The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 139. Speaker Kevin McCarthy: In Defence of Donald J. Trump

Episode Date: June 15, 2025

What is the logic behind Trump’s “chaotic” political strategy? Are Europe and America heading for a divorce? What did it feel like to get ousted as the Speaker of the House on a global stage?  Rory and Alastair are joined by former Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy to discuss all this and more.  Sign up to Revolut Business today via: https://get.revolut.com/z4lF/leading, and add money to your account to get a £200 welcome bonus. This offer’s only available until 7th July 2025 and other T&Cs apply. TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Social Producer: Celine Charles  Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Nicole Maslen Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And we like to kick off with our guests just to get a little bit of their upbringing. And your parents were Democrats. So what went wrong with you? I opened my eyes. But no, my parents, I came from a working class family, but my father, it's Irish and my mother's Italian, so we had the best fights in the neighborhood. My father was a firefighter, and then he always had a second job. He moved furniture, and I was the youngest in the family. And the time I grew up, really it was what happened in America that drove me more politically.

I watched Jimmy Carter. I think I was in sixth grade. He had this Malay speech where he had this fireside chat and told us to turn the heater down and put a sweater on and the best days were behind us. And this other guy walks up to the podium and says, no pastels, fly the bold colors and go to that shiny city on the hill. And it was an easy contrast. My family are all Democrats, but I was always a Republican. I was the youngest. And your siblings are Democrats as well? They were, yeah. Still are or not? My sister is not my brother. No, I switched them all. If I was good, I moved most of them all to be conservative. Kevin, tell us a little bit about your dad.

I'm presumably that's a very physical job moving furniture. Oh, yeah, no, no. Is that something he could keep doing as he got older, or did it become more difficult for? It's a physical job, but he did it for the money, like everything else. We didn't make a lot. And so he moved up in the fire department and became the deputy chief. But he retired at 55, but he got cancer the next year. and he only lived another three years.

It was unfortunate, battled it all. And the other thing I read about your childhood is you had some sort of speech impairment. Oh, yeah. It's interesting, quite a lot of politicians have that. And I just wonder whether the speaking that's involved in politics is some... I couldn't pronounce so many letters. So in kindergarten, they would test you all, right? Then during the day, at a certain time, a buzzer would ring,

and those that had speech impediment, would go to the special speech class. And when you're in kindergarten, there's like six or seven of us ago, you know. But the next year, there's a few of us. But when it got to like the fourth or fifth grade, I was the only one going. I was still in it for quite some time. And what was the issue? I don't know. I couldn't move my tongue.

Couldn't say my S's, my T's. I would stutter. How did you get over that? I just kept talking. Right. I don't know if I've ever truly gotten over it if you listen to some of my speeches. Yeah, I've seen the odd glitch. I just wonder whether that was a sort of brain malfunction.

I think I skip every third word or whatever. Oh, okay. Interesting. Doesn't Joe Biden have a, he said something similar? Don't equate me with Joe, but yeah. Okay, I won't provoke you. The difference, like getting into the political world, is not something I thought to do. I always thought to go into business.

I always pictured myself as being a more entrepreneur, right? But when I got out of high school, I was the youngest. My folks didn't have great wealth. And so I couldn't get academic scholarship, but I thought I deserved an athletic scholarship, but I was the only one. And so I went to community college. And this one liquor store that'd sell his beer underage, the guy had a car dealer's license. And I lived in this town called Bakersfield, which is like an hour and a half from L.A. And so I told him one day, I said, I'll give you $100 if you take me to the L.A. car auctions.

It's where all the dealers bring their trade-ins. And so I started buying and selling cars, and I was flipping them to pay my way through college. It was illegal, but I didn't know it while I was doing it. And then on the weekends, I would go visit my friends who were away at college. My best friend was up at Stanford, my other buddy SC and my other friends at San Diego State. So this one weekend, I was going to go to San Diego State for the weekend. And so I picked my buddy up and we go to the grocery store so I could cash a check to get some money. And the day before the lottery started in California.

So I buy a lottery ticket as I'm cash a check. And I won the lottery. I was one of the first winners. But when it first started, this is 1985. The most you could win was $5,000. But if you put yourself in my place, 20 years old, it's Friday night. I just won $5,000. And this was before the Biden inflation, so it really was a lot of money.

Low blow. And think about it. And I spend the weekend 10 minutes from Tijuana, right? No time to rebutt. From Tijuana. So I come back, I take my folks to the nicest restaurant in town. I still remember what they ordered. My brother orders dessert to make the price higher.

And I give my brother and sister each $100. bucks and I take the majority of the rest of the money, I put it in one stock. I like to take risk, right? I got lucky. I made 30% of my money in six weeks. The end of the semester comes, and I go and I try to buy a franchise. I try to buy a subway, but no one would sell me when they said I was too young, I was only 20. Another thing I like as I don't give up, right? So I go and to open my own deli. And there's three lessons I learn. First to work, last to leave, last to be paid. But the food critic comes in and compares me to do big restaurant and takes my business takes off. Why did you call it Kevin O?

Because my middle name's Owen. Okay. I thought a large thing. I'm Irish. You worry that, yeah, but you worry that people might think McCarthy was Scottish. You thought, called himself, oh, Kevin O, anyway. Tell us a little bit about the Irish and Italian communities in California when you were growing up. And we have a sort of idea from the movies.

And obviously, we have strong ideas from Chicago and New York. Was it different to California? Yeah, but the city in Baker Hills really didn't have, an Irish community and an Italian community, it's just the heritage of what you had, and you'd celebrate it on the different parts, maybe within the church. You were Catholic? Yes. It has a strong Irish and Italian segment within there.

So from that standpoint, both big families, by other cousins, always big families, both believed in all getting together. And the cliches, I guess, that we hear are kind of firemen, police officers, priests, I mean, did you have all those in your family? Yeah, my uncle was the fire chief for the county and my dad was for the city. So we argued if it caught on fire, who would be the best to put the fire out? I was a fireman for three seasons and I took the test. It did pretty well, but I couldn't become one because they had a nepotism clause. My mother always thought I was a failure because I never became a fireman. I'm sure that's why Eric and Don Trump, Jr., having nothing to do with the mingling of business and government in the United States now. You've had a long political career. which actually start, you started out essentially as a staffer working for a congressman. Well, the story goes, okay, so I do pretty well in the business.

I could finally afford to go to college. So I sell my business. I wanted to finish. And I'm going to Cal State. And I open up the papers as to be a summer intern in Washington, D.C. with my local congressman. And I did not know this man, but I thought he'd be lucky to have this. Bill Thomas. Yeah.

So I applied and he turned me down. But the end of the story, I got elected to that seat and became the 55th Speaker of the House. But he did tell you on. He took me down. Yeah, this is the thing I always tell people. If you just take no for an answer, you're going to fail in life and don't give up, right? Angela Duckworth has a great book. She's a professor at Penn.

The number one attribute of whether someone will be successful is perseverance, right? Adversity, how do you overcome it? It's called grit. And so I took the turndown letter because it was nice, you know, had something in there. So I went back to him and I said, look, I don't need to go D.C. and you don't need to pay me. I've got money now. I just want to volunteer. So I said, look, you volunteer for a month.

