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- [00:00]
Faisal Islam
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK.
- [00:06]
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- [00:39]
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- [01:16]
Tristan Kirk
Faisal.
- [01:17]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
Hello.
- [01:17]
Tristan Kirk
Hello. Hello. This is my first time presenting newscast, Faisal. The last time I was in this studio was for Adam's children in need 25 hour PODC classathon, where we did a whole hour conversation about ghosts.
- [01:34]
Faisal Islam
Wow.
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Tristan Kirk
All killer.
- [01:36]
Faisal Islam
I'm hoping this episode might be a little bit more succinct.
- [01:39]
Tristan Kirk
It's not gonna be 25 hours. It's gonna be very succinct.
- [01:42]
Faisal Islam
Minutes. Minutes, hopefully.
- [01:43]
Tristan Kirk
Have you ever seen a ghost, Faisal?
- [01:46]
Faisal Islam
Oh, my. Not to my knowledge. I'd like to think I'd. I'd like to believe it if I saw it, but I'm. Sadly, I've had no ghost. I'm saying this now. It's going to happen tonight, isn't it? I'm just. I can hear myself thinking, you want to believe. I can hear the ghost in this building thinking, we'll get him tonight. But no, I've not had. I mean, I obviously had when I was about. When I was a tiny kid of about 10. I thought I saw some weird stuff, but probably was just.
- [02:14]
Tristan Kirk
What sort of weird stuff?
- [02:14]
Faisal Islam
My brother or sister messing around trying to wind me up.
- [02:17]
Tristan Kirk
Yeah, yeah.
- [02:18]
Faisal Islam
Normally that stuff is.
- [02:19]
Tristan Kirk
I made a whole show about a ghost and I don't even think I believe in ghosts myself. Right, well, on Saturday and Sunday this week, as promised, you will be able to hear two best of episodes from Adam's 25 hour children need show, including part of Adam and I speaking to Danny Robbins from Uncanny about Ghostly Things. And you'll be able to find that in your newscast feeds. But let's get on with today's episode of Newscast, newscast, newscast from the BBC.
- [02:50]
Faisal Islam
Fat Boy Slim and me in the.
- [02:51]
Tristan Kirk
Classroom doing our violin lessons.
- [02:53]
Faisal Islam
I was the tattletale in the class. Can I have an apology, please?
- [02:56]
Tristan Kirk
I trust almost nobody that daddy has to sometimes do strong language.
- [03:00]
Faisal Islam
Next time in mosque.
- [03:01]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
I feel Delulu with no Salulu.
- [03:03]
Asma Khalid
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [03:05]
Advertisement Voice
Let's go have a tour.
- [03:07]
Tristan Kirk
Blimey. Hello, it's Tristan from the Global Story in the newscast studio standing in for Adam.
- [03:12]
Faisal Islam
And it's Faisal here in the newscast studio standing in for myself.
- [03:17]
Tristan Kirk
And in part two of today's podcast, we're going to be looking at the rising tensions between the US and Venezuela, asking where everything that's going on right now in the Caribbean could actually lead. But first, Faisal, some good news for the government today when it comes to the economy and interest rates. Before we get onto the substance of this though, you've been at something called a lock in at the bank of England. What's that like?
- [03:42]
Faisal Islam
Okay, well, there's a couple of things that happened. The lock in is the. Is a period of time before a big decision, a big announcement. Normally in the case of the bank of England, it will be an interest rate decision where a small number of us get to hear what has happened a little bit earlier, about an hour or so earlier, but on condition that we are locked with no devices inside the vaults of the bank of England. I. I assume rather close to where the gold is. But, but we don't get to see that. We don't get to sit among. I know it's sounding very glamorous at this point, but. No, it's in a rather tedious and boring convent sort of conference room.
- [04:17]
Tristan Kirk
Yeah.
- [04:18]
Faisal Islam
Which is deep underground.
- [04:20]
Tristan Kirk
Do they check you for devices?
- [04:21]
Faisal Islam
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You check them in.
- [04:23]
Tristan Kirk
But they did. They do like an actual search?
