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All right, Alexander, let's talk about what is happening in the U.S.
What is going on at the Republican Convention.
J.D. Vance has accepted the offer to be Trump's running mate,
to become potentially to become vice president of the United States.
And it looks like the Republican Party is coalescing around Trump's candidacy.
at the same time, it looks like the Democrat Party is once again turning on Biden.
Actually, what's his name? Van Jones, it's CNN even said as much.
He said that the Republicans are sticking with Trump.
They're getting behind Trump.
Their support is growing while the Democrat support of Biden is falling.
That was what Van Jones pretty much said.
actually he was talking about the coup and the virus and stuff like that with with
Biden.
But the point is clear that the Democrats are once again, they're losing their belief in
Biden while the Republicans are believing very much in Trump.
So what are your thoughts on everything that is happening in the United States and at the
Republican National Convention?
Well, I think the first thing to say is that Donald Trump has shown not only that he's an
astute politician, but that he's now an experienced one. That he was astute was obvious to me
all the way back in 2015. All you had to do was follow his interviews, see the way in which he was
able to talk to people, the way in which he was able to discover the themes, the concerns of the
American people and talk to them. So he always had that skill. But now he is certainly, after a long
period of learning started to acquire political experience, not just acquired political experience,
but he has political experience and the kind of political nowse and skills that a political
leader needs in order to succeed. And importantly, so far, he is not compromising on his programme.
And you can see this by the steps that he's taken in the Republican Convention up to this point.
Firstly, he has put aside his speech, the speech that he was going to make, which is going to be a massive attack on Biden.
He's now going to be the unity candidate.
He's capitalising, in other words, on the assassination attempt and the way in which he responded to it.
he seems to understand that this is the moment to seize the hour,
to project himself as the strong leader to the American people.
And that is intelligent politics.
It is what the French President Charles de Gaulle did, for example,
directly after an assassination attempt on him in the 1960s,
which de Gaulle similarly used to unite France and his party.
behind him.
So I found that interesting.
But the other thing is, he made the correct decision as to his pick of vice president.
He decided to go for J.D. Vance.
There were lots of rumors and speculations and theories that Trump would reach out to the rhinos.
I'm going to call them rhinos, the McConnell wing, that he'd go for one of the neocons.
There was talk that it might be Marco Rubio.
There was even talk that it might be Nikki Haley.
And instead, Trump went for the person that his electoral supporters, his electoral base wanted.
And he picked J.D. Vance.
And he didn't just pick J.D. Vance.
But he managed to unite the entire Republican Party behind him.
One of the most interesting things that I saw in the Republican Convention was the complete isolation of Mitch McConnell.
Now, there was this moment when McConnell turns up.
He's actually booed at one point in the convention.
He is now no longer in any conceivable, shape, or form, the leader of the Republican Party,
the dominant leading figure in the Republican Party.
that has passed to Trump
he's learnt the skills
of how to unite the party behind him
he has united the party behind him
he has won the wall
with the rhinos
and he has consolidated
control of the
control of the party
and projected himself
as the strong leader
who's going to lead the American people
and he's done that by picking
JD Vance
And J.D. Vance, just to reiterate a point which I've made in other places, including on our
latest live stream, J.D. Vance won't just be Trump's vice president. Trump can only serve one term
because he's already served another. So J.D. Vance as vice president is now also, in effect, Trump's
chosen successor. And that further consolidates Trump's control because as vice president,
it will be very, very difficult for Republicans, the McConnellites, to prevent Vance,
becoming the Republican Party's nominee in the 2028 election, which already you sense Trump is
thinking about. So he's become a much more experienced politician. He retains all his political skills,
or his previous political skills. He's united the party behind him. And he's now looking, I have to say
this, an exceptionally strong candidate, an exceptionally strong political force. And I understand that
the polling data is starting to reflect that.
And there are rumors that the polling data, the private polling data being received by the various parties, including by the Democrats, is pointing now clearly to a decisive win for Trump in the electoral college.
In other words, not just a win like the one he achieved in 2016, but a decisive win.
the entire dial of American politics is shifting towards him.
And I think this is creating more and more panic within the Democratic Party.
And even as Trump is uniting the Republican Party behind him and winning over Americans,
especially blue-collar Americans, but Americans of every kind,
the Democratic Party is fracturing as they realize that they're going to
that they're now at very high risk of losing the presidency in November, but also losing Congress as well.
