The Upsides--and Downsides--of Trump's Victory

It's the end of an era for a Democratic Party that privileged identity politics and top-down moralizing. What it means for the GOP and the rest of the country is less clear.

‘generate a picture of kamala harris donald trump elon musk and robert kennedy eating mcdonalds’ via grok

On Friday, I appeared on the Americano podcast of Britain’s Spectator (one of the oldest publications on the planet!). Guest host Kate Andrews, regular host Freddy Gray (who had recently returned from Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida), and I talked about the reasons for Kamala Harris’ defeat, and what’s likely to happen in a second Trump administration.

The short version: This is the end of an era not just for a certain brand of Democratic Party politics but for many fronts in the culture wars. I hope the Dems think about going in a more libertarian direction, rather than following Bernie Sanders, who says the problem was their agenda wasn’t left-wing enough.

Beyond that, I think things are less clear. Trump’s promises of massive new tariffs and mass deportations would wreak havoc on the economy and personal freedom (if any of us have to show papers to authorities, all of us have to). At the same time, Trump’s victory radically changes conversations about many aspects of the status quo, including spending and regulation. Trump talks a big game about cutting spending, but he did the opposite in his term—even before COVID (indeed, most of the debt he added was prior to the pandemic).

You can listen at The Spectator’s site by clicking here (the page also includes links to a wide variety of podcast platforms as well). Or click below to listen on Apple or Spotify.

I’ve also included an uncorrected transcript of our conversation, provided by Otter AI.

I’m happy to report that one serious concern I had—that Trump would be keeping on hawkish torture apologists like Mike Pompeo in his administration—is gone. Pompeo served as CIA director and Secretary of State in Trump 1.0 and a significant presence in his successful run this time, but he’s out.

This is an uncorrected transcript. Please check out all quotes against the audio recording for accuracy.

SPEAKERS: Freddy Gray, Nick Gillespie, Kate Andrews

Kate Andrews  00:05

Kate, hello and welcome to the americano show. I'm Kate Andrews and I'm guest hosting for Freddy Gray while he's over in the States. We'll be getting reports from him this week on the US election, and be speaking to many other guests now on with the show. I'm joined today by Nick Gillespie, editor at large for reason and host of the reason interview Podcast. I'm also joined by the host of this podcast, Freddy Gray, our deputy editor here at the spectator. Freddy, welcome back.

Freddy Gray  00:33

You've to be you've you've usurped me as the host of Americana. You

Kate Andrews  00:37

asked me to guest host this for you while you were away, but that's one way to put it. You've done

Freddy Gray  00:43

an annoyingly great job, and now I think I've been I've been replaced. I'll

Kate Andrews  00:47

be a lot worse next time. I promise. It's great to see you in person. You made it back in one piece from Palm Beach, where you witnessed history in the making. Can you tell us about that experience?

Freddy Gray  00:57

Yeah, well, I keep telling people that the moment when Pennsylvania came in, in at the election watch party was one of the most extraordinary experiences I've ever been part of. The room weren't completely bananas, and people were just sobbing, and it was like a sort of religious moment of elation. Jesus. I know this. I loved it. There was this great woman standing next to me from Oklahoma who wanted to talk about the crown because she realized I was British. So I was chatting to her a bit. And then when after Pennsylvania, she came up and found me, and she looked at me and she said, God has saved our country. And in that moment, I fully believed her. And do you still know? I think it is an extraordinary story. I think this election, or Trump's re election, is one of the most extraordinary stories in American history. Everybody's saying that now. So it's quite boring to say, but it's true.

Kate Andrews  01:55

Nick, were you crying tears of joy or tears of despair on election night?

