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Americanswers… Why has JD Vance changed his mind about Trump's intelligence?
00:31:15
And Trump’s reflecting pool algae disaster
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- [00:00]
Justin
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
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Jake Stauch
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Anthony
Hello, it's Anthony and you're about to hear ameracast and we're delighted to have you with us. And if you enjoy what you hear, please do consider subscribing to the podcast. Subscribe that way you'll never miss an episode. Now on with today, Is Donald Trump
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Justin
about to be defeated not in Congress, but by algae in a pool? That's one of the questions we turn to in this edition of Americ Answers. We're usually with Matt Chorley and five Live on a Monday, aren't we? But Matt is unusually busy because, as you may have heard, the UK Prime Minister has resigned. But don't worry, we are still going to answer a range of questions. Algae is certainly among those questions. So is JD Vance and his view of on Donald Trump's IQ and that fallout that there has been between Italy's Giorgio Meloni and the President, the two of them fighting on social media. So welcome to America. Answers
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Mariana
AmericasT America from BBC News.
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Unknown Male Commentator
You hear that sound? I think when I hear that sound it reminds me of money we didn't
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Jake Stauch
start this war, but under President Trump, we are finishing it.
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Mariana
This is a big cover up and this administration is engaged in it.
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Sarah
This guy has Trump derangement syndrome. I have four words for you.
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Unknown Male Commentator
Turn the volume up.
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Justin
Hello, it's Justin in the worldwide headquarters of AmericasT in London, England.
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Mariana
And it is Mariana sitting next to Justin in the worldwide headquarters in London.
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Sarah
And it is Sarah here in the heart of it all in Washington D.C.
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Justin
okay, let's go straight to the questions. This from Graham in Weymouth. Recently my social media feed, Graham says, has been showing posts about a reflection pool in Washington that Donald J. Trump ordered that either failed or algae is covering as well as costing millions of dollars. What is the truth behind this? Well, it's not just any old reflection pool, is it? Indeed it's not. Its real name isn't reflection pool at all, is it? Sarah, fill us in on what the thing is that we're talking about here.
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Sarah
Yeah, it's known as the reflecting pool or the reflecting pond initially. And it's a body of water right in the sort of ceremonial heart of Washington where the monuments and memorials are. And it's meant to reflect things like the Washington Monument in it. But it's always been a little bit dingy, lined with grey concrete. Often the waters appeared a little bit dirty. It hasn't really fulfilled its mission of reflecting. So Donald Trump decided, as he has done with so many things in Washington, he was going to beautify it. He was going to in time for America's 250th birthday. But it hasn't quite worked out like that.
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Justin
Yeah. And so they thought that they had beautified it and then either the paint job wasn't terribly well done or the stuff that they used to kill the algae has also damaged the paint. So there are now apparently bits of the paint, Mariana, just floating.
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Mariana
Yeah. Like chunks of blue paint.
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Justin
It's all desperately sad. Cause we posed, I thought very attractive next to it, didn't we, when we were.
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Mariana
It was absolutely freezing cold. It was beautiful.
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Justin
Yeah, it was very beautiful when we
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Mariana
were there for the.
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Justin
I've never, I mean I've been there a thousand times, but I never really looked into it because. Exactly. As Sarah says, it's never reflected anything really. And I think the idea that Donald Trump could get it, reflect was always going to be a bit far fetched.
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Mariana
Yeah, I think it's one of those things that was best left alone and in a, in a slightly more simple state. But as you might imagine, all of the Content showing this water going like very green has been all over. Yeah, exactly. As Grim pointed out, all over social media. And yeah, lots of speculation about exactly why. So there's the, there's the paint kind of peeling off and then there's also the algae bloom. And then apparently officials have been using chemicals including hydrogen peroxide to try to treat the algae. And then Donald Trump posed this thing on Truth Social saying, actually it's none of those things. It's to do with vandals. He said work will begin immediately on fixing the seriously vandalized reflecting pool. I just inspected it and could only say to myself and those gathered around me, wow, who would do such a thing? Sick, deranged people. Capitals. We will fix it. Question mark.
