Latest / The Fourcast / Musk, Gaetz, Gabbard: who could Donald Trump fire first? | The American Fourcast

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Musk, Gaetz, Gabbard: who could Donald Trump fire first? | The American Fourcast · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  I thought he was a firebrand. I think he did a very good job.
• 0:03
  That was populism. That was democracy.
• 0:05
  It was messy at it's finest. You just say messy at it's
• 0:07
  finest. Well, yeah, democracy is messy.
• 0:10
  Isn't it? I mean, there is a certain
• 0:11
  snootiness from the media about some of these appointments.
• 0:14
  It's seen as if like, it's an attack on expertise.
• 0:17
  But I think maybe what the Americans want is an attack on
• 0:20
  expertise. Donald Trump has been very
• 0:21
  explicit he wants to go after some of his political
• 0:24
  adversaries if he wants. To go after Liz Cheney, you
• 0:27
  know, or Nancy Pelosi, what is there to stop him, Tom?
• 0:30
  There's very little to stop him, especially if you have a loyal
• 0:32
  attorney general. Absolutely, absolutely, very
• 0:35
  little. Who's?
• 0:36
  He going to sack first Trump from his cabinet.
• 0:45
  Hello and welcome to the American Forecast.
• 0:48
  We now know the shape of Donald Trump's administration, and it's
• 0:51
  like nothing America has ever seen before.
• 0:54
  Firebrands, Mavericks and disruptors make up the bulk of
• 0:57
  the government. There's the tech giant, the news
• 1:00
  anchor and the governor who shot her family dog and goat.
• 1:03
  The unifying factor, their unwavering loyalty to the
• 1:06
  president-elect. So can they shake up the
• 1:09
  establishment to the benefit of ordinary Americans as promised?
• 1:13
  Or will we just see overreach, outrage and ultimately, perhaps
• 1:16
  implosion? To discuss all this, I'm joined
• 1:19
  by Jennifer Ewing from Republicans Overseas UK, Thomas
• 1:22
  GIF, the director of the UCL Centre on US Politics, and our
• 1:25
  very own correspondent Kieran Woodley, who's just back from a
• 1:29
  month at Mar a Lago. Sort of.
• 1:31
  Kieran, did they offer you a job?
• 1:32
  No. Were you angling?
• 1:34
  Were you angling? To be confirmed to.
• 1:36
  Be confirmed. OK, hold that space.
• 1:38
  OK, Jennifer, let me start with you.
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  What are you more pleased by in terms of picks?
• 1:42
  The The chief law enforcement officer who was once
• 1:44
  investigated for child sex trafficking or the former Fox
• 1:49
  News anchor is now going to be running the biggest military
• 1:51
  machine on the planet. Sure, sure.
• 1:54
  So I think it's a bit disingenuous to call Pete
• 1:59
  Hegseth the Fox News anchor. He.
• 2:01
  Was also a soldier. He was a soldier.
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  He. Said he is a journalist.
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  He's a, you know, he's a TV host.
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  He served in Iraq and Afghanistan 20 years.
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  He's got bronze medal. He runs a lot of veterans
• 2:12
  organizations, which is actually how he ended up on Fox News
• 2:15
  talking about those organizations.
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  He's 44. So I think he's he's a good pick
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  and he. Doesn't want women to serve in
• 2:23
  combat. In combat, yeah, he's OK with
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  pilots. But actually I'm not a military
• 2:27
  expert, but there are a lot of military experts that do say
• 2:30
  women do not belong on the front line.
• 2:32
  So I, I defer to, you know, his, his wisdom in that I've not been
• 2:38
  in the front line. He's not saying no women in the
• 2:40
  military at all. He's saying in certain, in
• 2:43
  certain positions, you know, you need the strongest people.
• 2:45
  It's a military, it's not. So you're, you're a fan of his?
• 2:48
  Yeah. What about Matt Gaetz?
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  Matt Gaetz, look, that's definitely the biggest heavy.
• 2:53
  Attorney General. For for a multitude of reasons.
