The Rest Is Politics: Leading - 189. Rahm Emanuel: China, Technology, and the Future of the Democratic Party

Episode Date: May 17, 2026

Will Rahm Emanuel run to be the next President of the United States? What were the underlying policy disagreements regarding West Bank settlements that led to Benjamin Netanyahu publicly attacking Rahm Emanuel? And, what approach would he take to handle the conflict with Iran and modernise the United States' relationships with Europe? Rory and Alastair are joined by American politician and diplomat, Rahm Emanuel, to discuss all this and more. __________ Search IG.com to find out more and/or Look for IG in your app store. __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [e-mail] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Bruno Di Castri Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Senior Producer: Nicole Maslen Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thanks for listening to The Restis Politics. Sign up to the Restis Politics Plus. To enjoy ad-free listening, receive a weekly newsletter, join our members chat room and gain early access to live show tickets. Just go to therestispolities.com. That's therestispoletics.com. America has wasted 12 years trying to recreate a pass that's not coming back. We're in a existential battle with China, a country three times our size. Nothing China does scares me. It's what America's not doing that scares me. I think 2028 will, be a fight about the future and not just the ideas, but who's got the strength to get it done. This episode is presented by IG, sell in May and go away. Maybe a weird saying in finance,

but as many politicians know, a pithy phrase isn't necessarily an effective strategy. And looking into Futsi 100 performance shows that this maxim would only have worked for two of the last 10 years. So while May's bank holidays might invite you to take a break, your portfolio doesn't have to transfer your investment portfolio to IG and take advantage of zero commission on stocks, shares and ETFs and zero platform fees. Search IG.com to find out more and check out their latest welcome offers. IG, trade, invest, progress. Your capital is at risk. Other fees may apply. Welcome to the restless politics leading with me, Rory Stewart.

And with me, Alastair Campbell. And we're very happy to be joined by Rahm Emmanuel. Iran has worked closely now with the last three Democrat U.S. presidents, and he's now eyeing up the prospect of possibly becoming a U.S. president himself. He's 66, and he is not short of CV material for the job. Back in the 90s, he was fundraising for President Bill Clinton, he was also an advisor, including on the Middle East at the time, the rather happier time of the Oslo Accords. then an elected congressman and mastermind of the Democrats winning 2006 midterm campaign, so we could maybe see whether the lessons for the Democrats today from that. Then Chief of Staff to President Obama, before getting back into elected politics as a two-term mayor of Chicago. Then during Joe Biden's term as president, Rahm became ambassador to Japan,

adding to his foreign policy expertise of someone once attacked as a self-hating Jew, by none other than Benjamin Netanyahu. So we have a lot to get through. Can I start, Ron, first by thanking you for being here, but also, can we start with the Jewish background? First of all, how important it is to you. And secondly, how your family came to be, came to move from Europe to the United States.

Well, it's two parts. So one part, and also around the same time, My dad's family leaves Odessa, 1907, turn of the century, flees the pogroms, and goes to Palestine. According to family lore, sets up the first Jewish pharmacy, which had been the family business for generations in Jerusalem. I don't know if that's true or not, but that's family lore. My older, my uncle, my dad's older brother by 17 years, his first name is Emmanuel. he dies of a leg wound in the 1930s. And the family, because my dad at that time was five years old, a family name going back

generations. And there's a story about how we know this, but the name Auerbach. So my grandparents, who I never met my grandfather, switched the name from Auerbach to Emmanuel to honor my uncle, who died in a land campaign fighting for the creation of the state of Israel. The other side, my mother's family, which is a more typical American story, my grandfather, Herman Smolovitz, leaves Eastern Europe, Poland, Ukraine, Romania, Moldova, depending on which period of time you want to use the map, leaves and goes to, he sent 14 years old by his mother to Chicago to meet his father. And there's a famous street in Chicago called Maxwell Street where the Jewish peddlers are. And he is, well, you wouldn't look at me and say, how did I get the DNA?

I didn't have his DNA. He was 6, 5, very tall, very big, who's a boxer, meat cutter, steel worker, truck driver. And he makes his way. And my mother is a nurse. My uncle is a police officer in Chicago. My other uncle is a truck driver. and my other two aunts are accountants, etc., office managers. But that's, you know, and then within a generation,

his grandson becomes a mayor of the city of Chicago, chief of staff. And my mom and dad meet at Mount Sinai Hospital. My mother's a nurse. My dad's a pediatrician. They meet. After a week of dating, my dad proposes and they get married. And the rest is history. And then I would also say, which is kind of the most influential,

part of our family. In our family room, my mother and father put the little purse that carried my grandmother and my two great aunts passports and the passports. And then on either side of the wall was my father and my mother's family members who never made it to America and it was a reminder to us that we had a responsibility because we won the lottery life being Americans to make the most of our lives. So it's a classical immigrant story within a generation and the aspirations of that. The only twist of it is my dad's side of the family that goes not to America, but to this place called Palestine in the turn of the century. I mean, Theodore Herzl's vision of Zionism is only about, depending on when you put it, about 20 to 30 years old at that point. 30, rather 40.

Maybe we start there. Do you think we only got an hour, we're going to go 150 years later? Well, we're going to jump 150 years forward and reflect a little bit on where you think Israel is today and what your grandfather would have made of it and what you made of it and how that original vision of Zionism has gone. Yeah. So why don't we just dive into the deep end of the pool and see us without my water wings? Why don't we go? Look, this is my take.

And I don't want to, my grandfather, who I love dear leave, I start talking about. My kids always say, oh, dad's going to start crying in a second. So he lived with us. We never had kind of a quote-unuclear family. There was always room reserve for whoever my grandparents on my mother's side, my grandmother on my dad's side, aunts, uncles, cousins, stray dogs. Everybody moved into the house at different times. So at one level, if you look at it today, Israel's the most secure it has ever been

But it is the most isolated it has also ever been. I should actually pivot one side note. My grandfather was a typical, he was a socialist, and Franklin Delano Roosevelt made him a Democrat. And in our family, being a Democrat, was one of the ten lost tribes. So there was the Levites, the Coenheims, and the Democrats. And you were not allowed to, there was no place for independence. There was no place for independent thinking.

