Latest / The Fourcast / Trump inauguration: is this the end for progressives in America?

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Trump inauguration: is this the end for progressives in America? · The Fourcast

• 0:00
  Welcome to the forecast from Washington, DC, where
• 0:02
  everything, and I mean everything is about to change.
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  Not just the inauguration itself on Monday, which Donald Trump
• 0:10
  has moved inside because apparently it's far too cold for
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  all those people to turn up on the Mall in front of the Capitol
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  building. But also what this inauguration
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  signifies for America and for the rest of the world.
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  You could call it the climax of the triumph of right wing
• 0:26
  populism across the board. Well, to discuss not just what's
• 0:29
  going to happen on Inauguration Day itself, but also the
• 0:31
  consequences and the first week of Trump, the sequel, I'm joined
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  by Kieran Woodley and by Siobhan Kennedy, our Washington
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  correspondent. Welcome to you both.
• 0:40
  Thank you. Thank you.
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  Is it the final festival of progressive America?
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  The kind of the wake of I? Don't think so.
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  I think progressive America feels that way right now.
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  I think they're still very wounded and distressed by what's
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  happened. I think for a while, yes, it's
• 0:54
  very clear that their policies and their desires will be very
• 0:58
  much pushed to the side. But remember, two years ago,
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  Donald Trump himself was an outcast after the midterms.
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  He was politically frozen even by his own party.
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  So yes, it all feels like not just Trump's Republican Party,
• 1:12
  but Trump's world right now. But progressives and Democrats
• 1:17
  are a tough bunch, and they might roll over for this
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  inauguration. There might not be the same
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  sense of. Push back.
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  Push back. Yeah, I can't think of the word.
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  Anger or wait? I mean, the one thing I've one
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  thing I've noticed is, but I was here for the for the first Trump
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  inauguration, 2016, you know, you couldn't walk around the
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  city with the Marga hat. Not that I was wearing one.
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  But, you know, if you did wear a Marga hat, you know, people were
• 1:38
  quite rude to you. Yeah.
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  And because they thought that basically Margot and Trump were
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  the aberration, the mood. Kieran this time around is
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  remarkably different, isn't it? Yes, and even from even from the
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  Biden inauguration. I mean, I think this is the
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  first inauguration, I guess, since the Obama ones where there
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  does feel to seem seem to be a vibe shift in terms of much more
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  positivity. Because as you say, in 2017,
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  there was so much anger boiling over.
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  There was a women's March the following day, which had bigger
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  crowds than the Trump inauguration.
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  Four years ago, Trump after January the 6th and we were in
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  the midst of COVID, there were hardly anywhere there weren't
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  allowed to be crowds. Everything was still felt
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  negative. So this time there feels like
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  there is a vibe shift where Trump has sort of, he's done
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  this, he's done 3 elections, he's won two of them.
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  He's won the argument. His supporters feel they've
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  they've won this moment. This feels like a movement has
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  happened. And but the big question really
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  is where does it go next? We'll discuss that a minute.
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  But I mean, the other difference is that, you know, Trump's,
• 2:30
  like, likes to point out that it was a landslide victory, the
• 2:32
  biggest in the history, which is nonsense, of course.
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  The margins are fairly tight, but they are convincing,
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  Siobhan. Yeah, I mean, they are and, and
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  crucially for him, he won the popular vote, which was the big
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  deal for him. But yes, he run it by a very
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  small margin. So, yeah, I mean, I just, it's
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  it's a convincing win. And that's what it feels like
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  here in DC. And people are rolling over and
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  they're going with the inauguration.
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  But I don't think to your original point that this is
• 3:00
  Trump's world forever. I think let's just give it some
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  time. There's going to be a lot of
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  shock and awe in the first few weeks.
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  And we're expecting that in the first few months and perhaps the
• 3:08
  first year. But I think that you will very
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  quickly see push back and as we all know, things change very
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  quickly in politics and certainly here in DC and.
