How Trump changed the world in 100 days
01:05:10 Share

The Telegraph.

Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year. But

But there is a solution. A new proposal before Congress would close this loophole and ensure these foreign investors pay taxes, just like the actual plaintiffs have to.

It's a common sense move that discourages frivolous and abusive lawsuits and redirects resources back into American jobs, innovation, and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse.

Out here, we feel things. The sore calves that lead to epic views. The cool waterfall mist during a hot hike. And the breeze that hits just right at the summit. But hey, don't just listen to us. Experience it for yourself. AllTrails makes it easy to discover the best of the outdoors. With more than 450,000 trails around the world. Points of interest along the trail. And offline maps for always-on navigation. Download the free app today and find your next outdoor adventure.

It is my honor and pleasure to introduce to you the 45th and the 47th President of the United States of America, Donald J. Trump. Thank you.

I was saved by God to make America great again. Canada is going to be a very serious contender to be our 51st state. We need Greenland for national security. You're gambling with World War III. The U.S. will take over the Gaza Strip. We'll own it. Know that China is doing very poorly right now.

I just saw some reports coming out and I don't want that to happen to China. And we're here tonight in the heartland of our nation to celebrate the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country. And that's according to many, many people. I'm Venetia Rainey and this is Battle Lines, Trump edition. It's Friday, 2nd of May, 2025.

This week marked 100 days of Donald Trump's second term. And what 100 days it's been. From cosying up to Vladimir Putin and closing USAID to a trade war with China and effectively ending illegal migration into America, Trump has been busy. On today's episode, we're going to be looking at his enormous impact on the world over the last three months or so. We'll look at everything he's done in terms of foreign policy and what the consequences might be going forward.

We'll also be looking at everything he hasn't done, despite promising to, from ending the wars in Ukraine and Gaza to annexing Canada.

I'm joined in the studio by my co-host and chief foreign analyst, Roland Oliphant. Hello. And down the line from Washington, D.C., is our chief U.S. correspondent, Rob Crilley. Great to be with you. Welcome to Battle Lions. Rob, let's start with you. You've just got back from Canada, where you were reporting on this week's election. It was one of the biggest upsets in Canadian political history. Just a few months ago, the ruling liberals under Justin Trudeau were trailing the Canadian Tories by more than 20 points. And then Trump got into power and started saying stuff like this.

What I'd like to see Canada become our 51st state. We give them protection, military protection. We don't need them to build our cars. We don't need them for lumber. We don't need them for anything. We don't need them for energy. As a state, it's much different. And there are no tariffs. So I'd love to see that, but some people say that would be

A long shot. That was him talking on C-SPAN back in February, but he actually repeated his call for Canada to become the 51st state on Canada's election day. Rob, how key was Trump in upending this election? And do you think now that Mark Carney has had this victory for the Liberals, this is the end of his threats to make Canada the 51st state? Well, there's no doubt Trump had a huge impact on the election. You know, as you point out, the Liberals were trailing by more than 20 points after Trump's intervention.

That flipped and the Liberals under Mark Carney suddenly developed a 15, 16 point lead. It's worth pointing out there was another factor in that. Justin Trudeau, the scandal here, a Liberal prime minister stepped aside knowing that he was going to lead the party to a huge defeat. And he was replaced by the technocrat Mark Carney, who offered a very different proposition to voters. So yeah, look, Trump had a huge impact. It wasn't the only...

And in fact, the Conservatives managed to narrow the Liberals' lead to only about two points on election night. So you now have Mark Carney, former governor of the Bank of England, former governor of the Bank of Canada, winning the election on a very Trump-centric message, which is that he is best placed to stand up to Trump. Now, come to your second point, whether this will essentially end Trump's flirtation with

taking over Canada, the problem that Mark Carney faces is he didn't win an overall majority. He wanted to form a strong government that could push back effectively on Donald Trump. And he's going to have to form some kind of a coalition. So that has rather weakened his position.

After, as the election results were announced, Mr. Carney did deliver a strong message saying that Trump would never take over Canada. But I think it's worth pointing out

that this isn't just some kind of weird Trump rhetoric about taking over Canada. When you put it into the context of what he said about the Panama Canal, Greenland, and so on, this is all part of a new foreign policy that really focuses on strengthening America's position in the Western Hemisphere. It's all about Western defense, of which Canada forms a sort of crucial part

with its access to the Arctic and Russia and beyond. Canadians booted

to stand up to Trump. But I don't think this is the last we've heard of Trump's intentions in that direction. Roland, there's another major election this week that might go a similar-ish way to what we've seen in Canada. Can you tell us a bit about that? Yeah, so Australians go to the polls on Saturday. Yeah, kind of similar kind of thing. I think definitely the election campaign in Australia hasn't been quite as affected by Trump as it was in Canada for obvious reasons. Trump, you know, a lot,

America's a lot further away, number one, but probably more importantly, Donald Trump hasn't said he wants to annex Australia. So I suppose that intervention hasn't done it. But similarly, you have an incumbent centre-left, Anthony Albanese of Labour. He's been in power since 2022. He's been challenged by Peter Dutton of the Liberal Party. In British terms, that's a conservative party. In American terms, the Republican Party, the centre-right, which is part of a coalition with the National Party, which is...

The Conservative Party for Rural Areas, basically. Anyway, so centre-left, centre-right. Similar kind of thing. Dutton, the coalition, were polling, you know, a few points above, ahead in the polls for quite a while. Depending on which poll you look at. I was looking at the one on Garden Australia earlier. So, I don't know, March 27th, they just cross like that. And it's been similarly reversed. So, Anthony Albanese is now...

leading Peter Dutton by, you know, four or five points. The polls suggest that they were suggesting it would now be a Labour minority government and now it's looking like possibly a Labour majority government. So again, similar kind of flip, similarly apparently informed by a kind of, you know, electorate's kind of alarm at

somebody who'd associated himself with Donald Trump and who was also pursuing quite Trumpish kind of policies. I mean, he had this doge-ish plan to... I think he was going to fire about 40,000 civil servants of the 70,000 in ACT, the area around Canberra. That's been kind of quietly shelved. And some other kind of rhetoric about... He's been talking about the hate media. He's been particularly singling out ABC and The Guardian there. It kind of quite...

kind of Trumpish kind of rhetoric that has characterized some of his campaign is,

Been dialing it back. I was speaking to some people in Australia this morning about this. Their feeling is that this scale, the sense of urgency here is not like Canada. The pattern is similar, but really this is an election that's really been dominated by its cost of living, its house prices largely. Interestingly, there is a consensus between both main parties on defence, on the need to increase defence spending, partly in response to

America no longer seeming like a reliable ally. Super interesting. We'll obviously keep an eye on that.