You just got to whack across your head. And, you know, when he comes to the end of his life, my grandfather, Herman Smolovitz, about the other side, he wants to die in Israel. And so they leave Chicago and they move to Israel and they die there. Mount Olives, my uncle, Manuel Arbach, is buried. And I see his cemetery and his gravesite every year. So at one level, they would be proud that Israel is secure. At another level, they would hate what has been done in the name of Israel and the isolation

because they believe Israel will fight for its security, but also fight for peace. They were true to Bangurian alight among nations, which was the inspiration of the state of Israel, not just a nation among nations, but a light to other nations, and a moral clarity because it comes out of the ashes of Auschwitz, Dahqa, Bokendwell, Treblinka, and it would be a home and a safety for Israel and Jews. But the idea that you would have people, settlers, terrorizing Palestinians, burning their homes, burning their families. That is not in the Jewish ethos or the state of Israel ethos. Not only from my family, but that's, as I remind everybody, when I say these things,

I'm saying everything that leaders of the Israeli defense force say, what is being perpetuated in the name of Israel's security by settlers, and not just by settlers, with encouragement by the government, is not in the ethos of both Israel's security and in the Jewish ethics. When Bibi Netanyahu wrote his own memoir, you were one of a very small, if he might be the only person that he kind of personally attacked. What was the, just tell us what was going on.

on in the Oval Office at that time. And, I mean, because Netanyahu's been around for a long, long time. 17 years. Yeah. So what happened there? And how did you so get under his skin that he complained to Obama? Yeah. Well, two things.

In his book, I give four distinct mentions, not in a very favorable light. Two, as you noted, we have this kind of infamous confrontation of which he called me a self-loathing Jew. Now, I want to paraphrase beforehand, and the reason for that is because of our disagreement about his initiative for housing in the West Bank past the Green Line, which would undermine both the sovereignty for Palestinian state and the security for the state of Israel. And I don't think they're, I actually think they're heads and tails of the Sepachron rather than two different initiatives. Now, he could say that to me. I know from as Marsha Emmanuel and Ben Emmanuel's son. I'm being true to how the values that they raised me and to the interest they

raised me. And so anyway, there's this confrontation that everything that was going to be done on housing in the West Bank was going to undermine the very fabric and roots of a two-state solution. I happen to think today, given where things are, you should be for a 23-state solution, meaning that the Arab League recognizes Israel, every country in it, not just Egypt, Jordan, but all 21, if Israel and the Palestinians come to an agreement in a sense. So there's a value beyond the two state that Israel then would be a nation of nations, as Ben-Gurian said, and a light to other nations, and you'd actually have peace and et cetera. I can fill that out later. But we have this unbelievable confrontation. There's a story. I don't know,

the president is on the phone with him a different time. And he's trying to, the president, Obama's trying to talk about a Tuesday solution, the peace process, getting the pieces of the line. and Netanyahu, the prime minister, keeps criticizing me, saying Rom hates me. Ram is undermining the relationship, etc. And after about a half hour where the president can't get him onto the topic, finally says, look, Ram doesn't hate you. But calling him a self-loathing Jew probably didn't help your cause. And I just for the record, if you don't know, you didn't say that in all the bottom.

My middle name is Israel. And it's Israel because I'm born on November 29th, the same date, different year, that the United Nations recognize Israel as a state. So that's the funny joke that Obama and I have all the time and et cetera. But it's a confrontation over a different view, and I do not believe what's happening today where elements of the settlement movement, I shouldn't say to the settlers because it's not right.

Elements of the settler movement are given a permission slip to act as terrorists and terrorizing Palestinians. and they're given a permission slip by the government. And the Israeli Defense Force leadership is opposed to it because it's undermining not only the morale, the ethics, but it's also a drain on the security capacity. As I headed the IDF said the other day, there are 30,000 troops short of the obligation, which is why you have this unprecedented suicide rate, both among reservists and active duty IDF officers.

This is not in Israel's either security interests or, as I said, in the ethos of, of what it means to be a democratic Jewish state. And nothing I said here hasn't been said by former Prime Minister Omar, Prime Minister of Ehrou Barak, Yitzhak Rabin, but, you know, different elements. And I just want to say something.

Every step Israel takes on the journey of peace, which is a painful step, the United States would stand on that journey for peace and recognition. Every step, as many tomorrow's as it takes for that security. And I understand and appreciate the cynicism that from Oslo Accords within weeks, there's buses being blown up in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv that after 1999, 2000, when President Clinton at Camp David is working through an agreement

where you get 98% of what you want and you say no. And then Omar seven years later does basically the same thing. I think it's 98%. And you still say no. So I understand and appreciate the Israeli public's perspective, we try to make peace and all we got was buses blowing up. I get it. But the alternative cannot be what you're pursuing. That idea, security, safety, the sovereignty of Israel as a Jewish democratic country, that will be the partnership of America has. Acting in another way beyond that, in the way the elements of society are being given

the green light to act. and terrorized Palestinians that live on the West Bank, that is not where America signed up for, and you're not going to drag us into that. And we're not going to be a partner or a silent partner to that. And that's where basically the prime minister and I broke ranks. And let me say one last thing since I'm on a senatorial tirade here. I told it to his face. A lot of American politicians would whisper things over the last 20 years. 20 years ago, I said this. I didn't need this water. realize what that policy inevitably would lead to the destination. And yet, I guess he would say he was right and you were wrong, that he could do all

these things and the United States would be with him all the way and all those threats that you made 20 years ago and that whole story you sold him. From Netanyahu's point of view, he's played, he's bluffed, he's won, he's won again, he can do whatever he wants. Let me say one other thing, two things to that. One is I should have added in the litany from Camp David to the buses blowing up. literally within months after the Oslo court, you signed an agreement, which you hadn't given up on terrorism, etc. You know, also what happened on October 7th, where more Jews had died in any one incident.

And I'm a partner, and I've supported in many different ways the women's report about the rape and sexual molestation that happened to these Jewish women. And I've supported all the professors. And in fact, when Japan was head of the United Nations Council, the UN, which ignored all of the, this, the international body, because they were Jewish women, I actually helped make sure that there was a hearing to that case. And the professors in Israel, the women professors, who took it on themselves to get that. So there is a level, I understand and appreciate the sense that Jews are treated, and violence against Jews are treated different. Your comment about the prime minister is right and wrong. And the wrong part is,

yes, Israel is secure in a way that it has a strategic capacity that in 1965, you never could have vision. In 1982, you couldn't see. But you're more isolated than you've ever, ever been. You're not a nation among nations. I mean, think about this. You're in England. You just had recently three days ago, synagogue, terrorized. Your policies have lost Europe, lost America's public opinion.

