336. 8am: TRUMP WINS

Head to The Rest is Politics Youtube channel now for live coverage of the final twists and turns of the US presidential election, between 8pm-midnight GMT on Tue 5th Nov, again from 5am-9am GMT on Wed 6th Nov, and finally at 7-8.30pm GMT on Wed 6th Nov. In the second of these special US election livestreams, Rory and Alastair are joined by Anthony Scaramucci from The Rest Is Politics US, Dominic Sandbrook from The Rest Is History and Marina Hyde from The Rest Is Entertainment to provide a deep dive into what just happened: Donald J Trump is to be President of the United States, for a second time. Join The Rest Is team for a final livestream tonight at 7pm – watch here. Search for ‘The Rest Is Politics’ on YouTube or go to: www.youtube.com/@restispolitics The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy, a green electricity supplier powering homes across the UK. Use referral code POLITICS after sign up for a chance to win a signed copy of Rory and Alastair's books with personalised messages. Learn more at getfuse.com/politics ⚡ Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It’s risk-free with Nord’s 30-day money-back guarantee! ✅ TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, receive our exclusive newsletter, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up, or start a free trial today on Apple Podcasts: apple.co/therestispolitics. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Assistant Producers: India Dunkley, Alice Horrell, Evan Green Video Editor: Teo Ayodeji-Ansell Social Producer: Jess Kidson Producers: Nicole Maslen, Fiona Douglas, Callum Hill Senior Producer: Dom Johnson Head of Content: Tom Whiter Exec Producers: Tony Pastor, Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Crete. And of course, the thing flashed up, saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN. And it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. That's nordvpn.com/rustispolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

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• 2:05Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back to the Rest is Politics US election livestream. I'm Alastair Campbell with Rory Stewart.

• 2:12Rory Stewart?

  And I'm Rory Stewart, yeah.

• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

  Stop it. I'm Chris Scaramucci, Marine Hyde and Dominic Sandbrook, digesting the fact, it is now a fact, not speculation, not prediction, nothing, it is a fact that Donald Trump has been elected President of America for the second time, just the second person in history to come back for a second term in the way that he's done after losing. Rory, where are we?

• 2:37Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so very quick explainer. The evening has actually gone much more quickly, for those of you that are just tuning in, than people expected. Many people thought because of 2020, more mail votes coming in, that this could drag on for days. It didn't. A bit like 2016, we're in a situation in which, basically, the race was over by about half past 2 in the morning, our time, about half an hour ago. And it really finished at the point at which it became clear that Donald Trump had taken Pennsylvania. There was nearly an hour and a half of hanging around as the votes got towards 95, 96, 97% of the votes with him leading. And the reason why, on this graph, it's showing 267, and he needs 270 to win, but we're saying

• 3:19Rory Stewart?

  he's won, is that it's almost inconceivable that they would not take Alaska. In fact, he's likely to take many more of the swing states. He could end up in a position stronger than he was against Hillary Clinton in 2016. I'm presenting this all in a slightly cheery voice. I am profoundly shattered by the whole situation. And what we've been talking about over the last few hours is that this will have incredible impacts on Russia-Ukraine, where we're likely to see support taken away from Zelensky and Putin increase his position in Europe. We're likely to see huge consequences for American democracy, for the Supreme Court. Trump is a man who is threatening mass deportations, revenge against his enemies.

• 4:02Rory Stewart?

  It's been a profoundly unpleasant campaign. And the Democrats, who I felt had learnt a lot of lessons from 2016, had turned a lot of things around, sadly, on the night, did not do enough to win.

• 4:15Alastair Campbell?

  How are you going to handle this?

• 4:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm gonna be a good sport. I congratulated him and Elon Musk on Twitter. I'm an American. I want the guy to succeed. If he's going in a direction that I think doesn't make sense for the country, I think I owe myself and my family to speak about it. But what I don't want to do is, I don't want to be this bitter guy. He won, we lost, and then, you know, we throw eggs and tomatoes at the television. You know, he's got the mantle of the presidency again. Let's hope he succeeds. Let's hope people reach him and say, hey, these systems are in place for a reason. You know, he told John Kelly, you know, why do we have, you know,

• 5:02Anthony Scaramucci?

  the 20,000 troops at the DMZ? And when Kelly explained it to him, he backed off a little bit. You know, we gotta get people in place around him to get him to back off some of the really tough, nonsensical things. These systems that have been put in place over the last 80 years in America have helped make the world safer, more prosperous, and freer. And the stuff that he's talking about could potentially damage that system. Who's happy tonight? Vladimir Putin. That should tell you everything you need to know. Viktor Orban is happy. You think Kira Storm is happy tonight? He's like thrilled that this happened?

• 5:41Alastair Campbell?

  I think he's probably thinking, hmm, it's quite tough being Prime Minister. But anyway, Marina, how are you gonna handle it?

• 5:48Marina Hyde?

  Well, I mean, there'll be plenty to write about. You know, this is, I mean, as I, we've talked about all sorts of things tonight. I do think, I do find the whole issue for women very, very difficult. And I find the idea, it's, to me, it's ridiculous that he's pushing ahead with this whole, and the whole abortion thing particularly, I just, I kept thinking legally, how would I get around saying this? And I guess I would say that if he were a guest on this podcast now, I would say to him, how many, sorry, but how many abortions have you personally paid for? And you know what? I'm sure he would reply, none. I have paid for no women to have abortions. And we would all have to make our judgments about that. But the fact that he, half of the things he has done, he doesn't believe in, and you know he doesn't believe in,

• 6:33Marina Hyde?

  and it's very difficult, if you're on the other side of those things, to sit there and watch him. You know, continue to sort of disappoint himself in a way that you fundamentally know he doesn't believe. I'm hoping he'll just play a lot of golf, but then the people who might be around him, the Project 2025ers, might be even worse.

• 6:49Alastair Campbell?

  He said in his speech in Mar-a-Lago, Dominic, this will be remembered as the day the American people regained control of their country.

• 6:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, yeah, we've got our country back. It's what populists often say when they win, of course. I think the interesting question, obviously, is not just what he does, what happens to the world, but his opponents have to do some really serious thinking. I was thinking about this one in the break. The Democrats have spent a lot of time talking about MAGA voters, but maybe next time they should think about talking more explicitly to them and actually saying to them.

• 7:23Rory Stewart?

  This is what Peter Hahn has been saying.

• 7:24Dominic Sandbrook?

  Your resentments, your anxieties, you shouldn't be ashamed of them. We will make you feel more secure, happier, more prosperous. We have the answers. We can deliver for you the world that you want in a way that Trump cannot.

• 7:40Rory Stewart?

  The problem is, of course, and this is the reason why populism is taking off in Europe, is that it's really difficult to deliver.

• 7:47Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 7:48Rory Stewart?