- [04:26]
Faisal Islam
Well, there's no, there's no, there's no reception anyway. So you couldn't get anything out. Okay. Anyway. Even if you tried. But it's very important that. And that's the quid pro quo. The point here is, is we're not just responding to the individual announcement of the rates cut as it was today, but the deliberations around it, some of the considerations about where things might go in the future, some of the disagreements on the nine member committee that decides interest rates. Yeah, it just helps you have a little bit of extra time to contextualize before you put your Headlines out before you put your initial takes on the, on the story. So, so that's the idea behind it. It does help with our telling of the story, but we obviously, absolutely, it's not that we not allowed to, but there can't be any possibility that we could if we wanted to tell any of that story in advance. We saw what happened. I mean, it was a different context. We saw what happened with the Office of Budget Responsibility early release, early inadvertent release of the, of the Chancellor's budget measures last month.
- [05:20]
Tristan Kirk
Well, the rate cut from 4% to 3.75. This is good news for the government, isn't it?
- [05:26]
Faisal Islam
Yes. So firstly, one should probably consider this as an accumulation of six cuts we've had over the past year and a half. So that's quite chunky, substantial. These things bizarrely take extra for many people. They'll take extra time to see the benefit from this because 90% of people are on fixed rate mortgages. So you have to physically wait until that mortgage comes up. But how it affects those fixed rates that are on offer is often in real time, often ahead of time. They're predicting these rate cuts in advance and they respond to that news. So although physically the pounds in your pocket depend on when you're taking a mortgage out, and indeed if you are a mortgage holder, plenty of people rent, plenty of people paid off their mortgages. The pounds in the pocket may be delayed. But your anticipation that the bump in mortgage rates that affected you three, five years ago, when rates were very high, which was, I know, hundreds of pounds increase, like a case study we've got on the 6 and 10 o' clock news, a thousand pounds a month, you start to anticipate that that's going to go away in six months time or a year's time, so it can affect your sense of how much money you have to spare, so it can affect confidence in that way. But it's a bit diffuse. Now you ask a very important question about credit and whether the government will feel vindicated by this. And certainly that's the message we got today. Chancellor Rachel Reeves, for a very specific reason, which is that the bank gave credit, if you like, to the fact that the budget was very carefully aimed in part at trying to get the headline rate of inflation down. So the headline rate of inflation overall went up. But given that the Office of Budget Responsibility, for example, said, well, actually these measures, things like the energy bills measure, taking hundreds of just over £100 off bills, freezing rail fares, freezing prescription prices, that they contributed to a 0.4 percentage point reduction in what the rate of inflation would be in April. The bank of England actually said it's a little bit higher, 0.5 percentage points. That's quite a chunky take away from inflation. And then the question is, how does the bank respond to that? Is that a real cut in inflation? Is it a slightly weird one that you shouldn't really account for? Well, as I said on behalf of broadcasters, been talking to the bank of England governor and he said yes, well actually a year ago when we had the budget and that contributed to inflationary pressures, I said, you know, Andrew Bailey said, well, we sort of called that out and we said this is part of a, a challenge in terms of the inflationary situation. Now they've done the reverse and it is helping us cut. So he was pretty clear in giving that credit. So that is why I think you heard from Rachel Reeves today, the Chancellor sounding quite vindicated. However, they also pointed out that the economy is subdued. And, and certainly we've heard from leader of the Opposition, from the Shadow Chancellor too that they blame that on some of the uncertainty around the budget and that hasn't cleared up. And so as you're left now with like, where is the economy going? And you have this sort of pre Christmas jolt to the festive spirit potentially from the so called Santa cut, but there certainly was some uncertainty that weighed on economic activity and confidence for consumers and businesses. What the, the bank goes around asking businesses, you know, do you feel better now? And they say there's been no rebound but perhaps a gradual appreciation for the fact that the uncertainty around the budget is over. So I think all roads lead to January and February and March about where the economy goes. And I think there's an awful lot up for grabs right now.