Nick Gillespie  02:00

No, no tears. I mean, but I agree with Freddy. This is, you know, from a kind of historic point of view. This is fascinating. It's obviously only the second time that a that America has elected a president to a non consecutive second term, and Trump's, you know, I'm not a fan of Trump. I don't think I have trumped arrangement syndrome. I'm, you know, I'm trying to be a neutral arbiter. Since he's emerged on the scene, you're really in a big way. In 2015 he has absolutely dominated our conversation and our politics. And I think, you know, this is a big deal with major ramifications. I think you know off the top, though, what I would say is that this election first and foremost, that the thing that we know for sure that it's going to do is close out an entire era of Democratic Party politics. And I think certain elements within the Democratic Party and the progressive coalition, where what we have seen really over, certainly over the past four years, but even going back to the 2018 midterms here and at various state and local levels, we saw the emergence of a very top down control heavy Democratic Party that was not interested in what people thought, but rather In telling people what to think and how to live, and you know, where you could shop and not and things like that. That I think that version of the Democratic Party, at least for a long time, is gone, and that is an absolute cause for celebration, you know, I think, by anybody who believes in individual freedom, and you know, and liberty and autonomy and

Kate Andrews  03:42

Freddy, in addition to telling people what they could do and what they could eat and how they could live, they were also telling people how they had to vote. One of the big problems, certainly in retrospect, seems to be that people felt like to elect Kamala Harris was to crown her because she did not go through the usual process. And as Nick says there, in terms of that institution, that huge, mighty Democratic Party institution, Harris was always the person they wanted back in 2019 going into the 2020 election, she was their pick. She was never the Democratic Party's grassroot pick. She couldn't get over 10% in the polls. She was their pick this time around too. And American voters said, we're not doing this anymore.

Freddy Gray  04:23

Yes, but I think even in 2024 you know, even the Obamas, you felt in their in their eye, they gave these quite impressive speeches at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August. And everybody said, Wow, amazing. You know, camel mania. Everyone's on board, isn't it great? But you could see in the Obama's eyes, both of them, that they didn't really feel it. And Obama himself sort of said, you know, things are going to get rough down the road. Because I think you could tell that this, this can her candidacy, was not going to work. And I think everybody who has worked with Kamala Harris doesn't like her. And thinks she's a disaster, and so that you could sort of sense that at the top of the Democratic operation, that there was great unhappiness there. And I think, as Nick says, I think there will be this moment of reckoning now for the Democratic Party, and which way they go will be fascinating. I think a lot of people are hoping that someone like, you know, Josh Shapiro, will come in and be a sort of a more sensible candidate, more moderate candidate. But then you do have the Israel question. What does the Democratic Party do about the fact that so much of its base is very pro Palestine, and if the Middle East continues to have terrible divisions in warfare, then how does the Democratic Party handle that? That's a very interesting question. I think it's going to think it's going to be very difficult for them to get out

Nick Gillespie  05:45

of that. Yeah, and you know, more broadly on that, you know, on kind of the issue of identity politics, or, you know, in the in the Democratic coalition, identity was always forward. But, you know, coming out of places like Dearborn, Michigan, which is one of the few Arab majority cities in America. I mean, I think it's one of two or something like that. They voted for Trump in Michigan. You know, in an Arab Muslim community, I think the Democrats, the bulk of them, are ready to jettison identity politics in terms of more serious governance issues, which is, how do you connect with people who say, you know they want inflation to be controlled. You know they want they want to hear more about how do you fix that? How do you make housing prices affordable? How do you create policies that create jobs, rather than telling me what kinds of you know how whether or not to call Latinos or Hispanics Latinx. You know, there is a group within the Democratic Party that is not dead, but they have been beaten down that you know will still say the reason why the Democrats lost is because they weren't anti Israel enough. They weren't pro Hamas enough. They weren't socialists enough. Barry Bernie Sanders has kind of said that in his quick autopsy. That's not going to I don't think that's going to work, and I don't think that's going to be the future of the Democratic Party. And again, that's for me, that is the one thing it's like, who? Okay, that's good. That's good.

