15 min listen
Last week Donald Trump was ordered to pay more than seventy million dollars to E. Jean Carroll, the writer who accused him of sexual assault. Freddy speaks to Spectator columnist Lionel Shriver about some of the oddities of this case against the former president.
45 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined in the office by Mike Baker a former CIA operations officer, CEO of the global intelligence and security firm Portman Square Group and host of the popular news podcast the President’s Daily Brief.
‘Always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy,’ said Sun Tzu. The Biden administration takes the opposite approach. America’s Commander-in-Chief spent much of the last week warning America’s antagonists in the Middle East that the US would respond to the killing of three of its troops in Jordan last weekend. And last night the retaliation finally began. US forces used some 125 bombs on seven sites in Syria and Iraq, targets that the Pentagon believes are tied to attacks on Americans. Iran was not hit, importantly, even though the White House has directly blamed the Iranian regime for the many attacks against western assets since the war in Gaza began in October.
Freddy Gray sits down with host and producer of the 538 Politics podcast Galen Druke to discuss whether a Taylor Swift endorsement could sway the general election.
It’s not yet February, and already we have a clear idea of what Joe Biden’s re-election will be all about: Donald Trump, abortion and, er, Taylor Swift. The New York Times reported yesterday that Team Biden-Harris 2024 has made recruiting Taylor Swift as one of its endorsers a top priority. This, inevitably, has triggered a media storm because Taylor Swift is now a culture-war avatar. She’s the new Meghan Markle when it comes to dividing opinion, although Swift is arguably more controversial because she was once a conservative darling and a hate figure among left-liberals. Today she's the opposite.
Donald Trump said yesterday that we’re ‘on the brink of world war three’ after a suicide drone killed three US soldiers and injured a further 34 in Jordan. ‘This attack would never have happened if I was president, not even a chance – just like the Iranian-backed Hamas attack on Israel would never have happened, the war in Ukraine would never have happened, and we would now have peace throughout the world,’ said Trump. ‘Our country cannot survive with Joe Biden as Commander in Chief.’ It’s cynical, of course, to score political points over military deaths. Yesterday’s US combat fatalities were reportedly the first in three years under Joe Biden. Some 45 servicemen were killed in the war in Afghanistan under Donald Trump – a conflict Joe Biden ended in 2021.
35 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Jonathan Askonas, assistant professor of politics at the Catholic University of America about Jon Stewart's return to TV, and what role, albeit inadvertent, he played in Tucker Carlson’s success.
12 min listen
Donald Trump seems to have the Republican primaries wrapped up. He’ll almost certainly be up against Joe Biden on 5 November in the general election. If Trump wins, and in Britain’s own elections in the second half of 2024, Starmer wins, the two will make an odd pair. Will they get on? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Freddy Gray, The Spectator’s deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast.
New Hampshire Joe Biden likes to say that ‘democracy is on the ballot’ in 2024. Yet Joe Biden was not on the ballot on Tuesday in New Hampshire. In his absence, a 55-year-old former congressman called Dean Phillips, who started his campaign just ten weeks ago, won 20 per cent of the vote. Biden still won easily as more than 65 per cent of Democratic voters wrote his name in. But the President’s ducking of New Hampshire, and Phillips’s sudden emergence, says a lot about the sorry state of Democratic politics and the gnawing fear that Biden is going to lose to Donald Trump in November. Dean Phillips’s hair is coiffed, his suits shine and he talks as if he’s the sweetest man in America The re-nomination of a commander-in-chief is usually little more than a formality.
Donald Trump has, like a boa constrictor, squeezed the life out of the Republican primary cycle. Last night, he swallowed New Hampshire and possibly Nikki Haley too. Haley did better than many of the late polls suggested. But that’s not saying much. She won 44 per cent of the vote, finishing 12 points behind Trump. She now has the momentum to move on to South Carolina, where she is thirty points behind in polls. But if she couldn’t win here in New Hampshire, where independents can vote in the Republican primary, it seems unlikely she can win anywhere. Or, as one Trump campaign official at his campaign’s election night watch party in Nashua put it: 'She’s staying in, because she’s a psycho.
40 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined in New Hampshire by Ben Domenech, editor at large of Spectator World. On the podcast they discuss the pro-Trump establishment of the Republican party; how the Republican cohort have changed since the Obama election and what issues Trump can identify that appeal to voters.
New Hampshire votes tomorrow and today Nikki Haley has just two planned events. She has a morning meet-and-greet in the city of Franklin and a ‘get out the vote rally’ in Salem this evening. Nobody could accuse Haley of not working hard. She’s famously an industrious woman. But given the make-or-break nature of tomorrow’s vote, her campaign seems strangely lacking in urgency. Yes, she’s spending a fortune on campaign ads. Yes, she’s engaging in slanging matches with Donald Trump, which is a useful fodder for an increasingly desperate media. She's accused him of being ‘clearly insecure’ and having ‘temper tantrums’ after he mocked her unusual name. But her campaign just isn't catching fire in the way that anti-Trump Republicans hoped it would.