And in the last two years, you've only picked up. Somaliland diplomatically. My grandmother would say such a deal. You lost the American public, you lost Great Britain, you lost the public opinion of Europe, and you've got Somaliland, that's what this is about. And I would say to Netanyahu may say that, but when your academic leadership, your technological leadership, your cultural institutions cannot travel anywhere in the world, that's not a nation among nations. And I said, I'll give you another example of what I think is the best of Israel. I don't know if you know this. Do you know the new head of hardware for Apple? No. Okay. He's an Israeli Arab from Haifa. He goes to the Technion in Haifa. Studies, heads up both

Intel and Apple in different parts of his life, in Israel as an Israeli Arab and a full citizen of Israel. And he heads up their operations and now he's the head of hardware and one of the most technologically sophisticated companies. That is the best of what Israel could explain to the world of why it is alike to other nations. As an example, one example, there's hundreds of other things you could say. But the head today of Apple hardware, which is not exactly, as my grandmother would say, a Pissure Job, is an Israeli Arab that grew up in Haifa, where 30% of the population in Haifa is Arab, Israeli. and he studies in the universities that Israel has,

the technion which in Haifa is one of the prominent technology universities around the world, and is now one of the most important players in the technological revolution in Iraq. That tells you what is the potential of the state of Israel to offer the world. And today, under Prime Minister Nanahu's policies, that technical capacity, that contribution to the betterment of society, is being isolated. So I don't think he got away with it. I guess one of the factors behind Rory's question, though,

is that when it comes to your current president, Donald Trump, Netanyard does feel that he has him. And I was watching an interview you did with Tommy Vita on Pod Save America a few months ago at the time of the initial attacks on Iran's nuclear program, the kind of 10, 12-day thing. And you were, you know, broadly supportive, broadly supportive. I'm not saying, you know, we can argue over the nuances. But what about this particular?

That was the June. Wait a second. Correct. But now that we've advanced to the Trump Netanyahu bigger attack, what is your view on that? And what's your view from your experience down the years of how we, the world, get out of it? Well, you've asked like seven questions there. So let me try to pick each of them.

And June was different in the sense it was limited. It was strategic. and it was also, remember, at that point, you had pushed Hezbollah back and it was on its back heels without leadership and showed a capacity of integration. Syria, another state's another sponsor of Iran's octopus strategy, had been the Assad regime and you're literally taking in and owning Syria and Lebanon making them shells of themselves as a home for the Hezbollah as a home for terrorists, that had been destroyed. So two weaknesses from the President Obama's policy, which was the kind of threads of terrorism,

that had been basically eliminated and pushed back from Israel's border. And in June, you had not ended, but you had seriously degraded the Iranians, and they were not only on their back heel, but this massive rupture between the Iranian people. and the Iranian government emerges. Now, one fact, I went, it doesn't mean, I went and checked it on Google and clawed. In the last 12 years, there have been civil disruption in Iran every two and a half years. And every disruption has led to more and more and greater violence by the Iranian government on its own people. You know, we have a rule in politics.

When your opponents in the middle of a night fight with themselves, don't get in the way. Iran had an 89-year-old cancer-ridden head estate with no tradition or real policy in 40 plus years of transitioning. The government had become an occupier of the Iranian-Slas Persian people who wanted to be part of the world economy and wanted to go back to their trade. And for the first time ever in those dozen years, the youth of Iran and the merchants of Iran opposed their government. That's as good at playing fields as you can get in politics. And the Iranian government was a serious threat. And every president from Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden, had in one way or another maneuvered in different tools and different instruments to isolate Iran.

And they were on their back heel. Now, on this effort, you can't unring a bell. I would not have rung this bell. And you have a situation, I think, given where we are, as I said, it was a war of choice and a bad choice. And you went in to deal with, quote, unquote, the nuclear capacity of Iran, and they found out in this process, they have a nuclear option. It's called the Strait of Hermuz. So I have a short, medium, and long term. One, President's policy, I articulated it before it was.

And I think he was, like always, because there's no strategic thinking going on in this administration, way too. late either all boats out and in or nobody medium term if you're trying to secure a deal and the united nations international maritime association monitor the strait of her moose charge a toll where the revenue is split but it doesn't go to iran it goes to iran kouae uae oman Bahrain Qatar all the country's affected it's an international toll if you wanted it all only because it's part of the negotiations, but it's not managed, organized by Iran. The Strait of Hermuz will not be your little lake. And then long term, since the Iranian goal is to push America out of the region, use the Abraham Accords to becoming a funding vehicle to build pipelines for the Gulf

countries around to circumvent the Strait Hermos. Not only is the good economics, not only is a good energy policy, but it says to the Iranian government, we're not going anywhere. Your goal to get us out of the region. And they said it just yesterday again. Get this foreign government out of here. So we would say to them, we are a permanent Middle East power, and it would remind our allies, both on energy, economics, and security, we're going to be your partner. That's what I would do.

One of the things we're interested in talking to you is you're a potential U.S. president. And I guess one of the questions people might have. Well, we haven't decided that. Potential. And the American people haven't. Potential. Let's just use a capital P on that. Capital P, potential capital P president.

Do you feel that in some ways your candidacy is stronger and in some ways weaker than it would have been in another period? We're in a world in which we hear about AOC, we hear about Governor Newsom. We're looking, of course, at President Trump. These are lots of differently. We look at Mayor Mamdani and New York. We're looking at many different styles of politics emerging. It's a different world from the world of Bill Clinton. Very different world, right?

So what do you think in this new world? Let's start with you being honest about where your weaknesses and limitations might be and then where your strengths might be in this new world. Well, one thing I know in life, as in politics, my whole life, all your strengths are your weaknesses. So, as I jokingly say, but I'm serious about this, for the Democrats? On day one, you have to have somebody that knows something about the family room, something about the classroom, something about the board room, something about the break room,

and something about the situation room. Not just the bathrooms across America, which is where the party's been. Day one. And not only that, this is a party known as weak and woke, and nobody looks at this as weak and woke. Every time I've had a fight when the president, President Clinton wanted to get kids health care, 10 million children, somebody, by the name of Rahm Emanuel, got that bat and ball. When he wanted somebody to take on the National Rifle Association to pass the assault weapon van, somebody by the name of Rahm Emanuel got that bat and ball. When President Obama wanted to get financial reform and universal health care, I got that call. When it came to taking our public school system in Chicago, which was Secretary Bennett, under Reagan called the worst in America,

and then Sean Rare and Stanford at the end of my 10 year, called it the single best of the top 100. We took a graduation rate from 56% to 84%. Two-thirds of our kids were going to college. And a very system with more than a majority, 84% of our kids are from poverty in the city. So I have taken on every battle, and anybody that's walked into the arena with me has walked out with a bloody nose.

Sounds to me like you're running, Rob. No, well, let's just finish one question before the next brick jumps in the middle of it. Okay? This is not the Emanuel dinner table, okay? But you asked me a question. Now, do I have that experience? Yeah.

The question is, do you want that experience put to work for you? Again, I want to be clear. I haven't decided what I'm going to do. Now, has politics changed? Yeah. It's changed. And it also hasn't changed. Okay?

And I know one thing that wasn't in your question. I'm laying out, as you know, one of the few people is your FT paper and other scribe. I'm winning the idea as primary. I agree with President Clinton. ideas are the most underappreciated thing in politics. I'm laying out a very clear distinction on education, social media to kids. You can go through how I would tax predictive markets, online sport gaming, to go into our science and technology and doubling it, etc.

