American Presidents: Totalus Rankium - 45.3 Donald Trump

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

So at last we come to the end! Join us as we rate the last president in the series! Trump has dominated political life in teh US for almost a decade, but how do we rate him? Find out!

Welcome to Totalus Rankium. This week, Dante Trump Part 3. Hello and welcome to American Presence Totalus Rankium. I am Jamie. And I'm Rob, ranking all of the presidents from Washington up until Biden. And this is episode 45.3. Jamie, Jamie, Jamie, Jamie. Yes, Rob. Jamie, it's the last episode, Jamie. And we're ending on a high, which is brilliant. Yeah, well, yeah, we'll get into that.

But yes, the last ranking episode. Yeah, we've got our playoffs. We'll talk about that more another time. But this is the last of the major series. There'll be some bonuses in the future. Are you recording? You didn't say. I am recording.

Yes, I am. I just checked. Excellent. That's good. I don't know if you saw the tweet I put out yesterday. No. It's fair enough. It's a weird thing if you share a Twitter thing.

You don't see an alert when someone tweets. I had no idea that you did that whole Eurovision song contest thing. Oh, yeah. Yeah, that was fun. Until I saw it the next day because I just didn't see you doing it. We got two new followers because of it. Oh, well, didn't you? I enjoyed it afterwards. I read through it. We got two new followers because of it. Oh, well, didn't you? I enjoyed it

afterwards. I read through it. Someone got mightily offended. People take this stuff seriously. They really do. Anyway, no, I worked out. We've done, I say worked out, roughly 100 episodes on The Presidents. Nice. And roughly 700,000

words I've written. That's tickling a million. Yeah, over the last six years, I have been... It's certainly very close to three quarters of a million words I've spent writing. We've done this for six years? 2018 was our first episode. Really? Wow. Seems a lot less than that. Those are like three or four years.

No, no. Six years of our lives, Jamie. Never getting those back. No. I mean, some of those words weren't like really sensible. Some of those words,

quite a few of them, we're talking about a lemon at one point. Anyway, it's going to be a long episode, this, so we should probably stop waffling and start.

Let's jump into it, shall we? For the very last time, Jamie, what's our introduction going to be? Because it is the very last time. It's a shot of you and me walking up to Lincoln Memorial. And as that's happening, we turn around and there's just a lot of noise happening.

Oh, yeah, no, you're exactly where I am. It's me and you. Me and you skipping. We're so happy to be there. Holding hands and skipping through Washington, D.C. It's a lovely, glorious place. So I've heard. I've met a few people in real life who have been to Washington, D.C.

Apparently, it is a grey bureaucratic hellhole, I believe, were the terms they use. But I'm sure it's actually really lovely if you go and visit. And we are enjoying our time. The camera's panning like no one's business. And that kind of like happy cartoon music as well. Yeah, exactly. Oh, it's fantastic.

Oh, we're having so much fun. Then a montage of us hanging out with Lincoln. Yes. There's like arm around him, even though he's really big. We've climbed up there and we're like putting hats on him and we're wearing his hat. Oh, it's really big we've climbed up there and we're like putting hats on him and we're wearing his hat oh it's really funny yeah but then just and then slash cut to uh to just just people smashing windows at the capitol building just lots of shouting and screaming and then cut back what a glorious day says one of us to the other. I hope it stays like this forever.

Bomb! Smash, smash. Screams. It's a guy with like a weird hat thing on, not wearing very much. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Cut back to us. We're having a great time. We do a selfie, Jamie.

I don't think we've ever done a selfie in our life, but we decide to do it. We're far above that, Rob. We decide to do a selfie together. And we're grinning and we're grinning but then suddenly like in the camera you see our grins fix because we realize behind us what's that behind us jamie oh that's right it's american democracy burning yes yes it was and then then just the words trump just just smash into the screen, through the screen, jump up and down on American democracy.

Yeah. I remember that so vividly. Oh, yeah. Yeah, we'll talk about that this episode. So there we are. Right. Where did we get up to last time? Well, it was the midterms, wasn't it, Jamie? Trump had just lost the midterms and things are not going well for him

or the Republican Party. The main story in the news, apart from Trump's former personal attorney being jailed for paying off an adult film actress, Stormy Daniels, during the campaign, I'm sure that will go nowhere. Yeah, this is Michael Cohen, by any chance. Probably never hear of that again.

Whilst we're recording, by the way, he is literally, if you listen to this in the future, he is literally giving testimony in court as we record this. I was reading the live tweets of what was happening before Jamie came on. The crazy thing is, such a full circle thing. I'll have to see if I get it. We made a prediction of what America would look like when we got to the end of our series in episode one.

And I did not release it. I was saving it for the very end and i can't remember what's in it apart from the fact i half remember saying something along the lines of oh it's just come out this thing about stormy daniels that will probably be buried and never talked about again because so much other crazy stuff will happen i'll find that i'll put it you know what i'll it in here. This is what we thought the end of the Trump administration would look like when he first got into power. Are you going to put this on at the end?

What, the entire series? Yeah. Yeah, that's why I've already pressed record. Hello, Jamie of the future. Yeah, hi, hi, everyone from the future. No, from the past, because people listening to this will be in the past. That's all. But it's the future to us, hi everyone from the future. No, from the past because people listening to this will be in the past. That's all.

But it's the future to us, it's the past to them. Yeah. Oh. Oh, scary. Wonder how the world's changed. We might all be dead.

I wonder if Trump's still president. We have literally just done his episode. Oh yeah. Perhaps. Could be Pence's episode. We might have done

Pence's episode. Oh no, we need to do the knockout rounds so we'll have done the knockout's episode. We might have done Pence's episode. Oh, no, we need to do the knockout rounds. So we'll have done the knockout rounds. But we'll have done Trump's episode not long ago. So I wonder if he's still president when we do it. God. God, make a bold prediction. What do you think has just happened in current affairs?

I think assassination attempt, gravely wounded not dead okay or he he decides to give up the presidency presidency yeah on his own terms i'm giving up you know i've done so much i'm the best ever best president's ever been everyone's saying it but obviously it's not and he's probably going through a bit of a tricky legal time now that's my prediction because that's him leaving on his own terms then he won't have to lose an election which he will so you think he's going to do a nixon he's going to resign yes at some point but no scan well obviously loads of scandal but no sort of no dodgy uh okay my my bold prediction then gone i'm, I'm liking it. Yeah, I think that the Mueller investigation comes to an end approximately a year from now.

Right. So it takes, we're recording this in February 2018, so I think it's going to take at least another year. There'll be nothing conclusive, but the pressure will be so great that it literally would have kicked out any other president in history. But Trump just won't move. And because there's nothing solid, he won't leave. He can tweet about it.

Yeah. So I think he will actually still be president. Okay. And nothing's really changed. And I think there's been several big crises happened, but they've all just kind of ticked along. But when will this be? So we're 2018 now. 2019. We're probably going to finish this series in early 2020, which will be the election year.

So I think what's just happened, Trump's still there, but the Republican Party have decided that they don't want him to run again, and they're trying to push somebody else to run. And he's having an internal fight with Republicans. That's my prediction for the end of the series. All right. Yeah. Yeah, my prediction, he's voluntarily just gone.

So because he can't be asked for the job because he's, you know, he golfs half the time. And you think Pence is in charge now? Maybe not Pence. It could be someone. I don't know. I don't know that's that's i don't want to stretch that far but um yeah i think he he left with declaring a victory he did everything he could the swamp was drained so he could go now yeah yes well and truly yeah he made america great again yeah oh just also um to root this into when we're recording the stormy daniels scandals just

happened okay if you uh have forgotten that that proves how crazy times are right now because that's where it came out that he paid off a porn star to be silent about the fact that the porn star spanked him with a magazine with his own face on the front cover. It's all a bit weird. But yeah, that scandal broke literally last week. No one's talking about it anymore. No. Because that's how crazy things are nowadays.

That is absolutely crazy. Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not the biggest, you know, it's still ticking along. It's going to fluctuate. But who knows maybe in four years time this will be seen as a turning point or no one will remember this point whatsoever because it's before the balloon scandal oh yeah i've heard about that yeah we've not had that yet no yeah i didn't think it's possible no not four of them all blue as well. Yes. Editing Rob here just before we jump back into the main episode.

You know what? I'm fairly impressed with our prediction. Yeah, the podcast obviously took a lot longer to record than we thought. The idea of us finishing in 2020 is now laughable. But, yeah, I think my Mueller report prediction was fairly good. But the GOP did not try and kick Trump out at all. I was way off there. Anyway, let's go back to the episode, shall we?

Oh, that was interesting. That was. I can't remember what it said. But I'm sure it was interesting. Yeah. Yeah, who knows? Anyway, right, sidetracked. The fact is, that has just come out.

Oh, sorry, no, it's not come out. It came out a while ago. But now Michael Cohen has been jailed for doing that. He was found guilty breaking the law. He's gone to jail. But that wasn't the biggest news in the news. The government shutdown was because Trump was hurting from the backlash from his family separation on the border. Remember, that's the high we left it on last week. Yeah, so he had to pull back on that and he had attempted to blame Obama for it. This was an Obama policy, he said, a blatant, blatant lie. And it was a ploy that did not work.

So in an attempt to appear strong on immigration still, he decided to push again his wall idea. He's going to build a wall. Yeah, definitely. Going to build a wall. So far, Trump had requested $21.5 billion so he could build his wall. But he said it'd be free and Mexico were going to pay for it. Yeah, but then they realised that wasn't going to work. But it's fine.

He was going to spend $21.5 billion on a wall that wouldn't work. And believe it or not, it didn't happen. Everyone in Washington knew that this was a stupid campaign slogan that had no basis in reality whatsoever. Like, even the diehard Trump supporters in Washington knew this was ridiculous. So they, even they, were struggling to support the idea of throwing money at this nonsense plan. Now, by this point in our narrative, Trump had changed position on the wall many times, mostly quietly behind closed doors. In public, it was still

build the wall, but behind the doors, he'd gone here and there with it. He was currently accepting the idea of merely repairing about 500 miles of existing fencing. Yeah. That would do, he said, privately. But now he was going back on that idea because he was getting bad press from the right about going soft on immigration wow yeah apparently the fact that he said yes we shouldn't be separating these children from their families meant he was soft yeah um so back to building the wall and the upcoming appropriations bill was the perfect place for him to show off his business skills remember he's a businessman it's all about the deals the art of of the deal, in fact. Yeah.

So in December, he invited the incoming speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, and also the Senate minority leader, the Democrat, Chuck Schumer. Yes. He invited both of them to the Oval Office. Oh, I remember this.

Yeah. Oh, you remember this one. Brilliant. I'll be honest. This was one that it wasn't until I actually looked up the interview. Then it came flooding back. But when I was just reading about it, I wasn't. And I looked it up and watched some of the interviews.

Oh, I remember this. Oh, it's bizarre. It's really strange. Anyway, getting ahead of myself slightly. The whole point of this, he was going to negotiate with the Democrats. He's a businessman. That's what he was going to negotiate with the democrats he's a businessman that's what he's going to do he asked the two democratic leaders for 5.7 billion dollars to fund the wall or he would get the republicans to not back the appropriations budget and therefore shut down

the government now we've talked about shutting down the government before so i won't go into it in detail but essentially if you are a government employee you don't get paid yeah and services are shut down unless they are essential. It is not good for the country at all. Yeah. Anyway, Pelosi and Schumer immediately said, no, we're not going to give you 5.7 billion for a wall that won't work. A frustrated Trump said that he would shut the government down.

And then he went, as often happens, off script. You just know that his advisors standing around him. Hands in the air. Sensible Samuel's still there. He's hanging around. He's just sat in the corner with Lionel the Lemon on his lap. And the two of them are just looking at each other. I think Samuel's left the room.

He's walked into a cupboard. Saw him later, wondered where he is. Opens that cupboard door and you see some legs hanging from the ceiling. Oh, we're dark. You went dark. Yeah, well, Samuel's very stressed at the moment. Dried up husk of a lemon rind. No, no, we're not killing off Lionel in the last episode.

No, we're not. And Samuel's fine. Samuel's probably fine. He's probably fine. He's just, he's just reaching off to check the top of the cupboard. Anyway. he's probably fine he's just he's just reaching off to check the top of the cup anyway yeah trump goes off off script that's what he does and he says he would be proud to shut down the government in fact i'll quote him here i will be the one to shut the government down

i'm not going to blame you for it i I will take the mantle. I will be the one to shut it down. Does he think it's like winning? It's right. So this is going back to the it's a bizarre meeting. So you've got you've got Trump there being Trump. He's leaning forward and he's being aggressive with his speech. You've got Mike Pence there next to him, frozen, literally frozen. And he's leaning away from Trump as if he doesn't want to be there and if he just stays still no one will notice him then you've got schumer who's like leaning in like leaning on his legs in his chair with just a bemused smile on his face staring into the middle distance but just like probably not believing that Trump has just given them this win. Yeah. And, yeah, so Trump just says,

I'm going to shut the government down and you can blame me for it. I'll do it because it's the right thing to do. Anyway, Schumer says, no, it's not the right thing to do. And then they leave. Yeah. After the meeting, Trump very quickly backtracks. Sir, can I have a very urgent word? What the hell was that?

So the whole shutting down the government as a bargaining chip is a relatively new thing in American politics. Yeah. But it has definitely become a thing. And there are certain rules to this engagement. And that is try to get the public to blame the other side. So if you come out the bat saying, yes, it's us, we did it,

you've shot yourself in the foot before playing the game. It's not going to work. So Trump tries to backtrack, saying that the upcoming shutdown was the Democrats' fault. But all the news channels had him on video saying he was going to be the one who shut it down and he'd be proud to do it. the GOP going in damage limitation mode and also Trump fluctuating on whether to bow down to the immigration pressure from the right or listen to his advisors on how shutdowns are bad, there was soon a lot of conflicting messaging going around. Trump wanted a shutdown. Trump didn't want a shutdown. It was the Democrats' fault. It's like people were trying to say all sorts of things. A lot of Trump supporters were saying this was a 4D chess move

from Trump because he was just such a genius. No one could understand his moves and that's why it looks like he's a bumbling idiot. We just haven't seen it yet. However, when it came down to it, Trump refused to sign anything that didn't have his border wall money in it. So the government shut down. Things did not move at all until January where there was a new Congress. It's sworn in and Pelosi becomes the new Speaker. The House immediately passed the proposed bill that had already passed the Senate

and this bill has no funds for the wall. But the way it works, the bill now has gone through Congress, both houses, but it just needs Trump's signature. Trump obviously refuses. It's not got his wall money in. But the pressure was on, and his poll numbers were starting to drop steadily.

Any time one of his defenders blamed it on the Democrats, the clip of Trump saying he would be proud to shut down the government could be played. The public were under no illusions. Unless you were a hardcore Trump supporter who refused to see anything he did wrong, it was very obvious that Trump was getting the blame here. So eventually, giving in to pressure, he allowed for a partial reopening while negotiations took place. But as soon as he saw some in the media calling this weak,

he then doubled down again, saying that he would call a national emergency if he didn't get his money. Does it fall under the banner of national emergency? Wow, this is debatable. Now, eventually, this is what he ended up doing. He did call a national emergency in the end. After 35 days, which is the longest shutdown in US history, Trump bowed to the inevitable. The appropriations bill passed with no funding for his wall.

