Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
From our UK edition
25 min listen
The House of Representatives has voted to open an impeachment inquiry into Joe Biden, after three Republican-led committees alleged bribery and corruption during his time as vice-president. Could it actually be good news for Biden? Freddy speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn.
From our UK edition
‘If Trump wasn’t running,’ said Joe Biden last week, ‘I’m not sure I’d be running.’ That’s a curiously uninspiring remark for an American leader seeking re-election to make. Yet ever since 2019, Biden’s pitch for the presidency has been essentially negative: if you don’t support me, you’ll get him. The trouble for Joe is that,
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Hunter Biden was lost and now he’s found. That was the subtext of the president’s prodigal son’s speech outside Congress yesterday. ‘For six years, I have been the target of the unrelenting Trump attack machine shouting ‘Where’s Hunter?’,’ Hunter Biden told reporters. ‘Well, here is my answer, I am here.’ If Hunter’s statement was meant
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21 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to journalist and author Niko Vorobyov who wrote Dopeworld: Undercover in the secret war on drugs. 90 years after Prohibition ended, what are some of the biggest misperception about that era? And what has been the legacy of repealing the 18th amendment?
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25 min listen
World leaders are in Dubai this weekend to discuss climate change, but are these Cop summits pointless? Joe Biden isn’t attending this year’s get together, allegedly because he’s focusing on the war between Israel and Hamas. Meanwhile, there have been reports that the Emiratis are using the convening power of the summit to sign new
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Sans Trump, the Republican presidential debates of 2023 have mostly been piddling contests in a shallow pool. We’ve seen nasty insults — most aimed at or directed by Vivek Ramaswamy — and that’s fun to watch. But you can catch those bits on social media and the rest hasn’t been worth tuning in for. Maybe
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Geert Wilders’s victory is another slap-in-the-face moment for the European Union. The complexities of Dutch democracy may mean that he struggles to form a strong government. But his victory, which seemed impossible just a few weeks ago, reminds us that, whether we like it or not, anti-immigration politics is the most potent force in 21st
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Freddy Gray talks to McKay Coppins, author of the New York Times bestselling book ‘Romney: A Reckoning’. Romney has announced he will not seek reelection in 2024. What next for the ‘never-Trumper’, could he support the creation of a new centrist party? And how does he feel about the significant losses in his career?
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42 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Patrick Ruffini, pollster and author of Party of the People: Inside the Multiracial Populist Coalition Remaking the GOP to discuss who could be a serious competitor to Trump.
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Vice presidents are meant to be dependable – and in a funny way Kamala Harris is exactly that. Joe Biden knows that, no matter how bad his poll numbers, hers will be worse: she’s the most unpopular vice president since polling began, according to one recent survey. Biden can afford to be pitifully vague in
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Not so long ago, Republicans called Democrats the ‘party of abortion’ as an insult, or a pre-election attack line. Now, it is the Republicans, as the party against abortion, who are losing. This is a grim reality for Americans who believe that the unborn deserve protection. Since Dobbs, in elections where abortion is on the
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24 min listen
Freddy Gray is reunited with Charles Lipson and Jacob Heilbrunn to debate the impact of Biden’s Middle East policy, and his shaky reputation at home. Is he a Cold War liberal, out of touch with the modern Democratic Party?
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‘I beseech you to control him if you can,’ Justice Arthur Engoron told Donald Trump’s lawyer in court yesterday. To which the only sensible reply is: ‘Good luck with that.’ Nobody can control, or stop, the 45th President – least of all, it seems, the legal system. The trials of Trump will drag on and on in
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36 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Robert Bryce who is an author and expert on energy, power and politics. On the podcast, Robert talks about the economic implications of Europe’s net zero targets; why we should push for nuclear energy; and shares the human stories behind electrification.
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It was hard to enjoy Rishi Sunak’s sit down with Elon Musk on stage at Lancaster House last night. It was hard to hate it, too. We saw two men, two different types of nerd, talking about how artificial intelligence can be good or bad, and how science fiction is a useful guide to this coming
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Try to think of leading names in the field of Artificial Intelligence. Kamala Harris is probably not the first that springs to mind. The woman can barely talk. But she is Vice President of the United States of America and as such she’s in London, about to give a speech ahead of Rishi Sunak’s big
From our UK edition
27 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to Dennis Ross, former Middle East coordinator under President Clinton and current Professor of the Practice of Diplomacy at Georgetown University. They discuss Biden’s visit to Israel this week, how his policy towards the Middle East borrows from Trump and Obama, and how we can discern between the public posturing and
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Joe Biden prides himself on his decades of foreign-policy experience, his ability to talk tough yet be kind, and his talent for bringing opposing sides together. Touching down in Israel today, he gave Bibi Netanyahu a big hug – quite the gesture – and promptly told him he believed that ‘the other team’ – i.e.
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31 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper’s Magazine, about America’s response to the developments in the Middle East. On the podcast they discuss the ‘squad’ (a section of Democrats who have been making pro-Palestinian noises), how America and Israel’s surveillance system allowed the attack to happen, and the importance of the
From our UK edition
23 min listen
Freddy speaks to Roger Kimball, editor of the New Criterion and columnist for The Spectator’s US edition. After Kevin McCarthy was ousted as speaker of the House this week, they discuss why the Republican party is such a mess.
