From our UK edition
For this Super Tuesday discussion, Sarah Elliot – head of the Special Relationship Unit at the Legatum Institute joins Freddy Gray to chat about the predicted Trump-Biden victory; what Nikki Haley will do next and who could be Donald Trump's vice president.
From our UK edition
25 min listen
Freddy talks to political technologist Eric Wilson about the role technology and media will play in the 2024 US election. They cover the differences in strategy between the Democrats and the Republicans, why television is still the best medium for reaching voters, and the role of social media influencers. Produced by Natasha Feroze.
From our UK edition
Commentators find it tedious to keep pointing out that Donald Trump has won yet another primary by yet another huge margin. He just defeated Nikki Haley by more than 40 points in Michigan, for instance, and many journalists seem to be focusing on his struggle to win over key ‘voter blocs’. She will inevitably cave to reality after Super Tuesday next week A lot of this talk is pure wind. Yes, Haley performed well in suburbs around Detroit and Michigan among voter groups that Trump will have to do better with in order to win in a general election against Joe Biden. But Michigan, like South Carolina and New Hampshire, is an open primary, in which all registered voters can vote for the Republican candidate, and a higher level of Trump resistance is therefore inevitable.
From our UK edition
28 min listen
In this special episode of Americano, The Spectator's editor Fraser Nelson explores Trump's candidacy with political commentator Deroy Murdock, and The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews. They debate the influence of his rhetoric on American politics. How important is language? Will his achievements as President be enough to secure his re-election? Does personality Trump policy?
From our UK edition
31 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to James Kanagasooriam who is the chief research officer at Focal Data about the state of the polls. They discuss why vaccines have become a polarising topic for this election; why bookmakers might be underestimating Joe Biden and the importance of the cost of living.
From our UK edition
'I'm a woman of my word,’ said Nikki Haley after another humiliating defeat last night. ‘I'm not giving up this fight when a majority of Americans disapprove of both Donald Trump and Joe Biden.’ But what, really, is the point? South Carolina is Haley’s home state and she lost by more than 20 percentage points. She lost New Hampshire by 11 points, she came third in Iowa, and, much to Trump’s delight, she lost to ‘none of these candidates’ in Nevada. Without Trump, Republican voters distrust and detest their party. They haven’t for some time The Republican nomination snoozefest – it’s not a race – will now move to Super Tuesday, on 4 March, and Haley will almost certainly lose in all 15 states she’s contesting there.
From our UK edition
Will Nikki Haley defy expectations and only lose by 20 points today? That seems to be closest thing to a point of contention as South Carolina heads to the polls for today’s dodo of a Republican primary. The polls have shown Trump’s enormous lead shrinking in recent days from well over 30 points to around 25. Some well-informed reporters think that Trump’s lead has diminished because of his rude outburst about Haley’s spouse. ‘Where’s her husband?’ Trump mused in February, in his off-the-top-of-his-head way. ‘Oh, he’s away. What happened to her husband? What happened to her husband? Where is he? He’s gone.' Making jokes about people’s marriages is one thing; insulting a serving member of the military is another.
From our UK edition
20 min listen
Freddy speaks to journalist and author of The Age of Entitlement: America Since the Sixties, Chris Caldwell, about the human rights movement. Can America’s influence be considered imperial? Is how we think of human rights outdated? And, what does the Black Lives Matter movement and the 2011 intervention in Libya tell us about the state of human rights today?
From our UK edition
27 min listen
Freddy speaks to philosopher Slavoj Zizek ahead of what we understand will be Julian Assange's final court appeal against extradition back to the US. The WikiLeaks founder has been wanted by the US authorities after he leaked tens of thousands of highly sensitive documents. On the podcast they discuss the parallels between Assange and Navalny, whether the West is beginning to behave more like the Soviet Union than we ever have, and if WikiLeaks was behind the election of Donald Trump.
From our UK edition
‘Donald Trump may have authored the Art of the Deal,’ said the New York Attorney General Letitia James, doing her best resolute voice. ‘But he perfected the art of the steal.’ There speaks the voice of American justice: biased, politicised, odiously trite. ‘Today, we proved that no one is above the law,’ said James, which is what every Trump prosecutor has said, over and over, for years now. ‘No matter how rich, powerful, or politically connected you are, everyone must play by the same rules.’ Despite all the strong words and massive fines, Trump’s candidacy is growing in strength That’s garbage and everybody knows it. The rules don’t apply to everyone.