To be fair, there was some money in there for repairs of existing fencing. So there was a little bit that needed to be done on the border, but no money for his stupid vanity project. Trump, to save face, declared a state of emergency and announced that he would be able to get immediate access to $8 million this way. $8 million? Sorry, billion. Typo there immediate access to $8 million this way. $8 million? Sorry, billion. Typo there.

Yes, $8 billion. However, in what was becoming a pattern, Trump went off script whilst announcing this. Yeah. Just saw Lionel screaming again. Samuel's now just sitting on the chair with his head in his hands. Yeah. State of emergency. I need this money.

It's an emergency, says Trump. And then, I'll quote him now, I could do this wall over a longer period of time. I didn't need to do this, but I'd rather do it much faster. Somewhat undercutting the message that this was an emergency. Yes. Emergency, emergency. I want to do something slightly faster.

I don't need to do it. Yeah. Yeah. We don't have time to go into all the legal and political problems that this national emergency caused but just know that it got kicked around the courts for ages and congress kicked it around for ages until biden eventually comes in and ends the emergency it took until biden being president yeah yeah the money never the money never materializes though because as the wall, in all his time in office,

Trump managed to build new barriers along around 450 miles of the border, which is certainly not the whole border. But also, 400 of these 450 miles was just replacing a previous barrier. So this brand new wall he was going to build, you could argue he only built 50 miles in the end. Oh, that's interesting to hear. Interesting to hear. Oh, and also, Steve Bannon,

he was found guilty of using the Build the Wall scheme to defraud donors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars. And he'll be going to prison in a few days for that, because all that's been coming up recently. Yeah, so that's nice, isn't it? Anyway, still, Trump felt like he'd done enough to save face. Just enough. He was very angry, but it will have to do.

I can still say I've got money for my wall because I said there was a national emergency. Now, it's about this time that the Mueller investigation finally comes to an end. After months of speculation on just how much interference the Russians had on the election, and whether the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians, it was finally all sorted, sort of.

The Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, had kept a tight leash on this investigation, as you can imagine. Now remember, the way these investigations are set up, Trump, as President, could order Rosenstein, as the assistant attorney general, to fire Mueller at any time. Yes, I remember that. Yeah. Any time,

Trump could essentially fire the guy investigating him. And oh, Trump came very close to doing this several times. Almost only the begging of his advisors stopped that from happening. It might feel good to do it, but you will end up in a world of pain if you do that. It's not screaming innocence, is it? It's really not. Now, Mueller knew this. He knew that he was walking a tightrope. A lot of expectations from him. People who wanted to see Trump fail and people who wanted to see Trump succeed were putting a huge amount of pressure on Mueller. So knowing that he could get fired, and there was a lot of pressure, he was trying to tread as lightly as he possibly could. There would be no subpoenaing Trump. He

would just focus on very clear details, and he would put out his findings. First of all, the report he finally produced discovered that the Russians had, and I quote here, interfered in the 2016 presidential election in sweeping and systematic fashion. So it had happened. Yes. And violated US criminal law. To simplify, Russian agents had organised rallies, promoted candidates online, and they had mostly supported Trump or Bernie Sanders and opposed

Hillary Clinton because the Russians saw this as the best way to sow discord in the election. Secondly, the Russian hackers had broken into Clinton's campaign, stole documents that were then released via things like WikiLeaks and other such leaking websites. So this is election interference. Undoubtedly, it had happened. Third thing they found. There were at least 140 contacts between Russian agents and Trump or his inner circle. Wow.

Yeah. Does that surprise you? Yeah, I didn't realise that. Yeah, the Mueller report came out and as you'll see, it kind of fizzles away to the point that a lot of people seem to think that the Trump, the Mueller report didn't find anything the all the Mueller report found a

lot of stuff but we'll talk about it here is some of it 140 contacts between the Russians and Trump's team however this was obviously dodgy but Mueller and his team could not prove beyond reasonable doubt that the coordination between Russia and Trump was anything illegal, pre-planned. However, as the report goes on, paraphrasing, but the report goes on to say that there's a pattern here. There's definitely a pattern. Best case scenario, the Trump team were manipulated by Russian agents. That is definitely the best case. The report clearly states that Mueller was not confident that Trump was not coordinating with Russia. So it's not like a, it's not a yes or no, it's just that, it's not a yes or a no, there is no smoking gun, but it is also a, it's dodgy as all hell, but I can't prove anything, is what the Mueller report is.

Without that smoking gun, however, the report could be summed up with a line from the report. So a quote from the report here. While this report does not conclude that the president committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him. This is not an exoneration. That was black and white in the report. In layman's terms, he seems guilty as hell, but we can't prove it. Bill Barr. Oh, Bill Barr, eh? Sorry.

Sorry. Bill Barr, the new attorney general. He's the new man in at the moment. Bill Barr is a man from the far-right faction of the Bush administration. Do you remember how Bush was a bit of a puppet of the far-right faction who managed to take over behind the scenes? Well, Bill Barr was right in there, along with Cheney. Bill Barr wrote a four-page summary of the report that was then released.

This was his job. He's the Attorney General. He's going to write a summary so people can easily digest what's in the report before the report is released in full. It's just easier that way. The letter essentially said, and I'll paraphrase, the Mueller report did not find sufficient evidence of anything illegal, although it did not exonerate the president. Yeah. Okay. That sounds shockingly honest. Essentially, however, what it did do was water down all the parts where the report mentioned just how dodgy it was.

The report was 443 pages. I've remembered that off the top of my head, so don't quote me on that, but roughly that. And a lot of it is this dodgy thing happened, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened, this happened. Oh, and this happened. But we can't really prove anything, so we can't exonerate him. We can't say he committed a crime. The summary, however, read more, yeah, they looked into it. They didn't find anything illegal, but it doesn't exonerate him. There's a difference there.

It's not a million miles away, and you can argue that it is an effective summary, but there is a difference. Anyway, Trump got this letter from Barr and was thrilled and immediately held a press conference where he announced that the report, due to be released in a couple of weeks, was a, and I quote Trump, a complete exoneration. He didn't read the letter, did he? Probably not.

And then he just stepped into the plane he was standing in front of, and then Air Force One, they took off. He happened to be by the plane. He is front of and then air force one they took off he happened to be by the plane he is cock a hoop he is chuffed to bits is trump on the way back to the white house on the plane he is elated although he was complaining to lindsey graham who happened to be with him about the press yeah he said to graham and i'll quote trump they are animals they're the most heartbroken people in america he was in other words very happy that the press had lost this in his eyes graham worried about what trump was going to say when he got off

the plane to the press waiting for them had some advice for him when you land why don't you just walk past them and just say how great america is don't speak to them it's the last thing they'll expect they'll expect you to to have a speech or something. Trump took the advice. What? It's exactly what he did. Yeah. He got to the White House off the helicopter

and he said, America's the best country in the world and just walked past the press. Trump then called Lindsey Graham later that day and just said to him, did you see them? Lindsey Graham replied, who? And then Trump replied, the animals.

And then talked about how he had followed Lindsey Graham's advice and he had enjoyed immensely how shocked the press looked. The reason why I pulled out this particular quote that I managed to find, this small conversation, I found it interesting that Trump referred to the press in this language personally in private. Kind of assumed that this was rhetoric that he used when he was talking to the press in this language personally in private. Kind of assumed that this was rhetoric that he used when he was talking to the crowd.

And he probably toned it down a little bit in private. Still, I knew he hates the press, but no, full on the animals. That's how he refers to the press. Anyway, as for the so-called animals, they filed their reports. And within moments, the news channels were all reporting how the Mueller report completely cleared the president of any wrongdoing. See how quickly we got there?

Report says he's dodgy as all hell. Summary went, nothing conclusive. Trump, well that clears me then. Press, he's cleared of all charges. Yeah. And that was it. So effective was that, to this day most people still think the muller report said that trump was completely couldn't be clear it's quite i don't

think it's clever because i don't think it's thought out that much but it is concerning in the u.s press's part in this i think more so yeah yeah it really is and it shows that trump has never been wrong in his assertion that if you just lie brazenly, people will believe you. It's never failed him before and it's still not failing him now. He just went, I'm completely cleared. The report said it. The report said the opposite. Everyone believed Trump.

Not everyone. Mueller didn't believe Trump. Mueller wasn't best pleased. He wrote to Barr complaining that the four-page summary did not encapsulate his 448-page report. Damn it, 448. That's close. That's close if my heart remembered. Mueller was not happy. I will quote Mueller here. There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This did nothing whatsoever. The report finally came out in full and many

people were shocked at just how bad it was for Trump after all the press coverage. But when I say many, mostly this was people who had read and understood the 448 page report. Not many people bothered doing that. There was some outrage from some people but just got drowned out. Over 700 former federal prosecutors signed a letter saying that if this was anyone else, the person covered by this report would face, and I quote, multiple felony charges for obstruction of justice. This is obviously awful. And everyone seems to have just gone, yeah. Could it ever be brought back up again and relooked at and charges brought forward? It's a good question.

I wouldn't want to give you a full answer because I don't know off the top of my head. But what I will say is that an extract from the Mueller report was read in Trump's trial about an hour before we are recording this right now. Interesting. So it is being used, yes. But I think it's safe to say that Trump will never face any consequences for the dodgy stuff he was doing in the election

that was covered by the Mueller report. Yeah. To the average American, the report found Trump had done nothing wrong. Because the average public as well aren't going to read all of it, all 448 pages of documents. All right. Yeah, I mean, I have been borderline, if not even borderline, over the line, I've camped over the line,

obsessed with Trump's presidency and everything that's gone around it. For the entire time doing this podcast, I have been reading about Trump, finding out what's going on. I'm reading the transcripts of the court case that's happening every single day at the moment because I want to know what's happening I didn't read the Mueller report No

So I know I knew enough about it to know that it wasn't what the press was saying but why would the average person do it? Most people have lives that don't mean that they're obsessed with politics like me and all the better for them Yeah, you're a weirdo Nerd

But the report obviously was saying a lot went wrong like me and all the better for them. Yeah, you're a weirdo. Nerd. But the report obviously was saying a lot went wrong. 34 indictments came out of this report, including Trump's campaign chairman, the deputy chairman for Trump's campaign, Trump's personal attorney, Cohen. But everyone around Trump were hit by it. Trump remained unscathed. And with this, Trump started to feel more emboldened. He got hit by it. Trump remained unscathed. And with this, Trump started to feel more emboldened. He got away with it. He was convinced this was going to bring him down, and he got away with it. He said something, I didn't write this down, but he said something

along the lines of, it was amazing. It just disappeared. Being post midterms, Trump started to think about the election and what everything that goes along with that. And by this point, it was becoming very clear that the Democrats were going to be backing the former Vice President Joe Biden. Never happened, he's too old. Too old. Surely they'll find someone younger. So in typical campaign mode, the Trump team started to look into any dirt

they could find on Biden. Ah. And this, just when Trump thought he was in the clear, is what led to the first impeachment of Donald Trump. And we won't actually be going into the second because that kind of happens as he's leaving office. So I'll only very briefly mention the second one, although talk about what led up to it. The first impeachment, I think, is the one that will go down in history as the lesser of the two. If you take them side by side, this one doesn't seem as big, but it is still big.

So what happened? Well, the story first came to light in August of 2019 when an anonymous whistleblower reported that the president had attempted to extort a foreign world leader in order to get information

on a political opponent. Can I guess this country and this leader? Is it Vladimir Yelensky? Yes, you can. Certainly is. And I'll be honest, I remember when this broke, I didn't Is it Vladimir Zelensky in Ukraine? Certainly is. And I'll be honest, I remember when this broke, I didn't really know who Zelensky was.

He was quite new and just got into power in Ukraine. I knew a bit about Ukraine and its history and stuff that was going on with Russia, but certainly didn't know much. So the name didn't hit me when I first heard this story. Obviously, he's big on the world scene now. Now, we're going to need a bit of background here, but I'm going to be as brief as I can be.

Back in 2015, as vice president, Joe Biden had put pressure on the Ukrainian government to remove the Ukrainian prosecutor general. You with me so far? Biden said to Ukraine, get rid of your prosecutor general named Viktor Shokin. Shokin had been holding up various corruption cases that had ties to the Ukraine,

but also ties to lots of other countries as well. And he was holding these up. The United States were not the only ones who wanted Shokin gone. The European Union wanted him gone. The International Monetary Fund wanted him gone. The guy was clearly corrupt as hell, and he was stopping cases going through. So a lot of pressure was

being put on Ukraine from all over the place. Can you get rid of your corrupt guy, please? However, in right-wing bubbles, a story had been doing the rounds about this. Apparently Biden had called for Shokin's resignation because Shokin was about to look into Biden's son, Hunter Biden, who was a member of the board of directors on a Ukrainian gas company, Burisma. Yes. Now, you might be wondering, why is Hunter Biden on the board of a Ukrainian gas company?

Corruption, money. Yeah, nepotism, definitely. Easily say nepotism. The corruption thing, it's murky. But it's all, it's a bit dodgy, but it's in the grand schemes of things, it's only a bit dodgy. Politicians giving their family members cushy jobs happen all the time. And yes, it's bad and it's wrong and it's nepotism and it's frustrating, but it is not the level that we're about to go into. So yeah, Hunter Biden's been

given a cushy job, essentially. We are not going to get into Hunter Biden any more than that here. Just know he's got a checkered past. He's certainly not squeaky clean. But to be very clear here, there has never been any evidence of Hunter Biden doing anything illegal linked to this Ukrainian company. But the laptop. And believe me, the gop have spent a ridiculous amount of time and effort looking for something anything and they can't find a thing because that's not the narrative that's given out it's like he's guilty he's he's going to like trial and all sorts oh there's been many hilarious moments where members of the democratic party in the hearings are saying

fine i'll call for the impeachment of Biden. All you need to do is back me one of you Republicans and the Republicans won't even back them because they know they can't actually impeach Biden, it will fall apart. So it's all showboating. It's a really surreal moment not long ago where a Democrat was saying, yeah, fine, impeach the president. If you dare. Someone back me and we'll do it. Yeah. Anyway, let's try not to get down a Hunter Biden rabbit hole because I know it's in the news a lot recently. But this is where it's all starting.

This is where it begins. Anyway, this isn't the only conspiracy theory that Trump believed linked to Ukraine. Trump also thought that the DNC had hidden a server in Ukraine from the FBI. And this server held evidence on it that all the information coming out that Russia aided Trump during the election was in fact false. Completely exonerated him.