Ron DeSantis's political action committee is called 'Never Back Down.' Well, he just did. A week ago, he said of Trump: 'You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he'll say you're wonderful.' Well, with just two days to go before the first-in-the-nation primary in New Hampshire, he just endorsed Trump for the presidency in 2024. This morning, DeSantis campaign staff batted away speculation that he would imminently quit, saying 'with 100 per cent certainty' that DeSantis would fight on to the South Carolina primary next month and beyond. Hours later, Ron proved them wrong. 'While this campaign has ended, the mission continues,' he said in a video. https://twitter.
Ron DeSantis' political action committee is called 'Never Back Down.' Well, he just did. A week ago, he said of Trump: 'You can be the most worthless Republican in America, but if you kiss the ring he'll say you're wonderful.' Well, he just endorsed Trump for the presidency in 2024. This morning, DeSantis campaign staff batted away speculation that he would imminently quit, saying 'with 100 per cent certainty' that DeSantis would fight on to the South Carolina primary next month and beyond. Hours later, Ron proved them wrong. 'While this campaign has ended, the mission continues,' he said in a video. Bowing to the seemingly inevitable, he endorsed Donald Trump to be the Republican nominee. The DeSantis campaign will be remembered as a colossal failure.
18 min listen
For this special Americano podcast, Freddy Gray is in New Hampshire with the Spectator US team, Matt McDonald and Zach Christenson covering the chilly primaries. Are both Ron De Santis and Nikki Haley's defeat a foregone conclusion?
The theory that Donald Trump will pick Nikki Haley as his vice president refuses to die – in spite of the growing evidence that he won’t. Haley, for one, is adamant that it will not happen. Today, at a meet-and-greet with voters in Mary Ann’s diner in Amherst, New Hampshire, a voter floated the idea. She grimaced and said: ‘I’ve never said that. That’s my opponent saying that… I don’t want to be anyone’s vice president. That’s off the table.’ She could change her mind, of course. Politicians do, and analysts will keep saying that Haley would help Trump appeal to aspirational suburban women and so on. But Trumpworld loathes Haley and Donald Trump Jr has been reassuring fans that he will stop his father from nominating her.
‘We have nothing to fear but fear itself,’ said Franklin D. Roosevelt, famously. The Democrats of 2024 have a rather different message for the world: Be Very Afraid! ‘I’m scared as heck,’ said vice president, Kamala Harris, yesterday, as she discussed the ‘crazies’ who might put Donald Trump back in the Oval Office. Not for the first time, Harris was echoing the sentiments of Michelle Obama, the former First Lady: ‘I am terrified,’ Michelle told a podcast last week. ‘We cannot take this democracy for granted.’ We’re a long way from 2008, when Michelle’s husband won the White House by appealing to the opposite emotion. ‘We choose hope over fear,’ said Barack Obama, back then. Today, his party opts for anxiety over optimism.
32 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Republican strategist Luke Thompson about Trump's landslide Iowa win; how much Trump's legal proceedings will interfere with his campaign and who could be his deputy. The Spectator is hiring! We are looking for a new producer to join our broadcast team working across our suite of podcasts – including this one – as well as our YouTube channel Spectator TV. Follow the link to read the full job listing: https://spectator.
Vivek Ramaswamy, the impressive podcast guest who has spent the last few months pretending to be a serious Republican presidential candidate, has just suspended his campaign after winning eight per cent of the vote in the Iowa caucuses. ‘This entire campaign is about speaking the TRUTH,’ he said. ‘We did not achieve our goal tonight.’ He endorsed Donald Trump even though on Saturday Trump called him ‘sly’ and ‘deceitful’. No matter: it’s not as if any Ramaswamy supporters will be queuing up to vote for Nikki Haley any time soon. DeSantis and Haley have proved that you can spend an awful lot of money failing to beat Donald Trump The real TRUTH is that, as so often in Republican politics since 2016, everything is falling into place for Donald Trump at the right time.
The bitterly cold conditions in Iowa today have at least given journalists something to talk about. There’s a distinct lack of political drama, given everyone expects today’s Republican caucuses to be a blowout win for Donald Trump. The main questions of interest are: will Nikki Haley or Ron DeSantis finish second? And will Trump break Republican records and win more than 50 per cent of the vote? Given that polls suggest Trump voters are far more enthusiastic than the supporters of his rivals, the arctic temperatures may only give him a further advantage.
