Transcript
Speaker: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast.
Speaker: Today we're talking about probably the biggest news that has happened the last couple of days.
Speaker: which is obviously Trump.
Speaker: Trump came to power fairly recently and he's already done quite a few extraordinary changes, you might say.
Speaker: But John is going to tell us more about those.
Speaker: So, yes, I think everyone will probably have noticed that Trump has dominated the headlines recently.
Speaker: I think he's probably quite enjoys it.
Speaker: He likes to see himself at the front of every news website, every newspaper.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: And he's done quite a good job, in fairness to him, because, I mean, it's sort of every single minute there's a new announcement.
Speaker: He's announcing something new.
Speaker: So, Diane, firstly, just to sort of go through this, what happened straight after Trump's inauguration?
Speaker: So he got inaugurated now a few weeks ago by the time of recording, and it was obviously a huge event.
Speaker: Not only has all this grandeur, but what happened?
Speaker: Well, a couple of things happened, actually.
Speaker: But first, I'd like to go ask you what happened before the inauguration.
Speaker: It doesn't have to do anything with Trump, but it kind of does at the same time.
Speaker: So Biden, in the car ride before the inauguration, apparently pardoned a couple hundred people.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Unidentified people.
Speaker: He's pardoned his entire family.
Speaker: And Trump has sort of replicated...
Speaker: that in some way, as he's pardoned a couple of the people that have been responsible for the infamous January 6th incident.
Speaker: Yeah, it was actually about 1,600.
Speaker: It was, ye ah, a huge number.
Speaker: So 1,600 pardons for people who've basically attacked law enforcement on the Capitol and vandalised one of the premier buildings in Washington.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So that's one thing that's happened.
Speaker: Now we've seen all these sort of nominations, RFK, one that always comes sort of back and back.
Speaker: They're going through now, so the nominees for Cabinet.
Speaker: Another big thing, in my opinion, that's happened is that TikTok got unbanned.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: I know it might seem quite trivial, but I think it's...
Speaker: sort of again back in the trump agenda he wants to dominate the news and he wants to dominate everywhere including where young people are so i think he's keeping kick-tock open um elon oh yeah always in the news in the cup last couple of days the last couple of weeks actually following some risque dodgy arm movements yeah um
Speaker: And I can't really think of much more.
Speaker: I'm sure a lot more has happened, but what else have I missed, John?
Speaker: So, yes.
Speaker: So Trump had this sort of fixation on his first 100 hours.
Speaker: And in these first 100 hours, we saw him go to the Capital One Arena in Washington.
Speaker: And he also did it in the Oval Office, but he signed all these executive orders.
Speaker: So you mentioned a few there.
Speaker: Some other sort of pretty big ones was that he ended diversity hires in the federal government.
Speaker: and he actually put all diversity hires on leave.
Speaker: On those lines of diversity, he also federally established only two genders.
Speaker: This is quite a big blow to members of the LGBTQ plus community and lobby.
Speaker: but it's very in line with his Republican conservative right-wing views.
Speaker: He also pulled out the Paris Climate Agreement, signed a deal to unleash gas and oil in Alaska, as well as some also more trivial things I think you could say.
Speaker: One of these was renamed Mount Denali, which is the tallest mountain in America.
Speaker: Mount McKinley, which was actually its previous name, named after former US President William McKinley.
Speaker: Another one that, I mean, I wasn't the biggest fan of, was that he renamed the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America.
Speaker: I mean, is it that big a deal?
Speaker: I think for him, yeah, he loves names.
Speaker: He loves MAGA, putting the American name on everything.
Speaker: So for him, yes, I think it was quite a big deal.
Speaker: But I think, I mean, I'll ask you this question as well, Jan, but I think it's quite interesting just to think that he really wants to put his mark and his own Trump brand on office.
Speaker: And that's what, in my opinion, he's done in these first 100 days.
Speaker: Yeah, I fully agree with you.