Now, I couldn't figure out where on earth this story originated, but it was doing the rounds. Apparently there's a magic server in Ukraine that just said on it, Trump is innocent, Democrats are bad. that just said on it, Trump is innocent, Democrats are bad. Anyway, so to sum all that up, Trump thinks Biden's son is dodgy and wants someone to look into it. Trump thinks there's a magic server that will say that he is perfect in Ukraine. So when he's on the phone with this newly elected president of Ukraine, Zelensky, Trump mentions these things. Now, this didn't come out of the blue. Trump's team, especially Giuliani, had been talking to a lot of people in the Ukrainian

government. Giuliani had been over to Ukraine talking to them in person. Zelensky, fearing the rapid rise of aggression from Russia and thinking he had best help out the president of the most powerful country in the world, thought, well, I to him them so when the two presidents talked on the phone trump urged zelensky to work closely with his attorney general bill barr and and giuliani as well trump essentially said to zelensky that the united states would provide funds which had already been promised but they would provide them and then a quote, I would like you to do us a favour though. Now, that phrase is key. Jamie, here you can have a Mars bar. Oh, thank you. I'd like you to do me a favour though. Oh, that sounds sinister, Rob. What does that imply about you getting the Mars bar? I have to do something for you before I get the Mars bar. Yeah. Or it's a bribery. I mean,

the word though is doing a lot of lifting in this sentence. Here, Jamie, have the Mars bar. Yeah. Or it's a bribery. I mean, the word though is doing a lot of lifting in this sentence. Here, Jamie, have a Mars bar. I'd like you to do me a favour. That sounds like you want me to help you trim your hedge. That sounds, here, have this. Don't suppose you could help me out, by the way. The though really makes it sound much more, you're only getting this unless you help me.

It is really weird to think that one word coming out the mouth of someone who we know just has verbal spaghetti coming out of his mouth all the time is so important. I just always find that quite strange. Anyway, the plan was Zelensky was going to go on CNN and other news channels and announce that he was looking into the Biden family for their crimes. And he was announcing a search for this server that would exonerate Trump. Now, the president of Ukraine saying that would lend a lot of legitimacy to these conspiracy theories. And I thought Russia would love that. Putin would be like, yeah, yeah, add more discord.

Oh, yeah, yeah, exactly. Russia would be more than happy with that. Anyway, many people were listening in on this call, as was normal. One of them was an official who worked for the CIA, and they were appalled at what they heard. This was the president of the United States That's pretty big. There is not really much denying that. That is what's happening here. And when you take a step back, that is really big.

It is. When you lead into it with the, oh, Trump thought this, Trump thought this, and I genuinely thought these things, he thought these things were true. They turned out in time to be fairly baseless, but I'm convinced that Trump thinks they're true. So you can see why he'd be saying this, but no, you can't do that as president. You just can't. There's got to be rules in place. Anyway, the summary of the phone call was leaked to the press. Soon, the news channels were talking of a quid pro quo. Trump was confused.

He genuinely could not see what he'd done wrong. Of course. This is business. This is what you do in business. I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine. He assumed that, like I say, the Bidens were corrupt and there was evidence to find. What's the problem with that?

So, so sure he was that the phone was a perfect phone call which he kept saying over and over again which just shows he's got a weird way of speaking trump went against the advice of some of his advisors and released the transcript of the phone call this is how much he was convinced he'd done nothing wrong he read the transcript and went i've done nothing wrong so he released it there you go i've done nothing wrong. So he released it. There you go. I've done nothing wrong. And he sat back, waited for the world to apologise to him. He was somewhat confused then when there was an uproar. Oh my goodness, the whistleblower was right. There it is, in black and white, Trump implying that funds would be withheld unless Zelensky announced he was looking into corruption

into Trump's political opponents, based on nothing. Many Democrats started calling for impeachment. Now, to be fair, many Democrats have been calling for impeachment for Trump for many reasons, because Trump was all over the map and breaking political norms. However, many old-school Democrats, being in the party for a long time, realised that, no, impeachment is serious. If you're doing it, it's got to be airtight. You can't just impeach people on a whim. I know the Republicans did it with Clinton in the past,

but we can't go down the road where we're just impeaching people just because we don't like them. But that wasn't all Democrats. There was a strong, but small-fashioned Democrats who just wanted to impeach him. But now, here we go. We've got in black and white a transcript, something that had clearly happened.

One Democratic congressman said, and I quote, he essentially bragged about what he had done. However, if there was going to be impeachment, it was going to have to come from Nancy Pelosi. She's leader of the House. She still isn't sure. If they swung a mist, this could harm the party and lead to Trump winning the next election.

However, with the release of the transcript, many in the press who had had their noses at Trump so far also started calling for impeachment. With pressure mounting within her party, Pelosi called a press conference and I'll quote, the president must be held accountable. No one is above the law. She went on to say that his actions were,

and I quote, a betrayal of his oath for office. And therefore today I'm announcing the House of Representatives is moving towards an official impeachment inquiry. Ironically, Trump was not as concerned about this as he was with the Mueller report. He really feared the Mueller report because he thought it would lead to his impeachment and he'd be removed from office. This one, he was so convinced he'd done nothing wrong. And also he'd got away with the Mueller report where he kind of knew that there was stuff he didn't want to be found out. He kind of assumed, well, this can't hurt me then, can it? If I got through the Mueller report,

this can't hurt me. And also he was told in no uncertain terms, the Senate would never let it go through. We've got the Senate. They won't. Yeah. You're not being removed from office regardless. So even if you are impeached, you're going to save your job. Several of his advisors, including his daughter, told him that the heat would come off him a lot if he just apologised for the call. But Trump stuck to his guns. Never apologise. That was always his line.

So the line was he was investigating corruption. That's what he was doing. And the White House made it clear that they were in no way going to cooperate with the impeachment inquiry. Trump kept calling it illegitimate. The inquiry started and requests for documents and subpoenas were simply ignored. Most people who were ordered to go and speak simply didn't. This was very damaging to Congress. I mean, they have powers to subpoena people and they were being ignored. Then they don't have that power then, do they? Well, exactly. Well, if you can't enforce it, then what powers do we actually have?

This ended up being very damaging, not to the Democrats, to Congress as a whole, that people weren't going to this impeachment inquiry. However, I'm not saying no one went. People did go. And what they said was damning. Several witnesses backed up the version of events put forth by the whistleblower that Trump was trying to use back channels to find dirt on Biden.

It was very obviously happening. The evidence was all there. So in December, the Judiciary Committee drafted two articles of impeachment against Trump, one for abuse of power and one for obstruction of justice. Trump becomes the third president in history to be impeached after Jackson and Clinton.

However, as all saw coming, the Republican House Senate immediately acquitted Trump. Only Mitt Romney of the GOP voted for it. Everyone else said, no, it's fine. So there you go. Trump, Trump's still there. He was never really in any danger. But the impeachment was a stain on his legacy.

He was not happy. Imagine being a president who is impeached. I mean, being impeached would be humiliating. It would be humiliating. If I can't think of anything that would increase that humiliation. No, no. I mean, once you're impeached, where next? Where next? Anyway, he immediately started firing anyone who he

felt had in any way contributed to this outcome. He went on a bit of a firing spree. But then this was fairly typical of Trump. And it's just as this was all finishing off that the biggest crisis in his presidency hit. It's 2020 roughly. January 2020.

And there had been some rumblings. He was just hungry. Rumblings of a new virus in China. Tell you what, it was weird researching this point. I've almost sort of forgotten about it. When I think back at it again, it was really odd. It was really weird. It's surreal, isn't it?

Anyway, let's do it, shall we? On New Year's Eve in 2019, Dr. Redfield, an expert virologist and the director of the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, saw reports of unexplained phenomena coming out of a large city in China. He was not the only one.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, for the last 36 years, had also seen reports. That's right, he'd been the director for the last 36 years. No one is the director of a department for 36 years. So that means he's doing a good job. That doesn't happen. It's just one of those departments that quietly gets on with things in the background.

It's not important enough to hit major political scenes or anything. It's not like you're going to be on the main stage, are you? That is true. So yeah, he just got on with his job. Anyway, being in the post for that long, Fauci had seen a lot, including the outbreak of AIDS in the 80s, SARS, anthrax outbreaks, swine flu, Ebola, all these things that happened. He'd seen it, he'd gone through it.

He'd learned how to spot early warning signs, and this report worries him. Some people, whose job it is to look into these kind of things, went and looked into them. And they talked to China through back channels, and they're just generally getting some background. And it was decided we need to meet the president with this. This looks like it could be serious. So O'Brien, the security advisor at the time, put it very simply in our quote, this will be the biggest national security threat you face in your presidency. Trump was confused. He had been told not long before about this, but he was also told that it's not going to be any different, really, to the SARS outbreak in 2003, which was serious, yes, but easily manageable within the United States.

However, another advisor agreed. This was Matt Pottinger. He was an expert in China. He'd lived there during the SARS outbreak. He'd reported on it. Pottinger had been contacting his contacts about this new strain of COVID that had been identified, and he was very worried. Turns out what China was saying about it was not true at all. It was much bigger, faster, and scarier. When he had asked someone over there if this was going to be as bad as SARS-2003, the reply was, don't think about 2003. Think more about 1918. Yeah. Spanish flu.

Spanish flu. He was told that the factors with the disease were changing so quickly and rapidly that this was going to be a oncea-century event and millions were probably going to die. Oh. Oh, dear. And more worryingly, he was told that it was definitely already outside China. We did not contain it. Because we've discovered cases in Thailand. If it was in Thailand, it's everywhere.

Yeah, that's a very popular holiday destination. Yeah, it's probably too late. They probably needed to shut down now. We might just do it if we shut everything down now. Let's just shut down. Even just the flights. But obviously, obviously, obviously, this is the real world.

Shutting everything down immediately can't happen. And Thailand's so far away. So far away. But also, what they could do, it's a big step, but might be overcautious, but what we can do right now is stop travel from china trump was surprised by this seriously we need to do that much but he was told by no uncertain terms yes we need to do this a covid task force was set up with

fauci in it and various other people as well who did important work but for reasons we'll come clear later I'm going to keep saying Fauci because he kind of comes to the public face of it but just know it's not just him there are many experts contributing a lot into this task force so that's set up they tell him shut down China and and Trump did it he did it a couple of days later it was the State of the Union address. Trump barely mentioned COVID. It got one sentence. Later, when accused of not acting quickly enough, Trump claimed that he was doing it on purpose so people didn't panic. But he also, when asked about the meeting that I've just talked about, he had completely forgotten about it. Yeah, which is

interesting. Anyway, which is interesting. Anyway, behind the scenes, Trump had not really taken on board just how serious all this was. But to be fair to Trump, very few had. It's not like all the other leaders in the world were really on top of it. Not at all. Yeah, so I don't think it's fair to single out Trump at this stage for him not jumping into action. No one was jumping into action quick enough at this time. Anyway, a few days later, President Xi of China and Trump talked over the phone. Trump offered aid to help contain the virus.

Xi was noncommittal. Yeah, I don't think we need that. Trump offered to send scientists over there to go and look into things. We've got leaders in the world over here. No, it's all right. We're okay. I'm sure you would love to send some spies to come and look at how well we're doing in the field of medicine, America. Maybe you just stay over there. Yeah, China did not trust America, to put it bluntly. Trump came off the call mildly concerned, shall we say, but he was convinced that the hot weather was going to kill

the virus come summer, and the United States would be fine. Now, I did try and look into this. I could not figure out where this idea originally came from. He mentioned to President Xi this very fact. I hear that it will die out come summer. And she replied in a slightly noncommittal kind of, oh, possibly kind of way, because they simply didn't know anything about it. But I don't know where the original, it will die out in the heat comes from. Maybe it's like people mainly get colds in the winter

and they associate colds with being cold. Maybe it's that. Yeah, that would make sense. Viruses don't work as well at certain temperatures. Some of them don't. I mean, you can imagine various places where it comes from But I can't figure out where Trump heard that and got it into his head Because he really gets it into his head He is convinced that this will go away in the summer

Anyways, around this time that Trump is talking to the famous reporter and novelist Bob Woodward Great name Bob Woodward has possibly the best access to Trump in terms of interviewing, reporting, writing books that will secure his legacy. It's the only reporter Trump is really talking to. So he offers some insights here. Woodward was talking to Trump after this phone call and reports that Trump described the virus as, and I quote, tricky. It goes through the air. You just breathe the air and that's how it's passed. So it's a very tricky one, and also

it's more deadly than even your strenuous flu. So at this point, it seems like it got through to him, this is important. This is far more dangerous than flu, it is deadly, it's airborne. Which is interesting, because he started off not too concerned, and then very quickly

he seemed very concerned. The task force that was set up met with governors of all the states and put it very bluntly this is coming we cannot escape it it's going to kill hundreds of thousands if not millions buckle up however trump that very same day had a very different message for the public it was all just going to go away. In fact, I'll quote him, when it gets a little warmer, it will miraculously go away. I think it's going to work out good. We only have 11 cases and they are all getting better.

I remember the first case in the UK being announced. Yeah. I remember the first case in the UK being announced. It was whilst I was ill with COVID. Yeah, I remember that. That's why I knew the figures were wrong. Yeah. I think it was 13 people officially had it in this country

when I obviously had it. You're obviously number 13 or 14. I was unable to move in bed, struggling to breathe, fun times. Of fact, of course, we were doing episodes. That's why we had a big break at that time. Yeah, we did a little. Yeah, if you go back and listen to our Edward N norton episode i was still very ill when we recorded that i just needed to do something to take my mind i mean i've recovered quite a bit but oh yeah fun times

anyway yeah so trump's saying we've got 11 cases they're all getting better it's fine now fauci who like i say he's fast becoming the public face of this virus he was also trying to reassure the public we have 13 people he was. There is a risk that this is going to become a global pandemic. Absolutely. But the risk is still relatively low, which again is interesting. I think there is a narrative that's been built up that Trump downplayed it and Fauci was there saying, no, it's terrible. No, actually, when you look into it, Trump and Fauci were saying almost the same thing. Fauci wasn't saying it's going to miraculously disappear, but they were both trying to reassure the public. Trump was doing it in his bombastic, hyperbolic way, though.

Behind the scenes, however, the administration by this point knew that this was coming. It's unclear at this point just how much Trump was just trying to keep people calm or how much he really believed them. Trump's opinion on the pandemic is hard to pin down. At this point, I have a feeling he knew that it was going to be bad and he was trying to reassure the public. That's probably true. Yeah, yeah. I mean, that one's... I might be wrong here. But at this very early stage where it's not really in the country.

Technically, it's in the country, but it's not really in the country technically it's in the country but it's not really in the country anyway through february the virus swept through europe there was no denying that this was turning global trump carried on his message that it would be fine now quote we have it very much under control the stock market's starting to look very good to me yeah which was just bizarre remember that one rumblings carry on just how serious it is, though it starts to leak through. Someone working for the CDC issued a warning that schools were probably going to have to

shut down and that everyday life is going to be upended. It's not a case of if, but when. Now, this surprised a lot of people. What, really? No, surely not. No. We had swine flu a few years ago. That didn't make a difference. I didn't tell you to a pig.

And then some in the right-wing media jumped on this warning that life was going to be ended as a leftist plot to undermine Trump and ruin the economy before the election. Of course, of course. That's what they thought. And so begins the fundamental problem with the United States' response to the pandemic. Because politically, the country was so divided, begins the fundamental problem with the United States response to the pandemic because politically the country was so divided it was only a matter of time before the pandemic became a political football with people picking sides. Now by the 26th of February Trump was still very vocal about

how the United States were going to be okay telling the public there were only 15 cases and soon it was going to be down to zero. He also announced that the vice president was going to take over the coronavirus task force and he said, and I quote, this is a flu, it's just like the flu. Be shocked to know that that 15 did not go down to zero. No. Within days of saying that, cases had started popping up all over the entire country. It's now clear it's in America, there's no stopping it. On the 29th of February, Fauci appeared on NBC and told the public that they did not need to change the way they were doing anything in their day-to-day lives. The risk is still low. We don't want panic. But the public was starting to get worried.

