0:02

The News Agents USA with Emily

0:04

Maitlis and John Sople. The

0:30

January the 6th hostages. There

0:32

are the October the 7th

0:34

hostages in tunnels in

0:36

Gaza. But the January

0:38

the 6th hostages that are being

0:41

referred to there at a Donald Trump rally in

0:43

Dayton, Ohio, are actually the

0:45

people who have been before a court of

0:47

law, judged by

0:49

a jury of fellow Americans, and

0:52

been found guilty to have

0:54

committed crimes when they stormed

0:56

the Capitol. There is now

0:58

a choir, a prison choir,

1:02

and they have a recording called Justice for All, which

1:05

features January the 6th prisoners singing

1:07

the national anthem intercut with Trump

1:09

reciting the pledge of allegiance on

1:11

the iTunes singles chart. Welcome

1:14

to News Agents USA. Donald

1:23

Trump is still leaning into the

1:25

idea that on January

1:27

the 6th perfectly innocent people did

1:30

nothing wrong and have been wrongly

1:32

convicted by a criminal justice system

1:34

that is stacked against them. When

1:36

anyone can see the videos of

1:38

what happened when a violent mob

1:41

assaulted the Capitol, this had one

1:43

consequence already, which is that

1:45

the Vice President at the time, Mike

1:47

Pence, who remember people were

1:50

chanting, hang Mike Pence, has

1:52

said he cannot support Donald Trump now

1:54

in the 2024 election. And

1:57

you can be sure that whilst Pence may not

1:59

speak for the people, many Republicans. There'll

2:01

be many who will think the same. My

2:04

God, this is a step too far. It's

2:06

interesting, isn't it? So the vice president,

2:08

part of that Trump administration, has said

2:11

he will not endorse Trump. We

2:13

know that Nikki Haley will

2:15

not endorse or vote for Trump. At

2:18

the weekend, we had the Republican Center

2:20

for Louisiana, Bill Cassidy, say that he

2:22

would vote for a Republican, but he

2:24

didn't say that that would be Trump.

2:26

You imagine this ballot in

2:28

November that is full of assortment of

2:31

slightly crazy writing names. It could be

2:33

Abraham Lincoln. It could be Ronald

2:36

Reagan. It could be people feeling that

2:38

they're endorsing an idea rather than the

2:40

candidate. But at the

2:42

weekend, this all took a

2:44

really odd turn because Donald

2:47

Trump was in Dayton, Ohio.

2:49

Ohio, the heartland formerly of

2:51

manufacturing, once more trying

2:53

to be the heartland of the

2:56

car makers unions. And

2:58

Donald Trump had a message which

3:00

was very much about the auto

3:03

industry and about the tariffs that

3:05

he would place on imported cars

3:08

if he became president again. But the phrasing

3:10

he used was pretty triggering to a lot

3:12

of people. Just have a listen. We're going

3:14

to put a 100% tariff

3:16

on every single car that

3:18

comes across the line, and you're not going to

3:21

be able to sell those cars. If I get

3:23

elected, now if I don't get

3:25

elected, it's going to be a bloodbath for the whole,

3:27

that's going to be the least of it. It's going

3:29

to be a bloodbath for the country. That'll be the

3:31

least of it. Now, I think you don't

3:33

have to be a fan of Trump to understand that

3:36

he's using that phrase bloodbath

3:38

metaphorically to talk about the car industry.

