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- [00:00]
Adam Fleming
This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the uk.
- [00:07]
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- [01:06]
Ray Winstone
Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Heroes. I got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough.
- [01:21]
History's Toughest Heroes Narrator
And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head.
- [01:28]
Ray Winstone
Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.
- [01:39]
Katie Razzall
BBC Sounds Music Radio Podcasts hello.
- [01:43]
Adam Fleming
It's been a day of potential danger for the BBC as two long awaited reports about two big controversies landed in everyone's inboxes. One was about Greg Wallace and his time as a presenter on MasterChef, which attracted lots of complaints from people who worked on that program. The other was the forensic examination of what went wrong about that documentary filmed in Gaza by an independent production company where the child who was narrating it turns out to be the son of a Hamas official. Lots of questions were asked about both those situations today. We got some answers. We'll discuss what they mean on this.
- [02:22]
Katie Razzall
Episode of Newscast Newscast Newscast from the BBC.
- [02:26]
Adam Fleming
He has just compared me to the Fat Controller.
- [02:29]
Donald Trump
Did I say that? I can't believe I said that. Next question.
- [02:33]
Katie Razzall
This is R For the benefit of Earth.
- [02:35]
Noor Nanji
I'm not personally a huge Sabrina Carpenter fan.
- [02:39]
Adam Fleming
I don't think I'm being rude. I like landscapes.
- [02:41]
Katie Razzall
Take me down to Downing Street.
- [02:43]
Adam Fleming
Let's go have a tour. Blimey. Hello, hello, it's Adam in the newscast studio. And the first two stories we're going to cover on today's episode are related to the BBC, although they are quite different. And then we'll end with a very different story, which is about Donald Trump changing his mind about how much military support to provide to Ukraine, and also a toughening up of his opinion about Russia. So the first story, and the first one related to the BBC is about that documentary broadcast earlier this year, filmed in Gaza and presented and narrated by. By a young boy who became the subject of a lot of media scrutiny. And the person who's been doing that scrutiny for us Today is the BBC's media editor, Katie Razzle, who's here. Hi, Katie.
- [03:27]
Katie Razzall
Hi, Adam.
- [03:28]
Adam Fleming
So the backstory to this was it was this documentary filmed in Gaza, narrated by a young boy, made, crucially, by an independent production company for the BBC. It was broadcast, it went on iplayer. Then when people spotted that this child was the son of a Hamas official in Gaza, it got pulled from iplayer. The BBC started this review.
- [03:51]
Katie Razzall
Yes, Adam, that's absolutely right. So that was five months ago. So that happened in February, and it has taken five months for this investigation to report. Now, that is because, as they said today, they've watched hours of footage, they've.
- [04:05]
Adam Fleming
Spoken to lots of people, thousands of emails.
- [04:08]
Katie Razzall
Thousands of emails, all of that. And the key findings are that the BBC, this film breached the BBC's editorial guidelines on accuracy by failing to disclose that the child narrator, as you say, was the son of Hamas's deputy agriculture minister. So that is around misleading audiences, not being transparent. So in a sense, what the review is saying is if you had said that, then the audience could have judged for itself how to view this, but you didn't give them that information, which the report says was critical information, and the audience should have been informed about it. So it doesn't find. You talk about an independent production company that they're called Hoyo Films. They're a very small outfit, just a few people. It doesn't find that they intentionally misled the BBC. They say they do, though, bear most of the responsibility for the failure, but also that the BBC bears responsibility and they criticize the BBC team for not being sufficiently proactive and then a lack of critical oversight, because even though the questions were asked, the answers obviously didn't come because nobody in the BBC knew that this child had this family link.
- [05:17]
Adam Fleming
And Peter Johnson comes to those because he was the guy that led the review, comes to those conclusions because he says that the three people in the production company knew who the child was and who the child's dad was, but they didn't intentionally mislead the BBC by sort of kicking, concealing that information in an underhand way. And also the BBC executives and program makers involved on the BBC side did ask the questions, they just didn't secure the answers correct.
- [05:44]
Katie Razzall
So the production company did not think it was relevant. I mean, to be honest, some of this stuff I knew at the time, when I'd made a few calls at the beginning after this happened, but you know, that was clear. They didn't think the information was relevant because they see this guy or the father of this child as a technocrat. They may well be right in that, that, you know, there's a difference between working for the mass in a place where, you know, if you're working for the government, the government's run by Hamas, you're working for Hamas and being obviously part of the military wing of a, of a terrorist organization as, as viewed by the British and, and many others. So that was on their side and then on the BBC side, yes, the questions were asked but the answers didn't come and there wasn't the follow up to find that out. So the question, you know, the culture. Lisa Nandy said previously, you know, why has nobody been fired over this? Well, today the BBC won't comment on that, you know, but clearly, you know, it looks, reading between the lines, or not even between the lines, it's fairly clear that there have been failures on the BBC side. The report says that. So the BBC, when it, when it said that this review was going to happen, it said it was going to determine whether any disciplinary action was warranted. And although they wouldn't talk specifically about that today, they did use this phrase, you know, they're taking fair, appropriate action to ensure accountability.