Matt, let's just stick with the Americas for a moment. The other big Trump foreign policy goal that we should speak about is securing the borders and mass deporting illegal migrants. All illegal entry will immediately be halted and we will begin the process of returning millions and millions of criminal aliens back to the places from which they came. We will reinstate my remain in Mexico policy.

And I will send troops to the southern border to repel the disastrous invasion of our country. And it's worked, hasn't it, Rob? I mean, there's been a 95% drop in encounters at the southern border. The U.S. has deported around 57,000 people, according to official stats, although we should say the Trump administration claims it's quite a lot higher at around 139,000.

What has this meant for the Central and Southern American countries, Rob, where these migrants usually come from? Yeah, I mean, it's a really fascinating picture. I mean, the places we've heard most from are sort of the transit countries. And if you take

Mexico, the areas all along the border where shelters, charities were flat out trying to help people on their often weeks-long journey. I mean, they're saying their shelters are empty now, but...

At the same time, you're seeing further south. I mean, those people haven't gone away. A bunch of people who started their journey some time ago and now essentially find their way blocked. We're getting reports from the likes of Mexico City and so on that they're dealing with thousands of people who aren't really sure what the next step is.

what their next steps should be. And I think one of the big stories we've seen through this 100 days is that for some Central and Southern American countries, there might even be an opportunity here

If you are willing to go along with Trump's ploy, if you are willing to take deported migrants, sometimes from a third country, there are opportunities to do deals with Trump. And we've seen the likes of Costa Rica currying favor there. And on the flip side,

You might not be currying favor, but you might be able to avoid Trump's anger. I mean, remember, for example, Colombia, about 10 days into Trump 2.0, it refused two American planes carrying migrants. There was a complaint that these were military planes.

they weren't treating the migrants with sufficient respect and turned the planes around. Trump immediately threatened 25% tariffs on them and Colombia pretty much caved. There is an opportunity here for some countries if they want to play ball with Trump. I mean, I think maybe we'll talk some more about tariffs, but Trump is using tariffs here as a weapon to get what he wants. And he's using it pretty aggressively.

when countries aren't prepared to go along with his policies. I think that's a really good point. And one of the other countries we should mention that's benefited from this policy is El Salvador. And the president there, Nayib Bukele, has had a press conference, I believe, with Trump. And there's a big row at the moment over...

A Maryland resident who is El Salvadorian, Kilmar Obrego-Garcia, he was deported back to El Salvador earlier this year, apparently due to an administrative error, and I'm air quoting there, and despite court orders to let him stay in the U.S. with his family, who are all American citizens. Our U.S. correspondent Susie Cohen has actually been to El Salvador, and she spoke to the justice and security minister there, and they admitted that they have no evidence that he's a gangster like Trump has alleged. It's a great scoop from our correspondent Susie there, so we'll link to that in the show notes.

Roland, what do you think other countries in the world will take from this migration policy that seems to be working so well and other countries, as Rob mentioned, benefiting from working with Trump on this? Well, I think, as Rob mentioned, there's a particular question there specifically about Latin Central and South America, where a lot of these countries are going back to. I mean, it's El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras have taken more than half of the deportation flights. So there's specific questions there about that part of the world.

But elsewhere in the world, I think if you talk about the kind of the global north, the countries, Europe included, that kind of on the receiving end of the global phenomenon of migration at the moment, there's going to be

People are going to be watching closely to see if it works. Populist parties are going to be seeing if they can capitalize on this. People have been putting questions to Kimmy Badenock, obviously, you know, would you do what Trump would do? You have to balance that if you're a right-wing populist with this kind of aversion we were talking about in Canada and Australia to what Trump is. So if you look at, you know, this country, the country we know most of all, Nigel Farage of reform, right?

who is the right-wing threat that Mrs. Badenoch is trying to outflank. He was asked, you know, would your plan be Trump's plan? And he said, no, no, no, no, no, no. And he referenced Tony Abbott of Australia's response instead. So he's kind of, he's very, very sensitive. And I think that quite can be to the way, you know, voters in other countries react.

are responding to the Trump brand. But we know this, the whole immigration being a massive domestic issue, that's not only an American thing. So I think there's going to be a lot of kind of

A lot of kind of reflections on that and assessments of where it can work and whether it's going to sell with voters. Let's talk about Europe. The shifts underway here as a result of Trump's policy to disengage from European security interests. They're almost so profound and far reaching that we probably don't completely understand the full implications just yet. But we're going to have a stab.

Roland, let's kick off with you. You're a former Russia correspondent. You spent lots of time in Ukraine over the years. We did know before Trump came into power that he was sympathetic to Putin and sceptical of the US's military assistance to Zelensky. But did you expect things to go as they have done quite so badly? No, I don't think I did. It's difficult to remember because things change so quickly and then you have to adjust. So what did I expect? I'm not sure. But

The point is in the run up to this, in the kind of year or so when people were kind of coming to terms with the idea of Donald Trump's return, there was a lot of what looks in retrospect like rationalization going around. And I was hearing it in Kyiv from Ukrainians. I was hearing it here from Brits. I was hearing it from a lot of Republicans actually in America. The rationalizations went like this. There are basically three of them. The

The first one, which you'd hear in Ukraine, was, look, the Biden administration hasn't really lived up to the challenge here. They've slow-pedaled military aid when they should have put their foot on the gas. They've allowed themselves to be deterred by Putin. What we need is a

is a new broom and someone who's less self-deterring. So that could be good. That leads into the second rationalization, which is that, look, I mean, Donald Trump says all this stuff, but really he's unpredictable. I can't tell what he's going to do. You don't. But that means Vladimir Putin can't tell what he's going to do. And that's going to play to our advantage. And the third rationalization, which is another iteration of this, I heard this from an extremely senior politician.

British official, you know, when it was clear Donald Trump was going to be the president. He said, look, I think there is going to be probably he's going to do a deal in Ukraine, but that deal will have to be one in which Donald Trump comes out the winner. Therefore, that means that Vladimir Putin can't look like the winner. And in retrospect, all of that, I mean, for my money, just looks like a little bit of wishful thinking. But then again, I think if you just looked at what he was saying, he can't really be surprised by the way things have gone. I mean, it's

at the moment, as we speak this week, Ukraine signed the rare earth deal. You've got Vladimir Putin has called this three day ceasefire over, over victory day weekend, the 8th, 9th, 10th of May. And you've also got the Americans making noises like they're, they're running out of patience. So Donald Trump saying, you know, I'll know in two, you know, three weeks, you've had a spokesman saying, you know, we're going to watch what Putin does, not what he says. So far, those are just words though.

