From our UK edition
35 min listen
Freddy keeps up Americano tradition by speaking to Daniel McCarthy ahead of the election. On the podcast they discuss how Trump’s get-out-the-vote project is working and the impact low-propensity voters could have on the result, whether this election will be plagued by inefficiencies in the American electoral system and if J.D. Vance is actually the heir apparent to the MAGA title.
From our UK edition
The ‘Trumpmentum’ of the last few weeks couldn’t last forever. Now, with less than four days to go until election day, concern is spreading in Republican circles that the Trump train has ‘stalled’ as the Democrats make late and potentially decisive gains in key areas. Across the battleground states, and especially in Pennsylvania, early voting numbers suggest that women are turning out in far bigger numbers than men. This is good news for the Democrats because 2024 is widely thought to be ‘the gender election’: a majority of men favour Trump; a majority of women support Harris. The Trump campaign is also lagging behind Harris in early voting among senior citizens in Pennsylvania.
From our UK edition
For Donald Trump fans, one of the many creepy curiosities of this year’s presidential election is that Liz and Dick Cheney and other disgruntled Bush-era Republicans are firmly supporting the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris. Donald Trump understands this dynamic better than most For Harris supporters, meanwhile, it’s strangely alarming that Robert F. Kennedy Junior, scion of the world’s most famous Democratic dynasty, and the former presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard are now both superstars in Trumpworld. The realignment is real. Hippie Democrats, who distrust corporate America, Big Pharma, the military-industrial complex, and Washington have grown increasingly fond of Trump.
From our UK edition
43 min listen
This week: Team Trump – who’s in, and who’s out? To understand Trumpworld you need to appreciate it’s a family affair, writes Freddy Gray in the magazine this week. For instance, it was 18-year-old Barron Trump who persuaded his father to do a series of long ‘bro-casts’ with online male influencers such as Joe Rogan. In 2016, Donald’s son-in-law Jared Kushner was the reigning prince; this year, he has been largely out of the picture. Which family figures are helping Trump run things this time around, and which groups hold the most influence? Freddy joins the podcast alongside economics editor Kate Andrews. What are the most important personnel decisions facing Trump if he wins next week? (0:58).Next: do astrologers predict elections better than pollsters?
From our UK edition
‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ is a computer programming principle which states that the quality of a system’s output is determined by the quality of its input. It’s also a phrase that speaks to US politics this week. After a string of good news cycles for the Republican campaign, the Democrats finally believed they had caught a break on Sunday night after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke about Puerto Rico on stage at Trump’s mega-rally in Madison Square Garden in New York. ‘I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘It’s called Puerto Rico.’ Other speakers made other ill-judged remarks, but the garbage line seemed to stick.
From our UK edition
If Donald Trump wins back the White House next week, adopt the brace position. His opponents will go beserk, inevitably, and try once again to put him in prison. Yet Trump allies might go even more crazy as they scramble for influence. Trump claims to have learned from the mistakes of his first term. But what counts as a mistake depends on who you talk to. And it’s impossible to even guess at what a Trump Redux might mean without some sense of who he talks to these days – and who might shape and influence his agenda if he is elected. The awkward truth – for insiders anyway – is that King Donald and his clan hide in plain sight.
From our UK edition
Nigel Farage was on gregarious and ebullient form at our Americano US election event in Westminster last night. He confidently assured the audience that Donald Trump is going to win. He repeatedly mocked the British Conservative and Labour parties. And he offered his services as a sort of unofficial transatlantic point man for the ‘special relationship’. Having claimed in Politico yesterday that he was 90 per cent sure that Trump would take back the White House, Farage upped the ante for The Spectator audience. ‘I tell you what, folks,’ he said, ‘be in no doubt on 5 November, Donald Trump is going to win. And thank God for that.’ Farage called Trump’s McDonald’s stunt last weekend ‘absolute political genius.
From our UK edition
11 min listen
After Nigel Farage's overture to Tory councillors to 'defect', one already has. Farage has also been on manoeuvres, piling on the criticism against Labour for its volunteers campaigning for the Democrats in the US. James Heale talks to Katy Balls and Freddy Gray about the latest. Tickets are still available to join Freddy Gray and Nigel Farage on Thursday 24 October for their analysis on the US election. Get your tickets here.Produced by Cindy Yu.
From our UK edition
16 min listen
Keir Starmer can’t even fly to Samoa without another international British embarrassment breaking out. The latest is an angry accusation from Donald Trump’s campaign that Labour is committing the crime of ‘election interference’ in the United States. ‘The British are coming!’ screamed a typically camp Trump-Vance official press release last night. The campaign denounced Britain’s ‘far-left’ governing party for attempting to subvert democracy by sending almost 100 of its activists across the pond to sway American voters. But are the British actually coming? Freddy Gray speaks to James Heale, The Spectator's political correspondent. Produced by Oscar Edmondson.
From our UK edition
Our hapless Prime Minister, Keir Starmer, can’t even fly to Samoa without another international British embarrassment breaking out. The latest is an angry accusation from Donald Trump’s campaign that Labour is committing the crime of ‘election interference’ in the United States. ‘The British are coming!’ screamed a typically camp Trump-Vance official press release last night. The campaign denounced Britain’s ‘far-left’ governing party for attempting to subvert democracy by sending almost 100 of its activists across the pond to sway American voters. ‘The flailing Harris-Walz campaign is seeking foreign influence to boost its radical message – because they know they can’t win the American people,’ said Trump’s campaign manager Susie Wiles.
