529. Antisemitism, Polarisation, and How the King Outplayed Trump

How is polarisation fuelling antisemitism, and how should religious and political leaders respond? What can politicians learn from the King’s speech to Congress about how to challenge Trump? Is Russia's security partnership model collapsing across Africa? Join Rory and Alastair as they answer all these questions and more in this week's edition of Question Time. __________ Our new student discount: get TRIP membership for just £20 per year when you sign up using your university email at checkout on ⁠therestispolitics.com⁠. Go deeper into the world of The Rest Is Politics by signing up for our free newsletter HERE, featuring exclusive interviews, analysis and weekend reads from Alastair and Rory. Join The Rest Is Politics Plus. Start your free trial at therestispolitics.com to unlock exclusive bonus content – including Rory and Alastair’s miniseries – plus ad-free listening, early access to episodes and live show tickets, exclusive newsletters, discounted book prices, and a private chatroom on Discord. The Rest Is Politics is powered by Fuse Energy. Stop overpaying for energy. Switch at fuseenergy.com/politics and get a free TRIP+ subscription. Get our exclusive NordVPN deal here ➼ nordvpn.com/restispolitics It's risk-free with Nord's 30 day money back guarantee ✅ __________ Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @restispolitics Email: [email protected] __________ Social Producer: Celine Charles Video Editor: Vasco Andrade Assistant Producer: Daisy Alston-Horne Producer: Evan Green Exec Producer: Chris Sawyer General Manager: Tom Whiter 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.

• 0:01Rory Stewart?

  It's becoming very, very polarised. There's a sense that a lot of my friends who are worried about antisemitism are not very sympathetic to Islamophobia and people who are worried about Islamophobia are not very sympathetic to antisemitism. Actually, what we need is a reset of the whole democratic conversation, which says fundamentally, everybody's equal, everybody deserves to be protected across the board, and they should be working together to make those arguments.

• 0:24Alastair Campbell?

  This episode is brought to you by Fuse Energy.

• 0:27Rory Stewart?

  Fuse has introduced the tracker tariff, designed to give customers what matters most from their energy supplier: savings, clarity and a bit more control.

• 0:36Alastair Campbell?

  And it guarantees that your rates stay below the off gem price gap, which saves you up to £200 and the tariff updates automatically every quarter.

• 0:47Rory Stewart?

  Energy prices don't move in straight lines. Global events and market pressures you can't predict and certainly can't control still find their way onto your bill.

• 0:55Alastair Campbell?

  And if you're on the wrong tariff, you can be stuck with higher rates after the pressure has ended.

• 1:01Rory Stewart?

  With Fuse Energy's tracker tariff, that changes. If prices fall, your rate adjusts at the next quarterly update.

• 1:08Alastair Campbell?

  And it's automatic. No switching, no trying to second guess the market. You're protected while prices are high and ready to benefit when they fall.

• 1:15Rory Stewart?

  Switch to Fuse Energy's tracker tariff at fuseenergy.com/politics and use code POLITICS to get a free trip plus subscription.

• 1:25Alastair Campbell?

  Visit fuseenergy.com for full terms and conditions.

• 1:35Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 1:37Alastair 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.

• 1:49Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creef 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 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.

• 2:13Alastair Campbell?

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

• 2:20Rory Stewart?

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

• 2:36Speaker 02

  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.

• 2:46Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 2:52Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze in there, that's what.

• 2:57Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  I'm not the first then.

• 3:01Speaker 03

  Digger, see the trailer online, only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R, under 17, not a middle without parent.

• 3:17Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to the Restless Politics Question Time with me Rory Stewart.

• 3:20Alastair Campbell?

  And with me, Alastair Campbell. And unsurprisingly Rory, we had a lot of questions on the back of the attack in Gold is Green, two Jewish men stabbed and a man now in court for that and the stabbing of somebody he stabbed earlier. We should point out, by the way, we had a little bit of criticism for the fact that we last week discussed a book on genocide and we were both very, very critical of Israel. I think, I don't know about you, but I stand by every word I said in that discussion, but some people felt we shouldn't have discussed it on the back of this, but we should simply point out that that discussion preceded this, but anyway, there we are. So first question here, in the discussions about what to do about antisemitism in the

• 4:04Alastair Campbell?

  UK, why can't we separate our relationship with and attitude towards Jews from any opposition to the behavior of Israel? It seems that nobody is brave enough publicly to make the distinction because they might be accused of antisemitism.

• 4:20Alastair Campbell?

  That kind of goes to the heart of the problem.

• 4:21Rory Stewart?

  The first thing is there is a real problem of antisemitism in Britain. It's rising, there are more attacks, including violent attacks. There was the attack on the synagogue, which people remember. There's this recent stabbing in the streets. You will find that many, many people in the Jewish community in Britain are feeling increasingly worried. You've got the chief rabbi saying showing public signs of Jewish worship outside is now feeling dangerous. There are security teams surrounding synagogues and schools. And there is a real, not just perception of threat, part of which was linked to the outpouring of attacks on Israel over Gaza, as you say.

• 5:06Rory Stewart?

  So the two things can connect. But also a real sense of genuine attacks, threats happening against Jewish communities. So I think that's the first thing that I think any politician has to deal with. Before you get on to the other stuff that I really feel that one should say, which is one should be able to absolutely say that Netanyahu's government is terrible, that what they're doing in Iran is illegal, that what they did in Gaza was a war crime and that there are also an enormous numbers of attacks on other minority communities in Britain and increasingly open hatred of Muslims being expressed.

• 5:47Rory Stewart?

  But that doesn't have to be said to accept that our Jewish community in Britain is in a really fragile position and are feeling under really difficult pressure and attack. And they feel that people aren't stepping up or speaking up for them or protecting them enough. Back over to you.

• 6:04Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and I think the thing that that they feel perhaps more strongly than anything is that the anti-racism campaigns generally.

• 6:14Alastair Campbell?