And at the end of the month, they said, okay, we'd like to keep you, but we really don't have a lot of money. We don't pay you $100. It said, fine, because they had computers. I could do my homework there. And that's what got me started in politics. Tell us about this whole thing. Are you born in the mid-60s?

65, yeah. So you're actually in British terms, the British listeners. You're about the same age as people like David Cameron, that kind of generation. Ed Miliband, who we just interviewed, or David, his brother. And I guess what we tend to think about this generation, your generation of politicians, is that you really came into your own at this extraordinary moment, 89 to 2004, where the liberal global order was dominating. And it was all about democracy growing. It was all about free trade and globalization. It was all about international intervention. And it's Francis Fukuyama,

your Californian constituent, the end of history, right? Your order has this kind of idea of liberal. Did you believe in that? How did that feel? That whole airfew was that important in your political formation? Yeah, but the foundation prior to that, you know, you came into it in 2000, was really the time of watching Reagan, Thatcher, and Pope John Paul, right? And, I mean, when I was in high school, the original Red Dawn, and you had the after-school program about whether the Soviet Union invades, where you have this war, and the concept of the optimism of Reagan instilled something. me that was fundamentally different and gave you a foundation. And Reagan was a true believer in the free market, right, in competition. But I thought Reagan taught from a conservative point of you, and this is what conservative, Reagan was always a happy conservative. And what he truly fundamentally, I believed he would say it, if you believe, and it doesn't matter whether you're conservative,

if you believe your principles bring people more freedom, you should be happy, not angry. And too often in politics, we think we have to be angry or yell louder to prove more fundamental in whatever our philosophy or principle is. Then knowing American history, I would look to a Lincoln or look to a Teddy Roosevelt from the foundations of where I would study and go. Then 1989 happens. Berenemal comes down, Soviet Union collapses. The U.S. then emerges as this dominant power, and we have a period of about 15 years. where it seems as though the West, Europe is going gangbusters, European Union's expanding, the US is doing well, politics of his friend Tony Blair, Bill Clinton comes along in this period.

It really feels like a kind of politics, at least in Europe, of sort of confident third way. Everybody's trying to be like Denmark. But that isn't quite what's happening in American politics at that time, or not how it will have felt to you. I mean, if you look back in history and you think of that era, you had a combination, you had Clinton, merge, right, because the Democrats are lost. It was a new type of Democrat. Then you had Newt Gingrich, and you had the revolution of Republicans. And that's a little more of a modern day Republican that they hadn't believed they could ever win Congress, right? It's been 40 years in the contract with America. And all of a sudden, we got to where we balanced our budget, right? I mean, you think

from there were discussions in the late 90s and beginning of 2000 that we were paying our debt down too fast. The Fed was worried about that and then where we are today. And then the fundamental shift after Bush comes in in 9-11. 9-11 had a really turning within America of changing it in many ways. But I also think things don't just happen in America across. I mean, when you had the Brexit vote, we kind of had the rise of- Maca of Trump. I remember having discussion with Tony Blair at Davos, and it was during the primary. And I remember talking to you, he was doing something B of A when at dinner, and I said,

Trump's going to win. There was all these metrics that I measured from 1979 to then from participation rate, right? How people felt. And they wanted something different to go saying. And I said, he's tapping into something. Then I remember seeing Tony Blair, like at Melkin later. And he's the one that kind of weaved in, well, we just had Brexit.

This isn't tied to just one country. This is something happening throughout the world. Before we get on Trump, just once more, Newt Gingrich. Explain to internationalists as non-U.S. And maybe younger Americans, what did that mean? How did he change Congress? How did he change campaigning? How did it change what it meant to be a Republican representative?

There was a moment in time, like, Newt Gingrich was in Congress and he was a congressman. He didn't have it easy. And he's a dear friend now. Like Lincoln, it took him many runs. He ran three times and lost, and he was a professor of history. And when he got into Congress, he was kind of this backbencher and maybe a flamethrower. You know, he would throw out. And no one believed Republicans could ever win.

And Republicans believed they couldn't win. What was funny is the leader then, this guy named Bob Michaels, the Democrats loved him. They literally give the office we have for Speaker now, Bob Michaels had, right? Because they just placated him because he would never challenge you. And he accepted mediocrisy. And what Gingrich did was made the party believe they could govern, right? And the first thing you had to believe in yourself. What he did with the campaign, instead of being individual races, he made it in a national race, right?

So he challenged the status quo. And complacency had set in where, you know, we had a speaker right that goes and does a book deal. And so he took the point and expanded it. then the bank one. He made the campaign national, and we won in 94, and everybody thought we would lose again, but he showed that we can govern. And he really did it kind of checked. But he changed Washington, where people don't just move there. So it changed Washington, people didn't move that, and it also became more polarized. It went from a much more cross-party consensual, or that's the sense of it, to a world in which, instead of spending a lot of time, Washington,

people spent time in their constituency, and the tone of politics seemed to become more divisive. Yes and no. I mean, people would rate that. I think they overscore that to the changing of media and Howey campaign compounded upon that. What it really was was challenging the status quo. Because if you really looked internally and you looked at Congress, you took it out. They had an elevator operator for you. They had somebody come and bring an ice bag in front. It was poorly managed and we accepted that. And what he finally did from internally was, said, you don't have to accept that we could do better, right? And we could hold people accountable. And the interesting thing, when Republicans won, they went into rooms they'd never been in before. So it was opening. But it was more in your face because when we ran in your face to win, we thought the Democrats to win back that same way. So it became the rise of a Pelosi on the Democratic side. One of the impressions that we have in Britain, in particular, I think, and across Europe as of American politics, is the role of money, money in campaigns, the fundraising. We talked to Rosa DeLauro,

who said, was she said she spent at least a third of her time? I don't think it's Rosa, but we've definitely, I've spoken to a congressperson who said that they were spending 60 or 50, 60 hours a week sometimes, calling donors, bringing in money. Okay, I was a leader of the party. I raised money more than anybody else. I would have loved my members to spend three hours. Right. Because I felt it was pretty much on my shoulders to raise the money. But it's crazy. We just look back at the presidential election we just had billion dollar campaigns. I mean, that is mind-blowing. It is. And should put it in perspective. I mean, the money has really gotten high, but campaign laws have changed. And the campaign laws in

America really shifted after Watergate. Because before you didn't disclose and people gave cash and everything else, the money in politics of the federal government is really much different than anywhere else. You can't take any corporate money and you're limited to how much you can get from one individual person if you run for Congress. But what are these super PACs getting around it? Well, there was a Supreme Court case because of the First Amendment. Somebody could give unlimited. You can't deny a person first amendment. So that was the growth and that was later. But still to this day, a person who runs for the State House in California can get corporate money and the limits for them are much greater, right? So in the House, I might get it wrong since I'd left it. I think.

I think it was 3,300 and it goes up by inflation. Maybe it's 3,400 for primary general. So how can Elon Musk pay tens of millions and then more tens of millions to Trump's campaign? He can't give it to Trump's campaign. So who is he giving it to? Super PACs. His own Super PAC. And he can do anything he wants and somebody can do the difference.