  Demography is against us, economic facts are against us, productivity has been stagnant, median wages have been stagnant, and really since about 2006, GDP per capita has not been going up in most of these countries. And so the problem is that you are talking to people whose economic conditions suck. Many of the people voting for Trump, if you were somebody who was born in the 1950s, you will remember earning $15 an hour working in Michigan in an automobile factory in the late 1970s. Your daughter is now earning $15 an hour working at Walmart's. So Walmart, so this is a really tough world, and I think the problem for the Democrats is, yes, they can do inflation reduction acts, they can try to move some industry back.

• 8:34Rory Stewart?

  But the idea that they can recreate what Trump is pretending, which is back to the world of the 50s and 60s where GDP per capita is growing by 3.2% a year, the glory days of the great booming American economy, it's not doable.

• 8:47Dominic Sandbrook?

  I agree with that Rory, and I agree that a lot of those jobs are never coming back. But I think it's not just economics. I think often what some of these people, the so-called left behind voters want, is they want to feel respected. I think that's Clinton, for example, made them feel that there was somebody who understood them, who spoke like them, who shared some of their values. Trump clearly sends people a message that he understands them, that he's one of them, that he knows what's going on in their heads. And maybe the argument is that somebody like Eric Clinton or Kamala Harris doesn't give them that sense.

• 9:25Alastair Campbell?

  How do you handle that? This is what we're talking to Peter Hyman about, that he's doing this project on how progressives can tackle populism. I get that, and Bill Clinton was brilliant at it, that's why I think he's such a formidable politician. He could speak to those people. But he didn't go out to people who were racist and say, "I applaud your racism." I mean, that's what I feel is the really hard bit of this. And by the way, just like with you, the Nazi thing, I'm not saying all the people who voted for Trump are racist. But I think that a lot of those who are racist are more likely to have voted for Trump than not. So I guess the question I think the Democrats really have to work through is, how do they do what you're saying without having to go, what

• 10:09Alastair Campbell?

  Rory was saying earlier, play the same game?

• 10:11Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yes, it's a tough one, isn't it? I mean, you basically try to, there's clearly an element of the MAGA coalition that they will never reach and they maybe wouldn't want to reach. But they must believe, if they want to be a truly national party and a winning party, they must believe that there's a segment of that Trump coalition that they can take in the future, that they can convert.

• 10:31Marina Hyde?

  They certainly must believe that the one in three ethnic minority voters who voted for Trump, they can surely feel, you know, they must be able to see the irony in the fact that the more sort of lefty or woke or whatever you want to call it that they've got, the more of those people they've lost.

• 10:47Alastair Campbell?

  Or women who vote for Trump.

• 10:48Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 10:49Alastair Campbell?

  Can I just tell you that we were talking earlier about who'd be the first leader that he might vote, we still don't know that. But the first leader who's officially recognised the win and congratulated Donald Trump is? Benjamin Netanyahu calls it histories. Here's one for you, Dominic. History's greatest comeback. Your historic return to the White House offers a new beginning for America and a powerful recommitment to the great alliance between Israel and America. This is a huge victory.

• 11:16Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, so that I mean.

• 11:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  I ask you a question, Rory.

• 11:21Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 11:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  So when the Brexit happened, there was a very large group of people in the UK that said, yeah, this is great. We had the Brexit. How long did, or maybe it didn't happen, but I think it sort of has at this point. How long did it take for people to realize, whoa, this is probably not in our economic interest? Or did that never happen?

• 11:40Rory Stewart?

  The polls suggest at the moment that the majority of people in Britain now think that Brexit isn't working for them. But that isn't the same as people wanting to rerun the election. And many of the things that Dominic said will still be true of those voters. They will still feel patronized, excluded, that Britain isn't working for them, they aren't listened to, and that this isn't a country they have mistaken. I just wanted, though, to follow up on this interesting point Alice has raised. The extent to which Gaza has become very important to these elections. Now, Trump's victory has been very, very considerable, but he's been helped by the fact that there's been some interesting articles in New York Times about 440,000 Jewish voters

• 12:23Rory Stewart?

  in Pennsylvania who felt Trump was much, much stronger on Israel. And paradoxically, Kamala Harris was hit and dead by Michigan from the other side, where Jill Stein seems to have taken about 22% of, and Michigan, one of the key swing states, because Arab Americans were very uncomfortable with Kamala Harris's position on Gaza. So I think this is something that we will see playing cross. One more final thing. This is a body blow to the way the world will view America. Do not underestimate this. I mean, people like me, who were betting hard on Kamala Harris, are betting on our sense of hope for America. Essentially, I'm saying, I believe in this country. They are not going to repeat the mistake they made in 2016.

• 13:06Rory Stewart?

  This man is a clear monster, and in the end, the good sense of the American people will prevail. The decision of America to vote again for Donald Trump.

• 13:17Rory Stewart?

  Just feeds into the narrative of so many people around the world that this country is in trouble.

• 13:23Alastair Campbell?

  The, um, just a couple of.

• 13:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  I agree on that. You've got eight years of data after that first election and we're here now. So tells you something about the country.

• 13:36Alastair Campbell?

  This is, this is, Marina, I don't want to say even more, but Trump also said that Robert F. Kennedy is going to help make America healthy again. So I don't know what that means.

• 13:47Marina Hyde?

  Is the, well, it doesn't mean that the fluoride is coming out of the water because that was one of the supposedly, that was one of the late unveiled policies this last week.

• 13:56Alastair Campbell?

  You've always thought that these kind of third candidates have been part of the kind of MAGA Steve Bannon plot, particularly RFK.

• 14:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  I didn't think, I know.

• 14:07Alastair Campbell?

  Right.

• 14:07Anthony Scaramucci?

  That was part of it. I saw.

• 14:08Alastair Campbell?

  So he had a, you know, not insignificant support. He then came out for Trump. I mean, there's no single thing that won the election for Trump, but that must have helped.

• 14:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  No question. No, no question. And the, and the Republicans do it better than the Democrats. Like the Democrats would never put up an all right candidate to steal votes away from Trump. Right? Look at what Nader did to Al Gore, as we've talked about. Jill Stein did a number on Hillary Clinton. Jill Stein, it looks like she did a number on Vice President Harris. They're running the same playbook. You know, the other, the other thing, you guys probably remember Cambridge Analytica.

• 14:51Alastair Campbell?

  Certainly do.

• 14:51Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay. And so Cambridge Analytica, someone's going to study what Musk did because, because they didn't have Cambridge Analytica in 2020. They lost the election to Biden. But they did have Elon Musk and they did have access to the $44 billion musical instrument known as X, where they were playing notes out into the marketplace. And, uh, and it worked for them.

• 15:17Alastair Campbell?

  I don't know if there's a pun in here, but Emmanuel Macron, the person that Rory always calls your friend Emmanuel Macron, he said, "Congratulations, President Donald Trump, ready to work together, as we did for four years, with your convictions and mine, with respect and ambition for more peace and prosperity." I think use of the word convictions was probably...

• 15:37Dominic Sandbrook?

  Does that pun work in French?

• 15:39Alastair Campbell?

  Conviction, yeah.

• 15:40Dominic Sandbrook?

  Really?

• 15:41Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's not... Listen, I think Macron speaks very, very good English.

