The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 155. Mike Pompeo On Russia, Trump, and China

Episode Date: September 28, 2025

Why does the former Secretary of State think the US is going too soft on Russia and China? What was it like working closely with President Trump? Why did Putin invade Europe under Obama and Biden, but not Trump?  Alastair and Rory are joined by Mike Pompeo, former US Secretary of State and CIA-Director, to discuss all this and more.  Visit HP.com/politics to find out more. To save your company time and money, open a Revolut Business account today via https://www.revolut.com/rb/leading, and add money to your account by 31st of December 2025 to get a £200 welcome bonus or equivalent in your local currency. Feature availability varies by plan. This offer’s available for New Business customers in the UK, US, Australia and Ireland. Fees and Terms & Conditions apply. For US customers, Revolut is not a bank. Banking services and card issuance are provided by Lead Bank, Member FDIC. Visa® and Mastercard® cards issued under license. Funds are FDIC insured up to $250,000 through Lead Bank, in the event Lead Bank fails. Fees may apply. See full terms in description. For Irish customers, Revolut Bank UAB is authorised and regulated by the Bank of Lithuania in the Republic of Lithuania and by the European Central Bank and is regulated by the Central Bank of Ireland for conduct of business rules. For AU customers, consider PDS & TMD at revolut.com/en-AU. Revolut Payments Australia Pty Ltd (AFSL 517589). Find out more about how Google’s AI is helping fuel the UK’s growth and transformation and read the report at goo.gle/aiworks. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus: Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, an exclusive members’ newsletter, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. Instagram: @restispolitics  Twitter: @RestIsPolitics  Email: [e-mail] Social Producer: Celine Charles Assistant Producer: Alice Horrell Producer: Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Welcome to the Restless Politics Leading with me, Rory Stewart. and me, Alice Campbell, and we're absolutely delighted today to be with a very, very significant figure from the world of the United States of America, Mike Pompeo. Mike Pompeo is an ex-military guy, but more significantly in recent years, in Donald Trump's first term, was director of the CIA, the Central Intelligence Agency, and also Secretary of State. And actually, given the rate of churn that Donald Trump went through some of his top officials, he survived in that job for a fairly long time, is also still very active in the political debate at home and abroad, has very strong views on China, on Russia, on the Middle East, and we'll be getting through all of that. So, Mike Pompeo,

welcome. Thank you for being here. And Secretary Pompeo, thank you very much for joining us. It's an amazing moment to have you here in the United Kingdom at this particular time. I wonder whether I could start you on a sort of big issue, which is where you're going to be you? do you sense the gap is now? Are you aware of a gap between a particular kind of liberal center European view and an American view? And how would you describe that gap? Are you aware that there are sort of tensions out there between how some people see Trump and other people see Trump? Oh yes. No, those tensions don't just exist in the United Kingdom. They exist in every burg in America, every small town. President Trump is a, he's a walking Roershack test, right?

People respond to him. He is deeply charismatic. He is clear. There's no doubt about what he thinks at any given moment. He dominates so many news cycles. So people have deeply informed, deeply held opinions on him. I don't know that it's materially different in one place or the other. My guess is that there would be people on both sides of the Atlantic that would hold very favorable views of President Trump.

And separately from that, perhaps his policies and those who were both disgusted by him and didn't like his policies. Just described as you've worked with him very, very closely as Secretary of State, heading the CIA, really big jobs that really matter. And we have a sense of him, and this is communicating in all sorts of different ways, that not really on top of detail, doesn't really like reading briefings. What's he like to kind of deal with as somebody who's at the top table trying to formulate really complicated policy?

Yeah, I mean, I spent so much time with him. As the CIA director, he wanted the director to brief him. That was unusual. It's usually a more junior person in the organization, but he wanted me to be at those briefings. So when I became second or state, I had the enormous advantage of spending hours and hours and hours with him. He was a fantastic boss.

I could go in and tell him, here's what I think. He'd respond. Sometimes he would agree with me. Sometimes I'd present him a set of options and he'd pick one. Sometimes he would disagree with me. He got 270 electoral votes. I got zero. He reminded me of that from time to time.

But he was absolutely right about that. And we would go execute his vision of American foreign policy as best I was able to go execute. But he gave me the space to go do that. When I was the CIA director, he gave us all the resources that we needed to go execute our mission. He gave us enormous space to go build and build and build to do good intelligence collection and conduct operations. And I think we got a pretty good net effective outcome, but the world can judge for itself if that was true. But from my perspective, as someone who was a leader on the national security team as part of a team in that organization, we had a lovely four years. Secretary, one of the things that's making us very anxious in Europe is the sense, if we quote Osula van der Leyen, that President Trump is, in her words, weaponizing dependency.