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  Of course, his supporters do hope it's going to be Trump's
• 3:19
  world forever. They very, they're very much
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  invested in this, in this being a fundamental change, a
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  transformation of America. Yes.
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  And again, it's that what I'm almost saying, it's that it's
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  that that vibe of the feeling of a, of a real turning point
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  against the actual practicalities of the politics
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  of it all. Because not just what he can do,
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  but also, you know, he did only win, He did win the popular
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  vote, but only by like 1.5%. You know, he won the swings, he
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  won all those seven swing states.
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  But it's not like a big landslide in the way of Obama or
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  anything else. But it feels that way.
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  And I think that's a really interesting thing that it feels
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  like and he's. Very good at making it feel.
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  Yeah, he's like, it feels like that's what he does.
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  He's had the final say, but he hasn't yet because there are
• 3:59
  this next four years to go. We'll talk about day one and
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  week one in a minute, but just on the inauguration itself, it's
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  fascinating to me that a man who's so obsessed with crowd
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  sizes, who I, you would have thought could have banked on a
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  bigger crowd this time round than in 2016, right?
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  Because it, it was a bigger victory.
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  You know, the Margaret crowd feel, you know, empowered,
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  etcetera, etcetera, that he's moved it inside.
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  Now the official reason is that it's going to be too cold.
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  But actually it might not be all that cold.
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  Is he worried about the numbers being too small?
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  Yes, he is, because that's what NBC is reporting.
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  I wonder if he must because no one will ever forget that the
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  long pan of them all last time, terrible people here and then it
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  just and then nobody towards the back.
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  So I think he's worried about that.
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  And I think he also just loves the, he just loves the getting
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  in among the crowd and, and, and being the center of attention,
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  which necessarily he won't be. But there is also, there is also
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  the thing that maybe there's also I think here like the
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  fundamental issue with Trump and, and how he he sees this
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  moment is that on the one hand, you would expect him to want to
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  have all these crowds and to have all his supporters out
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  there. On the other hand, he now has a
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  smaller Rotunda where he can have perhaps the people who
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  might be much more important than all this Elon Musk, you
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  know, Jeff Bezos. Yeah, but they.
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  Would have been on this on the stage anyway.
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  Yeah, but now he's got. But it's almost like is is he
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  the argument? And this is where the new push
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  back is coming from, from the Democrats who are sort of in
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  disarray. Is this what Biden was saying,
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  this oligarchy? So this is now what we're seeing
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  is this oligarchy of, you know, Trump says he's there for
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  America first and for the people.
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  But actually, you know, he's got the circus, he's got these
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  people who nudging him saying, hey, you know, I've got, I've
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  got, you know, I've got money and TikTok.
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  Let's try and bring it. Back OK, let's look at the guest
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  list. You know, what does that tell
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  you about the Trump, the next Trump presidency from who's been
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  invited and who's not been invited?
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  Well, as I say, you know, the oligarchs who will be on display
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  as Joe Biden talks about them, you know, Elon Musk, Yes,
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  exactly Elon Musk. You know, it's fascinating to
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  see, you know, Mark Zuckerberg. I mean, I think that game.
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  Who turned up yesterday and was surrounded by bodyguards and
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  went to one of the many sort of inaugural balls or pre inaugural
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  balls? Which goes, which goes into this
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  vibe, vibe shift. You know, I mean, it was only
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  four years ago that, you know, what was then Facebook, now
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  Meta, you know them, them exactly them along with Twitter,
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  now X, you know, everything's changed.
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  You know, he was, he was banned from those platforms after
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  January 6th and now they're all there.
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  And not only that, they've all given, not just bending the
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  knee, but also writing, they've each given $1,000,000 to the
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  inauguration committee. Never has an inauguration
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  committee ever had this much money to to spend on canopies
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  and drinks or music, whatever else.
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  And there's this amazing image of Zuckerberg, which I cannot
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  get out of my head. Zuckerberg at Mar a Lago, I
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  think about a month ago, yeah, not just kissing the ring of
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  Trump, but also then listening to the January the 6th Memorial
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  Choir perform the national anthem.
