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- [00:01]
Alistair Campbell
We are seeing two very different Americas right now as the USA celebrates its 250th birthday. Which is the real America and which will endure? Will it be Trump's America? A country being reshaped in his own image in pursuit of naked self enrichment? Where a man who has blatantly never actually watched a real football match in his life can abuse his presidential power to try and succeed in getting a red card suspended? Or will it be the country that the people are showing off to? Fans flocking to the US from all around the world. They're welcoming, friendly, loving the internationalism and getting behind their national team. So which America will endure? To answer that question, with Rory on his silent retreat this week, I am delighted to be joined by the never silent Anglo American, Mehdi Hassan.
- [00:55]
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- [00:58]
Alistair Campbell
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- [01:42]
Alistair Campbell
So don't just listen to another price cap story. Switch to Fuse, save up to £200 and get trip free with code politics@fuseenergy.com politics. Welcome to the Racist Politics with me, Alistair Campbell.
- [02:03]
Mehdi Hassan
And I'm Mary Husson in Washington D.C.
- [02:05]
Alistair Campbell
mehdi, thank you so much. Being there, we are going to talk about Washington D.C. or more generally about the United States 250th anniversary since independence and also this extraordinary round that Donald Trump has created within the World Cup. And then we're going to talk a little bit in the second half about something you and I talk about a lot, which is the relationship between media and politics. And we'll be looking at that in relation in particular to a lot of the stuff that's happening in Germany. But first of all, let's kick off with football, no pun intended. And it is such a pleasure to be able legitimately to start on football because this is a subject that my regular podcast partner Freely admits he has very low down his list of priorities. Now, last week I said I was genuinely surprised that Donald Trump had engaged so little, barely at all with this World cup since he started. Well, I spoke far too soon. Their star player, Walarin Baligan, gets a red card. Trump cannot resist getting involved. More typically, cannot resist telling everybody that he's involved. And he's asked his FIFA pet and his Peace Prize creator, Giano Infantino to take another look. Cue the whole world enraged. Cue belgium destroying the USA 4:1. And even my partner Fiona, who rivals Rory in her lack of interest in football, came up with a belter this morning when she said, Trump has made Belgium great again. Yes. So, Mehdi, what do you make of it? And is Trump actually getting any of the blame for the defeat, as I believe he should?
- [03:37]
Mehdi Hassan
No, Alistair, the Trump faction will never blame him for anything. They didn't even understand why the world was upset. For the last 48 hours, most American pundits on the right, commentators, trolls, etcetera, were doing the nonsense about, well, you know what, we're the most powerful nation, we managed to make it happen. Who cares what Belgium thinks? Not understanding or not caring that the rest of the world were outraged by this ridiculous intervention from Donald Trump. And I think, you know, I had liberals defending the Trump intervention because when it comes to stuff like this, the patriotism takes over. And I am an American, as you introduced, Anglo American, I'm a British American. I'm supporting the England football team as I have done for 40 years. But I'm also, obviously, I also sat down to support the U.S. men's National Team last night, on Monday night, and it was bad. It was not just bad on the pitch. And there's a whole debate to be had about whether Trump got inside these players heads. It was their worst performance of the tournament by a country mile. But also the mockery, Alistair. I mean, Trump, as ever, makes a mockery of the United States. And you see the Belgian team's Twitter account putting out pictures saying, overturn this. The Belgian team dancing to the ridiculous Trump dance. And as Fiona says, make Belgium great again. Forced Donald Trump, as he forced the world to support Belgium. Who the hell ever voluntarily supports Belgium? But in this case, people did because they were annoyed about the clear corrupt intervention from Trump. Yeah, Rick Wilson, Alistair, the former Republican strategist, never Trumper. Now, he wrote a book a few years ago and the title of that book, I believe, sums up the Trump phenomenon more than anything else. The book is called Everything Trump Touches Dies. And I Think that is the phenomenon. Anything he gets involved in, anything he touches, anything he's around gets ruined. He ruins it for everyone.
- [05:18]
Alistair Campbell
Well, look, you and I, we must be very careful not to passionately and aggressively agree about every single thing. We both have pretty profound Trump Derangement syndrome, and we're very, very proud of that.
- [05:29]
Mehdi Hassan
What I like to call Trump Discernment syndrome.
- [05:31]
Alistair Campbell
Fine, fine. Or Realistic Trump Assessment syndrome, maybe, something like that. But what. The reason why I'm serious about whether he gets the blame is because Belgium have not actually been playing that well. He definitely, as you saw from the dancing, as you say, and all the rest of it, he added to their motivation. And it is quite something for two things. One, as you say, virtually the whole world supporting Belgium. Right? It's not like Brazil, it's Belgium.
- [05:57]
Mehdi Hassan
Yeah.
- [05:57]
Alistair Campbell
And secondly, Sepp Blatter, with whom the munification of football is so closely linked, him coming out and basically saying, this is an outrage. Quo vadis. FIFA, as he said. And you mentioned the thing about everything he touches. My algorithm at the moment is just endlessly sending me picture of pictures of Scottish football fans, Norwegian football fans. Today, it's all Belgian stuff. Right. And one of them was a guy, an American guy, in the crowd in the stadium yesterday. Exactly. Doing what? Saying what you've just said. He said everything Trump touches turns to shit. You did this, Trump. And he sort of raised his little finger. And we've interviewed. This week, Roy and I are leading. We've interviewed Ben Rhodes, Barack Obama's former foreign policy speechwriter, and he posted this. In fact, he's written a sub state. But I'll just read you a very short extract from it, written in the wake of this. The failure of powerful actors to play by the rules and the absence of guardians to enforce the rules is why the world is in the chaotic mess that it's in right now. That is why we run competitions like the World cup, which is supposed to be a respite from the harsh realities of our time. A competition where a victory emerges within an agreed amount of time with agreed rules. Now, the World cup feels like, well, the world that we're living in, where corrupt and powerful people make opaque deals above the heads of the people and the US tries to dominate anything in its way. And even better, Mary Trump, member of the family. He casts a shadow over everything. He can only win if he cheats. And he thinks that applies to everyone.