- [07:04]
Adam Fleming
And I thought that word fair was interesting because that is a signal that this is an, this is a formal HR process in an organization that has employees. As opposed to something that looks a bit more like politics where government ministers resign because they take responsibility for mistakes in their departments or things that they've done. It was sort of, I think was signaling that we're in a different world from politics here. We're in the HR world.
- [07:27]
Katie Razzall
Exactly right. And you know, we've had this before, haven't we? Where in a sense what happens is, as you say, there are employees here, they have, if they failed, they need to be, you know, the absolutely appropriate procedures need to be gone through to determine that and determine what a fair response to that is. Obviously on the outside, even on the inside, perhaps there's that sort of joke about the BBC will head's role or deputy will Deputy head's role. Yeah. There's always that thing about is there proper accountability at the top? You know, do people lose their jobs over, you know, serious failings? We just don't know on this occasion. But it looks like a process is.
- [08:12]
Adam Fleming
Going on and in terms of things the BBC is going to do differently now. I mean, the head of BBC News, Deborah Turness, was on the World at One talking to Sarah Montague and this is what she said. And then it led onto what's going to change after this?
- [08:23]
Deborah Turness
I think what you can see today is that the BBC has taken this incredibly seriously. We have led a full and thorough investigation which we are publishing full and, and transparently. Everything's out there. And we share the action plan that we're now putting into place to prevent this kind of mistake happening again. We are owning where we've made mistakes. We are finding out what went wrong. We're acting on the findings and we've said we're sorry. And I am sorry I said it at the time. I'm sorry this happened. It was a mistake.
- [08:51]
Adam Fleming
So, Katie, that was Deborah Tuness, the CEO of BBC News. They're talking about this action plan. What are the actions in the plan?
- [08:56]
Katie Razzall
Okay, well, some of them, all of them are quite interesting. One of them is that they are actually looking because they think it's important to tell the story of what's happening in Gaza and they're keen to tell the stories. Some of the stories that featured in this documentary, they are looking at re editing and reversioning shorter films from some of the other children's stories to put on the iplayer and Hoyo Films are working with them on that. So that's interesting. Then of course, as we were talking about, there's this issue around disciplinary action taking fair, clear and appropriate action on narration. They're putting new editorial guidance in place to look more carefully at the use of narrators in contested current affairs programs. They're also creating a new director role on the BBC News Board to have strategic leadership of long form output across BBC News. I have a feeling that was a role that they used to have. Yeah, but then they cut. Well, now that role's going back in.
- [09:53]
Adam Fleming
Place and there's the whole about this thing that we've been learning about the gates.
- [09:57]
Katie Razzall
Exactly. First Gate. I have a bit of a claim to fame because a story I worked on a while ago was the first program, the first story that was used on in that or Test Road tested that first.
- [10:07]
Adam Fleming
So explain what this is because basically a few months ago they introduced thing called the Final Gate, which is if you've made a program about Israel and Gaza, then a bunch of executives kind of listen to it or watch it and ask really probing questions to just double check, triple check, quadruple check that there's nothing been missed out or it couldn't end up being misleading or biased. But they're now going to do that whole process at the beginning as well.
- [10:29]
Katie Razzall
Yeah. So in fact I'm getting confused. I was the first road testing the Final Gate. That was at the end of the process. But you're right, they're bringing in this first Gate process. So no high risk long form programmes can become a formal commission until all potential compliance considerations are considered and listed. And that includes rigorous social media and background checks.
- [10:50]
Adam Fleming
What was your program that was in the Final Gate process? The first Final Gate? Just to confuse people, what gates we're talking about?
- [10:57]
Katie Razzall
It was an interview I'd done with Sarah Wynn Williams who wrote a book about her time at Facebook and she was making a series of claims and it was put in, well, it was broadcast, so obviously passed the Final day.
- [11:09]
Adam Fleming
As a journalist, did you find that a useful process?
- [11:12]
Katie Razzall
Well, because I, you're right, because I was so tied up in the actual editing. I was only aware of it in the sense that the executive who was overseeing my, my, my pieces went to the Final Gate meetings and kept us informed. So it didn't really impact me at all apart from to know that there was an extra series of checks that were going on. Yeah. So in that it's interesting, one of.