They could see by just going online what was happening in other countries that had been hit first. Italy, Spain. We're locking down at this point. By this point, definitely Italy. It hadn't really hit Britain yet it started. I don't think I'd quite got it at this point. If I remember, it was the very start of March is when I got it. So it's starting to hit Europe, but it had really hit Asia hard. So you could see what was going on in Asia. So people are starting to get worried.

Trump, who would always use the stock market as a way to gauge the country's feelings. For some weird reason, some people do that. Anyway, he was dismayed when he saw the stock market starting to plummet. He tweeted out that 37,000 people a year die of flu, and the country continued. Nothing has been shut down. Everyone can carry on with their lives. You don't need to worry. He pointed out that there's only been 22 deaths so far in this country and only 500 cases. It will go away. That last one was a quote at this time. He said that the next day the cases jumped by another 200. Inside the Oval Office, a meeting took place. Europe, by this point, is quickly being overrun. Scenes in Italy of people dying in hospital car parks because their quickly being overrun scenes in Italy of people dying in hospital car parks

because their hospitals were overrun this by the way is about when I get it because I remember lying in bed reading this and starting to actually get a little bit worried

I'd have to see this podcast by myself can you imagine that oh god could you imagine could you imagine the amounts of lies that are going to be damaged did you ever get it? Yes, I

got it. Did you get it in the end? You howled out longer than anyone else I knew. I got it last year. Yeah, when you were vaccined up to the eyeballs. And it wasn't too bad for me. I just felt like I had a cold. That was it. The joy of the vaccine. See if they

work. Yeah, I hope that. Anyway, inside the Oval Office, like I say they work. Yeah, hold that. Anyway, inside the Oval Office, like I say, there's a meeting taking place. It was decided, let's shut down travel from Europe. The Secretary of Treasury,

Mnuchin, I've not talked about him yet, but he is a Bond villain. Just Google him and, in fact, do it now. Google him, Mnuchin,

spout M-N-U, Mnuchin. Steve, Stephen Mnuchin. Yeah. Secretary of Treasury. Holding money. Type thatnuchin. Steve, Stephen Mnuchin. Secretary of the Treasury. Holding money. Type that in as well. I bet the picture will come up. It's him and his wife. Oh, wow.

Like a big sheet of... Yeah, yeah. That's the one. That's the one. Yeah. Bond villain and the Bond villain girl. She looks a bit like Cruella. And that is horrible to Jewish people. Their parents say, you shouldn't do that. She does look like Cruella, though. If anyone thinks Jamie's being harsh there,

just Google Steve Mnuchin holding money and the picture comes up and you will very quickly go, oh, yeah. She's there with an interesting expression with her leather gloves holding a large sheet of money whilst Mnuchin is, yeah, Bond villain. And anyway, he said no, no, no, no, no, we are not stopping travel from Europe. Everyone will

go bankrupt. But it was decided, no, we do kind of need to do this. It's at this point that COVID-19 has officially declared a pandemic by the who. Who? The who always. The who. The who. Very famous the who very famous band roger roger roger adultery yeah he declared it for some reason he's just he's he's very interested

he's i don't know why but over the years people have listened to him a lot um i can only assume that he knows his stuff so anyway ro Roger says that it is official pandemic. So there you go. Perhaps this was starting to get through to Trump because when he gave his next speech, he seemed very worn down and despondent. One reporter described it as unsettling to see him this way, which was odd.

The Dow Jones fell off a cliff, which is sad. And then Trump declared a national emergency, like a real one this time. Shops were rushed toilet paper for some reason was targeted for panic shopping i remember that happening as well that was weird i did not buy a single toilet roll you just joined the panic shopping thing we just bought them normally i was very proud of ourselves yeah there's a shop near me they just sold them yeah same normal price. I'm saying this.

I was going nowhere at the time. I was feeling very sorry for myself. But, yeah. Anyway, schools started shutting down, as did sports competitions. Entertainment venues start shutting down. The Coronavirus Task Force, which now included Jared Kushner, by the way, alongside Fauci and many others, suggested to Trump a 15-day countrywide shutdown to stop the spread.

Trump sought advice from Lindsey Graham, who thought that idea was crazy, until Lindsey Graham was then shown the predictions for the death count if things continued. 2.2 million. Wow. Oh, says Lindsey Graham, I think maybe you best shut down the country. Yeah, because there's exponential growth, which is, you know. Yeah. Unfortunately, as the advice was being drafted,

the need to be physically apart from each other was left out. All the rest was in stay at home, work from home, avoid gathering in more than 10, but the stay six feet away from each other was decided that was too complex. So that was chucked out. Okay. Problem with this, the staying six feet away from each other is the best thing in all the advice.

Yeah. It's better than any of the others. Maybe if they'd have said two meters, it would have made more sense. There's fewer numbers. There's only two of them. They're six feet. They're weird in America.

Yeah. But no, they didn't go for that. They went for that in this country, by the way, if you're in America and you're listening. And no, it was not easy to implement. And it meant a lot of people stared at you a lot as you you're listening. And no, it was not easy to implement. And it meant a lot of people stared at you a lot as you were walking near them to make sure you didn't get too close. And the queue lines into like supermarkets and stuff.

It was hilarious. Experts were getting very frustrated by this point. The 15 days to stop the spread was being treated by the White House as if this was the perfect solution to the problem. 100%. We'll do it for 15 days and that's it. COVID is gone. But this was ridiculous to the problem. 100%. We'll do it for 15 days and that's it. COVID is gone. But this was ridiculous to the experts because they knew. Dr. Redfield attempted to tell anyone who

would listen that, no, no, this is going to be years before we can control this. Not days. Years. No one wanted to hear that. So he was ignored. Now, I remember reading something like this around this time because I read somewhere, it's like, this is like the Spanish flu. It's going to take years to get over. And I went, oh, yeah, that kind of makes sense. So I remember repeating that to people. And they all looked at me as if they wanted to kill me and went, don't be ridiculous. I can't cope with this much longer.

Yeah. No one wants to hear it. Because at this point as well, because it's still on March, it hadn't even reached the peak. Oh, we were at the very start, very start at this point. Anyway, Trump is starting to get frustrated by the criticism he was getting. He reminded people often at this

time that he'd shut down travel from China almost straight away. And if he hadn't done that, there would have been thousands more deaths at this point. Now, not really, because by the time he shut down from China, it was already elsewhere in the world. So it wouldn't really have made much difference. But in Trump's head, it did. So he was getting frustrated. He started doing press conferences daily, something that he said

helped, saying to one reporter, and I'll quote here, frankly, since I started doing the news conferences, it's all turned around. And then he boasted about the viewing figures of his conferences. Quote, they get unbelievable ratings. Right. Yeah. Not everyone was convinced that Trump talking every day about the pandemic was a good thing. Because it was around this time that he promoted the use of hydroxychloroquine. The horse drug.

If I said that correctly, yes, sort of. It's slightly more complex than that, but what was known as the horse drug in the wider internet soon afterwards. Anyway, use this as a way to protect the virus. There was no scientific evidence that it did whatsoever. It could be dangerous. At least

one person died after using the drug. So, their death's on Trump's hand. For quite some time, Trump supporters all raved about the drug. I remember a lot of things on Twitter. I use it all the time and I've not caught COVID. I remember a lot of those botty accounts. Yeah, I mean, there were

genuine studies went into it. They were looking into anything at that point. Eventually, it was a study in Oxford finally conclusively went, no, it makes no difference whatsoever. So there you go. Anyway, so that's depressing, isn't it? Less depressing, he also suggested injecting bleach.

Mm. Sort of. He said putting antiseptic into the body or something. Right, so the whole he said you should inject bleach has what it's been morphed into. And it's what democrats now use to attack trump and it is one of those things it's like what did he actually say that you know what i'm gonna quote the whole thing verbatim drink bleach drink bleach you

must drink bleach it'll save your life oh we did say it just just whilst i'm saying this, just imagine a doctor. Yes, I remember her face. An expert. She's looking down at the floor. Yeah, sat to one side, just slowly crumpling in on herself. She realises the president is saying this. Anyway, and I quote, bit of a lengthy one. A question that probably some of you are thinking,

it's weird quoting Trump because I don't want to do his voice. You can't though. But not saying it in his voice seems really weird anyway give him give him a clipped english accent a question that probably some of you are thinking of is if you are totally into that world which i find to be interesting so supposedly we hit the body with a tremendous whether it's ultraviolet or just very powerful light. And I think you said that it hasn't been checked, but you're going to test it. And then I said, supposing you brought in the light inside the body, which you can do either through the skin or some other way. And I think you said you're going to test that too. Sounds interesting, right?

And then I see disinfectant where it knocks it out in one minute. And is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside or almost a cleaning? Because you see it gets into the lungs and it does a tremendous number in the lungs. So it will be interesting to check that. So that you're going to have to use medical doctors with. But sounds interesting to me. So we'll see. But the whole concept of the light,

the way that it kills in one minute, that's pretty powerful. I'm so impressed you managed to read that. It's really weird hearing Trump's words without his voice. It makes you realise just how rambly it is. I mean, the way to get sunlight into the body is definitely through the Second Amendment. That would help with that. Yeah, I see disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute.

And is there a way we could do something like that by injection inside, almost a cleaning? I mean, it is pretty much saying, can we inject some kind of disinfectant? But I still don't think he meant it in the way that it's been portrayed. No, I think he was saying, look, if we know we can kill it with this thing, why can't we get the thing in that and then put it in our bodies? I don't think he said go and inject bleach.

However, it is still rambling nonsense where he is clearly spitballing ridiculous ideas to experts who know far more about it and he is acting as if he is some kind of genius who is coming up with some great ideas he's full-on dunning kruger isn't it yeah it is nonsense ideas that i would expect a teenager to be able to come up with and to be honest i think that's slightly more damning than the go and inject bleach i mean he he did say afterwards he was joking well he clearly wasn't joking he was going through ideas yeah it's can we get sunlight in the body can we use ultraviolet light can we inject something into the body that will kill? Yeah.

But also the whole turning to the doctor and just saying, so, yeah, so you're going to have to check that. And you go, oh, yeah. Anyway, if you've not seen the video, Google the video, especially find the version where the camera slowly zooms into the advisor on the side, because that's hilarious. Anyway, Trump also by this time was getting angry at the pandemic and how the press were reporting it. He was being criticised from a large portion of the press

for not being ready enough. And he started calling the coronavirus the China virus. I remember that. Saying it's all their fault. Soon after this, he talked to Xi again, who asked Trump to stop calling it the China virus, please. Xi told him that China had done the best that it had done at stopping the spread when social distancing was enforced.

That's the key part. That's what we've learnt. But he also then openly lied to Trump, saying that China had no new cases and the only cases in the country were being brought in from the outside. So that's what gave his confidence then. The problem here is Trump's hearing another world leader lie to him. Trump knows he's lying.

But she also said something very sensible at the same time. Social distancing is the key. Well, Trump heard that, heard the lie and just discounted all of it. China, a bunch of liars. Yeah. Over the next week, Trump called it with... Sorry. Trump called it...

It's so weird how he says China. He called it with the anti-China talk. He started to be more vague. Instead of calling it the China virus, he said, you can call it a germ, you can call it a flu, you can call it a virus,

you know it can have many names, I'm not sure anyone knows what it is. Cut to the viral just get off of goodness sake pretty much pretty much yeah uh interestingly he also privately at this time was telling members of the gop to stop openly blaming china what i'll quote trump here you can't do that and the reason why they couldn't do that is because words could cause wars. Trump thought that the whole Freedom Caucus, Marjorie Taylor Greene, etc, etc, his supporters in Congress were going too far, which I found fascinating.

That's like blaming the fire for the spark. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Isn't that really interesting? That after he talked to the president of China, he then went to some of his biggest supporters who were saying, no, China did this on purpose and said, no, no, no, no, call it a bit. That's too far.

To be honest, it was really reassuring to read that part. And it's like, oh, look, that's a glimmer of sanity. Self-awareness. Excellent. I'll take anything. I will take any glimmers of sanity whatsoever. By this point, 2,000 confirmed deaths in the United States, which made it the country with the most official deaths at this time.

The 15 days to stop the spread drew closer, and Trump really liked the idea of opening up the country for Easter. So we won't do the full 15 days. It's close. We're closed down, but if we open up for Easter, that'll be a big celebration. That'll be nice, won't it? The expression you've got and the arm waving you've got right now is essentially what all the all the experts in the room would do the eat out to help out which then had to be

undone and and then they brought in at christmas yeah go and see your families it's fine second wave january 2021 yeah i don't want to get into all of that now for our american listeners because our british listeners will know what you're talking about. But for our American listeners, essentially, we closed down hard, fast, but then we just opened up again and then went, oh dear, and then closed down hard and fast and then just opened up again. Timings never seemed right. Just, oh, it was a mess. It was a mess in this country. But anyway, we're talking about the mess in America. Fauci objected. No, no, no, no. These 15 days, it's not a case of let's just do... We need to be going longer, not less.

This is a non-starter. I'll quote him here. We need to go for 30 more days on top. Trump was not happy by this, but he turned to another expert on the task force and said, do you agree with Fauci? And the other expert went, yeah. I think you have to 60.

Yeah. So Trump, To give him credit Listened to the experts Even though he wanted to open Went okay Was closed for even longer then So he gave the okay To extend the lockdown

Oh This intro just occurred to me We always call it lockdown In this country But just thinking Every time I read about it It was called the shutdown Maybe they call it

The shutdown in America Well I'm on lockdown Yeah Anyway Neither here nor there. Anyway, saying that he said, okay, we're doing it but he said he hoped the experts were right. Trump asked about

predictions. Where's this going? And he was told that they might just get away with 100 to 200,000 deaths. That sounds clinically awful. Yeah. Trump had been told this many times by this point, and eventually it seems to have sunk in,

and he started to say that if they can keep it at around 100,000 deaths, they could celebrate and say they've done a good job. He was still daily telling the public that it weren't, and I quote, Go away. You know it. You know it's going to go away. We are going to have a great victory. And then there was a problem for the CDC. They were recommending face masks as a way for reducing the spread of the airborne virus.

Almost all other countries in the world were putting into place rules about covering their mouths in public. Airborne virus, common sense. Very few countries had any problems convincing the public that this was sensible. However, America have a history when it comes to individual freedoms.

Tanning people that they had to wear something was, according to some, un-American. I mean, after all, it's not like they have rules to say that people have to do things like wear clothes in public. Oh no, they do have that, don't they? They do have rules that say you have to wear certain things in America.

Oh, when you're in a car, you have to wear a seatbelt. Yeah, anyway. One such person who did not like the idea to wear certain things in America. Oh, when you're in a car, you have to wear a seatbelt. Yeah. Anyway, one such person who did not like the idea of wearing a mask merely due to how it looked was the president. Yes, because there's like one video of him wearing one and he takes it off. I remember seeing that. It was a factory tour. Technically, there's a couple, but yeah. Trump announces we're going to have to all wear masks.

But he then says, and I quote, this is voluntary. I don't think I'll be doing it. You look shocked. Well, no, I'm not shocked. Just frustration. Not shocked, but frustrated. Yeah.