3:40

And to be fair, I think you'd

3:42

use it in the way that we

3:45

talk about the financial crash, or we

3:47

talk about things coming tumbling

3:49

down economically if he doesn't get

3:51

his way. The trouble is for

3:53

somebody who has overseen, essentially

3:55

what happened on January the 6th, who has been,

3:58

if not a perpetrator of the violence. then

4:00

the instigator of the movement, bloodbath

4:03

does not sit well. I saw

4:05

the clip on Saturday immediately after

4:07

he spoke, someone had posted it

4:09

and it was just a bloodbath and I retweeted it

4:12

and said, oh, democracy, and got a

4:14

pile in from people saying, you've totally taken

4:16

out of context what he said. I'm going

4:18

to half put my hand up, but only

4:21

half because I think that Donald Trump also

4:23

says that is the least of it. I

4:26

mean, the carpet is that is the least of

4:28

where the bloodbath is going to be if I

4:30

lose the election. And I just think there is

4:32

always the implication there. There is just a

4:35

hint of menace. And I

4:37

think to ignore that would be

4:39

equally negligent because this is the language that

4:41

Donald Trump use. I mean, yeah, you can

4:43

talk about, you know, a rugby match and

4:45

it's kind of the scrum got really rough

4:47

and it was a bloodbath or whatever. It's

4:49

a metaphor. I understand that. But

4:51

I think that Donald Trump uses it in

4:53

a slightly different and wider way to

4:56

talk about the sort of politics

4:58

that might ensue if for

5:00

any reason whatsoever he does not

5:02

win the 2024 presidential

5:04

election. So I think there is

5:06

something that is off colour about

5:08

that. Yes, it was in the context

5:10

of cars, but I think Donald Trump

5:13

intends it to mean something much more

5:15

wide. I think the point about Donald

5:17

Trump's language is that he always goes

5:19

as close to the line and leaves

5:21

just an inch of ambiguity, which is

5:23

filled by, you know, people like us

5:25

trying to work out the nuances of

5:27

something that he knows very, very

5:29

well has taken it to the top

5:31

of the running order. I guess the wider question

5:33

is if we look at what he did over

5:35

NATO, we've spoken exactly about this, Emily. And

5:38

when we met Steve Bannon in Washington a couple

5:40

of weeks ago, you know, he said, if other

5:42

countries pay their full dues in NATO, Donald Trump

5:44

hasn't got a problem. And sure enough, Donald Trump

5:46

has more or less come out and said exactly

5:48

that. And so I think that

5:50

you're spot on. Just get

5:52

it talked about and then you can kind of,

5:55

Donald Trump is being talked about. You can pretend

5:57

everyone else has got confused and you were perfectly

5:59

clear. I mean, that's what he does. So he's

6:01

right when we were talking to Steve Bannon one

6:04

of my first questions was is he threatening to

6:06

pull America out of NATO? If he gets reelected

6:08

Bannon was very clear with us. He said a

6:10

he can't Constitutionally you

6:12

cannot just remove yourself unilaterally from an

6:15

agreement without getting a two-thirds a sort

6:17

of 60% majority Vote

6:20

from Congress, but be he doesn't

6:22

really want to he just wants everyone else to

6:24

get that We are not

6:26

America's responsibility anymore and last night

6:28

He gave an interview to Nigel

6:30

Farage on GB News where he

6:33

essentially confirmed that he wasn't

6:35

gonna pull America out of NATO If

6:37

he's in the job in November, but NATO

6:40

has to treat the US fairly because if

6:42

it's not for the United States NATO Literally

6:45

doesn't even exist, but they

6:47

took advantage of us like most countries do Okay

6:50

I mean this is being used in Brussels as we've

6:52

got to have a European defense force Even

6:54

talk of Brussels having a nuclear weapon Let's

6:57

just try and get somewhere on this

7:00

if they start to pay their bills properly

7:02

and the club is fair Our

7:04

places like Poland defended will America

7:06

be there? Yeah, but you know

7:08

the United States should pay

7:11

its fair share Not everybody else's fair share.

