Justin Webb on The Trump World Order (Part 1)
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Welcome to Intelligence Squared, where great minds meet. I'm producer Mia Cirenti. Today's episode is part one of our recent live event in London Smith Square Hall with Justin Webb. Webb was joined in conversation by journalist and broadcaster Rich LaSharr to discuss how Donald Trump is reshaping the world order.

This conversation is coming to you in two parts. If you're an Intelligence Squared member, you can get access to the full conversation ad-free. Head to intelligencesquared.com forward slash membership to find out more or hit the IQ2 extra button on Apple. Now here's our host, Richela Shah, with more.

Good evening, everyone. I'm Ritula Shah. Welcome to this Intelligence Squared debate, event, event, chat, I think. Debate? Oh, my goodness. No, no, no debate. Let me introduce Justin Webb. I don't think he needs much introduction. He's the presenter of BBC Radio 4's Today programme. He was the BBC's North America editor for eight years, covering the 9-11 attacks and the election of President Obama. He regularly writes for The Times and is the host of the BBC's flagship America podcast,

AmeriCast. I think we've all listened to him. He's the only one, Risa. He's the only one. And he's the author of the memoir, The Gift of Radio, My Childhood and Other Train Wrecks. And that was published in 2022. Now, Justin, I was trying to think of something sort of vaguely insightful to begin this conversation. And basically, I failed. All I can think about is a snow globe and the way in which we shake a snow globe. And there are all

those flakes sort of fluttering all over the place and you know there's something in there but you can't really see what it feels a bit like that to me at the moment should we be surprised i just i don't think we should be surprised but i think that the you think of starmer's visit

Whenever it is Thursday to DC. I mean we would all pay wouldn't we big bucks to be a fly on the wall Oh my goodness He is the most extraordinary man talking now about Trump not star mother I thought so secure is also extraordinary in his own way, but a bit of BBC balance there for you I I there is something about Trump that is just

to many people repellent, but also captivating. And the captivating side of him is the reason why he's president, isn't it? And the personality of presidents really does matter, and their kind of ability to project

I have interviewed Trump from Doncaster railway station This is a bit of an insight into the planning process of the today program so many years ago I was at a UKIP conference in Doncaster at the racecourse the highlight

I should say as a journalist, not an attendee, just to make that clear. But I was doing the conference and at the end of it, the program rang me and said, we've got this businessman, Donald Trump. We've set up an interview with him. He's a US businessman. You used to be in America as a correspondent. Would you do the interview? Because the business person has gone AWOL. So I then had to do this interview from, I was by now on the train, right?

at Doncaster Station, which hadn't yet taken off. So the reason I'm telling this story is the reason it really struck me at the time. I mean, Trump wasn't running for office at that stage, but he was a really significant figure. And I think it's fair to say he's always been a significant figure in his own mind.

And yet he was totally happy with the randomness of this weird English guy saying, "Hello, it's Justin from the Today program. I'm on a train actually in a place called Doncaster that you won't have heard of. Could we just do the interview now and we'll patch in my questions later or whatever?" Totally fine. He just didn't care. And there is this element of Trump that is able to deal with

just oddness and and being outside the mainstream and normality that I think is Pret-a-natural actually, I don't think there are many other serious people who've done well in politics who have that ability just to roll with stuff and

and to be utterly random as the kids say and that is of course a good thing in the sense that it's got to him to where he is but it's also potentially not such a good thing when it comes to diplomacy and if you're a Ukrainian you're not that happy with the randomness but you know the personality of presidents really does matter and I think it matters with him and it's mattered with others. Obama

Just to kind of digress for a second Obama when I was there Was this reaction against a lot of the things that had come before against W Bush and all the rest of it and Obama was very austere and all he was one-to-one I interviewed him one-to-one. He was like I wasn't in Doncaster when interviewed Obama, but it was actually standing or sitting next to him, but it was one of those things where you're sitting next to a

you know that you're never going to get an opportunity to meet this person again. He's a really famous person, a consequential person. So what do you say in the minutes when they're setting up the sound and the camera and all the rest of it? And I thought this weird thing that Obama had mentioned in a speech, this incredibly unusual illness called type 1 diabetes.

