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- [00:01]
Commercial Narrator
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- [00:33]
Fiona Hill
Close your eyes, exhale, feel your body relax and let go of whatever you're carrying today.
- [00:41]
Commercial Narrator
Well, I'm letting go of the worry that I wouldn't get my new contacts in time for this class.
- [00:45]
Fiona Hill
I got them delivered free from 1-800-contacts.
- [00:47]
Commercial Narrator
Oh, my gosh, they're so fast. And breathe. Oh, sorry. I almost couldn't breathe when I saw the discount they gave me on my first order. Oh, sorry.
- [00:56]
Fiona Hill
Namaste.
- [00:57]
Commercial Narrator
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- [01:01]
Fiona Hill
1-800-contacts.
- [01:03]
Mia Sorrenti
Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Sorrenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event with Fiona Hill. Fiona Hill is one of the most authoritative voices on the forces reshaping global politics today. Born in County Durham from 2017 to 2019, she was a senior advisor on European and Russian affairs at the White house. And in October 2019, she was a key witness in President Trump's first impeachment inquiry. In 2024 and 2025, she co led the British Government Strategic Defence Review, which sets out how the UK should scale up its response to risks from an emboldened Russia and a less predictable United States. Hill joined us at Union Chapel live on stage with John Sopel to share her insights on the world in 2026. Let's join them now live on stage in London.
- [02:02]
John Sopel
Well, thank you all so much for coming and for queuing up in the drizzly rain. It was a perfect London evening out there for you all. I could spend probably the next 20 minutes just talking about the prodigious achievements of Fiona, the extraordinary backstory, but I'm not. Because if you want that, you read her wonderful memoir, There Is Nothing for your Here, which I think may well be on sale at the back afterwards, as well as a book called Unprecedented, which. No, actually it's called something else. It's called Strangeland and it's. Anyway, I won't talk about the author. Look, you grew up in the Northeast. It's an Amazing story. We won't come to that, but I want to concentrate on the world that we're living in right now because you are perhaps among the most authoritative voices on global security. And of course, from 2017 to 2019, you are the Deputy Assistant to the President of the United States. You are in charge of sort of European and Russian affairs on the National Security Council. We were both in Helsinki in June 2018 when the Trump Putin summit happened. I was in the room, obviously, with the other journalists waiting for the news conference to happen. You were in the room. And I think one of the enduring mysteries for me all the time, I was the North America editor and since is to try to understand Donald Trump's relationship with Vladimir Putin. And I wonder whether we can start there, because I think for many people, the fact that Donald Trump never, ever seems able to criticize Vladimir Putin over anything is bewildering.
- [03:53]
Fiona Hill
Well, I think the first thing to disavow everybody of is the idea that there is a relationship between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin. I think that's part of the problem, because Trump would like a relationship with Putin, and that's exactly why he doesn't criticize him. It's a kind of unrequited love of some description. You know, everyone keeps talking about it, a bromance he hasn't even got there. And, you know, Putin is very good at playing hard to get, incredibly hard to get. And this is. I think it drives Trump mad because he never gets what he wants off Putin, which is really adulation, respect. And, you know, in the case of the situation we're dealing with now, is Putin actually giving something up, making some kind of concession so that Trump can get his peace in Ukraine and his Nobel Prize, and Putin is both denying him the ability to have a real relationship with him, leader to leader, and the ability to get these accolades for solving the war in Ukraine. And all the way leading up until this, there's just really this dynamic where Trump has tried to get his sit down with Putin to get this breakthrough, to have the two of them always together, and it's inevitably being thwarted.
- [05:05]
John Sopel
That explains some of it. So I was struck. I would love to know what happened behind the scenes, because I was struck in the news conference. And as North America, I'd gone around the world with Trump at these various press conferences that he had, and he was always the giant silverback gorilla in the room, and he was beating up anyone else. And with Putin, he was like a little pussycat, and he was just absolutely enthralled. To Vladimir Putin, it seemed. What was it like where we weren't in that sort of conference room in Helsinki in June 2018?
