← Today in Focus
Today in Focus
Mehdi Hasan on Donald Trump’s big, beautiful birthday
00:28:05
As the US prepares to celebrate its 250th anniversary and Trump turns 80, what state is the country in? And its president?
Loading summary
Transcript100 lines
- [00:00]
Noshi Nikbal
This is the Guardian.
- [00:10]
Today. Donald Trump's big, beautiful distraction.
- [00:19]
Podcast Announcer
Today In Focus is supported by Paramount plus the agency. All episode streaming June 21st on Paramount plus in the world of espionage, truth is a moving target and every decision carries a dangerous consequence. This new mission explores what it means to live as a double agent. Twice the lies, twice the risk. The lines between ally and enemy blur like never before and and survival depends on trusting no one. Starring Michael Fassbender, Jeffrey Wright, Jodie Turner Smith and Richard Gere. Don't miss the Agency. All episode streaming June 21st on Paramount +.
- [01:25]
Noshi Nikbal
Happy birthday, America. More importantly, Perhaps happy birthday, Mr. President. This weekend kicks off an extravaganza of celebrations for the nation marking its 250 years of independence from Britain, and for Donald TRUMP Marking 80 years of being, well, him.
- [01:47]
Donald Trump
We're having a big fight. It's never going to happen again, never happened before. And it's going to happen right in front of the White House. Here's a picture. I think a lot of people haven't seen this yet.
- [02:00]
Noshi Nikbal
Presidents gone by would have used a milestone anniversary to promote national unity. Trump is organizing a cage fight.
- [02:12]
Mehdi Hassan
He's a deeply unpopular president. He's one of the most unpopular presidents in modern American history at this point in his presidency, if not the most unpopular president. And he is nakedly, brazenly, unashamedly trying to hijack these celebrations.
- [02:25]
Noshi Nikbal
The president is adamant. Every decent flag waving American will enjoy the festivities or at the very least be talking about the party rather than what he's actually brought to it.
- [02:38]
Mehdi Hassan
There's a very serious assault on the Constitution, on liberal democracy, on the idea of three co equal branches of government. And we lose track of that with the USC and the gold and the ballroom. But this is actually very, very dangerous moment for American democracy at 250 years.
- [02:59]
Noshi Nikbal
From the Guardian, I'm Noshi Nikbal, Today in Focus party in the usa. But how much is there to celebr? Mehdi Hassan welcome back to today in focus. It is a big week for the U.S. and for Washington, D.C. you know, the epicenter of the start of the country's 250th birthday celebrations, which start this weekend and keep going I think until July 4th, until Independence Day, I think even beyond.
- [03:30]
Mehdi Hassan
I think they run till July 10,
- [03:32]
Noshi Nikbal
which is my birthday bookended by two
- [03:33]
Mehdi Hassan
birthdays, me and Donald Trump with the birthdays.
- [03:36]
Noshi Nikbal
Even bigger deal than that anniversary is his own birthday, his 80th birthday, which is this week. Mehdi, what can we expect from these two historic milestones?
- [03:46]
Mehdi Hassan
I mean It's a reminder that he's super old. First of all, we talked a lot about Joe Biden's age and health. Donald Trump is the oldest man elected to the presidency. He is someone whose health is in clear decline visually to people who look at him and obviously with our ears, if you hear him speak. So it's an interesting time to celebrate his age. He recently spoke to a bunch of elderly folks in Florida and he said, you're all seniors. I'm not. You know you are, which was very funny because most of those people were younger than him in the crowd. But, you know, he's in denial about his age and his health. He keeps bragging about acing a dementia test, which is a weird thing to do.
- [04:18]
Donald Trump
Anybody running for president or vice president should take a cognitive test, and no president has ever taken one except me. I've taken three of them and I've aced each one.
- [04:30]
Mehdi Hassan
So his birthday is very big for him and his supporters. It is a very cultish movement, the MAGA movements. Of course, they have to celebrate him. They want to do a lot of stuff. They want to build an arch, an arch bark to Trump, all of this kind of nonsense. It's very, very kind of Roman Empire in decline moment here for the United States with this weird president. America loves patriotic displays of flag waving in a way that many European countries don't. But I'm not seeing that right now. I'm in Washington D.C. in the belly of the beast. I'm not seeing people getting excited. More people are excited about the World cup and even the World cup is going to be a disaster because Donald Trump's fingertips are all over it.