You know, maybe we are reaching a point where Donald Trump says, no, Vladimir Putin is stringing me along here. I'm not interested and I'm going to impose these East Britain secondary sections and so on. But so far, we haven't seen that, to be absolutely honest. Rob, I'd like to get your response to that about how you think things will move on. But first, I just want to feel like we have to mention the Trump-Zelensky Oval Office meeting. Let's just hear a quick clip of that.

You're not in a good position. You don't have the cards right now. With us, you start having cards. I'm not playing cards. Right now, you're playing cards. I'm very serious, Mr President. You're playing cards. I'm very serious. You're gambling with the lives of millions of people. You're gambling with World War III. What was it like being in the US after all of that happened? Trump had been talking it all up and he had said he expected...

President Zelensky to be signing the rare earth minerals deal during that visit. So there was a lot of optimism that everything was moving in the right direction. Remember, Sir Keir Starmer, President Macron had just been there kind of buttering up Trump, getting him in a good mood, getting him all prepared.

the Zelensky meeting and how long was the Zelensky meeting like about 55 minutes or something first 45 minutes brilliant it was just when things got on to the clothing he was wearing and JD Vance's interaction and of course you can never rely on

on the Ukrainians as a British diplomat said to me. And President Zelensky, rather than just smiling and taking it on the chin, had to push back as he always does. And that's where it all went off the rails. So yeah, I mean, at the time I was as shocked as anyone. I remember the reaction to it all being very much among right-wing Republicans. Well, you know, Zelensky had this coming, we're done with him. I

And then watching the right in Europe, the likes of Nigel Farage and so on, finding themselves in a very awkward situation, having been very Trumpy up to that point. It suddenly became clear to me as a foreign correspondent in Washington, it was another reminder of just how far apart the US and Europe is on this crucial question.

How do you see this playing out if Russia does continue to, you know, continues as it has done in sort of declaring a few days of ceasefire here, but not really giving anything? Will Trump slowly lose interest? And what happens then? Well, I don't know. I think maybe we're seeing the end game right now. I mean, we have the minerals deal.

Trump loses interest and moves on. He's already expressed his frustration that this is taking longer than he thought. He initially said this was a day one thing. He'd get it fixed on his first day in office. Then it was Easter was the target. Then 100 days, they've all come and gone. I think this minerals deal is kind of interesting. And I think in some ways there's a victory in there for Kiev in terms of the language that's used. Leaked details that the Telegraph has suggest the language talks about the full-scale invasion of

of Ukraine, which will annoy the Russians and is very much a framing of the conflict in the way Ukraine sees it. And also Scott Besant, the Treasury Secretary, who is one of the key factors in negotiating this, I mean, his language in announcing this, I mean, he says,

This agreement signals clearly to Russia that the Trump administration is committed to a peace process centered on a free, sovereign and prosperous Ukraine. I think that language is interesting. Plus, it talks very much about the idea that an American interest in Ukraine like this will serve as a security guarantee for Ukraine. Trump

struggles with the nitty gritty of international diplomacy. He sees everything like a New York property deal. And if it can't be done fast, and if he can't just use pressure to get it done, it suddenly becomes very complicated, starts to slip away from him. And what does he do? He

He takes whatever he's got, declares victory and moves on. I feel like this deal offers him the chance to draw a line under things and move on. I think one of the things that we can say concretely in Europe is that Trump has forced European countries to really invest in their defence. And that's been underway for a little while since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. But

It's really ramped up now. We reported a Monday's episode on the biggest ever rise in defence spending in countries such as Poland, Romania, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden. The UK obviously increased its defence spending to 2.5% with a 3% goal.

Clearly, this is a win for Trump. He wanted Europe to look after itself. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth spelled that out pretty clearly at a speech to NATO members in Brussels back in February. We're also here today to directly and unambiguously express that stark strategic realities prevent the United States of America from being primarily focused on the security of Europe. The United States faces consequential threats to our homeland.

We must and we are focusing on security of our own borders. It's been a huge adjustment, I think we can say fairly, for Europe. Our Brussels editor, Joe Barnes, sent us this voice note about what it's been like from there. For Brussels, the first 100 days of Donald Trump's second stint in the White House have been nothing but a walk on the wild side. Let's start over at NATO HQ, where Donald Trump dispatched his defence secretary, Pete Hexer, to

to deliver the news that America will no longer prioritise Europe's defence as it turns its sights to the Indo-Pacific and China. Diplomats and officials I spoke to who were in the room during that speech still speak of their bemusement at what they heard,

America essentially said, Europe, you're on your own. And that's the first time since, well, the Second World War that's happened. I'm not sure why they were so gobsmacked, considering that an embargoed version of that speech had been circulating NATO HQ all morning. And look, Donald Trump's rhetoric had been on Europe, one of, if you don't pay your bills, talking about NATO's defence spending target, 2% of GDP, we won't protect you. He's previously alluded to

Russia being able to do what it wants with those countries. Britain and Germany have been forced to take a leading role in the Ramstein Group of 50 countries supporting Ukraine's military. And that is after the US relinquished its chairmanship. Biden administration steered dozens of these meetings. But as soon as Trump came to office, the US involvement basically became nil-poiré.

There is still some disbelief in Brussels that Donald Trump is not doing the same as Joe Biden when it comes to supporting Ukraine's armed forces with shipments of weapons. Obviously, lots of antsk around the decision to withdraw intelligence support and weapons support for Ukraine during that brief period when Donald Trump believed President Zelensky wasn't serious about negotiating peace. That caused all sorts of problems, especially the intelligence element.

Because a lot of Europe's support for Ukraine is reliant on US intelligence being fed into the NATO system and being then taken out to aid that support. Roland, despite the hostile and quite tumultuous way this has all been done, do you think this is actually a good thing for Europe in the long term? Oh, yeah. Well, is it good to be without the security relationship that has guaranteed peace on the continent since 1945? No. No.

But be taking care of our own defense? Well, if you're able to take care of your own defense as a response, then yes, that's good. But you've got to bridge the gap from one to the other. And that's a real moment of danger. I mean, all this stuff. We're going back to what Rob was saying right at the beginning about a completely new form of foreign policy, which is focused on the Western Hemisphere. Right.