• 2:56
  That's a that's a heavy lift. We're we've got a few senators
• 2:59
  that have already come out and said not sure I'm going to back
• 3:02
  him. What will be interesting is if
• 3:04
  what if President-elect Trump used what's called the the
• 3:08
  recess appointments to get Matt Gaetz through but.
• 3:11
  That's the big picture. These are the people, these
• 3:13
  these appointments, if they get approved, indicate that Trump,
• 3:17
  you know, during his campaign was very serious about the
• 3:20
  promises that he made. He.
• 3:21
  Still has that mandate of of the popular vote, the electoral
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  votes and you know, 75 million people that thought the country
• 3:29
  was going in the wrong direction.
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  The biggest issues that people voted on economy and inflation
• 3:34
  and of course the crisis at the southern border.
• 3:37
  So let's not forget about the other appointment, Tom Holman.
• 3:41
  The borders are, that is probably, I think one of the
• 3:44
  most exciting because, well, because he's done the job.
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  He's worked under, I believe it was 5 or 6 different presidents.
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  So he's worn the uniform, he's done the border control.
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  Job So someone who's been working for the Republicans
• 3:59
  overseas, you fully expect there to be mass deportations, as
• 4:02
  Trump has promised on day one? Yes.
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  What does that actually mean in your book?
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  Sure. So what that will look like is
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  and just for anybody that's, you know, continuing with the fear
• 4:12
  mongering that they're going to break into somebody's house and
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  steal somebody's abuela or something, that's not what we're
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  talking about. There's actually a lot of low
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  hanging fruit. We know that there's
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  approximately 1.3 million people who have already been told, hey,
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  you've broken some sort of a law, you need to check in with
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  the Department of Immigration. So they're going to go after the
• 4:31
  criminals first. Tom, I'm going to turn to you.
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  When you look at these appointments that Trump has
• 4:36
  made, what message does that send to you as an American and
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  to the rest of the world? Well, the first word that you
• 4:42
  mentioned in describing his appointments was loyalty.
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  I think you might say that it's fealty, but it's one of the two.
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  Certainly, Donald Trump doesn't want to commit what he perceives
• 4:51
  as the mistake he made in the first term, which was to rely on
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  status quo Washington insiders, inside the Beltway types, public
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  servants who have spent their careers in Washington
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  essentially. This time, he really wants his
• 5:06
  own people. And I think the fact that he had
• 5:08
  four years in the White House, had four years out, gave him
• 5:11
  time to reflect and figure out exactly who were those people
• 5:14
  who were loyal to him all the way through.
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  And they're being rewarded now with jobs.
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  The second message that it sends to me is that Donald Trump is
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  serious about disrupting the status quo, that he wants to
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  drain the swamp. I'm a little bit skeptical
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  whether he can actually be successful in that.
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  Because if there's one word that defines Washington, it's status
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  quo. And there's so many factions and
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  entrenched interest and roadblocks that Elon Musk and
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  others who kind of want to go in and and clean house will
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  encounter that it's going to be an uphill battle.
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  Is there anything, Karen, that I know that, you know, there's a
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  clean sweep, He's got the House. We don't know the exact numbers,
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  but he's got the House, He's got the Senate.
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  Of course, the Supreme Court, you know, made a big ruling more
• 6:00
  or less in the favour of any president acting as president
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  back in June. Is there anyone that can stop
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  these appointments? So, so there's some appointments
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  which are people who are based in the White House where that he
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  doesn't have to go through the Senate for those.
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  The other ones in the Cabinet like the Matt Gates and the
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  attorney general, that has to have Senate confirmation and you
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  have to have a majority for that.
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  Now, interestingly, actually, you used to have to have more
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  than that, but the Democrats changed that rule 11 years ago
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  because it was the Republicans holding up loads of Obama's
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  appointments. So.
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  A simple majority does the trick.
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  Exactly. And so the interesting thing
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  with Matt Gaetz, for example, is that why would Trump talk about
• 6:37
  having a recess appointment? Because if you just need a
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  simple majority, he has 53 senators.
