The Rest Is History - 3. Is Trump Caesar or Nixon?

Episode Date: November 9, 2020

Recorded hours after Joe Biden was named President of the United States, we ask if Donald Trump is a modern day Caesar, willing to do anything to stay in power? Or is Trump the natural successor to the disgraced Richard Nixon? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook draw parallels between the modern White House, the 1970s and ancient Rome. Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. Hello and welcome to this special edition of The Rest Is History. It's Sunday morning, the American presidential election has reached its climax, and last night, among considerable recrimination from Donald Trump, Joe Biden was declared the 46th President of the United States of America. It was an election for the very soul of modern America, with Trump fighting tooth and nail to cling on to power. So is this unheard of? Who

does Trump think he is? Is he a modern-day Julius Caesar or an updated and slightly shop-soiled Richard Nixon, ancient or modern? Well, the joke is, of course, that Trump brought the news that Biden had been elected while he was on the Gulf Corps. So there have been lots of comments about dictators being cornered in bunkers. The Hitler parallel has been much aired, but isn't one, I think, Dominic, that you would have much time for? Probably not. The jokesmith who's just spoken is, of my sparring partner Tom Holland. The Trump-Hitler analogy, my goodness, that's a well-worn analogy and one for which I have absolutely no time at all. Actually, one thing that Trump and Hitler had in common, two things they had in common, Tom, they're both very funny about their food. So Hitler, of course, was a vegetarian and

Trump only eats McDonald's burgers. And they're both very lazy. So Hitler didn't get up until kind of midday and didn't do any work. And I don't think Donald Trump's work ethic has ever really... And was Hitler teetotal? Yes, he was. So... So Trump is as well. So there's a third comparison. Is Trump teetotal? So they're stacking up.

Yes. Hitler was less orange. Hitler was less orange. No doubt about that. And not into golf, as far as I know. Okay. Okay. So I think that we're really pushing the boundaries of historical inquiry here. We are. But Dominic, actually, talking of historical inquiry, I'm right, aren't I, that Nixon was a particular area of specialisation for you. That's kind of the area you did your doctorate in. Well, I did my doctorate in sort of late 60s American politics, and that's Richard Nixon's time. So the election of 1968, that's when Nixon, running as a law and order candidate, carried all before him, and he became US president.

And I used to teach a course that lasted all year about Richard Nixon. It was my special subject course, and it was brilliant. We kind of got into Nixon's head. We started with his love letters to Pat, his wife, and we ended with him basically being winched out of the White House, kicking and screaming. And that, of course, is the parallel because, you know,

he's the only analogy I can think of, of somebody leaving the White House with this sort of air of shambolic indignity that we have right now with Mr Trump. And Nixon, of course, did not lose an election. No, he's an election winner. Massive winner. Election winner. So he essentially has to resign. Did he fight to stay in the White House as furiously as Trump is currently fighting? Yes, I suppose he did. So it's an extraordinary story, the Nixon story. It's much more complicated than Trump's story, because Nixon won the 1972 presidential election in a stonking landslide. So there's a big contrast there with Trump. Nixon won every single state except Massachusetts and

the District of Columbia. So this sort of utter wipeout of the Democrats. But Nixon's gnawing insecurity was such that he had got his team effectively to bug the Democrats. He colluded and then he covered it up and then he covered up the cover up. And so you had this unfolding scandal for the next sort of 18 months or so. And when it turned out that Nixon had been taping himself and his sort of dirty secrets were aired before the American public, he had to go. But of course, as politicians always do, he fought and he he you know he he sort of tried everything he tried to spin things and eventually in august 1974 he the republican senators told him you know time's up and he had to go but where i think the parallel works is that you know nixon left in the

most undignified way possible so he gave a fairly standard resignation speech to the nation. But when it came to the day of his departure, so the morning of his departure, he stayed up all night sort of sweating and staring into the shadows. And then and he's knackered and he's overwrought and he's a bit of a bit of a mess. And he gives this extraordinary farewell speech to his staff, which is televised. And anyone, the listeners who've seen the Anthony Hopkins film, Nixon, will probably remember this. And he just completely disintegrates on camera. He's talking about his dad, who was a little guy and a common man. He says his mother was a saint. He basically starts crying when he talks about his mother. And it's just this awful disintegration and flies completely in the face of everything