  Tend to be run by people on the progressive side of politics. And they feel that the progressive side of politics is the one that doesn't speak up strongly enough for them. Okay. And I have, by the way, you know, when Fiona was growing up in North London, I say a very, very high proportion of her friends are Jewish. And there are people that we know that, you know, we see reasonably regularly, who say that in the last few weeks and months, for the first time, they've really felt like they're not sure that they want to live where they live anymore. And that is real, and it should never, ever be dismissed. But at the same time, as per Chris's questions,

• 6:54Alastair Campbell?

  that does not mean either that you shouldn't be able to say you think the Israeli government is terrible, or that there shouldn't be an understanding that when so much bad stuff is happening to the Palestinians, that there shouldn't be the right to protest about that in a fair, reasonable, democratic way on the streets of London or any other city in the UK. Just on the facts, Roy, let's just, let's just, and it's quite hard to get figures on this, but the recorded religious hate crime, up 25%, up from 8,370 to just under 10 and a half thousand in the year up to March 2024. So it's the highest annual account

• 7:36Alastair Campbell?

  since counting began in 2012. Okay. Yep. Sharp rise in religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people. There were 3,282 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the year up to March 2024. It's the last full figures we can get. But that's more than double the number recorded the previous year. And that accounts for one third exactly of all religious hate crimes in the last year. And the previous year was 20%. There was also an increase in religious hate crimes targeted against Muslims since the beginning of the Israel Hamas conflict. 3,866 in the latest year, up 13%.

• 8:20Alastair Campbell?

  And almost two in five, thirty eight percent of religious hate crimes are targeted against Muslims. So that's the, they're the facts, they're the numbers that we're talking about. But as you say, the fear that those, that that reality represents and creates is real, and I think it's that that is growing as much as anything.

• 8:40Rory Stewart?

  And just quickly to define what we mean by religious hate crimes. So it's any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or another person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's actual or perceived religion or faith or lack thereof. So could be threatening behaviour, name-calling, or it could be assaults, it could be attack on a place of worship or graffiti, it could be online abuse. So two quick things. I mean, the first is Australia's been going through a very, very long review on how to deal with antisemitism after the horrifying terrorist attacks on Bondi Beach, when literally a father and son turned up with rifles and began systematically shooting Jews as celebrating

• 9:25Rory Stewart?

  the most holy Jewish festival on Bondi Beach. A lot of that has focused on arms control. So a lot of the Australian response has been around not letting people access weapons. The recent attacks in Britain, of course, have been knives, not guns. The most recent attack is somebody living in a mental institution and who actually attacked somebody who appears to have been Muslim earlier in the day and then attacked two Jews later in the day. Now, how do you disentangle the question of, you know, what weapons are available, you know, whether people can get their hands on a gun or a knife, from general propaganda or views towards minority groups, lies about them, prejudice about them, specific anti-terrorist

• 10:09Rory Stewart?

  moves, you know, how would you actually deal with people who are properly planned terrorist cells, which I would guess is very different from a mentally ill individual wandering around attacking people with a knife. And I think this is one of the things that governments are struggling to do. I heard an MP on the radio saying, the honest answer is we're not going to be able to keep everybody safe all the time, which I think will have worried a lot of people, but probably has an element of truth to it.

• 10:34Alastair Campbell?

  Somebody was saying to me, you know, why did Keir Starmer, Keir make such a big thing of this? Shouldn't they have waited to find out exactly what this guy, and whether it was mental illness, whether it was hatred or whatever. But what the government is worried about is that there is no doubt, we've seen this in relation to Ukraine as well. The Russian intelligence services recruit people to cause division and mayhem. And the Iranians do this as well. Now, I have no idea if that is the case here, but that is something that the government is very, very worried about.

• 11:03Rory Stewart?

  Can I try to, try to understand that? Because it seems a bit unlikely in this case, right? It doesn't seem like a classic Iranian intelligence operative.

• 11:10Alastair Campbell?

  None of us know, but what I was told by somebody who works in the security services about the way that the Russians do it is that they hang around places like magistrate's courts and they find vulnerable people who need a bit of money. And they say, can you maybe start a fire here? Could you perhaps cause a bit of trouble there? Can you, you know, so it's pretty low level. We're not talking about, you know, Iranian spies who are coming in and doing this sort of stuff themselves. But as I say, I think you're right. I think this is unlikely in this case, but the truth is, none of us know. I think the other thing that we should think about this, and this is where social media has become such a kind of impediment to serious debate when serious things happen.

• 11:54Alastair Campbell?

  I think one good thing would be if politicians didn't think that their reaction to any important event is that they should find their thumbs and go to their social media feeds. Zach Polanski got himself into political difficulty because he retweeted somebody condemning the way that the police were dealing with this guy on the ground. So somebody's filming the guy on the ground, he's still got a knife in his hand. It looks like some of the faces were blurred, but it looks like the police are kicking the guy in the head or the shoulder or the neck. It's not entirely clear. So Polanski got into trouble for that. Lots of the stuff that causes difficulty in these debates, I think, comes from instant reactions from people who actually it would be better if they just waited a bit.

• 12:37Rory Stewart?

  Is it too idealistic to say that the key to this is for minority groups?

• 12:45Rory Stewart?

  To work together to make the case for the protection of minorities and minority rights, that what actually shouldn't be happening is the Jewish community attacking Muslims or Muslims attacking Jews on these issues, which it's becoming, it's becoming very, very polarised. There's a sense that a lot of my friends who are worried about antisemitism are not very sympathetic to Islamophobia, and people who are worried about Islamophobia are not very sympathetic to antisemitism. Actually, what we need is a reset of the whole democratic conversation, which says fundamentally, everybody's equal, everybody deserves to be protected. We live in a country where minority communities deserve to be protected and looked after across the board, and they should be working together to make those arguments, because they're the same philosophical arguments, not we're the real

• 13:29Rory Stewart?

  British people and you are the lot aren't, or you deserve this because of something that's being done internationally and we don't, or your culture is like that, or your religion is like that. But just get back to the basics of we are a country that is protecting minority rights.