- [05:37]
Fiona Hill
Well, to be honest, it's a little sad to have to relate this, because it wasn't anything like everybody expected. I mean, really, where everything went wrong was in the press conference. And everybody who was watching that got to see it in real time. What Trump really wanted to do was to sit down with Putin one on one. And he can't do it one on one because he doesn't speak Russian. So he needs to have an interpreter there. And in this case, they had an American interpreter as well as a Russian interpreter. And Putin tends to speak in not just complete sentences, but entire paragraphs. You know, he'll go on and on and on. So Trump has to wait and wait until that gets interpreted. And Putin has an advantage because he actually speaks English. He's been working on his English. He can always be several steps ahead. So by the time Trump has sat all the way through waiting for the transition to come through, Putin's already off to the next kind of phase of his sparring with Trump. And what Trump really wanted out of Helsinki was to do a Gorbachev, Reagan. He wanted to come out of there, and that's what he thought you were all going to be praising him for when he got to the press conference. And if you might recall at the very beginning, he's actually saying, look, we had this great meeting. You know, the world is a lot of a safer place because we've sat down. Because he thought he was going to come away with the beginnings of some kind of big arms control negotiation and some agreements. So remember that the big nuclear deal that has just expired is start. And what Trump wanted was the Super Trump arms regulation treaty. So a kind of a Trump.
- [07:04]
John Sopel
It would have to have his name in it.
- [07:05]
Fiona Hill
It would have to have his name in it. And that's what he thought he was doing. But of course, everybody else just wanted to know, well, hang on, what went on with that meeting with Vladimir Putin behind the scenes? Because he was there with the interpreters. But we knew what had happened because our interpreter, the US Interpreter, came out and gave everybody a quick debrief. And she essentially said it was just like two guys chatting. Because Trump was just so thrilled to be talking to Putin. And he did try to move the conversation along, but what he did was really leave all of the meat of the conversation till the lunch where he had with his teams and basically asked Putin to repeat what he'd said in the other room, because he obviously wasn't taking notes.
- [07:43]
John Sopel
So let me give you three theories that can explain this relationship, because I think, I mean, we'll come to all the today stuff of what's happening in Ukraine and what's happening in our relationship with Russia and the United States of America. But one theory I've had expressed to me by a very senior diplomat who served as an ambassador in Washington, is that you have to understand that Donald Trump is a product of the post war generation. He has an absolute terror of nuclear weapons and therefore he gives Putin more importance than maybe economically he should because of the terror of a nuclear war. Second theory is it's the Monroe Doctrine written large, or the Donro Doctrine, as they're now calling it, which is everyone's got spheres of influence and Russia's got its backyard, Ukraine is part of that, America's got its backyard, Latin America is part of that, and China's got its backyard. And that's theory number two. Theory number three, and it has been put to me by a senior diplomat, is that Trump is a Russian asset. Is that ridiculous?
- [08:57]
Fiona Hill
Well, that isn't ridiculous because as far as Putin is concerned, everyone's potentially an asset. It doesn't mean that they're witting. So that's kind of part of the problem here because you can be pretty certain that Putin and the Russians have been spending an enormous amount of time not just trying to penetrate the inner circles of Donald Trump, which isn't that difficult, to be honest, because all kinds of people, as if people are going to go and see Anthony Scaramucci later, they'll hear about that as well. I mean, Trump has an open door to anybody who praises him and wants to get close to him. It's in Mar a Lago, it's wherever he is. So that's actually not all that difficult. And, you know, I think the Russians are pretty savvy about figuring out who someone is. And it's not just Trump. It's, you know, pretty much anybody who's ever come into the orbit or visited Russia, you know, keeping files on everybody. I think the second element you were saying about sphere of influence is probably the lesser of all of these rationales for why Trump is so enamored. I mean, yes, he certainly thinks the Western hemisphere is his, but, you know, he's not really going to let everybody else be unchecked anywhere else either. I mean, if Trump can get away with it, you know, he will exert his influence wherever it is, be this in Asia or, you know, Latin America. Obviously, or Europe or anywhere else. He'll just use, you know, everything we're seeing him doing at the moment. But I do think there is something in the whole idea of him being shaped by his experiences growing up during the Cold War. I mean, he was a young kid, really. I mean, a teenager during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And that would have probably scared him. You know, I think for sure it would have done. And the 1980s, the Euro missile Crisis, which, you know, many of us, you and I will remember that and many others, you know, here in the audience, will, that was when Trump was really trying to put himself out there on the national stage. He was already a celebrity businessman. And many of you will have read about Trump's efforts to pretty much stalk Gorbachev. I mean, he wanted to become the arms negotiator. This is why it was such a big deal for him in Helsinki to sit down with Vladimir Putin. He'd been trying since the 1980s and since he first visited the Soviet Union, not just to make business deals there, but to make himself the guy who would be the ultimate dealmaker on getting rid of nuclear weapons. And he still wants to do that. You see that with Iran. I mean, he's obviously got a large amount of there, and he's trying to be very coercive with Russia. He wants to be more persuasive. We saw him trying that with North Korea and Kim Jong Un in the first Trump administration. He wants to be the guy who made the world safer because, yes, he is very much intimidated and, you know, thinks back to that period of the 1960s and the 1980s and that risk of nuclear Armageddon. He talked about it a lot. I mean, I heard him talk about that openly in the time that I was there. He also had an uncle who was at mit. He was a nuclear physicist. And I think he believes that by some kind of family osmosis, he understands more about. He also said that, by the way, as well, understands more about nuclear weapons than most other people do.