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Justin
Have you seen the.
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Mariana
There have to be a question mark.
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Justin
Have you seen the vandals at work, Sarah?
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Sarah
Well, there are all sorts of stories about who the vandals could be. I've even seen mentioned online that it's actually a plot by Antifa to come and destroy the good work that had been done by Donald Trump in the reflecting pool too, in order to make him look bad. But this story is not, it's not just traveling on social media. It's absolutely captivated America. And you might think of all of the things that are going on in this country, truly is the most important thing whether or not there is algae blooming in this pool in the middle of Washington. But it is being seen as a metaphor for the way Donald Trump approaches everything. He took something that wasn't a huge problem. I mean, okay, maybe it could have reflected better, but it wasn't a substantial issue. Insisted that he could quickly and cheaply fix this. He said it was going to take two weeks and cost 1.5 million pounds. It has taken considerably longer than that and probably upwards of about £15 million so far as he insisted on doing it his way and making it into, into what he thought it should always have been. So it was gonna be painted blue on the bottom, American flag blue. He said it was gonna be done by a pal of his in a no bid contract. Even though this is federal government work, someone who'd done swimming pools for him in other properties was gonna fix the reflecting pool. And then weeks late, what happens is within hours of it being reopened, you've got this green algae blooming all over it. The pool doesn't look blue anymore. And it would appear to be something of a disaster, considerably worse than it was before Donald Trump ever got invol place. So while you might think heaven's sake. You know, we're dealing with Iran and the conflict there. Why are we worrying about a reflecting pool? Well, people are seeing a lot of parallels between the way Donald Trump has handled things like the war with Iran and this pool in the middle of
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Mariana
D.C. but it's where, like something quite small and quite simple becomes reflective of a wider thing that people are worried and concerned about and is quite visible as well. I mean, I think that's the thing about the pool, right? It's like the images are very obvious and very shareable and therefore trigger a conversation. Some of the other things we're talking about, including around geo politics, are perhaps visually harder to depict, not least when there's not really access to a lot of the places where this stuff is
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Justin
happening, like in Iran, when we live in such a visual society too. And you talk about this a lot and it really does matter, doesn't it? If we're in a post literate society, in a more visual society, then maybe things like what happens to the reflecting pool does suddenly take on this extraordinary importance.
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Mariana
But that's also the kind of irony of all this, that actually Donald Trump knows that. He knows how visual this age is, and that's why he was trying to do what he was doing to the, to the reflecting pool, because he wanted it give a certain impression of the United States.
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Sarah
There's another aspect, though, about this reflecting pool, which I think also is illustrative of some of the things people care a lot about during the Trump administration. And that is the way the justice system gets involved. How on earth, you might be wondering, could that come into the question of refurbishing a pool in the middle of Washington? Well, since Donald Trump said it was vandalism that had caused the lining on the bottom to be breaking apart and this algae to start blooming green, he says it vandalism and people have been arrested for that, with, it would appear very little evidence for what they had actually done wrong. One of them, who's been interviewed by American media, turns out to be an Olympian canoeist who represented the United States several times at the Olympics. Also says he's a material scientist who knows a thing or two about how this could have happened. He was cycling past the pool, stopped to have a look to try and work out what was going on, touched a piece of the lining that was floating on the surface, but he says he didn't break, dislodge, destroy, harm in any way, any of it. He was arrested, held for five hours, and may well be prosecuted for this. With a charge that could carry a 10 year sentence. Now, I imagine it's probably not going to come to that because his arrest is being sort of rather widely mocked. But the idea that you've got people being held in jail cells for supposedly vandalizing something, that's just because the president is upset that the renovation didn't work terribly well. Well, that's something else that in a very small way tells you quite a how people feel about living in Donald Trump's America at the moment.