• 13:44Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and in an ideal world, that would be so much better. But it's very, very hard in the polarised environment in which we live. And the problem with the way that instant news, social media, instant reaction, everybody has to have a view, everybody has to have a theory, everybody has to pretend that what they thought before about previous incidents is likely to apply to this one. I think sometimes it's just the nuance and the complications that get lost. And actually, a couple of pieces from the Weekend Media, which I think are worth mentioning, because they did actually get into some of the news, both written by Jews. So Robert Shrimpsley in the FT, Robert who I know very, very well from when I was in Number Ten, and he was a political journalist. Very sad piece in

• 14:26Alastair Campbell?

  many ways. He basically starts it by saying that his son was set upon by a couple of guys, and they were in a pub, and they asked if he was Jewish, and he said no, as a way of avoiding getting beaten up. He said that he felt that antisemites felt emboldened at the moment. But he went on to say this, I don't minimise the outrages in Gaza, and I don't deny the Palestinians are a wronged people, nor do I automatically conflate opposition to Israel with antisemitism. I'm deeply uneasy at the calls to And marches, but it is time for organisers to police their own movement. It should be entirely possible, this speaks to what Chris said in his question. It should be entirely possible to be anti-Israel without sinking to dehumanising language

• 15:09Alastair Campbell?

  that offers sanction for those who wish to menace British Jews. And the other piece was a piece by Eva Wiseman, who lives in Golders Green. And she pointed out, when Sarah Spackman, who's the local MP, and she's Jewish, and she's, she's been a fighter for Jewish people all her life. When she turned up, there were protesters there constantly calling her a bitch. When Keir Starmer went there, an organisation called Stop the Hate was holding up banners, Keir Starmer, the Jew Harmer, Keir Starmer who happens to be married to a Jew and whose children are being raised as Jews. And we can only be fair to both sides in the way that you're talking about if actually both sides

• 15:54Alastair Campbell?

  can see some good in the other and not get driven along by this sort of monetised, polarised hate that social media depends off. And Eva Wiseman in her piece, the headline is that the dread that I feel here today is an old dread, paper inflammable. And she says, I hate writing about this because I feel really heavy inside my chest whenever I do. And she says, this is the reason why. Those who say all critics of Israel are antisemitic mirror those who say all Jews are racist. Right wing politicians who make accusations of antisemitism have agendas that sit far beyond

• 16:35Alastair Campbell?

  the safety of Jews and, as in the case of Tommy Robinson or the Trump administration, are often friends with antisemitic extremists. The more accusations of antisemitism are misused, the less power a real claim has. I don't know, look, it's incredibly difficult. There shouldn't be a hierarchy of hate. All hate and all hate, whether it's online and all hate crimes in the in the real world are bad and have got to be dealt with and they've got to be dealt with equally. And just on the social media stuff, Rory, but let's just talk a little bit about Zach Polanski, because, you know, we had him on the podcast, he said some very, very strong things about Israel, most of which you and I agree with. He retweeted something, probably

• 17:19Alastair Campbell?

  unwisely, well, I will say unwisely, because he should have just thought, right, now is not the time, let's stand back, let's wait to see what this is all about. He's paid a political price for it and, you know, he's apologised, that's fine. The Economist this week, this was before this happened, done an analysis of Zach Polanski's activity on just one social media site, Blue Sky, and his team, by the way, say Zach Polanski does all his own social media, okay. He liked 35,000 posts in a 12-month period. That's a lot, that's a lot of activity. He goes on to say, around a third of the posts include his name, they tend to be adoring, e.g. I'm impressed with everything I've seen from

• 18:03Alastair Campbell?

  Zach, God, how I love this man. Goes on, though, to say that his liking activity shows a lot of hostility to journalists. Our own dear Marina Hyde from the Rest of Entertainment wrote a mildly critical article. Following it, he liked 20 posts criticizing her by name. Marina Hyde is a total twat, began one of them. He also, he liked a post that described somebody from The Guardian, I'm not going to say the word because it's a C-word, as a smug, sanctimonious C-word. In November, a post which describes Sky News Sophie Ridge as a sneering dickhead. And the article concludes, Mr. Polanski's thumbs

• 18:44Alastair Campbell?

  are working faster than his judgment, and that's the lesson he should take out of the post that he did at the weekend.

• 18:51Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, yeah, it's quite revealing, it's quite revealing, quite interesting revelation. Okay, now, here's a speech, which I think both of us admire immensely. Diane, Trip Plus member from Devon, asks, Hi, Alison Rory, I watched the King's speech to Congress yesterday evening. When the King mentioned the war in Ukraine, he received a standing ovation from the House. Did either of you notice that J D Vance did not applaud? What should we take from that? Will the US continue to sideline Ukraine?

• 19:20Alastair Campbell?

  There were a couple of other questions that I thought were very interesting. Basia from London, did Rory help write the King's Speech? And Julie, is it my imagination or could the speechwriter be one Mr. Alastair Campbell? Well, I didn't, Rory, did you?

• 19:34Rory Stewart?

  No, I didn't. And I think it's very flattering that actually really one of the great speeches. I mean, by which I mean, I don't mean it's the Gettysburg Address, but I mean, if a speech is the perfect coming together of the moment, the personality and the subject, those were pretty close to pitch perfect speeches.

• 19:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 19:56Rory Stewart?

  And I think it's something that we underestimate when you read a book of speeches, because you read them out of context and so you're reading them as though they're Shakespeare. It's just the language. Everything here, which made the drama of it, I mean, it was unbelievable, right? And you could almost write a movie out of it in terms of the King's Life.

• 20:13Alastair Campbell?

  The King's, so you could call it the King's Speech.

• 20:15Rory Stewart?

  The King's Speech.

• 20:16Alastair Campbell?

  Starring Colin Farrell, possibly.

• 20:17Rory Stewart?