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  So he can do it very easily, which I think points to the fact
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  that he's obviously worried about pushing that through.
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  The Democrats still can do what they did last time, which is
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  delay, delay, delay. And that was one of the reasons
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  why Trump has spoken about the recess appointments, because
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  last time they delayed all of his appointments.
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  I think at one point the Republicans said it would have
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  taken 11 years to get all of his appointments through.
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  There's there's an interesting question here about what will a
• 7:02
  Trump second term look like? Because when I was out on the
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  campaign trail, one of the things which always came.
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  On your job hunt? On my job hunt, yeah.
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  One of the things which always came up was that a lot of
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  people, young, old, whatever, said the world was a lot safer
• 7:14
  and calmer under Donald Trump. Now you can argue whatever you
• 7:17
  want about. That which doesn't necessarily
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  time with disruption. No, but so there was a sense
• 7:21
  that we need, I guess the sense is that we want a disruptor and
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  someone who's different who has non experts because we went with
• 7:28
  the wonky experts under the Bushes.
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  We went with the wonky experts under Obama.
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  We went with them under Biden. The world is now not as safe.
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  I think the the conundrum there though, is that if you are
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  saying things were calmer and more safe under Trump back then
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  in the first time he had those experts, the John Kelly's, the,
• 7:45
  you know, the John Bolton's. So, So if they're all now gone,
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  will the world be safer and will America go in the right
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  direction? That is the conundrum.
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  And there there are two issues. There's the issue of policy and
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  then there's the issue of temperance or, or tone.
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  And, you know, the tone is much more abrasive than it was last
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  time, you know, and the policies seem to be much stricter or much
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  more robust than they were last time.
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  And I just wonder, Tom, whether when you look at the personnel
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  that's been appointed, although they're still waiting to be
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  approved, well, a lot, a lot of people are outraged by the tone
• 8:19
  that some of these people have uttered.
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  But is that talent there? Do you see expertise behind the
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  tone? Well, I think that there's some
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  interesting selections, and chief among them would be Elon
• 8:28
  Musk. So if you're thinking about
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  trying to run the government in an entrepreneurial way, in a way
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  that a manager would, I think that there's probably few
• 8:37
  individuals who would be better positioned to be able to do
• 8:40
  that. Now, whether Washington again
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  can operate like a corporation, I'm a little bit skeptical of.
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  It's also quite funny that in the apartment of government
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  efficiency they appointed 2 guys, Elon Musk and Vivek as
• 8:52
  well will. Not be getting paid.
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  Yeah, but but so. But there are two people, there
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  are two big egos trying to sort out this problem.
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  Absolutely. And that could be a problem.
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  I do think that everyone's fairly chummy now, but the one
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  thing that we saw during the first Trump administration is
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  that many of his high level appointees ended up resigning,
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  saying very critical things of Donald Trump.
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  So whether Donald Trump can maintain kind of continuity in
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  personnel, I think will be a big challenge, OK.
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  Let's go through some other names.
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  And Kirsty Nolan, the governor of South Dakota, the famous goat
• 9:24
  and dog Slayer, although she's famous for other things as well.
• 9:27
  Good appointment, I mean. I just don't want to hear sad
• 9:33
  dog killing stories during December.
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  The affirmation love dogs in this country do careful what.
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  You say no, I said I don't Remember Me.
• 9:40
  Remember Mitt Romney? I said I don't want to hear it.
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  That's what I'm saying. I mean, dog, I, you know, I just
• 9:45
  absolutely don't want to hear it.
• 9:46
  So look, it was. OK, beyond the dog's day.
• 9:50
  Does she have talent? Yeah, she absolutely has talent.
• 9:53
  She ran one of the freest states during lockdown, South Dakota.
• 9:57
  That's not talent though, that's just the position that she took
• 9:59
  on COVID, right? So I'd say that's talent.
• 10:01
  I'd say that's bravery. She will now be in charge of the
• 10:03
  border she. Will be in charge of the border.
• 10:05
  So yeah, interesting pick. I think she will get through.