- [11:38]
Adam Fleming
The things I've noticed in my time at the BBC and of course we're, we're reporting on a story about the BBC as, as editorially independent journalists as opposed to kind of BBC employees. You said that's where it might sound a bit confusing to people, but we are just reporting this as a news story as if it was at any other organization. But one of the things I've noticed being a journalist here at the BBC is in the early noughties programs and journalists kind of just worked much more on their own and used their own judgment within the BBC editorial guidelines. But over the years, as the media has changed as the kind of stories we do change, as scrutiny changes, as mistakes happen and new procedures get put in place, there's a lot more kind of centralization of the. The production. Like different programmes, different bits of the organization talk to each other a lot more and people are brought in to double check, triple check people's work.
- [12:30]
Katie Razzall
But that being said, that is why it is still entirely astounding that this program that went out on BBC2, it was put on the BBC's internal, what was called managed risk program list. And that is because it was classified as a high risk project which carried reputational risk and posed an impartiality challenge. So all those, all of that was in place. It, it had been flagged. So it's just astounding that it did go out without the BBC team knowing this key crucial fact. And, and I must say, when I watched it, and that was before all this emerged, I thought it was a slightly odd documentary for a different reason, which was, you've got a child narrator. You know, we've all made programs with children. That's fine, of course, but it very much felt like a scripted program. This child was reading words that would obviously been written for it for him by the BBC.
- [13:22]
Adam Fleming
Also, rights of reply from the idf.
- [13:24]
Katie Razzall
Exactly. Rights of reply from the idf. Real balance, serious balance. And it almost felt like watching it. And then in hindsight, after finding out, it felt like the BBC had bent over backwards in one sense to be ensure the program was impartial and had just taken its off the ball on one key fact that was so crucial.
- [13:42]
Adam Fleming
One, there's two things there. Because this review by Peter Johnson said it was impartial. There was no evidence that it had been sort of influenced by Hamas to be in a more pro Hamas direction. And that's interesting because Samir Shah, the chair, had publicly said, oh, this was a, this was a blow to the BBC's reputation for impartiality. That's not been upheld by this review. And second of all, we've just got to remember, well, I mean, you and I don't need any reminding. Independent international journalists aren't allowed into Gaza by the Israeli government. So the reason you need to do is slightly odd documentary of a child having to then read out statements from the Israeli government. So that's balance is because none of.
- [14:19]
Katie Razzall
Us can go, yeah, and Hoyo Films that made the film, in their statement, you know, they made clear that they made this film, their teams in Gaza risked, or their team in Gaza risked their lives to document this, you know, the devastating impact, as they put it, with the war on, on children. And that's why they were making clear that those children as well still deserve to have their voices heard.
- [14:45]
Adam Fleming
And just adding to that statement from Hoyo Films, the independent production company at the center of this, they also said, we're pleased that the report found there was no evidence of inappropriate influence on the content of the documentary from any third party. And they added, we appreciate the rigorous nature of this investigation and its findings that Hoyo Films did not intentionally mislead the BBC, that there was no other breaches of the editorial guidelines in the program and that there was no evidence to suggest, suggest that the program funds were further spent on other than reasonable production related purposes. Because there was also a part of this investigation was into whether anyone who has been subject to international financial sanctions had ended up receiving money as part of the production. Right now, our colleague Noor Nanji, who's the culture reporter here at the BBC, is actually waiting outside the door of the studio to talk about the other BBC stories. So I'm going to try and like, give her a signal to come in now. Nur, hello.
- [15:40]
Noor Nanji
Hello.
- [15:40]
Adam Fleming
Right, so you've been working on the other story about the BBC in the news today, which is about Greg Wallace, one of the presenters on MasterChef, and this is another investigation, but just explain who, who was doing this and for which company, because it wasn't actually directly the BBC, was it?
- [15:57]
Noor Nanji
No, that's right. It does get confusing because there's sort of so many investigations and inquiries, so you might get lost along the way. But this was an inquiry which was ordered by MasterChef's production company, Banerjee, in the wake of our initial litigation which took place last November. And it was ordered and it was carried out by the, the law firm Lewis Silkin. And they reported back and we got those results today.
- [16:20]
Adam Fleming
And what did Lewis Silkin find?
- [16:22]
Noor Nanji
Well, this was much anticipated, this report. They upheld 45 of the 83 allegations against him about his conduct specifically on MasterChef. And they covered a 19 year period and they included one allegation of unwelcome physical contact and another three of being in a state of undress. Now, the majority of the substantiated claims related to inappropriate sexual language and humour, but also there were culturally insensitive or racist comments within that as well. And the report also said that 10 standalone allegations were made against other people, two of which were substantiated and they relate to inappropriate language, one of swearing and one of racist language.