Kate Andrews  07:18

That's interesting, though. It sounds like you're slightly optimistic that the Democrats will learn the lessons feel like in the fallout for them in this election. Over the past couple of days, we have only heard about identity politics. We have only heard that this was a flawless campaign. If she hadn't been a black woman in America, she would have won. I Yeah,

Nick Gillespie  07:39

you know some people say that I am not getting that vibe. I mean, it's definitely out there. And there's, there's people are saying that. But these, these are people who are not going to be around, you know, they don't, they're not going to be sticking it out and doing the party politics. I think it's more people the future the Democratic Party, if it is serious about, you know, offering an alternative and a governing majority, they're going to be turning more to people like Josh Shapiro or somebody like Jared Polis in Colorado. And Colorado is an interesting state. Polis is a very free market, free speech, you know, liberal, Libertarian, adjacent Democrat, who you know is gay, is married. Colorado is one of the few states, and it's a kind of purple state that saw Democrats actually gaining. I mean, the the other thing that is amazing about this election, when you look at the maps, like every place, basically moved Republican. It was a real thorough rejection of Democrats. It was not, you know, Kamala Harris was a terrible candidate who, you know, you you recognize now, why she stayed under wraps, because she can't actually talk. She didn't have the substance, she didn't have the personality, she didn't have the charisma to, you know, to do three hours on Joe Rogan and walk out, you know, feeling good. But it's much bigger than that, you know. And at the at the local level, you know, you saw people like the mayor of San Francisco get bounced, people who are identified with the most kind of extreme live liberal views. If they were on the ballot this time around, they're gone. You know, the district attorney of Los Angeles, and I'm focusing on California, because this is a that massively blue state. It's been a democratic super majority for over a debt well over a decade, and they bounced a bunch of people in Liberal strongholds. Because that, you know that that has been tried, and it just doesn't seem to work.

Kate Andrews  09:37

Freddy, last point about the Democrats, before we move on to the Republicans, and what President elect Trump may well do. Our listeners haven't had the joy or the experience yet of getting your feedback on the Vice President's concession speech, and I think they'd really like to know your thoughts.

Freddy Gray  09:55

Well, I thought it was amazingly bad, wasn't it? I didn't think. It was great. It was trying to evoke. It was a lot of it was ripped off from Hillary Clinton's 2016 concession speech, and it was a similar timing, because it was the day after, and it was trying to show grace without having any grace. It

Kate Andrews  10:14

was pretty graceless. Yeah. Now maybe you can't expect much more in the age of Donald Trump. It isn't as if he is particularly generous, but it was not a kind speech. Well,

Freddy Gray  10:24

actually, I was thinking about that because there's an interesting story about Joe Biden finding the, you know, the tradition of the president who leaves leaves a letter in the resolute desk for the incoming president. And Biden was asked what Trump's letter was like, and he said it was, I think, shockingly gracious. So I think Trump, despite, while Trump was actually disputing the election, he wrote this shockingly gracious. So I think Trump does have a gracious streak in him, even if it is overwhelmed a lot of the time by the rest of Donald Trump. But I mean, I think Kamala Harris will be seen as a disaster candidate. I think there will be that will be part of the reckoning as to, how did we allow this candidate that we knew had no popular appeal, that didn't cut through with voters? How did we allow her to get to the top of the ticket, or why did we push her to the top of the ticket? That will be the question. But the speech was awful, and the bit about stars, I can't I was going to quote it, but now I can't remember it because my brain had deliberately shut it out. Well, I

Kate Andrews  11:22

did want to know it if, if, if you, and if you as well, Nick, identify as one of the stars in the darkest sky. Yeah,

Nick Gillespie  11:30

yeah. I think I identify with the darkness,

Freddy Gray  11:36

the black hole in the we're all part of the black hole.