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  The argument is that the border will be the priority.
• 10:12
  Matt Gaetz being appointed, one would argue, is not about the
• 10:18
  priority of a border or an issue.
• 10:20
  It's a priority of Donald Trump putting himself first.
• 10:22
  I mean, why do you think he's chosen Matt Gaetz, who has no
• 10:24
  experience other than the fact that he has criticized the
• 10:27
  Justice Department because it looked into Matt Gaetz and it's
• 10:30
  looked into Donald Trump. Does that worry you that the
• 10:33
  idea that actually his appointment on Matt Gaetz shows
• 10:36
  that Trump's priority will be retribution?
• 10:40
  I hear what you're saying, definitely.
• 10:41
  And he's not my favorite pick, let's put it that way.
• 10:44
  I thought he was great to January's ago.
• 10:47
  I remember watching over cocktails with my father when
• 10:50
  they were trying to, you know, get rid of the Speaker.
• 10:52
  McCarthy. I thought he was a firebrand.
• 10:54
  I think he did a very good job. That was populism.
• 10:57
  That was democracy. It was messy at its finest.
• 11:00
  However, he has also done and I'm saying this is somebody.
• 11:04
  Saying messy at its finest. Well, yeah, democracy is messy,
• 11:07
  isn't it? So, But to answer your question,
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  I and while I say this, he's not one of my favorite picks.
• 11:13
  He has done some very good things with regards to law in
• 11:17
  Florida, right? He has fought back against
• 11:20
  corporatism. He's fought back against more
• 11:22
  money in campaigns. He has fought back against
• 11:25
  Silicon Valley monopolies. So there are a lot of consumer
• 11:28
  protection things that Matt Gaetz has done that people like.
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  He's also gone against a lot of the the, the way the GOP thinks.
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  I I'm sorry, but I don't. Think that was mentioned, that
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  wasn't mentioned in the press release.
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  Was it that he's going to go on these campaign finance or?
• 11:41
  Whatever. It's no.
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  Of course, I think. I think.
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  But the. Trump would have chosen him
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  primarily, do not think, because he's spoken about a rigged
• 11:48
  system within the Justice Department.
• 11:50
  Trump has a legitimate gripe, shall we say, against the DOJ
• 11:56
  and the way I think we can all agree on that and the way that
• 11:59
  it has behaved against him over the last 18 months.
• 12:02
  The DOJ going after a political opponent for which is something
• 12:07
  we've never done in our almost 250 years of history is the
• 12:11
  reason Donald Trump is president right now.
• 12:14
  And we know that because in the GOP primary, Ron DeSantis, the
• 12:18
  governor of Florida, and Trump on neck and neck, the second rag
• 12:21
  thing came out. Isn't the danger, Tom, that that
• 12:25
  Trump can do exactly the same now that he is accused the law,
• 12:27
  you know, law officers getting after him.
• 12:29
  He accuses the DOJ of having gone after him.
• 12:32
  He is now got the wherewithal if he wants to, to try and do the
• 12:34
  same to his enemies. I think absolutely and certainly
• 12:37
  getting rid of the cases against Donald Trump was a a litmus test
• 12:41
  for anyone who's going to be the new attorney general.
• 12:44
  But Donald Trump has been very explicit.
• 12:46
  He was during the campaign and he still continues to be that he
• 12:49
  wants to go after some of his political adversaries.
• 12:51
  I do think that some of the that rhetoric is ultimately just sort
• 12:56
  of smoke, but at the same time, you know, I think that he has
• 13:00
  made very strong claims about sort of wielding the Department
• 13:04
  of Justice and other state level apparatuses to go after.
• 13:08
  If he wanted to go after his opponents, if he wants to go
• 13:11
  after Liz Cheney, you know, or Nancy Pelosi, as he has
• 13:14
  indicated in the past that he might, what is there to stop
• 13:17
  him, Tom? There's very little to stop him,
• 13:20
  especially if you have a loyal attorney general.
• 13:22
  Absolutely, absolutely, very little.