- [17:01]
Adam Fleming
Oh, so other people have been drawn into this?
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Noor Nanji
Yes, we don't know who, but other people have been drawn in.
- [17:06]
Adam Fleming
And of course, the other thing that's happened in the build up to this was that Greg Wallace himself kind of like leaked. Well, I don't know if that's the right Word. But he talked about this report in advance and posted on social media last week, and he said he'd been cleared of the most serious allegations. Does that stand up now that we see the actual report?
- [17:25]
Noor Nanji
Well, that's right. Last week, on Tuesday, he posted this Instagram statement in which he said that he had been cleared of the most serious and sensational allegations. And he said that he had seen the report and this was his take on it. Now, I mean, I guess that's for everyone to decide when they read the report or see the executive summary of it. But he also reiterated that today we did hear another statement from him in which he said that this report had cleared him of the most serious allegations. But he also did say that he was deeply sorry for any distress he'd caused. And he said that some of his humor and language may have missed the mark at points. So it was a slightly different statement to what we got last week.
- [18:00]
Adam Fleming
Yeah, because he issued another statement today once this had all come out. Then the other thing Greg Wallace had done in the last few days was tell everyone that he'd been diagnosed with autism while this review was going on. What differences has that made to proceedings?
- [18:14]
Noor Nanji
Well, it's interesting because autism also got a mention in today's inquiry report as well. So, yes, and you're right, last week he mentioned that in his statement, he mentioned that his recent autism diagnosis and some people, we should say, were supportive on social media. They said, you know, people should be speaking up about this sort of thing, and they offered him their. Their support. But I think there was also quite a big backlash, including from autism charities and some DIS groups working with disabled people. And people seem to think that it wasn't quite right to link an autism diagnosis to these claims of misconduct. And so a couple of the charities were speaking up about that. It also led to quite a big response on sort of radio call ins and on social media last week.
- [18:53]
Adam Fleming
And so Banerjay, the company that actually makes MasterChef for the BBC and who commissioned this review, what did they have to say about it today?
- [19:00]
Noor Nanji
Well, Banerjay apologized to those who had been affected. The BBC also said that opportunities were missed to address Greg Wallace's behavior and they accepted that more could and should have been.
- [19:10]
Adam Fleming
And the BBC's take on all of this?
- [19:12]
Noor Nanji
Well, I mean, that is their take on it, really. So I think they. They accepted it, which I think is, you know, is interesting. They said that there were opportunities that had been missed. And I think that kind of goes back to the Fact that the investigation team did find evidence that over this period that they were investigating, six complaints were raised with the production company and six with the BBC. So I think that is what that response is in response to, you know, people have been speaking out more widely about the TV production world and sort of the whole world of TV in relation to these allegations. And I think that one thing that really came out was the freelancers and the fact that this industry is so dependent on freelancers, the creative industries, and how for them it's very. The precarious nature of the work that they're doing means it's very hard for them to speak up. And that's something that we've heard a lot of people saying, including the trade union back to. And I think that's something that in the coming days we'll hear more about because it's clearly been a factor in why lots of people felt that they couldn't speak up.
- [20:06]
Adam Fleming
And is it true that there's a series of MasterChef with Greg Wallace in it sort of sitting on a shelf somewhere at the moment?
- [20:12]
Noor Nanji
Yeah, that' right. So as we understand it, there was a series that was filmed with Greg Wallace last year prior to these allegations emerging and that has not yet been seen, hasn't been released. And for the BBC, and you know, it's a difficult decision because on one hand they could show it, but we've been hearing from some of the people and the women who've spoken up and they've said that they would be very upset if that happened. On the other hand, they could shelve it, but of course they've got a responsibility to all the amateur chefs who are on it, for whom something like that can be life changing. And I suppose the third option that's being floated is could they just put the whole thing on iplayer? That's possible, but you know, that isn't necessarily the best outcome anyway. And we've seen recently, with the likes of Bob Villain and Glastonbury, that iplayer and streaming isn't necessarily a way of getting out of things.
- [20:55]
Adam Fleming
Yeah. And Katie, I mean, this is an impossible question to answer, but I'll ask it anyway and see how. Yeah, see how you want to approach it. But I mean, at the start of the day, this looked like a real moment of drama for the BBC and you could see the newspapers for whatever reason, speculating, oh, will the Director General, Tim Davy, survive all of this? How does it feel now that we're at the end of the day and we've seen These two big pieces of work.
