Lord Radford Black is a historian, author, businessman, media baron, and member of the British House of Lords. He is also the author of Donald J. Trump: A President Like No Other and has written a column in the National Post on the coronavirus. In this episode, Lord Black makes the case for Donald Trump s re-election and makes a bold prediction about the upcoming election.
00:03:01.600well lord black thank you so much for joining the turn our speaker series it's such a pleasure to have
00:03:05.760you on the show thank you for having me so i really want to get into your book donald j uh trump a
00:03:13.520president like no other but before we do you you recently wrote a column in the national post talking
00:03:18.880about the coronavirus and you know in in ontario we're going back into lockdowns and and it just
00:03:25.120seems like we don't really have good leadership on this on this topic so before we get into uh president
00:03:30.080trump can you tell us a little bit about your thoughts on the coronavirus the the lockdowns
00:03:35.600and where we where we are uh sort of you know coming into the fall of 2020 here
00:03:42.400it's a virus that can't be contained the only way to eliminate it is with the vaccine
00:03:48.640and so all that can be done is to moderate the potential for its communication uh and the only
00:04:01.040way to do that is to take these drastic lockdown measures that cause terrible economic problems as
00:04:08.800well as social problems and psychological problems to people upon whom relative isolation is imposed as
00:04:16.800well as economic hardship and uh it is not logical to do that because we now have after having coped
00:04:25.760with this all around the world now since certainly since march and in some places earlier than that
00:04:32.160a fair amount of information about it as well as a good many therapeutic palliative summit and the
00:04:39.280position we've arrived at is that we can see that using american figures but they they would go for
00:04:45.440other certainly advanced countries anyway including this one that uh for those under the age of 65
00:04:54.320uh the the chances of a fatality are uh 99.997 percent against so a very very small number of people
00:05:06.560uh and for those above the age of 65 the chances of avoiding a fatality are 94.6 percent again very good
00:05:18.480odds though obviously that does involve some danger to uh to a significant number of people um so logically the
00:05:28.160way to cope with this given that uh uh the impact of the coronavirus uh does not reduce the average life
00:05:39.600expectancy of a population it afflicts chiefly elderly people uh and now the loss of such people is no less
00:05:48.400sadness than anyone else i'm not i'm not suggesting that but uh they are comparatively
00:05:56.480easily identifiable group and if they live autonomously they can be advised and helped in observing
00:06:06.320sensible precautions to insulate them from the danger and if they're in homes where they're under
00:06:12.560administration of others those places can be regulated properly now that was a terrible problem at
00:06:18.720the outset we didn't know that and the fatality rates in some of those places were shocking but we do know
00:06:25.920it now and i would suspect that if the elderly people were more vulnerable albeit 94.6 percent of them
00:06:34.640survive were canvas they would say for heaven's sakes don't shut down the whole country for us and and we have to
00:06:45.120keep in mind here that um uh even even for the elderly in every age group symptoms are zero to minimal
00:06:56.720for over 90 percent of people so the fact is all looking mournful hysterical talk about you know a grim
00:07:07.360milestone of the in the united states 85 000 new cases yesterday well you know that means uh eighty
00:07:17.680four thousand 150 people uh emerge after minimal symptoms with immunity to the virus now we don't know
00:07:31.280how long the immunity lasts but at least four months and possibly much longer so instead of it being a grim
00:07:37.760milestone i mean the united states is a country where 8 000 people a day die well if it happens that
00:07:45.84010 percent of them die with the coronavirus bearing in mind that 80 percent of people who are deemed to
00:07:52.320die of the coronavirus have other problems that have contributed to the death and it's hard to figure out
00:07:58.160which is the effective cause of the death and that the average age of a coronavirus afflicted death is
00:08:06.880in the united states 78 which is the average actuarial life expectancy of an american 78 that we see a
00:08:16.400completely ludicrous picture of the entire society being uh induced or coerced into a state of social and
00:08:28.640economic and cultural stagnation for the sake of not necessarily increasing materially the chances of
00:08:37.200of assisting that one percent who are actually vulnerable one percent of the total population
00:08:44.240uh from assisting them and increasing their likely survival rate so i mean it the whole thing is nonsense and
00:08:53.280in my opinion it has been conducted in this country because of a mindless emulation of what has been
00:09:00.080forced to some degree on the united states by the democratic opposition to the incumbent administration
00:09:07.040because from the beginning they saw that if they could get a shutdown of the economy they would produce
00:09:12.480a an economic depression that they could then blame on the president he had a one election prior to the
00:09:19.920covid outbreak everyone conceded he was going to win he had full employment and high standing in the
00:09:26.240poll and uh and and this was a device by which his opponents have tried to defeat him well that's