Kate Andrews  11:39

I'm the I'm the gray clouds hovering above Nick Donald Trump is suggesting that he is going to dismantle, certainly what we've seen over the past four years, with bidenomics, with industrial strategy, with the interventionist state, he's also promising to dismantle huge parts of the federal government, bringing in Elon Musk just to wipe it out. Do you believe him when he says he's going, yeah,

Nick Gillespie  12:05

absolutely not. Because, you know, the a couple of things. One, he has a record to run on, you know, and this isn't hypothetical or anything, but he added something on the order of about $8.4 trillion he signed off on legislation that created $8.4 trillion in new debt, the majority of that came before COVID. He increased spending. Before COVID, he's not going to cut spending. And if you're a populist, I mean, go back comb through history. Populists don't reduce spending. Populist get they increase spending, and they just give it to the people who put them in office. Trump ran on tariffs. Which tariffs are put into support particular industries he's going to shovel money and subsidies and put up protectionist, you know, kind of blinkered or deflector shields for his preferred industries. And we know what those are end up ultimately going to be, because he has a bunch of very public backers from Silicon Valley and a bunch of defense related industries and things like that. The other thing that he, you know, he promised to come in and deconstruct in the in the phrase of Steve Bannon, he was going to deconstruct the administrative state, which he didn't do. And in fact, one of the big court rulings this year, the Supreme Court ruling that helped knock down the administrative state, or, you know, overturn Chevron deference, that was against a policy that Trump had put in. So Trump is not a foe of the administrative state. He's an enabler of it. And his other, you know, besides tariffs, his big signature thing is that I'm going to deport millions of illegal immigrants and everybody who's related to them, you know, with, you know, starting on day one. That is not something that is going to minimize the administrative state. That is going to create vast new bureaucracies that go very intimately into every aspect of every American's lives. So I don't, you know, I don't buy that he is going to simplify things, or cut a lot of spending. He will very publicly, cut certain things, possibly, and then that money is going to be spent elsewhere, plus some other added some. You

Kate Andrews  14:20

know Fred, thinking back on it, over the past couple months, we haven't really heard the phrase drain the swamp from him as much, if, if at all. He does talk about massive cuts. He does talk about massive change. But is he okay with that swamp in DC now? No,

Freddy Gray  14:35

I don't think he's okay. I think the Republicans around him, feel they are a more professional outfit now they and they are more of an established party. They have a more coherent professional movement. Whether that's true in office, remains to be seen, but I would say, to counter Nick's point slightly, I do think on immigration and on debt as well. Well, I think Donald Trump is not going to be running for re election, and he's very sad about this. He keeps talking about how sad he is about that he's done his last campaign rally. But the fact that he's not running for re election might change him as a politician, and or might change the way he governs. And I think on debt, they might be a bit more serious than you obviously it'll be. It's extremely hard to tackle entitlements. No modern government seems able to do it, and he

Nick Gillespie  15:27

has, if I may, though he has repeatedly said, I am not going to touch a penny of Medicare or Social Security. So when you take those two things, plus interest on the debt, maybe throw in defense, because he's always talking about how we're going to have the best defense ever. And I, you know, I'd like his gesture towards foreign policy much more than Kamala Harris, where he's like, we're going to have a great military, so we don't have to use it. But, like, already he's he, you know, there's no, there isn't $2 trillion out of a $6 trillion budget to cut when you've layered in Medicare, Social Security, interest on the debt, which has to be paid, and defense spending, you know, it's like, okay, we're already at like, over $5 trillion so

Freddy Gray  16:10

well, I do think on immigration. I do think, although they're willing to spend 100 billion, apparently, on this deportation program. I mean, I do think there's an argument that you can cut quite a lot of government costs through reducing illegal immigration. I mean, illegal immigration does not less in America than it does here, but it does place a huge burden on government, federal infrastructures, and the fact that they are serious about that is part of their debt reduction creating a more efficient economy. I know it all can sound like pie in the sky, but I think at this early stage, it's probably a bit tuned to dismiss it. Something

Kate Andrews  16:48

I've been wondering, Nick is, if you wanted to make good on some of these pledges, but also weigh that up with the fact that, as you say, You've promised not to touch the two biggest entitlements in America, which are politically very, very difficult to change. Is there a possibility that Trump might try to make a deal with the younger Americans about what's to come? So I'm not going to touch Medicare or Social Security for people over the age of 45 but if you are young, if you aren't there yet we need to talk about a new and sustainable plan, and this means you're not going to see these entitlements in the same way, but it also means I'm going to create a lower tax rate for you, something similar to maybe what they're doing in Portugal, where they're actually offering a lower tax rate to under 35 to try to get them into the country. Is it perhaps a new deal with younger voters, rather than taking away from older voters. And to be fair, people who will be banking on these entitlements, who will structure their life in a certain way, and it would be hard to pivot now.