- [21:19]
Katie Razzall
Well, my instinct is that the BBC isn't going to feel terrible at the end of today. So waking up this morning, the alarm clock going off, I don't imagine Tim Davy or Deborah Turness, the CEO, were looking forward to today. One report's bad enough. Two reports on the same day could be catastrophic. For now, I don't think this does feel catastrophic for the BBC for various reasons. On the Wallace front, I know Nora and I have talked about this and it may be that more emerges and perhaps the Telegraph has more stories, but in terms of Wallace, it seems to me, reading that executive summary, that Kate Phillips, who's now the chief content officer at the BBC, she warned Greg Wallace about his behavior in 2019. And according to that report, since then, any of the allegations that have been made, none of them were escalated to the BBC. So in that sense, the BBC can tell its. Can tell a story which is, we didn't know about anything else. Now, more may emerge and that may not be the case. But at the moment, that's how that feels. On Gaza, it, as we were saying, it is still really surprising and terrible that this documentary with that went out without them knowing what they should have known and therefore misleading audiences. And of course, there's more to come because OFCOM have launched a review and so the story's not over. But it does feel like they've got through the day, you know, apologizing. They've obviously planned this for a long time, apologizing, announcing these action plans and kind of getting. Giving this sense that they're getting to grips on it. What I would say is tomorrow is the annual report. Now, I've been culture editor for a few years now, but not that many. And in that time, you know, two years ago, the annual report was overshadowed by the Hugh Edwards crisis. Last year it was overshadowed by the allegations about Strictly Come Dancing. This year it's not one, but actually three stories, if you include the BBC's decision to drop the other Gaza documentary that you may have talked about on other newscasts. So, you know, we've got. We're in this situation. Well, exactly. So maybe it's Glastonbury, at that. So maybe that's four stories, or maybe it's only three. Anyway, exactly. Something along those lines. You've got a situation where the Director General, Tim Davy, is trying to tell the story to sell the story of the BBC ahead of charter renewal. And there's lots of brilliant stuff to say about the BBC, you know, over the last year. So all of the top 10 programs at Christmas were all BBC shows. Yeah. Then you had this amazing summer of short sport with huge audiences for the BBC and yet it is again gonna be overshadowed by questions about the BBC's handling of these issues.
- [23:53]
Adam Fleming
But having said all of that, I thought it was interesting that Lisa Nandi, the Culture Secretary, when she's been talking about all these things collectively today, she sounded a lot less down on the BBC than she has done when she's been asked about this in the preceding few weeks.
- [24:07]
Lisa Nandy
Look, it's not for the government to say who should and shouldn't work at the BBC. My job is to make sure that we uphold the highest standards and that the public and parliament can have confidence in the BBC. I think given the recent events, that has been called into question. But the BBC in recent weeks has made big strides to try to reset that relationship with the public and show that they have grip on the very, very serious issues that have taken place. Whether it's the Gaza documentary, whether it's the Greg Wallace allegations, or whether it's the ongoing concerns about Glastonbury.
- [24:44]
Adam Fleming
I think she has moderated her language.
- [24:47]
Katie Razzall
I think you're absolutely right. I mean, it was very startling how much she had not moderated her language in the last few weeks. You know, she really, it really felt like she was gunning specifically for the Director General and perhaps she is. I mean, our understanding is they don't, you know, they haven't seen eye to eye since she was in position. But it felt, for whatever reason, you know, there were some claims that it was a bit of an overreach or a serious overreach for the government to be telling the BBC who should be in charge at the BBC.
- [25:16]
Adam Fleming
Because it's meant to be independence.
- [25:17]
Katie Razzall
Meant to be independence. So there's, maybe that's part of it. But I also think, you know, I understand that she has met with the Director General and the Chair of the Board to talk about these issues. And clearly from what she said, she has a sense that they are getting to grips with it, that they do have a plan in place and that she does feel more confident.
- [25:38]
Adam Fleming
Katie, thank you very much.
- [25:39]
Katie Razzall
Thank you.
- [25:39]
Adam Fleming
And Noor, before I say goodbye to you, just give me a sense of how much work goes in to breaking a story like this in the first place. When it's about a high profile figure, it's the BBC. So even though we report on it as any other organization, we are still in it. And also it's a really sensitive thing because it's about people Feeling hurt or potentially victimized. Just give me a sense of how you do it.