00:09:34.240you know that's how politics work but because it applies in the united states we should not be emulating
00:09:39.120it here well there does seem to just be such a disconnect between the what we now know about the
00:09:46.240coronavirus i mean you know i will say the beginning it was a mysterious virus it came from china we
00:09:51.120didn't know the origin we didn't really know any of the things about it but but now that we know we've
00:09:55.920had you know we've had we've been living with this thing for six seven eight months and to still be
00:10:00.560going back into lockdowns in ontario you know like there just seems to be such a disconnect between
00:10:06.560the reality and the facts that you lay out in your column and what we're being told by the so-called
00:10:12.640sort of expert class that that governs us would you would you really put it all on trump or do
00:10:17.760you think that there's anything else at play there
00:10:22.960well look it's not for me to say that there is nothing else at play but the experts the so-called
00:10:28.320experts aren't united and they aren't consistent i mean the famous dr fauci has been you know he's
00:10:34.240faced in all four directions on the issue of use of the mask he started out saying you didn't need it
00:10:39.120now he's saying that there should be a national mandate for it in confined spaces which is probably
00:10:44.720technically true but isn't constitutional you can't tell people what they have to wear and it's sort of
00:10:50.880a flip side of these things with people in quebec wearing uh uh clothes or or articles on themselves
00:11:01.840necklaces or bracelets or brooches or something that imply what religion they are i mean
00:11:06.720you these are fundamental freedoms that are involved here unless you can make a real case for
00:11:14.480a public health uh general interest an eminent domain of the public interest now to some degree i think
00:11:21.680you could do that about wearing masks in confined places but but this idea of joe biden's of wearing them
00:11:28.720everywhere wearing them on the sidewalk and so forth this is just a lot of nonsense and
00:11:32.480you know some of these things have already been thrown out by uh federal district courts in the us
00:11:38.560um you know i think it's not for me to impute motives to people and we're you know even though we're all
00:11:45.200unlicensed psychiatrists i think there's not much doubt that the democrats screamed for a shutdown
00:11:51.840and and when trump was slightly hesitant and accused him of being anti-scientist and a kind of
00:11:57.440uh flatter society uh philistine and then when he said all right we'll have a shutdown we'll have a quick reopening
00:12:07.920uh they went along with a shutdown and argued about the reopening but you know meanwhile he's he's got
00:12:13.440most of the unemployed back into work and uh and and the the fatality rate is still only a third of what it was at its worst
00:12:23.440uh and uh the normal period for vaccines been accelerated by over a year and when the vaccine
00:12:30.000comes to apparently be either an american or british vaccine or both uh but it will um it will quickly
00:12:37.840be obviously made available to everybody uh in every country and and that is the only answer to it in the
00:12:44.560meantime the less economic and psychological damage we do to to our populations the better it is i i i'm a
00:12:53.040great supporter of doug ford i think he's a good man and a good premier but in this case uh i i disagree
00:12:59.600with him i i'm a supporter of john tory too he's an old friend of mine as well he's a good mayor but i
00:13:05.120think i think they've both been galled here by the by the federal government and uh you know again i'm not
00:13:12.960one of these who is going to say that the uh the governments that exercise the authority that they do
00:13:20.080and i'm in these unusual circumstances are doing it because they enjoy uh that greater authority and
00:13:26.480then they're trying to restructure society along lines that it hasn't politically authorized that
00:13:32.560there there i there may be some truth to that but i'm not making that allegation i'm just saying it's
00:13:37.840mistaken policy i'm not achieving motives to anyone well i really want to get into your book i i just
00:13:44.240finished uh reading it and i think it's really insightful uh the biography that you wrote on
00:13:50.560donald j trump so much of what we see from the media so much of the sort of character that's
00:13:56.480presented to us doesn't always really reflect reality uh during the republican convention we saw
00:14:02.320a lot of speeches really talking to trump's character uh the kind of family man that he is
00:14:07.360the opportunities that he's given the way that he reaches out to workers and people who you
00:14:12.640know the little guys along the way and that's not really something that we see at all through the
00:14:17.840media your book did a great job of really uh explaining that the sort of early years of trump
00:14:23.920so i'm hoping you can help sort of walk us through the the early years in trump's life you know growing
00:14:30.240up his time that he spent in um at the new york military academy and then also just sort of entering
00:14:36.800the scene um of real estate development in new york city oh well yes i mean are you giving me an
00:14:45.120open-ended mandate to give you basically trump's life prior to becoming president well maybe you
00:14:51.360could just tell us a little bit of the sort of highlights of his early life prior to kind of