Right. This kind of this Monroe doctrine on steroids. Right. And that involves kind of as, you know, Hegseth and J.D. Vance has spelled out kind of really explicitly that involves a long term kind of withdrawal, certainly ground troops from Europe. You know, what they want is, you know, Canada, Greenland, maybe the U.S. Navy patrols the Greenland, Iceland, Scotland gap. But.

But no, like land warfare, the security of the European continent, that's up to us. Well, the British Army got rid of its proper armored division, what, in 2012 or something? Yeah.

We're talking about putting in a reassurance force in Ukraine of, I think the number is kind of fluctuated around 30,000 men. That's as many casualties as Russia takes in one month. There's a massive gap to bridge here. And there's a really, really long way to go. And I think one of the frustrations of people who live...

who look at this for a living. Some of them were really banging the drum long before Donald Trump ran and then won the election. But even before that, the message was from people who really study this, Trump is kind of, he's a catalyst and he's certainly speeding things up. But this was a long-term trend.

consistent message from the Americans about frustration, about underwriting European defence. It's been coming out for more than a decade under Republican and Democrat administrations. And it goes back to the sense that, OK, well, there is no Soviet threat anymore. The Cold War is over. Why are we still underwriting you guys? You've got to show your pitching in. Five

Finally, they started doing it. But there remains this sense of great uncertainty because Trump hasn't withdrawn from NATO. He's still officially kind of subject to Article 5, the common defense cause. But there's a wriggle room in that defense cause. You know, you've got to consult and then you've got to respond. You can respond, including military force. You know, what if Russia goes for Latvia and the American response is, well, we'll send an aircraft carrier to kind of

cruise about a bit in the North Sea. You know, I mean, it's the thing with NATO has always been, it's about credibility of deterrence. And the Americans underpin that. And the Americans, the entire alliance is built around it. The logistics, the communications, the getting stuff in the field, all this stuff you don't even think about. Europeans just don't have it. The Americans have always had that central role. So if they're going to vanish, which seems like a long-term goal,

Yes, absolutely. It makes complete sense that the Europeans have to, you know, take responsibility for their own security and so on. But they've got a mountain to climb and they've started out the starting gate late. I think you raise a really interesting point about NATO. And Rob, I'd love to get your thoughts. Can NATO survive Trump? It survived Trump before. You know, he tried to withdraw in his first term and he never actually did it. I'm maybe slightly more sanguine than Rob.

Roland on this, you know, Trump clearly thinks NATO is an outsized burden. He doesn't understand or see how a stable, secure Western Europe is essentially America's first line of defense. You know, and when you deal with such a transactional president, you know, his question is, well, what's in it for us? And he just doesn't get

that peace and harmony in Western Europe is good for him. It's going to look different. As Roland has explained, European countries are stepping up, the contributions are increasing. I think with Trump, you've got to think about the psychology a little bit.

He's leader of the free world. You know, is he still leader of the free world if he doesn't take on that central role in NATO? And we've been here before. He's threatened to withdraw before and he hasn't done it. We're going to take a little break. After that, we'll be looking at Trump's impact on the Middle East, China and the global rule of law.

As many of our listeners know, our beloved colleague and friend David Knowles passed away suddenly last September, aged 32, from an undiagnosed heart condition. As the creator of Ukraine the Latest and Battle Lines, many of you were familiar with his voice and passion for covering conflict with a keen sense of humanity. But you may not know that David was a man of many passions. Music, theatre, ancient languages, comedy, Warhammer, Napoleonic history, and above all else, cricket.

A late starter, he showed the true zeal of the convert and even founded his own team, Larkhall Wanderers CC. This weekend, the Larkhill Wanderers are playing a memorial game to fundraise for the British Heart Foundation. Their goal is to raise £6,000 to help fund life-saving research to tackle heart diseases. If you'd like to donate in his memory, please follow the link to the show notes. Thank you in advance for your support.

Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year. But

But there is a solution. A new proposal before Congress would close this loophole and ensure these foreign investors pay taxes, just like the actual plaintiffs have to. It's a common sense move that discourages frivolous and abusive lawsuits and redirects resources back into American jobs in

innovation, and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse.

Out here, it's not only the amazing views, but the way time stretches out a little longer and how the breeze hits just right at the summit. With all trails, you can discover nature's best with over 450,000 trails around the world. Download the free app today.

So

Because without you, your business is just business as usual. Go to Wix.com. Welcome back. We're now going to turn to Trump's impact on the Middle East, namely the conflict launched by Israel against Hamas in the wake of the horrors of October 7th, but also by extension, the problem of Iran. The Gaza war was a big focus for Trump right from the beginning.

All hell will break out in the Middle East. And it will not be good for Hamas, and it will not be good, frankly, for anyone. All hell will break out. I don't have to say anymore, but that's what it is. And they should have given them back a long time. They should have never taken them. They should have never been the attack of October 7th. People forget that.

I think the potential in the Gaza Strip is unbelievable. We have an opportunity to do something that could be phenomenal. And I don't want to be cute, I don't want to be a wise guy, but the Riviera of the Middle East, this could be something that could be so magnificent.

And Trump did have a big impact on the Gaza war at first, as our Jerusalem correspondent Henry Bodkin explains here. Here in Israel, the second coming of Donald Trump is inextricably linked with the hostage return deal that took place in January and February, which saw 30 make it home. Although that was negotiated and indeed started under Biden, the feeling is that it was the promise of Trump and his no-nonsense approach which provided the impetus for the deal.

Certainly, those who were released were quick to lavish praise on the president, who can forget the sight of several still emaciated hostages lining up obediently in the Oval Office to thank the president as he slouched at the Resolute Desk as if it was him who had completed the unimaginable feat of endurance. Perhaps they were being canny politicians themselves, flattering the man who they believe holds the key for the return of their missing comrades. On that, however, Mr Trump's performance is disappointing.

Whether history will judge this to be the right strategic call or not, it's inescapably the case that the ceasefire broke down because Israel was not prepared to countenance a full withdrawal from Gaza to end the war, as the outline deal obliged them to do. Trump's bellicose rhetoric towards Hamas arguably gave Benjamin Netanyahu the cover to do that. Let's not forget his Middle East Riviera idea, Gaza is a regenerated rich man's paradise free of Hamas but also, apparently, normal Palestinians.