But this is the difference, though, too. Money in politics is not equal in campaigns, okay? because the law allows, if you're running for Congress, you get TV time at the lowest rate they have ever offered. If you're a super PAC or a party, you have to pay the going rate. So there's an equalizing effect there, right? So if I put in $5,000 to television, a super PAC probably has to put in five times to equal the amount. So there is an equalizing effect to some point. And they're all equal what they can raise there. So the power really rest of what you're able to do. And now when you have online fundraising, that's kind of changed politics. And it's made people more extreme,

because the more extreme you get, the more attention you get, the more money you'll raise online. So talk talks a little bit. We've got your conventional fundraising, more prosperous people giving $3,000. You've got the online fundraising, which could be trying to get millions of people to give you $10. And then you've got the super PACs, which can be billionaires writing these enormous checks. How are these three things changing and altering the way politics works? And if you were going to reform America, you're just sort of stepping back for a second, are the bits of that that might have troubled the founding fathers and that might be a risk to democracy?

It's a combination of what has happened, right? So Watergate happens. So they say, we've got to clean it up. So then they come in and you have to report. We can't take corporate money. The unions can't give, but the unions, the unions are a super pack upon themselves, and they give only to one side, maybe a little bit to the other side, right? And they get treated differently. Then you had the rise of social media, and then you had a Supreme Court decision. And then we had McCain-Feingold that changed how parties were able to raise money before the parties could get corporate money and unlimited. So then the parties had, and you looked at politics today, why can't you control all your members? Well, the party can't do that anymore. They're limited to what they can raise now, too. Explain that a little bit more about whipping and controlling members and how that created loyalty and discipline.

Well, this is back in McCain-Feingold in the 2000s. If you ran for office and races didn't cost as much, the party kind of controlled what they funded, right? The NRCC National Public Congressional Committee. And they still raise a lot, but there's not the biggest players because of the Super PAC now. And at that time, you could control members because you could fund the races or not. People would stay more in line than that broke free. And now when you can raise your money yourself online too, you could be an extremist so you don't care about. Leadership doesn't matter.

And then in the move of networks today, you don't get news, you get opinion. And so in the Republican Party, you don't just have one party anymore. and kind of if you run against, you become a little folk hero at the same time, too. So there's all these, I'm a break believer in structure dictates behavior. And your first question was, if I was king for a day, what would I do? I would like more competitive districts. Back when Newt ran, there was a lot of competitive districts. In 2010, when Republicans took the majority, we beat 63 different.

There's not even 63 competitive seats in America today. There's probably around 36. So now they're very safe, and all you have to do is when your primary, public and a Democrat. So then you're only looking the other way. And is that because of gerrymandering going on or not? Pretty much, yeah. Sounds good.

It cleaned up as well. But that's directed by states, right? But I always think, I want the idea to win at the end of the day. Either I win or lose, let the idea win, okay? So because of law, you can't limit the ability to take money from outside your district. But what I would say is to control the cost and everywhere else, you had to get a dollar in your district before you get a dollar outside your district. So then the structure dictates behavior. What is the member going to do? They're going to spend more time in the district

because if I got one dollar from you, that's important because it lets me get a dollar, but I got your vote too, right? So I'm going to focus more on the policies than on something else, right? Just to explain to this, what you're saying is that at the moment, if you create enough buzz and outrage, you can raise money from right across the United States well outside your district and you do it by becoming a big media personality who people want to send a dollar to, you might be running in Oregon. They're sending a money from Massachusetts. If you go out and be some extremist, they're going to put you on TV, whether they like you or not, you're going to create a name for yourself, and then you're going to send an email out and say, the world's collapsing,

send me two bucks so I can fight the extreme. Quick break and then back for more. This episode is sponsored by HP. Now, Rory, I hear that Windows 10 is finally being put out to pasture this year. is, and something pretty relevant for you, Alistair, given what I've seen as some of your technology. It's going on October the 14th, to be exact. And after that, Microsoft is going to stop supporting some of those old laptops of yours. No updates, no security patches. So if you were still using it or a business was still using Windows 10, it would be really exposed to cyber threats, for example.

It would be like locking the door, but leaving the key in the lock. So it's time to move on, and HP are making that refreshingly straightforward. Yes, they are. HP's latest business PCs comes with Windows, 11 Pro as standard. They're faster, more secure built for the AI tools which are already reshaping the way we work. And you don't have to figure out all in your own. HP's business advisors help you pick the right kit. So no baffling jargon, just practical advice. And here's the bonus. Restis Politics listeners get 10% of business PCs at HP.com using the code Trip10 term supply. So unlock,

Efficiency and Innovation upgrade to Windows 11 ProPCs with HP and get 10% discount. Visit HP.com slash politics to find out more. Hey, this is Michael and Hannah from Gollhangers The Rest is Science. This episode is brought to you by Cancer Research UK. We often think of beating cancer as treatment, but imagine stopping it before it begins. After years of work, Cancer Research UK scientists are launching a clinical trial of lung vacs, the first vaccine designed to prevent lung cancer. It builds on TracerX, the world's largest cancer evolution study, which tracked lung cancer cells over many years to uncover the

disease's earliest warning signs. Lung Vax is designed to train the immune system to spot these signs early on, destroying 40 cells before cancer develops. So it's not treatment, but preventative, with the potential to stop lung cancer before it starts. The first stage of the trial starts this year, focusing on people at higher risk. It shows what long-term research makes possible. For more information about Cancer Research UK, their research breakthroughs and how you can support them, visit cancerresearchuk.org forward slash the rest is science. Hi, everybody, it's Dominic Samark here from The Rest is History.

Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Restis Politics, when Rory was away and I was filling in and enjoying Alistair Campbell's tremendous banter. And I'm back to tell you about our new series on The Restis History, which is all about Britain in the 1970s, a period with a lot of uncanny resemblances to our own. So right now we're living through a moment when oil shocks generated by war in the Middle East are rippling through the world economy, when Britain feels like, like it's sunk in a bit of a malaise. People are arguing about Europe. The government has got a few issues with the trade unions. And we have a kind of, I suppose you'd say governing elite, a kind of political class that is really struggling to come to terms with all of these issues.

And people are asking if Britain is governable at all. So there are a lot of parallels between that Britain that I'm describing, which is our Britain and the Britain of the mid-1970s. So in this series that's coming out on the rest is history, we're looking at these and other issues. We'll be talking about the rise of Margaret Thatcher, obviously a colossal figure in our political life even now, whether you love her or loathe her. We'll be talking about the very first Brexit referendum of 1975, a subject that I'm sure Rory and Alistair will have strong opinions about.

We'll be talking about the fall of the Labour Prime Minister Harold Wilson. And we'll be talking about one of the grimest moments in Britain's economic history, the moment in 1976 when we had to go cap in hand, as people said at the time, to the International Monetary Fund, the IMF, for a then record bailout. Now, if that sounds good to you, how could it not sound good to you? Of course it sounds good to you. We have a clip for you to listen to at the end of this episode. And if you want to hear more, just search for The Rest is History wherever you get your podcasts. So we've, I don't want our listeners and viewers to imagine you spend all your time on Davos, but we met through Davos when Roy and I taught you.