- [11:54]
John Sopel
And just talk about what it's like being in the room with him. I mean, I've had him call me a beauty at a news conference, but that's about as far as it's gone. I mean, just in terms of what it's like. Does he read his daily intelligence briefing? Is he across the detail of an argument, or is it just impulsive? How do you keep his attention?
- [12:20]
Fiona Hill
He's very much impulsive. And I would just say that people like me never kept his attention. And to be honest, if you end up in his orbit. It doesn't matter.
- [12:26]
John Sopel
What do you mean, people like you?
- [12:27]
Fiona Hill
Well, I mean, you know, people like me, just look at me, you know, have you not noticed about how every woman who works for Trump has had a complete makeover? Right, so there we go. Say no more. All I just say to anybody is if you want to go home and just look up on Kirsty Noem and the transformation from what she looked like, you know, 10 years ago to what she looks like now, and you don't need any more explanation, I think, than that one anyway. So it also doesn't matter if you are, for example, Rex Tillerson, who had previously been the CEO of Exxon Mobil, or General Mattis, who, of course, you know, had been very prominent in the US Military. Once you start to work for him, you become the staff. And so it doesn't matter, you know, what rarefied position you had before. So all of the people now, the Scott Besants and all of the people that are always in the news and you think, you know, Howard Lutnick, they've all got some kind of cashier. They're part of his stuff. I mean, again, Scaramucci will tell you exactly the same thing, and you really don't matter. You no longer appear. So the people he listens to are his peers now. He will listen to his intelligence briefs, but they did have to start to get briefer, and then they had to start to be a bit more graphic. And I mean that by, you know, charts and pictures and things. And it's just, you know, because his intention span is, you know, very short, he also really firmly believes that he knows more than anyone else, more than his generals, more than his briefers. He doesn't have really the patience to basically get that information that people are trying to impart. And just as a little story around the preparation for Helsinki, he would not get briefed by anybody. He did listen to the CIA briefer, but he didn't want to hear about what it was actually like meeting with Vladimir Putin. He kind of assumed that nobody would really be able to tell him that. Even Rex Tillerson, who had met with Putin on many occasions and had basically, as the head of ExxonMobil, had multiple, you know, billion dollar deals. He never listened to him when he was Secretary of State. He wasn't really listening to all of the, you know, successes after that. And we, we flew out John Huntsman, who was the ambassador to Moscow at the time. And many of you will remember, I mean, John Huntsman, serious businessman, he had been a presidential candidate himself, former governor of Utah. And when he came to the Oval Office, all Trump wanted to talk about was John Huntsman's daughter, who was on Fox and Friends. So we didn't ever get to talk about Putin. So that was a dud. And then we got out to Helsinki, and before that, he'd gone to play golf at his, you know, his golf club. So he wasn't really. There was nobody running around at a golf cart trying to say, Mr. Trump, Mr. President, you know, could you wait a second? Let's talk about Mr. Putin. So we get to Helsinki. He still hasn't had the briefing. And Ambassador Bolton, who was the NSA at the time, national Security Advisor, he tried Pompeo, at that point was the Secretary of State. He tried the beef, had tried to add some extra in. It didn't work at all. And we ended up asking the Finnish president to cede his time at a breakfast where they were supposed to talk about Finland and U.S. relations, to actually tell him what it was like meeting Putin, because the Finnish president had met with Putin more times than pretty much any other European leader. So that's what we had to do.