In other words, since the Second World War, Europe has become very dependent on the United States in many, many different ways, particularly defense spending, NATO, but much. Chelsea. And for the first time, we feel that we are now dealing with a U.S. administration, which is prepared to use that to extract concessions, to threaten, to ask us to spend more, putting up tariff barriers, et cetera. And it's very, very destabilizing. Are you aware of what a profound kind of psychological impact this is having on Europe, having had a particular type of relationship with the U.S. since 1945, suddenly having to deal with a very different type of relationship. It seems to me that the, what do you describe it as, is the psychological impact is having, is how you characterized it? Yeah. It seems to me that that's a result of failed

British and European policies for 25 or 30 years. The dependencies didn't evolve because of something that the United States did. They did it because of failures of political leadership in Europe and in the United Kingdom, right? It was the Europeans and in the United Kingdom who decided, you know, we're just not going to spend the money necessary to keep our own people safe. We're just It's not going to do it. We'd rather go spend money at NHS. We'd rather go spend money on fixing potholes in suburbs of London. And, you know, we'll let the Americans go carry the burden. And by the way, we're going to set up enormous non-tariff barriers. We're not going to let Kansas farmers state that's near and dear to me back home. We're not going to let them sell wheat into our country

because, damn, those Kansans are competitive and actually make really highly productive farms and can deliver wheat to the tables of British citizens at a price that, uh, you know, British and European farmers can't. So we're just going to pretend that GMOs are dangerous. We're going to make up some fantities. And President Trump's saying nonsense. And so I'm untroubled by the fact that President Trump is trying to call out truths that I think are inescapable.

You said them yourself, right? You all have underinvested. They're creating dependencies. I think is how you described it. And he's trying to fix that. And, you know, President Obama tried to fix it too. He tried to do it by being nice and smiling and going to fancy cocktail parties. President Trump has a slightly different model.

But is part of the issue not that over the years, successive American presence essentially have given that sense of commitment to Europe? And you can argue that we took it for granted. And I would agree with that. But this kind of shock. But Alster, sometimes, you know this. We've all, many of us have raised children. Sometimes it takes a moment, right?

Sometimes it takes a shock. It takes a disruption, a dislocation to actually get someone, to not just go, yeah, that's a good point, but to actually act. And I'll say one last thing. I hope that Europe is actually going to act. They've made these commitments about spending that they're going to make two, five, seven years from now. The natural tendency of the human condition and certainly of the political condition is to say,

now we're just going to, when the threat from Russia is over, when the Russian aggression is at least brought to a temporary cessation, because I don't think Vladimir Putin fundamentally ever, I don't think it ends in that way. But when it's brought to cessation to the Europeans go, let's just go back and over to you, America. I was a young soldier. I served on the East German border when I was a young soldier. And I did from time to time wander into a wonderful little bar in Bairroyd, Germany,

and ask why the German kid was sitting there and I was out in the cold all weekend. We were unable to convince Europe to take the necessity for its own security seriously by many modalities that many presidents had tried. And now we're making progress. and I'm happy about that. Yeah. So it's actually, I mean, just two quick markers on that. I mean, there's much more to it than that, though, too.

I mean, the attempts by President Trump to push to acquire Greenland from Denmark against the express wishes the democratically elected government in Denmark, vice president visiting Greenland when the Danish government had said he wasn't welcome, the vice president coming out deliberately flirting with a far-right group, the AFD, during the German election, in a way that no U.S. President or U.S. administration in history has done to start openly flirting with an opposition party during election. U.S. administrations didn't even do that in developing countries, let alone with Western European allies. This is not just about...

Oh, British leaders have for decades met with parties out of power. We met with parties out of power. What we did not, what we did not do... Oh, yes. And some of them I thought, some of which I thought were far left and some of which you may well have thought were far right. It's okay. The point was not meeting with the parties. The point was promoting it. The point was that you had Elon Musk out there saying, vote AFD, AFD are going to win. We all met, right? That's what American diplomats always did.

The difference was making it clear that the support was going behind the far-right parties. That's what was unparalleled in American foreign policy. From one person, from a single individual, U.S. government policy was still our partners, the people meeting at the Pentagon, the people meeting at the State Department, were the duly elected leaders of each of these European nations. best I can tell. Impropriately so. And you don't, you don't understand why that threw people backwards, why Greenland disturbed people? You don't understand why any of this stuff is disturbing. No, I understand. No, I perfectly, I perfectly understand. But do you support it?

Do I support what? Do you, what is it? What is it? Everybody wants to focus. You all, you all want to focus on the noise. You want to focus on the sound. If you're, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, if you want to focus on the noise, focus on the policies. Here's what I'd predict. I would predict that the U.S. relationships with the countries that are Arctic nations will be deeper, stronger and better, and that the West will be more strongly capable of defending itself against Russian and Chinese threats in the Arctic three and a half years from now than it was when President Biden left office. That's the output that we should all be looking for. You all to talk about modalities and hurt feelings. By the way, this is a very left notion. That's fine.