Americans expect from their president, which is a level of dignity and civility and sort of sobriety and all the rest of it. And it's sort of gone down as the acme of what not to do, how not to leave the White House. Yeah, and that's interesting because, I mean, one of the things, of course, that Trump's behaviour raises is the question of why do people find it so shocking? And why did people find Nixon's behaviour so shocking? And it suggests that there is a kind of very strong, often unwritten code about how Americans expect their politicians and particularly their leaders to behave. And of course, this so often goes against the reality, because I guess to reach the top of American politics, you have to play hard and dirty. But there is a kind of

always this sense that, you know, there are moral standards that you have to live up to. And if, as Trump's currently doing, and as Nixon did, you break that, then people are genuinely shocked. Yeah, I think that's right, actually. I mean, they do fight hard. But actually, when you look back at American politics, the striking thing is how often they do feel the need to conform to these codes. So Al Gore, when he lost the presidency to George Bush, George W. Bush in 2000, in kind of dubious circumstances, he... Ah! Oh, that's a gift to you, Tom. I'll never speak again in this podcast. He gives them all away. It does. Yeah, terrible, terrible.

He loses possession. It's a schoolboy error. Yeah, it is Roman. It is Roman. I'm so glad you brought that up. Because, of course, the question of the code, the code of honour. Yeah.

I mean, it goes back, ultimately, to the, I guess, to the example of Washington. It does. I'm glad you brought it back to American politics, Tom, and left the Romans honour. Yeah. I mean, it goes back ultimately to the, I guess, to the example of Washington. It does. I'm glad you brought it back to American politics, Tom, and left the Romans behind. Yeah. Well, well, wait, wait, because Washington is a general. He's a victorious general who has thrown out a king and who has laboured to establish a republic. Yes. And so the big, the big question is, you know, is he going to lay down his sword? Is he going to return to his farm? And it so happens that the American founding fathers, who are absolutely steeped in the study of ancient Roman history, have the model of the Roman Republic to hand because the Roman

Republic is established after a king is expelled. And it works because it establishes this code, the Mossmaioran they call them, the kind of the customs held to by the ancestors that everyone is expected to hold to and that's what the founding fathers are kind of looking to and that's the model that Washington is drawing on. Exactly, so the Washington story is a good one. So he basically gives up his command in 1783, the Continental Army has won, or rather the French have won the war for them. Britain has basically given up. America has its independence. And actually, there's then a six-year break before Washington actually becomes president. So he doesn't actually become president until 1789. And basically, they have to drag him

kicking and screaming into the job. He doesn't really want to do it. They turn to him because he's a unifying figure, because he's a patriotic figure and all the rest of it. But he doesn't really fancy it. And then after his first term, again, he doesn't really want to carry on. And they basically compel him. The other founding fathers say, no, no, you must stay and do it. And then he leaves after his second term and establishes this tradition, which only one president, FDR, in the Second World War,

has ever broken, that a president will only do two terms. So that sort of, I'm hesitant to give you the ball back so easily, but that sort of ethos of the reluctant leader who has to be sort of coerced into the job, I mean, he's obviously trying to live up, I mean, he was the president of a group called the Society of the Cincinnati. And there you have your Roman hero, Cincinnatus, that I'm sure you're about to tell us about. I certainly am. So Cincinnatus is absolutely the archetype for this, who is a legendary figure from the early years of the Roman Republic. And the reason that he serves as such an iconic figure, both for the Romans and then for the Americans, is that he's a great war leader who is also a farmer and he is summoned from his plough to save his people, to lead his country.

And then having saved his country, he then returns to the plough. And this is such a kind of perfect image for Washington. There's a sensational statue, I think it's in the Smithsonian by Horatio Greenough, which obviously this is a podcast, unfortunately I can't bring it up for you. But anyone, Google it. It's so brilliant. It's Washington with his wig in a toga holding a sword. And it perfectly illustrates this kind of strange 18th century Roman fusion that the American, early American Republic kind of absolutely plays with. So those early Americans, I mean, they basically thought they were the Romans, didn't they? But particular kind of Romans, right? Because obviously there's lots of, they have this, do they have this idealised image of

Rome, do you think? I mean, obviously most Romans are probably just like us. Yes, they're haunted by the fact that, of course, the early days of the Republic, when everyone is virtuous and kind of yeoman farmers and at their plough, that the Roman Republic expands, it becomes incredibly wealthy, it becomes a superpower, it establishes its rule across the whole of the Mediterranean. And this then provides opportunities for ambitious Roman politicians to put the entire republic in its shadow. And in due course, that results in the establishment of an autocracy. And so every founding father is nervously aware of this. And so Benjamin Franklin, when he comes, he says, you know, is it going to be a republic?