- [15:41]
John Sopel
And I'm told that when Trump had the meeting with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the first meeting that on Air Force One over, the only thing that Trump was interested in is the angle of the cameras and where the handshake would take place, and would they film me below or above his head? And what the. You know, where were they going to come out for the handshake? And nothing to do with, you know, kind of denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula at all.
- [16:08]
Fiona Hill
The way to think about Trump as if you ever read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory or saw the film version of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, is to think of him as Mike tv. So nothing exists unless it's on television or inside television. And that's how he thinks all the time, because it's often he's watching television the entire time up until he's having a meeting. And sometimes if people come in to talk to him, he asks them if they were watching the same program. Most likely they weren't, because they were trying to get through security to get to see him. And he's saying, did you just see that? And of course they didn't. And it's all about the optics. It's all about how it presents. And he's very clever that way. I mean, we can all laugh about it, but it's all about the performance. So this is a highly performative presidency. And the reason things went so badly in Helsinki in the press conference is that everybody didn't indulge him in the performance. He wanted the prayers for what was going on in the background. I don't know if you remember all the screens were playing showing Gorbachev and Reagan or George H.W. bush first president Bush and Gorbachev, and all these various pictures, because he wanted to be seen as the peacemaker president, which he still wants to be in this case on nuclear weapons, saving the world from Armageddon.
- [17:18]
John Sopel
So you've mentioned John Bolton there, who is now facing prosecution in America from the doj, from the Justice Department. Donald Trump has gone after other people who have said disobliging things. Vienna Hill, do you ever worry that you speaking your mind, as you're doing before us now, could lead to legal jeopardy? Because the thing that strikes me, the main difference between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is the sense of intimidation and fear, fear that people have. And you gave evidence at the first impeachment investigation.
- [17:57]
Fiona Hill
Sure. And I got plenty of, you know, all kinds of nasty phone calls and things on the Internet. I mean, I'm not on the Internet anymore. I'm on LinkedIn. But, you know, there's only limits to what people actually do on LinkedIn. I'm not encouraging you all to write me rude letters, by the way, on LinkedIn. I just want, you know, befriend you or whatever you do on LinkedIn, kind of click accept or whatever, contacts or anything. But, I mean, it's just that he, he will try to intimidate people whichever way he can. I mean, in my case, I, along with many, many other people, hundreds of people, were put on a list to have security clearances stripped away. I mean, to be honest, mine wasn't current, but it actually has a huge impact on many people who, their livelihoods were linked to the fact that they could do consulting because they still had security clearances. So he tries to kind of hit at people. He does try to intimidate them. And, you know, Putin does the same thing. I'm also on the Russian list of people who can't go to Russia. So, you know, it's all. I'm just waiting for it to happen here next. You know, it's just basically. But they think that that will be sufficient. And look, there are an awful lot of people pushing back because that's what people like Trump and Putin and many other people bank on. They bank on people being intimidated. And I think, you know, once you experience some of this, you know, and you get through it. You. You got your backup. And I think that that's. You'll be starting to see that John Bolton, Ambassador Bolton, hasn't been cowed. He's out there every single day with another op ed taking Trump on, on this, that and the other. I mean, he's speaking out on CNN and all over the place at the moment, and so are a lot of other people.
- [19:24]
John Sopel
Just going back to my first question about the psychological relationship. I mean, is Trump, does Trump just love the tough guy image, the sort of macho man of Vladimir Putin? And if you've ever seen any of Vladimir Putin's annual calendars that he produces, they are really, you know, it's him riding bareback without a shirt on. It's him fishing kind of in the rivers, you know, in overalls. I mean, is that what Trump wants to be seen as?