Now those around Trump have briefed that the whole idea of this was to provoke the Arabs into coming up with an alternative workable solution, which they have tried to do. The problem is that it only works if Israel then accepts it, and there seems precious little pressure coming from the White House so far in that direction. It raises the question, does Mr Trump even know what he wants here? On Iran, the jury's out. Hawks, notably here in Israel, are extremely sceptical about these new talks mediated by Oman.

Israel is itching to strike, and the worry is that the discussions bind Israel's hands for a meaningful strike to set back the nuclear program at the most opportune time militarily. However, no one can know whether such a strike, which incidentally would require US backing, would fare and what the fallout would be. Iran has real incentives for a deal, economic above all else.

So however much his ego and lust for a legacy as a statesman is bound up in it, Mr Trump is currently giving peace a chance. We'll get on to Iran in a moment, but let's start with Gaza. Rob, with a bit of hindsight now, how serious do you think Trump was about clearing the strip out to rebuild it? And if Arab countries had signed up, do you think he would have gone ahead with that? Well, first of all, I have a confession to make.

That was all my fault. I was traveling with President Trump on his first domestic trip the weekend after he was sworn in. And we got a readout that he'd had a call with King Abdullah of Jordan. And so President Trump came back to talk to reporters on Air Force One. And I asked him what was the call about. And he said something vague about, you know, wishing each other well and blah, blah, blah. And I said, yeah, but like, you know, what about Gaza?

And he said something about thanking the king for taking in refugees. And then he said something about maybe taking in some more. So I pushed him and pushed him and pushed him. And then in the course of that sort of five minute conversation, he laid out apparently sort of on the hoof.

this idea of shipping people out of Gaza. And he sort of suggested it was for their own good that this was a war zone, it was a horrible place to live, and he was doing them a favor. So of course, that then dominated the news for the next week or so. I mean, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to the White House and he couldn't have looked happier as President Trump continued to talk about it. So look, you know, I mentioned before,

One of the ways to understand Trump, and I'm sorry I don't have any deeper insight or analysis, is that he is a New York property developer. And that is how he sees the world a lot of the time. You have a war zone. You have an area that has been demolished, flattened. So what is wrong with moving people out and rebuilding it? Now, of course,

That sets aside decades of tensions, the history of the Middle East and all the other things that make it such an intractable problem. But that's not the sort of thing that Trump worries about.

And I think Prime Minister Netanyahu sort of praised him for his out-of-the-box thinking or something like that. But, of course, you know, it went nowhere very quickly. I think there was a call with President Sisi of Egypt not long after, which was one of the other countries he wanted to take people from Gaza away.

And we haven't really heard very much about it since. And my understanding is there was a later conversation with King Abdullah, who basically said, we have as many refugees, Palestinian refugees, as we can take. And we're not in a position to take any more. So I think it was a serious suggestion from Trump's point of view. I think he believed it.

but pretty quickly ran out of allies in the region. In terms of the broader Gaza conflict, again, it was something he's intervened on. Remember, it was more than a month ago he said they'd be held to pay if Hamas didn't release the remaining hostages. They haven't released the remaining hostages, and Trump has gone quiet on it. So it's another one of these things where Trump wanted to move fast,

you wanted to move fast and break things in the tech lingo of the day. And it just turns out the Middle East hasn't been solved in centuries, and it's not going to be solved overnight with some out-of-the-box thinking. Roland, what about Trump's attitude towards Iran? There does appear to be real movement underway at the moment in terms of striking some kind of new nuclear deal. Trump does seem keen. I want them to be a rich, great nation. The

The only thing is, one thing, simple, it's really simple, they can't have a nuclear weapon. And they gotta go fast, because they're fairly close to having one. And they're not gonna have one. And if we have to do something very harsh, we'll do it. And I'm not doing it for us, I'm doing it for the world.

And these are radicalized people and they cannot have a nuclear weapon. Does that include a potential strike on Iranian nuclear facilities? Of course it does. I think Iran could be a great country as long as it doesn't have nuclear weapons. If they have nuclear weapons, they'll never get a chance to be a great country. They will never get a chance. It won't even come to us. That clip was from Al Arabiya from Meeting in April.

It's a bit ironic given Trump was the one who collapsed the original JCPOA deal by pulling the US out of it in 2018. But do you think Trump might be the one to force some kind of resolution on the nuclear issue this year? There's definitely really interesting diplomacy happening. And yes, the irony isn't lost on anybody. Trump ripped up the JCPOA, said this isn't good enough. That seemed actually to be aimed at the idea that that would force the Iranians to come back to the table with a new deal with more concessions, which didn't happen.

So it's not that he's been anti-deal per se. He's always said he wants a deal. He just wanted more restrictions. The rhetoric at the moment looks like something a bit softer than what he was after back in 2018. But look, this is the third of those three big...

peace project he's working on. We've talked about Ukraine, we've talked about Gaza. This is the other big one. And he came in saying that they've got to give up their nuclear program or I'm going to bomb them. And for a little while, you had quite a lot of talk about how America's just going to bomb Iran. That's really faded. And so now we've got, I think there are three rounds of

American Iranian talks brokered by Amman. The next round is on Saturday. So what's that, 3rd of May? Ongoing, and as Donald Trump said in that clip, he seems to think he can get a deal. But let's go back to that tension. His great ally, Benjamin Netanyahu, is not happy about this at all. And you've seen him, in fact, Netanyahu was saying to Israeli agencies yesterday,

just a few days ago. A bad deal is worse than no deal, and saying the only deal Israel could live with would be if Iran's nuclear capabilities were completely dismantled, which Iran isn't going to go for. The Americans have signaled the problem is weaponization. All we want is you not to have a bomb. So if we can get around that, and you can accept the inspections, which is a big climb down, that creates some kind of common space. So really, really interesting stuff. But it's this move fast thing, right? So

which Rob was just talking about, which will come back and bite him because this is never going to be an easy conversation. Back in March...

Trump sent a letter to Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader, where he said, let's do a deal, be a beautiful deal. You know, there's a place for diplomacy here. But if you don't, there will be military action and you won't like it. And reportedly that had a two-month deadline on it for achieving a new nuclear deal. Well, that's going to... We don't know exactly when the letter was sent, but it was kind of in the first 10 days of March. So we're entering the first 10 days of May. We're getting up to it now. Interestingly...

This is from the New York Times about two weeks ago. They reported that Israel had already planned a strike on Iranian nuclear sites, that that plan involved, well, America had to make the strike possible. We know that because only America's got the enormous bomb that's been developed for this job and would involve America in protecting Israel from retaliation. And apparently President Trump, he basically vetoed it. He said, no, I want to talk more.