- [07:35]
Mehdi Hassan
I think that Mary's point. I know Mary and Ben well. I agree with Ben's geopolitical Metaphor. This is a metaphor for the US right now. Clearly, the President comes along and decides to bring his brand of politics, intimidation, corruption, thuggery, intimidation, to the World cup as well, because it's the only way he knows how to deal with any kind of problem or challenge. And I think, you know, when Sepp Blatter, a man so associated with corruption, says, you're too corrupt, that is a problem. I mean, San Blado is banned from attending any World cup games till 2028. When he comes out and says, this is too much even for me. We've got to ask questions about the current FIFA president, Gianni Infantino, who, as you say, is Trump's pet, the man who created a peace prize for him. But the Mary Trump point is very important about the casting of the shadow and the undermining. I think it's really, really important about understanding that he doesn't let people live in peace. This is my biggest people say to me, why are you obsessed with Trump? Somebody on Twitter said to me yesterday, why do you have to make everything about Trump? It's the exact opposite. I spent my life wishing to get rid of him from my public and personal lives. When he lost in 2020, some people thought he was gone after the insurrection, people had written him off. His career's over. The idea that he's back now and that I spend my waking hours and sometimes my non waking hours thinking about this man, what he's doing next, how he's harming the country and the world is not a good thing. It's not something I want. I don't want him to be involved in the World Cup. I don't want him to be involved in the Olympics. Sorry, folks, just to remind you all, he's also got the Olympics. You know, luckiest man in the world comes back to and gets the 250th birthday, the world cup and the Olympics all on his watch. Kill me now. And he's ruining the Olympics. So the World cup, he will ruin the Olympics too. Thankfully, the US team's out now, so he'll pay less interest, but he's still going to turn up at the final. And as you say, the idea you said, you know, last week you thought, oh, he's not involved yet. He was always going to get involved. But the funny thing is, number one, he does not watch football. He actually says in the press conference, I didn't even know what a red card was, which is classic Trump, but he shouldn't have got one. And number two, the bragging about the fact that you did this. There's always been corruption associated with FIFA. Multiple governments have pressured FIFA and used FIFA. I just did a series for Zateo called the Dark side of the World Cup. We looked at Mussolini in the 1930s, the Videla regime in Argentina in the 1970s. This is not new. Corrupt authoritarian governments using FIFA as a fig leaf for sports, washing all of that. What is new is they never did it out in the open like this. Trump just is happy to be brazenly open, authoritarian, crooked, corrupt, whatever word you want to use. And I think that is the fundamental problem here. This idea that he can just come along and to go back to Ben's point, say, who cares about the rules? It's all rigged. By the way, one last thing, Alistair, he said yesterday, if we lose, we'll just say it's rigged. Like 2020.
- [10:14]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. And he did it with that sort of little smirk. The other thing, we're going to talk lots about the press, because that's kind of your world, the media and your world, and partly part of my world as well. Just on that thing about what he said in the White House yesterday. Is there no journalist there who's ever gonna just say, sorry, excuse me, how can you pretend to know about football when you've just said you didn't know that if you got a red part, you were banned? Or, excuse me, have you just said that if America lose this game, we'll just say it was rigged? Why do those people never interject in a way that pushes back? Can you explain that to me?
- [10:46]
Mehdi Hassan
No, I cannot explain it, Alice. It's the Bugbear of. It's the bane of my life. I spent decade criticizing here in the United States. I criticized it when I worked within mainstream media. NBC News and MSNBC criticize it now. When I'm in independent media, Zateo, it is deeply frustrating. It's why journalism and journalists have such a low rating, not just on the right who say they're fake news, but amongst liberals. It's why so many people tell me they cancel their New York Times subscription to become a Zateo subscriber. Because people are frustrated that the media has dropped the ball again and again with Trump. You mentioned that press conference. I tweeted the same thing. I tweeted the same thing yesterday, saying, why is no journalist asking him about Baligan being a birthright citizen? Is that obvious question to ask the president? You say he's our best player, Mr. President, but under your rules, he wouldn't be playing tonight. He wouldn't be an American. His mother literally was a tourist. Birth tourist. She didn't even have the intention of giving birth. She came on holiday to New York with her husband. Nigerian couple from England. A flight attendant wouldn't let her on the plane. She was seven months pregnant. She gave birth to Flo in New York. Flew back when he was three months old, I think. Grew up in England, never grew up in America. Under Trump's rules, had the Supreme Court not stepped in, we would not have a future Baligan. So no journalist asked him that question. No journalist asked him, do you know what the f you're talking about? As usual, you know, no one ever asks him, Alistair, his lack of knowledge. No one ever asked him a specific knowledge question. They always ask him yes or no questions. What's your opinion, Mr. President? No one ever asks a question that exposes his fundamental lack of knowledge about anything that he's commenting on. And finally, on the cheating point. Yes, it goes to the heart of it all. The media has moved on from the 2020 election. Interference from the insurrection. It's seen as old news. And yet he dredges it up every time. He brings it up out of nowhere yesterday and says, we'll just say we cheated. Somebody could have. Oh, so you accept then that the 2020 loss was a loss because you're saying if they lose fair and square in the football, that'll be rigged as well. One last thing. I'll remind everyone, people say, oh, you guys on the left are obsessed with Trump and his election claims. It's not just the left. When Donald Trump lost to Ted Cruz in the Iowa caucuses in 2016, his reaction was to say Ted Cruz rigged the Iowa caucuses. He's never accepted defeat at anyone's hands.
- [12:52]
Alistair Campbell
The point about Baligan as well, his story is extraordinary. Cause, I mean, and you know, he's quite low profile. He plays for Monaco. He's not kind of, you know, he's. And he's. He's a very, very good player, though he had a terrible game against, what a poor game against Belgium. He was barely in the game, but I was. Somebody sent me this morning, an American friend sent me this morning a stack of clips of people on the right addressing this issue of the. The birthright thing and including Stephen Miller. And we'll maybe talk about him when we get on to Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan's book. Stephen Miller essentially saying, these people are the scourge of. If you're going to come on holiday and you're very, very pregnant, then if you drop your baby when you're here, you're never going to be an American. And if you're doing it just as you get welfare. And we should probably put in the. In the newsletter a clip of Baligan speaking because, I mean, it is extraordinary, this World cup either to do very well, but if you think that they could and should have had him and Elise, you know, there he is. He sounds like a South London kid. That's what he sounds like.
- [13:56]
Mehdi Hassan
I mean, he could have played for England or Nigeria, but he chose the U.S. yeah, yeah, the Miller line, by the way, just for listeners in the uk, viewers in the UK to understand how batshit crazy the American right. I think sometimes people don't quite get it. You guys have your Farages and your lows and your Chemi Badenot. I don't think you quite get how unhinged the American right is when the birthright citizenship decision came down from the Supreme Court, when the Supreme Court said, actually, we're going to go against Trump very narrowly, by the way, and say that actually birthright citizenship is explicitly laid out in the Constitution. If you're born in the us, you are an American. The reaction from the right led by Stephen Miller, was. Was so unhinged that one prominent right wing commentator suggested. Suggested as an option of compulsory sterilizations of foreign women to avoid them from giving birth in this country. Miller himself was asked on tv, should we start checking women coming into the country to see if they're pregnant before we give them a visa? This is the insanity on the American
- [14:48]
Alistair Campbell
right Now, on the 250th anniversary, more generally. I assume you weren't invited to any of the big events, but you, but
- [14:55]
Mehdi Hassan
you not like Nigel Farage. I did not get an invite.
- [14:57]
Alistair Campbell
No Nigel Farage. And that's that. That in itself is quite interesting that these people on the right in the UK are so keen to celebrate the independence of America from Britain.
- [15:08]
Mehdi Hassan
Rupert Lowe was in Texas doing a Joe Rogan show and he was putting out pictures saying, happy Independence Day.
- [15:13]
Alistair Campbell
Exactly.
- [15:13]
Mehdi Hassan
Yeah. If we did that, if Alistair, if you and I did that, went to France or Germany or India, if I went to India and celebrated Indian independence with my family, extended family there, it would be like, oh, go back to India. That's where your loyalties.