- [19:50]
Fiona Hill
Yes, he does. Although you'll notice that Putin doesn't do that quite so much anymore, quite so attractive as he was in the past. I mean, he's just more in these, you know, very still manly, steely, you know, badasses, you know, kind of poses all the time. And that's. I don't know if any of you have been, you know, recently in D.C. i mean, I just flew over yesterday. But outside of the Justice Department now, there is a massive blue banner on most of the doorways, and it's Trump, you know, with all kinds of lighting, looking down gloweringly, and it says Justice. I mean, it's just, it's only going to be a matter of time before there are pictures in schools, in all kinds of official buildings. He's going full on cult of personality vibe. And if you've looked at the White House website, it's full of memes. It's not anything about what the United States is doing. And this is exactly that. And for Putin, that was very effective. I mean, I would actually say that Putin's the first real populist president of the 21st century in terms of just trying to make connections with all kinds of constituents. You know, everything from flying a microlight with endangered cranes to diving not very far down, admittedly about 10ft or, you know, something to pick up an amphora that was remarkably clean from the not very bottom of the Black Sea, you know, to playing the piano to then having, you know, aviator sunglasses on and being at the, you know, in a fighter jet and putting a helmet on and all kinds of things that he's doing. And, you know, Trump is doing very similar things, although always in the same suit and with the same red tie pretty much. But Trump actually, you know, has not gone into costume like Putin has. You didn't start a business just to keep the lights on. You're here to sell more today than yesterday.
- [21:40]
John Sopel
You're here to win.
- [21:42]
Fiona Hill
Lucky for you, Shopify built the best converting checkout on the planet, like the just one tapping ridiculously fast acting sky high sales stacking champion at checkouts. That's the good stuff right there. So if your business is in it to win it, win with Shopify. Start your free trial today@shopify.com win.
- [22:04]
Commercial Narrator
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- [23:28]
Fiona Hill
This is your fix.
- [23:31]
Commercial Narrator
I am your host, Stassi Schroeder. Welcome to Tell Me Lies, the official podcast. What's the most unhinged thing of season three? Steven because he's so I do think he is misunderstood.
- [23:43]
Fiona Hill
You see everyone face consequences.
- [23:46]
Mia Sorrenti
It's intoxicating.
- [23:47]
Commercial Narrator
The writers just know how to trick you. There's always a twist in this show. Tell Me Lies the official podcast January 6th and stream the new season of Tell Me Lies January 13th on Hulu and Hulu on Disney.
- [24:04]
John Sopel
So I've spent quite a bit of time just trying to examine the relationship between them and also the personality of Donald Trump. Let's talk about kind of where we are today because it would be easy to buy into the narrative that the three co equal branches of government, on which anyone who's ever looked for five seconds at the US Constitution understands is that there are checks and balances on each other. For the past year, it has felt as though Donald Trump has kind of taken over all three branches of government. And you talk about, you know, now there are pictures of him at the Justice Department, which is sort of supposedly meant to be a little bit independent. Likewise, Congress is doing whatever. Have they surrendered? Or are there signs now? And you look at what's happened over the release of the Epstein files, which Trump didn't want, but Congress voted for the tariff deal, which the Supreme Court has now overturned, that actually people are starting to assert themselves a bit more.
- [25:06]
Fiona Hill
I think that is true. But the question is, you know, whether it coalesces into something more. So we'll have to see, because these are the signs. But, you know, as they always say, one swallow doesn't make a spring. You know, so this is kind of, we're seeing a few, but we haven't really got all of the signs that you would want to see here. I think what's happened in Minneapolis has been pretty significant. I mean, really, the people of Minnesota and, you know, Minneapolis in particular, have started to push back and organize. And lots of the things that you don't see in the press all the time are the stories about what's going on behind the scenes. You've got a lot of civic action happening now. You've got a lot of groups who are organizing themselves and self organizing. You start to see states writ large push back. I mean, Gavin Newsom from California has been getting a lot of attention because he clearly has aspirations to run as president. But California, I mean, it's some of the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world if it was taken out of the United States. And you're starting to get Californians organizing themselves. You're getting the states to starting to take different positions from the federal government because the federal government is being paid back to such an extent that that kind of glue is starting to erode. I mean, Trump actually, in a way, I think he thought that the more power that accrued to the presidency and away from the rest of the federal government, the more powerful he would be. And I would actually argue that perhaps not because, I mean, he's basically not going to be distributing money. I mean, he's actually saying to blue states, all the states, he's calling blue states Democratic states. Democratic states. I'm not going to give you any money. Well, then what are those states going to do? They're going to start to step in and have to replace many of the functions that carried out by the federal government. And maybe they can't do them individually. But what you're starting to see is California, Washington State and Oregon are starting to band together on things like public health. You're starting to see the same thing on the East Coast. You know, basically all the way from now, Virginia, which is quickly has just recently gone from being a Republican governorship to a Democratic governorship. You've got Mamdani, the new Democratic mayor in New York. You're starting to see everywhere from Virginia through New York up to Maine, the state starting to pull together. And I think the same is going to start happening in the Midwest, clustered around Minnesota. You're seeing lots of people running as independents now for office in Congress as people are fed up of the partisanship of the two parties. And if you get enough independents who are getting through into Congress and into the Senate, they could become swing voters. That could also make more uncertainty for Trump down the line. So I think we've got to watch all of these signs. You're definitely seeing pushback, but I just can't say at this particular moment how it's all going to coalesce.