And he says, yeah, it's going to be a republic if we can keep hold of it. And that anxiety is always, and I guess it's because, you know, Nixon is very keen on the idea of America as an imperial republic. And so that's part of the shadow, I would guess, is it, of what's going on with Watergate and people's anxiety about him? Yeah, people talked about the imperial presidency. You're absolutely right. So obviously what had happened, I mean, basically until the 20th century, you know, America was kind of happening. But as far as the rest of the world was concerned, it was somewhere else who cared about them, let them get on with it. But then the 20th century, America does become an empire. I mean, there's people argue about this, but there's

no doubt really, it has colonies, it has overseas bases, it has influence, it wins wars in foreign countries. And the people talk about the president as an American Caesar, they use that sort of terminology. And Nixon, so the presidencies of LBJ, Lyndon Johnson, who preceded Nixon, who's famous for Vietnam, and then Nixon, who ends the Vietnam War, that's kind of the high point of what people think of as the imperial presidency of a president that can do what he wants, and then Nixon, who ends the Vietnam War, that's kind of the high point of what people think of as the imperial presidency. Of a president that can do what he wants, he can evade who he wants, he's accumulating more and more power. And in certainly Nixon's case, he's using people like the FBI to, you know, survey his opponents, to bug his opponents. There's this sort of fear, which now seems completely hysterical but at the time was very

real in the early 1970s that you know under Nixon America was turning into a sort of police state and actually that's not so different from what we've heard in the last four years from Donald Trump's critics who believe that he represents the end of the republican dream right and again I think that that is that that's been an anxiety that has shadowed the american republic pretty much from the beginning i mean basically if you model yourself on on rome if you have a capital if you have a senate if your capital city has loads of columns and pillars that look like ancient rome then there are two things that are going to worry you the first is that if you're a a republic that

essentially the republic is going to collapse and that a caesar is going to emerge in augustus and the second one is that the entire you know rome the roman empire fell and so the american empire will fall yeah and i think that those those that's a kind of although the hitler you know trump is hitler has been very very kind kind of popular theme over the past four years. I think the Trump as a kind of Caesar has also been pretty popular. I know I've made a lot of good money writing far-fetched comparisons between Trump and Nero and so on. People often talk about the drawbacks of the Trump presidency, but they don't mention this one, which is the greatest, which is the immense amount of money you've made out of it. Well, not immense amount of money. I mean, scratching together the odd penny. But I think that that is a kind of, it's been there right from, say, Andrew Jackson.

Yeah. He was a general, a successful general. 1812 war general. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. People start thinking that he's going to be a Caesar. And I think that essentially, if you model yourself on Rome, the idea that you're going to decline and fall is kind of hardwired into your mind. But isn't it odd, Tom, that they keep electing generals, which is kind of a Roman thing in itself. So Andrew Jackson is a general, Ulysses Grant after the Civil War. And then even after World War Two, they go for Eisenhower, you know, the architect of D-Day. Although what's interesting with Biden, who, like every other man of his generation, president of his generation, did not serve in Vietnam. Actually, the key fact about

recent presidents is that they didn't serve in the military. Yeah, that's true. It's a kind of interesting... And the one who did famously fail to win, John McCain. So John McCain was actually an extraordinarily Roman figure, isn't he? I mean, he's like somebody who's basically decided to role play his entire life. Yes. As a Roman war hero. Yes, yes. Because he fights for his country. He gets captured and brutally tortured and refuses to give in.