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  And he's got his hand on his heart.
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  That is a very different Zuckerberg to the one that we
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  saw, as you said, four years ago.
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  So. So the millionaire Bros will all
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  be there. I wonder if Musk is going to be
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  allowed to move into the White House, will he have an?
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  Honestly I was thinking the same thing.
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  He's been paying $2000 a night to live in Mar a Lago.
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  Where will he live now? I mean, he will think this, I'm
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  sure. He'll find a hotel room
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  somewhere, but will he be? Because this is, I think we've
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  got a, the Trump presidency like a medieval court.
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  This is like Henry the Eighth without the culture and and
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  nukes, right? It's a bit like that.
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  So access to the monarch is vital.
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  So I wonder. He'll have an office next door.
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  Well, I wonder because Steve Bannon, you know, and, and the
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  Margaret crowd, the hardcore Margaret crowd who hate Musk and
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  they hate him. But I.
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  Think there are, there are two things, two things there.
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  I mean, one, as you say, there is, you know, within the within
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  this Republican victory, there are obviously competing
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  factions. There are the America first sort
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  of almost JD Vance types who want, you know, you know, they
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  still want a government which ensures that Americans are much
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  more prosperous. You know, they're getting
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  welfares, Social Security, etcetera.
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  On the other hand, you have Elon Musk a lot who actually like
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  smaller government and still believe in that sort of
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  capitalist thing, which we've seen with the dispute over the
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  visas. But the other point when it
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  talks about is Elon Musk going to go into the White House?
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  I think the one thing you've always got to remember with
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  Trump and this goes throughout his life, is that the the number
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  one person who should always be the focus is Trump.
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  I think the only person he's ever sort of allowed to dominate
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  him in any way is his father. You know, he has all these
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  father issues, etcetera. So I think if Elon Musk ever
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  becomes someone who grabs more headlines than Trump and surely
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  has more power, he will be. Thrown under the Trump bus.
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  Exactly. OK, let's look at day one.
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  Like, what can we? And he, he talks a lot about day
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  one. Day one is, you know, Monday
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  afternoon. What?
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  So he's going to go to the White House after the ceremony.
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  He's going to sit down at the Resolute Desk in the Oval
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  Office. He's going to sign how many
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  emergency decrees? Well, I mean, I was, I was
• 8:36
  listening to Charlie Kirk, who's a, you know, a podcast on an
• 8:39
  influential sort of younger voice in this movement and he
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  was talking about a, a blitzkrieg of executive orders,
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  hundreds and hundreds. We think there's going to be
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  obviously ones on immigration that there'll be ones to do.
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  I think specifically on energy and electric vehicles, there's
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  a, an executive order which he completely get rid of, which was
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  a Joe Biden one about an incentive for electric vehicles
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  by 20-30, which he can get rid of completely.
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  There could be possibly January 6 pardons.
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  I mean, he can do all these areas of orders.
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  It's about sending that message and a narrative of I'm doing
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  something. He doesn't want to flood the
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  zone with too many of them. I'm I guess he wants people to
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  notice what they are and, and immigration and deportation.
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  I think he'll see. I think we'll see things like
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  things that are very easy for him are pulling out of Paris,
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  Paris climate accord that that will happen.
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  I think, I think you know, he will be really interesting to
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  see if he pulls the EV incentives for you.
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  Say that easy. Easy for him, It's slightly
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  harder for the planet I would have.
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  Thought and it's slightly harder when your right hand man is Elon
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  Musk. I mean, we're immediately going
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  to see some pushback there and that there's going to be tension
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  One of their they're going after energy in a big way.
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  And yet here is the man beside him who's brought him to the
• 9:45
  White House, who is Mr. Green Energy, I think.
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  But really the, the, the, the big thing is going to be
• 9:50
  migration. I think we're going to see that
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  this week. I think there is going to that's
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  where they're going for the shock and awe whether whether
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  they achieve it, how they achieve it, because this is
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  really difficult stuff. It's really difficult stuff.