- [05:03]
Noshi Nikbal
Take me back. Tell me a little bit more about the so called nonsense. What kind of events? What kind of like, you know, big sort of staging moments are we expecting to see?
- [05:11]
Mehdi Hassan
Well, they couldn't pull off any big moments because most celebrities, musicians, film stars, famous folks don't like Donald Trump, you'll be shocked to hear. So it's very hard. The Republican Party's always had this weird love hate relationship with Hollywood where they kind of, they scream and say, those Hollywood elites. And then they desperately try and find D rate celebrities to come out and back them whenever they can.
- [05:28]
Guest Commentator
Martina McBride saying she was initially told it would be a nonpartisan event, but that turned out to be misleading. She, along with Poisons, Brett Michaels, rapper, young mc and Milli Vanilli backed out.
- [05:40]
Noshi Nikbal
He asked Milli Vanilli?
- [05:42]
Mehdi Hassan
He did, and Mill turned him down. Imagine being turned down by Milli Vanilli a bunch of other artists were put on a list of artists performing, and they said, no one check with us. And they said, rightly, that we don't want to be part of a partisan event. And then the White House said, this is not a partisan event. This is a bipartisan event to celebrate America. So we're going to do it with a Trump speech.
- [06:01]
Guest Commentator
The President now saying that instead, he may focus the country's landmark birthday on a campaign style rally, quote, bringing the number one attraction anywhere in the world, Donald J. Trump.
- [06:12]
Mehdi Hassan
And we all know how bipartisan Trump speeches are. And yeah, he's gonna turn this major anniversary for the United States of America into an opportunity to attack the usual suspects, the fake news media, the treasonous Democrats, et cetera, et cetera.
- [06:25]
Noshi Nikbal
So, Mehdi, we had Munir Chihuahua on Today in Focus a few weeks ago, and he's got this quite interesting theory about how Trump may have learned all his showmanship moves from wwe. And now, lo and behold, there is a match of beefy, sweaty men being staged on the White House lawn. It's ufc.
- [06:42]
Mehdi Hassan
Yes.
- [06:43]
Noshi Nikbal
What do we know about why?
- [06:47]
Mehdi Hassan
Yeah, on the WWE point, it's always worth remembering that Donald Trump doesn't just love wwe. He was in wwe. He fought in wwe. He did a fake fight. Donald Trump taking down Michigan. Oh, my God. The hostile takeover of Donald Trump. On this mc, I often have to remind people that President of the United States was in a WWE fight and was in Home Alone 2. That is the person who currently has access to all the nuclear codes. So this is a situation we're in right now where this person who came out of reality tv, came out of fake fighting, has now in the White House and decides to mark the 250th birthday or maybe his own birthday with a UFC fight on the White House lawn. The images are insane.
- [07:27]
Guest Commentator
New construction is underway for an unprecedented spectacle. A cage fight at the White House, a massive arch taller than the building
- [07:35]
Mehdi Hassan
itself, this hulking frame of the cage that they are building or have built on the White House lawn. So first he destroyed the east wing of the White House to start building his ballroom, and now he puts this monstrosity on the White House lawn. And now he's suggesting that he'll keep it there forever.
- [07:51]
Donald Trump
You know, we're building something in front of the White House that's quite attractive to a lot of people. It's going to have the big UFC fight on June 14, and I'm looking at it, and maybe we'll never, ever take it down.
- [08:03]
Mehdi Hassan
And he loves this because his base is the only thing he has left. Swing voters have ditched him. Hispanic voters and young people who came over for the election have ditched him. So he's going back to the base. And some people have described UFC as the sporting wing of MAGA.
- [08:17]
Donald Trump
I think we'd be 10 years behind if it wasn't for you, so thank you for that. Dana says it better than anybody can say. They couldn't get any arenas because it was so violent that they couldn't get her in. As I was able to give them, I guess the first four or five
- [08:31]
Mehdi Hassan
fights, saying it out loud makes me feel like I'm in some weird dream. Dana White, who runs ufc, has turned it into a billion and a half dollar business. It's an old friend. I say friend loosely. Trump doesn't have friends. Old acquaintance and business partner of Donald Trump. He pretends to be apolitical, but he's spoken at every Republican national convention since 2016. And look, this is very much about where they decide to put their energies and resources. This is where they think the male young, white base is at ufc. This is where Trump thinks he can get cheered. Most people will boo Trump wherever he is, so he needs to retreat to safe spaces. And safe space is a UFC fight. And even safer space is a UFC fight on the White House lawn.