I've only made to Davos like two, three times. Yeah, well, yeah. That's enough for everybody. Rory loves it. He just lives, it lives for those sorts of events. So you said at the time, and this was around what time, just... January. Was it before the election?

It was off the election. It was after the election. Just up to the election. Yeah, a few weeks after. And you basically said to us, oh, for heaven's sake, calm down. It's going to be fine. The guy's not crazy. He's not going to do anything crazy on tariffs.

He's not going to do this kind of stuff. Just calm down. And the other piece of advice you said, we asked you what advice would you give to world leaders, and you said, learn to play golf because that's the way to influence Donald Trump. Right. Now, listen, honestly, why is your assessment of Trump so far? Trump is different than he was the first time. Better or worse?

I would think probably better, personally, internally himself. But this is why. This is only a second time in American history. Do we have a president who served, took a break and served, right? And what's difficult, you find yourself, or you've both been in it. Most presidents serve these two terms, but get no break to think about what they're working on, right? And you're just on a treadmill, so you can get a plan. So he had four years out to think about what he'd want to do.

He can't do another term. Is you sure about that? Does he each think that? There's two reasons why he does that, right? He just wants to screw with the press. Okay. And if he said he couldn't do another one, you make him a lame duck. He wants to troll you.

Look, he comes from... Why doesn't he have better motivations in life? Because, look, he's got strength, he's got weaknesses. He accepts those in life. But he comes from the media in American room ahead of time, right? And so we accept them. We see wards and we see everything else, right? But I don't believe Trump started the time he picked.

I believe this goes back to Ross Perot. And I believe it's a combination of... of parties failing to solve problems. Okay, tell us about Ross Perrault and how he relates to the story you gave in Newt Gingrich. Who is Ross Perrault again for international young... Ross Perot was a very successful American entrepreneur. He was from Texas. He created many companies in tech and others, right?

And in the 70s when Americans were being taken hostage, he would go in and rescue himself. He was a Texan. not a tall person, but a tough person. And he was the folklore of America, you know, the Western, and not from a cowboy point of view, but hard charging and I could do it myself and we can make things happen. When George Bush ran for a second term, Ross Perot runs. And he runs in an unconventional way, right? And had he not run, Clinton would have probably never won, okay? He runs and he has a unique voice about him and he's a straight talker. And he touches the chord of the people who felt they hadn't been listened to.

Not so much from a party, but from a country that you felt you've been left behind. And you think Trump modeled himself more on him than a conventional Republican leader? You know, Trump is a populace. I would say Ross Perrault is a populace, but there's two principles Trump has always believed. in life. In tariffs and in drug prices are too high. Those are just principles in his mind. It wouldn't matter if he's a Republican, a Democrat. That's just what he has always believed in, right? And there's moments in his life he's been a Republican. There's moments in his life he's been a Democrat, right? And he's intuitive. The difference in this presidency is he had four years out to think about it.

The first time he ran, he might be honest with you and tell you, I didn't really know I could win, right? but he tapped into something, kind of the forgotten man. And then when he won, he had to run against the establishment. And so he didn't have the old staff to come in and do things. And when he first comes in, he puts people together and kind of the Malcolm Gladwell type thing, he gets his 10,000 hours. But then he still has people who are in there that didn't come in with him that have stopped him from doing certain things, right?

And then COVID hits. And then he personally believes. that he got cheated in that, right? How did he get cheated? Well, he believes he won the election. I know, but I was denying COVID. Yeah. But COVID is a really good example,

because COVID he comes along and starts telling us to drink bleach and undermining Fauci and all this sort of stuff. We just looked at him and thought, how the hell is this guy, the president? And then when he loses and wins again, we think, how did you people do this?

Do you accept that's the kind of broad European attitude to Trump? Do you get that feeling when you're here? Yeah, you get that feeling what I'm still there from Europeans. You're not shy. I respect people's opinion. But if you think about how was he able to run again, kind of the prosecution of him elevated him. Okay, I'm in America. I see it. You won't see it from there. But what happens in America, you get a pendulum swinging. Yeah. And a challenge to politics in America, not in this presidential election, but the last two, I believe presidential elections are aspirational.

Tell me what's going to America is going to be like in the next four years. years and off your elections are like a report card. And that's why in the house you can win something, you run against it. But when it was his first election and his second election, people went to vote against somebody, not for something. And the Democrats, when they won with Biden, they just ran against Trump. And they won with that. But they kept doing it.

By the way, because you at the time, you were a bit equivocal about whether it was stolen or not. You absolutely accept you. You take it during, it was a very tight election. We've had these really tight elections. And this is just during the time after the election, you don't have everything done yet. I don't question who won that election. Biden won.

Yeah, Biden won. But Trump still questions that. Yeah. And he truly believes that. Does he really believe it? Yeah. He truly believes it. Does he worry you?

No. But, okay, so he gets these four years to think about the next four. And that's healthy because people in elected office, be it governor and everywhere else, you never have the time. You're always 30-minute meetings, everything else. Do you ever take a moment to sit and think about what you just thought you wanted to do and what you learned, right? You ever read Adam Grants? Think again. But he doesn't even write anything down.

He doesn't read. He doesn't write. You've never met him, have you? No. Okay. So those are characteristics that are not true to the man I know. Okay. He is very intuitive.

He listens a lot. Okay. He's intuitive. He talks to more people and he's more accessible. and if you watch the history of America, you used to go up and be able to see Abraham Lincoln, right? He will talk to people around the world. He'll talk to somebody that they don't like or he doesn't like.

Does he read briefs? Yes, yes. Kevin. And he will know things. Yes, he does. I've been in it. I've been in the meetings. I've never seen the more bare desks.

Sorry, Roy. I've never seen the bare desk in my life. Look, he's not going to deliver. This is the difference with Trump. You're putting them in a box of all other Americans. American presidents and how they got there, all right, without knowing the past ones. He is a businessman and everything to him is a business deal. And he's trying to set the table.

So he may say something that's totally different than a normal president, but he's trying to get an advantage in a discussion. Let's come back to Taras as an example. So when we saw you in Davos. Okay, he didn't see me. I was online. Yeah. Okay.

So when we saw you online at Palm Beach. I was giving a speech, yes. Yeah, you're at Palm Beach. beach and you will. I was trying to make a living. He's so excited to get a chance to argue with someone about Donald Trump. He's been looking for it. Almost. He really shone me up. Can't, can't withhold himself. Okay, so on tariffs, you got a series of stories. So after he was elected, you got all these kind of Wall Street titans saying, don't worry about it. He's not going to put up tariffs. He tried that last time. He put him up against Canada. The automobile industry screamed,

he dropped him down again. And he's got Scott Besson, and Scott Besson doesn't believe in tariffs, to be fine. Then Liberation Day happens. The tariffs go rocketing up. And everyone's like, oh, yes, we always knew he was going to do this. He's always loved tariffs. And it's going to be easy because Elon Musk is going to make a trillion by cutting the government. And Howard Lucknick's going to make a trillion from the tariffs. And then we're going to have, sort of the deficit. And then he blinks. And all the tariffs come crashing down again, right? And then suddenly the narrative all changes again. Oh, yes, no, no. We always knew what he really cared about was the markets. We cares about stock exchange, cares about the bond markets.