- [15:25]
Alistair Campbell
L. Yeah. Or it would be, you know, you're obsessed with this sort of colonialism, ashamed of your history, etc. Etc. Etc. Yes, but just on the general sense of. Of how that felt. As I said, right at the top you know, it does feel like there are sort of various Americas competing. And the America of Trump, the one that he set out in his speech at Mount Rushmore, where clearly he wants to be seen in the same bracket as Washington, Jefferson, Roosevelt and Lincoln, the four that are carved into the, into the rock there, that America feels dominant and powerful because that's what we see. But when you're living there as you do, and I know you're in that world, so maybe it's a, it's an unfair question, but is the other America that I talked about, is that still real? Is it still. Do you still feel that it's there? Is it still got a presence and a power?
- [16:12]
Mehdi Hassan
Oh, yes, very much so. I do unfortunately live in D.C. in the belly of the beast. So it's all very up close and personal, but I spend a lot of time with non political people and the beauty of the United States. Why, somebody asked me recently, are you more hopeful about the US than the UK And I said yes, weirdly. Even though the challenge against democracy is much bigger in the US than it is in the uk, even though, you know, the threat of political violence and the proliferation of guns, much bigger in the US than the uk, I would say I'm still more hopeful about the future of the US simply because of the vastness of this country. It is very hard, again to explain to people who have not visited the U.S. this is a continent of a country. It's just such a big place that you travel up and down the country, as I do regularly, and every state is like a different country. Every community is doing its own thing. And therefore Washington D.C. and Trump still doesn't, at the local level, have the same poll and the same impact as, for example, Westminster or London do in the United Kingdom, where it's very much focused on the capital city. And it's a much smaller, more crowded, congregated place. So the US has space which allows people to do what they want to do. And there's a lot of resistance to Trump even now in his second term. His poll ratings are at their lowest ever. He's now more unpopular than he was even the day after January 6, according to some polls. So, you know, 60, 70% of the public are against him. So just in sheer numbers, the majority of Americans do not agree with what's going on. The big issue is, are the people of power against him? And that's the fundamental divide right now. It's not about, you know, fundamentally left and right, it's about the powerful versus the powerless. Even Liberal institutions which stood up to him in his first term, in the second term have decided to roll over. The big universities, the big media companies, the big law firms, they have all kind of bowed the knee to Donald Trump. And that has. And obviously Silicon Valley at the front, the big tech fir. And that's the real challenge. But ordinary people, no, ordinary people I don't think have changed. I think, you know, there's a small minority of Trump voters, MAGA voters, whose brains are being rotted by the day because of the algorithm, because of social media. I think Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk have a lot to answer for. Historians will, if we have historians in the future, will ask questions about what role these tech bosses played in manipulating and brainwashing and inciting the public.
- [18:24]
Alistair Campbell
You see the other thing, I was looking at some polling on the issue of corruption, huge issue. But it strikes me as almost beyond belief that it's not damaging even more than it is. You know, we learned last week that he made 2.2 billion added to his own wealth in his first year of his second term. And his own son saying, well, in the first term he tried to play by the rules brackets, even though he didn't. And he got no credit for it, got all the heat. So let's just sort of, let's just do it. And then I saw a poll that said 68% of Americans think that Trump is corrupt. Okay, that's more than 2/3. That's a lot of people still a third who, who clearly can't believe the evidence of their own eyes. But then I saw in the same poll, and I read down a bit, 85% think that Congress is corrupt. So Trump is less corrupt than Congress. So he's benefiting from the sort of both sides are as bad as each other view of the world. Now, is that shifting at all or are the Democrats still in as deep a mess as they were?
- [19:20]
Mehdi Hassan
The Democrats are certainly in a deep mess in terms of the both sides. And that is a media phenomenon. I do fundamentally blame the United States media for approaching it in that way. It was an old fashioned kind of knee jerk response from the media to always treat politics as a sport between two teams and you're the referee and you're kind of trying to be neutral in between the two teams. But, you know, the example I give both to Democrats and to the media is if one of the teams is openly cheating, is picking up the ball. If you've got a football match, and I mean football, not soccer, if you've Got a football match and one team picks up the ball and starts running with it. It in defiance of the rules, A, the other team is under no obligation to keep just kicking the ball. And that's why I say to Democrats, you got to fight fire with fire if the other side is doing, you know, breaking all the rules. And B, the referee's job is not to say, well, both teams are to blame for this. No, the referee's job is to call out one side. And I think the media struggled to do that. And that has allowed the American public to carry on with this, you know, plague on all their houses. Alistair, you know this. There's a populist moment across Western democracy for multiple reasons. Partly the economy, you know, partly immigration. All sorts of issues have led into this populism. People don't like the people in power, incumbents across the Western world. And it's very easy to do a kind of they're all at it, they're all corrupt. And look, by the way, there are lots of corrupt Democrats. Money and politics is ruining politics across the board here in the United States. But the idea that both sides are the same is fundamentally absurd. Like one side is openly anti democracy. The other side, for all its many faults, is not one side. For example, let me give you a very current pertinent example. Graham Platner, who is a Democratic candidate in Maine as we speak. I don't know, by the time we finish taping, he may have pulled out of the race. He's the Democratic nominee for the Senate in the crucial swing state of Maine, a state that could go Democratic in November. It could be the key state that gives Democrats the Senate. He has been credibly accused now of sexual assault. Every prominent Democrat, including top former supporters of him, have come out and said he must stand down from the race. He probably will stand down for the race. It's a matter of when, not if. That doesn't happen on the Republican side. On the Republican side, the President of the United States was elected after being found liable for sexual abuse by a jury of his peers in a civil trial in New York City. And yet he was elected for a second term. So this both sides bullshit is really causing a lot of problems when it comes to America and corruption, by the way, just one last thing on corruption, I think it's partly the both sides. And the other reason Aleister Trump gets away with this is cuz he cultivated this image as a corrupt dude to begin with. So a lot of people kind of price it in. They say, well, that's who he is. That's who Trump is. You often hear that's the best defense from his supporters. They don't just deny the claims. They don't deny he's lying. They don't deny his corrupt.
- [21:48]
Alistair Campbell
They.
- [21:48]
Mehdi Hassan
That's who Donald Trump is and that's why we voted for him, to shake things up. He's a businessman. That's the kind of nonsense defenses they offer. The good news is that's not transferable. I don't think J.D. vance or Marco Rubio will get the similar pass. I think it's sui generis to Trump.