You want to talk about emotions and, you know, all the... I want to drive way people not have emotions. No, we are about outcomes and we have we have emotions. But is the outcome to get Greenland? Is that the outcome that he wants? No, the outcome is let's not take for granted the fact that the Russians aren't going to drive a literally drive a ship through our defensive systems, both in air and sea and in space up along the Arctic. And President Trump's determined to go fix it. But why couldn't he say?

And President Biden, just so, you know, I went to the Arctic Council and actually started this very same process. and I spoke about security up there. And you would have thought, you would have literally thought I was the skunk at the garden party. Because what did they want to talk about? For multiple Arctic councils, what was the sole topic that was permissible? Climate change, of course. Well, it's quite a big deal. But let's be realistic about the risks that are sitting there.

And it was taboo. One couldn't discuss these things. And we brought them to the four. So the one thing that I'm a little surprised by, in your prediction is this idea that somehow what's happening is a massive strengthening of the Western alliance against Russia. It doesn't really feel like that. It doesn't feel as they're nature. Again, you're talking about feelings. Please, let's do data. Talking about deterrence. It's actually deterrence is about perception. Yes, but feelings aren't deterrence. No, no, no. It is about

perception. It's about perception, but it's not about feelings. Deterance is about perception. So if we look logically at what's happened over the last seven months from the perspective of Vladimir Putin, does he feel that NATO is stronger today, that the U.S. commitment to NATO is stronger than it was, that the U.S. commitment to Ukraine is stronger than it was, that U.S. is following through on its sanctions against Russia, or does he feel they're rolling out the red carpet in Alaska? The sanctions never arrive. Have you forgotten under which president he invaded Europe? Joe Biden. okay but is no no have you forgotten which one which which which president did he of the three presidents last three presidents of america Putin invaded Europe under two of them one of them he did not go ahead take your pick which which one was it's a rhetorical question no you want to talk about feelings no i don't no you don't talk about feelings and emotion i want to talk about real power he did not invade europe on president trump's watch in the first term he didn't you can dispute it you could say we were

lucky you could say the good Lord was smiling. No, stop. Stop with feelings. Stop with emotion. Stop, saying, oh, it just, my feelings are hurt, right? He didn't. And so if you ask me, which, why did Vladimir Putin not accept that he should be deterred under Barack Obama? It's because Barack Obama wasn't going to do a damn thing and didn't when he took a fifth of Ukraine. And then he perceived that Joe Biden wouldn't do a damn thing. And Joe Biden, in fact, didn't do a damn thing. But now, but I'm just, no, you, you, you, you're, you, you're You tried to contrast that. You said the last seven months, how does Vladimir Putin feel?

And I would tell you, for two and a half years, he felt like he could roll through the West. And he did. Okay. Right now, Donald Trump, it talks about putting sanctions which never get delivered. He talks about sorting out a war in 24 hours. And it may be a figure of speech. And you said when we were talking earlier, he talks in a very different way. Right.

Where I agree with Rory, it's hard to assess that Vladimir Putin is not sitting there thinking, I've got these guys where I want them. Would you not agree with that? I don't know exactly what he's thinking. I will say this. I too were I in charge, I would have done far more than President Biden did. And I would do more than the Trump administration is doing today as well. So by the way, I would be demanding Europe do far more than it's doing. I would tell him, that's great you're going to spend 5% in 2037. I'll be dead. I want you to spend 5% next year. I can't do that. My budget process. I don't care about your budget process. Go do it. The time is on top of us. Instead, everybody just says, well, placate, he'll be. gone, he'll be off the global stage. And so, no, I think we should be doing more. I think we should doing deep strikes into Russia. President Trump doesn't want to do that.

Most of the European leaders don't want to do that either. We should get serious about sanctions. Germany and France should stop buying Russian crude oil, right? They are fueling the capacity of the war machine for Vladimir Putin. So I hope we'll collectively get serious about this. And the 300 billion that's locked up here. And how did you feel about the, on the day that the drones were coming in from Russia and Belarus that they lifted sanctions on Belarus.

Yeah, that was a mistake. Whether it's the day or not, we shouldn't have lift sanctions on Belarus. They're part and parcel of the problem set. I think that was a strategic mistake. Why is President Trump not being more robust with Russia? I get that you're criticizing Europe. Why was President Biden not more robust? Because people are trying to find their way through a problem set.

You want to suggest somehow that he's been corrupted or he has some connection? No, no, no, I'm not suggesting. sitting in the back of your mind and it's a story to see. No, no, no, no. That's your feeling. That's your strange feeling. No, no, no. For two years, I lived it. I've never suggested that. I lived it for two years. I've never suggested that. I don't think he's corrupted. Yes. Well, you're suggesting why. It can't be a good reason. It must certainly be something venal. I'm suggesting it's venal. I'm suggesting he's sympathetic to Putin's views on Ukraine. Yeah, fair enough. I don't think that's remotely the case. You don't think he is. What's the reason why he's not doing the

things that you think he should do? I think for some of the same reason President Biden chose not to do that. That is, there is this worry about escalation. And so they don't, they don't want to go do the things that I describe that seems simple when you're out of office. But someone's going to say, sir, if we do that, if we actually take those strikes you're describing, there'll be something that'll happen that'll be bad. And I'm not suggesting that there couldn't be, that it couldn't be right, that the escalation ladder could be controlled or uncontrollable in ways that we don't expect. But it seems to me it's the time to go identify that and take that on full throttle. And I wish all of us who are supporting, not Ukraine, right, we're supporting Ukraine, but we're supporting this idea that the West has to win these conflicts against authoritarian aggressors like Putin.