- [09:05]
Tristan Kirk
Well, I mean the uncertainty over this seems to be reflected in the decision making because the committee that decides these things, the Monetary policy committee, voted 5 to 4 in favor of the cut. Where was the opposition coming from? What were they worried about, those people who were against it?
- [09:20]
Faisal Islam
It's a bit of a battle. It's a battle between a subdued economy, subdued jobs market with unemployment going up, growth flat, actually contracting a little bit in the last three months, 0.1% and fears about inflation, about inflation becoming entrenched, about the perceptions of the UK being, you know, particularly inflation prone. You do not want that in the markets. You get punished in the markets and it becomes a sort of self fulfilling doom loop of, well, hang on, you're a bit of an outlier, therefore we're going to charge you more to borrow money, therefore your situation is worse and therefore we're going to charge. You know, that hadn't really triggered, but people started to ask questions about why the UK's inflation, uniquely was higher. So some of that has been allayed by a sharp surprise fall in the inflation rate that came yesterday, further allayed by the idea that there'll be a chunky fall inflation in April, partly as a result of the government's very specific budget actions aimed at reducing that. Not everybody was convinced by that as being a real cut in inflation. And there are just different views. There are different views as to what the biggest threat is right now. And. And essentially the 54 went from 54 the other way in the body of the governor of Andrew Bailey deciding to change his vote from hold to cut. And that again relates to a sort of marginal change of view about when the right timing was for a cut, about its effectiveness, about what the biggest risks were. He was just more convinced. And so he's gone with the idea that we should cut. Rather interestingly, he has now also suggested that from now on in that decision about further cuts into the future will be a closer call. And the markets have interpreted that we've pretty much had one cut every quarter over the last year and a half. And so the natural way to interpret that is, well, maybe that slows down to like one every half year. So expect a couple of cuts there or thereabouts next year, not four cuts as we've had this year. So that would still take interest rates to three and a quarter percent, but some had expected them to go as low as 3 or below. That kind of depends. That probably wouldn't be a good sign. That would be a sign that the economy was. They were trying to rescue the economy from recession and were not worried at all about inflation. So that's the balancing act. It's a very tight balancing act. You can see it not just in the 54 vote, the 54 from 4 5. You can see it actually in the individual deliberations of those nine members with themselves. They're arguing about these in and, you know, within their own sort of expertise as well.
- [11:56]
Tristan Kirk
Well, before I let you go, Faisal, we're coming to that time of year where we look back and we look forward and we reflect and we predict. Where do you think that Rachel Reeves finds herself at the end of 2025? Because it's been a bit of a bumpy year.
- [12:11]
Faisal Islam
Yeah, yeah. No, it has. It has been bumpy. I mean. I mean, clearly totemically having pushed the welfare cut in order to promote economic stability, but then finding it promoted actually pretty profound political instability enough to make raise questions about the economic stability. So that whole roundabout was, was problematic. I think actually, and this is a slightly non consensus view of the budget. What were they trying to do with the budget? They were trying to land it with the markets, land it with the back benches. You know, that could have been an impossible task, but they've managed to square that. Markets are calm, back benches are calmer than you might think. You leave it to Chris and, and Adam and others to assess exactly where the, the politics of all this is. And now she really does need, which is why the interest rate cut is, is important, it's necessary but not sufficient condition really does need those, those savers who are saving and not consuming. Savings rates super high right now in the uk, kind of more than you possibly, possibly expect. There's a despondency out there that spreads well beyond, you know, towards people that probably could afford to go out and spend. Are they going to go out and spend, are they going to feel more confident about the state of the economy, the state of the country to go out and spend normal amounts? Are businesses going to feel confident enough to invest again? Not huge amounts, just normal amounts. We would see a pickup, a pretty strong pickup in the economy, even if things went back to normal. So I think that that would be the modest hope for January and February. It's not certain politics could play its hand again in terms of the uncertainty coming back. And it may just be ironically that signs of a better economy will come by March or April. But does that align with the political timetable of those tough local elections in May?
- [14:04]
Tristan Kirk
Well, if people are saving money, that means that there is money that they might be able to spend if they wanted to.
