Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator and the editor of the US edition. He hosts Americano on YouTube.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

The Windsors are warring over their womenfolk

From our UK edition

Wouldn’t it be amusing to see an actual fly-on-the-wall job about Netflix’s new Harry & Meghan documentary? Imagine the scenes behind-the-scenes. The Duchess rehearses her crying face in consultation with her make-up specialist. The Duke glares at himself in a mirror. ‘I had to protect my family,’ he repeats over and over as he fingers his apricot beard. The lighting team try to coax along the impossibly capricious royals only to suffer their own nervous breakdowns after Meghan accuses them of disregarding her mental health. Or maybe that’s not the entertainment people want. Television these days is all about ‘structured reality’ – or rubbish glossed up as revelation. It’s up to you, the viewer, to decide how much you can be bothered to disbelieve.

Freddy Gray

The Twitter Files just got a lot more interesting

From our UK edition

As I wrote earlier, last week Matt Taibbi, the journalist chosen by Elon Musk to reveal what really happened behind-the-app during the 2020 presidential election, published the first instalment of the ‘Twitter Files’. He did it as a long Twitter ‘thread’ which showed various panicky corporate communications about the ethics of suppressing intriguing political information. This was important stuff but it wasn’t exactly explosive. We all knew that Big Tech censored information in order to help Joe Biden. Lots of Democrat-friendly journalists were therefore quick to pour cold water on the news. Nothing to see here, folks, move on.

Saturday

Freddy Gray

How Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story

From our UK edition

For weeks now, Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk has been promising to reveal what really happened behind the scenes at the social media platform in the run up to the 2020 presidential election.  Well, yesterday, Musk did — through the journalist Matt Taibbi. It’s a big story, one that free speech supporters everywhere should take seriously, especially in the United Kingdom where we are on the verge of passing the Online Safety Bill. What happened at Twitter in 2020 shows how easily concern about ‘safety’ can, under political pressure, morph into corruption and censorship.

Friday

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Is Kanye West really out to derail Trump?

From our UK edition

American conservatives like to say that the way to stop Donald Trump in 2024 is to hit him from the right. Compared with his own political movement, they argue, Trump has always been something of a squish when it comes to issues such as Covid vaccines, gay marriage, criminal justice, or border control. He never did build that wall – not properly, anyway. Any candidate wanting to take down the father of Trumpism should therefore keep pointing out that Daddy had four years in the White House and never lived up to the hype. Take note, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Freddy Gray

Is Kanye West really out to derail Trump? 

From our UK edition

American conservatives like to say that the way to stop Donald Trump in 2024 is to hit him from the right. Compared with his own political movement, they argue, Trump has always been something of a squish when it comes to issues such as Covid vaccines, gay marriage, criminal justice, or border control. He never did build that wall – not properly, anyway. Any candidate wanting to take down the father of Trumpism should therefore keep pointing out that Daddy had four years in the White House and never lived up to the hype. Take note, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.

Monday

Freddy Gray

Should Twitter pay Trump to tweet?

From our UK edition

16 min listen

Freddy Gray talks to the comedian and media and culture editor of American Greatness Tim Young, about Twitter, Donald Trump and the Republican race for president in 2024.

Thursday

Freddy Gray

The squeeze: how long will the pain last?

From our UK edition

40 min listen

This week: How long will the pain last? The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews asks this in her cover piece this week, reflecting on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt's autumn statement. She joins the podcast with Professor David Miles, economy expert at the Office for Budget Responsibility, to discuss the new age of austerity (00:58). Also on the podcast: After Donald Trump announced that he will be running for office in 2024, Freddy Gray writes in the magazine about the never ending Trump campaign. He speaks to Joe Walsh, 2020 Republican presidential candidate, about whether Trump could win the nomination (18:42). And finally: In the arts lead in The Spectator Mathew Lyons celebrates the bleak brilliance of the Peanuts comic strip.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Is Donald Trump the Jeb Bush of 2024?

From our UK edition

Donald Trump has been running for president for at least a decade. His campaign did not start on 16 June 2015, when he descended that golden escalator in that eponymous tower in New York. It began on 19 November 2012, days after President Barack Obama had defeated Mitt Romney, when Trump registered a trademark application for the phrase he pinched from Ronald Reagan: ‘Make America Great Again.’ After he won the White House in 2016, Trump did not cease pursuing re-election. After he lost in 2020, ditto. The fundraising – the key part – and therallies have kept going and going. On Tuesday night, at his home at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, he simply made it official.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Will Trump run?