So all to play for there. And one last thing, I'd really like to get Rob's take on this, actually. The other thing about this, this schizophrenia between, okay, I want peace, I want to talk, or I'm going to bomb you, but I don't want to bomb you. That talks, I think, to a tension within this White House and within this team. And it's the tension between the MAGA America firsters, you know, you could call them isolationists, the JD Vance's of this world, and

And a more traditional wing of the Republican Party, who the America firsters would call the neocons. And you can already see playing out this kind of war of words in Washington with people saying, oh, well, you know, the neocons are trying to pressure us into going into one of their wars again. This is, you know, this is madness. And people are putting, you know, different members of the administration into different boxes there. We had a conversation yesterday.

with a conservative American journalist who was talking in the same terms. So I think that's a really interesting dynamic in this White House and foreign policy that's going to play out over the next four years. There's another country that Trump's been trying to strike a deal with that we haven't spoken about yet, and that's China.

A lot of the changes that Trump has made in terms of his foreign policy have ostensibly been to enable him to focus more on the threat posed by Beijing to American dominance. This is Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth talking on the Hill back in March. Those who long for peace.

must prepare for war. That's why we're rebuilding our military. That's why we're reestablishing deterrence and the warrior ethos is because we live in a dangerous world with powerful ascendant countries with very different ideologies. If we want to deter war with the Chinese or others, we have to be strong and that president understands peace comes through strength. But my job as the Secretary of Defense is to make sure we're ready. Obviously, this isn't a new aim for the US, but Trump has definitely gone at it harder than any other previous president.

His attempts at rapprochement with Russia, for example, are apparently at least in part driven by a desire to stop Moscow from cosying up to Beijing, although most analysts agree that the cat is out of the bag on that one. But the main thing he's done is launch a massive trade war with China in a bid to reduce their economic might and try to bring back manufacturing jobs lost to the country's cheaper labour force. Let's hear Trump talking about that. We'll see what happens with China. We would love to be able to work a deal.

They've really taken advantage of our country for a long period of time. They've ripped us off beyond anybody, nobody. How people stood for it, sitting in my position, is not even believable. And we're talking about many presidents, not just a couple.

Rob, in terms of tackling China's might, how successful has Trump's approach with a tariff trade war been so far? In a word, unsuccessful. I was just looking at the numbers yesterday. We had these new GDP figures out of the US. GDP has crashed to, for the first quarter, crashed to 0.3% on an annualised basis.

same number for China was 5.4%. So the biggest impact of Trump's tariffs have actually been a negative impact on the US rather than on China. The Chinese have sort of delighted in this, calling the US President Trump the nation builder. But I think it's a little more complicated. Obviously, this is a

policy that's going to take time. As we see trade deals being done between Washington and the rest of the world, it's been clear among the people I've spoken to

that it's going to be the likes of India, Australia, Japan, South Korea that are going to be in the first wave of deals as Trump tries to build an alliance in that part of the world around China. And then I think that the second point I would make is,

I don't know that reigning in China is the number one goal of this trade war. I think it really is about bringing manufacturing back to the US and in a related way, reducing the reliance of the US on Chinese-based supply chains.

I think reducing the might of China is something they certainly want to do. But I think when you talk to Trump officials, the things that they're really talking about are the supply chains in the US being much more self-sufficient. So I think, yeah, look, we haven't,

This is barely a pinprick on China so far, but I think we've got a long way to go with this to play out. Can you tell us a bit more about the relationship between Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping? When I was going through clips of Trump talking about China, he's always very flattering about Xi, says he's a great guy and they get on very well. What's going on there?

I mean, it's the same old thing with President Trump, isn't it? I mean, whenever he wants to get something off the ground, he has to deal with a hostile media, first of all, then a divided Congress. It becomes very complicated. So he essentially the first hundred days have been

president by executive order you know what can he get done at the white house so he looks he looks to china he looks to president xi and he sees a guy who can just basically do whatever he wants if he wants to stay in power longer he can rewrite the rules and you know it's exactly the same when you look at um the way president trump sees president putin he fancies a bit of that for himself

It's very unclear to me where we are in terms of the latest round of trade tussle. I mean, Trump has said very clearly the ball is in President Xi's court. He wants Xi to come to him. He wants Xi to ask for help. He wants Xi to, you know, to make the first move. And he rather hinted the other day that those calls have started, but the Chinese were very quick.

deny it. So there's a bit of a power game there, there's a power play. But I think ultimately Trump looks around the world and he sees these huge leaders with almost untrammeled power and doesn't really understand why he can't have the same. Roland, I want to

I want to think a bit about Taiwan. Obviously, on Battlelines, we've reported extensively on the expansionist threat posed by China in Asia. And nowhere feels that more keenly than Taiwan, the democratic, self-governing island that Beijing claims as part of its territory. How do you think Taiwan is thinking about its situation since Trump has come in?

Well, to be honest, I spoke to a chap in Taipei just the other week off the back of the whole saga around British steel and the fact that it turns out that China just

basically dominates the world's entire steel supply at the moment, which is interesting. And we got onto the subject of this, you know, the invasion, will it happen? He said, look, people are pretty chilled. The actual, I'm paraphrasing, but pretty much the quotation was, people get much more panicked by Donald Trump than by the People's Liberation Army because, you know, with a few words, Donald Trump can tank the stock market. PLA can't do that. So...

I think, you know, Taiwan has been living with this for, you know, since the end of the Chinese Civil War, you know, since the 1940s. So my impression is they're not particularly any more panicked and scared than they were. But there's, again, these kind of mixed messages on Taiwan for the Americans. Yes, there's this tough talk on China. Yes, you had, you know, Pete Hegseth touring East Asia and China.

These very explicit calls for, you know, a military pivot to East Asia and being ready for the big fight over Taiwan if it comes and the deterring of that threat and all of that. And at the same time, you have had the usual kind of remarks from Donald Trump over the, you know,

before and after the election, so on along the lines of, you know, is Taiwan, is our spending all that worth our money? You know, and by the way, they've got this massive chip industry. Like, why can't we build them here in the United States? And so on and so forth. So a little bit of, clearly a little bit of nervousness there. The big question is, you know, if and when China will,

President Xi decides the time has come for reunification and how he would do about that. There was a lot of talk about kind of 2027 or 2028 and this window opening. A lot of people say that's been misinterpreted. It doesn't mean he's going to do it and so on. What is clear is that the PLA, its Navy, its Air Force is tooling up to be able to do this. I mean, there's no question about it. Landing ships,

being built, hypersonic missiles, an enormous navy, all of that. This is a long-term project

flashpoint in the world that Donald Trump has inherited, but which American presidents have been concerned about since, well, since the 1940s. So this isn't something that is specifically Trumpish. This is a perennial issue. And yes, in this era of history speeding up and all the rules going out of the window, it could well happen at some point.