Without going through every policy. What I also know about politics, if you want somebody that can tell you about clicks, I'm not your got. You want somebody to make sure your kids know calculus? That's what I work on. You want somebody that can be really cool on social media posts, go for it. I want to make sure that tomorrow's kids know something about social studies. That's what I do.

And I know one thing for sure about these ideas, that we don't have a data waste or a person to overlook or a community to ignore. We're in a existential battle with China, a country three times our size. We've had two presidents, President Vine and President Trump, who has spent their entire tenure of the last 12 years, debating the past that's never coming back. I think 2028 will be a fight about the future and not just the ideas, but who's got the strength to get it done. And we'll see. And the good news is you're going to have, unlike in 2024, unlike in 2020,

you're going to have a choice, 31 flavors. And I'm going to be Rocky Road in this. So you want to go into a course that, okay, is all about, look at a history. him, he's got a great TikTok. I'm not the guy. You want to make sure that you get health care. You want to make sure that kids who go to college don't end up in their parents' basement. You want to make sure you're not one sickness away from going into bankruptcy. I know how to get that done and make it happen. And I know how, in this period of time, that you cannot have an American dream where only Rahm Emanuel's kids and some other people's kids get access to it. My whole life has

been fighting for that. And I've made opponents. Now, I don't agree with you about where the party is. I happen to think something different about where the Democratic Party is, but we'll test it. And if not, I'll go fly fishing the rest of my life. That's okay with me. I'm going to tell you what I think needs to get done. I'm not going to sit here and just tell you what you want to hear. I'm going to tell you what I think needs to get done.

If you like it, great, if you don't. Okay. Cures. Okay. Anyway, what I was interrupting you to say was it sounds to me like you're running, but that's for you to know. Roy and I interviewed Gavin Newsom when he was over in the Munich Security Conference. And he said, and I'm not convinced that he was telling the whole picture,

he basically said his wife and his kids, they would get the only vote on this as whether he's going to run or not. Now, he's running, right? But with you, what are the factors that you're weighing up? Look, I mean, I've run six, a bit or part of six national races. Two for President Clinton, two for President Obama. And when I did it to take on the republicas and Tom DeLay and get Nancy Pelosi to be speaker and took back the house after 12 years of being out. I've been in five national races. I have one of them or been part of winning teams, and I've run my and put my name on the ballot six times, and I'm six for six. So what I know about politics is do you have the ideas to move this country forward and the strength? And what you're

offering is that scratch, the itch that's there for the American people. That's it. And B, your head, your heart and your gut have to be aligned. If they're not, you shouldn't do this because it's a brutal process. So where's your head, heart, and gut now? Okay, well, wait a second. I'm at a point when I first ran for Congress, my kids were five, four, and three. And then throughout my career, you know, when I ran for mayor, my three kids, high school, seventh grade, fifth grade.

They're all through college now. Zach just finished being a Navy Intala officer after UCLA. He's now a reservist in the Navy, and he's launched his career. My daughter Alana is also a Navy reservist, and she's going to graduate school for a law and business degrees. And Leah, having left Princeton, is a consultant to the Pentagon on national security and climate change. So my real thing isn't about me. My thing is my family will support me, but they also know I have to think about. not just myself, but them.

And so it's kind of a different place. Now, my head, my heart, my gut, more aligned it is today than it was a year ago. But I'm under no illusion, this is just the flirtation period. Once you say yes, you guys and the colleagues of yours, this is pot shot time. So the question is, is this what you want to do? And I don't, I never like in life saying woulda could have should up. Okay, Rahm, Rory, quick break, and then back for more. Welcome back. Welcome back to the rest of its politics leading with me, Rory Stewart.

And me, Alistair Campbell, and we are with Rahm Emanuel. Let me ask you this. I mentioned that you worked for very, very closely for three presidents. Yeah. And you've talked about your own strengths and weaknesses. What did you see as their strengthened weaknesses? If you go through them one by one, Clinton, Obama, Biden. Let me zoom out and say something about having been a mayor and then in and out, when you add off all the time, eight years in and out of the Oval Office. It's true about being mayor, at least of a big city. The only decisions that get into the Oval Office that get into the fifth floor of city

Chicago, which would be also true about New York, if you're trying to do big things, I'm not talking about big things, is bad and worse. And you have to have the judgment, the character, the inquisitiveness to distinguish between bad and worse. One point out of history in the United States, you had the Bay of Pigs and the Cuban Missile Crisis. If history had been different and they've been reversed, God knows where this would go. But Kennedy takes the Bay of Pigs, which is not a success, and is honest and learns something about himself, the people around him and his capacity.

There's other intervening. There's Vienna. There's other things that happen. And so you're going to, ready, breaking news, if I ever ran and it was successful, I'm going to fail. Do I have the capacity to learn from it? to have the capacity to know who I trust and who I don't, whose judgment is important. And do I have the discipline to be inquisitive, et cetera? Now, both President Clinton and President Obama's, and they had different styles, etc.

Different temperaments. And I learned a lot from both of them. They were not scared to be challenged by people. And I wasn't scared to challenge them. There's a infamous story between President Obama and I on the difference between health care or banking and financial reform, which goes first. They weren't scared to have smart people around, have thorough debates, sometime to my impatience, way too long a debate.

But they had those discussions, and they had the ability to ask tough questions of themselves and the people around them, because what happens, whether it's in the Oval Office, the cabinet room, et cetera, you don't get good and bad. You get bad and worse. And I'll give you an example from my Obama years. I wanted to do financial reform after the banking financial meltdown first. I thought the country needed to see the president fighting the bankers and fighting the insurance company and executives who had caused 7 million Americans to lose their homes on a thing called liar

loans. If you didn't start health care immediately, you are going to probably endanger the ability to get health care. And to do health care, the lesson out of Bill Clinton's tenure was the pharmaceutical, the health hospitals, the insurance companies, the doctors, all the interests, had to either be neutralized or on your side of the table rather than the other side of the table. That's the only way to get it done. Now, he picked. The good news is we had a thorough debate. I gave my two cents, went to work to get what do you want to done. In the end of the day, the American people got health care. If you had

pre-existing conditions, you got for the first time in America, the ability to have insurance. But we also got a tea party. So there's, you got to understand this. that in politics there isn't good and bad. There are tradeoffs between equities and losses, and every leader has to be able to know why they're doing what they're doing, and then the strength to get it done. It's not good enough to have a good idea, but the incapacity, and it's not capacity just to have strength,

but no knowledge of where you're taking the country and where you're leading it. And I also think they both shared one other thing. I think President Obama said it probably a little slightly more eloquently or rhetorably. You run your race, you hand off the baton, and the next individual runs their race. And hopefully, between the time you picked up the baton and you hand off the baton, you've picked up the pace and you've improved the competitiveness and the posture of your relay. Rums, can I come in and... You can do whatever you want. It's your podcast.