And that, again, is absolutely redolent of figures from Roman history. There's this guy Regulus, who leads a campaign against the Carthaginians in the First Punic War, gets captured, gets sent back to Rome on the proviso that he will sue for terms and encourage the Senate to basically to surrender to Carthage. Regulus gets back to Rome, refuses to encourage the Senate to surrender, says no, carry on fighting, and then feels honour bound to return to Carthage, where he gets put in a barrel that has spikes driven through it, and he gets rolled down a hill. Wow. And does that kill him? Yes, it does kill him. I mean, that's, of course, McCain survives. But, you know, he kind of goes

through torture for America in pretty much the same way. And in a way, one of the most kind of shocking things that Trump said, and kind of darkly funny, was he said, I don't like losers. I don't like my war heroes who get captured. Completely shocking. I've never met Regulus, but I did meet John McCain. Did you?

What was he like then? Shook hands with him. In a sort of depressing way, in that people sometimes are, he was exactly as he appeared to be on TV. So I have no colourful, you know, he didn't say, there's a great, you know, let's go and watch Call the Midwife, or...

No, he didn't. There was no hidden... Let's go and wrestle on the campus marshes. No, yes, exactly. No, I think we just passed the time of day. To be fair, I was part of a crowd. He was working his way down the line and I was in the line. I was in the crowd.

I was observing the New Hampshire primary in 2000 when I was a graduate student and met all these candidates. Guys, this is the podcast that brings you brushes with the great man of history. Well, on that note, I think we should, Tom, I believe we have to count some mail-in ballots. So let's go and count our ballots. And in the meantime, let's take a short break and we'll be back in a minute.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman. And together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, We'll be back in a minute. head to therestisentertainment.com. That's therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. If you've enjoyed these first three or four episodes, please do subscribe and leave us a review and a rating on Apple Podcasts. And if you didn't enjoy them, well, please don't. And do get in touch using my Twitter handle,

at DCSanbrookok or use tom's at holland underscore tom just realize tom that could be your uh cricketing epitaph underscore oh very amusing yeah i don't i don't actually write these links so you know you can blame the producer for that i'm completely blaming the producer for that and and so unfair the link have you ever sensational summer's a sensational summer. Do you not notice, Tom, that with these links, there's always a danger of turning into Alan Partridge, isn't there? Do you not think?

I kind of feel Alan Partridge's ghost on my shoulder the whole time. Well, Alan Partridge was a commentator, not a player. And I am a player, so I don't feel the danger. I think it's all danger. Very good. And talking of being a player, talking of being a player, we were on the subject of John McCain. And there was a particularly Roman moment, I thought, and kind of interesting for the light to shed on the way that Roman politics perhaps holds a mirror up to contemporary American politics, which was his funeral.

And what happened at his funeral was that you had Democrats as well as Republicans going to it. Yes. And traditionally in Rome, funerals, the famous example is the funeral of Caesar, were great political order, people who held to the Mos Maiorum, the customs of the ancestors, were gathering there to honour a great American hero and to tell Trump that he was not part of the club. And the reason I think that that is particularly interesting from the Roman context is that it reflects the way in which Roman politics was organised, which was essentially not about policy. It wasn't kind of left or right. It was more about style. It was about whether you upheld the traditional values of the elite

or whether you kind of took the piss out of them. But you know what, Tom? That's very American. So both the presidents that we've really talked about, Trump and actually Nixon, they projected themselves as the champion of the common man, the ordinary American, the square, sort of square-jawed, square-dealing, the little guy. Nixon talks himself a lot about the little guy against the sneering snobs on Wall Street and in New York and in New England and all the rest of

it. So actually, that sense of it being style rather than policy, I think is something they completely have in common, the two systems. Yeah, and I think that what's interesting about Trump is, and it so often doesn't come across just in the press reports, is that he's actually quite funny and quite a lot of what he says, so the comments about McCain, the classic example, are shocking, but a kind of designed to appeal to people who find the kind of traditional norms a bit stuffy, a bit boring. And that, again, is very, very Roman, because the kind of people who identify with the traditional ideals of the Roman Republic, I mean, they call themselves the Boni, the good people, the good guys. And set against them, there are people who are called populares, people who appeal to the people. So, I mean, you could translate that as populists. And that sense