Speaker: I mean, I think that takes me actually to the sort of declarations about Greenland.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: Taking over Greenland, taking over Canada.
Speaker: So if Trump wants to expand, I don't know if he actually wants to, or if he's just like, I'm going to take over Greenland to get a bit more coverage in the news, because he is basically a
Speaker: would do anything for publicity.
Speaker: He would genuinely sell his soul in children to be in the news for a couple more minutes.
Speaker: That's my opinion, at least.
Speaker: I think there is something else that has happened that was quite big that I'm trying to think about.
Speaker: It's escaping me, but... The tariffs.
Speaker: The tariffs.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And, and, and I definitely think another of the big things that he has done in the last couple of weeks is pull out of the WHO.
Speaker: Oh, yes.
Speaker: Which actually today Argentina's leader Javier Malay followed.
Speaker: Oh, wow.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So Malay has also withdrawn Argentina from WHO, making it now that two countries are not in the WHO, both the USA and Argentina.
Speaker: I think that was quite major.
Speaker: And that has, I think, some really negative implications on healthcare.
Speaker: So coming from a more science-y background, I do think that is incredibly pivotal.
Speaker: that the WHO remains a strong organization because they've done so much to promote this sort of equal healthcare all over the world and bring up health hygiene standards everywhere.
Speaker: And the fact that one of the biggest countries in the world and probably the biggest economic powerhouse, which is the USA, they've pulled out of it is just a very negative signal, in my opinion.
Speaker: I see.
Speaker: That's quite interesting as well, what you mentioned about Javier Millet pulling out, because I didn't know about that.
Speaker: But that idea of Javier Millet following Donald Trump is very important.
Speaker: because it does show this idea of this new world order under Trump.
Speaker: We've got Beijing, Russia, India in the East, and we've got this quite conservative right-wing movement forming over in the West.
Speaker: So we've got Trump leading this new world order, but we've got people like Javier Malay of Argentina following.
Speaker: Well, it's not really known about the Canadian elections, but is it Pierre Colivare?
Speaker: a right-wing candidate who's quite popular there.
Speaker: So we can sort of see this... Victor Orban.
Speaker: Victor Orban.
Speaker: So we can see this sort of new world order forming under Trump.
Speaker: And I think, I mean, I think the UK under Starmer, despite David Lamme having said some comments about Trump, I think we will see ourselves aligning with Trump as he almost does try and further isolate the world into these two world orders.
Speaker: Yeah, I fully agree with you.
Speaker: I think that is going to be both interesting but also incredibly dangerous.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: So fragmenting, this is fragmentation Trump wants to achieve.
Speaker: We don't really know what he's going to do with NATO.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of speculation, which I don't really like to go into because I do think most of it isn't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because if not, then that changes the chessboard very rapidly.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, NATO is an interesting one for Trump.
Speaker: And that's purely because Trump basically props up NATO.
Speaker: So for NATO, there's a defence requirement for a certain percentage of your GDP to be spent on defence.
Speaker: The USA meets this.
Speaker: Several other countries in Europe who have upped their defence spending since the Russian-Ukraine war have started to meet this as well.
Speaker: The UK meets it as well.
Speaker: I think it's 2% of your GDP spent on defence.
Speaker: Two and a half now, I think.
Speaker: Is it two and a half now?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think they've raised the, yeah.
Speaker: But the issue is that for the US, this means that they are committing far more money and defence towards NATO and they are solely propping up NATO.
Speaker: So Trump's got a fair point in his defence when he thinks that countries aren't really playing their role because he sees the US, this huge army, tons of money they're throwing towards defence.
Speaker: And then there's countries like England, for example.
Speaker: You know, we've got a weak army, not a weak army, but a small army at the moment.
Speaker: All our armed forces lack enough money.
Speaker: And that's similar with many countries across Europe.
Speaker: So I think for Trump, his issue with NATO is that he feels that it's too almost reliant on him.