I wish that we would all be more aggressive on military and diplomatic fronts and economic sanctions to your point earlier. I wish we would all be doing that. Can we leave Russia, Ukraine and go to the Middle East and what's going on there now? And again, another conflict that feels like it's in an even worse. position that it was even a few months ago. And I just wonder whether you can see any way out of this that doesn't involve the absolute total destruction of Gaza and then end to any possibility of a two-state solution. First of all, there's no possibility of a two-state solution. You think it's gone? It's gone. Do you think it's always gone? Do you think we just talked to talk and it wasn't

realistic? Yeah, I do think it's been unrealistic. As long as you have terrorists governing those spaces that real estate in those people, you can't have a, you can't have a state, at least a state as we would understand the normality of a state, right? Imagine an army in Judean Samaria. I mean, you just, it's not, it's not in the offing. You could have certain indicia of statehood. Frankly, in some ways, they've had that in the West Bank for a while. But yeah, I think we think we're now a long ways away from that.

So where do we go? I would challenge your predicate. You said it's worse now than it was three months ago or six months ago. Yeah. I think the decimation of the Iranian regime over the. course of the last couple months. I guess I'm talking on the ground in Gaza, I think. This is all part of a 3,000-year struggle to isolate Gaza from the greater struggles in the

Middle East. I think I don't think it remotely begins to address the set of issues that are underlying the conflict that sits there today. So here we are. Am I right in saying again, in terms of, I mean, this is not, you know, clearly we come from different political positions. So we're not trying to. This isn't about politics.

me. No, no, but unless I'm wrong, my sense is that if I were to talk to you about what we see on the BBC in relation to the suffering in Gaza, you would tend to be very sympathetic towards the Israeli side, you would tend to say we're with Israel regardless of what we do and to suggest that criticism of Israel is anti-Semitic. Is that correct? Absolutely not. Okay. Explain your position then on that, because that's certainly the impression that I've got. Yeah. One is completely free to criticize Israeli policies without remotely touching on being anti-Semitic. I'm sure I've criticized Israeli policies from time to time. Is there any aspect of the way that they've conducted themselves since October the 7th that you think is wording of criticism?

And related to that, we're speaking not long after the United Nations as as reporters said that actually Israel's conducting an act of genocide. Yeah. Well, I've not had a chance to read the UN report. I will read it. I look forward to reading it. I have very low confidence that UN is remotely neutral with respect to conducting an analysis of what's actually taken place there because they begin from the wrong spot in the

same way that the BBC begins at the wrong spot. I remember watching something, I don't know, a couple weeks back. I was in my hotel room and they come on the air and the first thing they say is the Israelis occupying Gaza, right, it begins from the predicate that forgets that, no, no, it turns out that the 2000 Israelis that were killed on October 7th were actually attacked into what everyone would recognize is Israel proper. So they start at the wrong starting point, right? In my view.

But you can't do historical context in every single bulletin, can you? They don't do it in any of them. I haven't observed it. Send me the clip and we're off the air. I look forward to seeing it. It's going to take you a while, but I'll be patient. The reality is, no, I think what the Israelis are doing is not only appropriate but necessary, right? It is necessary for nations to protect themselves from those that are trying to kill them.

And this is about Tehran. This is about Iran. Hamas is a tool of the Iranian regime. And so just as the United States took strikes into Pakistan against the Pakistani governments, without the Pakistani government's consent, we saw the Israelis take strikes in. to Qatar without the Quddery government's consent. We can all debate whether that was constructive, useful, effective, all of those things. But if you asked, do nations have the right to go identify, find terrorists and make sure that they protect their people from these people

who are trying to kill their own citizens? I think it goes far past the right. I think they indeed have a responsibility. Don't they also have a responsibility to have a duty of care to civilian life? Oh, 100%. But do you think there's a hundred percent? No, more than that, as a soldier, We trained, the Israeli forces trained alongside of us on exactly this. They warn people before they go in. No military has ever fed their adversary, as many meals as the Israeli military has fed their adversary. Why have so many children died?

