YouSaid · the spoken record

Jon Sopel

lines on the record: 63
first: 2021-03-05
most recent: 2021-03-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“That's a great question. I am going to miss the vibrancy. When the ten o'clock news used to write their running order, it was almost in the template that it would be a trump so called two minutes thirty. And now I have to fight to get on. And it's going to be much more difficult. The job is going to go back to what it used to be, whereas the North America editor was there'd be some new environmental protection legislation. Oh, let's go off to Wyoming for three days and film in big sky country. And, you know, and then come back to Washington and cut this lovely feature together, which will run on the news. Anytime I ever got near an airport, my phone would go off saying, come back to Washington now, Donald Trump has just said this. And I think that it will be more of the latter now, unless of the former. The job changes, there'll be time to breathe, there'll be time to read, there'll be time to reflect and think and do all those things that you just really haven't had.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is a paper trail. See, people like you. So you look at you. You're salivating the prospect of a proper paper trail. Yes, I love that. And I just think that of all, I find it hard to believe. I think it will be someone who is very trumpian. And it may be that that person hasn't emerged yet. And if you go back to 2004, who'd ever heard of Barack Obama? And yet he would go on to be the president four years later.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I would think Don Junior Orivanca Not Eric Don't think Eric. Eric, not the sharpest knife in the drawer, I wouldn't have said. Ivanka is certainly smart and smooth, and I think that she would be effective in bringing in more liberal elements because she looks like she's a modern woman, you know, and wants time off for parents to be able to look after newborn babies and all that sort of stuff. So she was feeling touchy. Don Jr. is abrasive and like his dad. I just don't see either of. I mean, Ivanka possibly Don Junior is very hard to see for all sorts of reasons. You know, I think that the backstory on Don Jr., I think he might get the scrutiny that his dad never did. His dad, Don Jr. wrote emails his dad never did. I think there are all sorts of reasons to believe.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You know, it might be might resonate, but he's not a charismatic forceful, you know, Donald Trump brought in the crowds they loved the showbiz. And you go to his rallies. They were fantastic. I mean, they were huge entertainment. He was funny. He's a good racantur. It may be eleven thousand words which when transcribed amounts to the biggest word salad you've ever seen, and that none of the sentences are formed in any proper meaningful way. But you get what he was saying and he's funny. He's entertaining, and they loved him. I mean, he really does have a hold on a certain section of the American public.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, he will try, he will try and thread it like, you know, Nikki Haley is trying to thread it by saying that Donald Trump, I stood by Donald Trump, he did a lot of great things. He was a great president. But I think, but you know, I think that I had a constitutional duty and I performed it.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“him down and he will accept that he's lost, and he will quietly fade away. And Donald Trump had other plans. And I think that Donald Trump will create absolute hell for Mike Pence if he runs, whereas Nicky Haley's a bit more cunning and has played Trump, a bit more, you know, Donald Pence was put into an impossible position. Are you going to choose what is constitutionally right or are you going to fight for me? That was the choice he had on january sixth, and he said I'm going to do what's constitutionally right. And of course you'll never be forgiven for that by Donald Trump.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, Mike Pence will certainly make a reappearance. I mean, and what will be fascinating is how Mike Pence handles Trump legacy because Trump was the I mean Pence was the ultimate betrayer of Donald Trump in Donald Trump's mind and remember they were chanting hang Mike Pence Hang Mike Pence they'd built a gallows at the capital some of them were carrying you know the handcuffs to maybe potentially handcuff Nancy Pelosi or Mike Pence if they'd caught them. This was a very volatile situation so I think Mike Pence will certainly run again and I think you know everything I think that I think that there were a lot of Republicans who thought if we just indulge Donald Trump a little bit after the election tell him for a week or so yeah yeah we'll explore the legal avenues and then they will talk”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“rallies were clever, they were mining data, people's data. They've still got all that data. Donald Trump, through the coal campaign, when he was trying to say that the election was stolen, was raising millions and millions and millions of dollars from people who were going to help him fight that legal case. And if you look at the small print, it said 65% of this money will be going into a fighting fund for Donald Trump's future campaigns. Only 35% of the money raised was going to fight the legal cases. So Donald Trump has a war chest. He has data on who these millions of people are. You can be sure that in the coming months maybe even weeks Donald Trump will be out hosting rallies whipping up and trying to whip up a crowd again.