[0:00]If you just listen out, you can actually hear them screaming in the embassy. Like this couldn't have dropped at a worst time for him at the very moment that they've rolled out King Charles II to help the special relationship. And is it
[0:11]true that the American administration holds Israel dearer to the heart than the UK? I think it probably is. >> The only thing that Donald Trump really wants out of us, you know, it's not even
[0:21]our air bases, it is royalty. It is sleepovers in Windsor Castle. Then you have to ask yourself, Anushka, does any of that actually last? Is there a half-life here that is longer than a
[0:32]week? Hello and welcome to Trump World. I'm Matt Frei in London. And I'm Anushka Asthana in Washington, D.C. Today we are
[0:43]asking the question, is King Charles our Trump card? And if so, should we keep playing him? Can he smooth over relations between ourselves and the US?
[0:53]And then also we've got some exclusive polling in which we can drill down a little deeper into what people here in America really make of Donald Trump right now and make of our special relationship.
[1:05]>> Okay, before we get into all the other stuff we need to discuss, and there's a lot of it uh, this week um, as there always is. Um, the British ambassador, uh, Christian Turner in Washington, relatively recent to the job after the
[1:17]demise of Peter Mandelson, um, has said some things on on the record it seems that are really quite surprising and you could say, you know,
[1:27]bombshells, diplomatic bombshells, especially given the current visit by the king. Tell us more, Anushka. I mean, you could say on the record. I don't think he thought they were on the
[1:37]record. He was doing a Q&A with students visiting Washington shortly after um, he arrived here in Washington, D.C. And I think he probably thought he was
[1:48]talking privately, let's be honest. And he certainly didn't expect the comments to come out in the middle of the special relationship. Two things are really embarrassing in what he said. One is basically he's clearly asked about the
[1:58]special relationship and he's said, "We're not special to the US. There's only one country that the US has a special relationship with and that is Israel." If you just listen out, you can actually hear them screaming in the
[2:10]embassy. Like this couldn't have dropped at a worst time for him at the very moment that they've rolled out King Charles II to help the special relationship. The other thing he said, which is going to be really difficult
[2:22]for him, particularly with Evette Cooper on this trip as well, I wonder if they're discussing it, is that, you know, Keir Starmer had been very badly damaged by the Peter Mandelson scandal and that he might be forced out after
[2:32]the May elections. Keir Starmer is probably looking thinking, who was the guy I just appointed? Um, look, yeah, privately, do I think that they believe that our relationship is
[2:43]not the special one to the Americans. And is it true that you know, the American administration holds Israel dearer to the heart than the UK? I think it probably is, although
[2:53]I should say, I do think particularly to Donald Trump, he has viewed the UK as particularly special. I think on the right here in the US, the UK relationship is almost more important
[3:04]than it is to the left. And normally it's the Democrats who you question if there's a special relationship with, which is why I think Donald Trump is so angry with Keir Starmer because he's like, how could the Brits do this to me? And it's about soft power versus hard
[3:16]power as well, isn't it? I mean, on the soft power front, you know, all the cuddly stuff, I think we definitely win, not that it gives us much, but I think we definitely win. On the hard power stuff, you know, Prime Minister
[3:27]Netanyahu managed to bounce Donald Trump into a war against his traditional foe, Iran. You know, we begged the Americans to come on side in Suez in 1956 and they said, "We're not interested." So, I
[3:39]mean, you know, and you could argue that this is this is payback for that. >> In reality, Mark, everything I go to, everything behind the scenes, those of course are the type of conversations you're hearing. And messaging, you know, people get
[3:49]frustrated with journalists using anonymous quotes. The problem we have is that people don't want to say things on the record. So, if we want to tell our viewers what's really going on or our listeners what's really going on, we
[4:01]sometimes have to portray and say what people are saying anonymously. Um, so that's how we kind of, you know, Christian Turner won't be the only person who's having a conversation about Keir Starmer's future behind the scenes.
[4:12]Every single member of the cabinet is having that conversation. The problem is putting it out in the public like this in the middle of this visit could not be more embarrassing.