Well, I mean, because Hamas and Iran decided to create war. And by the way, it happened in Europe, right? There were civilians killed during World War II. The United States killed civilians during World War II. All of those saddened me, each of them, every one of those. human life saddens me. And by the way, you could stop the civilian killing in Gaza today in 20 seconds. You could easily solve it. Hamas would lay down their weapons, agree that they weren't going to take, destroy the nation of Israel, and they would hand over 48 hostages. All things that I think

we, the three of us can agree, they ought to do. And maybe not. Maybe one of us would disagree with one of those three things. By the way, if you're looking to protect civilians, there's the tool, and that's who we ought to press upon if we're going to save the lives of innocence in many places. That's true in Ukraine today as well. We should be pressing on Vladimir Putin to stop the killing of innocence in Ukraine, innocent civilians in Ukraine, and we should be pressing on Iran to stop it in gosh. Do you think Donald Trump is pressing Putin enough with all the levers of the disposal? I've already said we should all be doing more. So actually, I would be interested. You said we could debate. Why don't we debate whether it was

effective and necessary to attack Qatar in that way. Tell us. Oh, goodness, I don't know the answer yet. I think sometimes these things can't be decided until history has had a little bit of chance to go do the analysis. I think it put on notice those terrorists in suits that there's no safe place for you to be will make it more difficult for them to continue to coordinate their terror campaigns. I couldn't tell you the net assessment of how effective that effort was. One thing that relates directly to your own work, you were very proud of the Abraham Accords and getting UAE and Israel together. The first result of this strike was immediate condemnation from UAE, Mohammed bin Zayed flying immediately to Doha to embrace the Emir, a joint statement from Arab states attacking

what they saw as the illegal and unprovoked actions of Israel. That doesn't seem to me to have been a great foreign policy success, and I can't quite see what Israel thinks they achieved by doing this, if you just look at it in cold terms. Could be. The sweep of history runs deep. You're sounding like a politician now, Secretary. No, no, no. I'm sounding like a statesman who actually gives a damn about peace and prosperity in the Middle East and actually who was pretty effective at building it out, as opposed to Secretary Kerry, who created chaos and President Obama who withdrew and created ISIS, and we were forced to clean

it up. No, that's not political. That is about the brutality and hard-nosed foreign policy that does the task of protecting the United States of America. And so let me let me, let me come back to this issue, I don't think there is a doubt in my mind that the leadership in the Gulf is thrilled with what Israel has done to diminish Iranian capacity. I think those Gulf Arab leaders all know that the risk to them doesn't emanate from the Jewish state. It emanates from Tehran. Indeed, Tehran today is hosting ISIS, excuse me, al-Qaeda's leadership in Tehran. People seldom talk about this, but al-Qaeda today has its global headquarters sitting in Tehran. I think I think the Gulf Arab states fully get the proposition for how security and prosperity will be built out in the region and it runs through Tehran and a fundamental change in the nature of the regime there.

Presumably you're not very content with the fact that possibly the United Kingdom, France, Canada, Australia are going to go to Unger and recognize a Palestinian state. You seem to be saying this. May I ask you a question? Yeah. Who's going to sign the other signature block on that agreement? I don't know. I don't know. But no, but they're voting.

They're voting. No, I understand. Well, it has to be a government of the Palestinian people. I'm always curious. They say, we're going to recognize the Palestinian state, and that means usually there's a leader. Well, it can't. And that leader is totally authorized by its citizenry through some mechanism, a monarchy. And I'm just, I'm fascinated to see who you all would suggest the proper counterparty should be.

To whom should we, with whom should it be that we have the signing ceremony? I'm guessing right now, it would be Mamu Abbas. And that would be, he's PNG and he can't go to the United States and he can't go to Unger. But I guess we think we should invite him there? I don't see why not. Yeah, I really think it should be up to you, really. I think it should be up to the UN. It's not up to me.

If you're hosting the UN in New York, the United States government should not be making those decisions. Otherwise, you don't get to host the UN. It's all yours. Knock yourself out. You take it on. You won't because it's expensive and time-consuming insecurity is a hot mess. So you won't.

You'll say, no, over to you, America. You all do this. Just leave a moh goes. No, no, you won't. Let's just be clear. Aboumazin is a terrorist. He has the blood of countless Israelis on his hands. by the way, countless Israeli Arabs, as well as Israeli Jews and Christians, you invite him

to the UN, knock yourself out. No, but okay. My suggestion is that if you're saying two-state solution is dead, okay, I'm saying that if the Palestinian people are to get any sort of territory, any sort of land, any sort of future for themselves, they have to keep and their supporters have to keep alive the possibility of a Palestinian state. Otherwise, where do they go? What do they do?

How does this end? No, I want them to be successful. But where? I want them to be successful. I'm happy to be successful precisely where they are. So someone rise up. Would the Thomas Jefferson living in Ramallah please stand up? Right?

So you'd be content with that. If a political force emerged, that the people elected, you'd be happy with that. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. History is replete with that not occurring with great frequency. We've only got a few minutes left. Can I honestly, I don't you think we're, of liberal pinko woke people.

But you're thoroughly enjoying it. It's okay. It's okay. It's fine. That's a great thing. You're free to be wrong. It's okay. Okay. Okay. Well, Sexie Pompeo. Alas, let's take a quick break. This episode is brought you by Revoluted Business, the All In One account, designed for efficiency and built for business.