17:50

Yeah. I mean, that is a great idea. And I wish you know the only candidate who was talking like that was Chase Oliver, the Libertarian Party candidate who you know, manage only you know, near or historic low among you know, third party candidates for himself. But Trump has not been sounding those notes. But it would be smart for him to start doing that, because the other thing to think about like in his victory, which was, you know, vast and overwhelming. He picked up a lot of younger voters, you know, the 18 to 29 year old vote range since, like, about 2004 but certainly under the two Obama terms and with Hillary Clinton, was overwhelmingly in favor of the Democratic candidate. Trump pulled back. You know, he had a swing, I think, of like six or 8% among 18 to 29 year olds. And that would be an incredible pitch to really seal that, not going forward for the Republicans, I think, to say to younger people, we recognize that you feel like you're getting ripped off in a lot of different ways, when all of us can argue whether that's true or not. I mean, millennials and Gen Z actually are doing quite well in America. You know, we don't, we don't have the language or the narrative to acknowledge that, but to say to them, Look, these entitlements are going bankrupt. They're not going to be around for you. Let's come up with a way that we we keep your grandparents or your parents from you have and eat cat food, but you're going to be free and clear to actually define yourself. I would love to have that conversation, but that is not what Trump was running on, for sure,

Kate Andrews  19:30

Freddy, he's got to do something, because part of the way that he grew the Republican coalition, I think, was through that pledge that Elon Musk was going to come in and dismantle large parts of the federal government. You'll have, you know, in terms of the demographics that have made up this election, you will have plenty of people who are college educated, who are, you know, in very well paying jobs, who hate the idea of Donald Trump, and they don't like what he says, but they love the idea of Elon Musk coming in and reducing the debt. Deficit.

Freddy Gray  20:00

Well, I think the appointment of Susie Wiles as chief of staff is really interesting on this for a number of reasons. I mean, she is she alarms a lot of people in Trump world because she is an old fashioned Republican. She's an Episcopalian. She worked for Reagan. Jeb Bush tweeted yesterday how pleased he was about her appointment long enough, lots of people, it's normally very bad news.

Nick Gillespie  20:24

I don't, yeah, I don't know what it is he trying to, you know, hurt Donald Trump by good things about him. Yeah, it could have

Freddy Gray  20:29

been trouble, but, but I do think what I mean, obviously, Jeb Bucha was governor of Florida, and Susie Wells is Miss political operative in Florida. And that in itself, is a fascinating subject, which has been talked about a lot, but it's come backing up, coming back up to the forward this election, the sort of floridaization of America and the future of America, because Florida, which has a huge number of senior citizens, very rich, very poor, Latinos, Hispanics, African Americans, very low taxes, very low taxes, which has driven a lot of people into that into that state. It is seen as a lot of people, is like what the future of the American experiment will look like. Sorry to call your country an experiment. I didn't mean it's a very beautiful it's a beautiful

Kate Andrews  21:17

50 experiments at once, but,

Freddy Gray  21:18

but the but the Susie Wells is going to be in that position. And that she understands the dynamics of how politics with those kind of demographics and whatever works, suggest that they have a kind of, if you like, it sort of a bush. But what's the opposite of lobotomy? You know, a kind of a Bucha, her mind, brain booster, a brain booster. They've had a Bucha politics with a brain, a super brain. Yeah, and and less pro war. So, you know, all good