  Exactly, exactly. And very, very similar structure. His Majesty became King quite late in life. He had a much, much loved mother and he, no sooner had he become monarch than he was diagnosed with cancer. There have been so many difficult things surrounding him. And he then goes off to the United States with you and I very, very sceptical about whether he should be going at all into the most difficult moment imaginable, where you're representing the United Kingdom with Trump, when Trump has been needlessly humiliating and insulting towards Britain and the British Prime Minister. And my goodness, he pulled it out of the bag.

• 20:58Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, if I've regularly, I'm sure you have as well, but I regularly get asked to do these, you know, speech of this and speech of that, and people couldn't pile anthologies of speeches. And the last one that Hansard did, it was a speech by John Smith. I've talked about it before, though, when he taught John Major, the man with the non Midas touch. But Charles's speech is one of those speeches that will, it will be in future anthologies of great speeches. And just to remind people, there were two speeches, the speech that he made to Congress. And if you remember, Rory, when we talked about this last week. I said, well, I'd been told he was going to speak up for NATO. I hope he does. But then he did, he did NATO, he did Ukraine, he did the rule of law, he did checks of balances, he did climate, he did the environment, he did his family's history in the military.

• 21:42Alastair Campbell?

  Trump having said that, you know, we always kept ourselves back from the, the front line. But then he also did this separate speech in the White House at, at the banquet. And he had a couple of great lines in that one as well. He had the one about, you know, you recently complained that if it hadn't been for you, we'd all be speaking German. Well, might I suggest, if it wasn't for us, you'd all be speaking French, which is a bloody, that's a good insult, right? But he delivered it with sort of wit and Trump had to laugh. He then said this, and in sport, in just a few weeks, the United States and Canada will be among those countries in the world as hosts of the FIFA World Cup. So in one sense, Mr. President, as heads of state, we are joint hosts. Just reminding him, I'm the king of Canada as well, mate.

• 22:26Alastair Campbell?

  And then he had a quote from Shakespeare. He was praising America for being the home to more Shakespeare folios than anywhere in the world, eighty-two copies in the Folga Library. And he quoted a speech by the Duke of Burgundy in Henry the Fifth. My speech intrigues that I may know why gentle peace should not bless us with her former qualities. Trump would not have got, I say, he was basically saying, could you stop this stupid war in Iran? Which Trump had just said King Charles supported, by the way.

• 22:54Rory Stewart?

  Well, and I think the other thing that makes the drama of a really, really great speech is that you can read the audience. So particularly with the Congress speech, even more than the White House speech, you are so aware that there are an enormous amount of pro-Trump Republican senators sitting there. And you're aware that J D Vance is sitting right behind him, often with a thunderous expression on his face, often reluctant to get to his feet. So you've got this incredible dramatic tension of, you know, how's that line gonna land? How's that gonna line land? And the extraordinary revelation that he is able to say things which are very challenging. Challenging.

• 23:35Rory Stewart?

  The American administration's policy, straight down the line.

• 23:39Alastair Campbell?

  Absolutely.

• 23:40Rory Stewart?

  He does not endorse what they're doing in Iran. He calls for peace. He calls for support for Ukraine. He calls for democracy, human rights, liberty, Magna Carta, the constitution, limits on executive power, investing in climate and the environment. And he's doing it in a way that is drawing enormous numbers of members of Congress to their feet with standing ovations.

• 24:03Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 24:04Rory Stewart?

  Which could never be achieved. I mean, any democratic politician would be unable to do that, to get a bipartisan response like that for these kinds of values. And then a final thing, without sounding too pro-British about this, he did it in a very British register. I mean, it was a very, it wasn't an American speech.

• 24:24Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 24:24Rory Stewart?

  It was playing very much to a certain sort of quiet, wry, British sense of humour underlying it, understatement underlying it. And also a speech that almost only he could have given. Only he really can get away with referring to Magna Carta as though it was yesterday. So I really thought, come with the hour, come with the man. I mean, this was extraordinary. And if you wanted an example, again, I don't want to overly roll into this, but why I remain such a passionate supporter of the King and the monarchy, regardless of all the things which are illogical and impossible to explain. It was a role that would have been very, very difficult for somebody who wasn't a constitutional monarch

• 25:09Rory Stewart?

  to perform. Almost impossible for an elected politician to do something that deft in Congress.

• 25:17Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. I've been in Congress for some of these kind of foreign dignitary speeches. And I remember once when Tony Blair was doing a speech there, and there were bits of the speech that the Republicans were cheering more than the Democrats. And then the Democrats thought, well, they're cheering, we have to cheer. It's almost like a football crowd where a chant suddenly moves around the chamber. I think I'm right, though, Diane, that the bit where Vance did not stand up when everybody else did, wasn't Ukraine. He stood up for that very reluctantly and very slowly, and he clapped in a way that it was almost as if he was trying to make his hands not touch each other so he didn't make any noise. But the time when he didn't stand up, which is, I think, even more remarkable,

• 25:59Alastair Campbell?

  was when Charles said his thing about nature being our most precious and irreplaceable asset. And Johnson, Mike Johnson, the speaker, who I think is just generally oleaginous anyway, so probably wanted to be standing up lots. But he sort of saw that Vance was keeping his bum firmly seated on the chair. But then he thought everybody else is getting up, so he got up. And he looked at Vance and Vance gave him a really kind of lemon swallowing sort of angry look. So what did it mean for Ukraine? Is the sidelining going on? What it said to me was that actually, take away the Trump administration and whatever it is that Putin's got on Trump. Take away J D Vance, who clearly hates Europe and hates Ukraine.

• 26:42Alastair Campbell?

  The body of US politics as represented there was completely on the side of Ukraine. And that gave me a little bit of hope.

• 26:50Rory Stewart?

  Well, it's the big question, isn't it? And it's the big drama of the United States, these two different Americas, which you can see there. That speech that the King gave, so many of the values are almost universal American values kind of baked into the Constitution. But those Republicans, senators and congresspeople are the very same people who, in all their interviews recently, their hearings with judges, federal judges, have demanded that the federal judges accept that Biden stole the election.