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Justin
Okay, thanks to Graham and Weymouth. Let's turn to the next question. It's a voice note, actually, from Robert in Malmesbury in North Wiltshire.
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Robert
Hello, AMERICAST team. I have a simple question. I saw JD Vance being interviewed last week and his whole message was how intelligent. Donald Trump was one of the most intelligent presidents in the history of the United States. I was just wondering what prompted him to feel he had to say that. So, you know, obviously I question the message, but why did Vance feel he had to say that?
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Mariana
Well, before we answer that question, let's have a listen to what Vance did say about the president. He was speaking to Stephen Bartlett on the Diary of a CEO podcast.
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JD Vance
The thing I say about Donald Trump is I remember this in 2016, and in hindsight, it's just so, so dumb. People would say that he was dumb or that he wasn't very smart. He's super smart. Like, he reads a lot, he understands people at an instinctual level better than anybody that I've ever known. But he is a very, very, like, from a pure IQ perspective, he's a very smart person. And it's interesting that so many people like, you know, if you give Donald Trump an IQ test with the other 45, 46 presidents that the United States has had, I guarantee he'd be either near the top or at the top. And the entire American media in 2016 had convinced me, at least, that he was not a smart person.
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Sarah
Yeah, that's really interesting, isn't it? Cause the question from Robert was, why did JD Vance feel that he had to say that? And I think he almost answered that for himself, which was he was trying to explain why he himself had changed his mind so much from going from saying that Donald Trump could be like America's Hitler, which was his criticism of him before the 2016 election, to obviously now serving as his vice president and bigging him up the whole time. So I think that's got as much to do with how bright he thinks Donald Trump is, with also sort of trying to justify his own intellectual position there. But I think he has a point. Not maybe that Donald Trump is the most intelligent president the United States has ever had, but that people underestimate Donald Trump, they think he's stupid and that he's really not.
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Mariana
I think that the bit that actually stood out to me of I listened to some of that Stephen Bartlett episode. So Stephen Bartlett is, I would say, sort of in the kind of he's not the same as. But he's probably Joe Rogan adjacent in the UK for people that don't listen to Diary of a CEO. And he has a similar format which is interviewing people in these quite sort of discursive, discussiony type ways. And when I was listening to it, the thing that actually stuck to stayed with me was this sort of understanding people on an instinctual level. Like a lot of what feels clever about Donald Trump is his ability to game or read situations and people and end up sort of manipulating, maybe the wrong word, however you want to call it, sort of strategizing in such a way that they end up coming out to his advantage.
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Justin
I've had exactly that experience with a senior British politician I was talking to who's been in the room with Donald Trump and we're talking about Trump. This was a year or so ago. I was talking to this person and they said he spots in the room who's powerful and who isn't instinctively and
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Mariana
presumably who he could get to respond in the ways he'd like, etc, which is so much about sort of emotional intelligence more than anything.
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Justin
That's right. And this person was saying he has to be advised, kind of whispered in his ear, almost literally what's actually going on in terms of kind of world affairs. But the absolutely understood who he could get to do what in the room and what his instincts told him was the right thing to do. And this whole discussion about, I mean, I agree with Sarah. The whole discussion about whether he was dumb or not, whether he is dumb or not just seems itself a dumb discussion actually, and a kind of a place that his opponents should not ever have got themselves into because he represented a strand of thinking, even that first time when he didn't win a majority of the vote, but he still obviously did incredibly well and beat Hillary Clinton and all the rest of it. So the idea of, oh, what are you saying? That Hillary Clinton is cleverer than he is? Well, who knows? Maybe she is, maybe she isn't. Does it matter? No. He won the election second time round. And of course, Sarah, really clever presidents often have to pretend that they're dumb, don't they, in order to ingratiate themselves with the American people.