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, yeah, she's come out against him, but she's also been saying things like we've got to accept that he did a lot of great things in his time. And so she's trying to walk the line between saying, you went bonkers on January the 6th, and you set up this ridiculous attempted insurrection. But what you did before was really good. It was like you had your sane days and you had your mad days. In your sane days, you were great. That is an attempt to appeal to the Trump base because you can't know Republican candidate is going to go in when Donald Trump has got so many millions of votes and say what a loser Donald Trump is, what an idiot thank God we're rid of him. Because you're going to alienate millions of people who might come out to vote. And I still think that Donald Trump They also ran a very good data operation, the Trump campaign.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There is not going to have been Oh my God we must rid ourselves of this man we must turn our backs on what has gone before I think that they will be venerating Donald Trump as well and that's a really fine line to walk about the great things Look at Nicky Haley who's very interesting the former UN ambassador she's clearly going to run you know we've got to salute”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“You see, I'm going to answer that question slightly differently, which is that the greatest thing that would diffuse the tension in America would be for Donald Trump to utter two words I lost and I don't think there is any chance. But I think that as the months go by and that more senior Republicans who kept their counsel in the early days and allowed Donald Trump to claim that the election had been stolen and you get Mitch McConnell and others coming out and saying these are just groundless conspiracy theories and they are not tethered to reality. There may be people will start to realize that some of the things weren't true. But Donald Trump, what I'm clear about, and it goes back to the questions we've started with about, you know, does Donald Trump run again in 24? No, I don't think Donald Trump runs again in 24. But I think the candidate in 24 will have strong Trumpian influences.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“impeachment trial which took place just over a year ago. Donald Trump is smart. He recognised that the greatest threat to him was Joe Biden, and that's why he set Giuliani off on that madcap scheme to subvert what was going on in Ukraine and investigate Hunter Biden and see if it could be tied to Joe Biden as well. Donald Trump saw that Biden was the threat. It cost him his first impeachment, and the riot because he couldn't accept the lost, loss of the election, cost him the second impeachment.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Because they like him They love the idea that there is this person who is sticking it to establishment America They like the idea and also in fairness to Donald Trump he did try to he did build quite a lot of wall and he did make it more difficult for Muslims to get into the country and he did reduce dramatically the number of refugees who could apply for asylum in the US and that was what he promised and he did try to bring back manufacturing jobs with some success looking back to I think the first question you asked me tonight if the pandemic had not come along and he hadn't handled it in such an erratic way with politicizing masks and all the rest of it the way the economy was humming at the beginning of twenty twenty he was on course to win a huge election victory and going back to the first”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“They've got your tax returns which you never released. So there with the Rohingya and the Uyghurs, we can now add Donald Trump”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was the most weird thing. I didn't know what to do with myself. It was like you were suddenly sleeping alone. I mean, as it happens, my wife has been back in the UK for the past year because she's an elderly mother to look after. So I've been living in my apartment in Washington, D.C. by myself for a year. But at six o'clock in the morning, the first thing I do is look, I lean over, roll over and see if Donald has tweeted me. And if Donald hasn't tweeted me, I think I will. I'll go back to sleep for half an hour. And suddenly it's silent. There's no one else in the room but me So I don't think we can just ignore totally what Donald Trump has said. I'm trying to find this press release that he put out, but it was just so funny. He said, from the office of the 45th President of the United States, President Donald Trump, the persecution of President Donald Trump continues. And you thought, you know, really? Because...”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I don't think you can ignore him, but I don't think you bark every time he kind of puts out, says something that is just tendentious or over the top. I mean, I think you have to judge it and frame it. But you can't just ignore Donald Trump. I'm just looking for the release of this tweet that he put out yesterday, which just was so astonishing. Not a tweet, sorry, because he's not on Twitter.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The Biden calculation was that people will want to turn down the volume. As I said that moment ago. And I think that it will, so it has been the best of times, the worst of times under Donald Trump.