT. You are now officially an AmericasT. It is, of course, a ride, a wild ride, navigating the US News, particularly in the era of Trump. But you have made it. If you have a comment, a question about the things we've talked about or anything at all, actually, get in touch with us. The email is americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 033-01-239480. We answer your questions every single week actually on the podcast. So keep them coming. You can join the online community as well on Discord. The link is the at the podcast description on your app. We will be back with another podcast very soon. So until then, see you later. Bye.
- [32:02]
America is changing and so is the world.
- [32:06]
Matt Chorley
But what's happening in America isn't just the cause of global upheaval. It's also a symptom of disruption that's happening everywhere.
- [32:14]
Sarah
I'm Asma Khalid in Washington, D.C. i'm.
- [32:17]
Matt Chorley
Tristan Redman in London. And this is the Global story.
- [32:21]
Sarah
Every weekday, we'll bring you a story from this intersection where the world and America meet.
- [32:26]
Matt Chorley
Listen on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.