The president said to the country, as the advice about the masks came through, that he wasn't going to follow the rules. And just like that, it became the biggest political football of the pandemic so far, and stays the biggest one until the vaccines start coming through. All of a sudden, in a sign that shows just how crazy the United States had come, the country was split between people who were Trump supporters who refused to wear a mask,

and those who realised that it was a mild inconvenience that ultimately saved lives. So nonsensical was the argument against masks, it was no time at all that conspiracy theories popped up to justify why people would not wear them. Things like wearing masks for an extended period of time would cause you brain damage due to the lack of oxygen. Yeah, like all those brain-dead surgeons that come out after a 15-hour operation. Yeah. Now, I remember thinking about this a lot whilst it was all going on.

I think the problem here was always the messaging. Because masks don't stop the spread, but they're better than nothing. And in the numbers we're talking, better than nothing will save literally thousands and thousands of lives. Now, I think if that was the message, people maybe might have been able

to get a bit on board with look after your fellow man people saying no i'm not wearing a mask they don't work that's not coming from nowhere because if you've got something in front of your face and you're breathing the air does go around the edges it's not the air it's it's it's the water vapor yeah yeah it's not completely sealed it's not completely sealed however it's better than nothing. It's much, much better than nothing. It is the best thing that we could do at the time, and it would save thousands and thousands of lives. That message

never really seemed to come through that I personally saw. It was always these don't work, or these are the perfect way of stopping coronavirus. And the actual evidence backs up what you're saying as well, because i've got i've got a list of literally of scientific studies that show that it's not perfect but it does limit

the amounts of viral virology whatever exactly the same things because i've been looking into these uh social distancing more effective than the masks definitely but why not both why not do everything that's a mild inconvenience to save thousands of lives? Anyway, getting off track slightly, but you have got a huge portion of the population now refusing to wear masks, largely due to the fact that the president refused. So anyway, why did Trump refuse? Well, you say it's because the way he looks. Looks weak. I'll quote him. I don't know. Somehow sitting in the oval office behind that beautiful resolute desk, somehow I don't see myself doing it. It was the image. He thought it made him look weak. Remember, Trump is always fearful of people who are ill,

people who look in any way disabled or different or weak. A mask to him shows weakness and he doesn't want to look weak. I mean, it'd be awful if he caught the virus. We'll get into that. Anyway, by the start of April, Trump's mood was really bad. He was getting constantly attacked for something that he didn't see as his fault. He saw the media as being out to bring him down and there

was no end in sight. He was being advised by the likes of Lindsey Graham that he needed more mobilisation. Seriously, you need to put someone in charge of testing. You need to put someone in charge of testing. You need to put someone in charge of the vaccines. You need to put someone in charge of the mobilization, etc., etc., etc. Let's get a clear structure on this. There wasn't any.

So far, Jared Kushner was in charge of pretty much everything. So that, by the way, sorry, I think I've mentioned his name a couple of times. I might not have mentioned who he is. He is Ivanka Trump's husband. He is Trump's son-in-law. And in Trump's eyes, Jared Kushner just gets things done. So at the moment,

Jared Kushner was in charge of the coronavirus. He was also in charge of bringing peace to the Middle East at this point. So somebody with no experience of politics. And also the border wall and pretty much everything. There was a running joke on the fact that Jared Kushner apparently was just going to deal with everything. You could argue that he did not

have time to cover everything, but Trump wouldn't listen. He didn't want to bring in other people. It's always how he's operated. Small keep it in the family. He carried on still with the positives publicly tweeting in all caps one day around this time. No, we'll be on there.

This is light at the end of the tunnel. Is it, Rob? Is it? That was it. That's all it was. Light at the end of the tunnel. There was no basis for it. Nothing had happened.

It's giving hope. It's hope. There was one thing that happened. It did occur to me looking up at the dates. Because the British Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, had caught COVID and was in intensive care. So maybe Trump heard that and went up at the dates because the british prime minister boris johnson had caught covid and was in intensive care so maybe trump heard that and went light at the end of the tunnel yeah maybe they got on though didn't they i could only assume i could only assume johnson got it in one of the many parties he was having at the time he was walking around hospitals shaking covid patients hands hands. He openly admitted to this.

Yes, walking, shaking, blah, blah, blah. And he caught COVID. Yeah, he did not believe. He just didn't believe. Genuinely didn't believe the COVID he would ever be able to catch it, and he didn't believe it was real. And for our American listeners, you might hear a tinge of anger

in my voice whilst I talk about him, but the whole Partygate stuff that he did, one of the things that frustrates me more than anything any Prime Minister's tinge of anger in my head voice whilst i talk about him but the whole party gate stuff that he did one of the things that frustrates me more than anything any prime minister's ever done my final grandparent died uh i've matched the dates up to when there was a party at downing street oh yeah yeah i if we ever get onto the uh the british prime ministers oh i can't wait let's let's start with let's start in the future and work backwards. We'll go backwards. We'll go backwards. Never done that before.

We're just somehow trying. So this thing came in 30 years ago. Yeah. Welcome, new listeners. Listen to a rant about Boris Johnson. Anyway, the death count by this point is 10,000. We're on the 6th of April. By the 11th of April, it had jumped to 20,000.

Exponential. Yeah, that's not good yeah we're in full swing now trump starts blaming you've guessed it the democrats and the reporters it's the democratic governor's fault they are trying to make him look bad by reporting too many deaths didn't um i'm maybe misremembering, but weren't the Democrat-controlled states actually better at keeping people alive? Oh, yeah. Okay, right. Absolutely.

Statistically, yes. But I'll talk about that again in a minute. Anyway, near the end of April, Trump wanted to open up the country again. He'd had enough of this lockdown. Fauci objected. No, seriously, our death rates are doubling in a week. But Trump pointed out the economy will fall over unless we open up.

And with no economy, no country, it will be even worse. There is a mark there. OK, replied the task force. You're saying we've got to open it up. But if we open up, it's got to be well planned. It's got to be phased and it's got to be organized. Otherwise, we will open up and the lockdown will be for nothing because the virus will just flood back in.

Trump replied, and I quote, I hear you, but I don't think that's going to happen. I think it will be fine. It'd be lovely to be like a minus optimist, wouldn't it? At the start of May, with over 70,000 deaths at this point, Trump then started to talk about vaccines. Now, at the beginning, Trump was very positive about vaccines. He told Bob Woodward that the coronavirus would only go away once the vaccine was developed.

He told Woodward that they were very close to getting one. But it was being slowed down because they didn't want to inject everyone and then discover later that it was poison. Makes sense. That was a couple of months prior. Now he seemed to have changed his tune slightly. Our quote. I feel about vaccines like I feel about the tests. This is going to go away without the vaccines.

At some point, it will just go away by itself. If we had a vaccine, it would be helpful. I think he's saying that because it costs money and he's going to have to give it out for free, which he did do, to be fair. I think he is so convinced it's just going to go to give it out for free, which he did do, to be fair. I think he is so convinced it's just going to go away. He's just, I don't know. Anyway, this, as you can imagine, got a lot of pushback. A week later, Trump made a statement in the Rose Garden.

They were going to start Operation Warp Speed. I remember that. Oh, yeah. To be a fly on the wall when they came up with that name. High fives all around. Star Trek link, yes. to be a fly on the wall when they came up with that name high fives all around link yes uh they were going to lead the world in pushing out the vaccine at this time over 80 companies worldwide were rushing to get their first this was a global effort but america were gonna lead the way damn

it america isn't interesting though it's like a massive pandemic and even though the companies are doing probably for a very self-centred reason for you know money but that drive to really want to do something does something

it's interesting oh yeah yeah space race for example space race yeah exactly things get done so good speech yeah we're gonna do a vaccine

yeah warp speed we're gonna lead the way which country was it developed in first before the end of the decade we'll have a man on the surface of a vaccine All that kind of stuff

In fact, I'll quote him There has never been a vaccine project like this in history He said And that's the end That's the end of the speech And that's when all his advisors And Sensible Samuel And Lionel the Lemon

All just held their breaths Don't say anything else don't say anything else just walk away from the podium walk away from the podium and i'd like to think trump started to walk away and then pulled a colombo just just one more thing and i'll quote him and i want to make something clear vaccine or no vaccine we're back in many cases they don't have a vaccine, and a virus and a flu comes, and you fight through it. So after announcing that they were leading the world for the fight for a vaccine, he then immediately just says, but it doesn't matter if we don't have one. Anyway, deaths are surging. Deaths have been surging non-stop. We're now May the 26th,

over 600,000 deaths. We've gone way beyond the if we can keep it at 100,000, we've done a good job. But something finally happened that took the virus off the front pages. Hooray, Jamie. At last, it's been nothing but death, death, virus, virus,

death, death, death. What? What? What possibly? What wonderful story takes it off the front pages? Oh, is this the Black Lives Matter thing? A man called George Floyd was murdered in broad daylight by a police officer. Videos of him pleading for his life hit the internet, and the country, already feeling on edge to say the least, started to vent that anger.

The biggest and most important movement that came out of this was Black Lives Matter, a movement attempting to end racist institutions that are rife in America. Although there were a lot of Americans who were just angry with the world at this point, or with the president, or just generally. So it wasn't only Black Lives Matter. There was just a lot of bad feeling in the country. It's almost like just releasing the pressure valve at this point. Yes, exactly.

Angry protests erupted almost immediately, overnight, in over 2,000 cities and towns. It's the biggest civil upheaval since the Vietnam and the Civil War protests. A vast, vast majority of these protests were peaceful full of full of anger at the situation of what's happened about racism about life about how unfair the pandemic is but peaceful but a significant portion were not peaceful it's true They were a very small portion, but small is not the same as significant, and it was significant and small.

A significant small portion were not peaceful, and the police and the rioters clashed hard. Right-wing media painted the whole Black Lives Matter movement as a domestic terrorist group, showing footage of looting and burning buildings. Now, there was never any proof that these looters and vandals were in any way linked to the Black Lives Matter movement. No, they're opportunists.

Some people just like to smash things when they've got a chance. Do you remember when the riots happened in this country in 2012? No, was it 2012? These are huge riots. No, it wasn't. Later than that. Later than that. 2015, 2014, something like that.

Anyway, yeah, it started with a very good reason. A young black boy was mistreated and killed by the police. But it soon turned into just people smashing up shops because people like smashing up things. It had nothing to do with the protests whatsoever. This is what happens with riots. It is what rioting is. It's not organised.

It's chaotic. Because they're in control and they're not coordinated. So it's just people join in, do what they want. So there was lots of rioting in the streets. There were lots of unhappy people in America and people expressing that in different ways. In Washington DC, a church had been set alight opposite the White House.

Oh. Is this what the... Trump. Yeah. Trump, by this point, by the way, had built a wall of large fences around the White House. Trump genuinely feared

that he was going to be attacked by the people. National security were there as well. Oh, yeah, yeah. You saw some amazing pictures. So at one point, he was ushered into the bunker below the White House. This hit the news, and he was criticised for being a coward. And this, possibly more than anything else in his whole presidency,

really got to him. He was being portrayed as a coward on the news. I think that's unfair, because any president at the time would have been put into the bunker because they're that close to the White House. He was following the advice of the Secret Service. Exactly. It's nothing to do with Trump. Yeah.

If any other president went down to the bunker, I don't think they would have been called a coward. But I think it's Trump's rhetoric and bluster to then go down. They knew what to say to hurt him. It seemed hypocritical. And people knew what to say to hurt him. And it worked. It really got under his skin.

So because he was very annoyed about this criticism, he did what seemed sensible to him. He ordered the 82nd Airborne into the Capitol to take out the protesters. Yeah, I remember this. Oh. What? It was explained to him that it's not really the job of the airborne to do this, sir. We've got other forces for this. I mean, we've got troops forces for this i mean we've got

troops in washington we've got the national guard um we i mean are you expected to land harrier jump jets in the middle of the the precinct i i don't know yeah so instead he ordered police dressed up in full riot gear to show a presence. These are the pictures I mentioned a second ago, just phenomenal pictures in a scary way. These forces were lined up outside the Lincoln Memorial, pictures that looked like they were created for a film set in a fascist dystopia version of America. It just was so alien to see, and one of those how the hell did we get to this moment kind of things. So, but that wasn't enough. Trump needed to show he was tough himself.

So he ordered a crowd of entirely peaceful protesters to be tear gassed and then headed across the road to the church so he could take a photo of it outside the church. And this is the one that had the fire in it. That's why he went there. And then he delivered a speech. and I will quote him here. All Americans were rightly sickened and revolted by the brutal death of George Floyd,

but we cannot allow the righteous cries of the protesters to be drowned out by an angry mob. Whoever wrote that was on full on that day. Any president could have said that. The words ring true. It's good. The death of George Floyd was awful. People are protesting, understandably. Angry mobs need to not

ruin those protests. Death's bad. Protesting, fair enough. Smashing crap up, bad. Yeah. Those words, absolutely fine. The trouble is, presumably, he said this over the coughing, splutters and crying of the tear gas peaceful protesters that he trampled over in order to give the speech yeah also he completely tricked the

heads of the military who were dressed up in like military outfits um and they ended up being swept up in this because it wasn't pre-planned and they found themselves suddenly standing with a president delivering uh these messages dressed in their fatigues so it seemed like a military yeah they were not happy with that a lot of angry people in the military anyway i'd love to cover the black lives matter movement more i know i have not done it justice there's a lot going on there now's not the time to talk about it but i will say it divided america very bitterly unfortunately because you get the black lives matter and they all lives matter but still to this day i did i looked it up uh to this day United America very bitterly, unfortunately. Yes, because you get the Black Lives Matter and the All Lives Matter. But still to this day, I looked it up, to this day,

40% of Americans think that the Black Lives Matter movement is a force for bad in the country. Force for bad? That doesn't sound right. But you know what I mean. It actively harms the country. Yeah. 40% of people in America think a movement calling for the end of racism is harmful to the country. Yeah.

I mean, well, because they're in denial as well. It's like, it's racism. Not a thing in my white ivory white man tower. It's fine. I don't experience racism, so therefore it doesn't happen. So let's move on, shall we? As the bodies piled higher in the country the election period started it is one of those things where you really want to go back to

the election before trump cuts gets in and people are going well how bad would it be and you just want to cut to a point in the future of me saying the phrase as the bodies piled higher in the country, the election period started. Yeah, anyway, Trump wanted to do one of his rallies. He'd not been able to campaign for ages. Remember, he'd never stopped campaigning. It's really weird. Now, he can't do his rallies. He's not been able to do them because the country's on lockdown.

But he was getting very fed up with the fact he can't do them. So he decides, you know what, I'm just going gonna go ahead and do one anyway so he does he's gonna have a rally in oklahoma it fails miserably now long-time listeners of this program will know that occasionally especially in the roman podcast we occasionally have a dig at students oh bloody students but i take my hat off to all students. This is brilliant. It's so good. Involved in the organization shown here, because a whole bunch of students in Oklahoma

had organized and reserved large numbers of tickets for the Trump rally, never intending to show up. The rally was a huge embarrassment for Trump. The stadium was over half empty. But Trump, remember, he's not having a good time at this point. He is on the edge. He always seemed, apparently, a moment away from screaming at the people. So at this point, he just starts screaming at people.