- [14:10]
Faisal Islam
Yeah, but this has been rolling for some time now and it's particularly amongst older. Obviously most savings are with older, wealthier people who've been around to save, but you know, they have saved much more than you'd expect and actually it's part of that is the very point of cutting interest rates, which is no one wants to say this publicly, but the way in which the channel through which it works is to squeeze savings income and persuade at the margin people to spend a few tens of pounds rather than put it in a bank account because they're fearful about the economy. There's an amazingly interesting psychology around, around savings. People don't like to be told what to do. But interest rates send a clear signal and that is part of the very point. Get people spending, get people saving. For now, they don't feel confident, haven't felt confident enough. And so that is why a sense of stability, a sense of people like me not going on the TV wondering if more taxes are going to be raised kind of every couple of weeks. You know, that should be settled. That should be settled at least for several months. Next, next, you know, until June or July. The next budget shouldn't be till next October or November. So that should be settled. So that could feel quite different. But it would, you know, it would be such a change from what we've become used to now. We thought this year, this 2025 that's ending would see a calmer year, less political and economic instability. We didn't quite get it. Are we going to get that next year? That is the chancellor and the prime minister's great hope. And that should provide some space for consumers and businesses. But we're still at the stage of if.
- [15:51]
Tristan Kirk
Faisal, thank you very much.
- [15:52]
Faisal Islam
Thanks.
- [16:02]
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- [19:26]
Tristan Kirk
We'Ve been talking about quite a lot over on the Global Story. Where I come from, newscast, cousin news show is the rising tensions between Venezuela and the United States, which actually seems to occupy quite a bit of our time so ever. It all goes back to the beginning of September. In September, U.S. airstrikes against boats in the Caribbean started. Boats being blown out of the water allegedly because they were carrying narcotics northwards to the United States. And then there was a military buildup in the Caribbean of U.S. ships and U.S. troops and U.S. planes. And all of this seems to be moving potentially in the direction of a US intervention in Venezuela. That's what the Venezuelan government are saying. So what we want to talk about today is where this really could all be heading and where it could end up. And joining me from Washington is my co presenter on the Global Story, Asma Khalid. Normally she and I are co hosting together today. She's my guest, which is a pleasure. And also it's a pleasure to be with you. Oh, thank you so much for joining us, Asma. And with me in the studio here in London is Vanessa Bushleuter, who is the Latin American Caribbean editor for the BBC News website. Thanks so much for joining us, Vanessa.
- [20:47]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
No problem. My pleasure.
- [20:48]
Tristan Kirk
Vanessa, can you take this back to September and tell us how all of this started?
- [20:54]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
I would go back even a little bit further to the election in July of last year when President Maduro tried to be re elected and the opposition put up a candidate. It was Maria Corina Machado, who has now won the Nobel Peace Prize. But she was barred from running and she then threw her weight behind a different opposition candidate, Edmundo Gonzalez. And after the election, the National Electoral Council, which is dominated, it has to be said, by Maduro loyalists, declared Maduro re elected. But the opposition had voting tallies showing that its candidate had won. So that already caused friction with a lot of nations, including the U.S. the U.S. recognized Edmundo Gonzalez as the President elect. And you can imagine that that did not please Mr. Maduro. And since then, of course, President Trump was re elected. And since he's started his second term in office, he has been ramping up the pressure on Venezuela. So even before those strikes on the small boats, we had the, the reward that the US Is offering for information leading to the capture of President Maduro doubled from, from $25 million to $50 million. And then we had those strike starting on the 2nd of September.
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Tristan Kirk
Okay. And so how do we know how many people have been killed in these strikes?
- [22:25]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
It is now more than 90. So the first strikes tended to be in the Caribbean on small vessels in the Caribbean allegedly transporting drugs. Now it's moved more to the Pacific side. And that is actually more logical because a lot of the cocaine that is transported from South America to the US Actually goes through the Pacific and not the Caribbean. It's about 70 to 80% of the cocaine that is going the Pacific way.
- [22:54]
Tristan Kirk
Asma, can you remember when it was that Donald Trump first started talking about Venezuela in these quite forthright terms since he came back to the White House?