From our UK edition
Some experts believe that Donald Trump is on course to win a bigger share of the African American vote in 2024 than any previous Republican presidential candidate. You can’t trust experts. A number of highly-informed pundits made the same prediction in 2020 – and Joe Biden ended up winning 90 per cent of black voters that year. Kamala Harris, as the vice president of an unpopular administration, may struggle to reach that number. Yet Democratic strategists remain quietly confident that she’ll achieve something close. Team Harris-Walz is possibly more concerned about another, smaller subsection of the American electorate. According to a new Arab News/YouGov poll, among Arab Americans, Trump has a slight edge over Harris: 45 per cent to her 43.
From our UK edition
30 min listen
To discuss whether the Electoral College is out of date and in need of reform, Freddy Gray is join by Michael Kazin – a professor of history at Georgetown University and emeritus coeditor of Dissent. His most recent book, What It Took to Win: A History of the Democratic Party, has just been released in paperback. Join Freddy Gray a special live recording of Americano on Thursday 24 October. You can buy tickets at spectator.com/electionspecial.
From our UK edition
80 min listen
Two weeks to go until the American election and politics is ever more divisive. Freddy Gray is joined by The Spectator's Kate Andrews and lecturer at Queen Mary's University Dr Richard Johnson about the latino vote, class politics, abortion and both guests make predictions for the 2024 election. Join Freddy Gray a special live recording of Americano on Thursday 24 October. You can buy tickets at spectator.com/electionspecial.
From our UK edition
Donald Trump is many things. Most of all, he is the quintessential American entrepreneur. He sees the upside in everything. Even at the age of 78, he still has the energy to undertake every opportunity to advance himself and his interests. When, for instance, he noticed a few weeks ago that Kamala Harris had claimed somewhat dubiously to have worked in McDonald’s, he didn’t just gripe that the media accepted her assertion without checking for evidence (though he did do that). He decided that, as a promotional stunt, he would do something he suspected Harris had never actually done: work a shift in McDonald’s. In doing so, he knew he would create a Golden Arches campaign moment, a viral storm that the world would see.
From our UK edition
27 min listen
Trump won the Catholic vote in 2016 and Biden won it in 2020. Polling suggests that Trump is on course to win it back this year. With issues such as immigration and abortion high on the agenda for voters, where will the Catholic vote land? Ryan Girdursky, the Catholic founder of the 1776 Project PAC and the National Populist substack joins Freddy Gray to discuss. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
From our UK edition
Kamala Harris has been criticising Donald Trump for ducking interviews. Today, however, she avoided a sit-down with the Economic Club of Chicago. Trump, by contrast, showed up and spent an hour facing difficult questions from Bloomberg News’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. It was, like all the best Trump appearances, a magnificently weird occasion. Who needs LSD when you can watch him as a presidential candidate, eight years in, still melting reality live on YouTube? If Kamala Harris speaks in confusing word salads, Trump speaks in even more baffling fruit jellies Micklethwait is a brilliant man: polished, Ampleforth and Oxford, highly successful. His hair is coiffed and his loafers look expensive.
From our UK edition
26 min listen
Indian Americans are the second-largest immigrant group in the United States. They're also one of the most successful. That includes the election campaign; Kamala Harris, Usha Vance, Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy. Freddy Gray is joined by Shruti Rajagopalan, economist at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. They discuss the buzz around Indian Americans in politics, and ask why they're so disproportionately successful. You can find Shruti's website here: https://shrutiraj.com/cv-and-bio/ and her substack here: https://srajagopalan.substack.
From our UK edition
As Hurricane Milton battered Florida last week, Kamala Harris did her best to look and sound presidential. The Vice President hosted a live broadcast with the leadership of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. She then called into CNN, live, to reassure Americans that her administration was tackling the crisis. The message was meant to be clear: she’s got this. Alas, Joe Biden also wanted to show that he’s in charge and that muddled matters. On Friday, the actual Commander-in-Chief gave an emergency press conference about the disaster from the White House briefing room, which rather overshadowed Harris’s big rally that day in the critical swing state of Michigan.
From our UK edition
Republican strategist, and friend of Americano, Luke Thompson joins Freddy Gray to talk about the ground game of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump. From postal voting, to party registration, to machine politics, whose is better? And what impact did Biden's exit from the race have on the organised parts of the Democratic Party? With Luke's unique insight working on two current senate races, and as a longtime consultant to Vice-Presidential nominee J.D. Vance, they analyse the state of an election that continues to be unpredictable. Produced by Patrick Gibbons.
From our UK edition
49 min listen
Journalist, historian and friend of Americano Thomas Frank joins Freddy Gray to dissect the state of American politics. Author of books, including the famed What's the matter with Kansas? How conservatives won the heart of America and, most recently, The People, No: A Brief History of Anti-Populism, Frank talks about his research into the origins of populism, the strange nature of American conventions, and the fundamental flaws he sees in the candidates ahead of the November election. Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Natasha Feroze.