Anyone involved in the organisation of this event, he starts shouting at. I should never have done that f***ing rally, he shouts, and then called the organiser a f***ing rally, he shouts, and then called the organiser a f***ing moron. He's not having a good time. Soon after this, he asked one advisor why he was not doing as well. Why are my poll numbers up? What's going on? Why aren't I as popular as I should be? The reply came that people were tired of all the chaos. Trump snapped back. Oh, they're tired. They're f***ing tired., well I'm f***ing tired too.

Which apparently made the Oval Office at the time go silent. Trump never admits weakness. And there he did to a room full of people that he was too tired. Anyway, he was about to get more tired because in October he finally caught coronavirus. Yeah he did. The White House was doing nothing at all whatsoever to stop the spread, as most working with the president had doubts how real the virus was by this point, after months of Fox News pumping out anti-pandemic propaganda. 800,000 people dead.

Yeah, it's not a thing. Nah, it's not a thing. Anyway, it was only a matter of time before he got it. Fortunately for Trump, coronavirus affects different people very differently. It's one of the odd things about it. Some people get it, and it's like a mild cold. Some people get it, it literally kills them. Old, fit,

not much correlation. Obviously it's some, but not as much correlation as you would think. And Trump got lucky. He seemed to get one of the versions that didn't hit him too hard. He was to get one of the versions that didn't hit him too hard. He was also rushed to Walter Reed Hospital and given literally the best treatment in the world,

including a cocktail of drugs that would keep him on his feet. Oh, is this where he was sitting in that weird room and he's writing something and it's still working and it just looks a bit, like, slightly out of it? Oh, I don't know about that, but possibly. I'd say yes. Anyway, compared to many, like, slightly out of it. Oh, I don't know about that, but possibly. I'll say yes. Anyway, compared to many, Trump made a very rapid recovery.

I mean, I remember when he got it and thinking, oh, I mean, he's old, is this going to... And then I saw him a few days later standing up and just thinking, I got it worse than that. It's not fair. Weeks I spent lying in bed. What the hell? Yeah.

Anyway, Trump made a relatively rapid recovery. And, hey, he beat COVID. Strong man. Big man. Tears running down his face. No, not him. That's other people. Anyway, the election comes in, and I'm just not going to cover it at all.

It was a very strange election. The country was very restricted in its movement. There was a lot of divide. Very different campaigning styles. Trump did rallies. Biden, according to the Republicans, campaigned from his basement, which is unfair, but he did not do any big events at all. Anyway, election night finally comes along. The White House was jubilant to begin with. Trump did very well in many of the first states called. But there was an undercurrent of worry because those who actually understood how elections worked realised ahead of time that Biden was going to fall behind at the start and then catch up due to a combination of reasons.

States that tended to call early happened to be, this time around, Trump-supporting states. And also, postal voting. Democrats tended to use postal posting more anyway but with the pandemic democrats use postal voting a lot more and postal votes are always counted at the end so you suddenly get a big dump of votes right at the end editing up here just jumping on to say it is obviously more complex than this, but as per usual I've just simplified it a little bit to make it easier to understand.

This is the gist though, really. The Democrats had more postal votes. Those got counted towards the end. They don't always have to wait till the end to count them, but for various reasons they were coming in later this time round. Which is why you hear of the sudden dump of votes at the end, which some people try and turn into a conspiracy, rather than it just being the way that elections usually run. Anyway, back to the episode.

Trump and his team had got ahead of this by stating several times during the election that the only way Biden could win is if the Democrats cheated with postal voting somehow. Yeah, he's completely premeditated. We are going to cheat. This conversations have been recorded. Bannon and Trump talking about if we lose, we will just say we've won and see if we can cling on somehow. They full on plan this this anyway um then 11 30

fox news of all channels called arizona for biden i remember this happening uh yeah this was awful news for trump this pretty much guaranteed a loss sounds quite a narrow margin as well as well yeah yeah he couldn't afford to lose arizona mean, it technically wasn't over, but this was very bad news. Trump started shouting at various family members and aides, get onto Fox News and retract the calling of Arizona. Fox refused. No. It's true. Who do you think we are?

You don't own us. We're Fox News. We made you. The race ended up being very close, but it was obviously going in Biden's favour. Biden spoke just past midnight, predicting victory very confidently, but he didn't declare victory because he technically hadn't won yet, and he was very careful about that.

Trump gave a speech declaring it, and I quote, a fraud on the American people. Then he privately, after this speech, turned to one of his aides and asked, how the hell did we lose to Joe Biden? So he knew he lost. Brilliant Biden? So he knew he lost. Brilliant.

Of course he knew he lost. Yes. Over the next few days, two things happened. One, the votes came in and it became very clear that Biden had won. Two, Trump talked to more people. Those who told him the truth were brushed to one side. Don't want to talk to you. Those who lied to him and said he'd actually won were pulled closer

by telling me what I want to hear. Very quickly, a new group of advisors were pulled into Trump's inner circle and his previous advisors were pushed out. And Trump, in a mini little real world echo chamber, started to genuinely believe he had actually won. Even still now. One, yeah, to genuinely believe he had actually won. Even still now. One of his chief supporters in the administration said, and I quote, the crazies are taking over. This was from Pompeo.

He's right there in the inner circle. Chief of the crazies was Giuliani. Giuliani's back. I love the interview. He's doing an interview in a car park that I think he talked about last time and he got the new oh sorry I'm not going to go

into any detail because we covered it in the breakdown but yeah it is just hilarious absolutely hilarious yeah Giuliani convinced Trump

that he could fight the courts and he would win so yeah the hilarious absolutely brilliant four seasons event took place which trump apparently was very angry about made him look like an idiot to be fair i would be angry

as well so it made him look like an idiot because it made him look like an idiot i mean it there you are saying no no they're trying to steal this from me. I'm the legitimate president. Oh, I can't organise a press conference. My chief lawyer is now standing outside a landscaping company in a car park. That's funny. Oh, by the way, stood next to someone who was claiming that he'd seen voter fraud. They've managed to find someone.

Yeah, turned out that person had a long history of sexual assault. Excellent. I mean, if we're being fair, if we're being impartial, that has nothing to vote for, Rob. It has nothing to... You're absolutely right.

Yeah. Anyway, a 10-series podcast could talk about the next two months and maybe just about break it down so it could be understood. I'm just not... I'm not doing it. We all lived through it. we were all there i i got

i got my wife because i was just it started happening and it's like are you talking about january 6th oh i'm not there yet i'm not there that i'm on the build-up but yeah but oh yeah we'll get to that in a moment and we're not far off it yeah'm going to sum up the build-up to January the 6th as a lot of stuff went down. Yeah. A lot of it was probably highly illegal. And I'm sure we're going to be finding out more and more about it over the next couple of decades or so. But highlights. Trump phoned up and put pressure on governors to find votes.

Yes. That allowed him to win. There's a phone call recording. One of these. It's Arizona. Yeah. One of these was recorded. Georgia. Sorry. It's Arizona. Yeah, one of these was recorded. Georgia.

Georgia, sorry. I'll stop. I'm getting very excited because I remember this so clearly. Sorry. It's fine. You get excited. I can help now on the podcast. You know things.

Yeah, but no, Arizona was part of this as well. Absolutely right. This is, yeah, there is evidence that he was trying to get people to find votes for him i mean this is slam dunk obviously illegal that trial has yet to take place it's starting up but oh it's being slowed down to a crawl and it is not going to happen before the election yeah there's very recently the last two weeks wasn't it they said yeah yeah it's not going to happen before the election yeah there's very recently the last two weeks wasn't it they said yeah yeah it's not going to happen before the election so i i get legally why it had to be slowed down because he's in a current court case so it kind of makes no that that has that has no bearing you can do two concurrently that is fine the slowing down literally is there are people

who are trying to slow it down that's just democracy law isn't it so good yes yeah anyway trump's legal team used every available legal route open to them to contest the election uh true story here i tried to quickly google just how many cases there were i know off the top of my head that there was i don't know it's more than 50 less than 100 cases and i know that all but one got chucked out immediately. But I thought, well, let's go find out the exact number. We are a podcast with facts, after all. So I did a quick Google.

Couldn't find it for ages. Because how do you Google that? Trump legal cases election. Absolutely drownded out by all his other legal cases. These ones aren't even a blip. Yeah, found it eventually. Just over 60 cases were put forward, all of them thrown out the courts immediately

for being absolutely nonsense, apart from one, and that was just a technicality. It was nothing to do with the actual thing that the case was about. It just meant that it got seen for a bit before it was declined. Anyway, rallies also were held. The slogan Stop the Steal was created. Conspiracy theories were abound. Good news, though.

A vaccine, by the way, has just been discovered to be 90% effective. So that's nice. Operation Warp Speed. How nice. Anyway, back to the attempted use of patient. The head of the CIA at this point talked to the Joint Chiefs of Staff, saying, and I quote, we are on the way to a right-wing coup. The whole thing is insanity.

He's acting like a six-year-old with a tantrum. Yeah. The reply from the Chief of Staff comes, we are going to be steady. So in other words, we're just going to try and weather the storm, going to weather the storm. We are going to be steady. So in other words, we're just going to try and weather the storm. We're going to weather the storm. We're going to let him have his tantrum. He'll be gone soon.

When the head of your intelligence agency is talking to the heads of the military about a right-wing coup in your country, you know you're in serious trouble. And that's where we have got to. Those close to Trump, not in denial, started asking Trump, how long is this going to go on? People like his family. People like his advisors who weren't in the crazies. It's like, you need to think of your legacy.

What are we going to do? What is the Trump legacy? Do we step back and then you run again? Do you step back and you just become one of the most popular figures in history forever? What do you want to do, Trump? They're trying to get him away from this idea that he can still be president.

One made the mistake of mentioning the first part of the Biden administration around this time. Trump lost it and screamed in the man's face the first part of the Biden administration, exclamation mark, question mark, exclamation mark, question mark. Yeah, just absolutely lost it. He is furious, and he is convinced by this point that he did really win. So that initial how did we lose to Biden has gone now. He's had too many people telling him that he's right and he fully believes it. At least that's what I get.

I feel that Trump believes his own lies. Anyway, some bright spark around this time comes up with a plan. Not sure who exactly. I'm sure it'll all come out at some point. On the 14th of December, all the electors in all the states formally cast their ballots. Remember how it works in America? They do all their votes and and then the state says, we're voting for Biden or Trump,

and then the elector sends those votes on. So technically, it's the electors voting, not the people. It's a convoluted and strange system. Anyway, they all cast their ballots. Biden wins. He's going to be the next president. But due to certain legalities, certain delays

that court cases have caused and such, the final rubber stamp we are done, which is always done by the vice president, was going to have to wait until January the 6th. There was a delay on it. It is a rubber stamp technicality. It's done.

The election is over. Someone just needs to... Rubber stamp it. Rubber stamp it, yeah. Some desperate clutching of straws led to some around Trump suggesting that Mike Pence could simply, I don't know, could he just not rubber stamp? What would happen then? Could he not vote, count all of those votes? Now, it's complex, but to oversimplify just to save time and stop people being bored,

the plan was this. Some states were going to send two sets of results. You'd get your official sets of results, but then there'd be a different set of results sent forth by the states saying, no, these are the real ones. We came across this in our early episodes, back when the democracy was a bit shaky and new. Pence would then say, oh dear, these states can't be counted because there's a discrepancy and

there's a problem here. We just won't count them. Now, what they'd do is they'd engineer it so that if those states were chucked out, Trump would actually be ahead because they'd chuck out the Biden ones. Yeah. Now, it is more complex than that. That is me simplifying it, but only in detail. That essentially is the plot.

I don't know how else you can describe this other than a coup attempt. It is. It is a coup attempt. You're saying, let's not count some of the votes to get someone who didn't win to win. It's that simple.

Anyway, Trump had a little time for details. He possibly didn't even understand the whole plan, but he definitely heard that his vice president could make him president again if he refused to rubber stamp the votes. So Trump starts to put a lot of pressure on Pence, in private and in public, via Twitter. Now, Bannon is back on the scene. You'll be pleased to know they had a falling out, didn't they?

But hey, he's back. He was suggesting to Trump that they hold a rally in Washington on January the 6th. What better way to put pressure on the vice president? Big, big group of people outside chanting, stop the steal. Pence himself was having a horrible time. So, like, Pence is someone that, like, politically, obviously himself was having a horrible time. So Pence is someone that politically, obviously, I don't agree with.

I'm assuming you don't, Rob. No, I think his political opinions are vile myself, but do carry on. But you have to feel for him this time. Yeah, one thing I will say for Pence is that he believes in the United States Constitution, rule of law, it's democracy. He is a conservative. Yes, and he has morals. Morals that I completely object to, but they are there.

And he's a conservative. He doesn't want the system to change. He wants to change things within the system. So he was having a horrible time. He was looking everywhere for a way out. But it was blindingly obvious. He had no legal way to do what Trump wanted him to do. If he did it, he would go down in history as a single man who overthrew the election. He would, in all likelihood, go down in history as literally the worst American traitor in history. We are talking Benedict Arnold times a thousand. And he knows that as well.

He knows it. He can't do it. He tries to find a way out, and he is told by everyone around him, no, no, no. Pence, no. No, bad Pence. Sit, sit, stay. Stop thinking about it.

There's no way you can do it. He knows he can't do it anyway the morning of january the 6th happens trump phones pence one more time to try and put pressure on him and then he tweeted and i quote do it mike this is the time for extreme courage all mike pence has to do is send them back to the states meaning the votes and we will win there is no subtlety in this. Since then, I've seen some people defend this, saying all Trump wanted to do was have a recount of the votes and they wouldn't let him. No, all they need to do is send the votes back and we will win. This is obvious what they're

doing here. Pence made it clear, yet again, I can't do that, Mr. President. I just can't do it. Trump phoned yet again, getting angry this time, shouting at Pence, saying that it was a mistake to make him vice president and he had to go through with it. Meanwhile, whilst this was going, outside the Capitol building, there's a big crowd for the Stop the Steal rally. They were listening to Giuliani declaring that they would have, and I quote, trial by combat. Oh my, yeah.

Yeah. Trump then went out and gave a speech where he talked, I'm just going to put it bluntly, a lot of nonsense about conspiracy theories. Oh my god. astronomical sum because it was absolute outright lies haven't even gone into all that but anyway trump's spouting all of this at this point oh yeah oh sorry it just occurred to me again all through this communications he's having with fox news and they're all telling him this is obviously lies and they're talking to each other talking about oh my god trump's a madman uh this what on earth are we doing and yet you get on on fox they're still supporting him it's just insane anyway sorry that's not in my notes and I'm now just blurting things out uh Trump he's making a speech that's what he's doing he's making a speech and he tells the crowd march towards the Capitol building

how else better to put pressure on Pence to do the right thing during the speech however Pence announced that he was going to do his duty and he was going to rubber stamp the electors and Biden was the next president. Now, Pence didn't need to make that announcement. It made no difference whether he made that announcement. It wasn't him deciding Biden was the next president. It is just a statement of fact. Trump's speech finished and the crowd made their way to the Capitol building. News spread that Pence was not going to help them. So chance start up, hang Mike Pence. Yep, I remember that.