00:14:56.080bursting onto the political scene in 2015 yeah okay well look his father was a wealthy developer but
00:15:03.440outer borough developer queens and brooklyn um and and a little beyond the the five boroughs
00:15:13.040of new york city uh he wasn't active in manhattan and um and he was a specialist in uh middle class
00:15:22.320residential and uh donald went out um as a young man as a high school student he would go out with one
00:15:32.640of his father's employees to collect rent and they often had real problems collecting the rent including
00:15:38.720a few occasions when firearms were used so he concluded that he did not want to be collecting
00:15:45.120rent in other than the highest income buildings so he was always devoted all his life from earliest years
00:15:53.680he wanted to be a developer like his father but he always wanted to make the socio-culturally
00:16:00.640big jump from the outer boroughs to manhattan as you know new york city is a very large city and there
00:16:07.120is a great really the outer boroughs are bronx brooklyn queens staten island are are you know they're
00:16:16.960they're quite indistinguishable from many other cities but manhattan which is what everyone thinks of
00:16:22.000as new york it is is something altogether different and unique in the world and um and a tremendous
00:16:30.400concentration of highly influential people uh and uh because he had a knife mother discovered that he had
00:16:42.800who came from scotland originally he had a knife i mean not a bare bladed knife uh what do you call
00:16:51.760that kind of knife where you press it and it comes open uh switchblade i guess uh but he didn't use it
00:16:58.720or he didn't threaten using it he just had one so this so alarmed his parents they sent him to the
00:17:04.160new york state military academy and he excelled there despite the regimentation and the lack of
00:17:10.560privacy with a very good student and uh was highly regarded for his uh uh adherence to the rules and
00:17:19.680his punctuality and all sorts of things like that and then he he had a good education he went to um
00:17:26.160fordham university and the university of horton where he studied uh they had a real estate development
00:17:34.640course and he studied that and did well there and graduated all of his holidays from early high
00:17:41.280school right through university worked in his father's business in higher and higher positions but
00:17:47.760he knew personally uh how to mix for example the uh the insecticide to keep cockroaches instead of
00:17:56.800buying at wholesale they'd make it themselves and he knew how to do that he knew every aspect of the
00:18:02.640business how to build a building every aspect of the construction how to finance it all of that he came in
00:18:10.240very well prepared uh practically and academically and his father made him the
00:18:16.480chief operating officer of his company just in his 20s and then
00:18:22.960donald lived in manhattan and again unlike millions of other new yorkers his commute was
00:18:29.840from manhattan out to queens and not the other way around and then he he made his first splash in the
00:18:37.280development business in new york city in manhattan in the old commodore hotel which some of your
00:18:43.520viewers would remember next to grand central station between grand central station and the chrysler
00:18:48.880building but at that time the commuter trains had lost ground to other forms of the transport and
00:18:59.440it was a somewhat depressed area in that part of manhattan just in the lower 30s and upper 20s
00:19:06.240east side uh east side and um uh and and chrysler building was insolvent it was taken over by someone
00:19:17.120many of your viewers would remember canadian jack kent cook and what donald did was he took over the
00:19:25.040the the commodore hotel by um putting together a plan to renovate it was in a very decrepit
00:19:35.280conditions a huge hotel with with i believe two thousand rooms and um substantially bigger than the
00:19:43.040royal york for example uh but but in a very decrepit condition and he it was a tremendously intricate
00:19:51.040matter of getting the adherence of city officials zoning authorities a financial group and and the
00:19:59.120actual owners of the land and and the building on the land and so donald would he he made up a plan
00:20:07.840and he held a press conference every day announcing progress you know some of the progress was more in
00:20:15.360his imagination than than in a language you could really justify building a press conference about
00:20:20.880but that's part of how development works especially in new york it's a game to hide things you know
00:20:27.120and uh he would wave a sheet of papers around saying i have a signed contract which he did been signed by
00:20:34.080him but not by anyone else you think and uh but eventually there became a considerable agitation to get
00:20:42.160get this contract awarded and get the building redeveloped because it was considered
00:20:47.760very important to the renovation of that part that famous part of new york city between grand central
00:20:53.360station and the chryslet building uh to to get this great hotel functioning again it had been closed for
00:20:59.520years and uh he at one point he produced a contract uh that was so complicated that
00:21:12.080that he gave it to the city to show that he had the financial backing he needed and it was signed by
00:21:18.720another party but it didn't actually give the financial backing and the cities and bureaucrats as
00:21:23.600he foresaw did not have the perseverance to go all the way through it and see what it was it was about a