7:13

No fair enough I believe the United States

7:15

was paying 90% of NATO

7:17

the cause of the other could be 100% response You

7:20

have an echo of exactly what Bannon told us which

7:22

is America doesn't feel the

7:25

way we do about Europe anymore. It

7:27

doesn't feel it has to protect Poland

7:29

It doesn't feel it has to run

7:31

to the Baltic states to the Lithuanian

7:33

years and the latvias because they're on

7:35

the border with Russia It doesn't have

7:37

that said same sense We do

7:39

of the existential threat of Russia

7:42

Which was the same as the existential threat from

7:44

Germany in the 1930s, which is

7:46

this monster is getting closer to us I

7:48

don't think they share that if they ever

7:50

did they don't share it anymore And

7:53

so now it's kind of like this is

7:55

kind of your problem So pay up and

7:57

Bannon made reference you remember to Georgia Maloney

8:00

who talks the talk on supporting Zelensky

8:02

in Ukraine, but then cut her own

8:04

budget, the Italian defense budget, and

8:07

said, well, you know, there you

8:09

have it, hypocrisy in a nutshell. If you look

8:12

at American involvement in

8:14

the First World War and the Second World

8:16

War, you know, arguably if they had come

8:18

in earlier, then the wars would have

8:20

ended much more quickly. And America

8:23

will act when it suddenly

8:25

gets too late or it gets very late

8:28

in the day. Or when their own interests

8:30

are at stake. Or when their own interests

8:32

are at stake. And I think that the

8:34

NATO argument is really interesting because actually I

8:36

don't think there's any difference between Donald Trump's

8:39

policy in terms of the funding of NATO

8:42

than there was with Obama or

8:45

George W. Bush or Joe Biden.

8:48

I think everyone thinks that Europe

8:50

needs to stump up more money

8:52

to put into NATO. It's just

8:54

that Donald Trump puts it in

8:56

much more defiant and categorical terms.

8:59

I was at the British ambassador's residence playing

9:01

tennis, of course, like you do. And the

9:03

deputy national security advisor in

9:06

the Obama administration was playing in

9:08

a doubles game. At the switch

9:10

over, Peter Westmock, who was then

9:13

the ambassador, was delivered a very

9:15

firm message from the deputy national

9:17

security advisor, do not go

9:19

under 2% as David Cameron

9:21

and George Osborne were threatening. You

9:23

cannot do that. We will go berserk if you

9:26

do. And it was just really telling that that

9:28

was happening then in a different way.

9:30

Donald Trump does it on a platform.

9:32

Yeah, and actually, I think if we go back

9:34

to 2014, following your lessons

9:37

in history, and you look at

9:39

the first incursion, invasion, Russia

9:41

in Ukraine, which was when

9:43

Obama was still president. And

9:46

Obama made the law then that

9:48

they could not export armaments to

9:50

Ukraine because it would inflame the

9:52

situation. Now, when Trump came in

9:54

in 2016, he

9:56

overturned that. So there's a

9:58

lot of very complicated. responses I

10:00

think in terms of what

10:02

Trump says and where he sits. You're right,

10:05

I mean maybe yes of course they should

10:07

have come in earlier that would have been

10:09

much more helpful but I think you

10:11

now have to take that America first

10:14

phrase very seriously. It doesn't actually mean,

10:17

I don't know that it means we're

10:19

gonna have black shirts marching through you

10:21

know Washington, I don't think it means

10:23

that but it means you will

10:25

only get us acting in our own

10:27

best interests first and that's what you know

10:30

he's basically telling us we've got to get

10:32

used to. I think this is maybe a

10:34

silly point but you look at the unique

10:36

geography at the United States of America. Thousands

10:39

of miles of Pacific Ocean to

10:41

the west, thousands of miles Atlantic

10:43

Ocean to the east, friendly countries

10:46

to the north, Canada to the

10:48

south, Mexico. America can

10:50

live in a world where it isn't

10:52

that troubled by global events in the

10:54

way that living in Europe we are.

10:56

Well until 2001. Yes

10:58

until 2001, until Pearl Harbor you know

11:00

those are the moments where suddenly America

11:02

loses its sense of inviolability but for

11:05

the most part America can live with

11:07

this idea that it can just pull

11:09

up the drawbridge and live very safely

11:11

and shut itself off in the world

11:13

and that's what Donald Trump wants. But

11:15

it's just Trump's understanding of foreign affairs.

11:18

If people say to Donald Trump I

11:20

really love you Mr President or sir,

11:22

you must always call him sir. I

11:24

really think you're the greatest sir. Donald

11:27

Trump's happy with you. Not just happy with you but

11:29

you get to be the ambassador of the UK.