- [23:07]
Asma Khalid
Mm. I mean, to echo what we just heard, I think there is, it is undeniable that the United States relationship with Venezuela has been tense for quite some time, dating back, even, as we say, to the Biden years, Right. When we saw Maduro retain, retain his power there in Venezuela. But I think, I think what the big difference to me, Tristan, is the return of Donald Trump to the White House. That is when we have seen this relationship systematically take a turn and frankly, the tension escalating. I would say the big point of escalation was September when we saw these boat strikes begin. They have been extraordinarily, I would say, complicated and debated in political circles here in Washington. We've seen both the Senate and the House of Representatives debate whether or not these are, in fact legal, that this is being done without any sort of congressional authorization, as is normally the case. And just shorthand here is that in order to actually enter into a war, there needs to be congressional authorization. And we're seeing the Trump administration not just blow up these boats in the Caribbean and now the Pacific. We've also seen them systematically build up a kind of naval blockade around Venezuela. And we've seen, I would say, just a heightening and heightening of both military escalation, but also of rhetoric. And just one last note here is that I think that the rhetoric has been getting far, far more tense. And just this week, we saw President Trump post on his truth social media account that, you know, he sees the Venezuelan regime, his words, as a foreign terrorist organization. He accused the Venezuelan government of stealing American oil and talked about there being the now largest armada in history around the South American country and, you know, threatened that it could even become a worse situation for Venezuela. And so a lot of us here in Washington are wondering, well, what exactly is going on here? And is the president sort of building the case now for possible intervention?
- [25:00]
Tristan Kirk
Well, the White House has kind of laid out its stall early on, saying that drugs were kind of one of the primary reasons for these strikes. Vanessa, is that what they're still saying there was? Have things evolved?
- [25:14]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
I think things have evolved a little bit over the last days since that tanker was seized. A tanker that was sanctioned by the us. US was seized by US forces. So a helicopter took off from the USS Gerald Ford, the largest aircraft carrier in the world, which has been cruising in international waters just off the coast of Venezuela. And U.S. coast Guard soldier or U.S. coast Guard officials boarded that vessel, and it's now on its way to the us. And since that happened, there has been a lot of talk about oil. And as Asma said there, president posted on Truth Social about oil, he accused Venezuela of stealing the US's oil, and he said that the pressure wouldn't stop until it had returned that oil. Now, that's where it gets a bit strange because, yes, Venezuela nationalized its oil industry, but that was back in 1976. So we're really going back 50 years here. And for Trump to make that case is rather thin.
- [26:26]
Tristan Kirk
Well, oil, it feels to me like oil has sometimes been kind of like the elephant in the room in all of this because Venezuela has the world's largest proven oil reserves, even more oil than Saudi Arabia. But it feels like this week, people in the United States, in Washington, started talking a little bit more openly about oil as being a possible objective of the United States in all of this. And this kind of came about when Donald Trump posted a very long message on Truth Social a few days ago. Asma, what did he actually say?
- [27:05]
Asma Khalid
Yeah, and let me pull this up here because I think it's worth quoting the president in his own words. It was a very lengthy post, but his words here, I'm going to quote a portion of it. He says the illegitimate Maduro regime is using oil from these stolen oil fields to finance themselves drug, terrorism, human trafficking, murder and kidnapping. He also said in this post that the largest armada ever assembled in the history of South America is surrounding Venezuela and that it will only get bigger and the shock to them will be like nothing they've ever seen until such time as they return to the United States of America all of the oil, land and other assets that they had previously stole from us. It's a very long post. There's a lot more in there. I mean, I do think this is the most explicit reference we've seen from the president and from his team about oil in this context. But Trump, I will say, is a sort of confusing, I think, politician to me in many ways, Tristan. And I think it is worth going back to what you said here at the outset, which was that initially this seemed to be about accusations of drugs entering the United States. And that is for much of the president's first year back in office, now in the White House. That's been the argument we've heard about Venezuela. We've heard them refer to Maduro as the head of a drug cartel. We have heard that as being the legitimate basis, they say, for blowing up these boats in the Caribbean. They have described them as being narco terrorists. They have went on to, you know, say that fentanyl is a weapon of mass destruction. We've seen the language of terrorism and war being used in the context of drugs. And the purported explanation we hear is that they are trying to prevent drugs from Central America, South America from coming into the United States. And so I found the shift rhetorically in the last week to be really striking. I think one of the things, though, to Keep in mind about President Trump is, you know, he is somebody who I think finds certain leaders around the world to have a certain degree of kinship with him. And I don't know that I actually see a policy basis for some of this. And Tristan, we've talked about this a bit on the global story, but if you look at his actions in Central and South America recently, he bailed out the Argentinian president financially. Right. He pardoned the former president of Honduras, who was in fact, a convicted drug offender here in the US Courts. Right. And he pardoned him. So if this is really about drugs, I think there's a question that many people are asking, which is, well, then why conduct these other actions? And so it strikes me as that, you know, President Trump often finds a kinship with world leaders around the globe and Maduro is ideologically not aligned with him.