- [26:06]
Noor Nanji
It was hard work. I mean, we started hearing these allegations pretty much a year ago. Exactly. It was last summer. And it started off very slowly, but we started digging into it, myself and my colleague Felicity Baker and. But a lot of the people were very nervous about speaking up because as we talked about earlier, a lot of them were freelance in the industry, felt that if they complained, they would get a black mark against their name. So persuading them to speak up was tough. Then you have the issue. Of course, it is a BBC story. Now, BBC News is editorially independent from the wider corporation, but it's still, you know, we are still part of the BBC. So there is that element. And it took a lot of time. It took a lot of patience, you know, going around, meeting people, traveling to build up their confidence into and persuading them to share their stories. And eventually, when we got to towards the end of last year, we spoke to Kirsty Walk, who was prepared to share her story. And I think that was a really important moment in this investigation because she gave a face to the story in a sense that she was prepared to go on the record about it.
- [27:08]
Adam Fleming
And then it snowballed.
- [27:09]
Noor Nanji
And then it snowballed because then we broke the story in November. Then people started coming out of the woodworks with their allegations. And we followed up and we continued going. And earlier last week we reported that another 50 people had come with further allegations. And not only was the magnitude relevant there, but also it was the significance of what they were talking about. We had allegations of inappropriate comments, but also groping and touching. Then it emerged that he'd been sacked as Master Chef presenter. And today we've had this report. So it has been. It has been a process.
- [27:41]
Adam Fleming
Well, thanks for all your hard work.
- [27:43]
Noor Nanji
Thank you, Foreign.
- [27:54]
Ray Winstone
Stone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Heroes. I've got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough.
- [28:07]
History's Toughest Heroes Narrator
And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head.
- [28:15]
Ray Winstone
Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.
- [28:26]
Adam Fleming
Now, the sound you could hear from the Oval Office Monday morning Washington time, Monday late afternoon UK time was the sound of a foreign policy u turn. Donald Trump sitting next to Mark Rutter, the Secretary General of NATO, saying he was willing to send weapons to European NATO countries, so they could then resupply Ukraine. And he also had quite a tough new warning for Vladimir Putin of Russia, aimed particularly at the Russian economy. So what is going on and why has Donald Trump changed his mind? The person who can help work that out with us is Katrina Perry, BBC chief presenter in Washington. Hello, Katrina.
- [29:06]
Katrina Perry
Hi, Adam. How are you?
- [29:07]
Adam Fleming
Good, thanks. Good to catch up. Another busy day in the Oval Office.
- [29:11]
Katrina Perry
I know. It's not even lunchtime yet. Already it's another busy Monday. My gosh. Yeah. Indeed it is. We have the visit of the NATO Secretary General, Mark here, visiting President Donald Trump. It was all supposed to be behind closed doors, but as we've become accustomed to in this White House, at the last minute, the doors swing wide open and the media are allowed in.
- [29:34]
Adam Fleming
And Trump had been teasing this over the last couple of days, saying there was going to be a major statement about his policy towards Russia and Ukraine. Was this the major statement?
- [29:43]
Katrina Perry
This was the major statement, although the jury slightly still out on the major part of it. Two prongs to it, really. One is that he has given Russia 50 days to come up with a deal, agree to a deal. Now, he hasn't told us the terms of this deal. We don't know how Ukraine feels about whatever this deal is, but that Russia has 50 days to agree to this deal or else face what President Trump is calling 100% secondary tariffs. Again, not much detail on what that means. Some clarification coming from the White House that Perhaps this means 100% tariffs on Russia and then a secondary kind of punishment on countries who do business with Russia. But again, no firm detail on that. Perhaps that will come a little bit later in the day. And then the second prong of this sort of major statement that the President has made with Mark Rutte sitting beside him, is that the US Is going to sell weapons to NATO members. NATO will act as a kind of clearinghouse for these weapons to give to Ukraine. And some of those weapons will come from weapons that are already in European nations, that then will kind of be backfilled and produced in the U.S. so the president very much lauding this. It allows him to stick to those campaign promises that he made of, I'm not sending anything extra to Ukraine, because technically he's not. These weapons are being bought from the US and in order to get them to Ukraine as quickly as possible, because as we know, and as we heard from President Zelenskyy and the allies gathered in Rome last week, they need those things immediately. He says he needs 10 Patriot missiles immediately. So some of these will come from weapons that are already in European nations or already on order for European nations. And then the US Will backfill them. But crucially, the US Won't be, as the President said, paying anything towards this. The money will all come from European nations.
- [31:42]
Adam Fleming
And that is a way of doing things that had been used previously in this conflict. Now, let's have a little listen to how Trump put some of that himself with Mark Rutter sat next to him in the Oval Office.