And we see how, in spite of the claims a few days ago, that after the assassination, Biden was home and dry within a few hours of those reports circulating, you see again calls for Biden to step down.
from people like Adam Schiff, who's clearly speaking for Nancy Pelosi, I'm guessing,
and Chuck Schumer apparently and others, there's now going to be a concerted attempt
over the next few days to get the old man to step down.
And the reason that's happening is because Trump has used the events of his assassination,
has used the assassination as astutely as he has, and that is what is.
caused the Republican Party, the Democratic Party, to in effect go into meltdown.
Well, Schiff was absolutely speaking on behalf of Pelosi.
But Pelosi, from what I understand, is actually advising Biden, telling the Biden camp that it's
time to step aside.
For Kamala Harris, that's what it looks like.
It does seem that they have decided that the only viable option given the time constraints
that they have.
in the entire situation is to go with Kamala Harris.
And the reports are that the Kamala Harris camp, which I imagine is the Obama clan,
they are, they're pressing the Biden oligarchy to step aside.
But Biden, his family continues to say, no, we're not going anywhere.
And a lot of people believe that this latest sickness that he has acquired may actually be the foundation
for moving Biden aside and installing Harris.
What do you make of that?
Absolutely.
I mean, it could very well be that,
but it could also be a way of hiding the old man away in the White House.
So he doesn't have to speak to the Schumers and the Loses and the Clintons
and whoever it is who wants to come to speak to him in order to get him to stand down.
We're looking at a real crisis.
within the Democratic Party, to which they have no obvious solutions. Now, it is very interesting,
by the way, the way this plot, because it is a plot, or it's called it a conspiracy,
or whatever you like, to get Biden to stand down, is playing out, because all the top people,
Obama, Pelosi, Schumer, the Clintons, are all trying to get Biden to stand down.
none of them wants to go out and speak too openly about this in public.
Schumer, I think, is the one who's come up, come closest.
So what they're doing is they're getting their political allies to act as proxies for them
and to come out and start making public comments on their behalf.
Schiff, therefore, is doing it on behalf of Pelosi, even as Pelosi is trying to talk to Biden.
So it looks to me as if Biden is barricading himself inside the White House,
There's this plan that they hatched to try to get the delegates from the primaries to confirm their support for Biden in the next week or so before the convention was convened.
Apparently that's now had to be put back to August.
There's apparently so much resistance on that.
We have the irresistible force encountering the immovable obstacle.
the irresistible force being the leaders of the Democratic Party plus the donors, the immovable
obstacle being Biden and the circle around him. And all of this is playing out, even as Donald Trump
looks like the undisputed master of all that he survives on the Republican side. This is not a good look
for any party to go into an election with, looking as fragmented as they are, against a candidate
who looks as confident and as strong as Trump is. If you follow electoral politics, as I've done,
and if you know anything at all about electoral politics, this is an all but certain guarantee
of failure. But you're right, they've been driven to do it,
as they realize that with Biden,
the prospects of losing are, you know, almost immovable.
They can't be shifted.
I don't think they seriously believe that Kamala Harris
can hold the presidency against Donald Trump.
It's all now about trying to retain Congress,
or at least the Senate,
rather than have Donald Trump get a clean sweep,
emerge, not just as the elected president of the United States, probably with a clear majority
this time, but also with a Congress that is not only Republican, but also Republican and
united behind him in a way that the Republican Congress of 2017 was not.
Yeah, I've been calling this a soft coup.
From the time it started, the way I saw it was a coup.
I think that's actually very accurate.
I remember I was talking about this in a video, and that was questioning whether this is a coup.
I was asking viewers, is this a coup?
It is a coup.
Is this a coup?
Yes, it is a coup.