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  They're not something going to go with a big net and round
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  people up, tied up and talk them out.
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  That's what they say they're going to do.
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  But I think it's going to be. Mahoman, who is the kind of
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  immigration that the deportations.
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  Are. Yes, he's actually used the word
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  shock and awe, he said in interviews.
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  There will be shock and awe in the first week when it comes to
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  deportation. And apparently, according to the
• 10:17
  Wall Street Journal, the city that they've targeted, you know,
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  it's Chicago, bastion of Democratic politics, sanctuary
• 10:23
  city. And that's where they've already
• 10:24
  started to kind of compile lists and the rounding up people.
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  But they have. But because it's leaked, the
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  last thing you want to do is leak everyone's scatters.
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  They're saying now, or he's saying now at least Homan, that
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  Oh no, we might not do Chicago, but the point is they're going
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  to do all the sanctuary cities that have been welcoming and
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  kind and who's Democratic leaders are saying you leave
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  these people alone. So we're going to see shock and
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  awe. The shock and awe might more be
• 10:48
  the push back with Democratic leaders and and then the police
• 10:51
  and people on the streets. You know that it will be with
• 10:54
  them rounding up migrants and throwing them out.
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  I think that you'll definitely see more officers National
• 11:00
  Guard. You'll see that's what they
• 11:01
  immediately brought to the border.
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  But of course, the border's not the problem at the moment.
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  It's the interior and the millions and millions of people
• 11:08
  that Biden let in and allowed to go and be with their sponsors in
• 11:13
  the country. How will he round those up?
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  And it's the criminals he wants first, don't forget.
• 11:17
  But and then the potential for for human drama, for real
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  suffering, for families, families being torn apart, the
• 11:23
  stuff that we saw in 2016, but on a much bigger scale, you
• 11:27
  know, that's definitely here. It will be a a a shock and all
• 11:30
  process to to be seen that he's doing something.
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  But I think already Homan was talking about scaling back some
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  of the the positivity around how much they could actually do and
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  actually warning Congress, you know, if we want to do this in
• 11:43
  the long run rather than a few ICE raids.
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  And we actually want to really clamp down on this in terms of
• 11:48
  the people who are unauthorized. But also, you know, trying to
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  get all the different levels of because when we talk about
• 11:53
  undocumented, there are so many different, so many catalogues
• 11:56
  that's going to take a lot of money.
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  And this is a Congress which, you know, Donald Trump does not
• 12:00
  want to spend loads of money necessarily.
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  This is a Congress which he doesn't have that many people,
• 12:04
  especially in the House. So it's going to be a long
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  tricky pathway ahead just as much as.
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  And we are seeing some backtracking, not just on
• 12:11
  immigration, but also with Ukraine.
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  It was going to be dealt with in one day.
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  Now it's going to be more than that.
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  You know, there are those things and.
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  Just to be clear, I mean, you know, he talked during the
• 12:19
  campaign, although less so in recent weeks, about the
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  11,000,000 number of undocumented, documented, you
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  know, people, foreigners in this country.
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  I mean, to deport 11,000,000 is virtually impossible and it's
• 12:30
  too costly and it'll also have a massive inflationary effect on
• 12:33
  the labour market and so on. So I think we can assume that
• 12:36
  that would probably not happen. We spoke to an ICE, the head of
• 12:41
  ICE under Biden for a piece we did before Christmas who said, I
• 12:46
  sorry, the immigration control. For those of us who.
• 12:49
  Enforcement agency works within the Department of Homeland
• 12:52
  Security. It's that the people that get
• 12:54
  get the immigrants out enforcement and he ran that
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  business and he said, he said in order to get to the scale of the
• 13:02
  numbers that Trump and Homan are talking about, you would need
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  billions, 10s of billions more dollars than the is currently
• 13:09
  allocated and hundreds of thousands of more enforcement
• 13:12
  officers. And if you're prepared to pull
• 13:14
  in for military and police and put in all those resources and
• 13:18
  by the way, what would who's looking after crime in America,
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  then you might get to a million a year.