- [27:50]
John Sopel
And his approval ratings are low and going down, and support for independence and the coalition that brought him to power in November 24, particularly that incredible thing that he achieved of getting so many Hispanic and black voters to vote for him, that seems to be disintegrating. So should we be confident that the midterm elections this November will be free and fair?
- [28:14]
Fiona Hill
No. I mean, we shouldn't be. I think we should really worry about that.
- [28:19]
John Sopel
So what does that. So what does that look like in real terms?
- [28:22]
Fiona Hill
Well, I think we can already see it because the voter ID that they're pushing, I mean, look here in the United Kingdom, I mean, there weren't really ID cards. I mean, unlike in the rest of Europe, I mean, a lot of people don't have their passport because in America, lots of people don't travel outside of the United States. People don't have access to their birth certificates. And also, if you're a woman, anybody out here who changed their name, I'm really glad I never did when I got married. You'd have to get your original birth certificate and your marriage certificate and be able to kind of show that you legally changed your name to be able to vote. If this goes through. It hasn't yet. You'll have to see whether Congress blocks it. But there's one effort. He's already talking down the election, saying they're going to be stopped, stolen. I've talked to all kinds of people who said, well, you know, I mean, what's the point of voting? Because, you know, the vote's not free and fair anymore because they think he'll steal it. So people aren't going to go out, not just people who he's telling they're going to steal it. From the Democratic side, there's gerrymandering. I mean, the United States is, you know, I know that some of that is being discussed here in the United Kingdom, but it's, you know, really only in the United States, where some of the electoral districts are so ridiculous that they might include this church and a house down the street and then nothing else. And it's just that's also going on all the time so that people's votes are not going to be kind of counted in the neighborhood in which they live. And there's this discussion of federalizing the election, so basically having federal oversight, including the National Guard and other federal authorities, which will definitely intimidate people. And talking about getting rid of postal voting. You remember after the Alaska meeting with Putin, Putin obviously encouraged him in this direction, classic Putin, about the idea of postal voting. Trump comes out and says, well, Vladimir Putin told me that it would be really ridiculous to have mail in voting. No other country does this apart from us. Well, Russia does it.
- [30:16]
John Sopel
And fancy taking your lessons on democracy from Vladimir Putin.
- [30:20]
Fiona Hill
Putin introduced it to get even more votes for himself because he wanted everybody possibly to vote and remote areas, you know, so he could manipulate it. And so many, I think, you know, about 33 countries have postal voting. And so there's just that whole atmosphere of manipulating it. The American electoral system was incredibly secure and safe because it was all run by the states. All did it differently. It was extremely difficult to manipulate, certainly centrally for the Russians or for anyone else. But Trump is having a really go at it. So we should be watching this very closely.