• 15:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right. So he could be doing the pun.

• 15:47Alastair Campbell?

  He could have known what conviction meant.

• 15:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  I noticed Adam Bianco has put, "Well, he's certainly got some convictions."

• 15:53Alastair Campbell?

  Listen, we haven't talked at all tonight, really, which is extraordinary to think about, about the climate. What do we think this means for the climate crisis?

• 16:05Marina Hyde?

  I was talking to a... Actually, it was the other weekend, I was with a marine biologist, and we were talking about the election. She's American, she works for the US government. She was like, "I can't." We were banned from using the term... She's a marine biologist at a very senior government level. They were banned from using the term "climate change" in the department. And she said, "I can't go back to that. I can't, I just can't get that level of reality denial I can't deal with." But it seems that she will be going back to it.

• 16:32Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, it's... International cooperation on climate change is going to be very, very difficult. I mean, frankly, impossible in the next four years.

• 16:42Alastair Campbell?

  God, how world... How different the world would have been if we hadn't had the hanging Chad's drama and Al Gore had...

• 16:48Dominic Sandbrook?

  Well, how different the world would have been if in 2016 Joe Biden had run against Donald Trump? Because I think Joe Biden would have won in 2016.

• 16:57Alastair Campbell?

  You do.

• 16:58Dominic Sandbrook?

  I think so. It was very close. I mean, it was close as it was in terms of their... You know, it was a few votes that swung it. So if Biden had won in 2016, you know, Trumpism, the roots of Trumpism would still be there, the resentment, the anxiety, all of those things. But the character, the main character, would have been beaten.

• 17:18Rory Stewart?

  So, climate is absolutely central. US is 13.5% of all global emissions. But more than that, the US is absolutely central to all these sorts of international cooperation. Climate is probably the most important example, but it's also true on international security. It's true on the Middle East peace process, it's true on Sudan, it's true on Russia-Ukraine, it's true on China-Taiwan. And Trump is fundamentally an isolationist. He doesn't give a monkey's about what's happening around the rest of the world. Hence, "Make America Great Again." And for climate, this can quite easily put the entire move back four years or more.

• 18:00Rory Stewart?

  We can expect him to be drilling more, extracting more coal, investing less in renewable energies and green technology, putting less subsidies behind all this stuff. And once the US starts doing that, what incentive has China, which has got 30% of global emissions, and India, which has got 7% of global emissions, really to go along with this stuff? We have to hope they will, but why?

• 18:20Alastair Campbell?

  Roy, get ready to do your final NordVPN of this session, but I just want to read out what Keir Starmer said. "Congratulations, President-elect Trump, on your historic election victory. I look forward to working with you in the years ahead. As the closest of allies, we stand shoulder to shoulder in defense of our shared values of freedom, democracy, and enterprise. From growth and security to innovation and tech, I know that the UK-US special relationship will continue to prosper on both sides of the Atlantic for years to come." So what do you think of that, Marina, as a piece of writing, a piece of drafting, a piece of diplomacy?

• 18:54Marina Hyde?

  Well, I mean, it's quite bland, isn't it? It's less, obviously, funny than Macron. It's longer, so it's trying to say less. I mean, they've all got to do this now. They've all got to do this, they've all got to pretend, and they've all got to be asked about their previous comments and say, "Yeah, you know, I was, you know, being..." I don't know what they say. What do you, I mean, what do you say if you said someone was a Nazi?

• 19:18Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think is David Lammy? I mean, I actually think David Lammy is doing a pretty good job as foreign secretary, and I think he's been a big part of trying to get close to Trump. But do you think that becomes a problem that?

• 19:26Rory Stewart?

  But Anthony's view is that provided you bend the knee, you can say whatever you want, provided you then humiliate yourself in front of him, he'll forgive you.

• 19:33Anthony Scaramucci?

  That's all you gotta do.

• 19:35Alastair Campbell?

  If J D Vance can get away with it.

• 19:36Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're America's Hitler. I love you now. No problem.

• 19:41Alastair Campbell?

  But now you're in the woodchipper.

• 19:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're in the wood. He's gonna go on. They all go into the woodchipper eventually. But the thing about Musk is it's so interesting to me because he's so brilliant and so successful in so many different ways. But he got snubbed by Biden and he got snubbed by the administration. And by the way, he voted for Biden. Okay, he told everybody.

• 20:04Alastair Campbell?

  And got people to deny it.

• 20:05Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm a lifelong Democrat. I voted for Biden. I would love to get, excuse me, President Biden. Why did you snub Musk? You didn't invite him to the Electric Car Summit. You didn't invite him to the Rocketry Summit. What was the deal with snubbing him? Also, she could have made a move to talk to him. She elected not to do that. So, so what are you, what are you actually doing? You know, you know, you talked to Liz Cheney. How could you not pick up the phone and call Elon Musk?

• 20:36Alastair Campbell?

  Rory, your final NordVPN before we go to break.

• 20:39Rory Stewart?

  Absolutely. Well, a huge thank you to NordVPN, who have made this amazing livestream, which I hope you've all been watching for many, many hours, possible. NordVPN is something that you can put, it's an app you can put on your phone or your laptop, and it protects you from malware, from unsafe websites, from viruses, from attacks, from people surveilling your data on the internet. It's a great thing to travel with if you're opening up your laptop in an airport. It's something that you can sign up to and get the best discounts available on nordvpn.com/RestIsPolitics. I'm going to use that, Alistair, as my, as my sneaky attempt to just, just get into this debate for a second.

• 21:20Alastair Campbell?

  Just before you do that, can I just do a last shout out, please, for, for questions? We'll take a few more questions before the end of the, of this second of our livestream. We've got another one later on. And remember, you just go into the chat on YouTube or hashtag trip live. Carry on.

• 21:34Rory Stewart?

  So given we're on technology, given we're on Elon Musk, AI policy. Elon Musk is profoundly skeptical about the direction that artificial intelligence is going in. He's very, very angry. He funded ChatGPT, and then it set off in a direction. He's the main signatory and initiator of a letter calling for much more restrictions on the development of artificial intelligence. And so him being close to Trump and getting in will be seen by Microsoft, by Google, by Facebook and others who are pushing ahead with AI as a real threat to the business models they're trying to develop.

• 22:08Alastair Campbell?

  I know, Simon, we're going to be brave, go to brave. I know you've got very strong views on this.

• 22:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, I think it's the beginning of an oligarchy. I think they've decided that Trump is their guy. He's a transactionalist and we can get things from him and we're heading for a trillion dollars each. One of the ways to do that is to siphon it off of a government. You're not getting to a trillion dollars on private enterprise. But if you can join yourself with the government, you might be able to do that. And they've looked at other oligarchies around the world and they like it. And these guys are from South Africa, so they're used to it. They don't, it's not like they were raised in America. They're used to it, you know. One thing about Reagan, and it's in Max Boot's book, he had a Washingtonian sense for departure.

• 22:56Anthony Scaramucci?