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Sarah
Yeah. And it always comes across as incredibly inauthentic as well. Whereas with Donald Trump, he communicates in a certain way. And of course, it doesn't sound tremendously highly educated or very erudite or eloquent. Not like Barack Obama, for instance, who couldn't have been more different in his style in office. But that's been very helpful, too. I mean, I think it's deliberate as well as instinctive, because then he doesn't sound as though he's part of a Ivy League educated elite who have nothing to do with the electorate he's appealing to. You know, a lot of this, I think, has been instinctively but carefully crafted around appealing to a certain segment of America who felt incredibly left behind, whom Donald Trump does not belong to, never has, never will, but yet is able to make common cause with in a way that other presidents who you might automatically consider to be terribly, terribly intelligent or intellectual were just fundamentally unable to do.
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Mariana
When it comes to JD Vance saying this, I mean, one of the things that always interests me is how much, obviously in this context, he was referring to what he sees as misconceptions about Donald Trump. But I always wonder how well Donald Trump actually responds to this. Slightly like sycophantic, like he's the cleverest person ever in the whole world. Because you sometimes feel like, think of, for example, Donald Trump and Mandami. He almost has a sort of more of a respect for people that don't try to suck up to him and be like, you're the cleverest person ever. But then also he absolutely hates if people don't say that. It's a bit of a no win, isn't it? Like a bit of a double bind. What are you supposed to do?
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Justin
So was he impressed or not? Because we should play this clip of him at a press conference on Wednesday. So this is a joke that possibly Robert in Malmesbury is important for the answer to your question, because this is a joke very much about Vance and about what would happen to Vance if the Iran deal fails.
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Jake Stauch
You send the vice president. If it works out, great, you'll look like a genius for sending him. And if it doesn't work out, it's the vice President.
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Unknown Male Commentator
I like that idea. Sure. This way, if it works out, I'm going to take the credit. If it doesn't work out, I'm blaming J.D. you better be careful, J.D. he's going to turn his plane around and get the hell out of here. Yeah, I like that idea. I think it's a good idea. Thank you very much.
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Sarah
I know, but it's astonishing, isn't it, that you would think that that would sink him. And he said something very similar even before he returned to the White House about the 2022 midterms, that if the Republicans do well, he'll take all the credit and if they don't, then he'll accept none of the blame. But it's one of these other Trumpisms. You wonder if anybody else could get away with it. But people love him for it. Well, a certain section of the electorate love him for it. Other people are pretty contemptuous of it, but they're not people who were ever going to agree with Donald Trump in the first place. And part of it also, I think, is another mistake people make. They underestimate his intelligence, but. But also they don't understand the joke. And it works two ways. It's appealing to those who already like him and, you know, reinforcing his bond with them whilst really, really, really irritating people who don't like him. So he manages to make a joke and score a troll all at the same time. And in Trump world, that is, as he would say, a big win.
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Mariana
Isn't this also just the eternal curse of being the Vice President, like you are the one lumped with sort of all of the rubbish. And being particularly the Vice President of Donald Trump, it's kind of like, well, you are a very con, certainly placed scapegoat should you, should you be needed.
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Justin
I'd also say of Vance, to further answer Robert and Malmesbury's question about why he felt necessary to say it. Number one, he's got to say it because he's got to suck up to Trump, et cetera, et cetera. But number two, I wonder if Vance was also answering a question that wasn't asked in that way that politicians do. In as much as he's talking an awful lot about his intelligence. But as Sarah reminded us, what he'd originally said all those years ago was effectively that Donald Trump seemed evil to him. It's the question he didn't answer is why he seems to have changed his mind on his moral compass rather than his intelligence, it's on his morality. So it's fine to go into this great screed about how clever he is or not and his IQ and all the rest of it, but actually it's a way of avoiding the central question,
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Mariana
which is, why did you think he was a bad person? Why did you think he was evil?
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Justin
Now you think he's great? Yeah.
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Hans
Yeah.