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  You might get to 1,000,000, which is a hell of a lot.
• 13:25
  Which is a hell of a lot. What about tariffs?
• 13:27
  Can we expect much on tariffs in in week 1 the.
• 13:29
  Interesting thing about tariffs again, is that you hear this
• 13:31
  muddled messaging, where is is tariffs actually something that
• 13:35
  Donald Trump will do and risk the potential economic effects
• 13:39
  of that which which one assumes is what economists say will
• 13:43
  affect the American consumer, the American people at a time
• 13:46
  when they don't want that. Or is it, as people within his
• 13:50
  team have said, is that it's a very good negotiating tactic to
• 13:53
  bring people to the table to get the bill?
• 13:55
  Because they're elastic, aren't they?
• 13:56
  You can. And they're very arbitrary.
• 13:58
  You can say 20% for you Kieran, 15 for you, Siobhan, and then
• 14:02
  you can fight it out amongst each other.
• 14:03
  I mean. But what I find so fascinating
• 14:05
  is that, you know, whether you're talking to the Danish
• 14:08
  government in Copenhagen after the Greenland episode, whether
• 14:12
  you're talking to people in Ottawa, you know, Canadians
• 14:15
  about, you know, my God, are we going to be the 51st state of
• 14:17
  the United States? Whether you're talking to people
• 14:19
  in Panama or indeed in Western Europe or Ukraine or China,
• 14:23
  everyone around the planet is getting their affairs in order.
• 14:27
  That's right for the possibility, eventuality, maybe
• 14:30
  probability of what Trump may or may not do.
• 14:33
  I mean, that is, you know, I think we should have to be
• 14:35
  really clear. I think we're we are in a very
• 14:38
  brave and chaotic new world when it comes to how America, which
• 14:42
  has always been seen, for better or worse, as part of the
• 14:45
  solution, will operate. And now to many people it is a
• 14:48
  really big part of the problem. I think we, we, we've seen that
• 14:51
  writ large with, you know, all hell will break loose if Hamas
• 14:54
  doesn't come to the table. I mean, discuss.
• 14:56
  That's a whole different discussion.
• 14:58
  But or Netanyahu for that? Matter Netanyahu, but but I'm
• 15:00
  saying he says these things and as you rightly say whether or
• 15:04
  not he follows through it brings people to the table and it makes
• 15:07
  them get their house in order whether it's we should pay more
• 15:10
  into NATO. Mandelson, the new ambassador
• 15:12
  here, he put out a statement or did an op-ed the other day and
• 15:16
  he was parroting many of Trump's lines.
• 15:18
  People should pay more into NATO.
• 15:20
  I think Trump's right and you know so so I think it it has the
• 15:23
  effect of making people sit up and listen whether or not those
• 15:27
  tariffs immediately come in is not clear but but he's done it
• 15:31
  before. I think he's pretty.
• 15:32
  I think he's pretty firm on tariffs.
• 15:34
  I think the America First agenda tariffs is one of the big tools
• 15:39
  in the bag and. But how predictable, You know,
• 15:43
  people like predictability, especially if you're a foreign
• 15:45
  government or you're a foreign business.
• 15:46
  You want predictability in order to plan your own future.
• 15:49
  And one thing that really freaks out the Chinese is that Trump is
• 15:52
  not predictable enough for them. And they are the masters or try
• 15:55
  to be the masters of predictability.
• 15:57
  I just wondered to what extent, you know, his personality, his
• 16:01
  mercurial personality, underpinned by the fact that you
• 16:04
  have an incredibly broad coalition of opinions around the
• 16:07
  White House, much more so than 2016, all the way from RFK
• 16:11
  junior to the kind of Marco Rubio, you know, pro pro-life,
• 16:15
  traditional, you know, America, power projectors, anti China,
• 16:19
  etcetera, etcetera. I mean, there's a vast coalition
• 16:21
  of people there and then you have one thing in common and
• 16:23
  that is their allegiance and feel to to Donald Trump, and
• 16:27
  that's different. Which is, yeah, which is the big
• 16:29
  sort of question mark over the next four years really, isn't
• 16:31
  it? It's because we understand that
• 16:33
  Trump has learnt his lessons from the from his first term,
• 16:36
  that the people around him, you know, they're going to be much
• 16:38
  more focused on his agenda and there won't be as many, sort of.