  He was there to serve. He did his eight years. He wanted to cut brush in Santa Barbara and he left. Okay, and what did Washington say? He cited General Cincinnatus. So I'm going home. I don't need this. I'm not going to make my kids some aristocrats. That's not what America is supposed to be. Trump wants that. He's been very, very clear about that.

• 23:19Alastair Campbell?

  We're going to go to a quick break. And when we come back, I think we should talk about race. I think we should talk about the role of race in this debate, where we are on race in American society. So don't go away. We may be wilting a little bit, but a lot of you in the UK presumably just had a very nice sleep and you're getting up to face this extraordinary news that Donald Trump is going back to the White House. See you soon.

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• 25:29Alastair Campbell?

  Welcome back, Rory's eating, not allowed. And he doesn't like it, he hates the crunchiness. I don't like it, I can't stand the crunchy food. But more serious things have happened, Donald Trump has just become president of the country, it's a catastrophe, compared to my crunching. Rory, I'm trying so hard to contain what I'm actually thinking and feeling inside and project a sense of, you know, balance and etcetera. That could be the straw that breaks the straw. That could be the thing that tips me over. Now, listen, we've got half an hour to go in this, the second of these three live streams that we're doing. Just a couple of points on the scale of this. Trump's performance in Iowa, where there was this poll at the weekend that got the Democrats very excited, looks set to be the strongest for any candidate in the state since 1972. In Ohio, it's the best of any candidate since 1988.

• 26:14Alastair Campbell?

  That poll that I mentioned was out by 17 points. And that's Seltzer, the great hero that cheered us all up.

• 26:19Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, she's gonna get scattered over the city of the mine like she feared.

• 26:22Alastair Campbell?

  And Trump's performance in Florida is the best for any candidate since 1988. So, this is, there's no getting away from it, this is an incredible political comeback success story, call it what you will, and even though we can all say, as we do the whole time, the guy's a liar, the guy's a racist, the guy's a misogynist, etcetera, it is an incredible thing that he's pulled off here. So I think, I just like, this is something Anthony and I were talking about just during the quick break, I think all of us, with the exception of Dominic, need to sort of reflect a little bit, well, what did we get wrong about the whole, what did we get wrong? I think Peter Hyman gave us some interesting insights into this, and it goes to what Dominic was saying about maybe being a bit patronizing, because we don't think a certain way, we can't understand why other people, but what did you think we got wrong?

• 27:07Rory Stewart?

  Well, I mean, I got it totally wrong. I thought Kamala Harris would win, and I believed she would win comfortably, and I thought it would be over quite quickly. Despite the polls showing 50/50, why? Well, I can repeat my arguments, they were technical arguments about young African-American voters and how they would turn out, her ground game, the money, the performance of Biden's administration, it's all turned out to be wrong, completely wrong. I don't think, though, that I was fundamentally wrong because I'm patronizing towards people. I never felt that. I never felt that as a politician in Britain. I didn't feel I was patronizing towards my Brexit-voting constituents. I think I was wrong because I'm an optimist. And I hate the idea of being right pessimistically.

• 27:52Rory Stewart?

  I think you can be a false prophet and right. You can align yourself with the worst instincts of humanity. You can assume that everything's going to hell and hand to acid. Or you can hope. And my bet on Kamala Harris was a bet on the American people. It was a bet on liberal democracy. It was a bet against populism. It was a bet on hope.

• 28:11Alastair Campbell?

  So are we wrong to think that that can work? That's the really difficult thing that this sort of confronts us with.

• 28:21Rory Stewart?

  It's so difficult because, of course, I felt in a very minor way in Britain, seeing Boris Johnson take over. This just proves everything that I feared, that the bad people win, populism triumphs. And I've spent a long time trying to pull myself together and see moments of light and inspiration. You've just written a book, Inspiring Young People to Get Involved in Politics. We have to believe that the Middle East peace process can still be solved. The two-state solution is possible, that peace can come back to the world and that the world can get back onto a better trajectory. But tonight is a very, very devastating body blow. This is 25% of the global economy. This is the world's largest, oldest, most mature democracy that has just voted for a multiple convicted felon.

• 29:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, to answer your own question, what do you think you got wrong?

• 29:11Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I got...

• 29:11Alastair Campbell?

  You told me, when we interviewed you in that podcast, you said, "I guarantee Donald Trump will let me be president again."

• 29:17Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah.

• 29:17Alastair Campbell?

  Right. You're wrong.

• 29:18Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I got wrong as competition for sure. I thought Biden was up to the job. He wasn't, and they didn't give her enough time. So I got that wrong for sure. The second thing that I got wrong is that I didn't understand Trump's hold on these people because I thought there was a breaking point. You know, my dad had a great expression. He was a construction worker. "Here's a rock. You hit it one time, it doesn't break. 500 times, it doesn't break. You hit it the 1,000th time, it splinters into a million pieces. You don't know which one of those things broke the rock." And I thought, okay, Trump, there's just too much that he's doing that's wrong. And it's too much that he's doing that's un-American. The rock is going to shatter.

• 30:02Anthony Scaramucci?

  I actually thought the Puerto Rican moment was a potential sign of the rock shattering. So I got that wrong. But the last thing that I'm worried about, and this is something hopefully Dominic will address, do we have to break the world in order to fix it again? Because we broke the world in fourteen to seventeen, or fourteen to nineteen. We had a terrible treaty. We went back to war twenty years later. We broke the world again. We came out of forty-five with the right treaties and the right architecture. And I'm just wondering now, are we going to be in a situation where the world has to break again in order to conjoin people and get it fixed?

• 30:41Alastair Campbell?

  That's a pretty terrifying thought, because the world might break in because we don't address the crisis, or because we don't address the refugee crisis, etc. Marina, what do you think we got wrong?

• 30:50Marina Hyde?

  I think I said something about me, because I have honestly spent like eighteen months, two years, saying to my husband pretty much every single day, he's gonna win. This is all just a huge cope, this idea that she's like selling joy. I mean, show me an election that's ever been won like that. I would say these things every day.

• 31:06Alastair Campbell?

  Nineteen ninety-seven Labour.

• 31:08Marina Hyde?

  Okay.

• 31:09Alastair Campbell?

  Things could only get better.

• 31:10Marina Hyde?

  Okay. And I said this, and honestly, the last three days, maybe partisan media, and there's something about that, I'm making a slight joke about the fact that I watch CNN, and it just seems to be like a proxy for the Harris campaign. And there is something about America's news market being so completely, so I am making a slight serious point, and I fell for it, you know? I fell for thinking, oh, yeah, maybe I'm not, you know, and I didn't look aside, and I thought his campaign is chaotic in the final days, and hers is sort of on message, and she hasn't made any mistakes. And I actually failed to trust my instinct of sort of, and I don't know why, I failed to trust my instinct of eighteen months, two years.