an autoimmune condition, and my son had just contracted it, like a month or so before I interviewed Obama. So I thought, I'll mention it. It'll be something we'll sort of bond, rather than just talk about the weather. So I said, Mr. President, before we start, can I just say how wonderful it was that you mentioned type 1 diabetes in a speech recently, and my son has got it, and we've been really...

affected as a family by it and it's lifelong and it's incurable and the rest of it. And he knew everything about it. He knew all the pathways to a cure. He knew the best hospitals and the rest of it. But there was still a kind of distance

Between us because of the kind of man that he was and I was thinking I'd been in America when W had been president - and I was thinking if this had been W You know our tears would have mingled would have melt on the floor together He even had the foggiest idea what Taiwan diabetes was but there has a kind of an element of togetherness And each president approaches the world and approaches

everything fundamentally as we all do as human beings and I think we forget that sometimes about them because of this pedestal that they get onto that they are human beings with all the same pressures and all the same oddnesses and my goodness in the case of Trump you sort of you see that and all the same changes during the course of their lives and you wonder as well

The extent to which Trump now is being affected by, does he care about legacy? People sometimes ask us on AmeriCast, what do you think his legacy? I'm not even sure he cares that much. Does he want his children to take over? What's going on in his mind? And all of those things are relevant.

Again, sadly, if you're Ukraine, but all those things are relevant to what's going on at the moment. Sorry, that's a ludicrously long answer, Ritula. I'll be quiet now. Interesting, that's fine. The other thing that I'm fascinated by is you say there is this appearance of chaos and all sorts of things firing off in all sorts of directions.

But they do seem to be much more organized this time as an administration. I think that's right. And I think that's another really important aspect to the Trump second presidency. First time round, he had all sorts of people that he thought he ought to have. He didn't think he was going to win. They were really surprised that night when they won. Terrified. And in the end, he ended up getting all sorts of people into the administration who he fell out with really badly because they weren't his sorts of people. This time round...

with one exception. I'm not sure that Elon Musk will last the full course. We'll talk about that in a bit more. But generally, in cabinet positions, he's getting in. And you think of Pete Hegseth at defence and all the rest of it. I mean, he'll fire them if he sees it as expedient to do so.

But I think that fundamentally they are all on board in as much as they are all totally subservient to him and that really obviously matters to him and that gives this administration a much more certain path than the last one had and he absolutely knows what he wants to do and and and

Abroad, of course, that matters, but also domestically it matters hugely. There's a much more of a focus on what they want to achieve and where, and I think that's a big, big change. So at the end of January, you wrote a column in The Times where the headline was, Beyond the bluster, Trump may be making America normal again. I know you didn't necessarily write the headline, but do you think that that is the case? Is America becoming normal?

in sunset. It's funny, I can tell you this, everything you write as a BBC person, you would have done this as well, when you worked for the BBC, is checked by someone from the BBC, is read by them, and it's really important that it is, and it's right that it is too, because we work for the BBC, and there are

Obvious issues there because they never see the headlines because the headline is done by some tired sub-editor later Not just think that'll be good and you know it was a slightly queasy feeling particularly written something for the Daily Mail about what the headline is gonna be anyway Yeah, the headline was he's is he gonna make America normal again and actually

Stand by the headline because and I think the headline writer was right I think it was something that I had mentioned in the in the course of the article one of the really interesting things about Trump is that he is not in the minds of many Americans an extremist He is not in the minds of America many Americans a far right winger and

in the sense of those far right wingers who Elon Musk now says that he likes around the world. Trump is actually, and it's a really interesting thing this, in spite of the efforts of the Democrats

to portray him as a danger to democracy and as a crazed extremist, it never worked. And one of the reasons why it didn't work, it seemed to me, is that he has a lot of aspects of his personality and of his policy positions that are really

inside the mainstream of America and it's actually the Democrats who have taken themselves away from that mainstream and you saw this in opinion polls in the years before the election where people were asked which party do you think is the most extreme and actually was pretty much a 50/50 split and some polls suggesting a majority of Americans thought the Democrats were more extreme and it's on things like

the southern border where there is a real desire among most Americans to have that border, if not sealed off, then to have fewer people coming across who haven't the foggiest idea who they are or where they're going. It's about race.