[4:23]>> Of course, but I mean, I guess it comes back to what you were saying a few minutes ago. He was speaking in front of a bunch of visiting school kids. You know, don't ever say stuff in front of
[4:33]kids or students who don't know about Chatham House rules. Because I'm assuming they didn't I mean, the German Chancellor Swedish Chancellor was speaking in front of students just earlier this week where he let rip
[4:45]about Donald Trump and how he, you know, he started an unnecessary war that the Americans never aren't going to win and how the Iranians have got the upper hand. This is the same Merkel at the beginning of the war was actually quite
[4:57]positive towards what Trump had done. And you know, of course he and the Germans are very careful, you know, to to not to cross Israel in public in any shape or form. So, the health warning
[5:07]is, don't talk to kids, you know, off, you know, in a when you think it's off the record because it won't be off the record. >> What a shame, hey? But right at this very moment, if I if I got this correctly, Christian Turner is probably
[5:19]standing on the White House lawn waiting for the ceremonial welcome for the King and Queen. Awkward. Awks, as my kids would say. The White
[5:29]House is very excited about the arrival of the King. So many people have told me how much Donald Trump loves royalty to the extent that a very, very senior member of his
[5:39]team told um, British teams who have been organizing this that Windsor last year, the state visit was the high point of his second term in his eyes. So,
[5:51]they're very excited. What senior figures in our government were saying to me is they genuinely see King Charles as the best diplomat that they have, that he really is their secret weapon and
[6:02]that the relationship needs a bit of work at the moment. >> You mean better than Evette Cooper, for instance, or our wonderful new ambassador in Washington. I'm being I'm being facetious here. I think I think what's
[6:13]really interesting about I mean, there are lots of things which I find interesting about this strange visit. First of all, the overarching irony that in a year in which America is
[6:25]celebrating 250 years from turning its back on the British monarchy, on Mad King George III, you have a president who is about as
[6:35]monarchical as any president has ever been in terms of his behavior trying to ride roughshod over over, you know, so many parts of the Constitution which
[6:46]was designed by the founding fathers to prevent monarchy from resurfacing in the republic. It was all about the limitations and the divisions of powers. And here's Donald Trump who, especially
[6:58]in his second term, doesn't really care too much about all that. I find that rather ironic. I also find it ironic that in terms of interior design, he really is channeling monarchy from a distant era, possibly a distant galaxy.
[7:09]I mean, all that fool's gold in the Oval Office, the big beautiful ballroom, which of course has now been given added significance by the shooting in the other ballroom in the Hilton Hotel, which has a terrible history when it comes to political
[7:21]violence because that's where Ronald Reagan almost died in 1982. But I think this whole thing, this obsession with monarchy, and I think for Trump it's personal. I think he
[7:32]genuinely believes that he's best buddies with King Charles and he probably thought that he was really close to the Queen and to to the late Queen. And he, you know, his mother who came from the island of Lewis in Scotland was
[7:43]a huge royalist. And when I interviewed him back in the day, he he spent quite a lot of time telling me about how much his mother loved the royal family and therefore he loved them, too.
[7:54]But for us, I think, for the, you know, for us on the island, on in Britain, it is yet another example of the relative limitations of our power because we kind of know that the one
[8:06]thing, perhaps the only thing that Donald Trump Trump really wants out of us, you know, it's not even our air bases. I mean, he needs them now, but he doesn't really want them. It's not access to the
[8:15]NHS for for selling medicine. It is royalty. It is sleepovers in Windsor Castle. It is hosting the King and Queen at the White House.
[8:26]And then you have to ask yourself, Anushka, does any of that actually last? Is there a half-life here that is longer than a week? Because the last visit went swimmingly
[8:37]in Windsor Castle, even though they had to get rid of the ordinary people, the subjects, and had mainly beefeaters and maybe a couple of, you know, exotic animals in the distance. But after that, it was it was curtains
[8:48]for the special relationship, as people like to call it. So, do you think this will be any different? Well, I think there is a inevitable shallowness about it because just sending in the kind of pomp and ceremony
[9:00]doesn't overcome the reason that there is a division. And the reason that there is a division is a really substantive policy point, which is we didn't agree with the president fully on the Iran
[9:11]war. Although it is worth saying, and I think this is the frustration for all the hundreds of people who work in the embassy over here, Britain is actually doing almost everything American America has asked
[9:23]after the beginning of the war itself. Obviously, Keir Starmer for his own political um, life support, whatever you might call it, is is giving out the
[9:33]rhetoric of being quite anti-war, saying we're only there defensively, we're not there offensively. But essentially has given the president almost everything he wants. You know, much more so than say
[9:44]the Spanish prime minister. And obviously Pedro Sánchez has also been attacked by the president. But I feel like there is a special kind of ire for Keir Starmer. Um, yeah, so I find it