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  And it depends, of course, how much pressure he wants to exert
• 13:28
  on that. Right.
• 13:29
  And Jennifer, I want to know from you as an American, you
• 13:31
  know, you represent one party, one of the great parties of
• 13:35
  state, you know, or overseas, you know, the grand old party of
• 13:39
  Abraham Lincoln, etcetera. We know that.
• 13:42
  Are you comfortable with a president going after his
• 13:46
  opponents with the law? Absolutely not and I've been on
• 13:51
  every single. But if they do, what would you
• 13:53
  say? No, I would say that's the wrong
• 13:54
  direction, absolutely. I got my touch.
• 13:56
  As a matter of fact, I think he should pardon Hunter Biden like
• 14:00
  I think he should pardon Hunter Biden.
• 14:02
  I, I, I don't think that's totally far fetched thing for
• 14:05
  him to do. I don't want, he's not going to
• 14:07
  go after Nancy Pelosi. He's not going to go after Liz
• 14:09
  Cheney. I, I, I really hope that's not
• 14:13
  the direction he goes in. He, after all, he did not lock
• 14:16
  up Hillary Clinton and he could have for that Russian hoax.
• 14:19
  So to answer your question of what will stop him, the American
• 14:22
  people will stop. Him, but this is but how?
• 14:24
  This is my question. So he might not go after them,
• 14:27
  but there might be other people underneath him who feel
• 14:30
  empowered to go after political opponents or enemies.
• 14:34
  Well, there might be people, his supporters and voters who say
• 14:37
  you promised us you'd go after. There will be some for sure.
• 14:39
  And that is dangerous, isn't it? That is dangerous.
• 14:41
  You're opening the door to vigilante power if you're not
• 14:43
  careful. Well, actually the Biden and
• 14:45
  Harris administration already opened that with the the cases
• 14:49
  that came towards Trump. I do not believe that Trump
• 14:51
  should do the same thing back to his political enemies.
• 14:55
  It will be the end of our Republic.
• 14:57
  We do not go after political opponents in the United States
• 15:02
  of America. That had not happened until they
• 15:04
  went after Trump. So no, I do not want Trump.
• 15:06
  To go after should he? Should he pardon the January 6th
• 15:08
  rioters? Those are all very different
• 15:11
  cases. So, you know, I think there's a
• 15:13
  grandma in there that happened to be standing there case by
• 15:16
  case. Let's look at the the bigger
• 15:18
  picture of disruption because disruption is one of the things
• 15:20
  that he ran on. You could argue the disruption
• 15:23
  is something that you know, America needs.
• 15:25
  Like, you know, everyone, everyone needs a bit of
• 15:26
  disruption. The question is how much and at
• 15:28
  what cost. So what disruption, Kieran, do
• 15:31
  you think that he will actually bring to the system of
• 15:34
  government in Washington that could be beneficial to the
• 15:37
  country? Well, I guess similar to what I
• 15:40
  was saying before is is in some ways you have to.
• 15:44
  I mean, there is a certain snootiness.
• 15:45
  Snootiness. Yes.
• 15:48
  Yes, snootiness from the media about some of these
• 15:52
  appointments, you know, and it's seen as if like it's an attack
• 15:56
  on expertise. But I think maybe what the
• 15:58
  Americans want is an attack on expertise, an idea that the way
• 16:02
  things have gone isn't working and they want to go back into a
• 16:05
  sort of isolationist type route. I think the concern when you
• 16:08
  look at someone like an Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy doing
• 16:10
  this government efficiency is whether or not they really
• 16:13
  understand the workings of the federal government.
• 16:17
  But the argument would be that you don't need to understand
• 16:19
  that. If you're going to disrupt it,
• 16:20
  don't get too deep into the weeds of it, otherwise you might
• 16:23
  preserve too much of it. But that would be their
• 16:25
  argument. So for example, like so the
• 16:28
  Department of Education, they've mooted, I think Reagan first
• 16:30
  mooted the idea of getting rid of the Department of Education
• 16:32
  and it was in Project 2025. If you get rid of the Department
• 16:34
  of Education, right, because I assume the idea is that post
• 16:38
  COVID, a lot of parents saw what their kids were learning on Zoom
• 16:42
  and decided that there was, you know, critical race theory and
• 16:45
  all this, you know, gender, whatever.