A mock gallows was built. Now, to be clear, this was a small mock gallows. There was no way they could hang a human being on it if you actually looked at the dimensions. And there are lots of photos where it's positioned very well, so looks huge but it's made out of cardboard so it's yeah this idea they built a gallows that could actually hang a person is not quite true however you have people with literal pitchforks not joking there and you have people making mock gallows chanting hang mike pence again this is one of these moments where you want to go back in time to someone saying, how bad could it be?

Flash cut. The crowd made it to the Capitol building. Some then kept going. The crowd then started to smash windows, and within the hour, the Capitol building was breached. The members of Congress were whisked away for their own safety. Rioters break down windows. They attack the Capitol Police.

One woman is shot and killed as she attempted to break into the Senate chamber. Several police officers sustained serious injuries, a few of which were fatal in the end because of complications with recovery. This was violent. People died. People with families, children, wives, husbands. Yeah. Now, a lot has been said on places like Fox News since

that this was mostly peaceful. And yes, it was. Most of the people in the building were just following the crowd. But that doesn't matter. A significant portion were not. And again, this is significant is not the same as small. Significant just means significant. A significant portion were there to overthrow the government. And if they had not been stopped, they would have done that. Yeah. They had to physically be stopped

from doing it. And yes, it was poorly planned. And yes, most of the people there weren't really involved or knew what was happening but i constantly i've been thinking this for a very long time do people defending this really think the storming of the bastille did not also have people milling around looking slightly confused and just looking at the place this is what insurrections look like they're messy and yes you get people just looking around poking in corners going oh look at that that doesn't mean that it's not an insurrection and that it was not an attempt to attack the government anyway my slight rant over there what's trump doing i know he's um i know he's getting people telling him to you need to call the national guard you need to stop this please stop this and he was a bit like, no.

That's exactly what's happening. And he's ignoring all of them. He is watching Fox News for two and a half hours. He did nothing but watch Fox News. He called no law enforcement agencies to try and tackle the situation. He refused for hours to ask the mob to go home. He eventually did, but hours in.

Many people tried to contact the president to see what the hell was going on. And this is where the whole Fox News people were trying to contact him to say, you've gone too far. Only Fox News is saying that. That's a thing. Yeah. He did talk to the Republican leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy said to Trump, I've never seen anything like this. You've got to tell them to stop. You've got to get them leader of the House, Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy said to Trump, I've never seen anything like this. You've got to tell them to stop. You've got to get them out of here.

Get them out of here now. Trump's reply was, well, Kevin, I guess these people are more upset about the election than you are. Bloody hell. Yeah. Eventually, the National Guard arrive after Pence orders them to.

Going against protocol, Vice President should not be doing that over the President, but the President wasn't doing anything. So Mike Pence took it into his own hands. He called the National Guard. The rioters were indeed pushed back. Like I say, this was relatively small and disorganised. It was unlikely this was ever going to achieve the result that some of them wanted, but it doesn't mean that that's not what they were aiming for. Anyway, Mitch McConnell, who by this point despised Trump, used all his power as Senate leader to make sure that everyone went back into the Senate chamber and get the vote to happen. It was going to happen that night. The American public had to see that their democracy

had not been disturbed by this i think possibly the only time mitch mcconnell has done anything that has made me respect the gop very rattled at what they had created mostly did not object to this and there were a lot of plans of how they could do certain tricks to slow down this vote, and mostly they just abandoned it. Lindsey Graham, the most loyal of Trump supporters in Congress, stands up and says enough is enough, no more.

He could have said that years ago. Yeah. Interestingly, all of these people who say no too much from Fox News, from Congress, from his advisors, everyone who went no too much from fox news from uh congress uh from his advisors everyone who went no this is too far pretty much all of them end up going back and supporting trump in the future but at this point there is a real sense of oh dear what have we created yeah but still america survived one of the most dangerous challenges to its democracy since its formation. I mean, the Civil War obviously far more dangerous than this,

but take that out, there aren't many other cases in American history where there is a bigger challenge than this. Anyone who disagrees with that statement, I personally would argue do not know history well enough to realise that governments are fragile. They're far more fragile than they look this could have ended the united states it's not likely but it could have done trump tweeted and i'll quote these are the things and events that happen when a sacred

landslide victory is so unceremoniously and viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly and unfairly treated for so long. Go home with love and in peace. Remember this day forever. And that is where we will leave Donald Trump. Oh, by the way, he got impeached for this again. Oh, and also lighthearted, he called the CEO of Apple, Tim Apple. just thought i'll put that nugget in the end i forgot that in our rundown last week we didn't have one this week so oh yeah i was reminded of that one so i chucked it in oh what a mess like what one person can do it's scary and they're and they're approaching it again sorry what i find fascinating is that if you take away covid which is a once in a generation century even things it's unfair really to judge too much on such an event take away covid trump could have got to the end of

his presidency and with time i honestly think the public would have gone, yeah, Bush was a worse president. When you were in the maelstrom of the craziness with all the weird stuff he did, it just seemed chaotic. But when you were at a distance, it's like, oh, there were bad stuff, there was awful stuff, bad president. But we've also had other bad presidents. Yes.

But this at the end, his refusal to give up power and his desperate trying to illegally become president again, it's absolutely ruined any legacy he will ever have in the history books. It will always put him down as one of the worst presidents. In the history books, yes. Currently, no. Currently, he has a lot of support. Why does he have that support, Jamie?

Have you ever wondered that? I think the massive disparity between, like, there's the idea of, like, the right and the left, and it's growing wider as well. Even if you're not... You know, the left always complain, if any conservative is right-wing, that you're a Nazi. The extreme view of that view.

If you're extreme right-wing, you'll say you're a socialist or a communist. And it's divided. There isn't that centre ground which everyone needs and where democracy works best. And the culture war is being stoked by the right-wing press because it sells. However, I'd argue that there is a bigger issue at play here, and this is because American politics is going through the second Gilded Age.

Interesting. You have a very corrupt elite running America. And we have seen. This is why we've done this podcast. This is the question I asked myself right at the start. Why is Trump president? And I think it's this. We're in the second Gilded Age. People are so fed up with these corrupt politicians, and so many of them are corrupt. And they're not doing things illegally, but they are doing things like inside trading.

They are giving jobs to their family members. They are living cushy lives while normal Americans are struggling. And so many Americans are so fed up with how wide the rich and poor gap is that they are just angry and they want someone to come along and smash the system. That is why Trump is popular. Save it for billionaire. Anyway, that's got nothing to do with rating Trump, has it? That was just my own personal feelings at the very end of the last episode So here we go, Jamie For the very last time

Let's rate this mother So, like I said in the main thing We spent six years doing this, Jamie And the whole time I have been constantly reading updates Looking into Trump Thinking about Trump It's not healthy, Jamie

No It's really not, Jamie. No. It's really not. But the whole time, I've been wondering, how on earth am I going to put this in the Trump episode? In the end, I've had to fit in so, so little. I have missed so, so, so much. There are so many things I've missed out,

but I'm hoping what I've managed to do here is put together a rough outline of what his presidency was like. So how good was his presidency? Let's start with the good, shall we? Now, I found it easiest to do this if I transported myself into the body of a conservative American. After all, conservative Americans make up about half the country. They deserve representation. They voted Trump in. They must have been looking for something. So how good was Trump for them? He's their president. So let's see how we can do. Trump got three people onto the Supreme Court.

This was always the game plan, trying to get two on. Three was a bonus. This is going to have a longer effect than anything Trump ever did. And a lot of conservatives are very happy that the Supreme Court is now very conservative. So there you go. That is something that Trump succeeded at. You could argue, however, that was more Congress who paved the way. This was more Mitch McConnell than Trump. But Trump was there when it happened. He cut taxes for the rich. Rich people love that. And for some reason, so do MAGA Republicans. Not sure why, but apparently they do. They really like rich people getting their tax cuts.

I'm poor, but rich people like me pay less tax. Brilliant. I might be rich one day, I can only assume is the idea. Also, loads of deregulation. I love deregulation. I do now that I'm a conservative American. Of course. I hate regulation.

I hate making sure that people aren't corrupt within systems. So, yeah, that's good. I also could, to be fair, and this isn't even me talking as a conservative American, this is me being actual me here, there are glimmers of his foreign policy that I am sympathetic to. I think he went about it the wrong way. I don't think he had an understanding of the complexities,

and I think ultimately he made things worse. However, I am sympathetic to any president who comes along and says, why are we in all these wars? Let's get out of all these wars. Yeah, that's, I mean, always the goal, right? Because if the wars are based on, let's face it, wanting oil and resources that's not a good war to be in there's there's no reason for that one trump is very anti-bush wars it's

just the irony is that all the advisors around him were the ones who were really in support of bush doing those and made them happen and they could not control trump with this they wanted trump to be more on board with this and they couldn't get him on board. Trump could not see the point in the wars. He wanted out. He pulled out of these areas, and I've not gone into it, places like Syria and Afghanistan. He pulled out incredibly irresponsibly.

And that's the problem. Leading to a lot of danger. The whole, I didn't even mention ISIS throughout all of this and I could have talked about it, and he claimed to have fixed it all, and he really hadn't. So it just was not done well, but I do understand where he was coming from. It's one of the few areas where I go, yeah, I get you, Trump, I understand where you're coming from. I just really wish someone with those views who was competent and could do it well was pushing them. So anyway, that's what I've got for good. If I pretend to have different political views to myself,

I can see some things that are good, and there was one thing that I kind of thought he did okay. Bad. Oh, dear God, it was a shit show. Yeah. Yeah, it was. But to begin with, I'm still going to be a conservative American. I should have a name, really, shouldn't I?

Dave. Dave. Frat boy Dave. That's who I am. You know what I'm sad about as be a conservative American. I should have a name, really, shouldn't I? Dave. Dave. Frat boy Dave. That's who I am. You know what I'm sad about as being frat boy Dave? Because he didn't repeal Obamacare. He said he was going to repeal Obamacare, and he couldn't get it done. And that wall, he didn't build it.

A little bit of a fence, but a 50-mile fence that people put, like, seesaws on, and people cut through with literally a handsaw yeah yeah so those were his two biggest promises in his campaign and he failed on them but that's me i'm gonna stop being fat boy dave now uh let's move on to my more personal opinion of the good and bad right okay those supreme justices i just talked about as a hey he managed to get that done well that's why roe v wade has just been overturned and this isn't the time and place to discuss why that's awful so let's just leave it with i think that is yeah i mean i mean a raped 11 year old that's not pregnant yeah screw them who cares yeah the tax cuts excellent the rich get more tax cuts. This harms the average American. So I'm not for

it. Deregulation. Oh joy. That led to the last financial crash. Remember all the Mouty Hotels and Monopoly houses I was talking about? Where did that come? That came from Reagan's deregulation. Obviously that is an oversimplification, but there was an argument to be made, and it's a very good one that I subscribe to, that that is where it comes from that is not to say that clinton does not also hold responsibility as well because he certainly does but deregulation well there we go we've now deregulated to the hilt once more so there's no reason why we won't have another financial crash nothing has been put in place to stop excellent so It could happen tomorrow Covid His response to Covid was just awful

Absolutely awful Now, like I said before No one could have done this perfectly I think it's unfair to go at him too much for this Because no leader in the world got this perfect But some did a pretty damn good job New Zealand New Zealand did a very good job, but it wasn't perfect.

And when they did eventually start letting things in, COVID surged through. It's inevitable. You're just not. It's inevitable. You are going to get things wrong. It is inevitable. However, saying this,

America really did seem world-leading at being bad at the response. It is impossible to put a definitive answer to how America responded compared to other countries. It's too complex. However, they ended up with a staggering mortality rate. Remember the 100,000? Yeah. Yeah.

Do you want to guess how many died in the end? I think it was over a million, as I remember. Over 2 million. How? That initial worst-case scenario, 2 over a million, as I remember. Over two million. Bloody hell. That initial worst case scenario, 2.2 million, that's what happened. The worst case scenario happened. Yep. The most tanning thing is the fact that it is indisputed fact that people died in higher rates in counties that had more GOP supporters.

Yes. This tells us that they bungled the response awfully. Few other countries turned the response into a political football like the United States did. Now, we in this country did not do it well. Our government was spectacularly bad in many ways. However, it was always one government working together. The Labour Party worked with the Conservative Party.

And nowhere in this country, apart from the weird extreme fringes, were anyone going, your political beliefs are going to dictate how we should tackle this. Believe me, there was a lot of outrage and criticism of our government's handling, but that was healthy, the public criticising the government. There was no blind, well, I voted for this party before, so therefore they must be doing the right thing. Now in America, that did happen to the point that people were avoiding doing things that could stop them from dying just because the person in charge of their political party had said something that was not accurate. I mean, you could argue then that GOP killed two million people.

Well, I can argue that is Trump. It is Trump who did that. Trump was in charge. He was the one saying, I'm not going to wear a mask. I'm not going to do this. He was the one saying the Democratic governors were out to get him. He was the one saying it was all going to go away. So the nation's response was not ideal.

Trump's personal response was abysmal. Yes. Anyway, on to the next thing. Children in cages. Oh, yes. Yeah, how we left last episode. Now, interestingly, I had a little bit of pushback on this, saying that I was wrong. And this did indeed start under the Obama administration. So

I did a bit more digging. And I think this is really stretching facts. Yes, technically, children were separated from adults that they were traveling with under obama but this happened very rarely on average two a year and it was always because the child was deemed to be in danger because they were being trafficked interesting it's like we don't believe this is your family you're saying that's your child we don't believe you you we think you're trafficking this child for whatever purposes, but it's never going to be good. And that happened once or twice a year. That's, yeah. That is not the same as the Trump administration,

who did it to cause pain. There's no hiding that fact. The whole point was to hurt the families as a deterrent. Thousands of children were taken from their mothers and their fathers over a few months. It is entirely disingenuous to compare the two things. So this is why I said this is nonsense to blame it on Obama. It is nonsense to blame it on Obama.

So it's a bit more clouty there. We've seen the videos and photographs of it, and it's genuinely... It is so awful that even trump rode back on it yeah this is the brainchild of stephen miller the awful so can we add that to a plus that he actually went back on it yes after ripping apart families thousands of them he decided to stop one day. Well done. Racial tensions, well, they ramped up under Trump like we have not seen in quite some time.

We have riots in the streets. The erosion of political norms. Now, obviously in America, but you know what? I'm also going to point out that this is not just the United States. For example, the far-right faction of the Tory party over here was emboldened by Trump's tactics and started to do the same. And our political norms over here have eroded. And I'm not saying it's all Trump's fault, but it was all part of the same movement.

Well, people in the Tory party, including our most embarrassing ex-prime minister, are very much in that Steve Bannon camp who are trying to do this across several countries. This is a far right push that is not just in America. These people are coordinated. They're talking to each other. Seriously, have you seen the stuff Liz Truss has been doing recently? I genuinely think she is the most despicable prime minister we've ever had. But didn't last as long as a lettuce. So that's...