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Do you know what, Dominic, you were saying earlier, and I was saying to the team and to Marina earlier about, when I went on Morning Joe on MSNBC the other day, and I came away, it actually was a moment where I came away thinking... We're just in, we're just in a ridiculous world because it was, you know, they're obviously very good journalists and all that stuff, but one, there was no real news being told. It was just endless ventilations of the same opinions about how awful Trump was, about how awful Vance was. And of course, then you go to the other side, you can turn on Fox News and they're doing the, the opposite. And I, I do think that the, this is what I was asking you later about, what the late, earlier, what the legacy media, how they handle this, because I, I, I think that the,

• 32:36Alastair Campbell?

  I don't see how we get to sort of sensible, rational, democratic debate if the media just become extensions of the players that the public are meant to be looking at to make a choice.

• 32:49Marina Hyde?

  It's all, it's all partisan. They're, everyone wants a relatively small player. Nobody's got more than 25% and they're, and they're all very polarized. Whereas in the, in, in, in the UK, the BBC, 60% of people consume some form of BBC news in a week. You know, you would, people say, oh, if the BBC hadn't been invented, you would never invent it now. Oh my God, now's the best time to invent something like that. Where you can slightly return to some form of shared objective reality. And I know people will have criticisms of the BBC and all sorts of things like that. But this is, have a look at this news market and see the difference.

• 33:22Alastair Campbell?

  And also, can I say, I know Anthony spends a lot of time with Katie Kay with the Rest is Polities US, but this is also the time where the BBC should be investing in developing a bigger market here because it's wide open for the sort of journalism they do. Instead of which they're getting rid of hard talk and cutting the budgets, et cetera. Dominic, what do you, what do you, you as the person who got it right, what do you think we got wrong, Dominic?

• 33:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  So I, it goes to something that I often think about politics, which is that people who are very, I mean, you do a politics podcast, as does Anthony. I think the one thing that people who are very interested in politics get wrong about politics more than anything else is that most ordinary people are not interested in politics, do not follow it, do not care, do not understand, or do not care to understand. I'm not saying they're incapable of understanding, but they don't choose to follow and to immerse themselves in the minutiae. So all the things that we kind of off air before we recorded this were saying, this will do for Trump, this will kill him, you know, all these, a lot of people don't know about those things or don't care.

• 34:34Dominic Sandbrook?

  And as far as I can tell from the exit polls, the single biggest issue for people was the issue that is almost always the single biggest issue in every election, not just in America, but everywhere in the Western world, which is the economy. Are you better off? And I think the inflation a couple of years ago clearly really hurt the Democrats because Harris was tarnished by that. So all the things that we think should have destroyed Trump, Puerto Rico, garbage, blah, blah, blah, blah. A lot of people probably weren't even aware of those things. I think at any given moment, most people-

• 35:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, all these news channels were talking about it for 24 hours.

• 35:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Right, because most people aren't watching those news channels. They have traditional audiences. They have lives. They're out doing-

• 35:14Alastair Campbell?

  They turn people off.

• 35:15Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, I think that's the one thing. I always think this about all political history. It's the one thing that people get most wrong because people who write the history care about politics.

• 35:25Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Cassius, one of Tony Blair's absolute pieces of genius as a politician is he understood that all the time and always used to say to us, you lot need to understand, people out there aren't thinking about us the whole time. When they do think about us, they've got to be thinking about us on our terms, not our opponents. Can we just, I said before the break, talk about race. Anthony, what do you think this says about race in the US? If he goes through with some of the stuff that he's talked about, how difficult does that become? And where are we on race relations in the US?

• 36:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, some of the things that they want to do is they want to make the democracy less of a democracy, right? If you read the Constitution in Russia, it's very flowery language. The North Korean Constitution says similar things related to rights that the British have or the Americans have, but they just changed the rules. They've made it so that one person has more power than the other people. He wants that, and they'll be spending time figuring out a way to do that. And with that, there's a big question of race because the country is changing. You know, when we get to 2044, there'll be less white people in the country than other people.

• 36:42Alastair Campbell?

  Sorry, I have to do this because I owe it to Rory. Fewer.

• 36:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Fewer.

• 36:46Alastair Campbell?

  But carry on.

• 36:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, there'll be fewer white people. You should hit him. No, don't hit me, don't hit me. I wouldn't look up to you. I can barely speak English. The guy, the guy brings me on the thing for eight hours. I say one tiny syllable off key and he's like a verbal proofreader, the guy. Right? Okay, but, but on, on, on the point that I'm making, these people will be like, yeah, we're gonna have a democracy, but we're gonna make sure the white people run the thing. And I know you guys think I'm crazy, but when it starts to happen, you remember all the writings that Churchill did in the 30s? And people was, ah, he's crazy, he's crazy, he's crazy. And everything started to happen. And then people looked around and said, oh, okay, he, he may be on to something in terms

• 37:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  of what the, because if you study history, guys like Trump, the stuff ends badly. Starts out like this and the market's rallying. You know, we're not, we don't talk about the markets on this show, it's not the rest is money, but the Dow is up a thousand, Bitcoin's at an all time high, small cap stocks are through the moon, whatever Elon Musk's private equity valuation of SpaceX, yesterday it's gotta be up 20% today.

• 37:57Rory Stewart?

  So, we should take Trump more at his word. He's just said in his speech, his acceptance speech in inverted commas, that he's gonna change things and he's gonna change things fast. And he's on the record saying what he wants to do. Right? He wants to do mass deportation of immigrants. He wants to fix Russia, Ukraine in one day, which basically means giving Kiev to a Putin puppet. He does not want to do anything to support women's reproductive rights. If anything, he's trying to empower people who are trying to make it more difficult for women to have any control of their bodies. And that's just the beginning of where he's going, right? So, I, I think all of this stuff, Project 2025, the reforms of civil service, the stuff

• 38:42Rory Stewart?

  he wants to do with the Supreme Court, but basically his total contempt for the rule of law, for due process, for American democracy, for international alliances, for the liberal global order, all this stuff, we should now expect. And I don't think we should get into this complacent world. Which you can often get into of saying, oh, well, maybe he's just going to be laid back. Put good people around him, it'll all be fine. I think he's had four years to think about it. He's impatient, he wants to make his mark on history.

• 39:08Alastair Campbell?

  Look at that, Trump, God spared my life for a reason. Let's take a few of your questions, and by the way, thank you to all of the people who stayed up with us through the night. Thank you for all the amazing questions. I'm sorry we've not been able to do them all, but let's take a few more.

• 39:19Anthony Scaramucci?

  You're welcome, Alastair, thank you for thanking me.

• 39:21Alastair Campbell?

  I'll thank you later by, I don't know, taking you for a nice meal or whatever.

• 39:26Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, just work on the extradition treaty.

• 39:28Alastair Campbell?

  Don't worry, you're going to be safe, you're going to be fine. Is that Juden, Juwan, Juden? Question for Dominic, are these extraordinary times or is this just another turbulent time in history full of them?

• 39:39Dominic Sandbrook?

  Uh, they're not extraordinary times.

• 39:41Alastair Campbell?

  Ah.

• 39:42Dominic Sandbrook?

  Uh, history is always turbulent.