I want to bring in a view from the ground in Asia. Sarah Newey is our global health correspondent. She's based in Bangkok, Thailand, and she sent us this voice note. There are two major issues that have dominated newspaper headlines, tariffs and aid cuts. I'll start with foreign aid. Trump's slashing of the budgets has hit everything from support for Agent Orange survivors in Laos to health clinics in Myanmar.

When the US aid cuts were first announced back in January, I was actually in Karen State, which is in eastern Myanmar, and the hospital I was visiting was reeling as it found out that half a million dollars of funding had been frozen overnight. When the devastating earthquake hit, this was also really apparent. The absence of the US on the ground and the presence of China was telling.

Then there's the tit-for-tat trade war between China and the US, which has pushed economic markets into chaos and raised tensions between the two superpowers. Some countries have spotted a potential opportunity to capitalise on businesses potentially looking to relocate from China. Yet the overriding sentiment is uncertainty. Some of the largest tariffs announced on Trump's Liberation Day were for Southeast Asian manufacturing hubs like Vietnam and Cambodia. The stakes are high as governments try to negotiate.

Both of these, tariffs and aid cuts, will likely have significant diplomatic impacts. One thing that keeps coming up in my conversations with analysts in this region is that, especially in places like Southeast Asia, that economic chaos and eroded trusts could push countries closer to Beijing. Rob and Roland, I'd be interested to get both of your thoughts on the long-term consequences of Trump's axing of USAID. Do you think...

like Sarah said, that this does just push countries into the arms of China, that it's leaving a gap that Beijing can fill? In a word, yes. I mean, American officials that I talk to are very keen to talk about Panama, which after Trump came to power and started putting pressure on it, actually then withdrew from China's Belt and Road Initiative. It's huge sort of

global infrastructure project. So they point to that as an example of why putting back on American soft power doesn't inevitably push countries into China's arms. But there is a gap there, and there are some concrete examples already. You know, you look at the natural disaster that hit Myanmar and the Chinese contribution

of aid was about seven times bigger than the American one. So, look, I mean, there's a gap there. I mean, China historically hasn't used aid in the same way that the US has and its global contribution has only ever been a fraction of American aid. It prefers to do all sorts of much more complicated things with loans and complicated ways of doing things. So there's a gap there. But, you know, it could be that

this sort of pullback on US involvement in the world comes at a reasonable time when Chinese officials are very worried about the state of their economy and I suspect are in no mood to be throwing it around the world. But as well as what you're seeing with USAID, you've got the US-restructured VOA, its global news broadcast outlet, essentially run by the State Department. So

you know, there's, there's, there's all sorts of gaps there and opportunities for other countries. I mean, you know, we talk about China all the time, but you know, there's an opportunity for Britain there through the, through the world service and, um, it's own much vaunted, um, aid programs. Um, but, but there is a gap there. Whether or not China will want to fill it, I think is another question. Yeah. I think I'd agree with that. I mean, um,

One of the things that came out of the reporting I was doing around China, China's efforts to exploit, not just this and the fall of soft power, but the whole tariff war and everything. They're making a real effort to kind of sell themselves as the grown-ups in the room, as the defenders of the free trade order, as we're the kind of people. And you can see kind of them reaching out to some traditional US allies. You saw President Xi visiting China.

And Vietnam was a particularly interesting one. That's a country that's got closer and closer to the United States recently, largely because they're so concerned about balancing off China. Vietnam was hit with tariffs. You can see the Chinese trying to play that game, but...

The sense I got is that, look, yeah, this has created opportunities for China, but it's not an open goal. I mean, they've got their own work cut out. It's not easy to develop a soft power network of quite that size. And a lot of the countries that they're turning to, they still have their own issues with China that are not going to go away or vanish. And I haven't really seen the Chinese stepping up to, you know, to do what USAID does. Yeah.

in quite the way that it did. And to be absolutely honest, I have a feeling that elements of that are going to slowly creep back in one form or another, maybe under future administrations, because it is just useful. And things like the Myanmar earthquake response, things like HIV clinics in South Africa, all of that doesn't cost very much money

but does kind of project and by goodwill and a degree of influence. And yes, absolutely, as Rob said, this is an opportunity not only for America's adversaries, but for the Europeans as well. I want to end by taking a bit of a step back. I'm going to read you some words from Amnesty International Secretary General Agnes Calomar.

100 days into his second term, President Trump has shown only utter contempt for universal human rights. His government has swiftly and deliberately targeted vital US and international institutions and initiatives that were designed to make ours a safer and fairer world.

His all-out assault on the very concepts of multilateralism, asylum, racial and gender justice, global health and life-saving climate action is exacerbating the significant damage those principles and institutions have already sustained and is further emboldening other anti-rights leaders and movements to join his onslaught.

Obviously, amnesty takes a very critical view of Trump. No surprises there. But I think she raises some important questions. And that's that our post-World War II system of international courts, multilateralism, Geneva Conventions, universal human rights, democratic norms and so on. It's only as strong as the countries that believe in it and uphold it. And it's not clear how much Trump believes in a lot of that stuff.

So I think we can all agree that the system is being eroded at the moment. But I'm wondering to what extent you think Trump is responsible for that? Or do you think there's something bigger at play? Rob, do you want to kick us off? I always kind of say the same thing. I mean, he, at the end of the day, was elected by people who agreed with him. And I don't think we can say Trump is responsible for all of this. To a certain extent, the world is responsible.

responsible for Trump. So he has accelerated things. And the other point I always make about American presidents is they are not elected to uphold what became to be known as the Washington Consensus or this new world order after the Second World War of rights and institutions and international law. American presidents

are elected to protect America. And American national security is the number one priority. Now, if that world order is protecting America, and we talked about NATO earlier, if American presidents believe that a strong and secure Western Europe is essentially the first line of defense for America, then they will invest in a safe and secure Western Europe. But really, it all comes down to

what it all means for America. What Trump does is he says the quiet parts out loud. I was Pakistan correspondent for the Telegraph during the Biden presidency.

we could talk about the legality of drone strikes conducted in Pakistan. You know, we could go back through the way Joe Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. Now, both of those presidents were very good at dressing up what they did in nice Washington speech in terms of human rights and international law.