- [22:02]
Alistair Campbell
The other area where we see this both sides thing is the erosion in both sides and the confidence in both sides through Trump's continuing obsession with. You already mentioned it, the election denial. So just recently we've had 260 FBI investigators have gone into Fulton in Georgia. You know, they're reviving the idea that the election in Georgia was rigged. And there's a guy there was, I was talking to says that and I hadn't really thought about this. In doing that, they're sowing doubt in a way that actually helps them more than it helps the Democrats. Because the Democrats come out, they're being accused of rigging the election, the Democrats. But then the Democrats attack Trump for what he's doing. Thereby they're saying that these elections are being rigged as well. So you have both sides in the end conspiring with the lie that people rig elections. So I think that. And you. So when you say fight fire with fire, I think this is where it's so, so difficult. And you know, we're going to talk later about you. You interviewed Maximilian Krah, the very, very, very right wing German politician. When do you get to a point where you actually say somebody that I wouldn't have platformed before now. I will. When do you get to point? Let's take the issue of election denial. I've talked, I've heard you before saying I will not give a platform to somebody who denies the election. Right. That means you can't talk to Republicans, presumably, because most of them, which is
- [23:33]
Mehdi Hassan
why I had to drop that. I held onto that for about three years. Alistair. I had that as a hygiene test when I was a host at msnbc. I told my team we're not going to book any Republican is an election denier. Which means you basically can't book Republicans.
- [23:44]
Alistair Campbell
Right.
- [23:44]
Mehdi Hassan
Because they're all election deniers. Now, the few who were not have been cleared out from the party. Donald Trump reasserted his control maybe if Ron DeSantis or someone else, Nikki Haley, had won the primary in 2024, they might have been able to move on from it. But Trump has an iron grip on the party. It's now a condition for being in the party. Every judge, they nominate. Alistair, I don't know if you've seen the hilarious, well, not hilarious, but, you know, black comedy hearings on Capitol Hill. When a judge is nominated and a Democratic senator says, did Joe Biden win the 2020 election? And they refused to answer the question, a judge, someone going for a judgeship will not answer because they're scared that Trump will pull their nomination. So this is the America we live in now. Yes. I can't have that hygiene test anymore because I'm a journalist who needs to interview people and there's, you know, no one left if you kind of have those hygiene tests. And you're right. But just to go back to your point about fire versus fire, I'm not saying the Democrats should break the law. I am saying that you need to forget about norms. For too long, the Democratic Party was the party of norms. We can't do that because we've never done that before. There's no precedent for that. That would be violating the norms and the decorum and the decency of our politics. It was Michelle Obama who I'm a great admirer of, going and giving that speech and getting huge applause and saying, when they go low, we go high. No, no, when they go low, you go lower. That is what we have to do in politics right now on the left, because the right have no standards left. They're not following any norms. Alistair, let me give you one obvious example. When the Democrats, when Biden was in office, there's a thing called the filibuster in the Senate which allows the minority party to block the president. And the Repub. Republicans used it to block much of Biden's agenda. And a lot of us said to Democrats, get rid of the filibuster. It's not in the Constitution. It's not that. Get rid of it. No, no, we can't do that. It's part of American democracy. It's part of our heritage. It's a convention. And guess what? Now they're not in power. Trump and the Republicans are threatening every day that they're going to get rid of the filibuster. So this idea that you can just kind of play along and everyone will respect the rules. Trump has made it very clear his understanding of politics is a mob boss understanding of politics. His Understanding of football. Football is a mob boss understanding of football. And you have to respond in kind.
- [25:39]
Alistair Campbell
The other thing that really struck me again this week was the issue of pardons. Pardons strikes to the heart of the sort of corruption of the American soul in so many ways. So he pardoned a load of people this week, some of them not serving very heavy sentences, but they're all for offenses against the Clean Air Act. Now, the Clean Air act, as you know, is a big part of the American sort of fight against the climate crisis. Of course, he wants to reverse all that, but he actually said that these guys were jailed for trying to fix their car. Okay. In other words, they were jailed for pretty serious offenses related to emissions from exhausts. Okay. But on a kind of industrial scale. Jailed for trying to fix their car. And then he also pardoned another donor. And, you know, I checked with a friend in the States that it didn't even make the media. Another donor gets a pardon, it doesn't even make the media anymore.
- [26:31]
Mehdi Hassan
You're probably the only person covering it right now. He is the master. He's the master fabulist. He's the master at making up stories. Stories. He makes these excuses up. He bullshits, he gaslights, he gish gallops. This is the problem. And the corruption story, the pardon story and the corruption story are inextricably linked. Right? So we've had lawyers now tell the media publicly. There's been stories recently, lawyers saying in our circles, white collar lawyers know if you pay a million, 2 million, 5 million, you'll get a pardon.
- [26:58]
Fuse Energy Advertiser
Right?
- [26:58]
Mehdi Hassan
It's just an accepted system now and again, the pardon power is corrupt on a bipartisan level. Presidents of both parties have done dodgy things with pardons. I wish we could amend the Constitution and get rid of that pardon power. The they don't like it. It's abused all the time. But Trump has taken it to a whole different level. He's pardoned over two terms, 70 fraudsters. On day one of his presidency, he pardoned every single January 6th riot to insurrection as detainee convict. Even his own vice president said he should only pardon the nonviolent ones. Trump said, f it, pardon them all. Right, According to Axios. And he pardoned everyone. So this is the abuse of the pardoned power. He's pardoned people who have donated to his campaign. He's pardoned friends of his. He's pardoned people he doesn't know, but who have business links with friends he does know. And then when he's asked about it to Go to the point you and I raised earlier about why don't people ask you about the red card about him not knowing about football? When he was asked about the Binance guy, the crypto guy who he pardoned from China, I forget his name. Trump said, guess what? I don't know the guy. I don't know anything about the case. All right, then why'd you pardon him?
- [27:55]
Alistair Campbell
Answer. Because he does know him. And he's really got big into crypto. And crypto accounted for 1.4 billion of the 2.2.
- [28:04]
Mehdi Hassan
Isn't it funny that it's crypto that's at the forefront of the corruption allegations against Donald Trump?
- [28:09]
Alistair Campbell
And Nigel, I mentioned the Maggie Haberman Jonathan Swan book. Fiona and I were in France last week and we were on driving, listening to it. It's one of those books. It's a very good book and it's clearly very, very well researched. But you have to stop. You have to keep going for maybe half an hour. Then you say, I can't do this anymore. You've got to stop. There is. And the thing that really struck me there is not a single nice person, person in his orbit. They're all, when you read it, page after page after page after page, event after event, hour after hour. The kind of nastiness, the trivia, the horribleness of, of the lot of them. There's no niceness in it. And I just, that's what I find so sad, that because this is the America that's being projected to the world. And then as we said earlier, there is this other America. I should say, if we'll go to the break, Medi, we've had our trip reporter. I don't know if you know, we have this podcast, has its own reporter team, obviously. She's called Izzy. She's been in New York and she's been speaking to people from across the country, asking on this 250th anniversary what they think about Trump in the state of America. And she actually had people crying to her about the state of it. She had Latinos who were scared to give their names, and she had others who were describing the demise of the American dream. My favorite quote about the American dream this week was from Jens Stoltenberg, former prime minister and now finance minister of Norway, who said that the American dream, dream is more alive in Norway today than it is in America. And I think there's something, there's something in that.
- [29:39]
Mehdi Hassan
I saw that. That was in Nick Kristoff's piece. I think the former NATO chief Correct.
- [29:43]
Alistair Campbell
That's right. Yeah, exactly.