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, that is the paradox. That is the paradox, the fact that this is one of three that I've written in the last four or five years is down to Donald Trump. So newspapers were investing in investigations department. So, you know, the man Vin Rana's, there were jobs for hundreds of people in Washington who were great investigative journalists like you. But those jobs, are we going to investigate Joe Biden, whose tax returns we have seen forever and a day, and that we don't are we that interested in it? Is that going to excite our readers? Or, you know, Ocamala Harris, whose financial returns we've seen? So those jobs are not going to be there. And I think that...”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“car plant and all the car manufacturing is in Mexico and you don't have a job then you don't think that globalization is that great and you're not you're not that impressed by the fact that there is this burgeoning middle class in Brazil or Russia or India or China you're thinking I want a better life for my kids and it's not happening and so I think that there was there was a very strong element of it”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And Donald Trump's message was compelling Bring back jobs, rebuild our army, treat our veterans better, build a wall, keep immigrants out. And people loved it. Now the fact that there was no On the bones was neither here nor there people bought into that, and I think that that disaffection is what led to a rise in populism and you can look at elements of social media where people are magnifying those views and the algorithm partly means that if you've already shown a predisposition to that you're going to see that on your feet on your Facebook feed more information that you've already like and that is a part of it as well and I think that politicians were complacent that everything was fine. I think Obama was complacent. I think Cameron was complacent. I think Blair was complacent in his own way about the virtues and merits of globalization and isn't it fantastic that we're seeing a G20 now and that there are countries these emerge of the BRIC countries are getting richer and richer well if you're the bloke in Michigan who used to work at the”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To call centers in India and the Philippines or wherever they're not returning to me. And I think that so you suddenly get Donald Trump coming along. And I heard a brilliant description of it that Donald Trump In twenty sixteen just had a series of top lines, but nothing beneath his top lines, and Hilary Clinton had no top lines and a mass of knowledge beneath, and Donald Trump's”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I said, I mean, look, there are multiple facets to it to give the answer. I think the most telling part about it was the financial crash in two thousand eight, when America has been through dips and, you know, there has been economic cycles of recession, growth, recession, growth, all the rest of it. And people then thought, right, we're in a recession. I've lost my job. My job will come back. Not only did they lose their job, they lost their homes because they had bought these, you know, they'd been mortgages were being given away. And I think there was a sudden disaffection with the American dream, that things aren't coming back. The steel plant up the road is going to remain shuttered. The textile jobs are not coming back. I'm being replaced by, you know, by robots. My God, what am I doing on all those jobs have gone?”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Americans In a very engaging way, great top lines, we've got to sort out immigration. We've got to bring back our manufacturing jobs. We've got to build a wall. We've got to keep Muslims out. It was red in tooth and claw and it appealed to a lot of people who felt they'd been left behind by globalization and Joe Biden in a way represents globalization of having been vice president during the Obama years at the height of coming off the back of the financial crash in 2008. And so I think that Joe Biden is very conscious of that and very conscious of what he needs to do to win back those disaffected people who turn to Trump and also it has to be said that in 2020 you know the 2020 election was not a repudiation of Trump. Trump got millions more votes than he did in 2016.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, if it doesn't happen in the next couple of months, there is a window by which this can be passed and doesn't have to go through line by line scrutiny in Congress. Once that window closes, Congress will have to go through every line of the agreement, and that could delay it endlessly. So there is some of the economic nationalism of Donald Trump that has transferred over to Joe Biden. And some as well of the big spending. Donald Trump was not against big spending. Donald Trump wanted to give big stimulus checks out to all the voters. So there are areas of overlap. And I think that, you know, and you look at, I mentioned that the stimulus package was popular with a lot of Republican voters, a lot of blue-collar Republican voters as well. Now, whether, you see, I think that Trump was a unique candidate, a unique time. He spoke to a blue-collar working class.