• 16:46
  If you get rid of the Department of Education, you get rid of
• 16:49
  federal grants which ensure schools for low income families,
• 16:53
  working class people who vote for Trump.
• 16:54
  You also get rid of federal grants which go to educations
• 16:57
  for, you know, kids with disabilities, right?
• 17:00
  So if you so you're attacking the, you're attacking the
• 17:02
  federal bureaucracy and saying it's all ridiculous, but
• 17:04
  actually you're having real effects to people's lives
• 17:06
  because two men have decided we think this is all bloated and
• 17:10
  ridiculous when actually there are these minutiae of of
• 17:13
  livelihoods where actually you need the.
• 17:15
  Assistance. The Department of Education has
• 17:17
  not been helpful to the education of American students.
• 17:20
  And I think people are looking at things like school choice.
• 17:23
  You mentioned obviously lockdown and everything, OK, fine, maybe
• 17:26
  there's going to be some home schooling, but a lot of it is
• 17:29
  just going to be it's, it's, it's bloated.
• 17:32
  Tom, I wonder if the problem with these efficiencies, with
• 17:35
  these disruptions is that they are conducted or they could be
• 17:38
  conducted. They're certainly been promised
• 17:40
  to be conducted in a spirit of anger.
• 17:43
  There's anger there. You know, if you wanted to hire
• 17:45
  a management consultant to make your business, you know, more
• 17:48
  efficient, you wouldn't want someone who is kind of shouting
• 17:51
  at the moon. You'd want someone who looks at
• 17:52
  the numbers very clinically and says, you don't need this and
• 17:55
  you don't need that. Is the anger necessary or is it
• 17:58
  actually going to be counterproductive?
• 18:00
  Well, I think it'll probably be counterproductive, but one thing
• 18:03
  that I would say is that I don't think that Donald Trump is going
• 18:05
  to blow up the system quite the ways that we expect.
• 18:08
  In particular, because many of his policies are fairly standard
• 18:12
  Republican orthodox. He wants to pursue deregulation.
• 18:15
  He wants to pursue tax cuts, right?
• 18:18
  He wants to install conservative appointments to to the the
• 18:22
  courts. None of that is particularly
• 18:24
  radical. I think it's really his
• 18:25
  temperament sort of the way that he goes about it.
• 18:28
  You know, that does have some advantages.
• 18:29
  I think a lot of it is counterproductive simply because
• 18:32
  it puts the opposition in sort of a defensive posture.
• 18:36
  So looking at the Pentagon, which is really interesting.
• 18:38
  So you've got Pete Hex of who you defended as a great, a great
• 18:41
  warrior, you know, therefore an expert at, at, at, at running
• 18:43
  the Pentagon. I mean, a lot of his obsession
• 18:46
  with the Pentagon is the war on work.
• 18:48
  You know, there's a culture war inside the Pentagon.
• 18:51
  And, you know, I've certainly been, you know, listening to
• 18:54
  military experts, many of them Trump supporters.
• 18:56
  You say, hang on a minute, You want to reform the Pentagon,
• 18:59
  turn it into a more efficient fighting machine.
• 19:02
  OK, some of that work stuff is nonsense.
• 19:04
  But if that's what you, if that's what motivates you first
• 19:07
  and foremost, you're making a big mistake here.
• 19:10
  You shouldn't be focusing mainly on the woke stuff because
• 19:13
  there's much more important stuff out there.
• 19:14
  I don't think he's just focusing on the.
• 19:16
  Woke, but it's a really big motivator.
• 19:17
  I think that this new generation of Republicans and I consider
• 19:22
  myself to be the more populist in the party.
• 19:24
  You know, we three of the the biggest people that are going to
• 19:27
  be involved here, Tulsi Gabbard, Elon Musk and Bobby Kennedy
• 19:31
  Junior will probably hear something from soon were
• 19:33
  recently Democrats. These are populist.