that to be a populist is somehow underhand is absolutely what the Boni, the good guys, are about in Roman politics. And I think that's, that's very much been a trend in, in, in American politics as well. Hillary Clinton was, was the sort of Bonnie par excellence, wasn't she? I mean, she was a sort of, sort of, people often talked about her sort of school mistracy, is that a word? School mistracy side. The fact that she's, you know, she's always, you know, Miss Goody Two Shoes. And Donald Trump was the sort of raucous boy at the back of the class who's stirring up all the others against her. Yeah, well, but also all the presidential you know Miss Goody Two-Shoes and Donald Trump was the sort of raucous boy at the back of the class who's stirring up all the others against her. Yeah well but also all the presidential candidates I mean even Nixon have kind of served their time in the traditional way so they've they've they've

gone up what the Romans would call the cursus honorum the kind of the the greasy pole they've they've served their time in politics they or they've served in the military or whatever or they academics or whatever. Trump didn't. I mean, Trump came from a background essentially in entertainment, and that's how he's governed. I mean, it wasn't that he brought the methodology of entertainment to politics. He turned politics into a form of entertainment. And that, again, was something that was kind of a part of Roman life. There were political figures who used gladiatorial entertainments, whatever, as a way of winning popular support. And they would mock the traditions that more conventional political figures upheld. So I wanted to talk to you about that, Tom, because I think you and I have talked about this in other contexts about Roman emperors. So,

you know, Trump is an exceedingly rich man. He's actually somebody who, in many ways, you know, people raise their eyebrows that he's the champion of the common man. But in Rome, there were obviously early emperors who, you know, steeped in wealth and privilege, but who had enormous success in doing exactly what you've talked about, staging gladiatorial games, pandering to the mob. People like, I guess, Caligula, Nero, are we talking about those kind of emperors? All Roman politicians were incredibly rich. I mean, you had to be. It was, again, very like American politics politics you just couldn't get anywhere without basically being very rich um so that that that wasn't really the issue the issue was yeah was essentially whether you were were you making a pitch to what the common guy thought or were you

standing sternly for for the traditional values so compare i mean all comparisons obviously like this are are incredibly stretched But I think not entirely so with American Rome, simply because the American Republic did found itself on the kind of model of the Roman Republic. And I think you do get this, this kind of dynamic. So Trump compares, well, I mean, you say he's very rich, is he? I mean, that's one of the issues. And I'm sure, you know, one of the reasons why he's so desperate to cling on to the presidency is actually a kind of interesting parallel with with Julius Caesar, because Caesar constantly flirted with bankruptcy. He speculated to accumulate. And in doing that, he brushed very, very heavily against the law. So the threat for Caesar was always that his enemies would prosecute him and bring him to trial.

And one of the reasons, ultimately, we know we talked about civil wars in a previous episode, but one of the reasons why Caesar ends up crossing the Rubicon and involving Rome in a civil war is that he gets cornered by his enemies. His enemies want to prosecute him. Caesar can't be prosecuted while he holds an official rank in the Republic. So he's the governor of Gaul, so he can't be prosecuted. The moment he lays that governorship down and becomes a private citizen, then he can be prosecuted. So the issue on the Rubicon is that Caesar wants to go seamlessly from being governor of Gaul to being consul so that he doesn't run the risk of prosecution. And basically, Trump is in a kind of analogous situation. And I'm sure that if, like CZ, he had battle-hardened

legions behind him, he absolutely wouldn't surrender the presidency. I mean, he wouldn't hesitate to cross the Rubicon. But what current events show is that actually, he doesn't have the Republican Party behind him. No, no. I mean, did you see no i mean did you see that extraordinary did you see that press conference at the garden center that i think is the that's my favorite thing that's ever happened did you see that um he tried to book the four seasons so yesterday he tried to book the four seasons hotel in philadelphia for rudy giuliani to unveil all his sort of ballot rigging claims but they they booked the wrong place they booked a place called four seasons total landscaping inping in suburban Philadelphia,

which is between a sex shop and a crematorium. And Giuliani was there giving the press conference at the very moment that the networks called the election for Trump. So it's this extraordinarily humiliating way to, as people have said, you know, he started his political career coming down a golden escalator and he ended it in the car park of a philadelphia garden center right so that's very much not standing on the banks of the river con with legion behind you

sat with a god about to blow on a trumpet and summon you to glory but what about these characters like um like the neros and the the caligulas you know these people who you can absolutely imagine doing the roman equivalent of tweeting how great they are and mocking their opponents. I mean, the mocking your opponents, which Trump does, that's quite a Roman thing, isn't it? Yes. So wholesale abuse of your opponents is very much a Roman thing. And I think that, so Augustus, who's the first emperor, his genius is to keep these two traditions, the tradition of the Boni and the tradition of the Populares, kind of in balance. He is able to play at both of them. Tiberius is very much a traditionalist. He's very much a kind of John McCain figure. Caligula, who succeeds him, his genius is to discover that you can root your power in the popularist tradition, that you can become very, very popular by essentially... Caligula kind of, you know, he roars around town with a chariot drawn by kind of hundreds of horses.