It is a straightforward coup because what the Democratic Party is trying to do has no legal or constitution.
basis. Biden is the elected president of the United States. If they say that he is incapable,
there is a legal mechanism that they can use, which is the 25th Amendment of the Constitution,
but they don't want to use it because that would broadcast even more openly the extent to
which there's been a massive deception of the American people over the past three years. And anyway,
it is a terrible thing for the Democratic Party to do something like that to its own president
in order to win an election. So they are using means of pressure in order to get the president
to stand down. And that is a coup. It is, it is in effect trying to remove from office the person
who is holding it constitutionally. And trying to do the same, by the way, in terms of
Biden's position as the party's nominee for the presidency, because the Democratic Party didn't listen
to your advice. They allowed him to stand for the primaries. He stood for the primaries. I believe he
won every single one. He's got pretty much all the delegates sewn up. And nonetheless,
the Democratic Party is trying to deprive Joe Biden of those.
which is, again, you know, contrary to the party's rules, that also is a coup. So this is a coup,
definitely is a coup. They tried to regime change Putin. They said that Putin was weak and sick
and on his way out. And everything that they were projecting onto Putin has basically
come to come to Biden. It's an amazing.
story. If it is Harris, say the plan is, is to go with with Harris, will that give the Democrat
party the, the momentum that it needs to at least win the House or the Senate? I mean,
I imagine, I imagine the best case scenario for them. We do have five months to go. So a lot can
change. So nothing is guaranteed, including a Trump win, especially when you're dealing with the, with the DNC, the Democrat Party, and the fact that they control pretty much the entire information space, big tech and the mainstream media. That all works as a surrogate of the Democrat Party. So you can never count them out. But is a Harris presidency the game changer?
the injection of some sort of a spark to inject some momentum into into what is a flailing Biden campaign,
so that at the very minimum they can do something in the House or the Senate.
Is that how they're probably looking at this by now?
I mean, you have to stop the slide.
You have to do it somehow.
It seems that's the only way to do it is to swap out Biden for someone.
Absolutely. Now, I think there's a number of things to say about this. Firstly, if you're again applying conventional electoral rules, then changing your candidate at this time, even if the candidate is Joe Biden is not the right thing to do, it's going to make the situation worse. It's, you know, the more logical thing to do would be to try to break.
them this out. Go on pretending that Biden is, you know, in control, you had a bad day, come up
with some excuse for him not to have the debate. You then pull all the people together, you know,
across the country, the various activists, all of those kind of people. You use the party's
enormous machine to bring the voters out, the Democratic Party's voters out to the extent that
you can and you try and hold the position that way.
the Democratic Party came to the view that this is not going to work and that it's going to be a disaster
and that they are better off with Harris.
Then I'm going to make a shrewd guess that the private polling is far, far, far worse than what we're being told.
It has to be really, really bad if they're being forced to do something like this.
So that's the first thing to say.
And I speak, by the way, as somebody, you know, who has never been a point.
politician, but he's worked with politicians.
As I said, it's known that my aunt was in politics, and I gave her advice, and she was a formidable
election winner, and she explained to me much, many things about elections.
And remember, we had a situation in Greece where we did have a prime minister.
You remember him, Papandreau, who was clearly ill and well, and nonetheless, at Pasoq, the party.
everybody knew what the problems were, but they realized that the better thing to do was just to stick with him.
And that would at least prevent the defeat turning into a route.
And he was not only sick and infirm, but there were all kinds of other scandals hovering around him too.
So this must, the situation here must be extremely bad if they're thinking about doing this.
And this, I think, goes very far to explain why we are only talking about Kamala Harris.
Because Kamala Harris looks to me like the only person in the Democratic Party who is stupid enough to want to take over from Biden at this time.
I say that because all of the others, Newsom, all the other people that we have been hearing about,
not only do they understand very well that the mechanics of the, um, mechanics of their,
them stepping in and taking over from Biden as the party's candidate are impossibly complicated.
But they also know that if they did become the Democratic Party's candidate in this election,
they would almost certainly be going to go down in a smash in November.
So they don't want to do that.
They're not looking to this election.
They're looking to the election beyond this.
They don't want to compromise themselves by, you know, losing disastrously to Trump in November.
They're thinking about, well, you know, we've got to preserve ourselves and keep our reputations undamaged
so that we can be convincing candidates against Vance in 2028 and beyond that.
I'm sure that calculation is being made.
as I said, I know politicians.
The only candidate who does seem to actually want the job,
wants to be vice president and wants to be the party's nominee,
is Kamala Harris.
And removing Kamala Harris from contention is incredibly difficult
because she is the vice president.
And to repeat again a point I've made several times
in which I think now is now widely accepted.
if Biden stands down as the party's candidate for the election in November,
then realistically, given the reasons he would be standing down,
he would also have to stand down from the presidency as well.