where many, many Americans are queasy at the idea of quotas and of racial segregation as they would see it in schools, in universities, where there's this kind of re-racialization of America. And what the left would say is we're doing it for right reasons because we want to make America fundamentally fairer again. But to a lot of Americans, it just feels wrong. And they quote, and Trump used to quote Martin Luther King,

I look forward to a day when a person is judged by his character, or the color of his skin, all that kind of stuff. There is something sort of fundamentally un-American almost about efforts to get around that, even if you are saying those efforts are for decent purposes. And the last one, and we might talk about this separately, but I think it was a huge underlying issue in the election. There was one

advert that they ran at football matches over and over and over again and it ended with the words Kamala Harris is for they/them, Donald Trump is for you. And I think the trans issue, the gender sex issue

was somewhere where he is actually pretty much in the mainstream of where most Americans are. So the reason I wrote that and the reason I think it's still true is that one of the issues about Trump is that for all the kind of crazy stuff

that there is, there is an element of him that is very much in the mainstream. Same on abortion, actually, just thinking about it. Again and again, the Democrats tried to persuade people that he would threaten abortion to court right across the states. He would sign a bill banning it. And again and again, he said no. And actually, I think fundamentally, most Americans look at him and say, is he really in himself an anti-abortion leader?

campaigner, not really. He's a libertine. He's not interested in those things. And of course in his new health secretary, goodness knows how it goes in other aspects, but RFK is pro-choice, was a democrat,

maybe is a Democrat. So the idea of, again, of trying to push him to push to people the idea that Trump is fundamentally outside the American mainstream just doesn't work.

But if we accept this characterised nation of Trump as a new property developer, essentially, what about the tensions within the administration, the Elon Musk tech pros, the evangelist Christians, the working class populists? I mean, there's an awful lot of strains of opinion and ideas that are pulling in very different directions. To put it mildly, I mean,

What an extraordinary group of people. You've got these really serious kind of, what's it called here, blue labour people. So the idea, these people who are keen on community and place and...

Tends to be anti-immigration certainly illegal immigration, but actually tend to be anti-immigration anyway the idea of and Pro religion and pro tradition and and

and leery about the idea of free trade if indeed they accept it at all, wanting everything to be based around community and place. And that is a really important part of the Trump coalition. You think of, there's a think tank called American Compass, which is the serious side of it, but there's also Steve Bannon,

these kind of rather wild, woolly characters who've attached themselves to Trump and are occasionally very important, occasionally less important. Who does Bannon hate more than anyone in the world? Elon Musk, who he says is a Chinese spy. I mean, he actually says it in terms.

because you've got the other side is actually the polar opposite in a sense of all the community people. It's Elon Musk who says, you know, you should be fired if someone can do your job cheaper in China. What the heck? And has huge business interests in China and all the rest of it. And you've got a real fissure inside the Trump administration and inside more broadly the American right between those who genuinely do see

an America which reaches out almost in a kind of Reaganite, Thatcherite free trade way to the outside world but just beats the outside world at doing this stuff and those who want to close up and be just at home. And at the moment it's the latter group

actually who seem to me to be driving policy, although it's the former group who make all the noise, the tech bros and all the rest of it. And of course, who provide all the money. And that might become quite important as the administration goes on.

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You've painted a bit of a picture of where Trump might be going, what some of the ideas are that are flowing around the administration. Let's just talk about the specifics. And perhaps the thing that has shaken us up in Europe is Trump and Ukraine.