Thank you. That's very sweet. I really appreciate that. That's generous of you. I don't think I'll listen to you, but you could do whatever you want. You can pretend to listen, or you could just... I can. Don't tell my wife that I did that. She doesn't think I do a very good job of that. Rum, listen, we felt when Trump, one, came in in Europe, maybe this was an anomaly. Yeah.

And that America being able to turn away from its traditional allies and weaponize our dependency on the United States was something that was just happening once. We didn't need to worry about it very much. Trump comes back a second time, and the whole world changes. Nobody's going to trust you in the way they can again. You can come in, Rahm, you can be president, you can be like, ah, it's all over, don't worry about it. We're all friends again. The post-world order is operating. We believe in the United Nations.

You know, we're not going to wipe tariffs on you every time we feel like it. We're not going to weaponize the dollar. We're not going to exploit your dependence on us for defense and trade. So what happens? I mean, we basically feel at the moment as though we are. an abused partner in a house owned by the United States. The United States saying to us, you can't afford to leave. You've got to suck it up.

Well, let me say this. About six weeks ago, I write for the Wall Street Journal, I wrote a column of what I call a first draft of a new national security policy. Because, one, having been in the Oval Office for eight years of my life, there's no reset button at the Resolute Desk. You just don't go in and hit Oh, rule law.

Trust, allies, alliances. If you think that you're a fool. Two, you also don't appreciate the sentiment behind Prime Minister Carnies. There's a rupture. You don't just walk around squeezing super glue on this broken pottery. It's too stupid. So you have to rethink and re-evaluate. And this is a generational battle because you're going to approach next time with buyer's remorse from last time.

Now, do I believe that alliances are strength of the United States? 100%. Do I actually think Russia, China, North Korea, Iran, are trying to harm us? 100%. And when I say us, I mean us. And the big capital of you, us, not just the United States. We're the target of it. You guys are also the target of it, not just Great Britain, but Europe and our Asia and allies.

So I look at this and I said there are four instruments of your national security. These are the tools in the toolbox, not the toolbox. There's military power, economic state craft, political persuasion, and cultural attraction. Every region of the world, we have to assemble those four things into a different order of prioritization. As it relates to euro, not limited to, but these are my first three. things that I would put front and center. One, if everything west of the Rhine River from American troops in NATO, if it's not nailed down and you can't describe essential, move it east into Lafia, Estonia, Poland, Romania, Czech. And I would challenge the rest of Europe, follow suit.

And whatever, in Belgium and headquarters, 10% cut it, move it to the front line. As an active deterrence saying to Europe, our allies, we are going to be part of a re-booted deterrence. Second, NATO needs to promulgate a set of real rules and guidances that communicate to the Russians. We're done with these gray zone attacks. If you do this, it's Article 5. Or if we do this, here's what happens. Third, forget tariffs and forget what we've done on the economic state graph. Here are the supply chain choke points we know of.

that affect all of us. Here are the emerging technologies from quantum computing to fusion to life sciences, da-da-da-da. And that's an economic agreement to work together on ameliorating the known and future supply chain choke points.

And these are the technologies that are going to keep the Western world in a dominant position. Your universities, our universities, are prominent, and we're in a scientific, technological, cold war with China. and we want you to be part of muslin up.

Now, there's other pieces to it, but those are my top three. And I think if we showed that, executed on it, and showed respect, you're not going to snap back in because you're always going to be joined us. You should be. But our alliance, I believe in the alliances, and then you have to have a set of actions that reinforce on that philosophy and et cetera, and we will hopefully earn, again, strengthen the alliance. Now, two things I would say I would add to my position on this.

One, I don't want to go through. You guys can say what we did bad. You know, the truth is, how many times over 20 years did we say get the 2% of GDP to defense? And how many times basically the European NATO countries outside of those on the eastern side, ignore it. So while you can say, okay, you did this Trump, so I'm not interested in doing, we all screwed up in the past. We told you not to get dependent on Russian oil and gas. You didn't listen. Do you want to sit here?

I don't want to debate the past. Both all of us come with the culpability. I want to talk about the future and what do we got to do? And what do we got to invest in? And what do we got to be a part of? The truth is, European countries, we're freeloading. The truth of the matter is alliances are also important. They're good for America.

And I'm sorry, I don't really follow this. What is the connection? What's the connection between the fact that Europe didn't spend enough on defense and was too reliant on Russian gas? and America thinking it can threaten to take Greenland, intervene in Iran without consulting with us? What's all this got to do with it? Well, because your comment was about Donald Trump and what's wrong with America. My point is both sides have a culpability of what happened in the past.

If I decided to run, throw my hat in, and I get through the primary and general election, you said, okay, what would you do? and you know that Europe and the United States is mainly Europe is going to be pretty cynical about our politics, etc. So my attempt was to lay out a prospective agenda, A, and B, also appreciate the fact that, yes, President Trump has his challenges. He likes to punch down and suck up, as I like to say. When it comes to Putin and Xi, he wants to be admired by them as it relates to Great Britain,

France, or Germany. for Canada, he likes to punch down. We have to get past that and set up an agenda that I think starts to rebuild the relationship. I do believe why you were critical of President Trump, and trust me, I'm also critical

of President Trump. Europe has some culpability in the last 20 to 30 years that also weakened NATO to the point that Emmanuel Macron eight years ago called it a paper tiger. I don't disagree with you about the European NATO

spending point, I think what we find particularly confusing at the moment is the fact that you just mentioned that Trump must be admired by Xi and by Putin, it's very hard to escape the notion that Trump is actually on Putin's side when it comes to Ukraine. Yeah. You mentioned the troops west or east of the right. When J.D. Vance says that the thing he's proudest of is stopping American funding, he's basically saying, I'm supporting Russia, and I don't mind that they've taken sovereign territory and they're killing kids and bombing hospitals and all the rest of it.

And so I actually would be hopeful if that Trump and Van, let's say Vance disappeared with Trump, that something maybe Democrat would come better, the cynicism could be worn down fairly quickly. But from your vantage point, what are we to make of an American president who, as per just recently, had a phone call with Putin, comes off the phone and says,

I'm thinking of pulling the American troops out of Germany? Why did he say that? Because Putin asked him. to. I'm not for Donald Trump. I don't think I need to say that. I know that. I know that. Okay. And I don't think his strategic actions are in America's self-interest, let alone as the national security interest. No. I think, as I said, he punches down, doesn't realize the value of allies expressed in the Strait of Hermuz, which is that you didn't come to our defense. Well, you didn't consult. And more importantly, having spent a year and a half degrading people

and punching down on them, doesn't make him really want to forthcome and be stretched. And do I think he is in both in awe and admire President Putin? Yes, I do, and I think he does it for all the wrong reasons, because he loves the fact that President Putin got wealthy in this job, as President Trump has gotten wealthy in this job, and sees power in the same way. He's jealous. He's jealous of him. And then to put the two questions that both of you have posed me together, my point is there's a lot of finger pointing going on.