And the most pathetic at the same time, which I think is beautifully typically British. Yeah, it's like you listen to an interview. Oh my goodness. Absolutely awful. Anyway, I'm just spewing out my personal political opinions now. Anyway, finally, this is a big finally. He attempted to overthrow the election. If he had succeeded, American politics would have suffered an irreparable blow.

succeeded american politics would have suffered an irreparable blow we have not seen a politician attack their own country like this since the civil war yeah so how statesmanly is donald j trump so if we're going by a statesman as in presidential acting like a leader you know we've got a a conversation to have uh but we both know we're scoring zero uh we are scoring zero i've already put it into my spreadsheet or i will if the spreadsheet hadn't come up with a problem i can't type into it which is why i went quiet just i'm trying to figure that out but yeah it's obviously zero isn't it it's definitely it's just awful it's's truly, truly awful. I don't think we need to say anything more than I've just said. Next.

Remember, this is personal. This is no longer politics. So all the stuff I just said, discounted. Fresh start. He is a liar. He's a cheater. He's racist. He's misogynistic.

He has had countless affairs. He has been found in a court of law to have sexually assaulted a woman. Only the fact that it was a civil, not criminal, charge means that we don't use the word guilty, countless affairs. He has been found in a court of law to have sexually assaulted a woman. Only the fact that it was a civil, not criminal charge means that we don't use the word guilty, but arguing that he was only liable for sexual assault is not the defense that some people think it is. He openly boasts about sexually assaulting others. He's committed so much tax fraud in his life that it is simply ridiculous. He has set up so many scams to take money, I can't even count them, and I can't be bothered to go through them, such as Trump University or his, quite frankly, hilariously stupid NFT cards, which, again, I did not put in the list and I should have done.

Without getting too far down the armchair psychologist road, he is quite clearly a narcissist who seems to lack any empathy. Yep. He has a long history of not paying any of his workers. He sues anyone who he does not like just to make them squirm and make himself feel big. To be honest, I'm just going to read verbatim what I wrote in my notes here. To be honest, I've run out of steam writing about him.

He's not a nice person. Yeah. I mean, hands down, you can argue how bad he is as a president. And I would argue there is a case to be said that he's not the worst president. But he is, hands down You can argue how bad he is as a president And I would argue there is a case to be said He's not the worst president But he is hands down, I would say Since possibly Andrew Jackson

Wow, yeah The most horrible human being Who has had the role We need to go to the early days Where people were Selling human beings To find someone who was this objectionable. It's 20.

Yeah, it is. Mine is 20. I've already put it on before we started talking. Silver screen. Well, he is doing very badly so far. But, arguably, here is where he is going to pick up some points. So, he was born to a very rich family. He did horribly in school. He was forced to go to military school, remember, which seemed to up some points. So, he was born to a very rich family. He did horribly in school.

He was forced to go to military school, remember, which seemed to do some good for him, where finally he starts getting on with his dad. He finishes school and university with unknown grades because he sues the school if they try and release them. And he joins the family business. Now, personally, this is the part that I would struggle with if it was a series,

because this part I did not find hugely interesting. All the business deals. I was hoping for more. I was hoping for some more juicy stories, but he's too private of a person. He's kept it quiet, so I couldn't find stuff, and I didn't find it as interesting. Business deal after business deal. However, I know some people do find that really interesting, so I'm not saying it wouldn't work. Maybe it could. Essentially, if you, before Succession, I just said people do find that really interesting, so I'm not saying it wouldn't work. Maybe it could. Essentially, if you... Before Succession, I just said there's no way you could make this good, but I've now seen Succession and I really liked it. So if it was well-written, this area of his life could be interesting.

But only in his failures, though. There aren't any successes. Oh, yeah, yeah. But it's still... But this isn't how successful he was, it's how interesting would it be to watch a dramatisation. So, anyway, the main thread of this period was that he kept failing in his businesses

until his dad took over. Then he becomes famous for being a Playboy bachelor. You could possibly get a lot out of him making his fake phone calls where he's pretending to be his own assistant. I mean, you could almost turn it into a farcical comedy at this point. He crashes and burns terribly at the end of the 80s, early 90s.

So everything starts to go under. But then, like a phoenix, orange phoenix, he comes back. And he's suddenly on The Apprentice. He is famous. This period of time seems more interesting to me. How did he come back? He gets onto The Apprentice. He's working in TV, meeting the stars.

Then he gets into politics. All the stuff with him hating Obama. All of the conspiracy theories. This I can imagine being a good drama. I don't think you could focus solely on Trump. I think you'd have to focus on Trump and the person he is obsessed with. Trump and Obama. Trump

and Clinton. Trump and Biden. But I think it would be interesting to see the dynamic. I think the people around him, that would be more interesting. Just either being frustrated or being fanatical. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine that. That would be good. Then he gets into politics and he becomes president.

All the stuff we've covered in the last two episodes, which I'm not going to try and recap in just two sentences. We know what happened. Would you want to watch a dramatisation of the Trump years as president? Well, we lived it day to day, just reading Twitter. Yeah, and it was exhausting. But maybe in 20 years' time, maybe it would be fascinating. Maybe I've just got fatigue and that's why I wouldn't want to see it.

I think this one's quite hard one to rate there's definitely some glimmers of interest in there it's not as good as i thought it might be and also i'm trying to not be biased and just think about this deliberately give them a low score when let's let's let's do a bit of bit of comparison shall we um Let's see who we gave to some other people. So, for Silver Screen, recent ones, Barack Obama. We gave him a 9 in this. We ended up saying his story was not that interesting. He had some interesting

stuff early on, being born in Hawaii, going into Indonesia, but then his life was pretty much, I'm a lawyer, I'm a politician. George Dubya, we only gave a 4, which we've had some pushback on, and perhaps that is fair, but we have pushback on. I think we were just so annoyed that he was failing upwards all the

time, and you would just get so angry watching that. Going back again, Bill Clinton, we gave an eight. We've not been scoring highly recently in this round. He, remember he went to Oxford for a bit, and then he was awful with women and then it's because they're not going to wars they're not doing anything like dramatic like george

washington yes abraham lincoln yes that's like 20s but is the life story of trump more interesting than obama bush or clinton's or do you think we're roughly in the same ballpark? Do you know what? I think if we collectively gave a 10, that would be appropriate. Yeah. I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to give a five.

Yeah, I'll give a five. Yeah. I think on paper, it's a more interesting story than any president for a while. But there are also elements that I just don't think would be fun to watch. 10 in total. 10, that's a bit of a team. But there are also elements that I just don't think would be fun to watch. Ten in total. Ten visibility.

So what we don't have is Trump's official White House portrait. Because they've not made it yet. But as we talked with Obama's, presidents actually get two portraits. They have their National Portrait Gallery portrait and they have their White House one. Obama's National Portrait one is the one with the leaves that we weren't allowed to use. And we said would score much higher. So Obama probably will be sickened to hear what we're about to do. We are going to use his other portrait because he does have one of those. So if you just Google National Portrait Gallery Trump painting, you will find his painting.

So it's him sat in a chair. He's got a red tie and he's sort of leaning out of it slightly. Red tie in, in the Oval Office. What do you think of that? Um, as much as it hurts me to say, it's not a bad portrait.

Um, I, like the majority of the portrait is actually Oval Office, which implies to me it's power. It's interesting. He's not the main focal point. It is. Look where I am.

I'm in the Oval Office. He is getting out of his chair. It's a, it's not the main focal point it is it's look where i am i'm in the oval office he is getting out of his chair it's a it's it's interesting that it's like he's about to get up he's got places to go he's got things to do uh it's it's pretty good painting it is it is and he's hands on the uh the desk other hand on the chair yeah it's actually quite good it's pretty good isn't it uh saying that it's certainly not up there with my favourites. It's certainly no JFK painting. It's... It's different from any of the portrait.

It's active, isn't it? Yeah, it's sort of sidewall on. It's active. It's not bad. I'm going to give it a seven. I'm going to give it a five because he is not the main fixture of it he's like you know you get rules of photography and stuff like he's he's like in the third of it yeah well yeah rule of thirds yeah the fact that he is on the rule of third line his eyes line up perfectly

with the rule of thirds there uh which you've got who is that in the background there's a president in the background i actually i a president in the background. Actually, I think it is Andrew Jackson. That looks like Andrew Jackson. Editing will appear. And yes, it is Andrew Jackson, which is very interesting that he chose the first of the Democrats. So there you go. You sticking with five?

It's 12. Yeah, okay then. 12 divided by four. It's three. Go Lola! So now we go into our bonus. How many terms did he serve? One.

One. So far, to be fair, who knows, maybe he'll be back. But we're going up to this moment. One. Next. Assassination. Did anyone try and kill're going up to this moment. One. Next. Assassination. Did anyone try and kill him?

Not to our knowledge. No. No, no one did. Zero. And election. Zero. He gets zero. He lost the popular vote.

You get zero if you lose the popular vote. Oh, Jamie, I didn't want to be this predictable. But I voted with my heart. Yeah. I like to say that I put my bias aside when I was putting the scores for canvas ability and silver screen, and I stand by my scores in the other two. Do you want to know his final score?

Six. Nope. Minus six. Oh, that's what I meant. Yeah. Even better. Sorry. Minus six, which does indeed put him in last place.

But again, I didn't want to be predictable and just say he was, he's the worst. But I mean, this is why we did it. We went through all of them. There are presidents who come very close to him. And in some areas, there are presidents who are worse than him. Yeah. But in our overall scores, Trump comes last. There's one question we need to answer.

American or American? Absolutely not. Never in a million years I would rather cut off my own fingers with a rusty hacksaw than give him an American. So I remember when we started this, Jamie, and I remember saying it's going to be weird because although Trump is awful, no, he's going to be awful, remember we started at the start of his term, we said something along the lines of, but he'll still definitely get it, won't he?

Because how interesting is this? But that was before we started doing the series, and that's when we had our Roman Emperor heads on. If this was the Roman Emperor series, Trump would have been flying. Put put trump a thousand years ago in charge of the roman empire he would have been up there he would have been one of our favorite he'd been assassinated in like two weeks as well quite possibly you would have done lots of crazy fun stuff that we could have talked about that all the awful stuff he did in the roman series you get positive points for because

it's a long time ago and it's just interesting so he would he would have scored much higher and he would have had je ne sais just because he was a highlight of the history books for being interesting but this isn't the roman series and when all you're doing is causing horrible division within your country and tearing apart the institutions that keep it together, could you call yourself an American? Absolutely not. So no, Donald Trump, you are not an American. And with that, we are done. That was interesting. Yeah. Remember that time seven years ago when you said to me,

Rob, who do you think the best president was? Well, there you go. We have an answer. Well, sort of, we have an answer. What we have now is a spreadsheet full of data. So where do we go next? Well, we're going to have a special episode at some point soon where we will talk about the results. We'll talk about

who was the most statesmanly like, the one who was the most disgraceful. We'll talk about the best looking in terms of their portraits and generally their total score. And in that episode, we will also create some rounds based on who got American, we'll get all the presents who got American, and we will put them into a knockout round. Now I'm not going to go into details exactly how that looks now because I've not fully decided, but what I will do is a little bit of a teaser and say it's not going to look identical to how we did it with the Roman Serers, mainly because there were far fewer of them. So we're going to do a bit of a change and I've got something in the works that I'm hoping will work, which I think will be lots of fun. in the works that i'm hoping will work which i think

will be lots of fun uh but i don't know if it will work yet so i'm not gonna say anything apart from just leave it there so it's a tease as a tease um so that's our last normal episode jamie weird very very very strange end of an era anything you want to say i'm just any life lessons you've learned yeah thank you to our American listeners mainly because we got two British people giving their opinions and views from a British perspective, rating your presence. So thank you for that. And I will say I just have been so pleased, relieved.

I honestly thought as we got further to the end of this podcast, there would be some people who would attack us because online is a scary place. We have certainly had some criticisms, but that's what they've been. And when I've talked to these people who have gone, I disagree with your opinion on Bush, et cetera, or whatever. And I've said, well, I think this,

and I understand why you think, nothing but civility and an agreement that people can have different political views. And it's been really nice. So weird in the modern age. Yes, seeing that and having that. And yeah, so all of you listening who don't hold the same political opinions as me and Jamie,

thank you very much for listening and not getting too outraged at what we say. And those of you who listen and do agree with us, thank you for sticking with us and letting a couple of British guys just essentially mock your country for several years. It's been fun. If it's any consolation,

believe me, we think our country is even more ridiculous. And maybe we'll get to that one day. Right, we should probably say goodbye then, shouldn't we? Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye. Goodbye.

Four Seasons? Is that Four Seasons? Yes, we are the Four Seasons Landscaping. How may I help you? Fantastic. Four Seasons. Right. I know this is a rush. Sorry, I work for Rudy Giuliani, who obviously, I'm sure you know, works for President Trump. It's been a very busy day. The President's lawyer wants to make an announcement. So we just want to book one of your conference rooms, if that's okay. Come on, man. It needs to be done within half an hour. Have you got space?

Well, we certainly have space, but we don't quite have a conference room ready. You don't have a conference room ready. It doesn't matter. You mean you don't have a conference room ready? This is what you're... Right, it doesn't matter. You say you've got space. You've got space. Well, we definitely have space if that's what you'd like to hire, but we don't have a conference room.

We're just merely a... Right, whatever. As long as you've got space. Right, now, obviously we want all the usual stuff. We need chairs out for all the reporters.

I'm guessing there's going to be about a hummud. Well, I think we have a few deck chairs. Chad! Chad I think we have a few deck chairs. Chad! Chad, do we have a few deck chairs available? Yeah, we can sort that out for you. You can do a hummud. Fantastic, that's good.

So, remind me again, what was the last one you did for us? I seem to remember that went well. Well, yes, I remember Geoffrey from down the road. He's a good old GOP member, supporter. Yes, we sorted out his decking a few years ago and he was quite pleased, yes. What are you talking about, man? Decking. Decking?

Decking. Decking? Sorry, conference room. No, decking. We sorted out his decking. Why did you sort out his... Is that a service you provide? Oh, yes, we provide a lot of hardcore decking. What else do you do?

We can sort out your landscaping and your garden, which makes it look quite beautiful. We're very good at tree removal. We can remove trunks. We can remove the stumps. You just can't get rid of them. You have to mow around. Well, they're really tricky to remove, though.

Exactly. And we did that for Geoffrey as well, just before the decking was implanted. I honestly had no idea. It's really good. You should check us out. And you do this with all of your rooms and everything. Is this something you get? Is this complimentary when we book with you?

Well, we have a lot of office space. I think that makes the job easier. You know, I've got a tree in my garden that I want removing. Oh. I don't suppose, I mean, I know obviously it's Giuliani doing this, but I'm kind of the guy behind the scenes organising it. I don't suppose you could come and sort my tree out, could you? Well, yes. I mean, if you're happy to come here and hold a press conference, we'd give you a good deal. I'm sure we could throw in a few

tree removals, a few stump removals. Well, you know what? If you could, like, put me in for, I don't know, two nights as well, sweeten the deal. I have to speak to Bruno, but I'm pretty sure he'll be amiable to that. Bruno! Do you still have that bed free? Yes.

Yes, I mean, the missus did leave him a few months ago, but he's still got the spare bed free. Ready for a new one. So, Bruno, is that the name of one of your suites? He is very sweet, yes. What? What? Do you know what? Never mind, we're in're in a rush anyway we'll be there four seasons landscaping yes half an hour fantastic right we'll be there soon thank you very much goodbye right we'll clear out the rat oh you're gone um bruno chad come on i i i think something very funny is going to happen