• 19:35
  These are people who do not want to continue with these forever
• 19:39
  wars. So that's what they're going to
• 19:40
  be looking at. Let's move on to the economy
• 19:42
  then. So a lot of people voted for
• 19:45
  Trump, and I met lots of them when I was out there because
• 19:48
  they felt the Democrats didn't feel their pain sufficiently.
• 19:51
  Democrats kept saying, look at the headline numbers.
• 19:53
  Inflation is coming down. We're doing really quite well.
• 19:56
  And then, you know, you go to CVS and you try and buy some
• 19:58
  toothpaste and it's like $8.50 a tube and.
• 20:00
  It's locked up. And it's locked up, which, don't
• 20:03
  worry, that is something that really shocked me, that even the
• 20:05
  most basic things, apart from the tiny little travel
• 20:07
  toothpaste tubes, we're all under lock and key, which is
• 20:10
  amazing. Rather than lock up the
• 20:11
  toothpaste, let's lock up the people that are stealing the.
• 20:13
  Toothpaste. Anyway, that's, that's another
• 20:16
  subject, but the but I, I was really shocked by that.
• 20:18
  And I was really struck by the fact that Harris's message on
• 20:20
  the economy didn't hit home at all.
• 20:23
  And yet, if you take some of Trump's policies to their
• 20:27
  conclusion, right, we're going to kick out X million of, you
• 20:30
  know, illegal migrants, many of whom are serving tables at
• 20:32
  restaurants or, you know, fold folding hotel beds.
• 20:35
  We're going to be imposing tariffs left, right and centre.
• 20:38
  These will all be inflationary measures which will make life
• 20:41
  more difficult for Americans. Kieran, am I talking a load of
• 20:45
  nonsense here or do you agree with me?
• 20:46
  There's only one way to answer. By that.
• 20:47
  Well, I'm not, I'm not. Yeah, well, I'm not an economic
• 20:49
  expert, but I guess there's all the, you know, there's all the.
• 20:51
  Did you tell? Concerns.
• 20:55
  But those are the concerns which I think people have have raised
• 20:58
  ultimately about Trump and even I think Elon Musk himself said
• 21:00
  that the economy will get worse before it gets better under
• 21:02
  Trump when it when it begins. But I mean.
• 21:06
  We know how these things look, right?
• 21:07
  Disruption without numbers, that's called list trusts.
• 21:10
  We've had that experience and it was a pretty brutal.
• 21:12
  One, but you know, elections aren't necessarily about the
• 21:14
  minutiae of policy. It's about vibes, right?
• 21:16
  And the vibe was that Trump was change and difference, you know,
• 21:19
  and, and that, but it was. Specific also about the economy
• 21:22
  in many, many cases. And Biden and Harris would say,
• 21:24
  well, actually look at the numbers, the economy is actually
• 21:27
  much better then you feel it is. And the inflation was never as
• 21:32
  high and as much lower than it was in here or in Europe.
• 21:34
  But again, numbers don't. Numbers aren't.
• 21:37
  You can't feel the numbers. Well, you may feel the numbers,
• 21:39
  but they hadn't. They didn't feel the numbers.
• 21:41
  No. And if if you're talking about a
• 21:42
  a difficult economic situation, who do you want?
• 21:44
  You want someone who's been on the scene for four decades, who
• 21:48
  is a businessman who whatever you know, he's gone through
• 21:50
  bankruptcies. Maybe he's not that great
• 21:51
  businessman, but he has that vibe of someone who will fix
• 21:54
  things. So I think you hit the nail on
• 21:56
  the head though when you say that Donald Trump won this
• 21:59
  election because of the economy and yet ironically his proposals
• 22:02
  are going to be worse for the economy.
• 22:04
  If you want to depict 2 policies that could not be worse for
• 22:07
  inflation, it would be to impose tariffs and mass deportation.