• 27:26Alastair Campbell?

  And they won't say it.

• 27:27Rory Stewart?

  And the judges, as you say, and this is probably the most fatal sign in America, it's unbelievable. The judges refused to say that Biden validly won the election, something that has been proved repeatedly by American courts. They're refusing to speak the truth. Now, you cannot have a system where your judges. Won't respect the courts and won't speak the truth just because they want to get a job.

• 27:52Alastair Campbell?

  Fiona and I were watching the speech live and after the first 10 minutes, when I realised he was going to exceed my expectations of he was he was going to hit all the buttons. I started cheering it like it was a football match, you know. Cliver, Cliver, yes, yes, he's done Cliver, nature, yes, Ukraine, all this. So, but the other thing, Rory, when they were standing outside the the White House and they were just doing a this is when they were saying farewell and they were just sort of standing there having a few farewell pictures. And one of the reporters shouted out, what do you think of the all the all the improvements that are being made? In other words, the ridiculous ballroom. And Charles just stood there for about five seconds.

• 28:36Alastair Campbell?

  Trump sort of muttered, he liked it, muttered, right? And then and then and then Charles just said, we'll we shall see.

• 28:48Rory Stewart?

  It's amazing. And the other the other amazing thing, which I think is really good, is that you've often pointed out that there's no point in in love actually moments that simply alienate and provoke and achieve nothing. And part of the real skill which made it a real act of genius. And you know, why I wish I'd written that speech and feel so jealous whoever did. And I think the King will have played a huge part in it. And when I've seen his speeches, there are sprawling reg spider writing all over them.

• 29:14Alastair Campbell?

  I've seen a lot of the spider writing in my time.

• 29:16Rory Stewart?

  Again, again and again. But he managed to do it, standing up proud for Britain, for values that we all believe in, and somehow did it without alienating or provoking Trump.

• 29:27Alastair Campbell?

  He definitely he definitely alienated and provoked Vance. And I'll say another moment where I saw Vance swallowing multiple lemons was when Charles talked about the importance of Christianity and they all clapped that and then he immediately pivoted. And it's why I value so much the work I do at Interfaith, Interfaith Dialogue. I mean, it was just, it was like, you know, here's one for you and then here's another one for you. Very good, loved it.

• 29:55Rory Stewart?

  Why don't we take a quick break? And Alastair, you have made us focus on the issue of Mali, this enormous country in the Sahel, which has been right at the heart of global terrorism, jihad, and now the relationship with Russia and what used to be called the Wagner Group. So more of that after the break, led by Alastair and with a question.

• 30:16Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 30:20Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 30:21Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 30:26Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 30:33Speaker 04

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

• 30:37Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 30:42Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 30:47Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig.

• 30:50Speaker 03

  On October 2nd.

• 30:51Speaker 02

  Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 31:03Speaker 04

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

• 31:07Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 31:11Speaker 04

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 31:12Speaker 03

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 31:23Rory Stewart?

  Welcome back to the Restless Politics Question Time with me, Rory Shurd.

• 31:26Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell. Now Rory, Mali, Alex from Dublin. Given Russia's failure to defend Qedal and other Malian cities despite deploying its Africa Corps, how sustainable is Moscow's security partnership model across the continent? Should Russia's African partners be seeking alternative security arrangements? Or does the Kremlin retain sufficient political and economic leverage to weather this type of damage?

• 31:49Rory Stewart?

  Wow. Okay, so firstly, I'm not as up to date on Mali as I should be. And actually, I was reminded to go back into the humility game. I talked to my friend Adrian, who has been the Africa correspondent for many, many years, and actually lived in Kenya for nearly 30 years. And I was talking to him about Mali this morning, and he said, "Well, I'm not really up to date on exactly what's happening in Mali." And tonight, I'd just been there. So, anyway. I did talk to my friend Will Brown, who is now at ECFR and does a huge amount on Mali and Sahel. And I direct people towards reading the more detailed stuff there. Very broad terms, though, Mali is a butterfly lying on its side and the wing up in the north

• 32:32Rory Stewart?

  is largely empty Sahara Desert and traditionally dominated by nomadic communities, pastoralist communities with livestock, facing really tough conditions in this arid environment. Many of them Arab and Tuareg and then down in the south on the other wing of the butterfly, you have ninety percent of the population, it's more agriculture and it's more traditional black African. And this has been a big tension all the way across this hell between pastoralists and settled people. You can see versions of it in northern Kenya, see versions in Somalia, you can see versions obviously in Sudan. You know, we talked about Hameti and the forces there, which is very much

• 33:15Rory Stewart?

  people who come from this kind of wilder nomadic camel herding background, fighting the people coming from the riverine valleys of Sudan. But Mali is the worst of all. I mean, Mali is the place which has really fallen apart. You you will have encountered a lot of it through the French press because the French deployed quite early into Mali and it's been the front line between these Al Qaeda affiliated groups and these Tuareg affiliated groups who were traditionally found their base up in that empty zone of desert on the on the northern wing of the butterfly and the southern groups. The French were kicked out. There was this chain of military coups all the way across this hell. In almost every case, French and Americans booted out, Russians brought in.

• 33:58Rory Stewart?

  And since the Russians have come in, I had over two on this, it's gone from bad to worse. The French actually began to look quite impressive compared to the Russians.

• 34:06Alastair Campbell?