• 39:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:45Dominic Sandbrook?

  I mean, which point, period, there are very rare moments, the 1990s?

• 39:48Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 39:49Dominic Sandbrook?

  I guess.

• 39:50Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:50Dominic Sandbrook?

  But I mean, we only think that because the 1990s were kind to us. You don't think that if you're Rwandan or you're Bosnian.

• 39:55Rory Stewart?

  Or Russian.

• 39:56Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah, you think the 1990s were a total catastrophe.

• 39:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 39:59Dominic Sandbrook?

  The 50s, obviously, but again, you think that if you're British and American, but not if you live elsewhere. So, history is full of...

• 40:05Alastair Campbell?

  Well said.

• 40:06Dominic Sandbrook?

  History, history is the story of chaos.

• 40:08Alastair Campbell?

  Next question.

• 40:12Alastair Campbell?

  William Chong, can Biden do anything now as a kind of lame duck to do something to help Europe? Royce is shaking his head violently.

• 40:20Rory Stewart?

  I think he's the lamest of lame ducks now, it's a catastro... It's, it's bad being a president after election. It's unbelievably bad if you're Biden with Trump coming in.

• 40:27Alastair Campbell?

  Especially if your vice president is the candidate.

• 40:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  Does Biden help Trump on the transition? Does Biden show up at the inauguration?

• 40:33Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:35Rory Stewart?

  And does Trump pay any attention to the advice he gives him on the transition day?

• 40:38Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:38Rory Stewart?

  Actually ignores it, I mean, he ignored everything that Obama did and prepared, didn't he?

• 40:41Alastair Campbell?

  Marina, somewhere in Washington, presumably in the White House, Joe Biden and Jill Biden are watching the TV and...

• 40:49Marina Hyde?

  Very angry.

• 40:51Alastair Campbell?

  What do you think will be?

• 40:53Marina Hyde?

  The talk is that they're very angry and they've been angry all the way through. And they think that, you know, this wouldn't have happened with him. And as we said earlier, I don't believe that. But yeah, as you say, he is a double lame duck. He's already like, not really the president because he's withdrawn. And now Trump is coming and his vice president hasn't won. So I think it's quite hard to think what he could do that would be irreversible now in this period of time. I honestly can't conceive of something. Perhaps it's just too late or early in the morning.

• 41:26Rory Stewart?

  He's not a lame duck. He's a duck with no legs.

• 41:28Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 41:29Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, okay. He has very harsh images. I feel so sorry for him, but I mean, I do think he had to go. Let's take another question.

• 41:38Alastair Campbell?

  Ha, Alice Baker, what does Kamala do now? Well, she has to stay as vice president.

• 41:45Anthony Scaramucci?

  Has to certify the election.

• 41:46Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, she has to be the one sitting there saying Donald Trump is duly elected. That's going to be a hard moment. My God.

• 41:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  But does she have a political future?

• 42:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  Could she run for governor of California, let's say?

• 42:03Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But the question is whether you'd want to. I mean, I think there's something very interesting about the psychology of defeat. Donald Trump could easily have said, the election was stolen. But, you know, hey, well, let somebody else do it. I'll go and play golf. I'll go and make money, whatever. He came back.

• 42:20Alastair Campbell?

  She could. It depends whether some people just take defeat and go away. Other people take defeat and think, right, I'm coming back.

• 42:25Marina Hyde?

  I don't sense there's enormous love out there for her. I mean, you know, like as in political love and everyone's like, this is crushing. This is terrible.

• 42:31Alastair Campbell?

  I think a lot of people feel crushed tonight.

• 42:33Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, no, I think that people feel crushed tonight. But I don't think that they feel that there's a huge amount of love for her.

• 42:39Anthony Scaramucci?

  I feel crushed, Marina, but how do I look?

• 42:41Marina Hyde?

  You look sensational.

• 42:43Anthony Scaramucci?

  Am I like Steve McQueen in Papillon?

• 42:44Marina Hyde?

  Yes, exactly. That's the first thing I was thinking. But no, but I don't get the sense that they would, you know, think this is so awful. What happened to her? We want to return her somewhere and give her a governorship. No.

• 42:56Rory Stewart?

  But they don't, but they almost don't need to. I mean, remember Biden lost repeatedly and ultimately became president. People wrote him off again and again. I mean, he was like an embarrassment in the 1980s when he was China.

• 43:05Marina Hyde?

  I think it's different times now.

• 43:08Dominic Sandbrook?

  Yeah.

• 43:08Alastair Campbell?

  And be your point earlier, Marina, I've thought this, I think she has been subject to some pretty extraordinary double standards. You know, the debate, she absolutely trounced him. But if you think of some of the things that Trump has said and done in recent days and weeks, I mean, just take one, do you know when I talk about Trump, I start to do that, this is how it gets in your brain, something like that. The thing with the microphone. Yeah. I mean, did you see the microphone thing when you were in Australia? Well, I don't know how to put this politely, but the microphone wasn't working as well at his rallies and he essentially was sort of, it looked like he was performing oral sex on the, on the microphone. Just imagine if Kamala or Joe Biden had done that. But this is where he is unique.

• 43:51Alastair Campbell?

  He gets away with stuff that no other politician on earth.

• 43:54Dominic Sandbrook?

  Because that is priced in, and this is a comparison with your favorite politician, Boris Johnson. When these things are kind of priced in.

• 44:01Alastair Campbell?

  Americans, you don't get ironies, but you get the irony though, yeah.

• 44:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  Well, I'm still working on the other insult related to my grandmother.

• 44:09Dominic Sandbrook?

  Remember who the person was who said less and fewer.

• 44:12Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 44:13Anthony Scaramucci?

  Rory, does he do this to you? I mean, I gotta listen more carefully to your podcast. Does he do this, the verbal proof? Yeah, he does.

• 44:19Alastair Campbell?

  I thought you listened to every, I thought you listened to every episode.

• 44:22Anthony Scaramucci?

  You and I need to talk about proper strategy. I have it on high speed.

• 44:25Alastair Campbell?

  Maybe you two should do a podcast the rest of the season.

• 44:27Anthony Scaramucci?

  We should do, we should do, we should do.

• 44:29Alastair Campbell?

  Take on, you're both really good at history.

• 44:31Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yeah, we could do that.

• 44:32Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I think.

• 44:33Dominic Sandbrook?

  We'd welcome the competition.

• 44:34Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 44:35Anthony Scaramucci?

  I was, so you know what, though, I'm gonna say something. I think she and Doug Emhoff, they set sail and she moves to Brentwood and she hangs out in LA and he returns to his law practice. That's my guess. You think, you think she doesn't have to, she doesn't want to stick around and keep doing this forever? I, I, I don't, I don't see the path. And I guess the question for Marina is, did she hurt the cause for women presidential candidates? We've now 0 for 2.

• 45:05Marina Hyde?

  Oh, for the Democrats, yes.

• 45:06Anthony Scaramucci?

  With women presidential candidates in the last eight years.

• 45:07Marina Hyde?