11:31

Exactly. In Australia the ambassador now in

11:34

the US is Kevin Rudd, the former

11:36

Prime Minister. Labor Prime Minister. And was

11:38

appointed specifically because of his expertise on

11:41

China and I saw him at a

11:43

breakfast just before he went off to

11:46

Australia to talk about the threat of China

11:48

and the complicated way you have to manage

11:50

China. So you know America is very pleased

11:52

to have him there but he said some

11:54

disabliging things about Donald Trump which

11:56

Nigel Farage raised with Mr Trump

11:59

which got a dusty response.

12:02

Kevin Rudd, former Labour

12:04

MP, I mean, he has said the

12:07

most horrible things. You were a destructive

12:09

president, a traitor to the

12:11

West, and he's now Australia's

12:14

ambassador in Washington. Yeah, well, I don't know. Would you

12:16

tell the phone call from him? He won't be there

12:19

longer if that's the case. I don't know much about

12:21

him. I heard he was a little

12:23

bit nasty. I hear he's

12:25

not the brightest bulb, but I

12:27

don't know much about him. But if

12:29

he's at all hostile, he will not be there

12:32

long. I mean, not so different from

12:34

our own foreign ambassador, whose words about

12:36

Trump were leaked. We still don't know

12:38

whether that came from the UK side,

12:41

from the Johnson administration, or from the

12:43

Trump side. And sure enough, he

12:45

kind of packed his bags and got the

12:47

hell out of there. I mean, removed

12:49

fairly unceremoniously. Which is

12:51

extraordinary, the idea that

12:53

a foreign country can choose who

12:56

the ambassador is to represent your

12:58

country. Because the answer, yes, it was all

13:00

the whole set up was our man. Our

13:02

man in wherever. Our man. Well, it's going

13:05

to be Donald Trump's man again if he

13:07

wins in November. In a moment, we're going

13:09

to be talking about our man on Twitter.

13:11

Our man on X, as it

13:13

is now, Elon Musk, who's just done

13:15

a rather freewheeling interview. And

13:18

we'll leave it to you to decide who comes out

13:20

on top. So

13:39

you've already heard an interview with

13:41

Nigel Farage, former

13:43

leader of UKIP, talking

13:46

to Donald Trump on GB

13:49

News, which hosts many current

13:51

conservative MPs now, I

13:54

mean, hosts as in employees. Now

13:56

we're going to bring you an interview, which is Donald

13:59

Trump. by a former

14:02

CNN presenter, his name

14:04

is Don Lemon, who was ousted about

14:06

a year ago under the last sort

14:08

of CNN administration. And he has

14:10

set himself up on Twitter

14:13

or on X as an alternative sort

14:15

of media space. And

14:18

he's just done an interview with

14:20

Elon Musk. Now we

14:23

understand that the two of them essentially set

14:25

up a deal and Don Lemon gets a

14:27

few minutes with him in what looks like

14:30

a Tesla sort of car factory. And it's

14:33

a really odd chat, because

14:36

it's not fiery in the way that you

14:38

sort of think of interview might

14:40

be. But it is quite

14:42

revealing, isn't it? So the interview is

14:45

revealing. And just a bit more on

14:48

Elon Musk was literally

14:50

trying to woo Don Lemon

14:52

to come onto the platform to launch

14:54

his TV show just as Tucker Carlson,

14:56

ex of Fox News, has also gone

14:59

on to ex and Tucker Carlson, it's

15:01

been a brilliant outlet for him. There's

15:03

obviously a partnership arrangement in place. Yeah,

15:05

and you know, and Tucker Carlson gets

15:08

a ton of publicity on X for

15:10

doing this. And at one point, Elon

15:12

Musk directly appealed to Don Lemon on

15:14

X saying, have you considered doing your

15:17

show on this platform? Maybe worth a

15:19

try. Audience is much bigger. And so

15:21

they signed this deal. And this was

15:23

the fruit of the deal, which was the

15:26

first interview where Don Lemon asks these questions

15:28

to Elon Musk, Don Lemon goes straight for

15:30

the central question, which is, have you ruined

15:32

X by what you've done and driving

15:34

advertisers away? You believe that X and you

15:37

have some responsibility to moderate hate speech

15:39

on the platform, that you wouldn't have to

15:41

answer these questions. I don't have to answer

15:43

questions from reporters. Don, the only reason I've

15:46

been this interview is because you're on the

15:48

X platform, and you asked for it.