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“having her confirmation hearings to become Treasury Secretary, she said we're not doing any new trade deals until we've got American jobs back. And she didn't put a timescale on that. But Britain is really hoping to sign a free trade deal in the next couple of months with America”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think if anyone can Biden can bring them back in, and it's quite interesting one of the things that there was a caricature that Joe Biden would be Barack Obama's third term, and that this was just Obama coming back, and a lot of the same people are back, a lot of the technocrats, a lot of the politicians who had big names and big roles during the Obama administration are around again. But one of the things where Biden is differentiating himself is over economic policy. Whereas at the end of Obama it was all about these free trade agreements with Europe, with Asia, that these were all going to be signed and Donald Trump said over my dead body are we signing these deals, Biden seems to be following a bit more of that economic nationalism. So the point that, and this is kind of interesting for Britain, that when Janet Yellen was”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that if they split that terminal because if you look at the setup of American politics and in the electoral college its winner takes all, apart from very few places, you have to get to two hundred and seventy. And if you have a pro-Trump Republican Party and an anti Trump Republican Party, that will allow Democrat so those are two parties and you've got a United Democratic Party, I mean Joe Biden couldn't wish for anything better or Kamala Harris if she's going to be the candidate in 2024 because I think that the Republican Party tearing itself apart over which direction it goes”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yeah, I think that is. I think that there's no way that it's a Trump offspring or a super trumpian, you know, so there are a couple of those around, although Ted Cruz's chances of taking a bit of a dent after his day trip to Cancun, so his chances, but Josh Hawley, the junior senator from Missouri, he is being more Trump than Trump in a bid to win over the Trump base. But I think that there will be big challenges. And I think the Republican Party, easy in a sense. The nearest comparison, you know, I started as a political correspondent years ago at the very end of Thatcher. I was there for the last six, twelve months of Thatcher. And you sensed the Conservative Party that would continue to tear itself apart for years, deciding whether it was a Thatcherite party or it was a more centralized”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“But yet millions turned out because they couldn't bear the thought of another Trump term. So I think it would be a very difficult election for Donald Trump to win and I think it's probably unlikely I mean, maybe we'll go on to this in questions. I think if I was going to, you know, I tend to always lose the bets. I would put money on him not running in 24.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To get remembered for one thing. You know, Tony Blair will be the Iraq war, probably. Maybe unfairly given everything else that happened on his watch. David Cameron will be the Brexit referendum. Theresa May will be the failing to get the withdrawal agreement approved. You know, so it goes on. You can get on. John Major, the bastards exchange rate mechanism debacle. And in presidents too, Donald Trump, I think, will be remembered for the riot at Congress, the likes of which America had never seen before and the threat to democracy. So I think it would be an uphill struggle. And you can see that the Republican Party establishment in the Senate, Mitch McConnell, who is the very wily leader, would just love to be rid. Who will rid me of this troublesome priest? He would just love to be rid of Donald Trump. But the base is powerful and he still commands the support of millions.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“A lot of Do you think he can win I think that 2024 is a very long way away. I think that he will be that much older. I think that the damage done Over what happened on january sixth will not be forgotten. And if you kind of, I do tend to follow this view of politics that prime ministers.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have witnessed and never thought in all my time in political reporting. The words I have used on the ten o'clock news that have never been used before on the ten o'clock news because of things that have come out of Trump's mouth and that I am reporting them. So I have said the F word live on the ten o'clock news, not F dot dot dot I've said fuck and you know and those sort of things that you just think you were never going to do. So Trump has been a rich source of stories. I don't apparently this weekend he's going to say at the CPAC conference in Orlando that he is the presumptive candidate for 2024.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Oh God, you know, I thought I'd put it behind me. The publisher said that they wanted to get this book out in early January. And so the last diary entry is when it is confirmed that Joe Biden has taken Pennsylvania and he has the necessary electoral college votes on that Saturday after the election. And it seems to me that there is quite a lot that has happened since then. There's a book already. So, you know, the idea was that I would write a new chapter for the paperback and I'm thinking, it's not a new chapter, it's a new book. I would love to, sort of part of me would love to put Donald Trump behind me, but there are so many such a rich vein of stories which I try to tell in the book about just some of the craziness that, you know.