I don't agree with Donald Trump's approach, and I don't agree with President Biden saying America's back. We all have new challenges. NATO has to be modernized. The EU and America's economic statecraft has to be modernized. Our understanding of the challenges around the world have to be modernized, and we have to embark on a joint effort. Do I think you're going to turn around and say we're going to follow America today

because Donald Trump has gone and it's a Democratic president, whether it's me or somebody else? No. So Mike Vowler's, here's the agenda that gives you trust and confidence that if we embark on this, I appreciate that you have a real threat called the Russian bearer. And we not only appreciate it, we think it's a threat, which is here's how we're going to activate our deterrence on the economic front, the political front, the military front. Because you need to, the one thing Ukraine, there's a lot of things Ukraine showed. but one of the most important things, and I'm writing my new piece for the Wall Street Journal on this,

America set up militarily to fight two wars simultaneously. Post-Ukraine, Russia, post-Iran, America has to actually be in a position to fight two different types of war simultaneously. Neither Ukraine or Iran have a navy, and they both control their waterway. That tells you everything you need to know about the future. And that means, okay, to NATO and everybody that's part of this, not just what amount of money you're spending.

How do you spend it? How do we deal with gray zone attacks? How do we have active deterrence? How do we have a conventional, unconventional military? And in that process of working together, consulting together, training together, doing strategic thinking together, we will renew their friendship and the alliance. On AI, what sort of effects do you expect over the next five years? feel like I should go back to the swimming pool. Listen, it'd be worse if you're president. It'd be a lot worse if you're president.

Well, let me say this. If I was president, I wouldn't be doing this interview. You might be. You might be. That's true. That's true. You never know when you need it. Hope you remember one day. Okay, what's it going to mean for jobs in the U.S.? What's it going to mean for productivity in the U.S.? What's it going to mean for American power in the world? How's it going to change the world in the next five, ten years? You know, I have consulted with leaders of AI, Dario, Sam Holm and everybody. I've come to the inclusion. They don't know.

Not because they haven't thought about it, but there isn't just a glass half full and a glass half empty. It's both. It's not one or the other. And it's going to be revolutionary. Well, we have to make sure what I call is democratizing AI. You just can't have five bros who are all taxing each other and a court can't. right now, decide for everybody else and get all the upside and everybody else gets the downside and the down draft. That's the lesson of China and that's the lesson of the internet, not happening.

Now, for us in the United States, which I also think is true for Great Britain and the rest of Europe, our government set up, we issue a regulation and we wait 25 years to see the result. That's not going to work. We're going to have a total change. You're going to need a new board made up of industry, made up of academia, made up of both Democrat Republicans and House and Senate, and then made up of what I would call more than just business but also consumers or citizens that actively is making regulations and oversight in real time with the technology. I don't want to live in a world and this world, the political system won't accept it, that one CEO decides not to produce and distribute a product because he's worried. I'm thinking of Dario and mythos from Anthropic of the consequences. That should have been a board that made that decision. And it was so much of a bell ringer that the Federal Reserve and the Secretary of Treasurer told the financial system,

you guys got to get on top of this. So I'm not living in a world where one CEO and I appreciate that Dario acted with some ethical guidance here. What if they were trying to in the battle between Anthropic and A.S.? and Open AI, given they all trying to do up each other, what if they decided to release it because it was going to be important for the IPO? But yet, unleash a cyber capacity and an attack capacity that would bring our health care, our financial, and our economic system totally grounded to the hall. So you need a board set up by the president with all the representatives that is making decisions, not one regulation, pause, wait 30 years, see result. Decisions in real time.

that give guidance. Now, I do think we're in a competitiveness with China, but I also think it's an opportunity because China's scared of this of collaboration and cooperation. I don't think it's either or either. I think we're competitors and we need cooperation and collaboration. I think the idea that you're going to say no to everything is also unacceptable. So we have to find a way through policy and government that we have one national and slash international type of working but one national set of rules and regulations

made in real time and not made for the benefit of just four or five wealthy individuals who are as far as I can tell trying to kill each other. This has to be a technology that you actively regulate that works for more people in real time.

Rahm, my final question, As I said in the introduction, you spent... Final? Well, Rory will probably have three more final ones, but it's my final one for now. No, okay. I can have another final one, then maybe a couple more. But anyway, this is my final question. It relates to your time as ambassador.

Yeah. You said in one of the interviews I read that you said you learned more about America in three years in Japan than you expected to. What did you learn about America and what do you learn about China? Two nice, small questions for you. Yeah, I appreciate final thoughts. for the next three hours. Yeah. Look, I said, I wrote this piece that I learned a tremendous amount about Japan.

I learned a tremendous amount. I laid out what I learned about the Indo-Pacific and China specifically in it. But being 8,000 miles away from America and 12 hours away, I had a distance that gave me some perspective of both, you know, to quote the movie, the good, the bad, and the ugly. Let me sum it up this way. because this is like a 20-hour discussion. Nothing China does scares me.

It's what America's not doing that scares me. China does not decide whether we're complacent as a country that 50% of our kids cannot read at grade level, a 30-year low. That's on us. And if you think you're getting from here to there with 50% of your kids not reading at grade level, let me just give you one comment.

Kids drop out of college in third grade. you're not going to be take on a country that's three times your size and population with only 50% of your kids reading at the grade level. China does not decide whether like our president we cut the funding for the National Institute of Health, the National Science Foundation at DARPA. Going back to Ben Franklin, this country has been on the cutting edge of science and technology, which is why I said a 10% tax on predictive markets, online gambling, and the $50 billion in the year goes into additional funding for National Institute of Health. the National Science Foundation and our defense new technologies. I want to win the war of science and technology in the future, and I want Europe to be part of that. Third, China doesn't decide whether we put all our eggs in fossil fuel. They did all the above of President Obama's strategy.

We're the ones that abandoned it. I want to modernize our distribution, transmission, and our energy sources, not just around new energy, although I believe that's a promising parent. you have a 21st century energy and digital infrastructure, then the 21st century economy can prosper. It's now operating on the 20th century. And so my look at this was we have divisions. We have a precedent who never misses a day to exacerbate those divisions.