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Mariana
Okay, on to our next topic on the discord. There has been a lot of chatter about the Italian PM Georgia Maloney and her row with Donald Trump over the weekend. So it this all started with Donald Trump and Maloney being. They were pictured in close conversation at this G7 summit. And then on Friday, Donald Trump did a phone interview with an Italian TV channel in which he alleged, quote, she begged me to take a photo with her. I felt sorry for her. And then Meloni was not having any of that. And she hit back with this video on Instagram. She's speaking in Italian, but what she's saying is. So some things deserve an immediate reply. Donald Trump's comments are completely made up. I'm frankly appalled. I don't know why the President of the United States behaves that way with his own allies. Not that it's the first time it's happened. I can only say that it's a pity he doesn't have the same resolve when dealing with the enemy's of the west, with the enemies of the United States and with their leaders with whom instead he shows himself to be much more amenable. But he needs to bear one thing in mind. I never beg and nor does Italy.
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Sarah
Well, it's not a bad line, is it? And I think Giorgio Meloni thinks this is not going to do her too much harm in Italy, which is of course what matters far more than to her than how she's seen in the White House, because she also in some other posts said let's that in fact it hadn't been that helpful to her politically to have been seen to be particularly friendly with Donald Trump. And you know, they were ideologically aligned on a number of things. It was a fairly natural relationship. And he used to say how beautiful she was as well, how much he liked her.
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Unknown Male Commentator
I'm not allowed to say it because usually it's the end of your political career if you say it. She's a beautiful young woman. Now, if you use the word beautiful in the United States about a woman, that's the end of your political career. But I'll take my chances. Where is she? There she is. You don't mind being called beautiful, right? Because you are. Thank you very much for coming. We appreciate it. She wanted to be here and she's incredible and they really respect her in Italy. She's a very successful, very successful.
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Sarah
But she doesn't seem to think that there's much jeopardy in falling out with him. And I think we're starting to see this right across Europe, that leaders who worked incredibly hard in Trump's first term in office, Keir Starmer included, to stay on the right side of him and think that that meant they could get things done. They wouldn't be able to, if they had fallen out with him, seem perfectly happy now, actually, to have public disagreements and even to fuel public spats with him, because obviously they think that is more politically helpful than being seen to be on the same side.
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Justin
Boy, that's a change, isn't it? I mean, it's really fascinating that you could now have over the course of the next couple of years, particularly if everything goes wrong in the midterms for the Republicans, which we. We think they probably will. Well, certainly in the House of Representatives and possibly in the Senate as well, if Donald Trump's presidency is really on the ropes, the extent to which people turn against him, other world leaders turn against him, just say openly, and had enough of this nonsense, I no longer need to kowtow to you. I regret doing it in the past. That's the other thing, Sarah, isn't it? It's the extent to which people begin. I don't know if Keir Starmer is yet in a position to write his memoirs, but. But, you know, there are all sorts of things that could come out. Are there? Given how indiscreet.
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Mariana
Did you see Donald Trump's post about Kay Sama?
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Justin
Well, exactly, yeah. I was gonna say, given how indiscreet Trump is about them. And that's not the first time he's done that is.
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Mariana
It's just before Ksama resigned, he posted on Truth Social.
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Justin
Didn't he say the post onto Social, saying, he's gonna go, he's gonna go,
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Mariana
and he's kind of a loser. Sorry about that.
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Justin
Which is an extraordinary kind of lapse of diplomatic form, to put it mildly. But he's done it before, hasn't he? He's posted messages he's had from people before.