  Well, yeah, so and the other thing to reply, it's not just, you know, when you say butterfly and people think, oh, that's pretty and that's nice. It's it's huge. It's twice the size of Ukraine and they kicked out the French about five years ago now. And they turned to Russia, in particular the Wagner Group with my alleged lookalike, according to the rest is classified, who by the way have done a very good series on Iraq, Rory. They interviewed me for it and as you know, I can't pretend it's my favourite subject to talk about, but we had a interesting discussion about it. So Evgeny Prigozhin, he goes in there, sets up the troops, but then of course, when he turned against Putin and eventually got killed, the Africa Corps, as the question suggests, they take over. And in answer to the question, there are no doubts about the reliability because the

• 34:50Alastair Campbell?

  truth is, faced with these separatists on the one hand and the Al Qaeda linked JNIM group on the other, the Russians have fled. And it meant that the rebels, if you want to call them that, the separatists, they were able to enter very close to the capital. They've assassinated the Defence Minister, a guy called Kamara, who was a Russian speaker. He was the man behind their strategy. They've severely injured the head of intelligence and they've taken control of quite a lot of the the upper part of the butterfly. And so people are pretty down on the Russians. Added to which, this whole story, the atrocities in terms of violence against women and girls, rape and torture of the people that they

• 35:33Alastair Campbell?

  capture, has fuelled support for the insurgents. The leader of the country, the president, this guy Goite, he came to power in one of these coups that you talk about. He wasn't seen for several days and when he finally was seen, it was in a photograph with the Russian ambassador. I think that's the Russians trying to say, we're still in charge here, but they're not as in charge as they were, it would say.

• 35:55Rory Stewart?

  I was talking to the African Union representative Sahel and he said that he is one of, I think, 165 envoys to the Sahel. You know, as you imagine, every country has a Sahel envoy, every organisation has a Sahel envoy, but he said he was the only one actually living in Mali. I mean, it's a really interesting example of the international community going a bit nuts.

• 36:18Alastair Campbell?

  Hmm.

• 36:18Rory Stewart?

  I think also someday we should talk about how difficult it's been to analyse this. I mean, I think many people listening will have been aware that this story around Mali has been on everyone's news for about 15 years. And of course, people remember Boko Haram in northern Nigeria, which is a related story, again about tensions between separatist groups and settled groups and climate change, which is driving a lot of this. And then there are the things that nobody predicted. Maybe because we're not paying enough attention. You know, Chad, for example, has held together much more strongly than Mali. Benin, which people thought was going to collapse. You could make an argument that the African Parks, which was an international NGO,

• 37:00Rory Stewart?

  which did some really interesting work, invested in national parks and community work, contributed to stopping insurgent groups taking over in Benin. There's been quite good responses coming up from Ghana. Ivory Coast hasn't fallen in ways that people might have predicted 15 years ago. So it's not a universal story, but poverty is right at the core of it. Because, you know, when I've been with these groups or in these areas, and I'm talking now, it could be Somalia, it could be Sudan, it could be even northern Kenya.

• 37:33Rory Stewart?

  The poverty is absolutely unbelievable. I mean, it's communities with nothing. You can see them on the edge of World Food Programme feeding stations. You can see them walking weeks out of the desert with infants who are dying on their chests. These are people who have absolutely nothing. I mean, they're the very, very poorest people in the world. Their governments are offering nothing to them. You have the sense that the government in Bamako is so detached

• 37:58Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 37:59Rory Stewart?

  from the lives that people are living in the north. And therefore, insurgent groups that are able to provide a kind of modicum of sometimes law. Sometimes people say, I remember somebody saying about Al-Shabaab, they'll take, yes, they'll take payments at checkpoints, but at least they'll give you a receipt and the next Al-Shabaab checkpoint won't take another bribe. Whereas when the police come in, they fleece you every which way.

• 38:20Alastair Campbell?

  Have I told you before, I did advise the government in Benin for a while.

• 38:24Rory Stewart?

  Oh, my goodness.

• 38:25Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, I went there. It's a really interesting place, but.

• 38:29Rory Stewart?

  It's pro-Western, pro-Western and doing better.

• 38:32Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, hmm, depends who you talk to. So the guy that I was dealing with, President Talon.

• 38:43Alastair Campbell?

  It's a great name. It means heel in French, as you probably know. Uh, so it's T A L O N, not T A L E N T. But if you look at the all these kind of transparency international and the democracy index people, they basically say, and please don't give me the blame for this. But they say it's gone from being what was called a beacon of democracy in West Africa to something less than that. The last election, it was very hard to stand in the opposition, media, judiciary, usual stuff.

• 39:15Rory Stewart?

  Well, final one, if we're talking about African leaders, Ibrahim Traore, who has emerged in Burkina Faso, is become the great celebrity, the kind of Che Guevara of the rest. He took over in a military coup in his early thirties. He's become a TikTok star. He's been helped by AI and the Russians who promote him through Russian television and radio, but also huge bot factories, AI.

• 39:40Alastair Campbell?

  It's like Nigel Farage.

• 39:41Rory Stewart?

  A level beyond. I mean, the guy has become the big celebrity of Africa and he speaks anti-imperialism, pro-Russian skepticism about Western democracy and AI generate what appear to be tributes to him from the Pope, songs about him that claim to be by Beyoncé. It's an incredible thing.

• 40:01Alastair Campbell?

  Wow, we should get him on.

• 40:03Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, we should, yeah. Ibrahim Traore, if you're listening.

• 40:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 40:06Rory Stewart?

  Please come on The Rest Is Politics, uh, leading.

• 40:09Alastair Campbell?

  We'd love to, we'd love to. Final point on, um, on Mali. The Hunter under Goethe have made a series of big mistakes. They kicked out the United Nations. I'm sure that's, that was a mistake. They broke the Algea's agreement. This was the peace deal that they had with the Tuareg separatists. And they also left, uh, ECOWAS, the Economic Community of West African States. So they kind of basically were signaling they could go out, go on their own. And they also changed their position in relation to the. Battle between Algeria and Morocco over the Western Sahara. So they've made, they made a lot of mistakes, but that being said, I think it's good that we've talked about it because I don't think it's on that many people's radar right now. And it's pretty grim what's going on there.

• 40:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, Alison, maybe as we move on from the grim to, to maybe lighter stuff, advice on dating people with different political views. And Maggie, can friendships survive deep ideological divides?

• 41:05Alastair Campbell?