Xi's top political philosopher spends years in the United States and he comes away and one lesson is. America is hopelessly divided. So when you said what I learned about America, nothing that meets our challenges is we have a purpose, a singularity, a focus, and start to invest in our future, and more importantly invest in the people that will make and populate that future. Beijing, game on. Let's go. I'm ready. But if we don't and we spend our time fighting each other, thinking our politics is nothing but the Game of Thrones and Braveheart, and we sit here and decide to cut our state. science and technological advantage, decide to declare wars on our universities as part of the cultural war that the, you know, the president's brought on, then we're going to basically be living on fumes that will come to an end. Now, I happen to think China is a real threat. I happen to think

what we developed when the United States, Japan, and Korea, which I was prominent in, a coalition, that was a good day for America, a good day for our allies, and a really bad day for China. Because their entire strategy is built on Korea, Japan, and the United States never getting on the same page. And we push that with the quad. We push that with August. We push that theory with the United States, Japan, and the Philippines. Isolate the isolator. They are trying to dunk our heads in the toilet.

They do engage in intellectual property theft. They do engage in active cyber attacks on the United States infrastructure. You know, as we joke, paranoid people have enemies, too, you know. So they are trying to do us harm. This president loves G. I don't love sheep. I don't hate she, but I'm not in admiration of him. He doesn't have a win-win.

China has a theory. Their theory is everybody will be dependent on us and we will be independent of everybody else. We have a different theory. And the unfortunate is we have a president of the United States who wants to adopt the same theory that Xi has when it comes to allies, when it comes to economic dependence. So I believe America has wasted 12 years trying to recreate a pandemic. past that's not coming back, that 2028 will be the first election about the future. I'm going to, if I decide to do this, lay out a vision of that future. We don't have a person to waste or a community to overlook, which we did in the past.

And I am not complacent about 50% of our kids not able to read at the grade level. I am not complacent to the fact that we've decided only one energy source. It is a strategic asset. Ameri has a lot of capacities and a lot of capabilities to leapfrog China. I am not happy that we have a President of the United States and a Congress complicit with cutting our scientific and technological advantages. So those are the kind of things. I can go on for hours on this, but I think you get the flavor. We get the flavor.

Thank you. Thank you very, very much. Thank you for your time. We really, really appreciate it. Thanks, guys. And you appreciate that you and Alaster have many, many things in common, but swimming is one of them. All right. Well, you're not as, so you don't know this.

You didn't ask it. When I was 17, I almost died. And I was in the hospital for seven weeks. And I had five blood infections, two bone infections, and again, green. And the first 96 hours, 72 hours was touch and go. I had 105 plus fever. And three of my different roommates over those seven weeks died. And the doctor said, if it wasn't for your physical condition, you'd have been a goner.

And then I become neurotic. about it. Not only my ex-sacic, my wife would say neurotic about everything, but I was never going to let a day go to waste, but more importantly. So, by way of example, I did one hour of waits today, swam a mile, and for lunch, I will go do one hour of yoga. But it's like, now it helps me balance stress. But most importantly, it comes out of this impetus where I almost, having almost died, I appreciated life a lot better. Great. Well, great to hear from you. And thank you again. Lovely to see. Thank you again. And I want you to know this. Here's the deal. Here's the deal we'll have. Yeah. If I decided to jump into the deep end of the pool, and if I'm lucky enough to win the confidence of the Democratic primary voters,

my first foreign interview will be with you. Okay. Oh, thank you. That's what we like to hear. That's what we like to hear. We'll hold you to it. All right, guys. Thank you.

I promise not to be broken. Thank you, all right. Bye-bye. You got it. So, Rory, do you reckon? He's got it. One, do you think he's running? And two, do you think he's got what it takes?

One, to get the nomination and two, to get the people. He's definitely running. And it was a charming final move to try to stop me doing my normal, being rude to our guest, by saying that he's going to give us the first foreign interview when he wins the nomination. Listen, I've got my own prejudices about him, but you're a much more experienced person about political communication. So give me a sense what your gut instinct is. How does he compare to Gavin Newsom, Sarah McBride, I mean, any of the other Democrats that we've interviewed recently, what do you think about his, or indeed, Clinton or Obama, what do you think about his raw political skills? First of all, what are your prejudices?

It'll get on to, you know, I'll start grumbling about adjectives. I'll start grumbling about certain kinds of communication. I'll start grumbling about sense of humor and various other things. But anyway, listen, put me aside. I'm not trying to, I'm not trying to preempt this. I said to him beforehand, and he said he thought I needed to get out more. after I had my morning swim this morning, I went to a school. And then I came back, and for the last three hours,

I've just been listening to a few podcast interviews that he's done. And quite a lot of the things that he said, word for word, were things that I'd heard this morning. I've got nothing. I don't have a problem with that. I'm the Mr. Message Discipline guy. But I think my sense of him at the moment, I think he's running. But I think as he's deciding to make the final leap into saying,

I'm going for it, which is such a big thing to do. Because, you know, you're talking about raising, ridiculous amounts of money. You're talking about... Billions of dollars now. Millions of dollars to go the whole way, yeah. And you're talking about

incredible stress and all that stuff. So, but I think he is running. I think what he's doing is testing for himself a set of arguments that he's going to use. I wouldn't be surprised, for example,

if this interview and other interviews are put through a kind of pretty rigorous focus group machinery that basically says, yeah, they really like the fact that you don't like TikTok. You don't see yourself as the TikTok

guy. He clearly wants to make education a big thing. I think, look, we're living in a world where Donald Trump has become president twice, including after proving himself to be utterly useless, utterly corrupt, and a threat to democracy. So you can't rule anything in or out. Let's say, you mentioned Clinton. I said to him, you know, rate, what are the strengths and weaknesses of Clinton, Obama, Biden? I got the feeling he didn't want to say too much about Biden because I think he basically felt Biden should have gone a lot early than he did. But Clinton Obama, in their own different ways, are truly exceptional political figures. But you asked about communication.

Clinton and Obama, Obama's got one of the most beautiful voices in the world. He's got an incredible use of language, his lyricism, the values that come through it. And I would argue that Clinton, as well, is an amazing communicator. Could I see Rahm Emanuel on that level? No, I don't think so. Could I see him on a level that he wins a primary? yeah? Could I see him on a level that he wins an election? And he was very proud of his own record in terms of winning campaigns. But I think it's always particularly hard for me. I mean, I know he's been an elected politician twice, but I guess my consciousness of him is very much more as the advisor role. And so I'd be, I'd be jury out, but jury leaning towards positive. And I definitely think he's going to run. Yeah. I mean, it's an interesting thing, isn't it? I mean, I wonder what the equivalent is. It's a big.

like Jonathan Powell suddenly deciding to run to be Prime Minister or something. I mean, I guess there's a little, there are differences. I can tell you, I can tell you that now, Roy, that is not going to happen. That is definitely not going to happen. It's not going to happen. And there might be a reason why it wouldn't happen. But I'm afraid part of the problem for me is, and I, you know, I came to it, you know, I've met him a couple of times. I went to Chicago as a minister when he was the mayor. I'm quite close to people in Chicago who are close to his campaign. So I've always been very intrigued by him. And there was a lot about his education policy that I liked.