- [31:52]
Donald Trump
And I'm disappointed in President Putin because I thought we would have had a deal two months ago, but it doesn't seem to get there. So based on that, we're going to be doing secondary tariffs if we don't have a deal in 50 days. It's very simple.
- [32:05]
Adam Fleming
And now, Katrina, you mentioned the Patriot anti missile system there. Do we have any sense of just how lethal the kit Trump will be sending to NATO allies to then send on to Ukraine might be?
- [32:17]
Katrina Perry
No, but he did use the word lethal himself about what will be sent. But again, we didn't get any hard details on that. The president basically said something along the lines of everything, all that they want, everything that they want. But again, it's NATO that will kind of act as the clearinghouse from this. But he seemed to suggest that essentially whatever was on the Ukrainian order book would be delivered and it would come from European nations or come from the US but paid for by European nations.
- [32:45]
Adam Fleming
I mean, to me, on the surface of it, this seems like quite a big kind of pro Ukrainian tilt from Trump.
- [32:52]
Katrina Perry
Absolutely it is. If you contrast it to where he was when he came into office. We remember, of course, that absolute car crash meeting with President Zelensky in the Oval Office and all the sentiments that we heard from President Trump in those early days. You know, not calling President Putin an aggressor, calling him a competitor, suggesting that perhaps it was Ukraine that had started this war, which of course, clearly it wasn't. And all of that language and you get to today and President Trump saying he's disappointed in President Putin, saying basically he doesn't trust him anymore. He said he felt a deal was on the table. Four times he spoke about how he has these, what he calls really warm conversations with President Putin, great conversations. He thinks he's a great guy. And then he goes home and he said, he says to the first lady, oh, Melania, I had this great chat with President Putin today. And then she tells him, oh, well, he's just, you know, bombed a city. And President Trump Recounting this story in the Oval Office today. He said, oh, no, not again. We just had this great conversation. What is this guy talking about?
- [33:57]
Donald Trump
My conversations with him are always very pleasant. I say, isn't that very lovely conversation? And then the missiles go off that night. I go home, I tell the first lady, and I spoke to Vladimir today. We had a wonderful conversation. She said, oh, really? Another city was just hitting. So it's like, look, he's, I don't want to say he's an assassin, but he's a tough guy.
- [34:23]
Katrina Perry
So really expressing that kind of disappointment, total about turn from where he was and, you know, really a good day for Ukraine in that regard. And you have to say that Mark Rutte, the Secretary General of NATO, has taken a lot of stick over the last few weeks for being so fawning over President Trump. And, you know, we remember that message that he sent to him that the President leaked.
- [34:47]
Noor Nanji
Oh, no.
- [34:47]
Katrina Perry
Yeah, you were talking about on WhatsApp as well, or on Truth Social, the president, you're the best president ever. And, you know, we would never have got this deal without you coming here and all of that. But he has actually managed, with I would say, the help of Sir Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron and others to get President Trump to this place now where he does seem to be all in for Ukraine. And perhaps that's one of the strongest messages for President Putin to come from what we saw this morning is that he does seem to be resolutely now in the Ukrainian, in the European camp, and not leaning so favorably towards President Putin as he once was.
- [35:25]
Adam Fleming
And you could see some of that process unfolding in real time with the meeting in the Oval Office where Mark Rutte would jump in and talk about some of the recent big scale drone attacks by Russia on Ukraine. And then Mark Rutter would say, oh, oh, these were disproportionate. These weren't strategic things. These were just to cause harm to Ukrainians by the Russians. Oh, and they were on apartment buildings, so completely innocent civilians. You could see him just trying to ratch up the kind of, the emotional pressure on Donald Trump, which, which seems to have worked also just in terms of the, the American domestic politics. Is, is there stuff shifting there as, as well, in terms of support for Ukraine in Congress?
- [36:06]
Katrina Perry
Well, we have a bill moving through Congress at the moment. It's got almost unanimous support on the Senate. The last time I checked was something like 80 senators had said they were going to vote for this bill. It's a bipartisan bill. From Senators Lindsey Graham and Blumenthal. And it basically is a massive sanctions package on Russia, up to 500% tariffs, actually, in that sanctions bill. And President Trump was asked about it today and said, oh, I don't think we'll need 500%. My suggestion of 100% should really be enough. But there is unity behind that bill now. It would have to go through the House as well. And we saw a bill get stuck there last year for about six months over sending more money to Ukraine. But if this is not mentioning money and extra US Taxpayers dollars going to Ukraine, it will have a lot of support there as well. And again, President Trump referenced that, you know, he was asked a question today in the Oval Office, how far would you be willing to go to stop Russia to defend Ukraine? And he said, you know, these aren't Americans getting killed here. And he said, Vice President J.D. vance cares a lot about this, has very strong feelings about this, that it's not our war, but at the same time, it's in our interests to have a strong Europe. But he does seem to be of the opinion that what he's announced today with Mark Rutte would make there really be no need for that sanctions bill that's moving through the Hill.