[9:54]quite shallow, the idea that the King can come here and smooth it over with all the niceties, but as I say, we're not privy to those conversations behind the scenes, but senior people in
[10:05]government say he really is genuinely an amazing diplomat. I mean, in this visit, there are parts of it which are designed to focus in on King Charles' love of the environment, and I
[10:16]also would love to be a, you know, be there to listen in, be a fly on the wall to listen into their conversations about climate change. Because actually, when you listen to Donald Trump, that's one of the things that seems to irk him
[10:27]the most about the UK, that we don't want to, you know, dig down for more oil and gas, and we've got those windmills everywhere, which he hates. Um, so yeah, I think that would be quite interesting,
[10:39]and I would love to know how far the king actually takes it in the background. I mean, just worth mentioning one thing that kind of ties them is they've both been accused of, in different, very, very different ways,
[10:50]associations with Jeffrey Epstein. For the king, it's obviously removed, and it's his brother, Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor. There has been a push, quite a big push in the run-up to this, um, to try to get the king to meet
[11:01]survivors. Um, very clear to me that officials were worried that that would be the dominant issue this week. Um, Buckingham Palace says they can't he can't meet survivors
[11:11]because it could actually prejudice the cases that are being looked at back home. I mean, when somebody was telling me that, I was kind of like, can you can you just explain the legal thinking there? But
[11:22]that is their reasoning. And on Saturday, there was a memorial for Virginia Giuffre, who obviously took her life last year, very sadly, um,
[11:31]but when she was alive, accused Andrew of sexual assault, something that he has always denied. Um, and so I was speaking to the survivors who were gathered there, and look, I think they
[11:42]would have liked to have met the king and queen. I think in this visit, there will be a focus on domestic violence in the ways they think they can do it. Um, but it is very disappointing for people.
[11:53]I mean, in as part of the kind of planning for this, I think there were conversations with senior politicians, Ro Khanna in particular, the congressman who's been really pushing, um, this
[12:02]issue here on the hill to try and say the king can't do this. Basically, can you lay off? Um, I don't think he will lay off, but I do think it hasn't become
[12:12]as big and a controversial an issue. Um, the excuse that Buckingham Palace seems to have been taken just about, although the survivors were saying to me they do think it is a bit of an excuse, and they would like the king to push for a public
[12:24]inquiry in the UK. One of the things that always struck me, uh, in this weird relationship between Washington and London, is that it can go from one extreme to another quite quickly. And
[12:35]fundamentally, I don't think this trip, and I may be wrong here, and it may be the most brilliant speech he'll ever give when he addresses the joint houses of Congress, and it's certainly the most important, I don't think fundamentally,
[12:46]whatever very elegant phrasing he comes up with, he can really undo the damage of recent months, which is so much more fundamental. Yeah, although what people always say
[12:56]here to me is that it's, you know, you can't deny that there's trouble at the top between Trump and between Keir Starmer, but that every layer below it is still kind of functioning as it was
[13:06]before, although, and I I'll come to this, I think there is one layer that is not functioning as well anymore. Um, which is, you know, Marco Rubio and Yvette Cooper are still talking behind the scenes. And and, you know, I can
[13:17]imagine from what I've heard the type of conversations that are taking place, which is like, please, please, just make Donald Trump be nicer to Keir Starmer. And please, could you particularly lay
[13:26]off attacking the Royal Navy? Clues in the name type of stuff. Um, but interestingly, I had heard until recently that the Pete Hegseth, John Heely, the D um, the military link was
[13:37]also very strong. But I've now heard rumblings that Pete Hegseth, and this doesn't surprise me from sitting in his press conferences, where he is so political and so angry with the press,
[13:48]and he's so repeating the president's mantra on all of this, that that relationship has broken down somewhat, and that Pete Hegseth really buying into the whole naughty Brits thing that's
[13:59]coming from the White House. And if you look at two characters that, you know, that are as diametrically opposed in terms of their body language, their actual, you know, their verbal language, and their attitude to life, I'm sorry,
[14:11]John Heely and Pete Hegseth literally occupy the two opposite sections of human existence, right? And just on all the niceties, um, there was there was one moment
[14:21]yesterday where the king and queen were arriving at the White House. I was standing in the front of the White House, actually standing on a box ready to go live on Channel 4 News, and I was reading like, you know, here's what
[14:32]they're doing first. And they said they're visiting the beehives. And I know this was a big story that clearly has passed me by, but they were I didn't realize that Melania, the first lady,
[14:42]has put a beehive on the South Lawn shaped Like the White House. And as I was as I was reading where they were going to start, I saw a picture of