From our UK edition
30 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Americano regular Jacob Heilbrunn about Lord Cameron's recent visit to DC, where he persuaded Congress to pass a bill sending aid to Ukraine. Jacob and Freddy also discuss why Jacob thinks Biden's mental capacity is over exaggerated, and what Nato could look like under Trump, and the latest on his charges.
From our UK edition
38 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to author Joshua Green who wrote The Rebels: Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and the Struggle for a New American Politics. On the podcast they discuss the three rebels in the book; how they influenced Joe Biden in office; and whether the Democratic Party has given up ‘finance-centered’ liberalism.
Manchester, New Hampshire “OK, who here is not a voter in New Hampshire?” asked Marianne Williamson as she took the microphone. Almost everyone in the small, quarter-full auditorium at Manchester Community College raised a hand. “Well, that’s depressing,” said Marianne. Williamson carries herself with a certain grandiosity. She has that quasi-aristocratic bearing that comes from decades of being attractive, famous, well-off and radical. In 2024, she’s casting herself as the presidential candidate for despairing Bernie Sanders supporters. As she did in 2020, she presents her agenda as the spiritual alternative to politics as normal. “Not every rich person in America is a greedy bastard,” she says. “Not every poor person is a noble and pure soul.
From our UK edition
33 min listen
Freddy is joined by Todd Bensman, fellow at the Centre for Immigration Studies and author of Overrun: how Joe Biden unleashed the greatest border crisis in US history. They discuss how to solve what is perhaps the issue of our time, why meaningful reform doesn't seem to happen on immigration, and the extent of Biden's physical and mental frailty after a week of public gaffes.
From our UK edition
10 min listen
Tucker Carlson released his highly anticipated interview with Russia's leader Vladimir Putin last night. The two-hour long discussion was dominated by Putin who gave history lessons, blamed the Nord Stream 2 explosion on the CIA, and accused Boris Johnson of sabotaging the peace talks 18 months ago. Natasha Feroze speaks to James Heale and Freddy Gray about the highlights of the interview, and whether Boris Johnson's role in the talks was as influential as Putin suggests.
From our UK edition
Joe Biden isn’t working. That much has been clear to anyone who has followed American politics for the past four years. The 81-year-old often has no idea what he is saying or where he is. Yet it’s only now, months away from his possible re-election, that the Department of Justice, apparently in an attempt to exonerate him for committing a crime Donald Trump is accused of, has admitted the obvious: he’s not really in charge of himself, let alone the country. After interrogating Biden about his hoarding of classified documents, Special Counsel Robert K. Hur reported: We have also considered that, at trial, Mr Biden would likely present himself to a jury, as he did during our interview of him, as a sympathetic, well-meaning, elderly man with a poor memory.
From our UK edition
The trouble with ageing authoritarians is not necessarily that nobody dares tell them they are wrong. It’s that nobody ever tells them they are being tiresome. A less polite man might have aggressively interrupted his interviewee, but would that have stopped Vlad, the intellectual impaler? Yes, as Tucker Carlson’s big interview in Moscow finally dropped online tonight, the world learned that Vladimir Putin is, among other things, an almighty history bore. He just cannot be stopped. Following all the controversy and intrigue about what might be said, Putin managed to smother the excitement of the interview under an iron curtain of his own autodidactism. It was impressive, in a mind-numbing way.
From our UK edition
Two years ago, Éric Zemmour was the most talked-about man in France and a serious contender to be the ninth president of the Fifth Republic. A controversial journalist turned incendiary politician, he vied with Marine Le Pen for second place behind Emmanuel Macron in the polls. Crucially, he seemed to have something she lacked – an ability still to appeal to the Catholic bourgeoisie while tapping into widespread anger at mass immigration. But then Russia attacked Ukraine, the mood of Europe changed, and Zemmour’s political fortunes sank as quickly as they had risen. He finished a distant fourth in the first round of the presidential election, with 7 per cent of the vote.
From our UK edition
31 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by pollster and writer Patrick Ruffini. They talk about why the strengthening economy isn’t improving Biden’s numbers, and the other factors that will influence the 2024 election.
From our UK edition
In September, 1934, William Randolph Hearst, the most famous journalist and publisher in the world, visited Berlin and interviewed Adolf Hitler. At the time, Hearst admired Hitler, and was rather taken aback when the Fuhrer asked why he was so ‘misunderstood’ in the English-language press. Hearst replied that Americans love democracy and distrusted dictatorships, to which Hitler answered that he had been democratically elected by a vast majority of Germans. Unlike Hearst, Carlson does not think that his job is to talk to world leaders away from the cameras in order to decide what’s best for democracy Hearst then said that Americans were concerned about the treatment of a certain unnamed minority.