- [09:17]
Noshi Nikbal
As far as I understand it, there are two separate committees working on this sort of celebratory extravaganza. There's America 250, which was established by Congress 10 years ago, and Freedom 250, which was set up by Trump as a public private partnership slash grift machine. Well, it's giving quite King Trump vibes. How are we supposed to read what it says about his presidency and about his vision for America?
- [09:43]
Mehdi Hassan
So a couple of things. It's always very hard to talk about Trump's dictatorial tendencies because on the one hand, they're so tacky. Right? This is a guy who puts gold in the White House, fawns all over. Kim Jong Un, says, we sent each other love letters. I wish my people saluted me like his people salute him. The guy's in the middle of a war. He's losing in the Middle east, and all he talks about is, is a ballroom.
- [10:01]
Donald Trump
This will be the entrance into the ballroom. The ballroom will be right here. This is a glass. Beautiful glass tunnel. Beautiful tunnel that goes right into the ballrooms right there. Pretty good, right?
- [10:13]
Noshi Nikbal
You've had so much fun. I feel like designing this.
- [10:15]
Mehdi Hassan
Well, I did.
- [10:16]
Donald Trump
It's Going to be one of the greatest. I would say it will be the greatest facility of its kind.
- [10:21]
Mehdi Hassan
He went to China. When he left China, the Chinese government put out a statement about what they spoke about, trade, globalization. He put out a statement saying they have a ballroom. We should too. On the one hand, I talk about this stuff and we laugh and we say how ridiculous, how absurd.
- [10:33]
Noshi Nikbal
There's $400 million worth of ballroom going on right there.
- [10:36]
Mehdi Hassan
More than that. So on one hand it's kind of tacky, weird, you know, cheap, self aggrandizing. On the other hand, it is very serious. This is the executive branch of the United States government which is taking over the other two branches, has taken over Congress and has declared war basically on the judiciary. And therefore, in a country which is supposed to be built on checks and balances, on three CO/ of government, you have a president who's doing everything he can right now, politicizing his doj, his Department of Justice to go after his political opponents and doing things like enriching himself in office, but also giving himself powers that the founders never thought a president should have. The Founding Fathers left the UK to get away from a mad king, not to recreate a mad king. The V. Dem, which is a group of political scientists out of Sweden, last year downgraded the United States from being a liberal democracy for the first time since records began. But that is where we are today.
- [11:24]
Noshi Nikbal
Tell me a bit more about that assault on democracy and about some of the powers that you say that he has abused and basically just renegotiated for himself as president.
- [11:33]
Mehdi Hassan
So if you just look at some of the amendments to the Constitution which make up the Bill of Rights of the United States, First Amendment free speech. Donald Trump has declared war on the First Amendment. One judge recently said his detention of students just for their speech, just for writing articles, was quote, a full throated assault on the Constitution. And that was a Reagan appointed judge who said that, not some Marxist liberal judge as they like to dismiss all judges as he's arrested Don Lemon, he's raided the home of a Washington Post reporter, He's tried to ban flag burning in violation of the Supreme Court. He's tried to defund NPR and pbs. Again, a judge had to step in. He's detained and prosecuted and tried to deport foreign students for their speech. That's just the First Amendment. There's the Fourth Amendment that says you can't break into people's houses without warrants. What ICE does all the time. Fifth Amendment says you need due process. He Throws people out of the country without a court hearing. Go through the list. Sixth Amendment, right to a fair trial. He's targeted law firms and judges have said, this is assault on the Sixth Amendment. You keep going down the line. Tenth Amendment, which says the state should have their own rights. He's violated that by sending the National Guard into California, into Oregon, into Illinois. Trump judges have had to say, you can't do this. People he appointed are saying, whoa, you've gone too far. So you go down the list. Birthright citizenship, 14th amendment. He's saying, no, just by fiat, I'm gonna get rid of the ide that if you're born in America, you're a citizen. And he's made his contempt for the judiciary very clear. So it is a very dangerous moment when you have a man who believes he's not bound by forget conventions or norms, which he clearly isn't, but by basic amendments of the Constitution.