[14:53]it, and I started laughing so hard that I almost fell backwards off my live spot just as I was about to go on air. And then, look, it's so bizarre working in this country, isn't it? Like, this comes
[15:04]on the backdrop of a weekend which you couldn't make up. I mean, the, you know, White House Correspondents Association dinner, 2 and 1/2 thousand people, you know, most of the cabinet, diplomats,
[15:15]loads and loads of journalists, and obviously there was this shooting incident upstairs in the Hilton Hotel. And then I find myself in the White House briefing room watching the president in black tie with half his
[15:27]cabinet, Karoline Leavitt, the press secretary, giving this press conference like an hour or so later. It was just kind of so bizarre, and then at one point, he
[15:38]starts making the argument for the ballroom. Um, as our colleague Gracie Jerome said to me, doesn't matter if we're talking about Iran, it doesn't matter if we're talking about an assassination attempt, he always manages to bring it back to the ballroom. You
[15:49]know the other thing he manages to bring it back to is how attractive all the Secret Service agents looked. And there was this, I mean, he's, you know, it was this extraordinary moment. I was watching it,
[16:00]you know, online. Um, I wish I'd been in the room like you, but I was watching online, and there was this thing where he says, you know, these Secret Service agents, they were coming out of everywhere,
[16:10]and, um, they looked amazing and the way they drew their guns, and they were so attractive. I mean, it's such a strange thing to focus on when your life is
[16:19]supposedly in peril for the third time. You know what really surprises me, and I've been to, you know, half a dozen of these, uh, White House Correspondents dinners, um, and that, you know, it's it's it's
[16:31]rubber chicken, and you push it across the plate, but you do meet lots and lots of people, which is quite interesting, in this massive ballroom. But what surprises me is that to get in to that event was the heaviest security I've
[16:42]ever seen for any social event. It was extraordinary. So, how come this guy, the the suspect who appeared in court on Monday, was able to kind of check into the hotel a few days earlier with his armory of
[16:53]weapons, you know, without getting fleeced or searched? I mean, you would have thought that, you know, everyone knew what this hotel was hosting at the end of the week, that there would be some kind of check there. I find it
[17:04]astonishing that this heavily secured country, where everyone every second person owns a weapon of war, allows these kind of there's so much Secret Services, you know, everywhere in
[17:16]Washington, they allow these lapses to take place. I find it astonishing. But it clearly, you know, the guy done some of his homework and realized that he might be able to get away with it. I
[17:26]mean, big questions for Secret Service, for how they operate. I think probably more of the voices this time suggesting that things went right in as much as he
[17:37]didn't get through that barrier, unlike in Butler, where, um, you know, the person had got onto the roof. That said, talking to people about the kind of way it was laid out, he didn't get very far.
[17:48]Somebody, you know, senior politician was saying to me last night, we were very lucky that he tripped um, as he was running through. Um, so yeah, serious questions about that, serious questions
[17:58]about political violence. Um, I think we're going to come on to talk about some exclusive polling we've got, and also a focus group that, um, we've all got done for us by Public
[18:09]First, and we'll talk about some of the results. But one of the things just to say, just listening right now to what people were saying, these Trump voters from 2024, just to put things in perspective, one of them said, yeah,
[18:19]I've not heard much about that shooting. Um, don't think I think there's only been one or two stories about it. And it suddenly kind of occurred to me that, you know, I'm not saying that most people might will have heard about it
[18:31]quite well, but people consume news, um, in a kind of different way than they used to, and some of them in large parts of America, you know,
[18:41]not voraciously at all from what I was listening to. From what I can gather, that's all they ran, because it was a, you know, the colleagues were involved. I mean, Wolf Blitzer from CNN kind of appeared as the hero, because he I think
[18:53]he was quite close he was closer to the shooting than most other correspondents, because he'd gone to the bathroom, he'd gone to relieve himself, and on the way back, you know, he was told to get down by one of the Secret Service agents. And
[19:03]then I love the fact that in this, every single correspondent, you know, and there were hundreds of them of our ilk in that room, immediately started not just filming, but doing doing a selfie,
[19:13]or doing a little piece to camera under the table. And of course, we all love the guy, the New Yorker talent agent, who carried on sitting at the desk eating his burrata, his salad,
[19:23]maybe asking for some more salt. And then there's the woman who was pictured, you know, mine sweeping the wide. I'll have to say, I'm with her. If you've survived that, you're allowed, you know, you're allowed to take some of the booze that you've actually paid for. You know,
[19:35]and these tickets are not cheap, as you know. But I love the fact that the the the agent, um, I can't remember his name, but the agent who sat down having his burrata salad while everyone else was either climbing over tables or lying
[19:46]underneath them, um, said that he couldn't get down because his back is so bad, and had he get down? It would have involved several Secret Service agents just to lift him up to his feet again.