- [29:44]
Mehdi Hassan
And he's got a point. And Scandinavia definitely has more upward mobility and meritocracy than the US Under a corrupt Trump. The Haberman Swan book is a phenomenon. I interviewed Jonathan recently about it, and you're right, that is a key distinction between the first and second terms. In the first term, it at least pretends to have some quote unquote grown ups around people who might know what they're doing, who weren't just MAGA ideologues or grifters. You know, your Jim Mattises who was Defense Secretary and a few others. Handful of people. I remember writing a piece for the New Statesman ahead of the inauguration or just after the inauguration in 2017, and I called the Trump administration at the time a kakistocracy government by the worst people. And I feel like I was a little uncharitable to that administration because it's really this administration that is truly, truly cachistocratic. Kash Patel, RFK Jr. JD Vance go down the line Stephen Miller Just the worst people. Christine Just the worst people he surrounded himself with, and I said this when I was at MSNBC years ago, that the fundamental divide in American politics today is not just left versus right or, you know, up versus down, rich versus poor. It is decent versus indecent. Are there any decent people left in American politics on the right? I don't see any.
- [30:52]
Alistair Campbell
They will hopefully emerge if you're right, that we should be more optimistic about the United States than the uk.
- [30:58]
Mehdi Hassan
I didn't say I'm optimistic about the right. I don't think they emerge on the right.
- [31:01]
Alistair Campbell
Okay.
- [31:01]
Mehdi Hassan
They'll emerge elsewhere. I think the right is a lost cause, especially with the algorithm.
- [31:04]
Alistair Campbell
Okay, now I also received a fascinating text from a mayor after we briefly discussed Roy and I devolution on the podcast last week. And Vicki Spratt, who presented a brilliant miniseries on Gen Z for us. She's going to be writing about that this weekend in our Sunday Read. To get the newsletter pieces, you sign up to the newsletter via the link in the episode description. Let's take a quick break and when we come back, we're going to talk about Germany country. You and I are both very, very interested in some really interesting things going on, both in the political scene and their media landscape too. This episode is brought to you by Lloyds Premier. Life for many people is very complex and the political goings on in the world do not make it any easier. Trust in institutions, trust in politics, trust in business.
- [31:49]
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Alistair Campbell
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- [32:49]
Alistair Campbell
foreign.
- [32:56]
Gordon
The Rest is Politics listeners. It's Gordon and David here from the Rest Is Classified and we've got an exclusive preview of our latest series on the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko.
- [33:07]
David
A Russian security service officer is living in London with his wife and son when he suddenly falls seriously ill. He has been poisoned using a rare and highly radioactive toxin.
- [33:19]
Gordon
But who gave the orders and why? In our latest series, we investigate the mysterious murder of former KGB officer Alexander
- [33:28]
David
Litvinenko in a sinister plot that goes all the way to the top of the Russian state. We delve into the murky circumstances leading up to Litvinenko's death and how foreign agents pulled off an audacious murder on British soil, one which put the entire population of life, London, in serious danger.
- [33:46]
Gordon
This is a story of personal tragedy and of cloak and dagger espionage, but also political conspiracy. Litvinenko's murder sheds light on the cost of speaking out in Putin's Russia, but also the extent to which the British state has been willing to suppress the truth to maintain its political relationships.
- [34:06]
David
To hear the full series, listen to the Rest Is Classified wherever you get your podcasts.
- [34:17]
Alistair Campbell
Welcome back to the Racist Politics with
- [34:19]
Mehdi Hassan
me, Alistair Campbell and me, Mandy Hussen
- [34:21]
Alistair Campbell
in Washington D.C. mehdi Deutschland, I mentioned in the first half that you interviewed Maximilian Krah. Now, just to those who don't follow German politics as closely as you and I do, Maximilian Krah is a major senior figure in the alternative for Deutsche, but he's also, I think, one of the more. Tell me if you think I'm right or wrong. I think he's one of the more intelligent in that he understands there is a risk to the survival of the AfD if they go so far right that a constitutional court says, sorry, you guys are against the Constitution and there is a case pending or a case being developed against people like Bjorn Hacker in Turing in Thuringia, against some of the young alternative Deutschland people, some of whom have just been elected to the board of the AfD. So let's just, let's just talk a little bit about that. First of all, how long and hard did you think before you sat down and interviewed him for Al Jazeera? This isn't your head to head program. Yes. And secondly, what did you make of him and what do you make of the strategy that they seem to be pursuing, which is, we've got to admit it is being successful in electoral terms and also being successful in splitting this view that the firewall that keeps the other parties well away from the AfD may be fracturing, not least under pressure from senior figures in the media that we'll talk about in a minute.
- [35:51]
Mehdi Hassan
Yeah. So the big question of whether to interview him, to go back to our earlier discussion about election deniers, this is so depressing, isn't it, Alistair, that we live in a world now where you kind of have to drop all these hygiene tests and walls as a journalist, as I am, and have to ask questions of people who you don't really want to have to platform. But yes, I mean, years ago I've been presenting Head to Head on Al Jazeera English, I think for about 14 years now. We launched it in 2012 with Richard Dawkins, if memory serves me correctly. And we discussed with teams over the years. I've had discussions with producers should we have someone on from the AfD. And we always said, no, we don't want to platform this party. Too close to neo Nazis, too far right. Why would we do that? We don't want to platform fascists this. But it came to a point where the AfD, whether we like it or not, are so now in the German mainstream, are so, you know, enshrined in the political system of Germany. They are leading in the polls, sadly, they are leading in the polls for the Saxony Arnhold big state election later this year. They're the second biggest party in the Bundestag, in the German parliament. So at what point do you say, you know what, we need to actually hold them to account just like everyone else. The old system of saying we'll just ignore them them and hope they go away. That hasn't worked. Now, that doesn't mean I think you should platform them everywhere and anywhere. I don't think you should be having chummy interviews with them on breakfast tv. But I do think if you do it, you've got to do it in a sustained, challenging, interrogatory way, which is what Head To Head was built for. So we kind of slightly arrogantly said, okay, if anyone's going to do it, we should do it. Because we have a format, a one hour sustained interview with. I have a very good research team that helped me prep very in depth questions. We have a panel of experts to support me. We have a live audience which always, always holds a politician's feet to the fire in a way that even journalists cannot. And so we thought, let's have him on Head To Head. And he agreed to come on. He was actually a last minute change because the previous guest from the AfD, Marcus Frohnmeyer, had just come back from Russia and had got into a controversy in Germany as being too close to Putin and he pulled out of our show and then Maximilian Kraich agreed to join our show. Krai is an interesting character because he's part of what is a basically a neo fascist party, but he has a smile style, he has a charm, he has a sense of humor.
- [37:55]
Alistair Campbell
He has a handkerchief in his pocket.