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Sarah
Yeah. And I think it's going to be really interesting to watch which issues matter the most, because I think what we learned with Keir Starmer was you can be charming and flattering to Donald Trump as Keir Starmer was, and he became known as the Trump Whisperer, as they enjoyed this extremely unlikely bromance for, like, about 18 months or so when they were going around being best friends, even though they couldn't be more unlike each other in personality or in policies. And then it all fell apart over the Chagos Islands and Iran, effectively. So, yes, you'll probably have to try and charm him personally, because personal relationships matter a great deal to Trump. But issues will be important. And you've got Donald Trump in that truth social that he posted on Sunday night, saying that Keir Starmer failed badly on two important subjects, immigration and energy brackets, open, North Sea oil. That's what Donald Trump goes on all the time about what's wrong with the uk, how it's being run badly. That's not something that any UK prime minister is necessarily going to take lessons from Donald Trump about. Then there's the key issues about defence spending. Obviously, you know, at the heart of a row in the British government at the moment, that matters to Donald Trump, because the commitment of NATO member countries to spend 3% on GDP on defense is very, very important to Trump. And he was very critical of British armed forces and its defense posture when Keir Starmer initially refused to allow US bases to be used in the war in Iran. So you've got really sensitive defence issues, plus these other things where Donald Trump thinks he can tell the UK what its immigration policy should be. It's not a comfortable place for a new prime minister to wade in and try and find their way through this relationship.
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Justin
Do they need allies, Sarah? I suppose that's the other question. I mean, Giorgia Meloni was such a big one. She went to the inauguration, didn't she? She's so, so important, seen as so important in Trump's outreach to Europe or Europe's outreach to Trump, whichever way around it is. And if that bridge is now burned, does it really matter?
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Sarah
Well, I think that's something that Donald Trump is testing, isn't it, whether or not the US can operate without allies, because he has, as we know, an expansive foreign policy that he thinks he can operate without any of the normal courtesies or alliances, whether it's from his. His threats to leave NATO or his threats against Greenland that I don't think he's entirely given up on his idea that he wants to take over Greenland or at least increase the American footprint there. And he's been trampling over alliances and destroying America's soft power around the world. He's got clients there. So in Venezuela, you could say, oh, well, he's got a very firm ally there. But that's because he put Delcio Rodriguez in charge of that country and, and probably thinks that he controls her fate. Things are working out very differently for Donald Trump in the second year back in the White House than they did in his first and I think he maybe came away from the lesson of the first 12 months being that, no, he didn't need any allies. He could say what he wanted to other countries and he could manage without them because America was the greatest and strongest nation on earth. I think we might see as things are going less well in the course of this year, whether or not he has tested to destruction the idea that America can operate without allies.
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Justin
Okay, next up,
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Sarah
I pledge allegiance to the United States of America.
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Justin
As you know, we're making our very own United States of America. Basically, we're building a map of America. Listeners state by state, and we want to hear from all 50 states today. Hands ripped, who's actually from rural Herefordshire here in England, has sent us this voice note.
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Hans
I remember the United States as it was in the early 1960s. For a few years I lived in Evanston, Illinois with my father, who was originally from Holland and later became an American citizen. Life then seemed simple and optimistic. Junior high school, teenage fun, a paper route and cleaning cars to earn a few dollars. Looking at America today, I'm glad I made the decision to return to Europe in 1963. The USA remains today a great nation when you are young and healthy and financially secure. But life can look very different on the other side of the equation. It seems deeply rooted in the American character to resist welfare and collective social provision, whether in health care, infrastructure or public services. Suggestions of higher taxation to support such things are often dismissed as Marxist, Commie or liberal. And as a result, the country appears to be increasingly divided and polarized. Britain, in my opinion, comes a lot closer to finding the right balance. A balanced society, after all, is one in which most people feel reasonably secure and content.
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Sarah
Yeah, I think what Hans is saying there, the idea that Britain is a more balanced society, a lot of Brits would agree with. But I think exactly that characterization is what sounds to Americans as though Britain is a little bit dull, that everything's just a bit gray, and that the optimism and excitement that a lot of Americans still feel for their country and for the future does come with a less balanced society, with a lot of people feeling less secure. But it's that dynamism that's the other side of that, which is what Americans prize so much about their own society.