  I think friendships can, but I've never understood how marriages do. I've never, James Carville, James Carville and Mary Mattlin, he was working for the Democrats, she was working for the Republicans. I don't know how they do it.

• 41:17Rory Stewart?

  No, Joe Johnson, Boris Johnson's brother, who was in parliament with him, is married to a milli gentleman who ran these incredible front page articles in The Guardian on child poverty, attacking austerity while he was a minister. It's, it is interesting that, but I guess people make it work, right?

• 41:32Alastair Campbell?

  I mean, I guess, yeah, I suppose they do make it work. I mean, you know, deep ideological divide. I mean, Fiona and I have had some very deep ideological differences of opinion.

• 41:41Rory Stewart?

  The Iraq war being one.

• 41:42Alastair Campbell?

  The Iraq war was definitely one, but there were others.

• 41:45Rory Stewart?

  The general lefty bias on my things tends to think Fiona tends to be right on most of these debates whenever they're, they're raised. But maybe that's just my.

• 41:52Alastair Campbell?

  No, as you being a complete creep, as you being a total creep. No, I will, history has proved me right on so much that we've argued about. Yeah, she's definitely more, she's got a more romantic, idealistic view of how the world should be and how it therefore could be. I'm probably more practical and pragmatic. Used to be able to buy T-shirts and mugs at Labour Party Conference with the thing that said, I've never knowingly fucked a Tory.

• 42:18Rory Stewart?

  Ah, yes. And Angela Rayner, I think, got in trouble for making a joke along those lines, didn't she? Yeah, yeah. And you used to say, you used to say stuff like that, didn't you? I think I've heard you say that.

• 42:28Alastair Campbell?

  Probably, before, before, before I met you, Rory, I realised that it was possible to have friendships across political divides. I'm not sure I could. I think if, look, disagree agreeably, that's all fine and good. It's all fine and good for a podcast. But I think if you've got to do that 24/7.

• 42:43Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, I find, I didn't listen, listen, I find it very difficult with friendships, to be honest. I I have found it difficult. I think a lot of people found it difficult over Brexit. If you remember what it felt like then, I mean, it the polling was unbelievable. Twenty five percent of people voting for each side said they'd find it difficult to talk to someone from the other side, and fifty percent said they wouldn't allow their kid to marry someone from the other side, or wouldn't want their kid to marry someone from the other side. But I feel it because, you know, I've got friends who will say to me, well, you know, I'm not a supporter of Donald Trump, but, you know, I've got to say. And I find that really, really difficult. I mean, really difficult.

• 43:26Rory Stewart?

  And I quite quickly get dragged into a pretty unpleasant argument. It's the same with, you know, I I've been seeing some people around the Tory party in Canada recently. And when they lead with, well, Rory, you know, unlike you, I thought Boris Johnson was a great prime minister, you know, I find it very difficult to keep my temper. Yeah. And and I find myself kind of banging the table and getting a bit shaken. I I it's not easy. I mean, on the Trump thing, it may be that, like, you know, both of us do obviously have forms of Trump derangement syndrome. But I had a such a difficult time in the States with people trying, you know, telling me that everything he was doing

• 44:05Rory Stewart?

  in in Iran, you know, made sense, needed to be done, no options. And I I didn't find it actually that easy. We're about to release an interview that we've just done with Rahm Emanuel, with him saying, yeah, Trump's, you know, done some bad things to Europe, but let's be honest, there's blame on both sides, and Europeans didn't spend enough on defence. I mean, I find that stuff, I it's not, I wouldn't find it easy to keep keep friendships going. And the only way I can do it, I don't know how you feel, is by saying to friends who say that, let's just not talk about that. You know, I sometimes get that with my mother, who's much more right wing than me. I adore her, but I have to just shut the conversation down.

• 44:42Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, well, it's interesting. I was I was at the sport industry awards the other night and I was on table such and such, and I was looking at the other names on the table, and it included Tanny Gray Thompson, who I've known for a long, long, long time, and I think she's great and amazing athlete and amazing person. But of course, she was a very, very big voice in the recent assisted dying debate where, you know, I felt very, very strongly that the the House of Lords did the wrong thing. But similarly, I just decided, okay, I'm going to go up to her, I'm going to give her a big kiss, and I'm going to say, it's lovely to see you, then I'm going to go and sit down, and if it comes up, fine, but I'm not going to raise it. I think the old pre-rested politics me.

• 45:25Alastair Campbell?

  I think the two big issues that really do it for me, one is Brexit. I I don't mind if somebody comes along and says, look, I'll vote Brexit, I wish I hadn't. The ones I can't stand, the ones that say, well, yeah, it's been shit, I don't care. They, that's a, that's a deal breaker for me. Private education, here you are, Rory, I'll I'll let you out of this one because private education for people who go on about how much they care about state schools. So like when we had a, with the kids at the school, our primary school our kids went to, when we had a very bad offsted. And the ones who pull their kids out on the basis that, oh, well, the sport's not good enough, or, you know, my kids have got really special talents and they're not being developed properly. And therefore I have no option but to, I can't stand that. We've, we've lost quite a few friends on the private school.

• 46:08Rory Stewart?

  I wonder on that one, there's an interesting thing there, isn't it? Because partly it's about personal cost and your own personal commitments. So you decided to stick with a school that had had a poor offset thing. And they're almost implying they care more about their kids than you do. And you've made it. Right, and you've made it, and you've made a difficult decision to stick with it and believe, and you love your kids, and you're going to make it work within the system. I I think that's right. I mean, I, you know, I feel this a little bit with Boris. There was some personal cost to me from going against him, turning against him, leaving politics, bye bye.

• 46:47Rory Stewart?

  And that adds to the kind of anger I feel when people are just like, yeah, that maybe this.

• 46:53Alastair Campbell?