  I mean, we were talking earlier, we were saying that the Republicans will have a woman before the Democrats for definite, just as in the Conservative Party in the UK, they have had several and Labour have had none.

• 45:20Marina Hyde?

  I find it very difficult. She didn't really put a foot wrong and you can say, as you said, you know, you can't add what was your expression about what God had given, you couldn't

• 45:29Anthony Scaramucci?

  You can't put into somebody what God left out. You just can't do it.

• 45:33Marina Hyde?

  She, I mean, you know, it's ridiculous to sit here saying she did her best, she did whatever, but I think you have to say that it's pretty sexist and there's a lot of sexism in this country. And I know you've said that before, so I feel I'm slightly covered by saying that, but I think you've seen it again.

• 45:48Alastair Campbell?

  Of course there is. Anthony, your final, final Saly read is upon you.

• 45:55Anthony Scaramucci?

  Oh my God.

• 45:56Alastair Campbell?

  Would you please?

• 45:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  Okay, guys. This is super important, so please listen up. Saly, thank you Saly for sponsoring us tonight. Eight hours with me, Alistair, Rory, Marina and Dominic. God bless everybody, but it's more important you listen to me about Saly. It's a digital version of a SIM card. You can download it on your phone and you can roam the earth without roaming charges. Imagine that. All the money that you save with Saly. If you go to our website, and this would be saly.com/tripus, you get a 15% discount to start your journey with Saly. And I'm going to tell you something. You travel around the world

• 46:41Anthony Scaramucci?

  and you've been making phone calls to people and you'll be very smug about the savings. And Alistair and I are quite cheap and we're enjoying it.

• 46:47Alastair Campbell?

  Speak for yourself.

• 46:51Anthony Scaramucci?

  What do you mean speak for myself? This guy's traveling coach from Glasgow to London. I just want to make sure everybody knows that. Never seen anything like it.

• 46:58Alastair Campbell?

  Really, you said that...

• 46:59Anthony Scaramucci?

  I'm an ambitious nouveau riche New Yorker and this is a limousine liberal.

• 47:04Alastair Campbell?

  You said Keir Starmer put out a long statement. I've just got Anthony Albanese from Australia, a friend of mine in Australia, sent me his. And it's all the same themes. It's even a bit longer. And, you know, this is what you're going to do and then you're going to try and get the phone call and so forth. Now, we're coming to the, excuse me, we're coming to the end of this and some of you, you're leaving, aren't you? I am. I'm going to do the whole thing, but you've got to get on a plane. I'm getting on a plane back to Britain. Okay. Dominic, are you staying for later or are you...

• 47:31Dominic Sandbrook?

  I've got to write a Rest is History show because we're going on a live tour. So people have enjoyed this and they want to connect their shows in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago.

• 47:42Marina Hyde?

  Come in here Dominic, be right about history. As he's right about everything.

• 47:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  I feel like he was the LA Dodgers tonight, if you don't mind me saying so. I feel like I was like the New York Yankees. I mean, Okay, you have to explain that. Yeah, what does that mean? So the LA Dodgers are the World Series Champions. Oh, come on, that's right. And the Dodgers competed against the Yankees, two final teams. Yeah. Yankees lost miserably. But I think you hit it out of the park tonight. You nailed a lot of the things that were happening in the country. And either I chose to ignore it, or I hit an override switch because I was too close to the blast zone. I was one of the 40 people that were in that situation with them. And so how terrible it was. And I said, you know, it's important for me to just get that Surgeon General's warning label out, but you saw it, I didn't. Oh, yeah.

• 48:27Alastair Campbell?

  And you're the... What team is Marina?

• 48:30Anthony Scaramucci?

  She's the realist. She's like the, she's, she's the...

• 48:33Alastair Campbell?

  Kansas City Chiefs.

• 48:34Anthony Scaramucci?

  She was, she was... That would be nice. She was wincing at the thought of his victory, but in her, her, her heart told her she wanted Harris to win. But her mind told her it was Trump. She's the realist at the table.

• 48:47Alastair Campbell?

  And it's not even worth trying, what?

• 48:49Anthony Scaramucci?

  You, you're the headmaster. I mean, let's just face it, okay? I mean, you know, you're just whacking us all with a stick. And Rory is the disillusionist, if you don't mind me saying so.

• 48:58Alastair Campbell?

  The disillusionist?

• 48:59Anthony Scaramucci?

  Yes, he was disillusioned with this idea that Trump was going to lose and Harris was gonna win. And we just have to own that, you know? I think, I think it's better for us as analysts and pundits to recognize that we got certain things wrong. You don't think you got it wrong?

• 49:14Rory Stewart?

  I got it totally wrong. I got it totally wrong. But on the other hand, I'm sort of, weirdly, I'm so devastated by this result that I'm paradoxically kind of proud that I was backing, backing Harris. I mean, Oh, me too. When I went for a walk outside, just here, we're right next to the, um, the side of the World Trade Center. And I was reminded of the night in 2016, going for a walk in the dark in London after I heard that Trump had won the first time. And just that kind of sense of, I felt the same, these kind of empty streets, the darkness, what on earth is happening to the United States? And I, I, I want to believe in fairy stories, maybe. And I wanted to believe it was impossible for Trump to win again.

• 49:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, fairy stories are what you read to your children at night. They don't happen in real life, too.

• 50:00Anthony Scaramucci?

  We're here now, listen, you know, I'm not a sore sport, I wish him well. I congratulated on Twitter, I'm not sucking up to him, I just, he's gonna be the American president, it's important that he does well, and so I hope he does.

• 50:12Marina Hyde?

  But he is a fascist.

• 50:15Anthony Scaramucci?

  What's that? But he is a fascist. He's got fascist tendencies, and if he, you know what, Dominic's gonna invite me on to the rest is history when he's going full on fascist, and we'll remember this conversation.

• 50:27Alastair Campbell?

  That's a Dane. Well, I think you're done firmament. I don't know what that means. Exactly, good, excellent. Some of our listeners, he doesn't know what it means, you know, it's fine, it's fine, don't worry about it. I think you're Bo Jackson, okay, how's that? That's good, I know him, yeah, I know him. I think also, another piece of history here.

• 50:44Rory Stewart?

  We're not gonna bring in another question, I thought we were gonna bring in another question.

• 50:48Alastair Campbell?

  No, Rory, I'm...

• 50:49Rory Stewart?

  You're in charge.

• 50:50Alastair Campbell?

  I'm following instructions on my screen.

• 50:51Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 50:52Alastair Campbell?

  With the people in my ear.

• 50:53Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 50:54Alastair Campbell?

  And I just do as I'm told.

• 50:55Rory Stewart?

  Okay.

• 50:56Alastair Campbell?

  Obvious. Okay, let's have a question, because it's about the economy, and that's what I was wanting to talk about anyway, let's have the question. Mr. Mucioli, can you guys discuss how this affects the economy, please? Well, that's a big, big question. What about this tariff stuff, is he gonna do that?

• 51:16Anthony Scaramucci?