This is absolutely the equivalent of having, you know, gold... Stretch limo. ...everywhere in Europe. Yeah, stretch limos and things like that. So it kind of appeals to people. I mean, Kligler understands that. And he understands that he can win enormous popularity by ripping the piss out of the traditional way of doing things, out of kind of humiliating senators,

out of mocking them, out of threatening them, out of sometimes killing them. So that's why he makes... And it turns out to be a source of great popularity for him. So that's why he makes his horse a consul, right? Or says he's going to make his horse a consul? Because he wants to mock the institution. So he never makes his horse a consul,

but it's a joke because he's essentially saying to senators, I have so much power that if I want to, I could make my horse a consul. But then, of course, it's the senators who write the history. It's kind of the equivalent of the New York Times who write the history. And so Caligula gets condemned after he gets assassinated, not by senators, but by the Praetorians, because that's the key thing. Don't piss off your base like that. Very foolish to mock people who have swords.

Yeah. So Caligula can't help. I mean, he can't help mocking people. And so he mocks a commander in the Praetorian Guard, which is a fatal mistake. And so that's what dooms him. But after Caligula's death, his jokes get rewritten to demonstrate that he was insane. And I think there's a sense in which that's happened with Trump as well, that the things that he said as jokes get rewritten to illustrate he's mad or a dictator or whatever.

Yeah. And, you know, that's the fate of losers. Trump is a loser. Yes, I suppose that's true, isn't it? And what about Nero? So is Nero also quite Trumpian? I think he is, isn't he? I mean, Nero's got, am I right, Nero's fat as well, wasn't he?

He was a very ginormous fellow. Yes, yes. Am I right? Nero was fat as well, wasn't he? He was a ginormous fellow. Yes. Well, so you get this kind of swing in Roman politics where a traditionalist is succeeded by a popularist, is succeeded by a traditionalist. So after Caligula, you get Claudius, who's an antiquarian, very interested in Roman tradition. And then you get Nero, who is absolutely a popularist to the degree that he, you know, he does equivalent, you know, he plays the lyre in public. He races chariots at the Olympics, he appears on the stage. And this would be the equivalent of Trump, I guess, kind of headlining Glastonbury, awarding himself an Oscar, sweeping the board at the Oscars. But I mean, that's, Trump did that first, right, with The Apprentice and all that? Absolutely.

And people like it and people are amused by it. And when Nero dies, although all the kind of New York Times equivalents are ecstatic about it, there are lots of people who are left bereft and flowers are laid on his grave.

And there are even people who kind of pop up in Greece pretending to be Nero. And obviously there's no capital in pretending to be Nero if there isn't a kind of market for Nero. Yeah. And in a weird way, that's actually clearly going to happen in America, right? That people will try, there will now be a fight, assuming that Donald Trump is probably too old to run again in 2024. There will be a fight. And assuming he doesn't go to prison. Yes. But even if he does, there will be a fight to inherit

his mantle, to be the new Donald Trump, to appeal to that sort of popularised tradition, won't it? Don't you think? Yeah, and I guess that would be a difference between Trump and Nixon, is that no one wanted to be the new Nixon. No, although, although, here's the interesting thing that, you know, Nixon himself was discredited. I mean, I know he did his interviews with David Frost, and he spoke at the Oxford Union, he tried to sort of transform himself into a statesman and sage, but he never quite pulled it off. But Nixon's politics endured. So Nixon, I think a lot of American political historians would say, you know, Nixon is the man who really invents and perfects the appeal to the little guy as opposed to the establishment. So he turns... So who are his heirs? So his heirs, I mean, Reagan, to some extent, Reagan, you know, is also, you know, I'm an

ordinary person. I'm not a stuck up snob. I'm not, you know, Reagan's whole pitch was that I am an ordinary middle American. You know, I happen to have been in Hollywood and all the rest of it. But I speak for, you know, Main Street America. And that's obviously, you know, Trump's is a more aggressive form of that appeal. But it's a world away from the Republican appeal in the mid 20th century, or the early 20th century, the Republican Party was clearly a much more sort of staid and elitist party than it became under from Nixon onwards. So Nixon at school, at college rather, he'd founded a society called the Orthogonians, the square shooters. And they were, you know, it was all about we are not the privileged people on campus. We are the ordinary people. We are the kind of little guys. We poke fun at our betters.