• 16:41
  More loyal, yeah. Individuals within the
• 16:42
  Republican Party speaking out against him.
• 16:44
  But there that is still a fragile coalition in many ways,
• 16:46
  Sure. And it's and it's figuring out
• 16:49
  where the breaks will come and where the fallouts will come.
• 16:51
  And we assume they they will happen.
• 16:53
  A lot of what we can expect in the next 4 years will be
• 16:56
  determined by the speech that he gives, you know, on Capitol Hill
• 17:00
  on Inauguration Day. And I still remembered the
• 17:03
  collective dropping of jaws and the intake of breath on the
• 17:07
  podium in 2016. But also, you know, everywhere
• 17:11
  when you talked about the carnage of America, carnage in
• 17:14
  America, carnage is not a word on anyone's mind.
• 17:17
  In 2016, the country did not look like carnage.
• 17:19
  And there were problems. There was crime, there was
• 17:21
  unemployment here and there, but it it didn't feel like carnage
• 17:25
  central. Nor does it at the moment, to be
• 17:27
  honest. It's divided, but it doesn't
• 17:29
  feel like carnage central. Do you think that he will repeat
• 17:32
  a line as abrasive as that, or will he try to show the gentler,
• 17:35
  kinder side of Donald Trump? Who's now?
• 17:37
  I've been thinking. He's got what he wanted and can
• 17:39
  afford to unite the nation. I think I've been thinking about
• 17:42
  this very thing. What?
• 17:43
  What tone will he take? Well, what do you think?
• 17:48
  Come on, predict the tone. You can do it.
• 17:53
  You can feel the soul of Trump you.
• 17:55
  Know. He's got he listens to you all
• 17:58
  the. Time I, I am, I think he won't
• 18:00
  be able to resist sort of carnage light, right.
• 18:05
  It's not carnage as you say and he can't point.
• 18:07
  He will try and point to carnage in the economy, but demonstrably
• 18:10
  the numbers do not point to that crime.
• 18:12
  Numbers that he really attached the carnage line to, again, do
• 18:16
  not point to that crime is. But he doesn't care about
• 18:18
  numbers. Does.
• 18:18
  He but he doesn't care about numbers and he has to stick with
• 18:21
  the narrative that won him the election.
• 18:23
  So but I think there is there is carnage around immigration, but
• 18:27
  isn't it? So I think he'll, I think he'll,
• 18:29
  I think he'll. But interestingly, when he won,
• 18:31
  there was a lot of talk of unity.
• 18:32
  You were there that night. He did start.
• 18:34
  There was talk of unity, which was the Trump the unifier is not
• 18:39
  not what we're used to. But I think he does feel that he
• 18:41
  has the power and the numbers and the swagger and the vibe
• 18:45
  around him that he can try and be this unifier.
• 18:48
  But if we if one thing we know about Trump is that he, you
• 18:50
  know, he likes publicity. He's an attention seeker.
• 18:53
  You know, we're in caps. Surely the thing that that that
• 18:57
  gets you most attention when everyone is expecting carnage in
• 19:00
  America from the podium is actually to say, you know, a
• 19:03
  kumbaya, you know, peace in our time.
• 19:05
  And that would have people's attention, right?
• 19:07
  Maybe that's what he's going to do.
• 19:08
  I don't know. Yeah, I mean.
• 19:09
  Maybe you would assume that if you if you go back to the the
• 19:14
  first inauguration speech, it was like it, it was two things.
• 19:17
  It was American carnage. There's this, there's this
• 19:19
  country where, you know, factories are rusting away.
• 19:23
  You know, people haven't got jobs.