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time-free for the work where their expertise really counts. One community member, for example, working in a supported living home, said Gemini helped streamline paperwork so she could spend more time with residents. That's a very powerful story and it shows the positive impact AI can have on people's lives

making a real difference in the day-to-day. Find out how Google's AI is helping fuel the UK's growth and transformation at GEOO.g.m.g. F.m.m. Hi, everybody. It's Dominic Zawrack here from The Rest is History. Now, some of you may have heard me on your show, The Rest is 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 Rest is History, which is all about Britain in the world.

the 1970s appeared 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 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'll be 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 grimmest 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. I want to ask you about China, because I think you actually see China, from the discussion we've just had, I think you see China as a bigger threat than all of the things that we've been talking to.

And I just wondered where you think we are in relation to the rise of China. Yeah, no, it presents a much greater, deeper threat than any of these others. For sure, it has both the capability and the intention of undermining the post-war World War II Western model, basic liberty, liberalism, historically grounded liberalism. They want to upend it. They're going to take a good swing at it, and we all have to go do it. I mean, I can't do it in 30 seconds, but we all have to go use all the levers that we have, and we have ample number of levers to do it.

We ought to go fix it. Secretary, final one for me, historically grounded liberalism, which I'm coming back to. I mean, I was a conservative, right? But my vision of that historically grounded liberalism, that post-world order, feels radically different to that of President Trump or J.D. Vance,

all the kind of people that... You seem very focused on the moment. But yes, I would agree. I would agree with you. They don't present themselves in the same way that I would. That's true. You wouldn't have gone to Munich and said, to the European diplomatic world that Putin is not the threat to you, your own lack of commitment

to free speech is, which we just thought was weird. Well, no, the second one's true. In what way? Your absence of commitment to free speech is definitely detrimental to you. No, no, no, no, free speech matters everywhere. Where are we not committed to free speech? We don't have enough time. No, I just think it's a myth.

But the predicate, I would not have said. Putin is also an enormous risk to the Western order. There's no doubt about that. It pales compared to the Chinese Communist Party. I'm fascinated, but why the American, so many American Republicans seem to think that Britain and Europe are not committed to free speech. I don't get it. Okay. We can say anything.

Great. You can say anything to us now. That sounds great. I have, too. I know. So what's the issue? Yeah, I appreciate that. You wanted to talk about China.

I'd much rather spend my time than British free speech. We can agree there's no free speech in China. Yeah. We can agree that. Yeah. Okay. So, and you said that we should pull all the levers. What are the levers that we should be pulled?

They're mostly economic. But they also stem from like basic things. Like we shouldn't let Chinese students become PhD quantum mechanics on the backs of American universities. We should protect intellectual property that they have stolen for so long. We should find their espionage rings in our countries. You all are about to let 200 Chinese diplomats come occupy a new embassy. That's nuts. Absolutely nuts.

There won't be a single diplomat amongst them. They will all be elements of the Chinese national security apparatus as narrowly understood. We should build out an economic system that demands that the Chinese Communist Party comply with it. You know, you're a big fan of climate change. How about asking them not to build coal fire or power plants? You seem to put a lot of pressure on us not to do that. I'm a big fan of dealing with climate change. The Chinese Communist Party just face planted all of Europe with the Paris Climate Accords.

It literally did. You all said, no, we're going to suffer. We're going to make our citizens suffer. And China, you go, knock yourself out, grow your economy, and we'll see you in 20 years. I mean, just an absurd agreement. forget its objective to reduce total carbon output. One can agree or disagree about the urgency of that, but you didn't do it. The agreement fundamentally failed at its primary stated objective and instead let the

the worst actor in the world on climate, the Chinese Communist Party, Oli-Ali-Axon-free, and then you all just decided to come to American beat the tar out of us. It's really Obama-esque, so fair enough. Are you a drill-baby-drill guy? I'm not about drill-baby drill. I want affordable energy for the least amongst us so we can feed the next billion people. and you are not going to feed the next billion people with sunshine and wind. You're just not.

China, then. Where's the consistency? All you say about China, I hear it. So one would expect permanent 50% tariffs against China instead of which we have 50% tariffs against India, tariffs going in against American allies like Vietnam, South Korea, Japan. What's going on there? So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of global terror regimes. terrorist should be used for targeted purposes, objectives that are different than just saying, hey, we're going to use those as a tax collection or a revenue general, a U.S. revenue generation

device. I don't think that makes economic sense for the world or for global trade or most importantly for the United States of America. I don't know that you need 50% tariffs on China, but on high-end technology projects, we should do far more than put 50% tariffs on. We should have export bans on those tools. And U.S. policy is still not all exactly where Mike Pompeo would like it to be. it hasn't been for last 25 years.

I had this debate with Dr. Kissinger, which is always a dangerous thing. He's infinitely smarter than me. On China, he's just wrong. Well, listen, it's been a great... We've had two very long sessions together now. I've enjoyed both of them. Thank you very much for your time.

Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. So long. You have a wonderful day, too. Thank you. Bye-bye.

Well, Roy, I don't know about you, but I thoroughly enjoyed that. I'd actually just had an hour with him at an event that we were doing together where he does like to say knock yourself out on it and he does like to sort of push back very, very hard. But what do you make him? I thought he said a lot of interesting things. Yeah, I mean, I think that he gets to do these very, he was editor of the Harvard Law Review,

went to Harvard Law School, a very nimble lawyer, and therefore he's got these particular tricks. So when it suits him, he can convince, say, you know, we're a bunch of woolly liberals who are not facing reality. And when it suits him, if you ask him a direct question, he will say, well, you've got to see it in the grand historical sweep of things, and I'm not ready to make things.

Or he answers with a question. Let me ask you, you know, who you're going to sign with? What are you going to do? Who was it that led to the invasion of Ukraine? I did, though, think that it's important for the audience to understand that when I was saying, for example, that he basically thinks Israel right or wrong, and he's not interested in any form of criticism of Israel.

That is very much what I've heard from him directly when I've spoken to him one-on-one, and I was a bit surprised to hear him try to deny that. He's on the record saying, for example, just to give you a little bit of quote from a podcast that he did recently, Mahmoud Abbas is a known terrorist. Israel is not an occupying nation.

As an evangelical Christian, I'm convinced by my reading the Bible that 3,000 years on now, in spite of the denial of so many, this land, which he calls Judea and Sumeria, is the rightful homeland of the Jewish people, that there's no such thing as the occupation. It was him that overturned America's position that the settlements to West Bank were inconsistent with international law. It was Pompeo, who recognized Jerusalem as Israel's capital. So there's something a bit interesting about the way in which in this interview he's saying, no, I'm happy to criticize Israel, you know,

it was this and the other, but. And happy if they get a decent government for there to be a Palestinian state. Yeah. But I'm not sure that's... Yeah. It doesn't track with any of his public positions at all. And in fact, his position to me privately, but also publicly and not break any confidences here, is Israel can do whatever it wants and the US should always support it. No, how did you feel worry about this thing that he kept coming back to that, you know, you kept going on about what you feel and, you know, we're too interested in how people feel and what he's really not.

interest in his data and big concepts and also how he continues to, it strikes me, he criticises him on certain specific issues, like lifting sanctions on Belarus or whatever it might be, but generally still supportive of Donald Trump, even though Donald Trump took away security detail and said he didn't want anybody who worked for Pompeo in the first term to work for him in the second term. Well, it's no secret that Mike Pompeo is the potential candidate to be the next president of United States. He thought about running this time, which is one of the reasons Trump's so angry with him. He's almost certainly going to put his hat in the ring next time. So he is calibrating all the time. He knows the Republican Party is a Trump party. It's a MAGA party. So he cannot

ever say anything that sounds like he's openly attacking Trump. But at the same time, he comes from a very different Republican tradition. He comes from the anti-Russia international alliance. his free trade Republican traditions. So, you know, he is horrified by tariffs. He's horrified by Trump going weak on Putin. And he can't say it because he was cut out of the administration because, you know, the MAGA crowd, the America First crowd, see Pompeo as a warmonger.

So he's trying to tread this very difficult balance between being able to be the Republican that he always was and getting the Trump supporters for his presidential run. Yeah, he's also, he's lost an awful lot of weight. Is that, is that a Robert Jenrick-style leadership tactic? I mean, I noticed you were very impressed by him and by his thing. So he has said publicly that it has, it's all to do with his working out and his new diet. If he was here today, he would be turning around.

So let me ask you a question to you, Alastair. Did you lose weight through going to the gym? That's what he would say. Listen, let me be more serious on the feelings point, which obviously wow me up a bit. I think this is a bigger issue with listening to Republicans and Americans at the moment. They genuinely cannot understand why Europe is thrown off balance. Many Europeans feel that all the fundamental principles, the post-war order, are now weakened and shattered. We are very unsure about American commitment to NATO.

So we're very unsure about American commitment to defending Ukraine against Russia. We're very uncertain whether actually America really sees us as our allies and whether that it's actually prepared to treat its allies better and it treats its enemies with tariffs or anything. We don't feel we can rely on the US. And they don't seem to see this. They seem to want to say, it's a long time coming, about time you've put your socks up. You know, it's the parents telling the kids to, you know, start paying their own pocket money.

but, you know, we all know that we're a happy family and we all love each other and we're going to be stronger in three years' time. I think they're missing something. What do you think? Well, it was very interesting. In the event I did earlier with them, I did one of my show of hands with the audience, and I did that thing that I did in Singapore,

asking which was the greater threat to global stability, China or the United States. And the United States was ahead in what was a kind of international audience, but very European. So he looked at it and I said, does that surprise you, shock you? And he said, no, not at all because they all watch the BBC and CNN. That was his sort of way of doing with it. I think he was slightly surprised.