We poke fun at the elite. And that in that society that Nixon founded when he was a student, you can see the kind of contours of Republican Party politics right now, that we champion, you know, the small town, the rural village, against the big cities, the highly educated people, you know, all of that kind of thing. And I think that thing, that Nixon created that, and that will endure. And so commentators who know vastly more about American politics than I do are saying that Trump has kind of created a new constituency. Yeah. Unexpected degree of support from minority voters. And perhaps that's something that a future Republican candidate will be able to draw on. Yes. But I wonder, what do you think about the way in which he's behaved over the past few days, and presumably will be behaving over the months that he has left in the White House?

How damaging do you think that it will be to the fabric of American democracy? And is it something that future candidates, I guess Democrat as well as Republican, might kind of draw lessons from? Or will it be remembered as a kind of embarrassing incident like the Nixon? I think it will probably be the latter, actually. So before this all happened, I mean, a lot of people,

and myself included, thought this could be really damaging and toxic for American politics, that it could actually corrode the pluralism that democracy depends on, which is basically, as you know, that if you lose, you walk away and your opponents don't then kill you or put you in jail or something, because they know that when they lose, you won't do, you know, you'll treat them with respect as well. And I think a lot of people feared that this would be a complete disaster and that, you know, there'd be riots on the streets and all the rest of it. But actually what's happened mean he's been ridiculed hasn't he the republican media have

largely abandoned him fox news the new york post and so on the republican party have not come out in in support of him and actually i think it will be remembered as a a classic sort of tragicomic trump episode that you know he he he he left office in this ridiculous, shambolic, actually slightly pitiful way. And actually his legacy, if he had sort of grumpily conceded, which is the alternative, I mean, it's obviously impossible to imagine him graciously conceding, but if he'd kind of reluctantly and rather bitterly conceded,

then, you know, I think his legacy would be, well, it would be less tarnished than it is right now. Don't you? And what if, what if after he's, if he ever gets out of the White House, they drag him out? I mean, what if he gets prosecuted? What if he gets convicted? What if he gets, goes to prison? What kind of impact would that have? Well, first of all, I don't think he will go to prison. I mean, Donald Trump is an expert. If there's one thing he knows a lot about, it's litigation. And I think he and his lawyers will find ways to prolong any trial,

you know, and any case. There'll be appeals and appeals. I also don't actually think there's that much appetite for... I think a lot of Americans just for, and I think people, a lot of Americans just want the soap opera to end, rather like they did with Nixon. So Nixon was pardoned by successor Gerald Ford, basically because they thought, yeah, he is clearly guilty of crimes, but we just want to put this thing to bed now. You know, we don't want it hanging over us for the next five years. And I think that's what people feel about Trump. The thing is, he doesn't make a very persuasive martyr, does he? I mean, he's not,

he's, that's not really in his sort of skill set, playing the victim. That's something that Trump hates to do, because he hates losers. Yeah. So I don't really, I think he will go and sulk in Trump Tower, and tweet for the rest of his days. And he'll try to have an influence over the future of the Republican Party. So he will become the Edward Heath of his days. And he'll try to have an influence over the future of the Republican Party. So he will become the Edward Heath of American history. That is a very- Apologies there to any American listeners to the podcast. I really, nobody enjoys an Edward Heath analogy more than I do.

Yes, he'll be holed up in the American equivalent of Salisbury playing his piano, or in his case, playing a lot of golf. Well, I think that is a perfect note on which to end. We'll finish with the words of, for now, President Donald J. Trump, who tweeted last night in capital letters, I won this election by a lot. And this despite Joe Biden receiving around five million more votes. Bye from us. See you next time.

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