And you probably wouldn't have liked. I mean, you probably would have felt it felt quite kind of govlike the way that he did his education reforms in Chicago. I'm afraid, though, even as without having spent three hours listening to interviews, I'm afraid a lot of the lines did feel a bit as though they had been used in interviews before. And one of the skills for a politician, which I think Clinton and Obama have, and even Trump has, is their skill is they may well be repeating what they said before, but it doesn't sound like they're repeating what they said before. Maybe that's part of the trick. The tone of voice, the lyricism makes it seem as though they're freshly engaging. I also think in a world that is about attention. I wonder whether he's going to hold attention. I wonder what those focus groups will say. I mean, yeah, there were very effective lines. Of course there are. And he's worked out, you know, strengths, weaknesses. But Gavin used some. would have been much funnier and more self-deprecating when you asked about weaknesses. I mean, cradically, so he would have said, well, okay, I was dyslexic, I was drunk, I don't know this, that, I'm a disaster.

I don't even know where to start with my weaknesses instead of, well, if it's a weakness to care about detail, you know, this kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah. So I wonder, I want to, I can't think of an American president really like that, probably since Truman. Very difficult to think of an American president, communicate like that. Maybe, certainly, Reagan wasn't anything like that. Clinton, Obama, George W. Bush, Trump. I mean, they, you know, love him or hate them, are, you know, big extrovert, quick on their feet, self-deprecating, highly humorous communicators.

So I guess he's, but he probably would say, listening to that, that he's been underestimated all his life. He'd probably say, you know, a bit like Kirstama, that everybody's always said that about him, and yet he's made it. They probably said it when he ran to be a congressman. and they probably said it when he went around to be a marriage Chicago. He's also clearly trying to occupy the right of the Democratic Party, isn't he? Surprisingly, you know, some of that stuff about, well, you know, Europe's responsible too. And, you know, I'm obviously not a fan of President Trump, but, you know, there's harm on both sides. I mean, feels like somebody who, and that speech, I'm not about the bathrooms.

I'm about the boardroom or not bathrooms. I'm not a bathroom. He's trying to scoop up, I assume. the kind of soft Republican right in the center as well. And he's trying to be tough on national security and be the tough guy, isn't he? Well, one of the, I mentioned the 2006 midterms where he put together the strategy. A lot of it was about going out and finding candidates who were like in the military or police officers. And it was very much seen as a sort of, you know, kind of a pitch to the center.

And I also think, I mean, interestingly, the interview he did with Tommy Vitro on Pod Save America. Tommy basically, I think, felt that the Rahm is misrepresenting how the Democrats fought the last election. The truth is, the reason why the trans issue became such a big issue was because the Republicans spent an absolute fortune saying that it was the Democrats issue. And how do you deal with that? So Tommy's point was, look, we're talking about really vulnerable people that people like us should really care for when the right is weapon. the issue to the extent that they are. And you're right. He's basically saying, no, I'm not going to fall into any of those traps that the Republicans are laying down for me. But it's interesting because, because at the moment, I think he's clearly testing the waters. He's finally out what people

are saying, what people are thinking. Look, the truth is, if you get the nomination, let alone if you become the president, you have the platform. So you don't have to worry. Trump, yes, is a genius at the attention economy, but you get the attention of the economy just by dint of your position. I think where he sees himself in terms of his style of communication is as a very aggressive force. And that isn't Reagan in a way. That isn't, you know, that isn't, it's not even Clinton, really. It's definitely not Obama. So it is a, it's not, it's not that, it's not, yeah, it's not the happy warrior, which is, since, since, since,

that Theodore Roosevelt's meant to be the style. It's not a great, joyful, optimistic, hopeful. It's quite grim. Give me a final, I'll win it, you know. Yeah. It's quite enjoyed. It's quite golden brown. He seemed to, he seemed to, I thought he was, yeah, I think he's, look, I think it's

very interesting what he's doing at the moment. He's definitely testing it. And he's giving himself a bit of time to test it. I would have, tell you, tell you what, one more thing. I would have liked to see. Pronouns. Semicolos. Cost the living.

Oh, yeah. Cost of living. I'd like more sense of the ordinary voter. Stories, people, encounters on the streets, sense of compassion, sense of how people are struggling, sense of how much the United States is actually, I'm afraid, a disgrace. I mean, it's not just that, you know, when asked about China, he said people aren't graduating from high school with proper literacy. And of course that's a disgrace, but the real disgrace in America, I would have thought, is homelessness, poverty, exclusion from health care, lives of real misery. I mean, you know, the European economies are a much worse situation than the American economies, but are extreme poor and not in the positions of some of the people that you can see in Mississippi or Flint, Michigan.

So that surprised me as the Democrat. Yeah, but on that, he's probably, he's probably thinking, though, with a couple of Brits, you know, they've got this podcast. you know, yeah, they seem nice guys and people seem to listen to, but he's probably not thinking he's talking to an American audience. And I thought he felt, I actually think he, no, I think he quite, but put it this way. Well, I don't know. Quite a lot of those lines seem to be prepared for an American, he didn't seem as though he was like relaxing with a couple of foreigners.

Quite a lot of those seem polished lines from an American audience. In the infuse you watch, the three hours of inties you watch, did he talk more about poverty in the United States? He did, he did. He talked a lot more about education, a lot more. more about, you know, kids, the system being rigged against the poor. He talked a lot but more about that. I thought he, I mean, I don't know what he was expecting. And, you know, we did warn his team that you and I don't over-prepure these things. We kind of take the

conversation wherever it goes. So he probably thought he was, I think he's a little bit surprised that we started off with sort of 10 minutes on the Middle East. But I actually found that in some ways one of the most interesting parts of the interview because he's a, he's a very, you know, he's Jewish middle name Israel. And he absolutely hates Benjamin Netanyahu. There's no doubt about that whatsoever. And he does have that feeling. And I quite liked his notion of the 23 state solution. I'd not seen him say that in any of the previous interviews, by the way.

But I think, listen, overall, I think he's got a lot of experience. He's got a lot of strength. He clearly prides himself on being strolled. He's going to go for it. It's going to be a crowded field. I'd say he's in with a shot. Has him with a shot. Great.

Well, it was fun, Alastair. It was fun. And I'm not sure I'm voting for him in the primary, but I don't get a vote anyway. You're voting for Gavin. This thing is stand. I'm delighted we get an interview if he wins. I mean, that's terrific. He might not.

If he hears what you've just said, he might not. He might have sort of break that. That could be the first promise he breaks. Well, that's usually the problem with my promise slagging everybody off after the interview. All right. See you soon. Bye. Bye.

All right. Take it. Bye.