Whereas on the third of April, they were all saying, no, no, no, actually it's all about tariffs. So there's something very odd going on, which is people who've worked with him quite close to, right? People who know him as well as you do, miscalling this again and again, and often after the event, providing a different kind of psychological explanation for what he's up to. I think he's different than he was in the first term, but I disagree with part of that. Let me explain. The difference that he has this time is he has the 10,000 hours and he can't do a third term. And he does believe in the first term when he wanted to do certain things, he was always pushed back. So he couldn't fully implement what he wanted, okay? Because of the deep state.

Yeah, and then people working for him and everything else. And he'd take certain opinions. So this time he wasn't going to do it. He's going to go out and do what he believes. I believe, and he doesn't say this, but this is me analyzing him. If he tells you he's going to do a 10% tariff, he's going to do a 10% tariff. He did that in his first presidency, and Biden kept it. So what happened in that time period, he said, oh, everybody was complaining about it's not so bad.

You kept them. So they didn't create inflation. They're not so bad. Okay. So it gave him more reassurance. If he tells you the tariff is going to be higher than 10%, what he's doing is, and people don't understand how to read Trump, he wants to negotiate. Anytime he raises up what he's trying to do negotiation.

And what he was saying is reciprocal. Now, that's a legitimate argument. I'm a free trader, but reciprocal is a legitimate argument, especially when it comes to America based upon the last five, six decades. Okay. And understanding Trump, Trump prides a great deal on how somebody treats respect to him, okay? And he's thanked to America. Yeah.

And if we allow you into a. are markets and you don't allow us, and even if we have a trade agreement, that will irritate. Now, when he started all this, he wins the election and he is not sworn in yet. He starts with Canada and Mexico, okay? Remember, he got elected on, I believe, three issues. Immigration, our border, the economy, and he's not Biden. Okay. So to get a hold of the border, especially last time, he needs the help of Mexico. And he utilized tariffs for negotiations last time with Mexico, and he got him to react. So the first thing he says, fentanyl's coming in.

It's going to be 25. So again, if you read through it, I want you to negotiate. And it's going to go in effect in this date, which it never went into effect because they did what he wanted. And before he was sworn in, we already started slowing there. Can I interrupt for a second? Yeah, because I guess. Canada's different. What's weird about it is that his logics for tariffs are all mutually contradictory.

Number one, I'm doing it to raise a lot of money. So the manufacturing stays in China, but I'm going to charge the Chinese goods when they come in. Number two, I'm moving manufacturing back to the US, in which case you wouldn't get the tariff income. Number three, I'm doing it to deal with fentanyl. So I'll drop the tariffs down if you stop bringing the drugs in. Number four, I'm doing it for geostrategic reasons. I want to punish and weaken the Chinese economy because I don't want them to be a geostrategic competitor. All these things mean completely different.

things in terms of what you do with your trade policy and they contradict. Yeah. And is that deli- Can you say that does his strategy? No, get the principle of Donald Trump. Everything's a negotiation. So he's going to use the argument at the time that gets him into a playing field different. Now, you would say most politicians would fail doing that and wouldn't be able to be elected because they think they're flip-flop. With Trump, how he came into politics was different anything else, okay? He was on television. But what was he on television? As a successful business person who brought people into the room and was the apprentice and would fire people and put him out. And so it was always moving something different. It was chaotic. But in the

end, we picked somebody up and he made somebody out of nothing and made him a good business person because he was a negotiator. But Kevin, do we really want government to be like a reality TV show? No, but reality TV is pretty popular, right? We have democracy. Democracy. So cricket in the UK. Okay, so let me be a counterpoint to this. Do I want America to have an open border with all these people come through? Do I want inflation like we haven't seen since the 70s that hurts everybody? Do I want to allow Putin to invade another country?

Do I want the missteps of Afghanistan? So that was all Biden. He may have been a very polite person that you would invite to tea. He wouldn't really know what was happening. But Americans didn't want that. And they picked a disruptor because they felt it had gotten so out of control that, yes, we've watched this. But they also picked a disruptor because he had got such control of the Republican Party. And let's be frank.

Now he is. But when he first won, you let's not. Okay. But there are lots of Republicans. We speak to them. And you will know this is the case. I'm amazed how many Republicans you speak to who will say in privately, the guy's an absolute monster. I wouldn't trust my daughter with him.

I wouldn't do a deal with him. And yet publicly, you're all out there because he's so powerful over the party. He is more powerful in the Republican Party today than at any given time. But if I measure that, I remember when I first ran in the state house, George Bush was more powerful than any Republican at that time. We just had 9-11 everywhere else. Ronald Reagan at the moment. Most leaders, when they hit their peak, it also.

moves out to everywhere else. They help elect governors. George Bush went around helping elect. He expanded majorities, right? That's what leaders do. And if you waste that, how is that strong? And why do leaders do it? They want to put more people who support their view and grow. And so people that have different view. And remember, when he ran, the very first time, he ran against 17 others, he has a different philosophy than the other traditional Republicans. The same thing happened to Ronald Reagan. They tried to push him out when he first started running, right? Because he ran against Ford, and Ford was sitting,

and a lot of Republicans go out and campaign against them. So it's more a change within the party, but it's no different than any other leader. Okay, but when you were talking about Ronald Reagan earlier, and I did meet Ronald Reagan, and even though I'm very much not his politics, I could see what you mean. He's a world leader. Right, but he's also that happiness and that sort of positivity, right.

Trump comes over to me as one of the angriest people alive. That's not the same. Okay, you're making these comments, but you had never met him. So let me try to. You know, I see quite a lot of them. Okay, but let me try to give you an example. If I'm in America, I wouldn't say it equal to you, but I would say somebody of your part, someone of your beliefs, philosophy, and is out front and talks about it,

I'd take a Bill Maher, okay? He's on television. He has a show that's on HBO and everything all the time. I just was on it the other day. And his whole starting monologue is criticized it. And he's a liberal. He literally gives money, too, like millions of dollars. And he hates Trump.

He hates Trump. He has Trump syndrome. I mean, just goes crazy, yells at you, you know, stop it. And then kid rocks on and says, you know what? Have you ever known? Why don't you go to dinner? He goes to dinner at the White House. hates this man, says all these things about him. And Trump has said terrible things about him. You know what he does? He takes the list like 52 and has Trump signed him. He walks away and I was just on the show of you guys. He goes, I could have never had that conversation with Clinton or with Obama. He's more genuine. And what he found is sitting there one-on-one having a discussion. He disagrees with his politics and he disagrees with some of the his delivery. Was Trump wrong that Europe should actually get to 2%? He was right. And I've said that before he was there. So I take it.