What are we to make about this idea that Trump appears to want to rehabilitate Putin? That's one way of reading it. Yeah, so two things about that number one I think that the Trump Putin bromance thing is real and you hear that from people who have worked with Trump and seen him

at close quarters in and around the Putin orbit. And the closest of those is H.R. McMaster, who was Trump's

National Security Advisor for just over a year I think in the first term but but who left on relatively good terms most people didn't of course, but he he he did and McMaster's written a really interesting book Whose name I can't remember because I'm in my 60s now and you don't remember these things do you but but it might come to me during the course of the conversation really interesting book about his time With Trump and one of the things he

talks about is a day when he got into the office in the morning and Trump said, "Have you seen this?" And it's a headline in the New York Post, which is the very scrappy New York tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch. And the headline is very favorable to Trump and Putin. I can't remember what it is, but it's unlike only Trump gets Putin and it's great that the two men get on. And Trump says to McMaster, his national security advisor, "Cut that out and get it to Putin. Send it to him."

And McMaster thinks absolutely madness and doesn't do it and then a week later says I didn't send that I want you to know boss because I think it was a Damaging thing if we're seen to be fawning to him and Trump by then is interested in other things and has forgotten about it But he does have a real desire to impress Putin and that and I don't think that that needs to be in people's minds needs to be in Kirsten as mine when they try to deal with him, but

Having said that I think there is also a kind of there's a strand of more coherent thinking about the relationship between the United States and Europe which is actually to an extent cross party because none of this should be

surprise to any European Americans behind the scenes and sometimes in front of the scenes you think of Robert Gates who was Defense Secretary for Obama and had been as well for W Bush stayed on a Republican coming to Europe in probably about 29 20 2010 or so and saying in terms you people have got to pay more for your own defense or we'll be hopping it and and you know warning after warning

that the disparity, the disparity between what America spends as a proportion of GDP on defense and what, say, Spain does is so huge, given that to an American eye, everyone in Spain is on holiday for three months a year, and the rest of the time it's just drinking coffee or having a siesta and living large off American...

Money and you might say particularly if you're Spanish there is more to it than that But to most Americans there isn't and it was always going to happen this sense that the America that the Europeans are just not Serious about putting their money where their mouths are so I think there is you know in all of it as a sense in which the Frustration that he feels with us is also felt much more widely than just inside the Trump administration

orbit. But having said that, goodness knows the degree to which he is open to

openly being adoring of Putin and openly dismissive of Zelensky, albeit that they have history and that may be part of it and that matters with Trump. But I think it's more complicated than that. I know there's a sort of sense that Zelensky, because he was one of the reasons why Trump was impeached, the first impeachment,

was to do with Zelensky and whether the Bidens, whether Zelensky could be pressured to do the dirty on the Bidens and particularly on Hunter Biden and did he not come up with the goods? Zelensky himself has said he didn't feel pressured. Trump is eminently capable of

of forgiving people. I mean, for goodness sake, his vice president likened him to Hitler. So that was a pretty forgiving ability. And I do think that Trump's view of Ukraine is also not settled because that randomness that we started off talking about

also does apply, it genuinely applies to his view of people and of situations. He is so capable, as we all know, don't we, of just changing suddenly in a way that's dizzying and very difficult to cover as a journalist as well. But there is even within...

the Republican Party as it is now there are the MAGA Republicans who I think probably do believe that Ukraine has sucked up American money despite the fact there's evidence that suggests that most of the money that's been given to Ukraine has actually been spent in America on American arms and things and but there are those who believe really that that money shouldn't be spent and then there were the more

of the more traditional Republicans who actually believe in liberty, security, they're worried about Russia. Again, how will he square that circle? Those people are quiet at the moment. They will be quiet forever. Well, most of them are either quiet or dead.

or join the Democratic Party. I mean, one of the interesting, so there are fissures within the Republicans and within the Trump White House, and the obvious one is between their attitude to China and to immigration and to all the rest of it and to place.