15:51

Otherwise, there were not to go to the side here. So

15:53

you don't think you do you think that you wouldn't

15:55

get in trouble or you wouldn't be criticized for these

15:57

things? I've heard that possibly accurate care less. a

16:00

new world that we are in where

16:02

instead of the CEO of a

16:05

company coming into the TV studio sitting

16:07

there and doing an accountability interview the

16:10

reporter or the presenter is invited

16:12

into the CEO's not just showroom

16:15

not just car showroom but

16:17

media space so now

16:19

Elon Musk can essentially decide how well

16:22

that does on his own platform right

16:24

he gets to decide if he promotes

16:26

it he gets to decide if he

16:28

sort of smothers it and so you're

16:31

kind of doing an accountability interview with

16:33

the boss of the platform that it's

16:35

being shown on which I think probably

16:39

messes with democracy's head a bit

16:41

doesn't it? It's pretty uncomfortable it's like

16:44

you or I working for Fox News and

16:46

saying right we're going to interview Rupert Murdoch

16:48

now and we're going to ask

16:50

him all the tough questions on his own phone

16:53

are we really going to do that because there's

16:55

a risk involved in that and it was interesting

16:57

that Don Lemon... Well you would I mean I

16:59

have to say we would if we were working

17:01

for Fox News and we were interviewing Rupert Murdoch

17:03

we would ask him the tough questions but what

17:05

you don't know is what Rupert Murdoch then tells

17:08

the controller of what can be shown because

17:10

that's out of our hands right?

17:12

Totally and so Elon Musk was then

17:14

asked by Lemon about

17:17

free speech and its importance and

17:19

why this was a mission that

17:22

the world's richest man was engaged in. So you

17:24

said if they kill the company it's them but

17:26

doesn't the buck stop with you? Choose

17:29

a question carefully there's five minutes left okay

17:31

but so the same question you want to ask?

17:33

The same question is you said you said that

17:35

they are killing the company but you're the head

17:37

of the company and buck doesn't stop with you?

17:39

I acquired X in order to preserve freedom of

17:41

speech in America the First Amendment and

17:45

I'm going to stick that and if

17:47

that means making this money so be it so

17:52

I have to be listen I'm just being honest right

17:54

I'm not trying to like get

17:56

you or anything I was just

17:59

surprised they you would blame other people for killing

18:01

the company. I mean, when you say the buck

18:03

stops with the President of the United States regardless

18:06

of what happens, right? So

18:10

why would that question of, you seem

18:12

upset by it.

18:14

I'm not trying to upset, well you are upset

18:17

because the way you're phrasing the question is not

18:19

cogent. If given a choice where

18:21

an advertiser is

18:26

saying you have to censor all this content on

18:28

the platform irrespective of where they're advertising appears, then

18:31

RS will be like, look, you can choose where

18:33

you want your advertising, what you want your advertising

18:36

to appear next to. You can't

18:38

insist on censorship of the entire platform. If you

18:40

insist on censorship of the entire

18:42

platform, even where your advertising doesn't

18:44

appear, then

18:47

obviously we will not want

18:51

them as an advertiser. So what would you

18:53

say? So it's fascinating. The

18:55

whole question of the First Amendment. Elon

18:58

Musk has blamed advertisers for

19:01

pulling money out of advertising

19:03

on X because of the way the platform

19:05

is seen to have kind of changed so

19:07

much since he took it over. And

19:09

he's saying I'm not responsible for it, I just want

19:11

to give free speech to anyone and everyone and I'm

19:13

not going to have advertisers telling me what I can

19:15

and can't do. Advertisers of course say, well if you're

19:18

going to have all this stuff on their platform, I

19:20

don't want to advertise there. Which is their free choice.