- [37:57]
Mehdi Hassan
Yes, very stylish, says, I have Muslim friends. I love the Turks very, you know, in that, very, very Trumpy. And in fact, he's been described and has described himself as Germany's Trump. He's not the leader of the party. That's Alice Vidal, who is a very interesting person herself. She's a lesbian co leader whose partner is Sri Lankan. And again they wheel out her partner to say we can't be racist. Our leader's partner partner is brown. But this is a party that is very racist, is very Islamophobic. He didn't have any response to my questions about their Islamophobia other than to try and kind of pretend he hadn't heard about it. But it is a very dangerous moment for Germany because as you mentioned, for people who are not aware, the German system post war allows for the Constitutional Court to say this party, this movement can be banned as neo Nazi as a threat to democracy. And the German intelligence Service said the AfD is an extremist group. And when they gave that label, the AFD went to court, the court stepped in and paused it while they investigate that label. So right now we can't call them a far right domestic extremist. Group, because the German courts have put that classification on hold while it's being investigated. But I would point out 72% of Germans think it's an extremist group, according to the polls, but they might end up in power.
- [39:07]
Alistair Campbell
Would you, for example, would you do an interview with Bjorn Hawk Barker, who's the leader in Thuringia, who said actual Nazi slogans, where a court has said you actually can describe him as a neo Nazi, Would you platform him?
- [39:21]
Mehdi Hassan
It's a tricky one. Probably not. Unless I have to. Let's say he's on the verge of becoming Chancellor of Germany and I'm offered an interview with him. Would I take it? Yes. But, you know, I think we've got, as journalists, we've got to decide when and how is the right place and the right peg and the right location to do these interviews. My worry is that you head down an American path where you just platform everyone all the time and truly everyone the same. And I think that's a mistake. And even in the British media, you know, there's some interviewers who do tough interviews, there's some who don't do tough interviews. And if you are going to have these very controversial figures on, you really have to be prepared. My problem is a lot of journalists aren't prepared for interviews. So if you're going to, you know, I would advise against a random British journalist just turning up to interview Krah because he'll run rings around you, he knows the subject better than you do, you won't be prepared for all the, you know, the gaslighting.
- [40:06]
Alistair Campbell
Do you think he left that interview with you, you feeling that he had achieved his objectives? Because I felt. I watched it the other night and I felt I abhor what he stands for. But he did quite a good job of pretending that the things that you said he stood for, he didn't really stand for them. And you can't hold him responsible for everything that every member of the AFD has ever said. And I thought he did it quite cleverly.
- [40:31]
Mehdi Hassan
I agree, I agree. He's a very clever guy. And it was an interview. There's some interviews I walk away from. Alistair Ramla, Yeah, that was a slight slam dunk. It was very easy. And that clip goes viral because the guests made a fool of themselves. This clearly wasn't one of them. He's clearly a smart guy and it's interesting. I asked my team later, I wonder what a Marcus Frohnmeyer interview would look like, because he doesn't have the charisma or humor and this is the thing about fascists. The funny charismatic ones are the really dangerous ones. The reason why Donald Trump is still a singly, more dangerous figure than J.D. vance is because Trump, whatever you think of him, has charisma. He's able to make people laugh, he's able to dominate a room. J.D. vance has the charisma of a wooden chair. So I'm less worried about JD Vance events as a threat to American democracy,
- [41:08]
Alistair Campbell
even though it's more plastic chair. He's not even wood.
- [41:12]
Mehdi Hassan
He's not even wood. So. So cry definitely has that charisma and that enables you. I mean, my defense of that interview would be to say what I was able to do, I hope was to put on record what the AfD actually stands for rather than what they think they stand for. So for example, there's an exchange in there that people can watch where I said, well what do you think about the fact that your manifesto talks about Muslims the way that Hitler talked about Jews? And he said, oh, you can't just bring up Hitler. I said yes, here's the evidence, I bring receipts. Your manifesto says Islam is an alien religion. Muslims don't belong in Germany. This is exactly the language that was used about Jews in De Sturmer in the 1930s. And he said, oh, I don't know anything about that manifesto. I'd never heard about that manifesto. So it was very important moment there to put that stuff on the record. And again, this is about appealing to the broader public. I'm not going to change his supporters mind or his mind obviously. And you mentioned the firewall with Mertz. I mean that is the big question question, will the German mainstream political establishment say, well actually the public love the afd so we just got to get on board with them. And I think some of us have to resist that and say, well actually 72% of Germans think the AfD is an extremist group. They are polling number one. But they're polling at what, 30% in a PR electoral system in the East,
- [42:16]
Alistair Campbell
Even higher than that in some places. Let's just turn to the firewall because this is the other big story that's been going around the German political scene the last few days. So there's a podcast called Venzi Viston, if you only knew. And they reported that Mertz in March had had a meeting with the CEO of Axel Springer Big Media group, which now owns the Daily Telegraph, guy called Matthias Dupfner, who I think sort of fancies himself as a bit of a German Murdoch, but he doesn't want the baggage that goes with the sort of Murdoch label. But he's very, very, very interested in his own views and pursuing his own views. They bought Politico. He regularly writes in Politico. And what this podcast, Wendy Wusten. What they alleged was that Merz and Dupner had a huge row because Dufnussett was pressuring Merz to drop the firewall, essentially to say, you're not going to be able to fix our economy unless you work with these people. Because it's. And according to this report, Mertz said, once is enough, meaning we had this back in the 1930s. And then the meeting ended with Dupner saying, you're going to regret this. Now, denials, some of them a bit in the sort of non denial denial kind of phase, but very strong denials from Dupner. So I've been looking into this guy and I've been looking in. I read Bilt and I read Vel fairly regularly. But I don't think you need a podcast revealing that he has these views. You can see it in the newspapers. I then watched a podcast. This guy, as I say, has his own podcast. He interviewed Nigel Farage. Now, Nigel Farage is a British political figure. Nigel Farage, for various reasons best known to himself, doesn't want to come on the rest his politics. But he goes and spends, he goes and spends an hour talking to this guy who's asking him questions like, like, do you think you're ready to be Prime Minister? What would the relationship with America be like if you were Prime Minister rather than Keir Starmer? Snigger, snigger, snigger. And so I then I'm starting to think this guy clearly is the sort of person who probably is pressuring Metz even though he's denying it. And as I say, there is, this is of special interest, I think now because he's got, he's got this British newspaper, the Telegraph as well. But then I read some of their editorials. I think they're pushing in this direction now. They're entitled to do that if that's what they believe. But say you believe it. Say you believe the firewall has to go. Don't sort of, you know, do this behind the scenes stuff. And have they had a poll of their readers, a survey, and it looked to me like one of those where you had to kind of, you had to volunteer to give your view. And a very large majority said they thought the firewall war had its day. So I just wonder what you, I wonder what you think is going on in the mind of somebody who's a major media owner in Germany now, in the uk and how difficult that might become for a German chancellor who's not very strong right now.
- [45:21]
Mehdi Hassan
Well, first of all, to be careful what you wish for when you say they should just say openly. I think they will very soon. I think they're building to that moment where they will just very openly mainstream the AfD and say, why wouldn't we do a coalition with them? This is what the public wants. And I think we need to have a broader conversation as well about the role of mainstream liberals and conservatives in mainstreaming the far right, whether wittingly or unwittingly. You know that in Marxist political thought on the left, there is this line, a derogatory line, which is scratch a liberal and fascist bleeds. This idea going back to the Weimar Republic in the 1930s, that it was mainstream liberal centrists who welcomed Hitler and the Nazis into the political system thinking, we can control this guy. And I think, you know, you don't want a repeat of that, obviously, where you think Matthias Dopfinan, Friedrich Mertz, think we can control Alice Vidal and the AfD.