- [13:12]
Noshi Nikbal
Mehdi Birthdays, I guess, are supposed to be a great time to sort of take stock. And I'm sure the president has meditated on his last year.
- [13:19]
Mehdi Hassan
Oh, I'm sure.
- [13:19]
Donald Trump
Yeah.
- [13:20]
Noshi Nikbal
He's recently been so busy trying to make peace in the Middle east in recent weeks following a war, of course, that he started. He even missed his son Donald Trump Jr's wedding because, as you said, Iran, it's an incredibly unpopular war with much of the MAGA base. But how is Trump faring, by and large, with the American public?
- [13:41]
Mehdi Hassan
I mean, his presidency is a disaster right now on every front. Foreign policy, domestic policy. There was a running gag that he invaded Iran, he attacked Iran and bombed Iran and tried to do regime change. Iran to distract from the Epstein affair, which was the biggest story prior to Iran. And then you may remember a couple of weeks ago, Melania Trump did a random press conference where she said, I had nothing to do with Jeffrey Epstein.
- [14:00]
Noshi Nikbal
Out of nowhere, the lies linking me with the disgraceful Jeffrey Epstein need to end today.
- [14:08]
Mehdi Hassan
Now, when our stone, she just came out and said this, and then the gag was, well, Iran is going so badly, they're bringing up Epstein to distract from Iran. Right. So that's how bad it is at home and abroad. The economy is tanking. Inflation is higher than it was when he came to office. He said he was going to end inflation on day one. I will end inflation, he said, on day one. Day one also, that's not ended. You'll be shocked to hear. And the Iran war, he said we'd be over in a few days. We're now, what, three months into this war. So it's failing on every front. Shock, horror. Donald Trump is an incompetent president, as if we didn't already know that in the first term. The adults in the room that he had around him in term one, non existent in this term. You know, he's got Tulsi Gabbard, who just quit as a Director of National Intelligence. So it's a car crash of a presidency. As I say, he's more unpopular now than any president at this point in the presidency.
- [14:52]
Donald Trump
But look at where he is now.
- [14:53]
Mehdi Hassan
Whoo.
- [14:54]
Donald Trump
Down there, underwater, underneath the Cornfields, he's now 14 points underwater. That's an over 30 point switcheroo against the president, United States.
- [15:02]
Mehdi Hassan
Some polls suggest he's more unpopular now than he was the morning after January 6th, which tells you just how unpopular he is.
- [15:08]
Noshi Nikbal
But the polls are really shy, showing that the American public in as much as every part.
- [15:12]
Mehdi Hassan
And Trump knows this, and it's killing him, because if there's one thing he's always craved, it is public approval, and he's never got it. He's ran for president three times. He's never won a majority of the popular vote. Even last time around, he won 49.8%. He didn't quite get to 50. But he's obsessed with this idea that they are expressions of the public will, and he's not. The public are very much against him.
- [15:30]
Noshi Nikbal
Mehdi, how much of this bombast, the hundreds of millions of dollars spent on the ballrooms, the birthdays, how much of it is a distraction from the mess the US has made abroad? And is it working in the sense that, you know, are people talking about Iran or are they excited about the prospect of the God Bless America guy? Lee Greenwood, you know, pumping out his patriotic anthems at Trump's big rally.
- [15:52]
Donald Trump
God bless the usa. Ladies and gentlemen, President Donald Trump. J. Trump.
- [16:04]
Mehdi Hassan
Yeah, it gets hard debating how much of what Trump does is a distraction from other things that Trump does, because there is this idea that he's playing 4D or 3D or whatever. The analogy, chess. And he's just always like, it's very, very smart. And Steve Bannon once said it's like flooding the zone with shit. You just kind of distract the media with one story and scandal after another. And sometimes I feel like that's happening. Sometimes I just think they're just incompetent and they're not getting anything right. So it feels like they're distracting from one thing to another, but maybe they're just bad at everything they do. And clearly he would like people to see him in this light of leader, God, king, emperor, whatever he wants to call it. I mean, King Charles had to go to the US recently, had to come from the UK to the US and tell Congress, had to remind them that you need to restrain executive power. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Not least as the foundation of the principle that executive power is subject to checks and balances. Imagine the King of England has to remind democratic America about they need to constrain an executive. No irony there. The founders are rolling in their graves, but it is partly distraction. But I think we should oversell the distraction. I think we just deal with the fact that this is who Trump is. For so many years, people have tried to psychoanalyze him and say, well, it's really this, it's really that he's really doing this. No, this, what you see is what you get. He's an incompetent, empty vessel of a man who cares about nothing but his own ego, has no vision for anything he does. He said recently when the Iran will start, he said, people are going to say, I'll get bored of this. I don't get bored. And then on Sunday, he said, I'm bored.