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It would be negligent if she were not taking an interest in some of these issues. Now where you draw that line between being interfering, being too ambitious, another word that always tends to get used for women and not for blokes because that's what we're meant to be, I think is one of those things that I just think that is a no-win. And I think that she's handled herself with a good degree of caution. I was very struck when she had the vice presidential debate with Mike Pence that you just felt she would love to have ripped him limb from limb, but knew that if she did, she would have got a terrible press, and it was almost like they were both pulling their punches as if to say well, I'll see you in the green room in 2024 when we're both running for president and then we can really let Rip. But let's just go for a nil-nil draw in this one. And I'll see you in four years' time.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“The gossip is that she's actually steering a very Him making a success of the presidency helps her. The likelihood is that she is going to stand as good a chance as anybody at this stage. So I think that Camela Harris is doing what she was there to do. And let's face it, Joe Biden does look every one of his seventy eight years.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“To an Ukrainian president over an obscure energy company called Barisma that no one had ever heard of beforehand. This was the storming of the capital, and it did seem to follow from an awful lot of things that the president and his supporters had said. So I think that he felt it was right to do the impeachment, but he wanted it done and dusted as fast as possible.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think that the last thing he wants is for it to be the Donald Trump psychodrama to go on and on and on. And there was that crazy moment, when was it two Saturdays ago when it looked as though the democratic impeachment managers from the House of Representatives were going to call witnesses? And then Republicans said, right, well, if you call witnesses, we're going to call witnesses. And he suddenly saw this going on for weeks, which would have meant that he would not have been able to confirm his cabinet choices, which would have meant he wouldn't have been able to find time on the Senate floor to get the stimulus package through, and it would have just clogged everything up, and it would have all been about Donald Trump and the outcome would not have been any different. They weren't going to get a conviction of Donald Trump. And so he just calculated cut your losses. I think that he probably felt that the impeachment was the right thing to do given it wasn't just an odd call.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“to where Donald Trump was, and this huge package, the stimulus package to get the economy through COVID one point nine trillion dollars, which I can never quite imagine how much that is, but it seems an awful lot of money. I think that he's getting a lot of Republican grassroots support for it. And so I think that he is sort of starting to win a little bit, but a long way to go.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“people over by just the calmness and orderliness and the bet he's taken which was Okay, I've had I've been on a long car journey and the volume has been turned up to ten and it's been heavy metal all the way and now I just want something that's a bit more easy listening that is on in the background where the volume is at six and I think that that is sort of as well what will determine the success or failure of the Biden administration and I think that so it's a you know yes you can quantify the policies but there is also that qualitative thing about do people feel a little bit more at ease and there are signs that he is chipping away at that and his approval ratings the last approval ratings I looked at he was at 63% Donald Trump never got above fifty so already he's in a different place”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Pre Donald Trump So to an era where elections are fought in the most fierce and brutal way in American politics always have been always will be but there was something qualitative and quantitatively different about the Trump years and I think that Joe Biden's trying to lower the temperature he's trying to change the political discourse and the manner in which that discourse is held. And I think that he will be partly judged on the policy issues like does the economy bounce back after the pandemic does the vaccine roll out accelerate and America compared to the rest of the world is doing pretty well not as well as the UK, it's past the milestone, hideous milestone of five hundred thousand deaths but you know still per capita that is fewer than in Britain. But I do think that it's about whether he can win”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I think that There's the policy headlines which you can easily do, you know, let's talk about health, let's talk about the economy, let's talk about immigration, let's talk about rights of asylum seekers, infrastructure, and those will be part of it on which he is judged. I think he has come into the office to try to normalise the and take America back to where it was and has been”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And I think that is slightly what I faced over the Bannon interview. And fair enough. But I think that we do need to interview and challenge people who represent other viewpoints than the ones we are comfortable with.