19:22

Which is their free choice as well. And

19:25

what has happened now is

19:27

the kind of fabulous de nouveau of all of

19:29

this, is that Don Lemon's

19:31

agreement to be on X has

19:34

been ended. I mean Don

19:36

Lemon is still on X, but he doesn't have

19:38

the same deal that he and Elon

19:41

Musk started out with. So

19:44

in this whole explanation,

19:46

you know, the sort of the hypothesis

19:49

of how Elon Musk wants to protect

19:52

free speech, stop censorship, allow

19:54

people to come back and say whatever they

19:57

want. He has now decided that Don Lemon

19:59

doesn't have. the right to

20:01

whatever deal existed before that interview.

20:04

And I think every time you hear people

20:06

shouting free speech, shouting an end of censorship,

20:08

you have to just look really carefully at

20:10

their actions, not their words. Yes. So just

20:13

to give you the sort of, say,

20:15

Don Lemon, free speech, First Amendment, say

20:18

whatever you like. Don

20:20

Lemon has issued a statement, Elon Musk's commitment to

20:22

a global town square where all questions can be

20:24

asked and all ideas can be shared, seems

20:27

not to include questions of him

20:29

from people like me, into

20:32

which X has replied a statement on behalf

20:34

of Elon Musk. However, like

20:36

any enterprise, we reserve the right to

20:38

make decisions about our business partnerships. And

20:41

after careful consideration, X

20:43

decided not to enter into a commercial

20:45

partnership with the show. Careful

20:48

consideration means I got into a strop. And

20:50

in that interview, in that sort of

20:52

little clip, you heard something really unusual,

20:55

which is Don Lemon, who doesn't actually want to

20:57

fight. He doesn't want a gotcha moment. He's kind

21:00

of going, you seem really upset. And

21:02

Elon Musk goes, I am upset. And

21:04

there are these long pauses, which I

21:07

found really sort of compelling actually to

21:09

listen to, because you can

21:11

hear that relationship and

21:13

maybe that deal unraveling in

21:16

that space. Well, I was just

21:18

before we came back from our trip

21:20

to America, I went

21:22

and had lunch with my friend Debbie and

21:24

her three daughters who all work in tech and

21:27

have watched the rise and rise and rise of Elon Musk.

21:29

And I just asked the question, Elon

21:31

Musk, good or bad? And they

21:34

found it the most confoundingly complicated

21:36

question, because there is so much

21:38

that Elon Musk has done, which

21:41

is extraordinary, you know, SpaceX, Tesla, all these

21:43

things that have advanced kind of the human

21:45

condition. And yet on the other

21:47

side of it, there is stuff that he's getting involved in now.