- [17:46]
Noshi Nikbal
You say he cares only about his ego. He does also care about money. And, you know, while there are genuine worries for the Republicans that Trump will tank in the midterms because of this war, the war has been good for business. You know, from the his business, not American business. Well, how much money is it estimated that Trump has made from being in power? And how much has he pushed the boundaries and broken the rules of what a president can and can't do?
- [18:12]
Mehdi Hassan
So last year, Forbes magazine said it was his, quote, most lucrative year ever. The irony of Donald Trump is that he always claimed to be a billionaire when he wasn't. He was a fake billionaire.
- [18:21]
Noshi Nikbal
Yeah.
- [18:22]
Mehdi Hassan
And by becoming a politician, he actually became a real billionaire by getting into crypto, in particular, in the middle of the election campaign in 2024, he and his family and the Witkoff set up this World Liberty Financial, which is a crypto company, in the middle of an election campaign. The Trump family sets up this crypto business. Before, foreign governments couldn't just give money like in a briefcase to a presidential candidate or to a sitting president. Now you can just put money straight into his crypto company. It's what the Pakistani government have done. It's what the Emiratis. On the eve of his inauguration, January 2025, Emirati Prince, a national security advisor for the Emirati Government took a half a billion dollar 49 stake in World Liberty Financial. $187 million of that 500 million went straight into Trump family bank accounts. This is a day before Trump becomes president. Later, coincidentally, completely coincidentally, the Trump administration lifted a restriction on selling AI chips to the Emiratis. It is not allowed to answer your question. A president and any official in government cannot take a gift, cannot take a public office or title from a foreign government. Donald Trump took half a billion dollars from the Emiratis. He took a $400 million plane from the Qataris. He hosts the Saudi sponsored live golf tournament at his golf courses.
- [19:28]
Noshi Nikbal
And so where are the consequences?
- [19:29]
Mehdi Hassan
None. He just ignores court rulings, which no president has done before. And Congress, which is supposed to hold him to account, rubber stamps everything he does. Congress is run by Speaker Mike Johnson, who is speaker in name only. Donald Trump jokes in private that I am both President and Speaker. And he's not lying. He basically runs Congress. Congress is supposed to be a check on the presidency. It's now become an extension of the presidency as long as the Republicans are in charge. Now, if the Democrats win in November, in the midterms and take back control of the House, at least, if not the Senate, then yes, they can hold some hearings. They can impeach him for corruption, not that it will get convicted in the Senate because they don't have a 2/3 majority, but at least something can be done to draw attention to this insane level of corruption where the President and his family are making tons of money. And they all complained about Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden, Hunter Biden, hunter Biden made max 10 to 20 million dollars from his Ukrainian, Chinese business dealings. These guys are in the billions right now, the Trump family.
- [20:21]
Noshi Nikbal
And so you've got the personal enrichment of the President and his family on one side, but what about the sort of wealth inequality in the US under his presidency? What does life look like for the average American right now?
- [20:34]
Mehdi Hassan
So Donald Trump passed a big beautiful act last year. There's another set of tax cuts for the rich, paid for by cuts to health care and to social services. And income inequality. Wealth inequality has been widening in America. There was a brief period after the pandemic because of all the pandemic measures that actually cut inequality. The United States of America in Biden's first term in office, cut child poverty in half. Unheard of, 50% cut. And then they couldn't replicate that in year two because all of those benefits expired. And a couple of Democratic senators joined with Republicans to just end it all. I mean, it's too early to say now, but by the end of his term, I have no doubt in my mind that income and wealth inequality levels will balloon out of control again because he's so intent on giving tax cuts to the. To the richest, to the 0.1%. He's very open about rewarding his donors.
- [21:29]
Donald Trump
Happy birthday, Uncle Sam. ABC News goes to the great American birthday party.
- [21:39]
Noshi Nikbal
Mehdi. The country's last big anniversary was back in 1976 for the bicentennial, or the 200th anniversary, where President Gerald Ford delivered this quite optimistic speech for America's future.