- [46:04]
Alistair Campbell
I'm not saying Mertz should do it. I'm saying if that's what Dopner believes and if that's what he wants his newspapers to do it, fight for it.
- [46:13]
Mehdi Hassan
I mean, look, this is a guy who, just to give context to your viewers and listeners, this is a guy who sent texts to his senior editorial staff ahead of the 2020 election saying, we should all pray for Donald Trump's reelection. Right? This is a guy who runs Politico, which is kind of in the us. I know you have Politico in the UK now as well, but in the US it is seen as the gold standard of kind of impartial Westminster Beltway political journalism. He bought POLITICO in 2022. He writes in Politico, as you say, Politico staff have objected internally to him turning their outlet so partisan and going out and giving these partisan statements about politics, about Islam, about Israel. I should also point out to your listeners and viewers that if you work for Axel Sprouts, one of the core values, it's called, one of the essentials, is to defend Israel's right to exist. You must support Israel in that way, otherwise you are encouraged to resign or you're fired. And I think we can't ignore the role of Israel right now in the German political debate. We've seen German mainstream politicians act in a very Authoritarian way towards pro Palestine protesters, towards Jewish Germans, anti Zionist Jewish Germans who've been protesting the genocide. I don't know if you've seen Asta, the horrific scenes of German police drowning, dragging nonviolent unarmed people, women off the streets. That kind of authoritarianism. You know who that helps in the long run? It only helps the far right. Same thing in the UK with Palestine action. When you act in an authoritarian way as a center left or center right party, the ultimate beneficiary of that is the far right because that's where the political spectrum moves towards. That's where the energy and the center of travel goes towards. So in Germany, it is very worrying that they're on the rise. It is very worrying that this media mogul who owns the Telegraph, owns political owns, I think he owns Bilt as well. He has this power to kind of set the political agenda in these places, is backing Nigel Farage and Alistair. If you look at all these far right parties, you will find these billionaire media and tech moguls behind a lot of them. You will find Elon Musk backing the AfD as well. You will find Rupert Murdoch with his fingers in a lot of these pies. You will find Matthias Dogfiner now supporting a lot of these groups. He's obsessed with Islamism, he's obsessed with Israel. Israel. And that is not, you know, and that's why he's supporting a lot of these far right parties. I should point out a lot of these far right European parties traditionally have been very, very anti Semitic. But in recent years they have reconfigured themselves as super pro Israel.
- [48:31]
Alistair Campbell
Before we leave, Herr Dupfner, though, I think we'll come back to him because it'd be very, very interesting to see whether he plays the same sorts of games in the Telegraph, which is fair, you know, well, to the right, I would argue, of the papers that he's in charge of of in Germany. But the other link which you may or may not be aware of is that his son, and I know you shouldn't, you know, dob the sons in with the dad the whole time. But his son Moritz was chief of staff to a gentleman by the name of Peter Thiel, who I think you'll know very, very, very well and that Peter Thiel is now investor, a big investor in Dupfner JR's big starter startup. And it is interesting how this guy has, I think changed. I mean, he used to be somebody, you see very traditional German business in terms of the way he dressed. He now dresses very much in the kind of Silicon Valley Andy Burnham black vest type mode. I think he now sees Musk teal bezos as his milieu as opposed to, you know, the kind of the German business class. So I don't think you like the kind of German Murdoch label, but I think that's kind of what he's becoming.
- [49:42]
Mehdi Hassan
Do you think he wants the German Musk label? I mean, Musk has interfered a lot in German politics. He's spoken AFD rallies just like he spoke at Tommy Robinson rallies. Peter Thiel is a deeply disturbing figure. Also former Paypal ally of Elon Musk, part of the quote, unquote PayPal Mafia in Silicon Valley. Thiel spoke at Donald Trump's first Republican Convention in 2016. A gay, gay, right wing tech boss who is very Christian, talks about the Antichrist all the time, thinks Greta Thunberg may be the Antichrist. Just to get a sense of how nutty Peter Thiel is, had dinner with lots of white supremacists that came out a few years ago. Wrote an essay about 15 years ago saying, I've come to the conclusion that freedom is incompatible with democracy. He's a libertarian, wants to, he's one of these guys who wants to like build a, you know, a colony on Mars or in the middle of the ocean where there's no government and no regulation. And these are the guys, unfortunately running a lot of our politics on both sides of the Atlantic.
- [50:39]
Alistair Campbell
Worryingly, somebody got hold of some of these sort of, you know, private comments which included free the west, the intolerant Muslims and all the other riff raff, the Aussies, that's the East. Gems are either communists or fascists. They don't the in between. Disgusting. I'm all for climate change. We shouldn't fight climate change, but adjust to it.
- [50:55]
Mehdi Hassan
And again, to go back to my point earlier, we can't talk about this stuff in a vacuum. When you read out that quote, quote where he's going after Muslims and he's obsessed with Islam and Islamism and Muslim immigration, again, that is a mainstream issue. Right. Mainstream politicians have entertained and promoted that idea as well, have said Islamophobic things, both Democrats and people in the Labour Party. And I think that's one of the reasons why a lot of us, not just for moral reasons, do you have to stand up to bigotry, but also for political reasons because all you're doing is you're helping the Overton Window move further and further to the right. I know this goes back and this goes back to, unfortunately, your time in Government as well. Alice, to where the Labour Party's position was, well, you got to try and appease these people on the right. That's how you win them over. And it doesn't. When you meet a fascist halfway, all you do is embolden that fascist and the fascist narrative. And that's what we're seeing across Europe right now.
- [51:41]
Alistair Campbell
I mean, on that, though, do you think so? For example, you and I have both had lots of experience and I on kind of, as it were, both sides of the fence with politics. But it is interesting. So, you know, this podcast, we have this motto, disagree agreement agreeably. And we did, when we first mentioned, for example, that we, you know, might like to have Nigel Farage on now, as it happens, it's never come about because he's, he's not, he's not agreed to do it. But lots of our listeners said, no, we don't want you to do that. We don't want Nigel Farage. And then we said the same about Rupert Lowe. I threw out an invitation to Rupert Lowe. Rupert Lowe, likewise. He said I was a traitor. Don't know what I've done to be a traitor, but I'm a traitor. And therefore he didn't want to do it. But likewise, then lots of our listeners and viewers said, no, we don't want you interviewing people like Rupert Lowe. But I'm kind of with you on this. I think you have to engage. I'm not, you know, and the Bjorn Hooker thing is very, very interesting because I think I would like to sit down with him.