Speaker: And for him, he's not even too sure whether he's interested in Europe, and he should be.
Speaker: So I think to sort of remedy this NATO problem, in my opinion, countries in Europe need to understand they need to spend more on defence.
Speaker: And that's to get America's support.
Speaker: And that's also for their own defence as well.
Speaker: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker: I do think you've made a really good point there, that we don't really know that if Trump's interested in Europe... Yeah.
Speaker: We're beginning to see less and less interest, actually, I think, in Europe from the great world powers.
Speaker: I think the time where Europe was the sort of premier continent of the world is kind of gone.
Speaker: And unless everyone is careful, we are going to become a tourist attraction very quickly.
Speaker: Um, because number one, I don't think we've got the proper representation at the highest level because right now the most powerful leader in Europe in a sort of paradoxical way is probably Emmanuel Macron.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: He represents Europe at these sort of high meetings mostly, but the problem with Emmanuel Macron is that he doesn't have support of his own country.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So because we've lost, who I think is probably the most important European leader in recent memory, Angela Merkel, because she's now gone from politics, Europe has kind of lost a bit of that clout.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We don't have someone with a really strong position, both economically and politically, who can just basically say, look, you've got to make sure that we get cut in on the deal as well.
Speaker: And now you've got these people like Macron, Macron,
Speaker: Olaf Scholz, Giorgio Maloney, who frankly can't really do much.
Speaker: They're not really big international figures.
Speaker: Macron is the biggest international figure and he's no Angela Merkel.
Speaker: Yeah, I mean, I think the issue, as you said, there is for Europe at the moment is that we are literally sandwiched between the two economic titans of the world, the USA, China.
Speaker: And countries like the USA are doing sort of quite well growth wise, whereas Europe at the moment is stumbling, to be honest.
Speaker: We see it with the German economy, the British economy.
Speaker: They aren't really performing quite nearly as well as these Asian economies and as the USA.
Speaker: So the Europe is in a very difficult position at the moment.
Speaker: Politically, that is seeming that we're not sure what Trump's going to want to do with Europe.
Speaker: and also economically.
Speaker: Moving on though to Trump's policies around the world, a big one that has dominated the headlines is Gaza.
Speaker: Obviously Gaza has been actually for a while.
Speaker: So Diane, could you give a sort of a brief run through Trump's policies or ideas for policies in Gaza?
Speaker: Yeah, well,
Speaker: Well, I think number one we need to mention is that Trump has met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu the last couple of days.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think that, number one, brings a very important question, which is that Netanyahu has a couple of outstanding warrants from the ICJ.
Speaker: Basically, for the obvious who don't know, the ICJ is International Court of Justice in the Hague, and Netanyahu is to be tried at the Hague for war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Speaker: He has a couple, I think there's seven, seven or eight outstanding warrants about war crimes.
Speaker: So technically, Netanyahu is to be arrested once he leaves his home country of Israel.
Speaker: Trump has not...
Speaker: abides with this decision.
Speaker: He has completely ignored it.
Speaker: And no one can do anything about it, basically, because the ICJ at the moment is quite useless.
Speaker: They haven't really had a couple of big convictions from, you know, the Yugoslav wars when they've tried people for war crimes.
Speaker: But recently...
Speaker: There are many, many people comparatively without signing wars from the ICJ.
Speaker: Benjamin Netanyahu being so suspect number two after Mr. Putin.
Speaker: But you can't arrest Putin because he's not leaving Russia.
Speaker: You can arrest, on the other hand, Netanyahu because he's not in Israel at the moment.
Speaker: He's in the USA.
Speaker: But Trump has willingly and knowingly decided to ignore this.
Speaker: So this, to me, is very telling of his policies.
Speaker: He's very pro-Israel.
Speaker: He's going to fund them.
Speaker: He's going to give them bombs.
Speaker: And basically, he's going to allow Netanyahu to carpet bomb Gaza, which is what I think, at least.