From our UK edition

‘I don’t think anyone knows,’ someone close to Donald Trump told me at the end of last week. ‘My guess is he does but that’s just a guess.’ My question, of course, was ‘Is Donald Trump still going to announce?’ — despite the mid-term disappointments for his movement and the increasing certainty among Republican analysts that the party cannot win with him as its public face? He's expected to announce at 9 pm Eastern Standard Time – 2 am tomorrow, BST – after he declared yesterday on his Truth Social media platform that ‘Hopefully, tomorrow will turn out to be one of the most important days in the history of our country!

Sunday

Freddy Gray

Is Nixon the most misunderstood president in history?

From our UK edition

Has the reputation of any American statesman been more effectively trashed than that of Richard Milhous Nixon? Donald Trump’s, perhaps – certainly the forty-fifth president inspires loathing on a scale matched only by the thirty-seventh. Nixon and Trump have a few other points in common. Both men built coalitions through appeals to forgotten voters. They spoke to Americans who were frightened by rapid and destructive social and economic change. Both were denounced as fascists and standard bearers of the most reactionary forces in American life, yet in fact both governed with substantial moderation. Nixon and Trump prove the truth of Marx’s quip that history repeats itself first as tragedy, then as farce. Nixon is the tragedy; Trump the farce.

Friday

Freddy Gray

Could Georgia decide the midterms?

From our UK edition

30 min listen

This week Freddy is joined by Matt McDonald, US managing editor of The Spectator, who is covering the midterms from Georgia. What will the result of the run-off be there and could this decide who takes control of the Senate?

Thursday

Freddy Gray

Midterm madness

From our UK edition

37 min listen

On the podcast: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator's deputy editor Freddy Gray says the only clear winner from the US midterms is paranoia. He is joined by The Spectator's economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss whether the American political system is broken (00:52). Also this week: Isabel Hardman writes that Ed Miliband is the power behind Kier Starmer's Labour. She is joined by former Labour advisor Lord Stewart Wood of Anfield, to consider whether Starmer is wise to lend his ear to the former Leader of the Opposition (12:48). And finally: King Charles III is known for his love of classical music, and Damian Thompson writes in this week's arts lead that he is the most musical monarch since Queen Victoria.

Wednesday

Freddy Gray

Midterm madness: the only clear winner is paranoia

From our UK edition

Election night, folks – America decides! Except, it doesn’t. On 8 November 2022, as on 3 November 2020, the polls closed, the votes came in and, er, nobody appeared to have won. Everybody now looks nervously again to the state of Georgia, which is probably too close to call and will be decided in a run-off in four weeks’ time.  The people have spoken but once again nobody knows quite what they’ve said. Americans have spent decades arguing that Washington doesn’t work and their political system is broken. Well, they’re right. America is indeed polarised and terribly divided, as this week’s results show. It’s not just the politics, though: it’s the elections, stupid. The most powerful and sophisticated democracy in the world can’t get the basics right.

Freddy Gray

Midterms: No red wave, America is still very divided

From our UK edition

Is it a red wave? A ripple? Or a trickle? Nobody quite knows. However, what looks certain is that the Republican blow out that many right wing pundits were anticipating has not happened. Crucially, the Democrats have won the crunch Senate race in Pennsylvania. John Fetterman, the man who had a stroke just a few months ago, defeated Mehmet Oz, who the late polls suggested would win.  Elsewhere, it turns out the polls were right — the Senate races are incredibly tight. It looks as if a dramatic late surge for Adam Laxalt in Nevada means the Republicans should squeak another Senate victory for there. So … over to Georgia, again, where it looks as if neither the Republican Herschel Walker nor the Democrat Raphael Warnock will win by 0.

Monday

Freddy Gray

How worried are the Democrats about the US midterms?

From our UK edition

‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said the 19th century senator Mark Hanna. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ The maxim remains true in 2022. Public polling is all well and good, and useful in its way. Yet in a country as sprawling and complex and bitterly divided as the United States of America, and with so much information available online at everyone’s fingertips, polls can easily be used to suggest whatever you want.  Political parties inevitably lie about their electoral prospects and hide their rather more sophisticated (and less biased) internal polling. But campaigns can’t altogether conceal their spending patterns.

Friday