- [52:36]
Mehdi Hassan
But Alistair, how though? That's the question. And I no disrespect to your podcast, and I do a podcast too, but I do think we live in an age of podcasts and a lot of politicians do enjoy the fact that we live in an age of podcasts. Just look at what Donald Trump did in the last election. He avoided a lot of tough interviewers, but he did a bunch of podcasts. He did, you know, the Joe Rogans and the Theo Vons and all of those guys, the Andrew Schultz I think he did as well. He did a bunch of podcasts. And a lot of those podcasts, especially the right wing podcasters, it was all just fun and games, right? And politicians now like doing podcasts over doing Sunday morning shows or tough political interviews because they don't get asked follow up questions. They're confronted with a podcaster who doesn't understand politics or doesn't have, you know, a team of people writing, writing, forensic questions for them. And I think that is a problem. Right. As much as I love independent media, I run an independent media company. I have a podcast team. I do worry, though, with my kind of political nerd hat on, looking at political history, if politicians are able to find these safe spaces. Fine, if you had Nigel Farage, and I'm sure it would be a very. A very lively interview. But my worry is if Nigel Farage just pops up on podcasts as a whole, you're not going to get the kind of grilling or investigative journalism that you might get in more traditional mainstream advertising outlets. And that's my concern. I'm for grilling these people. I'm not for kind of quote, unquote, engagement, for engagement sake. And I do think that agreeing disagreeably thing, there has to be a line for that. Right? Do you agree disagreeably with a neo Nazi, with a fascist, with a racist, with a Holocaust denier, with a climate change denier? At what point do you say, I can't actually agree disagreeably with you? I can't disagree agreeably about whether up is down, hot is cold, black is white, reality. Right? And I think that's where we're going to have these kind of tortured conversations. As the right fight gets more deranged, more disconnected from reality, what do the rest of us do? And my position is you still hold the people in power to account, but you try and understand and engage with their followers. For sure, you need to understand what ordinary people, ordinary people who are voting for the AfD, who are voting for reform, who are voting for the Republican Party, we can engage with them and try and understand, are there any legitimate grievances? Have they been misled? Is there something that actually is powering this populist anger that we need to take seriously?
- [54:43]
Alistair Campbell
Seriously, you see, look, I think if I were sitting down to interview somebody, well, let's say Rupert Lowe. Let's say Rupert Lowe did it. I would want to give him the opportunity to say where he comes from, his background, how he made his money and all that. And I'd like to do that in a very conversational way. I think then when it came to what I think he stands for and how repellent I find some of those views, I would. I would want a listener to be aware of. That's how I felt. But I wouldn't want that to dominate the interview. I would want. I thought you did it well with car. To be fair, I'm not just blowing smoke at your backside because you're there. I thought you did it well because anybody Watching that nobody would ever think that you were giving him, you weren't giving him an easy ride, nor were you just sitting there saying what you think about him. You were confronting him with the reality of things that he had said and done, the things that other people said and, and done now. And you were sometimes, because you didn't have time, you were letting him slide away with stuff that you, in your heart knew he was being disingenuous, obfuscated.
- [55:48]
Mehdi Hassan
You can't cover everything, even enough.
- [55:50]
Alistair Campbell
No, you can't. And you, you, you, you end up sort of boring the ass off everybody because you're just going down sort of little rabbit hole. Another example I would give when we interviewed Alexander Vucic, the President of Serbia. Some people think we were too soft on him, but I actually, I don't agree with that because if we'd have just again, just gone at him again and again. I was right about Kosovo, you're wrong about Kosovo. Let's revisit Kosovo, what have you. I just don't think that informs debate.
- [56:17]
Mehdi Hassan
You also interviewed the president of Syria, who until very recently was a wanted Al Qaeda leader.
- [56:21]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah.
- [56:22]
Mehdi Hassan
And look, I'll be very honest with you. Thank you for blowing smoke up my ass. It makes this very awkward then to say this in response, which is there's a lot of people are going to be mad at me for coming on the show with you because of Iraq. Right. You and I fundamentally disagree on Iraq. I think what you did in Iraq was horrific. I think what Tony Blair did was horrific. That's something you and I will never agree on. And if we were having an Iraq debate, we'd probably get very, very lively now where we'd probably be shouting at each other. And I think that's. But I still come on the show. First of all, I don't think you're a fascist or a traitor, obviously, Rupert Lowe, these people on the right just throw around these ridiculous phrases. But, you know, if I, I wouldn't come on this show to do this show with you if you were just abusing me as a Muslim. Right. All I'm trying to say is we all have our red lines and our hygiene tag tests and you know, some people have draw the line here, some people draw the line there. And I think, you know, for me, I'm in a position now where I was more hardline on my lines, as it were. But now I just want to talk to as many people I can. Within reason. Right? Within reason. I still gotta, I've still gotta have some kind of Hygiene test. Like, if you ask me, would I have Tommy Robinson on my show? No, I don't think there's any value in having Tommy Robinson on for an interview. It would only help him and his cause. It's not like we'd have any kind of good faith conversation. And I do think that's an important criteria when we judge who we're going to talk to. Can you have a good faith conversation with that person without it turning into a grift or just a shouting match or abuse, or without it turning into an opportunity, a vehicle for one of the guests to just push their bullshit agenda? And I think that's a key question we have to ask ourselves. But I don't think there's any right or wrong answer. I think when people come into the comments of your show, on my show and say, you shouldn't have done that, you shouldn't have done this, I've got that all the time. It's very easy to say, you know, for the armchair pundits, it's very difficult for those of us who are in the middle of this crazy political moment trying to work out, well, who do we talk to, who do we ask questions to, what audiences do we address? And I, I think it's a work in progress. Alistair?
- [58:07]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. On the Tommy Robinson point over in Australia, a guy called Carl Stavanovich, I don't know if you followed this, but he's like a big deal TV presenter for the breakfast program on nine. Channel nine, the Today program.
- [58:19]
Mehdi Hassan
I think Piers Morgan was on his show recently. I may have seen it.
- [58:21]
Alistair Campbell
No, Piers Morgan's tortured him recently. But the reason Piers Morgan was talking to him is because this guy, guy has had to leave his job on Channel Nine because he did a very tame interview with Tommy Robinson on his own podcast.
- [58:37]
Mehdi Hassan
Missed that.
- [58:38]
Alistair Campbell
Yeah. Mehdi, it's been lovely to talk to you. Thank you for saying you still disagree with me about Iraq. I'm stunned to believe that. I thought, you know, I'm sure you were shocked. I'm sure you were shocked to hear that revelation. Absolutely shocked. Although, as I said in our interview with Ben Rhodes, I do kind of, I still kind of have lots of soul searching about that and lots of other things. But I think this point, I do think, and now I'm glad that Zettio is coming to, you know, you've largely been based in the U.S. you know, coming to the UK I do think we need more media. That's just challenging. Challenging of the media and more challenging of politics as well, which is kind of what we try to do from a pro politics, pro good journalism perspective. We do try to do that on the Rest Is Politics. But I think it's good to have more of it around the place because I do think that the. I hate the phrase the mainstream media, but people know what I mean. It's in big trouble. It's in big trouble in part because of economics, in part because of people like Musk and Zuckerberg doing the vileness that they've done, but also in part because I don't think they've really got to grips with the pace of change in the world and how we all need to adapt to to that.
- [59:46]
Mehdi Hassan
Thank you for having me. Thanks for the plug for Zotero uk, which we just soft launched last month. Great to be on the Rest Is Politics.
- [59:52]
Alistair Campbell
See you soon.