  So, Wall Street thinks this is phenomenal for the economy, Wall Street thinks that this is deregulation, that Wall Street thinks that tax rates are going from 21% to 15%, which is obviously gonna create a deficit explosion, but Wall Street's sitting here racking up the stock market, and so Wall Street likes it, but I just will say this to you, if he imposes the tariffs, it's gonna eat up the disposable income of the poor. If he does things like he's talking about, deporting massive amounts of people, it will crush the GDP, it'll hurt our tax base, and if he destabilizes our alliance, don't underestimate

• 51:57Anthony Scaramucci?

  the safe shipping lanes around the world, and all the good things that we benefit from, from the footprint that America and its alliance has around the world, and that'll have great consequence on the US economy and the global economy. And he will think he has a mandate for anything he wants. And he's got the immunity shield now.

• 52:13Rory Stewart?

  It's a real problem. The prosperity that we've seen, really, over the last 30, 40 years, has been built on free trade. Free trade is slowing, tariffs are going up. If he follows through on what he's talking about, we've already got 110% tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles. The tariffs he's talking about with China and with the rest of the world will have a crippling effect, I think, on the US economy and the global economy.

• 52:35Marina Hyde?

  20% on everything, a 20% sales tax.

• 52:37Rory Stewart?

  No, it's very worrying. If he does half the things he says he's going to do politically, economically, internationally, the world is going backwards.

• 52:44Alastair Campbell?

  Marina, just, how are you gonna...

• 52:47Anthony Scaramucci?

  Can I just say one thing really quick? He's dodged a bullet physically. He dodged the bullet legally. He's one of the luckiest people that has ever lived. You gotta just call it for what it is.

• 52:59Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. Marina, how does, um, well, do you think the media, I know the media doesn't mean anything, as Elon Musk says, you, the people in the media, but the media, as you and I understand it, do you think they'll cover him differently second time around to first time around? I thought he got away with so much in the first term because the media gave up kind of trying to just hold him properly to account.

• 53:21Marina Hyde?

  Yeah, but, and they said that when he was running again, that they were going to do everything differently, but it's happened again. So I don't, what I will tell you is that he is good for business, okay? He, whether or not you like it, he drives subscriber numbers for various, you know, the New York Times put on huge numbers of subscriber numbers, everybody, people want to read about him. He is, as he would say, ratings. And whether they want to hate read about it, or they want, or, you know, they love to read about him, he will, he will be good in terms of sort of clicks for the media. And, because it's constant drama, you know, there's like four news, he makes, instead of having one news a day...

• 53:58Alastair Campbell?

  I thought the drama was one of the reasons people might want to reject him.

• 54:01Marina Hyde?

  But I think people have become addicted, and to some extent, to dopamine. They look, they want to look at their phone, and they almost want something dramatic to have happened. And in the years when Trump was in the White House, you could guarantee like four times a day, something crazy would happen. Whatever Steve Bannon said, you know, flood the zone with shit, or, there would always be these things that, like, these absolute head-gutter line-grabbing, dopamine-sparking things occurring. And I think that actually, as a culture, we're really quite addicted, that whether or not we can admit that, and I'm, you know, I include myself in that, I'm not trying to sort of stand loftily above it, but, you know, you're looking at your phone and you sort of almost, there's an element of you that wants something new to have, what's he said now?

• 54:37Rory Stewart?

  It's a pantomime villain, right? People, people love a pantomime villain. They love to hate a pantomime villain.

• 54:42Marina Hyde?

  Yeah.

• 54:43Rory Stewart?

  And that's why you have the spike in subscriptions and so on.

• 54:47Alastair Campbell?

  No, I'm going to ask, who am I going to pick on for this one? I think Rory and Dominic. I'm going to ask you to pretend that you are Keir Starmer's foreign policy and political advisers. And I want you to explain to me how you intend to handle your first phone call with Donald Trump and your first meeting with Donald Trump.

• 55:10Rory Stewart?

  Okay, so, number one, you want to try to create as good a relationship as possible because that's the only hope you've got of trying to influence him. And then you need to be very, very clear about what Britain's priorities are. I mean, Donald Trump is a challenge to almost everything that Britain is doing. Because the Labour government has chosen not to go into the customs union or single market, it is very dependent on trade with people like the US and he's about to put up protection barriers. Number one. Number two, all the European vision for European security in Russia and Ukraine is threatened by Donald Trump. Number three, our position on the Security Council, our position in the UN is all dependent on Donald Trump.

• 55:50Rory Stewart?

  So get that sequence right, work out what really matters, and then build an incredible network of everybody who gets to Trump in the hope that you may be able to push him. But sadly, what we pick up from talking to Anthony is that half the people that you make contact with get thrown into the wood chipper. People spin around too much, very difficult to have influence.

• 56:10Dominic Sandbrook?

  I agree completely with Rory. I think you have to strike a cordial, more than cordial, friendly and businesslike tone in your personal dealings with him. And I think you, if I'm talking to Keir Starmer, I would say you need to talk to Berlin, Paris, and so on, about security above all, about what is the future for Europe? How do we work more closely to present a united front? How do we reimagine a NATO in which the United States is either semi-detached or, worst-case scenario, genuinely detached?

• 56:46Alastair Campbell?

  Well, some of us have been arguing for European foreign and defence policy for some time.

• 56:50Anthony Scaramucci?

  I would just say quickly, find the Jared Kushner in the room because Trump is very distracted. He drops the ball all the time. Get in touch with him when you need things and go to him. That's what Netanyahu did, that's what others did. And there's going to be somebody that's going to be picking up the balls with Donald Trump. Identify that person as quickly as possible and build that relationship.

• 57:13Alastair Campbell?

  Well, here we are. That's the second of two four-hour stints. The more, those of us with real stamina, Marina, the Mooch and myself, we will be back. When are we coming back? Later. I'll tell you in a minute. But 2pm, East Coast, and that'll be 7pm. So don't watch, don't watch Channel 4 news. Come back to see ours. You get the real deal.

• 57:36Alastair Campbell?

  So that is it. Donald Trump is going to be the next president of the United States. He's going to go well over the 270 electoral college votes. But he's also incredibly won the popular vote. And this marks, whether we like him or not, whether we like it or not, what has to be seen as one of the great comebacks in political history, not just in America, but anywhere in the world. There's no denying that. Donald Trump, convicted felon, a man with countless accusations against him of sexual assault, who then tried to overturn the 2020 election in a horrific act of violence as won an extraordinary victory. As to the cost, we'll find out.

• 58:17Alastair Campbell?

  It's getting close to 4am here, so we're at the end of the second of our live streams. But we'll be back tomorrow, those of us with real energy. 7pm UK time, which is 2pm Eastern time, to reflect on what we've seen tonight. See you later. Bye-bye.

• 58:35Speaker 10

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all keep the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 58:51Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You're stalled, you're freezing there, that's what.

• 58:55Speaker 10

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 58:59Speaker 03

  I'm not the first then.

• 59:00Speaker 10

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17.9. Without parent.

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