• 19:24
  It's all depressing. And the other thing is that I'm
• 19:26
  finally going to bring government away from the from
• 19:29
  the elites in Washington back to you, the people.
• 19:31
  Those are the two messages. And overall it was quite
• 19:33
  negative. So you would assume it's going
• 19:34
  to be much more positive and upbeat.
• 19:38
  You know, this is Trump having won the victory.
• 19:40
  But again, we're trying to predict Trump.
• 19:42
  And as we've said, he is unpredictable.
• 19:44
  And one of the fascinating things I read about in Time
• 19:47
  magazine, where he was again made Time Person of the Year,
• 19:50
  which he would love on the front cover and stuff, was that when
• 19:52
  they spoke to him at Mar a Lago after the election, he was
• 19:55
  almost flown in a bit downbeat. Because two things 1 he loves
• 20:02
  campaigning and he loves fighting and he loves having
• 20:05
  something to fight against. And two, he knows that that is
• 20:08
  his last election campaign. So what what is this Trump?
• 20:12
  Now? This is a guy who if you know,
• 20:14
  he's won everything, but he loves fighting against people.
• 20:16
  And that's that's the interesting thing here, isn't
• 20:18
  it? If if he's any other politician
• 20:20
  would be like, well, this is great.
• 20:21
  I've won everything. Let's go and do loads of things.
• 20:22
  Trump no longer has, you know, everything about him has been
• 20:25
  about fighting against something.
• 20:26
  And now he if he's the victor, what, what does he stand for and
• 20:30
  what's he going? To do but he but he I think
• 20:31
  there still will be battles ahead.
• 20:32
  Don't forget they won the House, yes, but by a very slim majority
• 20:37
  and there's lots of infighting, forgive me, within the
• 20:40
  Republican House, Mike Johnson, his speaker isn't the most
• 20:43
  popular so I think there will be mini battles for.
• 20:47
  Sure. But also he knows he's got two
• 20:48
  years with his majority to get stuff done.
• 20:50
  And then in the midterms, unless they predictable, it'll be, you
• 20:53
  know, it'll be, it'll probably be over in terms of his majority
• 20:56
  because that's what tends to happen.
• 20:57
  And finally, we haven't talked about the Democrats at all,
• 21:00
  which is extraordinary in itself.
• 21:02
  What are they doing? Are they doing?
• 21:03
  Is every meeting of Democrats now a kind of session of self
• 21:06
  flagellation and Mayor corpus? What are they doing?
• 21:08
  There's lots of hand wringing. There's lots of navel gazing.
• 21:12
  But they've basically thrown up their hands in resignation,
• 21:13
  haven't they? And and a bit of, I think,
• 21:16
  subliminal anger. Bring us back to the beginning
• 21:18
  of what we just talked about. But they have for the moment,
• 21:20
  they're still very shocked. They're nursing their wounds.
• 21:23
  There's still a lot of anger about Biden and the and what
• 21:27
  happened, but I think they'll regroup.
• 21:30
  I mean, I, I was reading yesterday, you know, there's
• 21:33
  definitely less of a backlash. There was 100 or so that didn't
• 21:37
  come to the other the first Trump inauguration.
• 21:41
  The majority are there's a list of now about 10 who aren't.
• 21:44
  I think they'll fight their battles in their states.
• 21:47
  Seems to be the the the the the method rather than big public
• 21:53
  protests against him here. And of course, Biden, Kieran, in
• 21:55
  his, you know, valedictory speech at the end, said, we're
• 21:59
  becoming an oligarchy. And you could say, hang on a
• 22:02
  minute, it was ever thus, right? I mean, powerful people,
• 22:06
  billionaires around the presidency, there are plenty of
• 22:08
  billionaires who give money to the Democrats.
• 22:10
  But the difference, I guess, this time round is that they are
• 22:12
  more overt in the way that they are funding the president's, the
• 22:16
  president, not just the presidency.
• 22:18
  They're much more in the inner circle, much more openly so than
• 22:20
  they were before, you know, under Obama or Biden.