But ultimately, a bunch of things they did would be exactly the same things that Trump does, but without the pretty language. So look, yeah, I think we are going through a time when, and I think you could go back to the end of the Cold War, where we are going through a rethinking of things we took for granted. Donald Trump has accelerated all of that, but I see bigger forces at work, you know,

And that's all a bit, we're all getting, I mean, I'm getting a bit hand wavy here. And of course, Amnesty is dressed it up in really apocalyptic language because they are the ones, I guess, with the finger in the die trying to hold it all back. But I think the direction of travel is not great. But I think to lay it all at Donald Trump's door,

is a little bit easy. The moment that I keep coming back to is the invasion of Iraq. And I'm just thinking about that more and more. And it comes from things people in the administration have said, especially the J.D. Vance's and the Pete Hegseth's of this world. But also, you know, conversations that I've had with kind of magerish Americans or others. And it feels like

That was a moment where American confidence in its powers at its absolute zenith. And then their attack, they went off to war on this war, which was sold to them as something completely heroic, as on a par with going to fight the Nazis and so on. It turned out to be an absolute bloody mess.

with not any of the glory they want. And you keep seeing again and again and again in the rhetoric around all this, this sense of bitterness, a sense of being deceived. It's why some people in the administration will talk about

or some, you know, America firsters will talk with much more anger about who they call the neocons than they talk about, you know, Obama or liberals or something like that. Because J.D. Vance, Pete Hegseth, you know, they served in the Great War on Terror. They went abroad. They saw how, you know, they're making things worse. It was a mess. And so you can see a kind of

A massive questioning of these assumptions that the assumption that expeditionary American power is good. The assumption that this being the world's policeman is actually in America's interests whatsoever. And a lot of that is playing out here, I think, in really interesting ways. And you get one amazingly interesting thing. J.D. Vance said the other week, he said, frankly, the British and the French were right about Suez.

This is from an American vice president. And for listeners who do not carry British national psychological scars around with them, Suez is when Egypt in 1956 nationalized the Suez Canal, which was controlled by France and Britain. We wanted it back. So we colluded with the Israelis, basically agreed the Israelis would stage an invasion of Egypt. So that would give us the excuse to invade, to intervene and stop the fighting.

Militarily, it was a great success. Eisenhower threatened to tank the pound by selling sterling. We had to leave. That was the end. It's gone down in history as a massive moment of humiliation for British and European power. The moment when it supercharged Britain

Decolonization, the end of the empire, all of that. Very stuffy old British conservative imperialists kind of feel it's the moment America stole our empire from us and all of that. But J.D. Vance said, no, look, I mean, they were right. And he said, because once we neutered the Europeans, there was no one to stop us from talking ourselves into completely crazy, hubristic things.

Which is a, I mean, whatever you think of the merits of that argument, whatever you think of Suez or so on, I think it's so revealing about the kind of the national psychosis that are going around that. So this is something that is more than, you know, more than two decades in the making. I don't know what you think. You live there. I mean, how long have you been lived in America, Rob? Yeah, I mean, I've been here 10, 11 years. I mean, I went to his campaign launch, would you believe, when he came down that golden escalator in 2015. Yeah.

and I started going to his rallies to see what was going on. And, you know, what was striking then was the number of people going to his rallies who'd never been to any political event before. And part of that was him being a celebrity and him being a showman. But also it was just a sense of being tired of the way things were. And I

really a questioning of why the world relied on America to get these jobs done. I mean, you know, it would be an exaggeration to say that was the number one thing people were talking about, but it was certainly part of the mix when blue collar workers in the US were struggling to make ends meet and they were worried the American dream didn't really exist anymore, which was that if you work hard, you get a sort of bigger house than you grew up in.

And so Trump, as ever, just seemed to instinctively tap into that. But it's his transactional nature, I think, that brings all of this out and makes him a target. His question is always, what's in it for us? And if...

uh american security is not he doesn't see for example a stable and secure afghanistan as being good for american security you know by the way i mean that's a whole other conversation we can have by where afghanistan is going to go i've got a feeling we're going to see a minerals deal on the table in afghanistan before too long then that you know again so

Trump gets a minerals deal in Ukraine. He can count the dollars and suddenly he sees, well, maybe this is worth some Americans on the ground and kind of this kind of partial security guarantee in the writing of the contract.

But he just doesn't see a peaceful world made up of rules and laws that we all abide by as being worth the expense for America in terms of blood and treasure in a way that American leaders have.

since the end of the Second World War. He says all that out loud. That's all for today's episode of Battle Lines. Thank you very much for joining us, Rob Crilley, our chief US correspondent in Washington, DC, and Roland Oliphant, my co-host and chief foreign analyst here at The Telegraph. We'll be back again on Monday with a special bank holiday episode. Until then, goodbye. Battle Lines is an original podcast from The Telegraph, created by David Knowles and hosted by me, Venetia Rainey, and Roland Oliphant.

If you appreciated this podcast, please consider following Battle Lines on your preferred podcast app. And if you have a moment, leave a review as it really helps others find the show. To stay on top of all of our news, subscribe to The Telegraph, sign up to our Dispatches newsletter or listen to our sister podcast, Ukraine The Latest. You can get in touch directly by emailing battlelines at telegraph.co.uk or contact us on X. You can find our handles in the show notes. The producer is Peter Shevlin. The executive producer is Louisa Wells.

Did you know that foreign investors are quietly funding lawsuits in American courts through a practice called third-party litigation funding? Shadowy overseas funders are paying to sue American companies in our courts, and they don't pay a dime in U.S. taxes if there is an award or settlement. They profit tax-free from our legal system, while U.S. companies are tied up in court and American families pay the price to the tune of $5,000 a year. But

Thank you.

innovation, and growth. Only President Trump and congressional Republicans can deliver this win for America and hold these foreign investors accountable. Contact your lawmakers today and demand they take a stand to end foreign-funded litigation abuse.

You've set the gold standard for your business. Your website should do the same. Wix puts you at the helm so you can enjoy the creative freedom of designing your site just the way you want. Want someone to bounce your ideas off? Talk with AI to create a beautiful site together. Whatever your business, manage it from one place and tie it all together with a personalized domain name. Gear up for success with a brand that says you best. You can do it yourself on Wix.