From an American looking back, his delivery is not good, but when I talk to, just as you say, you talk to a Republican, when I talk to elected officials in Europe, they'll say, they don't like them, but they say, but there's a lot of truth to what he says. But there's another problem, Kevin, which I think you're underestimating, which is America spent 70, 80 years building up an extraordinary network of alliances, incredible goodwill, incredible soft power. And countries like Denmark worship the United States and couldn't imagine a world without the United States. And we built an entire NATO in America's shadow, all these institutions, UN onwards, right?

And the last five months has been unbelievably traumatic for Europe. I mean, something has broken, which will be very, very difficult to fix again. Just small things which you don't care about, like Greenland, are devastating. The idea that the United States, we'd never scenario plan for a conflict with the United States, we assume that we are. Wait, wait, but let's just develop this, right? It's a sovereign territory. Canada, five years ago. Canada, five years ago.

And Denmark makes it clear that this is not happening. J.D. Vance goes there against the express wishes of the sovereign elected government and makes a provocative and offensive. speech against his Democratic guy. He endorses the AFD of far-right party in Germany interfering in a German election as it's happening at a very, very sensitive moment. Everything that's happened with Ukraine has completely thrown people off balance. It may be funny. He may be doing stuff that American voters like. The impact on America's alliances, particularly in the West, is shattering. It's going to be very difficult to rebuild this. You think it's all fine? Everyone's going to think I don't think it's fine. I know there's challenges here, but let me give you from a point of view

the outside. And I have a different opinion on what's happening in Ukraine than probably some people in my party do. I think these actions of Putin have very similar actions before the start of World War II. I think the world looks more like 1938 than any times. And we've got the crinks now, right? You haven't had that since the axis of evil. You're coming. off COVID, something like COVID only happens once a century. And what happens when COVID takes, something like COVID takes place, leaders in democracy lose. Not because he or she has done something wrong, but because it's so life-changing, an authoritarian stay in power and on a natural place they usurp more power. If I take from an American point of view looking out into Europe,

I don't know who the leader of Europe is anymore, right? Is Macron strong in France? I don't know. I think the Prime Minister of Italy, I think she's strong. Germany, I don't know what's happening within Germany. So I think we're both going through this political movement, but I don't see how a bond between American and Europe can break that quickly when we have shared the ultimate sacrifice for each other. You would have thought so. Well, I would believe that.

But can you imagine threatening a sovereign state, interfering in internal elections, suggesting that your allies, France and Britain, did not sacrifice lives or participate in Afghanistan. You are the only people. Wait, J.D. Van said this explicitly. You are the only people who've ever triggered Article 5. Look, we deployed for you after 9-11 in Afghanistan. We gave lives in Afghanistan, and we then get insulted. Look, I was the minority leader in Congress when Afghanistan, the withdrawal took place.

And I remember calling President Biden saying, you can't pull out. out this fast because how can you do this to the UK, they're not there because they had a 9-11, they're there because we had a 9-11, you know? No, I couldn't thank you enough that you were willing to sacrifice your own lives because we're there. Do you see that? I was in Munich when J.D. Vance made that speech. And I promise you, you talk about soft power, if the guy had gone in with a bucket full of sick and thrown it all over the room, he would have had the same effect.

because he was essentially saying, you guys aren't really democratic because you don't say like I do that the AFD are great in Germany. You guys don't believe in free speech. I think they don't believe in free speech. Who does? I think Trump and Vance,

they go after anybody who criticizes them. They go after anybody who challenges them. Look, I understand even though you're out of Congress, you're still a Republican, you want Trump to succeed. Let me be clear, I want America to succeed. I want Europe to succeed at the same time, but just at the same point you want with yours. I just think from a perspective, look, you two were served in government at the same time.

Government is much bigger on a number of different bases. We have too much bond in there in a basis to throw something away so rapidly or something. But we are in a world where things are going very quickly. Okay, let's play devil's advocate, though, okay? Is there any merit to Americans when I'm back home to say, why do we have to pay the largest share of NATO? And all these European countries have promised as 2% of the year. But I never came to your country and said,

we just broke a bond because you guys have promised something, you haven't done it. But you're the powerful person in this relationship in a way. And Rory and I have taught, ever since we started this podcast, we've talked about Europe has to step up for its own defense. We've taken American leadership on this for granted. I get that. But I think it's more about the things he says,

the things he threatens, the way he says them, the way he threatens them. I actually think, and I think you may agree with this, or you may have agreed with this at one point, I actually think what he did on January 6th renders him unfit for public office. In our country, that would have been unfit for public office ever again. The voters get to decide, look, I don't support anything that happened on January 6th. I think what happened on January 6 was wrong. But you still support him. He instigated that.

Look, you haven't met him, you haven't, you weren't there. I was literally in the capital and had to be removed from the capital at the time. So, I mean, I don't judge somebody based upon their opinion based upon their life experience when they lived through something. I kind of test that that's what they know. Look, do I think our relationships, what I feel as I'm here in Europe, is strain? Yeah. But what I would say is, I think it's been more building.

You ever been in a relationship and you let something go, go, go, go, go. And then whatever transpires isn't that big, but you let everything else build up in between it. And so it's higher. I think that's kind of where it's at. But I also believe in the Bible that it tells me iron sharpens iron. I don't see how the sacrifices we have made for one another. Europe has laid down their life for American, and Americans have laid down their life for Europe. You don't break that bond.

Do you have differences in opinion at time? Do you get frustrated with it? But that's where you work through whatever the challenges are. And remember, America is a land that lives under a constitution. I think, unfortunately, your analogy is a good one. I mean, I think frustration with Europe was in the U.S. was building for a long time. I mean, I remember seeing it even in the 90s. And you may well be right that what we're seeing now, kind of vance, is sort of taken off the mask.

He's revealed what a lot of Americans really think. You know, he's served in the U.S. military, and he somehow appears to have believed that America fought alone and that there weren't any allies with them and that they didn't do anything. I don't see that view. And to be honest with you, I've never heard others bring that up. That's not something America's. So it's healthy that I get to hear that. Okay.

So I think the risk is that if you let these things build up and then you're really unpleasant in the final days, whatever the background is, you know, whatever the justification is, you can end up with divorce. And I think we are very, very close to a world where the West that America carefully curated for 80 years is disintegrating and where it's becoming quite clear that, you know, President Trump's first visits, not to Canada, not to the United Kingdom, they're not to liberal democracies, they're not to NATO allies, where are they to? I would disagree with that premise wholeheartedly. I don't overread where somebody first goes. But let me give you an analogy or why my thinking is, where he transpired and why this Middle East trip was so successful. We've got conflict in Israel. We've got Ukraine and Russia. We got Iran. I mean, so Henry Kissinger before he died, he wrote this column with Graham Allison, destined for war.

16 times in the history of the world, the number two power has surpassed a number. Only four times he didn't go to war. Thericidious trap. And they wrote it with three numbers, 72, 72, and 9. 72 years since we've had a great war, and that's actually a long time. 72 years since a country has used the atomic or nuclear weapon, nine countries of that capability. If we were sitting here in the 1960s having this discussion and trying to project how many countries would have nuclear capabilities in 2025, we'd say 40, 60. Working together has made that, all right?