The fissure between those who are traditional neocons and want to reshape the world in America's image and bring Jeffersonian democracy to everyone, whether people want it or not, they've gone pretty much. They are not powerful enough.

not only in the Republican Party, they aren't powerful in America at all. You think of people like Dick Cheney and Liz Cheney, the kind of absolute archetypal people, well, certainly Dick was, of that manner, and she was a Republican Congresswoman as well. They have been blasted out of the party

They are not welcome within it. They are completely homeless now. They kind of tried to support Kamala Harris, but that didn't get them anywhere or indeed her anywhere either. So there is the group of people that you describe are at least for the time being pretty much finished. Come back to some of those tensions in a moment. Just talk about Gaza and the Middle East, if we may. And there was that...

just extraordinary press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan. I don't know if any of you saw the clips where he looked so uncomfortable. He was sort of sitting there like this, just clearly not knowing where to put himself as Donald Trump talked about taking Gaza and cherishing it and the Riviera of the region and all the rest of it.

What does that mean though? Does it mean Netanyahu now has free reign? That Saudi Arabia actually is the only country? I think there are some sort of fundamental principles about Trumpism. There are not many, but there are one or two. And this is a really important one because he ran on it and he will want it to become true. He does not want to get America involved in wars.

He would not want to get America involved in Gaza, for instance, either in defending it or in booting out Hamas or whatever. I mean, it is a really big part. And I was in the States for the primary elections where Trump blew everyone to one side. And one of the really interesting things, talking to his supporters and those who were intending to vote for him in Iowa in the snow back in January of last year, was...

He's going to keep us safe and he is going to bring peace to the world I mean people would genuinely say he's going to bring a troubled world he's going to bring balm and peace and Comedy to a troubled world and they genuinely believe it and that is in many respects why people voted for him And I don't think he will want to go back on that and actually weirdly as a person for all the bombast I don't think he is terribly keen on on

making war and I think there is something about him that holds back from it so I think there is a sort of so the idea of certainly of Israel doing anything I mean the obvious thing would be to to to

to launch an attack on Iran if they felt that Iran was a sudden real clear danger, perhaps with nuclear weapons suddenly not being that far away. What would Trump's attitude to that be? I'm not sure. I think your assumption would be that he'd say, go ahead and do it. But actually, given that it would involve the United States, I think there might also be quite a lot of him that tried to avoid it coming down.

So I don't think he is a warmonger in the kind of classic sense of the word. But I guess the difference is when you think about Ukraine and you think about Gaza and the West Bank, it's about finding some sort of equitable deal in some sense. And so far in both instances, he appears to clearly have taken a side, which is quite difficult. Well, that's interesting because I think another kind of firm thing that you can go back to the first Trump term

and say one of the things that Trump seems to believe, and it's a perfectly respectable thing to believe, even though a lot of people don't agree with it, is that the road to Middle East peace does not come through dealing with the Palestinian issue first. It's too intractable, it's too difficult, it's been tried for too long. The road to peace in the Middle East, he would say, and I think he's, well, I know that his, as I've talked to, is the guy who's in charge of the transition in the Department of Defense

about this, Robert Wilkie. The road to peace in the Middle East comes from involving the Gulf states in particular and Arab minds and money more widely

doing the things that will eventually persuade the Palestinians and the Israelis that it is in both of their interests and the classic side of that is the Abraham Accords which you know have in a sense stood the test of time they still exist even after October the 7th even after what's happened in Gaza there are still these these Accords the big

prize now is for Saudi Arabia to become involved and for Saudi money to become involved. And it's interesting, we've had the Saudi ambassador on the Today program who is not, who is...

absolutely clear about what he regards as the impossibility of dealing at the moment with the Netanyahu government, but has not at all closed the door to the idea that eventually Saudi Arabia will have to become involved in a Gaza solution. And if anyone can seduce them into that involvement, weirdly, I think it is Trump.