I think you're right that particularly, you know, just had the Trump state visit and all that. So there's a sense that Britain and America is still sort of hanging together. I think Americans do underestimate the extent to which people in Europe sort of feel completely discombobulated by Trump and I can't really understand when they hear somebody like him

he's clearly a very intelligent guy incredibly experienced had all sorts of sort of strings to his bow through his life but essentially he's saying look you guys are wrong he actually said at the end didn't he said you know well you're leaving free speech

and you're allowed to be wrong and say you're allowed to say what you think you're allowed to be wrong and here's the other thing I genuinely don't get what they're on about with this free speech thing I just don't get it. The answer is that they feel that people like Tommy Robinson are being imprisoned

and that the AFD in Germany is being chased by the constitutional courts. But Tommy Robinson was in prison for committing a crime. And the American perception is that you're not allowed to make a far-right comments or be a far-right party. And that's, you know, if you're daily vans, you support those parties. Why can't they recognize that the organs of the British state, including the security services and the police, helped Tommy Robinson to organise a huge protest

because that's part of our democratic belief in free speech. They look at us thinking, we can't understand what they're thinking. And I just, on this one, I just, it's, I find it mind-blowing, especially when something like Vance is so clearly not a believer in free speech if it's somebody saying something that offends Donald Trump. That's the amazing thing. I was sort of listening to somebody who's close to Trump this morning. Justin Webb tried to make this point to him. He said, well, what are you talking about? You know, Pam Bondi has just said that all these horrible, democratic people making comments that are in favor of the left should be shut down and they shouldn't be allowed to say that stuff and it's hate speech and it's inciting violence. Justin Webb said, well, do you understand now the concept of hate speech? And of course, they don't, guy doesn't understand at all. He just says, no, that's completely different. You know, of course, people from the left making offensive comments need to be shut down and they need to be stopped from saying this stuff. And people from the far right,

be allowed to say it. No, it's really interesting. And remember that Mike Pompei, what's, I think, unsettling for us is you're absolutely right. He was, did really well at West Point as a military officer, edited the Harvard Law Review, set up a successful company, this, that, and the other. But he's also a guy who says, you know, he makes calls for the Bible in front of him. He believes in the rapture, which is a very strange, non-theological, evangelical American thing. He's got these deep views on Judea and Sumeria. He is skeptical, to put it mildly, about climate change. He was funded by the Cockbrothers.

I didn't want to get into that because I know that would have been, you know, who funded you? He thinks we basically don't have free speech in Europe. I mean, all this stuff is central to his worldview and to most of the Republican Party. I mean, that even someone like him who's presented to us as not being Trump Republican, but a more old-fashioned Republican because he believes in free trade and believes that Russia is the enemy holds so many of the basic mega beliefs

which are radically different to mainstream European opinion. Do you think he is presidential material? I think he rates himself. Which is important. And the Trump family think that he's a significant enough threat for it to be worth Trump excluding him, badmouthing him, calling him a warmonger. And there will be quite a lot of people on the American right who think that he'll be more acceptable president than Trump.

That he might share quite a lot of Trump's kind of cultural worldviews, but that he wouldn't go, as he said, to the Munich Security Conference and deliberately poke and infuriate people. So, yeah, I think there could be quite a lot of support behind Mike Pompeo, but I don't think he's going to be able to hold the MAGA conspiracy theory right. you know, Tucker Carlson is not a fan, to put it mildly. Aniston, just to end, let me turn it around on you and ask you, do you think that he's presidential material? I think if I had to put my life on it, I'd say no. I think he's impressive, but there are quite a lot of impressive American politicians. I thought it was interesting over in the room with this audience and so forth.

I didn't sense that they felt there was. something coming at them that was kind of really special. I thought there were moments of it. There were moments of it. Listen, it's very hard for us to make a judgment because, of course, Trump became president when people like you and I thought, well, this, this can't happen.

I'll tell you what I did feel in him was a kind of iron. I felt, I felt there was a temper there in quite a good way. I felt there was stuff in there. He was, he's a guy who's got conviction and he's got passion and all that. So I actually think this is going to sound really trivial. and really stupid, right? I actually think he's lost too much weight. He's quite tall.

He's almost as tall as I am. I think he could do with a bit more kind of beef on him. I know it's a really trivial point. But you have more heft when he looked like Tony Soprano. He had more of a kind of presence, didn't he? Yeah. Anyway, yeah. Look, I can see why he thinks he might be a runner,

but I think it's going to be very, very hard to become the nominee in the current Republican Party unless you're full over. And he's clearly not full over. I actually felt he was most comfortable to some extent when he wasn't doing the kind of you guys are just a pair of pinkos and you don't understand that Trump's a great force for the world. I actually thought when he was more reflective, he was better. Anyway, I enjoyed it. I really did. I enjoyed meeting him. I enjoyed spending

a bit of time with him. Great. Thank you, Alisa, very much for doing that. I'd love to see you. See you soon. Bye-bye. See you soon. Bye.