If Iran is ever allowed to have a nuclear weapon, there'll be 40 countries with a nuclear weapon within a couple of years, easily, right? Going to Saudi Arabia, okay? In the first administration, he created the Abraham Accords, which I think was very important. I also think America has learned a lesson. We have been at war for two decades, right? And I think part of our learning is you can't force democracy on a country that doesn't ask for it. I think America's greatest strength is not our aircraft care, is the idea of America. Okay.

What he did there with Syria was a new start. What he did there was trying to get Saudi Arabia to join the Abraham Accords. Also, energy is important on how you're going to get Putin to the table. His whole economy is based upon the price of oil. If we're able to lower the price, we're big producers, they're big producers. If we worked together and it didn't have a good relationship. In the last administration, when Biden went there, it wasn't very positive. Then China comes in and bring Saudi Arabia with Iran.

Well, that's America stepping off the stage. Russia wasn't in the Middle East for quite some years. And then during the Obama administration, when he had the red line and let it cross 12 times, we brought him into Syria, right? Doing what he did in Syria was a different policy than we had a long time. And probably he was the only one to do it, probably like Nixon going to China, But that kind of makes sure Iran and maybe push Russia out of that region, which I believe would be positive. If you lower the price of oil for every economy in the world that's very helpful and lowers inflation.

So that combination of all that. But if you sat back and you looked where you didn't come to my country first, I will tell you on a personal basis, he has such high respect for your country. And especially when the queen hosted him, I'll tell you, the first. person, I've never shared somewhere else. He told me the story where I believe it was in Buckingham Palace and he was about to go down and the queen was hosting him and he and Melania and he turns to Melania and says, can you believe we're all here? I mean, I watch in his face, I watch in his eyes and depict that you didn't go to UK first, but who did he do the trade agreement first with?

The UK. So I look at positives. I mean, sometimes people just look at negative. Yeah, and I get sometimes that we, the Brits, probably a little bit needy about this special relationship, etc., etc. But it is special, though. It's beyond special. Okay. But you mentioned Ukraine there. It's very hard for us here to see what he is trying to achieve by this constant. I mean, he's darted down a little bit recently, but constant berating Zelensky, whose country was invaded by a kind of murderous dictatorial thug.

I think you're being kind of Putin. Okay. But Trump's kind to Putin. And sometimes what we sense is that Putin ultimately, you mentioned Kissinger's book, I mean, Madeline Albright wrote a book, Fascism a Warning, and she was talking about your country. That was in Trump term one. Is he not somebody who has deeply authoritarian, potentially dictatorial tendencies? And that's why he likes Putin, and that's why he likes he likes to be a strong leader. That doesn't mean your dictatorial or otherwise. I've served with a lot of presidents. Putin has.

served with a lot of presidents. There's only one president that he didn't invade another country in. Let me give you one analogy is when you think about, I look at the world and it concerns me at time. If I look at the actions movement up to World War II, where Hitler serves in the German army, but he hates that they sign the Treaty of Versailles, right? So what does he do? He runs for office in a democracy again and again and again. And the moment that he takes power within a month, he takes power. And then he moves into the Rhineman and he rebuilds his military, even though it goes against the Treaty of Versailles, but the world power doesn't do anything because they believe they'll keep the communists in bay. So then he takes Austria. Then he creates, with a country

in Asia and Italy, an axis of evil that all want to expand their sphere of influence. Then he tells, making it fast, then he tells the rest of the world he's going to take Czechoslovak on a given day. So in comes Neville Chamberlain, right? His own generals tell Hitler, knock it off. They can defeat us. but he sees weakness in the eyes. He signs a piece of paper he can care less about in plans and creates World War II. Putin doesn't serve in the Soviet Union Army, but he serves in the KGB. He hates that it collapses to the West. So much lower when Gorbachev died a few years ago, he went to attend the funeral.

What does he do? He does the same thing. He runs for office in a democracy, respects the democracy, serves two terms, puts its puppet Medved in, And we all knew what it was, right? Barack Obama gets caught on a hot mic talking to the president Medvin and says, tell Putin I'll be more flexible after the election. Then he uses... But how does this explain Trump's...

Well, I'm going to get to the point because you're going to interpret it. I'm telling you my view of the world right now. He uses to rebuild his military, the natural resource. He uses KGB tactics to fund environmental groups in Europe to get Merkel and everybody else buy his natural gas. The pipelines go through the old Soviet Union when Ukraine changes. his leadership, he doesn't want to pay the dividend anymore. So what does he do? Proposes a new pipeline that goes through no country, goes just through the ocean. The only country to stand up

against it was America to sanction it. Okay. Then what does he do? He invades Georgia. He takes Crimea. He goes to the Donbos. Then he goes to the Olympics in China and creates a new crank, right? And then he watches the missteps of America in Afghanistan. He got his meeting with Biden. And when Biden met with him, he didn't tell him to remove the troops he parked along Ukraine, he lifted the sanctions off North Stream too. So the world has to be strong. But you've got to judge on the outcome. What Trump wants to do, and I think everybody would say this, this war is atrocities of what has happened. I've been to Ukraine. I went in 2015 after the first invasion, and then I went back to my White House, and I sat with then the vice president, Joe Biden. I said,

less sell javelins to Ukraine. So they could defend themselves, right? You know what he told me? Europe wouldn't support it. You would provoke Putin, right? I said, okay, well, let's train him on and keep it in Poland. So he understands Putin's structure. How are you going to get Putin to the table? You cannot give, and this is where we're wrong because what did we promise Ukraine before. You've got to get Putin to the table. Ukraine wants to have some guarantee. This is where I think Zelensky misread it. The mineral agreement is the guarantee. Because what he was doing there, he literally said America is going to be a partner with you. If you read through the lines, if somebody attacks you, they're attacking America. So I'm giving you an agreement,

but not putting it in a manner that gives Putin to save face to come to have a negotiation. So you can't judge it until it's over, right? He's a negotiator. So what he's trying to do is get people at table to stop people from ending the atrocities that are going on. Putin is 100% wrong with everything about this. I don't want Putin to be successful in any shape or form. But does he not look at Trump at the moment to think, this guy's pretty weak? He's saying the things I want to hear. Vance is saying the things I want to hear. You ever have somebody a smooth talk or compliments you and everything else and you walk out and your pocket's gone, you overpaid for something? Yeah, I think this a hell of a negotiator. So you can't judge until the end, to be fair.

Kevin, we're going to have to wrap now. Okay. I can see Alice was so enthusiastic. He would keep going for us and you've been wonderful. I would happily keep going. He's fascinated by this conversation. As I might. So thank you for your time.

Let's finish with a final one. You're a very optimistic bouncing. Always. Always and it's lovely to see. But I want to finish just with a sense of the personal cost and the strains of being a politician. And what are the things, along with all the lovely stuff that you'll say to encourage young people to go into politics. What has become tougher about politics, if you were being honest with your family about the personal cost?