[19:56]So, he just stayed there and watched the whole proceeding, which I thought was I'd rather cool. Speaking about the special relationship, I saw someone post that how you reacted to the woman taking the wine showed whether you were British
[20:08]or American because British people were basically like legend. So, Public First, who are a research company I've done work with before, have done two things
[20:17]for us. They have run a poll, a kind of cross-country poll, representative, but we can break it down by different groups. We can look at what people are thinking.
[20:28]Looked a little bit at the special relationship, which I thought was kind of quite interesting. You know, although lots of people still think the UK is one of the America's greatest
[20:38]allies or at least one of a number. There are a not insignificant minority who think we're not important at all. And, you know, a third of people support criticism of Keir Starmer here in the
[20:49]US. But, the stuff that I found really interesting was kind of like, what do you think of the Trump presidency so far? Now, overall, his approval ratings are pretty poor. We talk about that
[20:59]quite a lot. Um 47% of people say their views about Trump have got worse or much worse over the last year. Only 25% say better. Um 50% think the presidency has
[21:09]fallen short of expectations. But, when you break this down, what you do see is there's still pretty high approval among Republican voters. And there's
[21:19]particularly high approval among people who are call themselves MAGA. So, you know, for example, 23% of non-MAGA Republicans say they have a negative
[21:29]view of him while just 4% of MAGA supporters feel the same. So, there is this split. There are still lots of people who really like what Trump is doing. And I just couldn't kind of could
[21:41]couldn't believe this. 20% 20% of people think that he should be able to run for a third term even if it means changing the Constitution. Now,
[21:53]many more say the opposite. 64% say not, but that is one in five people who would like to see Trump run for a third term. It rises to 37% if
[22:03]you just look at Trump's 2024 voters. And the biggest reason they give for wanting that, Matt, is they think he needs more time to deliver his MAGA vision. And, you know, I've
[22:14]just been listening to a group of focus group of all Trump voters from 24 from around the country. And it is just fascinating cuz they are so divided. They all think that he is treated
[22:26]unfairly. Some of them really think that actually time will tell that he's going to you know, he's doing a good job here. That said, I do think they were kind of unified on they don't really like his
[22:37]tone. They don't like the way he goes about communicating things. And some of them were absolutely furious and thought this second term was nowhere near as positive
[22:47]as the first term. And the economy was the big issue for all of them. You know, it's fascinating what you say about that poll, Anushka. And actually, some of it I think resonates with what I, you know,
[22:59]discovered in in the first Trump administration, which is that people Republicans on the whole didn't like his abrasive language. They thought he had bad manners. They wouldn't want him, you know, at their Thanksgiving
[23:10]dinner table. You know, there was none of that stuff as always he the kind of guy you'd like beer with, which was always one of the litmus tests for all previous presidents. But, they did like the fact that he took action,
[23:21]that he, you know, that he lent forward into a problem as, you know, you might put it politely. And And if you have to make that omelet and break a few eggs, then so be it.