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“That's a really interesting question, and I'm engaging with it rather than just saying, oh, no, no, no, no. But I don't like the use of the word platform because I think that a platform is just saying, here, here's a microphone, say what you want to say. And I think that people would have heard him havering over the question. I mean, it was just when I did the interview, it was just after Donald Trump had said to one of the so-called squad, you know, the sort of more radical members of the House of Representatives. Jewish joke about someone who's Jewish I can tell I think I can tell this joke about the you know the two women in the kosher restaurant and one calls the waiter over and said the food here is disgusting and the other one says and such small portions”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, off the record, he thinks that Trump's made a load of mistakes and he's the things that Steve Bannon is a smart, well-readian reading, BBC listening, sophisticated operator who happens to have a very nationalistic agenda. Now, whether it's white nationalism, but you know, you know, that's to be debated. But he is super smart and he was much more disobliging about Donald Trump when we stopped.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“There are at the margins there are things that I should have done differently, but going back to what I say, if you want to live in an echo chamber, and only I think it's a very dangerous route for the BBC to go down to say we're only going to hear certain opinions. Steve Bannon love him or loath him was the campaign manager that saw Donald Trump elected. So he was the campaign manager for the Trump campaign at the end of 2016 when Trump won the election. He goes into the White House as the chief strategist. So he's on a par with the chief of staff. They are given equal billing at the top of the White House food chain. He's not nobody. He is quite a significant player. Therefore to I mean the bits of the interview that were unbelievably frustrating. to me were what he said off the record about Trump was not what he said on the record.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Atlanta in Georgia of Fulton County, whose investigating that so and there are some civil cases and there are so I don't think Donald Trump's legal difficulties are anything like over.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“point look the attorney general in New York Syvance is at the moment very obviously building a case Donald Trump has lost in the Supreme Court yesterday to stop his taxes being handed over. There are various aspects of what the Trump Empire did in terms of the way it insured its buildings and whether it artificially inflated values as a means of gaining money that is being investigated. There is his call with the Secretary of State of Georgia just before the January riots when he says to Brad Raffensburger Can you find me another eleven thousand seven hundred eighty votes which he says in terms and there is a law a crime of election interference which comes with a minimum year long sentence that is the so there's an attorney general in one of the”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, I think it's very possible. I think that the trouble with impeachment is it's dressed up in quasi judicial terms of there is a jury and there is a judge presiding and there is evidence called and there are witnesses etc that you would talk in any other courtroom and the senators take an oath to hear the evidence impartially They're politicians They're thinking about their reelection It is the most bipartisan impeachment you know look if you're Donald Trump you spin it as not guilty again it's all a hoax it's ridiculous and if you are the Democrats you say this is the most bipartisan vote to convict a president that there has been there was a clear majority it just wasn't the super majority that is needed to remove someone from office or to ban someone from standing for office again but to your specific”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“October, and in the weeks leading up to the election itself on november third. And so no, not at all surprising. This was the consequence of telling his supporters eighty eight million followers or whatever it was on Twitter, huge following on Facebook, all the kind of right-wing sites that, you know, like Parlor, which people went to, it was the obvious consequence of what people were being fed and not hearing any other viewpoint.”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Unrest in America and yet it was also simultaneously the most predictable thing and you say I write the book in a diary format I do and I haven't gone back and tried to revisit any of my judgments to make myself look clever I mean I talk about I talk about Joe Biden at the start in January and February of 2020 and say oh my God this guy looks half asleep he looks like an old prize fighter going into the ring for one last fight but I also so I got that you know very wrong and actually I look back and think only Joe Biden could have beaten Donald Trump out of all the galaxy of candidates that the Democrats put up in the early stages but I also said months out from the election that Donald Trump only sees two outcomes one is that he wins and the other is that it is stolen from him and his havering over the question of a peaceful transfer of power it was obvious in September”
2021-03-05 · Intelligence Squared · Jon Sopel on Fear and Loathing on the US Campaign Trail · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source