So Kamala Harris would be looking to be the president of the United States
as the incumbent seeking re-election or seeking election as the candidate for the Democratic.
Party in November.
Will it change the electoral dynamics?
Well, as I said at the start of the program,
this violates fundamental principles of how to conduct elections.
Perhaps it can to a certain extent.
It might shore up the black American vote.
Because here one is hearing lots of reports
the more and more people from that community
are now going over to Donald Trump's side.
It may be that if they're offered the option of Kamala Harris,
they will support her
because of not who she is,
but because she's one of them.
So that might stem the tide there.
It might also mean that,
since it's Kamala Harris running the election,
Democratic Congress people, people in the House and in the Senate,
they won't be tied to Biden as they have,
they won't be tied to Harris as they have been to Biden.
They won't have come out and spoken about their huge undying support for Harris in the past
in the way that many of them have done about Biden.
they won't be as embarrassed in their personal electoral battles by the fact that the party's nominee
is Harris as they might be if the party's nominee is Biden, who they all have a past history
of supporting as president.
that is the only advantage to this from an electoral perspective, which I can see.
And I presume that's why it's been done, because the people in the House, the people in the Senate,
the Senators and the House of Representatives, the representatives in Congress are no doubt being told by their electoral managers.
You've got to get rid of Biden because he's absolutely talking.
We are losing support because your connection to Biden is so disastrous for you that your prospects of getting re-elected in November, if he's still there, are zilch.
So even though people don't like Harris very much, you don't have the history of supporting Harris that you have in terms of Biden.
So put Harris in, talk as little about her as you can, and that might enable you to get the support of the Democrats that you have in your local districts, and that will enable you to come through.
I suspect that is the calculation being made.
Yeah, I agree with that.
Just a final note.
I imagine that that Harris looks at this from from the standpoint of if I become the nominee or even the president, even if it is for three, four months, I'm the first woman president of the United States.
I think she looks at it from that viewpoint and her entire team and maybe even the Democrat Party.
You know, they could say we did it.
We broke the glass ceiling, right?
Which is very important for the Democrat Party.
And then they could say in the next four years, we can finally run Gavin Newsom or someone like that.
Because, you know, we got Harris.
She was president for three, four months, or she was a nominee against Trump.
And now we can move on to a Gavin Newsom or someone like that.
I don't know.
Something tells me that Harris would be fine if she was president for four or five months.
so she could say that she was the first woman president of the United States.
I think she would be happy with that.
And even if she lost, I think she would be happy with that.
I don't know.
And maybe the Democrat Party would be happy with that.
I don't know.
I think you're probably right, too.
I think you're probably right about all of these things.
And of course, she has a narrative that she can play out.
She can say, you know, that the reason she lost in November partly was because she broke the glass ceiling
and that this was unacceptable to such a.
huge number of people in the United States, because as we know, Trump supporters, so many of them
are deplorables, people with reactionary views. You can start trotting all that out again.
And you can say in the future election, well, it was a tragedy that the American people weren't
prepared to rally behind this wonderful person, Kamala Harris, but let's make up for her by supporting
someone like Newsom instead. I can very easily see these narratives being spun. And of course,
for Kamala Harris, she remains even after she loses a former president with all the great privileges,
the personal privileges that go with that. So, you know, one can see actually, if you think
of it in these terms, that she comes out quite well from this.
Yeah. We'll see if Biden steps, steps down. We'll see if Hunter and Jill let Biden step step down. I mean, that's what it all comes down to. That's the firewall that he has in place is Hunter and Dr. Jill. Indeed, absolutely. Interesting question, why they're so determined to keep him standing. I would have thought that, well, certainly if it had been a member of my family,
could reach the kind of point that he has,
I would be advising him not to stand.
I can say that absolutely, by the way,
because my aunt in her last election was seriously ill,
and I and other members of her family
didn't want her to stand for that reason.
So, you know, I talk with authority here.
but you know maybe they're negotiating
well maybe they're maybe they are
this is like a tough negotiation for them
and they're asking for more in order to
indeed or maybe
or maybe there are other reasons
which I'm not going to explore on this program
you know no I mean
but anyway I understand what those reasons could be
yeah it could be a combination of all these things
absolutely absolutely
yeah okay
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