[23:32]But, I think I think maybe this time the disillusionment is different because of the war of choice that he started. I think that is something that really
[23:41]fundamentally rankled with the MAGA base like few things did when he was president the first time. And by the way, astonishingly, something like 2/3
[23:51]of Republicans after the 2020 election agreed with him that the election had been stolen. So, I wonder My question to you is whether you could glean from this poll or anything else for that matter
[24:01]whether the base the MAGA base of supporters has swelled in number or it's still that bedrock that we've always been talking about, which is kind of roughly, you know, 30% or so. I think it
[24:12]remains a bedrock and some parts of it who are the more purist ends of it obviously are very upset about the war in Iran because it very much feels like it's different to what he said he was
[24:24]going to deliver. But, it has always been the case that his brilliance as a politician, if that's the right word, in in winning these two elections was to bring together the rest
[24:35]of the Republicans to do enough to bring them on board. And, you know, when you look at the breakdown in the polls, there are some issues which everyone really likes him for. And in fact, that was the same when I was listening to the
[24:45]focus group. They think that he's doing, you know, good stuff on the southern border and stopping, you know, illegal immigrants from coming across the border. The problem he's got, particularly with the Iran war, is
[24:56]everybody associates rising gas petrol prices with the Iran war and therefore with him. Even with Biden, who was blamed for the economic
[25:06]hardship, you couldn't say Biden caused COVID. I think you can quite safely say the Iran war wouldn't be happening if it wasn't for Donald Trump and therefore the Strait of Hormuz wouldn't have been
[25:17]closed in the way that it had been closed. And that issue, the rising oil prices, um was top of the list of things that were worrying even, you know, MAGA
[25:27]supporters. And so, when I was listening to the focus group and people really worried about the economy, even those who liked him were basically saying, "Affordability is such a big issue right now." One of them who liked him on
[25:39]everything else said, "I just can't believe the tariffs because they're really hitting me in terms of prices." Just a couple of other comments. This Lady Judy said, "He's not the same
[25:49]president as he was four years ago. Some things changed." She didn't want to say that he was losing it, but she's sort of leaning that way. And also, he's angrier. I mean, he's dropping F-bombs
[26:00]on on social media. You know, the all the Jesus Christ stuff, picking a fight with the Pope. I mean, I'm sorry, this is just not what Americans do. It's fundamentally, although, you know, you might get shot dead, you know, on the for walking down the wrong side of a
[26:12]street or whatever, America remains, in my experience, a polite nation. They don't like cuss words. And he's used a hell of a lot of them in public. So, it's unpresidential. And then the other
[26:23]thing just on the issue with the Pope. So, we put in questions on this in particular, whether or not the row with the Pope, Trump
[26:32]calling Pope Leo weak, Trump portraying himself in that picture where he looked like Jesus Christ, and then the Pope criticizing Trump over his tweet where he suggested a civilization would die.
[26:44]We asked people whether any of those three things had made them feel more negative about Donald Trump. Um overall, 47%, 54%, and 45% um for each of the three of them said
[26:55]yes. But, even among those who voted for Trump in 24, between one in five and a third of people found those things had made them feel less good about the
[27:06]president. And particular In particular, that picture that he put posted of himself and then later deleted saying, "I was just put portraying myself as a doctor." That had gone down very, very
[27:18]badly. I had dinner last week in London with some senior Republicans. And what they all said, and they wouldn't say this in public, but in private what they said is that the really toxic alchemy
[27:29]this time round for Trump is a combination of the affordability crisis, inflation, which he is not taking seriously enough, even though it has been made worse by
[27:39]the war that he started, in combination with all these vanity projects, which, you know, just create these symbols of indulgence. You know, and then the
[27:50]family as well, you know, making money on the side and and then of course all his rich mates. And And by the way, while they're paying more at the pump, his friends in Houston, Texas who run oil companies
[28:01]absolutely minting it. I'm surprised the Democrats haven't made more of a link between those oil executives who went to see Donald Trump in Mar-a-Lago before the election and basically promised him
[28:13]tons of money if he would further deregulate the oil industry and what's happening at the moment because of his war. But, you take all those elements together, ordinary guy
[28:24]gets hit at the pump. Tick, tick, tick. This is this for me would be fertile territory for the Democrats. And this for me would be the Achilles' heel for Trump, you know, not
[28:35]just in the next year, but maybe in the next two years. And it's worth saying Republicans are seriously worried. At the garden party, I was able to speak to quite a few Republican Congress
[28:45]men and senators. And particularly for the House, they think they're going to get really badly hit in the midterms. Senate, what about the Senate? I think they still are hopeful that there is a
[28:56]chance to hold on to the Senate. And actually, it would take a lot for the Democrats to take control. But, they're worried about that as well. You know, even the kind of most hawkish people on Iran who were saying to me,
[29:07]"We don't think there's any chance of a negotiation." And we're clearly in his ear as well. And wanted to see more military action there. We're still saying you kind of want to hit really hard and then get out. It was also
[29:18]really interesting to hear some of them talk about Trump's views on Vladimir Putin. clearly a bit of a push within the party to try and persuade him that, you know, Putin's the bad guy, not
[29:28]Zelenskyy, when it comes to Russia-Ukraine. Well, Anushka, after all that, we still have, let's face it, a special relationship. This is the most special special relationship in the world of podcasts. And there's never
[29:39]nothing What Whatever you say about me off the record on the record, nothing can dent that. As Donald Trump once said in front of the king, special doesn't even come doesn't even do it justice.
[29:51]All right. On that note, as ever, from Trump world, from the labyrinthine Trump world, in the middle of a royal visit, that's it. See you next week.