Can I just add into that as well a sense of what it was like when you were being ousted a speaker at the emotional level, at the kind of, you know, huge, around the world this is being watched and covered, and it's about you and your family are in the background somewhere watching this. Just give us an indication of what that feels like. Well, because I had been in for a while, because you've gone through the barrel a few times, I didn't have qualms. I had peace. Look, I got removed because I had one member sleep with an underage woman who wanted to leverage me to end an ethics investigation. Who Donald Trump wanted to give a senior position of the administration. Yeah, who didn't get there. Okay. Okay. And so from that standpoint, I'd rather stand on what's right, right, from the same same. point. It's difficult in politics that you can't have, everything's in a snapshot, you can't tell the full story, everything's not black and white, and you got to be tough skin to be able to survive

it. So is it tough on your family? Yeah, and then your family can't have a normal life and then, but there are also a lot of benefits. The tough part that I think through the ages, what we've done is we've said a lot of things, everybody that's in politics, to try to win, so we downgrade the job itself. I want the very best people to serve. I don't think if you're served the whole time. And I don't think, I was on this CNBC show, the squawk box, you know, they're in there and they're talking about carried interest. And they think anybody that has a different position, who bought them off? Well, somebody could have a different opinion in mind and not be bought off by somebody else. It's they look at the world a little differently.

And I think the difficult part today is before, if somebody made an agreement with the other side, just like in business, you'd have a win-win. Today's society thinks if you make a, an agreement that you must have sold out, right? I had to walk through and get a debt ceiling, which Republicans don't like to vote for with a five-seat majority, the Democrats controlling the Senate and the White House, and I got the largest cut in American history. I got the most conservative stuff you'd ever find, but you couldn't celebrate it because somehow they had, the Democrats had to be a part of it too. In the removing, the Democrats always before said they would never vote for a motion to vacate. Pelosi told me, ah, just can't want it. We'll never vote for that. But I'm the only

leader in modern history that has always won seats. I elected the most women for Republicans and the most minority for Republicans, and I won every single time as leader. We gained seats. Even when Biden won the presidency, 82 million votes, you know how many Republicans in Congress lost their seat? Zero. That hadn't happened since 94, and we beat 13 Democrats. Everybody projected I'd lose 25. The power of the idea, getting the right person who represents it, I still think, look, I look at the capital, I don't take back one day. I love every moment of it. I do it all again, and I do it the same way, even the falls, because it's what it makes you, who you are, right? I love to read books about people who have stumbled and picked themselves up.

And I think that's kind of what America is about. That's what we look for. Well, listen, thank you for your time. Our motto, I don't even though our motto is disagree agreeably. sounds to me that you're calling for a bit more of that. That's a message I think you should take back to your leader who should disagree more agreeably. But thank you very, very much for your time. It's been an honor.

Thank you. Good to see you guys. I really appreciate it. So, Roy, there was our second encounter with Kevin McCarthy, first in Davos and then on the podcast. Yeah, well, I thought the main thing sitting in the room was I've never seen you so animated or excited. It was actually, in a way, very kind of charming. It was a bit like me being sort of stuck in a room trying to argue. argue with some philosopher I disagreed with. You were clearly so sort of confused, intrigued and

enraged about his support for Trump. But I don't think he's very good to indicate to possible new listeners and new members that I'm normally asleep. I don't mean you're asleep. But I meant, no, I don't mean you're normally asleep. I feel I'm always animated. No, you're very animated. But this one was, this one was very charming because it was one way, you would occasionally look at me and say, you know, you can ask the next question. But then when it actually came to it, you couldn't resist asking a second the third question yourself. I think because you were so sort of puzzled by the fact that

you find it very difficult dealing with someone who's still a massive supporter of Trump. So you kept coming back in saying, yeah, but deep down, I don't believe he is. I don't believe he believes all that. I think he has to say that. He feels he has to say that because even though he's no longer a politician, as it were, or a serving active politician, he's still on the circuit. He's still part of the kind of national Republican Party conversation. so he feels he feels he has to say those things. I mean, I talked to Anthony Scaramucci beforehand and say, you know, and he was very strongly viewed that that was the way to press him was, you know,

does he really believe this stuff? And I genuinely find it hard to get over the January 6th stuff. And so at one point did Kevin McCarthy, but now it's sort of, oh, well, that's all ancient history. What do you think about him as a politician? Well, I thought one thing that was interesting. interesting, is that you saw the clearest possible example of what the moderate defense of Trump was. So I had dinner with a Trump appointee in the States just before I left who was saying almost exactly the same line as Kevin. And it was very similar actually to when we interviewed Nathamaharie about Boris Johnson.

You've got to meet him. You should spend time with him. Exactly. Classic defenses, when you spend time with them, they're very charming, they're very smart, they're very well briefed. and they let you get on with it and they're great managers. And it's really weird because the massive dissonance is how difficult it is to get across to Kevin McCarthy first see, as you pointed out, the fact that he said when we saw him in Davos in January that Trump was going to be much more moderate and restrained and wouldn't want to do anything crazy

on tariffs or scare the markets or the bond markets. And how he now processes that the second thing is that. The second thing is the struggle of American supporters of Trump understanding how totally thrown off balance Europe has been, how much they feel that what Trump has done has destroyed the American alliance since 1945, how things like Greenland, the threats are not a joke that you can't just say, yeah, he's a bit of a clown and he gets to go around saying stuff, but it will kiss and make up and all be just as it was before, that they just don't understand how. how much he's wrecked by his behaviour. But also, I just don't, I don't buy this idea that if you met him and you spoke to him, because the truth is, Donald Trump does everything in public anyway. I mean, I wish the news channels would stop saying, breaking news, Donald Trump takes questions from reporters,

because he does it about every 20 minutes. And so we see the guy. I don't need to meet him and to have a conversation to know that he behaved in a repellent fashion to Zelensky. when he met him. I don't need to meet him to know that when he sat down with Cyril Ramaphosa recently, he behaved like a complete jerk.

I don't need to meet him to know that... And the idea, by the way, Roy, that if you met him and he reads his brief, you've got the bloody Kirstie Noem woman, the intelligence person, saying that because he doesn't read his brief, she's trying to get them packaged like Fox News bulletins to give him a daily morning video briefing rather than the thing.

And likewise with Johnson, I don't buy the idea that if you met Johnson, you'd suddenly think he was a hard worker. Just look at the COVID inquiry to sort of put that one right. So, no, I don't buy that line. But what I think we're seeing at one level with both Trump and the kind of mild aversion in Boris Johnson is what it's like to be a professional party politician, how important party loyalty is. I mean, Kevin McCarthy is the ultimate party insider. He became involved in politics quite young. he's completely sort of Republican through and through

and what really matters to them above all is winning. I mean, I think the real answer that I used to get on Boris Johnson when I'd say that I thought he was a terrible prime minister, a terrible human beings, people would say, yeah, but he won. He did really well in the 2019 election. And that's what they will sense that above all, provided he can win, the sense of party loyalty seems to trump any kind of ethics, any kind of international relations, any kind of another.

You can see why you made it in that system, though. He's very eloquent, very charming. It was interesting after you had to run off. But, you know, he hung around at the end and wanted to sort of chat to the production team. And very affable. But I suspect deep in his heart, he thinks this Trump stuff is a bit of a disaster. But he knows that if he says that, you know, he's got a toast. There we go.

That's my view, Kevin. Anyways, love you to talk to you. Thank you, Cam for your time.