- [29:43]
Tristan Kirk
Yeah, I think he has less of a kinship with Nicolas Maduro, doesn't he? Arguably. Vanessa, what's been the response, though, from Nicolas Maduro to all of this from from Donald Trump?
- [29:53]
Vanessa Buschschlüter
Well, there's been an interesting shift there as well, because when the US Hit those small vessels, there was not that much outrage on the side on the part of Nicolas Maduro because that didn't really hurt him. I mean, some Venezuelan nationals, we don't know exactly who the nationals that died were, but we presume that some of them were Venezuelans. That's what the US has said time and time again. But President Maduro did not express condolences to the families. In fact, there are reports that reporters have been kept away from the villages from which some of these people came, the ones that were killed on those boats. So he, during those times, he was seen composing rap songs in defiance of what was going on. He was seen dancing and speaking to his supporters. Now, that tone has changed with that seizure of that oil tanker. He's talking about piracy, he's talking about theft, about attacks on the country's sovereignty. And he's also called a meeting of the UN Security Council, which will happen on the 23rd. So next week he got the backing of China and the Russia of Russia for that. So he has been making a lot of phone calls to people that he sees as his allies. It has to be said that neither China nor Russia have been really all that outspoken in their support of President Maduro recently. They have been keeping very quiet, but there has been a lot of diplomacy going on behind the scenes. And he is certainly much more strident now. And I think he's very worried. And that's because oil accounts for more than 50% of the government's finances, the oil revenues. So being deprived potentially of those revenues is a massive loss. And because his position is quite tenuous, I mean, there's a huge majority of people in the country who want to see him gone. And he has to have the backing of the armed forces. And if he can't pay the armed forces, then he could lose that backing. There's already a lot of, there are already a lot of reports of low ranking soldiers being disillusioned because they're just being paid a pittance. So if those salaries were to dry up, then those soldiers could turn their back on Nicolas Maduro and that would be really dangerous for him.
- [32:31]
Tristan Kirk
Well, Asma, I want to go to you for our last question here because there has been a certain amount of speculation online as to whether or not the United States could even declare war on Venezuela. Tucker Carlson's even been talking about it, the conservative media commentator and podcaster. What would a war against Venezuela even look like? Are there troops in the region? Any kind of U.S. military buildup?
- [33:00]
Asma Khalid
We've certainly seen a naval military buildup, right. Surrounding Venezuela. We've seen Coast Guard sent down to the area. But in terms of what any sort of military action might look like, I think one of the key questions for President Trump, at least from my vantage point here in Washington, is how he navigates this from a domestic political context. He returned to office on a promise to make America great again. He has often prioritized domestic issues. There are a lot of key domestic concerns here around issues like affordability, the price of groceries and utilities. And there are some within his own party who question his global interventionism and his global sort of outlook this second term. And I do think that is a question he will have to wrestle with. That all being said, Tristan, you know, several weeks ago now at this point, there were reports that the Trump administration had authorized some sort of COVID action, possibly inside Venezuela, CIA covert action. And I do think that raised a lot of alarm bells. I will say one last point on this, which is that there have been questions about trying to put some limits on this from the standpoint of Congress. But at this point, Democrats do not have the numbers in either the Senate or the House. And we see that President Trump has been able to act as he wishes with very little sort of very few restraints on his power there. You know, in terms of blowing up boats and other actions that he wants to take in Venezuela.