  I guess these are not the sort of people who necessarily become my friends, but I some I I met somebody not long ago who I they weren't a close friend, but somebody I was, you know, reasonably friendly with. The friendship had evolved with nothing to do with politics. And then I discovered that actually they really, really hated politics and they hated the, you know, I they're they're in that sort of, oh, they're all the fucking same anyway. Once you say something like that to me, I'm sorry, you you're not going to be welcome.

• 47:25Alastair Campbell?

  So there we go. Good. Last question. Last question, Rory, is from somebody called Daria. You often give us your book and TV series recommendations. I'd love to know some good podcast recommendations, too. My first recommendation is going to be the current mini series on a podcast that's called, oh, get let me get this right. It's called The Rest Is Politics. And it's by and it's not by Rory Stewart. It's not by me. It's by is presented by Vicky Spratt, and it's a mini series on Gen Z. And I've had some great feedback on it.

• 47:53Rory Stewart?

  I've got some great feedback on it, too. It's it's really, well, it was a look, just to explain to listeners, it's a huge departure for us. I don't think we've ever put anything out that isn't presented by one of the two of us.

• 48:03Alastair Campbell?

  No.

• 48:03Rory Stewart?

  In fact, barely put out anything isn't isn't presented by you because you don't take a day off. So this is a big departure and we thought long and hard about it, make sure that we were proud of the product and quality. But I think it's it's worked very well and people have responded very warmly, haven't they?

• 48:17Alastair Campbell?

  Should also say as well, Rory, I mean, I think we're if it's still the same as it was when we were doing our tour a while back, a third of our listeners are at or under thirty. So we do have a lot of people who are interested in Gen Z, which is fourteen to twenty nine. Should also say that we're offering discounted membership to students, twenty pound, down from the usual, whatever it is. So I hope that will make people want to kind of join the Rest Is Politics family. You do that at the rest is politics dot com. Sorry to keep going about the rest is, but they do could rather dominate this thing. I've had the other thing I've had a lot of good feedback on is the Rest Is History series on Thatcher and the seventies. So I think that there's a lot of good stuff out there. Do you listen to many other podcasts, Rory? Because I'll be honest, I don't.

• 49:03Rory Stewart?

  I I'm a bit of a nerd on international relations podcasts.

• 49:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah.

• 49:07Rory Stewart?

  I didn't actually in this case, but generally if I knew you wanted to talk about Mali, I'd probably listen to two or three podcasts on Mali because I think it's a lovely thing to hear real voices of experts getting in. On that, the the usual suspects, Council on Foreign Relations does great stuff. CSIS tends to do really good stuff. I think you've talked a little bit about the AQ podcast, America.

• 49:28Alastair Campbell?

  Oh, yeah, I love them. America's Quarterly, yeah.

• 49:30Rory Stewart?

  The deep stuff on Latin America.

• 49:32Alastair Campbell?

  They're one of my, they're one of my regulars. I don't have many regulars. Most of my regulars are German, I'm afraid. So for German listeners, I'm sure they'd be interested in that.

• 49:39Rory Stewart?

  If you want a shortcut to find the best podcasts on international affairs, run a couple of large language models, run, you know, Chat GPT and Claude, ask them. And between the two of them, if you run them against each other, you often come up with a really good shortlist of two or three recent episodes.

• 49:53Alastair Campbell?

  Well, Rory, unless unless he's putting us on them, I don't trust them at all. And why should I let, why should I let these tech bros, billionaire trillionaires who are currently trying to kill each other in court? Why should I let any judgment to them?

• 50:06Rory Stewart?

  Ditto, if you're looking for deep dives on, let's say, you know, the Czech Republic or Hungarian elections, there are often, you'll find really, really good local podcasts. Often, I think we're a bit stilted because it's often like, you know, the assistant professor of political science from the University of Freiburg talking about, but my goodness, you get into the the details of what's going on. Final one, which if people haven't listened to, may be worth going back to. The War Game podcast done by Sky News and Tortoise, which imagined a Russian attack on the UK. I told about the fact that I didn't regret the fact that you and I didn't go on on Celebrity Traitors. I do a little bit regret that I turned down

• 50:47Rory Stewart?

  the invitation to go on this. Amber Rudd, Ben Wallace, Jack Straw, Mark Sedwell, I think it was Richard Barron, but a lot of former Labour Conservative Cabinet Ministers and Generals and Intelligence Chiefs and our security devices are war gaming what happens if Russia started to. Attack the UK and spoiler alert, it's pretty terrifying when you discover how few options Britain have or what they can do. And it's a route into something we'll talk about someday or so, which is the vulnerability of places like Lithuania and how you would defend the Baltic. Anyway, the wargame podcast, my final recommendation.

• 51:24Alastair Campbell?

  Excellent. Well, I think we've recommended another enough podcasts now, but do stick people with the rest is politics and the rest of politics leading and make sure that they stay.

• 51:33Rory Stewart?

  We'll do all the listening to other podcasts for you. You won't have to listen to Prague talks because Rory will have listened to it on your behalf.

• 51:40Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And as long as we stay number one and number two, the one of the highlights of my week is on a Wednesday, Rory, like just to take a look. And if we're not number one and number two in the UK podcast episode charts, I get very, very angry. So.

• 51:54Rory Stewart?

  You do. And this is quite a high bar to hold us to for four years. Just to explain to listeners, Alistair insists that we're not number one in the politics category. He wants us number one across all podcast UK, which you achieve almost all the time, but it's a, it's, it's quite stressful, this endless. I didn't ask the question on how you keep your work ethic going, but maybe we'll return to that. Carrie's question, where does your relentless work ethics come from? We could tackle on another occasion. Anyway, lovely to talk to you and have a great, great day.

• 52:22Alastair Campbell?

  All the best. Bye bye.

• 52:23Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 52:24Alastair Campbell?

  For Labour.

• 52:32Speaker 02

  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.

• 52:43Speaker 03

  Digger got us into this mess and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and the Revenant.

• 52:49Speaker 04

  What would happen if I stopped going? You start, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 52:53Speaker 03

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  I'm not the earth then.

• 52:57Speaker 03

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