• 22:23
  Yeah. And I guess that sort of comes,
• 22:26
  I think that's what Biden was saying about the oligarchy is
• 22:29
  obviously a very important point and a worrying point for many
• 22:31
  people, You know, people like Elon Musk and others.
• 22:33
  And there are many more, you know, Peter Thiel, for example,
• 22:36
  sort of maneuvering around the White House.
• 22:37
  But you know, the Democrats also back in the day, you know, had
• 22:41
  Silicon Valley behind Obama, etcetera.
• 22:43
  You know, this, this flits, this flits conflict between the two.
• 22:46
  And I think that's the important thing to remember is that when
• 22:50
  we talk about that vibe shift in it feel like things are behind
• 22:52
  Trump. You know, whenever it comes to
• 22:55
  any election, there is always a reaction in in the media and
• 22:59
  amongst political parties in this country and elsewhere to
• 23:01
  say it's the end. You know, it's the end.
• 23:03
  How did they ever come back? And then you actually come back,
• 23:06
  you know, so the idea that the Democrats, they are definitely
• 23:08
  feeling completely, well, I mean, they're angry because of
• 23:12
  Biden hanging on. And there should have been a
• 23:14
  more open primary. And how do we let this all
• 23:15
  happen? Blah blah blah.
• 23:16
  Of course they will, but you know, the midterms are a moment
• 23:18
  and then in four years time there is no.
• 23:19
  Trouble. Two years ago, trouble was an
• 23:20
  outcast and then we said this so things.
• 23:22
  Things do change, and I guess so do you think that as a result of
• 23:25
  the majority he's got, the campaign he fought and what he
• 23:27
  wants to do to this country, the America that starts on
• 23:31
  Inauguration Day will be fundamentally and forever
• 23:34
  different to the America that everyone else had got used to,
• 23:37
  you know, since World War 2, effectively both in terms of
• 23:40
  domestic and foreign policy. I think it could be.
• 23:43
  It could indeed be. I think the key thing is that
• 23:46
  when we talk about Trump first, first term to this term is that
• 23:50
  he also had a Republican House and Senate last time and he
• 23:53
  didn't do the things as well as he could do in the first two
• 23:56
  years before the the blue wave in 2019.
• 23:58
  The key thing is, if it is going to be a fundamental sea change
• 24:01
  and it has concrete results in terms of this country and
• 24:04
  beyond, it's Trump trying to get those promises done much more
• 24:08
  efficiently. In his first year, yeah,
• 24:11
  there's. Let me ask you like this, Sean,
• 24:12
  is this the end of the Republic as we know it?
• 24:15
  No, I think I think that he will.
• 24:17
  I think that they'll there will be we keep coming back to the
• 24:19
  shock and awe. I think he will try and get
• 24:20
  things done quickly. We've seen the House Republicans
• 24:23
  say we're ready this time. You know, we've he he's got his
• 24:27
  people who are all much more subservient.
• 24:30
  I do think that one thing we can't calculate is, you know,
• 24:34
  when you're having chats on the phone with world leaders and
• 24:38
  Elon Musk is sitting beside you when he's on those call, I think
• 24:42
  we compare it to last time he came in, he made changes, but he
• 24:45
  found it hard. He didn't do as much as he said
• 24:47
  he was going to. The only thing we can't, we
• 24:51
  don't have any experience, there's no precedent is when you
• 24:55
  have got the Elon Musk of this world sitting beside you and
• 24:58
  having your ear and broadcasting on Twitter and being as
• 25:03
  influential. Sorry.
• 25:05
  And being as influential, I, I think that's an unknown quantity
• 25:10
  that I think none of us can apply on because we haven't been
• 25:12
  here before. And how that will shape the
• 25:14
  presidency. I that's to me the kind of
• 25:18
  $1,000,000 question. Siobhan and Kieran, thank you
• 25:21
  very much to both of you. That's it from the forecast here
• 25:23
  in Washington, DC in inauguration week.
• 25:26
  All I've got to say to you is buckle up.
• 25:28
  It's going to get interesting.