Speaker: So, yes, I mean, Trump's policy is for when this fighting in Gaza stops.
Speaker: for Netanyahu to basically hand him the Gaza Strip and for there to be a US takeover of the Gaza Strip.
Speaker: And so he would redevelop this region, sort of resettle Palestinians into it, bring it bring US stability to the region.
Speaker: and yes it's it's basically a planned u.s takeover of the gaza strip uh and it is almost as ridiculous as it sounds obviously there are huge logistical problems with this obviously the palestinians themselves don't want it to happen anyway as do kind of neighboring countries like saudi arabia they don't want it to happen and it does show his pro-israel alliance but it's quite interesting in a way um
Speaker: I mean, I think a year ago, the exact quote from Jared Kushner was that Gaza's waterfront property could be very valuable.
Speaker: So it sort of created these sort of ideas that he could be involved in Trump for a while has been thinking of a Gaza Strip takeover by the US.
Speaker: I mean, I've got to say, I don't think it'd be that long term planned, but it is nevertheless, I mean, just quite bizarre at the end of the day, because we do have a US president almost wanting to create what could potentially be the 51st state in a way with him taking over this US territory with this territory.
Speaker: Yeah, no.
Speaker: So again, what I think we need to again, come back to is this thing that Netanyahu is sort of has a couple of outstanding ones from the ICJ and ICC.
Speaker: And Trump has willingly decided to ignore this.
Speaker: Now, this isn't the same as saying, I will meet with you over the phone.
Speaker: This is saying you can come here and this is a safe place for you.
Speaker: And I think it is sort of, this is the U.S. imperialism we were talking about earlier in Greenland, Canada, which I think are a bit of a joke.
Speaker: However, I do think they are sort of prepping the way that
Speaker: for a US takeover of Gaza.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I do think that's a possibility.
Speaker: I think there's a lot of interest there because of the geographical position, which is in the middle of the world, basically.
Speaker: And you're quite next to some powerful Arab states, which Trump will definitely want to negotiate with for oil.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: um so yeah i i do think that's a possibility yeah i mean i think it's uh you know anything is a possibility uh and i think he he has definitely in these recent days shown an interest towards it uh yeah and you know this the gaza strip is an utterly destroyed region um because of this war uh
Speaker: And unfortunately, it has gone through just many years of instability.
Speaker: And so there does need to be a large international response and plan for resettling Palestinians into the Gaza Strip.
Speaker: I think his slightly more...
Speaker: The way in which he does it is probably not right.
Speaker: But then at the end of the day, for me, though, it does come back to this thing.
Speaker: And that is that there's quite a large difference between what Trump says and what he actually does.
Speaker: I mean, you mentioned it.
Speaker: Canada being the USA's 51st state, a takeover of Greenland.
Speaker: I mean, these are all things he's talked about in the past.
Speaker: And he's talking about a US takeover of the Gaza Strip now.
Speaker: But as you said there, Dan, I think it does have a slight more sense of credibility.
Speaker: And that purely is just because Netanyahu does want it.
Speaker: Yeah, I do think, again, I think...
Speaker: we need to be very sort of attentive and very analytical in what Trump is doing in the next couple of months.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Because I think now is the time he will want to sort of build on this sort of his foundation for his presidency.
Speaker: He's got a five-year presidency with no re-election pressure.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Which we need to keep in mind.
Speaker: So basically, instead of having sort of
Speaker: a three quarter presidency because the last quarter spent campaigning.
Speaker: As well as this, you know, if you go fight for reelection, you need some policies.
Speaker: He doesn't have to worry about any of it.
Speaker: What Trump is going to do now is exactly what he wants.
Speaker: He's going to do his agenda because number one, he's got majority in everything.
Speaker: and there's no pressure for him not to there's no risk he can't run again anyway so you might as well try and get stuff done um and this is why i'm making my prediction now i think this will be a more eventful presidency than his last one although you know that's it's hard to beat his last presidency but i think he will manage
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you there.