Nick Gillespie  21:51

Nick You know, if I may, just to follow up on this, I'm, I don't think that Kate, as much as I would love to be having conversations about, you know, deep, deep governance issues and monetary issues. Trump is going to be out in 2028 the, you know, Social Security, Medicare, really go belly up in the early 2030s he's never cared about, you know, finance, or about balancing the budget, whatever he says. I don't think he's going to what he is going to be working on is kind of restoring a sense of control or stopping chaos. And this is very attractive. I'm not, I'm not sure I'm going to like the way that he's going to try to do that. But if he does so, for instance, Freddy mentioned in passing, kind of Foreign Affairs, or global affairs, if Trump comes in and does, you know, bring a negotiated settlement in Ukraine, and kind of, you know, he supposedly has put pressure on Netanyahu to, you know, to to have, you know, the Israel situation cleaned up by the time he takes office. If he restores some kind of order, or semblance of order in foreign affairs, people will be like, Okay, that's good if he doesn't have to deport illegals. But if he brings some order to the border, people will be able to relax a little bit, and then the, you know, the economy is already much better. I mean, inflation has been going down and whatnot. Like, you know, jobs were, you know, the economy is doing pretty well. As long as he doesn't mess that up, it'll be like, okay, an adult is back in charge, rather than, you know, sleepy Joe Biden, who, I mean, is still president, and, you know, he also gave a talk yesterday, which nobody paid attention to, you know, the sense that nobody is in charge and that things are spiraling out of control, or slowly, kind of looping out of control. If he comes in and he restores a little bit of order without being seen as a draconian nut job, who you know that that's all he's going to have to do, and then ride off into the sunset. The question is, when it comes to things like tariffs, you know, if he puts in 20% tariffs across the board and 60% tariffs on China, that's going to cause real, recessionary fear if he starts going into mass public places, and he's talked about this and rounding up illegal immigrants, you know, that's going to scare people, because that's not the type of control that people want. People want to sense that things are okay, not that we're entering a new era of, you know, weird, very volatile politics. Well

Kate Andrews  24:24

also, as you say, the clear rejection of that state overreach from the Democratic Party and that sort of very strict attitude towards the way that you live your life has been pushed back on in this election, and even if people, broadly speaking, agree with Donald Trump that they would like to see illegal immigration curbed when you actually start for show, doing public raids and rounding people up. That is a that is a form of authoritarianism that which don't like George

Nick Gillespie  24:51

W Bush and Barack Obama did. I mean, they deported hundreds of 1000s of people over about an eight year period. It did not go well in a. America, because it does when you you you know, in order to do this, you do illegal you do sweeps at public places or at workplaces, and that does not play well. I mean, it's much better to focus on, you know, stemming, you know, people at the border, or figuring out ways to process people in their in their home countries before they enter the US. And, you know, ironically, Biden did some of that well, particularly with certain types of parole programs. But if you know, people who are still pissed about having to show their papers in order to go out there and COVID, are not going to they're not going to respond well to having shown their work papers, you know, at work, and things like that. So I think that's part of the, you know, the question of what happens over the first couple months of a Trump administration.

Kate Andrews  25:52

I want to reflect on something Nick said, which I completely agree with, but it's remarkable that we're saying it Donald Trump has just won his second term, to bring the grown ups back in to DC, to put the adults in charge. Did we ever think we'd be talking about that? Did we ever think we'd be saying the American people just voted for Donald Trump so that the adults could be back in charge? Well,

Freddy Gray  26:18

I mean, I think somebody who gives a lot of people in conservative worlds optimism is JD Vance, because of his view of foreign policy. For instance, he gave a great speech saying that, you know, the time for America lecturing people was over, and lecturing and bombing has been occasionally. Bombing has been America's kind of foreign policy for a long time. It's extremely unpopular. The rest of the world hates it. And if Vance is going to have a lot of influence over this administration, which a lot of people think he will, that can only be a good thing, I think.