- [21:52]
Donald Trump
Liberty is a living flame to be fed, not dead ashes to be revered. Even in a bicentennial year, it is fitting that we ask ourselves hard questions even on a glorious day like today.
- [22:13]
Noshi Nikbal
It was also a very short time for America. The Vietnam War had just ended. President Nixon had been forced out by Watergate just a few years earlier. There are some parallels when it comes to how divided the nation felt. Do you think there's any chance that Trump will use this moment to heal the country's depolarization? You've laughed before.
- [22:32]
Donald Trump
I even finished the question.
- [22:33]
Mehdi Hassan
You could actually say that question out
- [22:35]
Noshi Nikbal
loud with a straight face. Yes, I did.
- [22:36]
Mehdi Hassan
No, I mean, I would take Richard Nixon 100 times over right now. Richard Nixon on his worst day is better than Donald Trump on his best day when it comes to criminality and corruption, in my view and in terms of leading, I actually think Richard Nixon cared about America, cared about in his own weird way, broke as many laws as he wanted to do it. There's no doubt in my mind that Richard Nixon cared about America, cared about public service, was a governor, was a vice president, was a president, was a. This guy from WWE and Home Alone 2 is bent on enriching himself and his friends and his allies. The January 6th insurrection is he set up a slush fund to pay them out. Congress, for the first time ever, to take back what I just said. The one thing they got a spine for was say, oh, no, we can't sign up on. This is too far even for us as your sycophants. And I don't know if you saw on Sunday, he did Meet the Press and he went nuts.
- [23:22]
Donald Trump
Your elections are crooked and you're crooked and Meet the Press is crooked. And so is ABC and CBS and cnn.
- [23:31]
Mehdi Hassan
Orange faced, caked in makeup, screaming at Kristen Welker, the black female interviewer, simply because she asked him about the slush fund, asked him about the 2020 election, which he still believes is rigged. He went nuts and he said, thank you, darling, and ended the interview.
- [23:45]
Donald Trump
You're one sided crooked network. So let's call it quits because I've had a thank you, darling.
- [23:49]
Mehdi Hassan
Have a good time, Mr. President. Let's again imagine if a female president or female politician did that. Can you imagine? Oh, too emotional to this. There's no scenario in which he can heal the country. This is the man who came to office in 2017 talking about American carnage. He has a very dark, dystopian view for the country because he's a very dark, dystopian person. When he won last year, the first thing I did was look at that calendar and say, wow, Donald Trump is going to be president during the 250th birthday. Donald Trump's going to be president during America's first World cup since 1994. And Donald Trump's gonna be president during the Olympics. I mean, luckiest man in the world. We're unlucky. He's super lucky. I mean, he just turns up and gets these lands in his lap for him to perform. Imagine how embarrassing he's gonna be at the World cup final
- [24:33]
Noshi Nikbal
coming up. What will America look like by its next birthday?
- [24:52]
Podcast Announcer
From globalization to innovation sustainability to market volatility, there's always more than one side to a story. Explore different perspectives on today's most important business and economic issues with the Flipside podcast from Barclays Investment Bank. Hear two research analysts in a lively debate and get insights from every angle. To further inform your view, listen to the flip side on your favorite platform.
- [25:17]
Andrew Ton and Sarah Elk
Many business leaders see AI's tremendous potential for their companies, but are still struggling to turn that potential into measurable results and competitive advantage. I'm Andrewton.
- [25:27]
Noshi Nikbal
And I'm Sarah Elk. And on our new podcast, Winning with AI, we're talking to CEOs who are using AI to drive business transformation, delivering real wins and changing how their companies run.
- [25:39]
Andrew Ton and Sarah Elk
We'll hear how leaders empower and mobilize their people and make the use of AI part of how the whole organization thinks. Winning with AI.
- [25:52]
Noshi Nikbal
Mehdi, you have been living in the US since 2015, if I'm correct, which is of course, two Trump presidencies.
- [26:00]
Mehdi Hassan
Lucky me.
- [26:01]
Noshi Nikbal
Lucky you indeed. How much does it feel like the country democracy even. How much does it feel it's changed in that time and what worries you now that didn't when you first moved?