We'll come back to the administration. There's so much to talk about. I just want to talk about the Dems for a minute. What do they do? There is talk about Chris Murphy, Senator Chris Murphy, perhaps emerging as the new face of resistance. Do you think that's possible? And actually...

How difficult is it for the Democrats to organize themselves in the... There's a great story that John Major tells about going to Russia in the early 1990s. So Russia's going down the tubes. There are people starving in the streets. Yeltsin is the president. Major turns to Yeltsin as they're walking through this innate Kremlin corridor to lunch and says, in a word, Boris...

"What is the state of your country?" And Yeltsin turns back to Major and says, "In a word, good." And Major thinks, "Oh my God, I've been made to look like a complete idiot in front of all the civil servants and people who know perfectly well that Russia is absolutely a basket case, it's falling down fast." So he turns back to Yeltsin as they're sitting down in the Great Hall where they're having lunch and says, "Boris, what is the longer version of that?" To which Yeltsin replies, "Not good."

And that, actually, I was reminded of that story that I heard Major tell a few times by the Democrats, because the short version of where they are at the moment is that they lost the election because of racism and sexism

And everyone has lost election all incumbent governments lost elections last year It'll all be fine the longer version is all of that is true actually there was some racism I'd say particularly sexism even misogyny is really difficult still for a woman to be elected president the United States But oh my goodness the story is a bigger story than that and it's about fundamental things

and I think we touched on one or two of them before about how you work out

what your policy is towards illegal immigration, what your policy is towards race in the modern era. Are you still going to have a wing of people who say, "Let in anyone who wants to come"? Are you still on race going to have a wing of people who say, "Defund the police"? Which James Carville, the Ragin' Cajun, the guy who was responsible for Clinton being elected back in the 1990s, said,

the three worst words in the American language or something. I mean, this kind of... And on trans issues as well, are you really going to have... You know, the governor of Maine is now threatening to take Trump to court in order to make sure that biological males can still play in school sports in the state of Maine. And whatever you think of the rights and wrongs of the issue, it is not a popular issue in the United States. And here's the real problem for the Democrats. On all of those issues...

Are you going to have within your party a group of people who think that to disagree about them is on one side to be right, on the other side to be evil, evil, bigoted, and they will not allow, and this I'm afraid is particularly a young person's problem in the Democrats, they will not allow

that these are political differences and you should maybe compromise and you should chat about it and you should come up with a position that seems to attract people to your cause rather than saying you who disagree with me are an evil bigot and I won't have anything to do with you. And those

fundamental problems, it seems to me, for the Democratic Party are ones that they're going to have to sort out if they're going to mount a long-term challenge to Trump. And are there any individuals that you think might lead that? Yes, I mean, the Democrats actually have a very strong bench and I...

I think there is an argument for saying that any of the other senior people who could have stood instead of Kamala Harris probably would have done better than her. I'm not sure they necessarily would have won, but Josh Shapiro, the governor of Pennsylvania, I think would have had a very strong chance. Gretchen Whitmer...

the governor of Michigan equally, and there are quite a few others actually as well who would, I think, have scored really well because they have the ability to pull the party back from the places where it's not popular and appeal more broadly. But my goodness, to keep everyone on board in the modern Democratic Party is a really, really difficult thing to do. Trump's done it with the Republicans by just being...

dominant and domineering himself and all those those Disagreements that we talk about are real and there but they're kind of shaded at the moment by by the figure of him and in the Democrats you're not going to have that because you're not going to have a big figure you've got to have someone emerge and in those circumstances it seems to me you've got to be able to have discussions

And at the moment, I don't see them having those discussions. They need... You know, in Clinton, Bill, and Obama, they had two kind of generationally brilliant politicians who were able to just...

just pull everyone together and dominate the conversation and attract people. And that's what they've got to find. And I'm not saying they can't find another of those people, but I do think if they don't find one of those people, they're going to find it quite difficult to come up against J.D. Vance, as it almost certainly will be next time around. Thanks for listening to Intelligence Squared. This episode was produced by Connor Boyle with additional production and editing by Mark Roberts.

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