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Justin
I would challenge you, Hans, on two fronts. Number one, Evanston, Illinois, in the early 1960s probably felt like a great place to live as a youngster. There are all sorts of things about America in the early 1960s, certainly to the south of Illinois and in the southern states, that would not have been much fun. And particularly for certain segments of the population, in other words, America's a story, it's always on the march. And although certain segments of society feel at any one stage, goodness, this is wonderful, this is it. Other segments will not feel the same way. And it was the case in the 1960s and it's still the case now. So I don't think necessarily that looking back with sort of sepia tinged views of the 1960s necessarily is the right way to look at the US the flip side of all the incredible driving ambition and success and just can do attitude that there is, there is also that there's less of a safety net. And I suspect that the two have to go together. And to the extent that they have to go together, then America is always going to feel very different. This cultural divide that Hans remembers and brings up now, Sarah, is just always going to be with us, isn't it?
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Mariana
Yes.
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Sarah
We think British and American societies, people and cultures are much closer together because we share this common language and we share so many cultural touch points in TV shows and movies and music and books. Actually, we're very, very different people. And it would be easier to tell the difference if we didn't speak the same language. In fact, the former bureau chief here in the BBC Washington bureau used to say, if only they didn't speak English, otherwise we wouldn't be so confused when we realize just quite how different they are from us. I think it took me 12, 18 months of living in America to really understand. And it's a very, very different place from the United Kingdom. And we shouldn't be so surprised by that. And in some ways we should embrace and celebrate that. But a lot of our critique of American society, I think, comes from the fact that they're not as like us as we think they ought to be. And we need to separate that idea.
- [30:08]
Justin
Okay, thanks to Hans, it is time now to take stock. Thank you to all of you who've already contributed. The aim, of course, to hear from as many of you as possible and from all 50 states.
- [30:18]
Mariana
And we've already had messages from Texas, Ohio, Massachusetts, California and Washington. And last week we received our first correspondence from West Virginia, Rhode island and Tennessee. Here is a taster in 30 seconds of what we've had so far.
- [30:31]
Sarah
Hi, Ameracast, longtime listener. My name is Estevan. I live in sunny California. This is Jane Loveday from Bend in Oregon.
- [30:39]
Mariana
This is Melissa from North Dakota.
- [30:41]
JD Vance
This is Hunter calling in from sunny central Florida.
- [30:44]
Justin
I live in Houston, of all places.
- [30:47]
Sarah
This is Manuel from Ohio, specifically the Ohio State University.
- [30:52]
Mariana
I am from the great state of
- [30:54]
Sarah
Idaho and I would love to represent
- [30:56]
Mariana
Illinois for the map of Americas.
- [30:59]
Sarah
Thank you so much and all the best. Yeah, so we're already overwhelmed by the huge response that we've had covering a great deal of the map of the United States, building up a picture of what our Americas relationships with different states are. But there are several we haven't heard from yet. So shout out to Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. If you have a connection to any of them, please, please, please do get in touch and join the list of our ameracasters who are telling us of their own personal relationship. You don't need to live in one of those states if you've got some kind of connection, if you visited, if you've got family, even if you've just always, always wanted to go there, do please consider this your invitation to make your application to represent one of those fine states on our map of Americasters.
- [31:51]
Mariana
And you can email us ameracastbc.co.uk or you can send us a message or a voice note via WhatsApp. That's +443301239480 Bye bye bye.
- [32:07]
Justin
Thank you for answering our call and continuing to send your messages to us. We do read every single single one. We love to hear your thoughts, your feedback and questions as well. So please do keep them coming. You can send us an email. It's americastbc.co.uk the WhatsApp is 443-301-239480 and you can get involved in the AmericasT Discord server. The link to that is in the description. And don't forget to subscribe. That way you will never miss an episode. Episode. Until next time. Bye.
- [32:56]
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- [33:56]
Sarah
What do Beatles member Sir Paul McCartney,
- [33:58]
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Sarah
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Justin
That's Good Bad Billionaire from the BBC World Service.
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