• 22:11
  He has called for anywhere between 10 to 20% tariffs on all
• 22:16
  imports into the United States, up to 60% tariffs on imports
• 22:20
  from China. And I don't think that that's
• 22:21
  cheap talk based on what he did in his first administration.
• 22:24
  And he has really been ideologically consistent on this
• 22:27
  issue even dating back to the 819 eighties, 1990s, saying that
• 22:31
  China is essentially eating America's lunch.
• 22:34
  I mean on the deportation, just constricting the labour apply
• 22:37
  that supply that's definitely going to just.
• 22:39
  To be fair, for context and you'd love what I'm about to
• 22:41
  say, Jennifer, when I was based in the US last it was during the
• 22:45
  Obama presidency. On average, he deported 1000 a
• 22:48
  day, but he did it quietly. But he but it was brutal and it
• 22:51
  was effective. And those communities were
• 22:53
  terrified that someone would knock on the door.
• 22:55
  I'm not saying that that's a good thing.
• 22:57
  I'm just saying that it's happened and you know, and then
• 22:59
  when I. Forget that he well 1.3 and then
• 23:02
  in the but. The thing is, but but Trump is
• 23:04
  going to do the same thing in a more a performative way as a
• 23:06
  disincentive, a bit like, you know, flights to Rwanda, which
• 23:09
  we've now scrapped in this country.
• 23:10
  But the idea is to be a disincentive.
• 23:11
  The second thing is this. Biden inherited many of the
• 23:14
  tariffs that Trump had imposed and he didn't.
• 23:16
  That's right. The anti China tariffs, you get
• 23:19
  them right. So China is a real bugbear for
• 23:22
  both Democrats and Republicans, and we'll find out how the
• 23:25
  Chinese respond to this and whether this is going to be a
• 23:28
  good thing or a bad thing, whether it'll be disincentivize
• 23:31
  them for going after Taiwan. Final question.
• 23:33
  Let's start with you, Karen. Who's he going to sack first?
• 23:36
  Trump from his cabinet. Let's go for Elon Musk.
• 23:42
  Elon Musk, Is he even too big to be sacked?
• 23:45
  Surely that'd be the? Most.
• 23:46
  That'd be the most interesting one.
• 23:48
  It's all about the drama. Well, Elon Musk won't
• 23:51
  technically be in his cabinet, but I think that he is going to
• 23:53
  be the first one to go simply because Trump and Elon Musk 2
• 23:57
  huge egos. Eventually they're going to
• 23:59
  collide. They're not the only two huge
• 24:01
  egos. Well, that's true, but they're
• 24:03
  the big things about. Anyway, Jennifer, what do you
• 24:05
  think? Marco Rubio.
• 24:07
  Really. What's that?
• 24:09
  He's still in his little Marco, right?
• 24:10
  No I don't. Not a fan.
• 24:12
  We didn't talk about Marco Rubio.
• 24:13
  No, we didn't. Yeah, he he wasn't my.
• 24:17
  First choice, the new Secretary of State, I should just say.
• 24:20
  Yes to your state, yes. A man who once described Trump
• 24:23
  as an authoritarian Third World wannabe strongman.
• 24:26
  But but. Literally, Trump looked Trump's
• 24:28
  forgiven everyone for jade events to David Lammer.
• 24:31
  It's all about kissing the ring. Yeah, if you kiss.
• 24:33
  The ring sufficiently. Well, he's a, he's, he's, he's
• 24:37
  a, he likes to be transactional, right?
• 24:39
  So I think the UK, by the way, we not talked about, it's going
• 24:42
  to come out very well. I think there's going to be
• 24:44
  trade deals made with the UK and the US in a positive way for the
• 24:50
  UK that will not be these massive tariffs because he
• 24:53
  respects Brexit, he respects small government and he will
• 24:56
  want to support the United Kingdom.
• 24:57
  Well, listen, Thank you very much to all of you, Jennifer,
• 25:00
  Tom, Kieran, thanks to all of you.
• 25:02
  That's it from the American Forecast.
• 25:04
  We will be back soon. The news keeps on coming.
• 25:07
  Bye bye.