- [37:29]
Adam Fleming
And you alluded to it earlier in our conversation, Katrina. But Trump's got to be careful about his, his, his base, the, the MAGA supporters across the United States who don't want him getting entangled in what they would see as unnecessary wars from American, un American point of view. And that's the same sort of balance he had to strike with the military action against Iran a few weeks ago.
- [37:52]
Katrina Perry
Absolutely. He's campaigned on this. He speaks about it regularly. He made a reference to it in his inaugural address on 20 January that the US would not be getting in wars about other people's borders was kind of how he described it. And he says this a lot. And there is no great sympathy amongst the American people for their tax dollars being spent on wars in foreign countries. That is not what they're asking President Trump to do. And that's why, as you mentioned, the strikes on the nuclear sites in Iran was potentially so controversial. But President Trump managed to actually navigate that quite well. There wasn't serious blowback to that. It was over pretty quickly. I think if it had sort of gone in a second week after dropping those strikes, things might been different. But he has managed to navigate that quite well. And I think we'll see again, stressed, you know, he'll stress repeatedly this is, there's no American money involved here. In actual fact, we're getting paid for this. I mean, a Patriot missile is about a billion dollars or something. So he's also spinning this as like, oh, this is a great thing for the American economy.
- [38:59]
Adam Fleming
Right, last point. Phone calendars out 17th to 19th of September.
- [39:05]
Katrina Perry
Get the hats out. Yes, exactly. It's been confirmed that those are the dates, of course, for the second state visit of President Trump to the uk. He's very excited about that. We remember how excited he was when Sir Keira Starmer took the envelope out of his pocket in the Oval Office. That letter from King Charles inviting Donald Trump over. He will have been watching very intently the visit by Emmanuel Macron last week. We saw the fabulous banquet and all the pomp and ceremony which we know that this president really likes. And he still always talks about the visit that he paid to the late Queen. So this will be an exciting one. All right. And I think you can expect quite the entourage to be traveling with President Trump to the UK as well.
- [39:53]
Adam Fleming
And that, of course, is when Parliament is on its summer recess. So there's no chance of there being an argument about Trump addressing Parliament. Oh, except hang on, there already has been with some of Trump's UK supporters, people like, like Nigel Farage saying, maybe Parliament should be recalled early from its summer holidays so that Donald Trump would have a chance to speak to MPs. And then you get the opponents of Trump, like Lilib Dem, saying, well, if Trump's being invited, maybe Mark Carney, the Canadian Prime Minister, should be invited too. So there's still some. Some domestic politics around that we haven't managed to avoid the discussions about it, even if the powers that be have managed to avoid any kind of awkward moments. Katrina.
- [40:30]
Katrina Perry
There's plenty of time still to come, though.
- [40:31]
Adam Fleming
Oh, exactly.
- [40:32]
Katie Razzall
For those chats.
- [40:34]
Adam Fleming
Katrina, great to catch up. Thanks for making your state visit to Newscast this week.
- [40:38]
Katrina Perry
Talk soon.
- [40:47]
Adam Fleming
And here are some other important dates for your diary which are coming up sooner. It's the 4th to the 8th of August. That is when newscast is going to be recording episodes in front of a live audience at the Edinburgh Fringe. Now, tickets for Monday and Friday's episodes have gone, but that means they are still available for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. And if you fancy coming to see us in Edinburgh, although please don't go massively out of your way, then, the ways to get the tickets are in the episode description of this episode and it will be lovely to see you. And if you can't make it or you can't get tickets. So there's no tickets for the day that you want to go to. Don't worry, we'll be putting the episode in the podcast feed, so you can still join in and also just send us messages in advance and I'll try and read them out. Anyway, that's it for this episode, which very much did not have a live audience, just you listening wherever you are. But we'll be back with another one very soon. Bye bye. Newscast.
- [41:45]
Katie Razzall
Newscast from the BBC.
- [41:46]
Adam Fleming
Well, thank you for making it to the end of another newscast. You clearly ooze stamina. Can I gently encourage you to subscribe to us on BBC Sounds? And then, without having to do anything else, our meandering chat will miraculously make its way to your phone.
- [42:13]
Ray Winstone
Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, History's Toughest Hit Heroes. I've got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough.
- [42:28]
History's Toughest Heroes Narrator
And that was the first time that anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head.
- [42:35]
Ray Winstone
Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.