- [34:20]
Tristan Kirk
We're say goodbye to Vanessa Bushleuter. Thank you so Much for joining us, Vanessa. Thank you. And Asma, whilst I've got you, I want to ask you one final, final question, which since you're in dc, I saw this story about the portraits of presidents that have been put up in the White House by Donald J. Trump with particularly interesting commentary about the presidents underneath each portrait. Can you talk us through what's actually going on with this?
- [34:47]
Asma Khalid
I did see this story. You know, I spent a lot of time at the White House in my former life as a White House correspondent, but I actually haven't seen these in real life. But it was all the chatter amongst former colleagues I saw online. So these are plaques, my understanding are they're underneath portraits of various presidents in American history. And look, I mean, essentially what it seems like is the President has turned the style and the vernacular that he uses online in social media posts and kind of emblazoned them in a physical plaque to keep there for as long as he stays in the White House. It is language that you traditionally never have seen in the White House and to my recollection, I've never seen before. So let me just give you a bit of a sampling here.
- [35:29]
Tristan Kirk
Yes, please, please give us your favorites.
- [35:31]
Asma Khalid
We have Barack Hussein Obama was the first black president, a community organizer, one term senator from Illinois, and one of the most divisive political figures in American history. I mean, part of this is also that he's using these plaques to, I think, in rather typical form, critique and insult Democratic leaders. You just usually don't see this type of thing stuff in the White House. I mean, I think the White House is often seen to be the people's House. Right. And that it's supposed to be welcoming to all types of Americans with in theory, the type of imagery that you see. But let's hear, we have Joe Biden, Sleepy. Joe Biden was by far the worst president in American history. Nicknamed both Sleepy and Crooked, Joe Biden was dominated by his radical left hand left. So, you know, just a bit of a sampling here of what you've got.
- [36:26]
Tristan Kirk
Oh, he was dominated by his radical left handlers.
- [36:29]
Faisal Islam
Wow.
- [36:29]
Tristan Kirk
Okay. The bit that I find most interesting is this. There's. Under the Clinton portrait, we get the, you know, we get the standard pro forma stuff. Bill Clinton served as Attorney General and governor of Arkansas before winning the President's presidency, etc. Etc. And then the payoff, the final sentence just says, In 2016, President Clinton's wife Hillary lost the presidency to President Donald J. Trump, exclamation mark. And that's where it ends. Yeah. Okay. All right. Well, thank you so much for filling us in on that, Asma. It's been a total pleasure having you as a guest for once. It's been fun. Thank you.
- [37:07]
Asma Khalid
My pleasure. I know it's good to be on the other side of things here being interviewed by you, Tristan. Appreciate it.
- [37:13]
Tristan Kirk
Well, if they have me back on Newscast one day, we'll invite you back.
- [37:16]
Asma Khalid
Thank you. The honor was mine.
- [37:17]
Tristan Kirk
And you can listen to Asma and me every weekday, Monday to Friday on the Global Story, wherever you get your podcasts. And there's a treat from Newscast for you tomorrow. Chris Mason will be presenting a special episode of Newscast, looking back at some of the biggest stories in politics in the last few months and looking ahead to what might happen in 2026. And that's it for today's episode. Thank you so much. Cheerio. Newscast.
- [37:44]
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- [37:46]
Faisal Islam
Thank you so much for making it to the end of Newscast. You clearly copyright Chris Mason Ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? Don't forget, you can email us anytime. It's newscastbc.co.uk and if you would like to join our Discord community to talk about everything newscast related, there is a link in the description of this podcast and don't be scared. It's super easy to click on it and then get set up. Or you can WhatsApp us on 033-01-239480 and I promise you we read and listen to every single message. Thanks for listening to this podcast.
- [38:26]
Tristan Kirk
Bye.
- [38:33]
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