Speaker: I think it would definitely be more eventful just because he's gone through presidency.
Speaker: He's gone through a first term.
Speaker: He knows what it's like and he'll now know how to sort of get things done.
Speaker: So perhaps the final point of discussion to quickly touch on is a long term impact he would like to bring.
Speaker: And that is US tariffs.
Speaker: So these tariffs are going to, in particular, these are all the ones he's announced so far, be on China, Canada, and Mexico.
Speaker: So he's already announced a 10% tariff on Chinese imports, and he's just delayed, I think it was a 25% tariff on Canadian and Mexican imports.
Speaker: So, Dan, what do you think are the impacts of this on a sort of a geopolitical scale?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to talk more about the Canada and Mexico tariffs because I think me, I don't really know that much about the impact on the Chinese economy, which I'm sure will be significant.
Speaker: But I am not sure that you'll actually implement those two tariffs on Mexico and Canada.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I think there's a sort of political pressure.
Speaker: that Trump is using to get other stuff done with the Canadian and Mexican government.
Speaker: And he's sort of using that threat of tariffs, that threat of economic instability.
Speaker: He's basically, you know, waving like a bomb and saying, look, I've got it here.
Speaker: If you don't play nice, I'm going to throw it.
Speaker: And that's what I think is happening.
Speaker: I don't think those actually get implemented unless, again, to make sure that backdoor deal is done about something else.
Speaker: Immigration from Mexico, something like that.
Speaker: So that's what I think about those two.
Speaker: I think the Chinese tariffs, I think they're in a different category.
Speaker: I think there's a purely sort of an economic war between the USA and China, which has been going on for years.
Speaker: a bit under the radar, not directly, but it has.
Speaker: Now I think Trump is sort of bringing it more into the light.
Speaker: He's like, look, we cannot allow the Chinese economy to overtake ours, to be more powerful, to have sort of great to say.
Speaker: And now he's trying to put these tariffs and trying to damage the economy as much as he can.
Speaker: Yeah, I agree with you there.
Speaker: I think, firstly, the Canadian and the Mexican tariffs are basically a threat on two fronts.
Speaker: The first one is immigration and the second one is fentanyl trafficking.
Speaker: And he has said, if you can't reduce these two things, which they haven't really been able to, well, I'm going to put tons of tariffs on you.
Speaker: And I think we're already starting to see people like Trudeau say, well, wait, I'll do something instead to make you not do these tariffs.
Speaker: So I think it was Trudeau has announced a billion dollar or a billion pound it was plan to sort of almost like a sort of a border plan to sort of up border security all around the US Canadian border.
Speaker: And that is with the aim of primarily stopping this flow of fentanyl, sort of an opioid, which is sort of soared in popularity in the USA.
Speaker: And I think the Mexican government will also do the same.
Speaker: And that's just because Mexico's biggest trading partner is the USA.
Speaker: And they realise how detrimental these tariffs can be.
Speaker: I do think, though, as you said, there are two fronts he's fighting on.
Speaker: And I do think, in my opinion at least, I do very heavily think that he'll be successful because I think the threat of a 25% tariff from both the Canadian and Mexican economy, which are more or less reliant on the US, would be so damaging that both Mexico and Canada are actually going to get their act together and solve the issues that Trump needs to solve.
Speaker: Yeah, no, I completely agree with you there.
Speaker: Thank you very much, everyone, for listening.
Speaker: I hope this has been an informative episode.
Speaker: And as always, please do feel free to go back to listen to our previous episodes on this topic.
Speaker: We've had the Trump series going on for quite a while now.
Speaker: And again, we hope to see you next week.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: So thank you everyone for listening.
Speaker: Thank you, Dan, as well.
Speaker: We've got some very big episodes coming up.
Speaker: So do please follow us, give us a five star review.
Speaker: Follow us on all social media platforms at Debatable Discussions.