21:51

Where is he a free speech warrior? Is he

21:53

kind of getting ready to take sides with Donald

21:55

Trump in the election? And a lot of people

21:57

are thinking that is exactly the direction of travel

21:59

for Elon Musk. And you listen to

22:01

him and you can see and

22:03

feel the complexity of

22:06

him as an individual dangerous

22:08

possibly Visionary certainly,

22:11

but where do you draw the line on him? It's really

22:13

tough Yeah, and he also backed from

22:15

DeSantis famously thought he would be Party

22:21

ill-fainted terrible launch which kind of did

22:24

for them both for a while and

22:26

he's now swapped over to Trump But

22:29

just imagine this is the new look of

22:31

democracy. You've got Donald Trump with his billions

22:33

I mean, we haven't even talked about the

22:36

loan the bond that he owes that he can't pay

22:38

down But you've got him a billionaire

22:41

You've got Musk who owns all the

22:43

media platforms and you've got whatever he's

22:45

doing with his satellite That may or

22:47

may not be helping Putin in a

22:49

nutshell. We are moving into this really

22:52

weird autocratic space under the

22:54

guise of a free and fair

22:56

presidential election It is the

22:58

stuff of a James Bond film where

23:00

you have got the multi squillionaire Who

23:03

has got more money than he knows what to do

23:06

with and has ownership

23:08

of immensely powerful bits of

23:10

kit? Like it's the

23:12

access to social media like the

23:14

satellites in space, which is not

23:16

a shooting pen anymore It's not

23:18

a shooting pen anymore But he

23:20

is the kind of stuff where

23:22

you could see him being the

23:24

perfect bond villain and talking of

23:26

bond villains We've got a little

23:28

bit more for you on Trump and his money after the

23:30

break I Bond

23:49

villains. So what are we talking about? Well, Donald

23:51

Trump as you may know owes nearly 500 million

23:54

dollars after a civil

23:57

court case Essentially determined that he

23:59

had exactly exaggerated the value of his

24:01

assets and needed to pay back quite a

24:03

sum of money. That's not going too well

24:06

because suddenly Donald Trump, who has

24:08

long boasted of being a multi-zillionaire

24:10

I think that was your words, suddenly can't

24:12

find the cash. Well don't misquote me, I

24:14

said squillionaire, not a billionaire. I'm so sorry,

24:16

that's a fake news game. And

24:18

I've just seen the brilliance of your

24:21

gag about another Bond villain. Not a

24:23

capital B, but a small B, because

24:25

he can't pay Bond. And this is

24:27

the money that is outstanding as a

24:30

result of this forced inflation of the

24:32

values of Trump Tower and the like,

24:34

which meant that he got preferential interest

24:36

rates. And he's got to pay it

24:39

now. Now he's trying to appeal against

24:41

it and saying this is too heavy a fine,

24:43

but you have to post the Bond before

24:46

you can make the appeal. And

24:48

so he's in acoustic and he's gone to 30

24:51

loan companies apparently. And they said,

24:53

you must be joking, we're not touching

24:55

you. Now, even though Donald Trump is

24:57

potentially going to be the most

24:59

powerful man in the world, come November,

25:02

even after that, the companies

25:04

are saying, well, hang on, we're not going

25:06

to expose ourselves to that level of risk.

25:08

And it either means one of two things. His

25:11

assets are nothing like as liquid

25:14

as he said in court that they

25:16

were. So he can't lay his money

25:18

on the cash or

25:21

he's not as rich as

25:23

he's told everybody for a year after

25:25

year after year. And the worst case

25:27

scenario in all of this, which I

25:30

don't expect would happen for a nanosecond,

25:32

is that to get one this, he

25:34

might have to declare himself bankrupt.

25:37

Yes. I mean, it would start with a fire sale,

25:39

what they call a fire sale of

25:41

assets, where he sells off X

25:43

Hotel, X Blocker Flats, all the rest

25:45

of it. That only works

25:48

if you've actually got buyers who believe

25:50

in the price of what you're asking.

25:52

First of all, it's not unusual, we

25:54

should say, to make an appeal, which

25:56

does actually bring down the price of

25:58

what you've been asked. I think it

26:00

happens quite often, but

26:02

I think it is extra humiliating for a

26:04

man who has created this

26:07

aura of untouchability because

26:09

he is so rich and so powerful,

26:11

it's all been part of his success.

26:14

We should also just mention, Melania has been

26:16

seen, when she was asked to be back on

26:18

the campaign trail with him, she said, Stittenden. Yeah,

26:21

and I suppose the other possibility is

26:23

that there's been some renegotiation of arrangements

26:25

financial with between Don and Melania, which

26:27

means he hasn't got the money to

26:29

spend on the bond because he's had

26:31

to pay quite a bit to keep

26:33

Melania sweet. Yeah, £424

26:36

million. Yeah. Quite a nice book

26:38

of love. Yeah. Stay tuned. We

26:40

will be back next week. Bye-bye. This

26:43

has been a Global Player Original

26:46

podcast under perfect accommodation.