- [30:51]
John Sopel
Right? So those are the elections. If Trump does badly in the midterms, if the House. And I know if he's doing a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence, if the House goes Democrat and there are inquiries into the Trump antics, have we seen possibly the high watermark of Trumpism and that people, America snaps back to some kind of normal, and we get a normal Republican that. That maybe we're more used to, I
- [31:21]
Fiona Hill
don't think we've seen the end of it, because this style of governance has obviously been very effective. And you can actually see when you start to look at people like Gavin Newsom and others who are coming from the left, they're also trying to adopt that more populist, performative way of campaigning. So that style, just like you're seeing here in politics in the UK and you're seeing it in other countries as well, people are thinking, well, that really works. And the American presidency has become fetishized over time. It's almost become somehow disconnected from party politics. It's more like a beauty contest. It's like a reality TV show. And so the party politics almost matters less than the performance of the president. And unless there is some politics push later on to try to put the presidency back in the bottle, so to speak, it's like a genie that's really escaped from here and make Congress and the representation of ordinary Americans in Congress more of the locus of power. It's going to be very difficult to change this. And as I said, Trump has really got more of a cult of personality about him at the moment. He manages to cower people into submission and giving him power that he hasn't actually legally been able to accrue. So that is a big difference. A lot of people are pointing out to the fact that he hasn't really changed laws, but people have been ceding power to him. So what you have to have to snap back is to get Congress to snap back.
- [32:51]
John Sopel
So let us talk about this in an international context, because, I mean, here we are sort of almost at the point of the fourth year, fourth anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. Here we are with the tariffs policy of Donald Trump having been overturned. Let's deal with Ukraine first. Is Donald Trump ultimately going to do a deal that is all about Ukrainian surrender and concession with Vladimir Putin having to do very little?
- [33:25]
Fiona Hill
Yeah, there's a real risk of that. A real risk.
- [33:28]
John Sopel
How do you avert that? Is there anything that Europe can do? Is there anything? Or does the pressure have to come from within his own inner circle?
- [33:38]
Fiona Hill
It has to come from Congress again in Senate. I mean, I'm sorry to say, but, you know, Congress have been, you know, asleep at the wheel, or not even asleep at the wheel. I think they've run out of the car and, you know, taken off somewhere else. And in fact, I mean, one of the interpreters interpretations from the recent Supreme Court overturning his tariffs was that Neil Gorsuch, one of the Supreme Court justices, who's a bit of an originalist going back to the Constitution, who Trump appointed, who Trump appointed, has actually been making a case to Congress to say you are supposed to be the first branch of government. And as an originalist, I'm actually trying to remind you of this, which Trump obviously hasn't liked at all. Everybody's basically saying, look, hello, members of Congress, be Republican and Democrat. You basically need to do something here. Because when you're actually looking at support for essentially some kind of fair settlement for Ukraine, it's quite high in the United States. Doesn't mean to say that Americans think they should be doing it all. They certainly think that Europe and the UK and other countries should be really stepping up here and taking much more of the lead for support of Ukraine. But it's not that they want to Trump to hand Ukraine over on a platter to Vladimir Putin. You know, it's all about certainly over 50% and closer to 60% depending on the poll of Americans. And most members of Congress, their staffs and members of the Senate are in the same position as well. So it's really, this is all about, you know, getting back to where we started again, Trump's own fascination with Putin, but also his own cult of the strongman. He wants to be a strong man. His only peers in the world are other strong men, and there are only two of them as far as he's concerned. One is Vladimir Putin and the other is President Xi of China. And, you know, kind of there's really nobody else there. I mean, he might, you know, kind of pump up here and there, Victor Orban or Nigel Farage, but they're just lesser mortals as far as he's concerned. It's all really about how he is perceived. And so he thinks that Russia is strong. Strong. It's not just about, as you were pointing out before the nuclear weapons. He's still got a view of Russia as the successor state to the Soviet Union, therefore is the other superpower, even though for many other countries, Russia is very much a declining force, especially as a result of the war in Ukraine,
- [35:50]
John Sopel
with a GDP smaller than Italy's.
- [35:51]
Fiona Hill
Yeah. And he sees Ukraine as basically a weak state. So his view all the time is that Ukraine is a loser. I mean, it's losing, you know, it's losing ground. It's not, you know, a big state. It's actually a very large state. Territorially and so, you know, Ukraine should just give in to Russia. That's what he's saying all of the time.
- [36:11]
Mia Sorrenti
Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Hannah Kay and it was edited by Mark Roberts. For ad free episodes and full length recordings, you can become a member over@Intelligencesquared.com membership and if you'd like to join us at future events, you can see our full program over@intelligencesquared.com attend. You've been listening to Intelligence Squared. Thanks for joining us.
- [36:50]
Fiona Hill
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