- [26:12]
Mehdi Hassan
Oh, so much. So much worries me and so much has changed. I arrived in the last year of the Obama administration. Ironically, in Barack Obama's last year in office, he actually did some very powerful things on the foreign policy stage. I was a critic of much of his foreign policy, especially his drone strikes. But in his last year in office, he did the jcpoa, the Iran nuclear deal, he did the lifting of some of the blockade on Cuba. And they're trying to have some kind of rapprochement with Cuba. Look at where we are today. We're at war with Iran or we might be about to be at war with Cuba. So just on the foreign policy stage, a massive difference from the moment I arrived in the US to the moment we're in right now. And then, of course, as we've talked earlier, Donald Trump's assault on the Constitution, American government, how we see politics, all of its change. I often think of my kids, I think of anyone who is kind of, you know, under the age of 18, 19, 20. It's very hard to explain to them that there was a time when Donald Trump was just a reality TV star. We didn't have to take him seriously. You might be able to come back and fix some of the damage to the Constitution, but you can't undo the cultural damage to America. You can't undo the psychological damage. You can't undo the shattering of norms, certain things that are now out of the, you know, out of the bottle that you can't put back into the bottle. And that's what really worries me, the long term damage. Donald Trump could be, you know, disappear tomorrow, but the damage that he's done will be with us for decades to come. Especially in terms of the American public. It's a much more bitter country, divided country, angry country, violent country, hate filled country, unfortunately, look at the hate crimes against synagog mosques. That's what worries me most as a, obviously as a Muslim immigrant is safety. You know, we live in a world where people are being assaulted, assassinated. You have Republicans who say they can't vote against Donald Trump because they're worried about the security and safety of their own families. That's the kind of thing you used to hear in quote, unquote, banana republics. You now hear that in the United States of America on its 250th birthday.
- [27:58]
Noshi Nikbal
I wonder how you think the Trump presidency will be viewed by history.
- [28:05]
Mehdi Hassan
Well, first of all, if democracy doesn't survive, it doesn't really matter what history writes because, you know, to the winner goes the spoils, including writing the history. They're already trying to rewrite American history. We haven't talked about how on this 250th anniversary, they've gone out of their way to censor at museums, to rewrite national parks, to go after, you know, books in government facilities. But in terms of going forward, if we are able to get through this dark period, yeah. Historians will look back on two terms of Trump as kind of neo fascism, as authoritarianism of a very American kind. This is not some foreign import. This is very much who we are. You know, we say this is not who we are. No, it is. But I also think historians will look back on the people who enabled Donald Trump. For me, the real, the real criminals, the real sinners are, you know, the tech bosses, the big universities, big media organizations which rolled over for Donald Trump in the second term in a way they didn't in the first term. But in the second term, they decided it's much easier to just go along. And I think, you know, the Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerbergs will be judged very harshly.
- [29:08]
Noshi Nikbal
Well, time will tell. Mehdi, thank you so much for your time.
- [29:11]
Mehdi Hassan
Thank you.
- [29:14]
Noshi Nikbal
That was Mehdi Hassan, Guardian US Columnist and the editor of Zoteo. Read his columns and our coverage of the quincentennial and more@theguardian.com do also check out our sister podcast, politics weekly America, because they are taking a look at exactly how Trump is using some of the world's most popular sporting events as his own personal stage. And that's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Noshi Nikbal. It was produced by Tom Glasser and May Robson. Sound design is by Brian McNamara, and the executive producer was Homachalili. We'll be back this afternoon with the latest.
- [29:59]
This is the Guardian.
- [30:09]
Andrew Ton and Sarah Elk
Many business leaders see AI's tremendous potential for their companies, but are still struggling to turn their potential into measurable results and competitive advantage. I'm Andrew.
- [30:19]
Noshi Nikbal
And I'm Sarah Elk. And on our new podcast, Winning with AI, we're talking to CEOs who are using AI to drive business transformation, delivering real wins and changing how their companies run.
- [30:30]
Andrew Ton and Sarah Elk
We'll hear how leaders empower and mobilize their people and make the use of AI part of how the whole organization thinks. Winning with AI.
- [30:39]
Podcast Announcer
Former politics reporter Jane Koston is now hosting Crooked Media's daily news podcast. What a day. Five days a week. With stories constantly flooding your for you page, it's hard to separate what matters from all the noise. That's why every weekday, Jane and the Whataday team scour the biggest headlines and bring you the stories that matter most to your life, all in just 20 minutes. Listen to what a Day Wherever you get your podcast or subscribe to what a Day on YouTube for the video version.