Kate Andrews  26:55

But Nick, there's understandably quite a lot of concern in Europe right now about what Donald Trump is going to do on Ukraine, and whilst it's very obvious that in America, the move has been, thankfully, I think we all agree, away from extreme interventionism on the US as part and other parts of the world to something that is more in line with peacekeeping and more sustainable. Donald Trump still does not strike me as the kind of guy who wants to pull all funding overnight and see what happens to innocent Ukrainians. When he does that, he continues to speak very positively about Taiwan and the understanding that free countries should be allowed to stay free. I don't think we have any real consistent sense of what Donald Trump thinks on these issues. JD Vance is a lot more clear. People around him are quite clear, but with Trump, it's a bit more muddled. Maybe that works in his favor. Maybe that helps him negotiate.

Nick Gillespie  27:47

I think this is also, you know, it is yet to be seen, you know, and Trump did this the first time coming into office. There are many different units within the Republican Party, and you have a more non interventionist wing. But then also Mike Pompeo is, you know, clear in this in the past administration, this administration, you know, for the Ron Paul types in the Republican Party. And you know, Ron Paul and Elon Musk are supposedly going to be teaming up to cut, you know, trillions of dollars out of spending. But you know, those people look at Mike Pompeo, and they're like, this is the deep state incarnate, and this is a globalist, military industrial complex type of guy. It's not clear what side is going to win out. I will tell you on election night, I spoke as part of a recent live stream with former Representative Peter Meyer from Michigan, who's a guy who came in and voted to impeach Trump. He's a conservative Republican. He voted to impeach Trump because he was like, Yeah, Trump deserved to be impeached. And he got bounced because of that. He got primary and lost. He voted for Trump. He's very interested in foreign policy and in NATO. And he was saying the thing that Trump brings to foreign policy, which is kind of interesting, and from a libertarian perspective, I'm not fully comfortable with it, but it definitely has certain, you know, a certain effectiveness that the dictators of the world every bit as much as the democratic nations, have no idea what he's going to do, and that that's going to freeze People like xi and people like Putin in a positive way. And I think if Trump goes into a place like Ukraine and, you know, and he he forces a negotiated settlement that both sides can live with, that will be seen as a major victory he did in the Middle East. He was the person who pushed through the Abraham Accords, and those have been set back massively because of, you know, the Hamas attacks and, you know, and the war that Israel, I think, is, you know, legitimately fighting to, you know, kind of clear out a lot of terrorist threats. But, you know, the Abraham Accords, any, any comedy among all of the these nations, has been pushed back a few years. Is. But if Trump comes in and is seen as saying Tibetan Benjamin Netanyahu, you have to, you have to figure a way out to stop this. And it kind of works, even for a little while, he'll be seen as, you know, a really powerful peacemaker, especially if then also freezes any designs that she might have on Taiwan in the next couple of years. So Meyer was saying, you kind of want a crazy nut job, as opposed to somebody like a Biden or a Harris who, it's like, you know, yeah, go ahead and do whatever you want. I was joking on on election night that, you know, if Harris won, I would think about invading Taiwan, because, you know, it's like you I mean, you know, so Trump, Trump offers not a coherent foreign policy, but possibly something that will tamp down the worst things that are going on right now.

Kate Andrews  30:53

Fred, last question, it's been just the most remarkable week, and people are out there still celebrating, and they're still out there crying their eyes out. When does this all calm down and settle or is this what it's going to be like for the next four years?

Freddy Gray  31:10

Well, I think the infighting in Trump World will begin pretty quickly. I think that's sort of inevitable. That's just always what happens. But for now, you know there is this elation that comes with his victory, and it is such an extraordinary victory that I think it will give him quite a lot of momentum going into 2025 and we'll

Kate Andrews  31:34

be here to cover it. Freddy and Nick thanks for joining Americano, and you can have your podcast back.

Freddy Gray  31:39

Thank you.

Kate Andrews  31:40

Thank you for listening to this episode of Americano. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and send it on to your friends.

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