00:21:29.600200 page document of legalese that didn't really pledge anything but they said all right we'll approve this
00:21:35.760they took that back and got the financial side and yeah the renovation was was a huge undertaking they
00:21:43.520found dozens of squatters uh living in the boiler rooms that rat population was so huge that even
00:21:51.600though they put in a bunch of cats and things but the the rats drove the cats out and then donald went
00:21:58.480around and collected all the stray cats from the animal shelters in the new york city area became
00:22:04.000the man of the year and you know animal protection and he put all these cats into the commodore
00:22:11.120hotel and and and and the felines overpowered the rodent with that with that reinforcement you see
00:22:18.960the cat population prevailed over the rats and and uh and and it and it worked i mean it was a
00:22:25.120magnificent reconstruction he reduced the number of rooms by about 400. it's a glass sheath building
00:22:31.760thing it's operated i believe by um uh one of the famous chief pritzker and and and you know it's a
00:22:40.160it's a well-regarded very profitable hotel and he made 250 million dollars on this still in his 20s
00:22:47.600so he took off from there and he got a little carried away as everyone knows when he went into the casino
00:22:53.200business he saw that atlantic city could attract a lot of gamblers from new york city and philadelphia
00:22:59.360he didn't see that there would be no limit to the number of casino licenses that were given
00:23:04.480so eventually it was what he did was well it was very successful and well launched but before long
00:23:12.320it was an overpopulated casino town and there were too many casinos for the business but
00:23:19.040that was that's a junk bond business everyone buying instruments that yield 15 know they're getting
00:23:26.800a high yield because of a high risk and it may not work so you know the attempt of trump's enemies to
00:23:32.400claim that he he did terrible things to uh to working class families whose life savings were invested
00:23:40.800in his casinos is just complete foolishness nothing of the sort was trey we gave a modest haircut to
00:23:46.880people like carl icon who then you know doubled down and bought more of this stuff more cheaply greater
00:23:52.800discount to get a higher yield and then partly refinanced and in the end these sharpers who are
00:23:58.400the only people you get in that kind of finance take care of themselves already uh and and in the
00:24:04.080end it was a moderate success i mean he was a pioneer in casino in the casino business in new jersey and
00:24:11.600it's still there and it's a it adds to state revenues um that was at that point he became a great
00:24:18.400impresario and he held big prize fights there and uh uh beauty contests and things like this and he
00:24:25.680did this all over the country and elsewhere in the world and um and this was part of his new plan which
00:24:33.520he developed in those years uh and i should say while the casinos were going on he went to quality building
00:24:42.640on on the model of the commodore hotel elsewhere which the trump tower is the most famous a very
00:24:47.680distinguished building but his assets now were all quality buildings and golf courses and and uh but
00:24:55.040but he devised this technique of becoming famous with the idea of making money off the brand of his name
00:25:02.800and eventually as you know he was um selling trump mineral water and trump mattresses and trump shirts and
00:25:12.160trump neckties ones that he wears that are quite long so that if your jacket is open there there is
00:25:20.320not a gap even in a in a full-figured man between where his tie ends and his top of his trousers begin
00:25:26.640you see this was one of donald's secrets which is by this one uh but but he just traded off his name
00:25:32.800he actually got people including here in toronto to pay millions of dollars to put his name on the top of
00:25:39.200their hotel and he didn't have to do anything although usually he managed it as well but he
00:25:44.400didn't invest a cent and made money out of it and his personal life became very highly publicized in new
00:25:52.880york uh and and uh especially some of the romantic entanglements that he had and his theory was all
00:26:00.960publicity for the purposes he intended was good publicity and that he could he could turn his name
00:26:09.120into a huge profit center which he did now some of the aspects of that were frankly fairly cheesy like
00:26:16.080the trump university i mean there's no fraud involved they they they said you know you come to this it'll
00:26:22.400teach you about how to make money in real estate and it did but he got some people to pay for the
00:26:27.440platinum program thirty four thousand dollars for something that they could have got just by reading
00:26:33.680some you know do-it-yourself books that you could buy for a few dollars in a bookstore so i mean
00:26:39.680donald's conduct wasn't always the most distinguished but it wasn't it wasn't illegal uh i thought the
00:26:47.520shabbiest of it was this uh health remedy he came up with uh which he claimed would would uh really assist
00:26:55.760people and living longer and all it all consisted of was uh urinalysis and some vitamin pills but if
00:27:02.960people are going to pay for that you know pt barnum was a great and representative american said
00:27:10.080a sucker's born every minute no one ever went broke exaggerating the intelligence of the public
00:27:16.960uh so you know there was that aspect of donald but he always had this theory that celebrity could be
00:27:26.080translated into high political office and he did a lot of polling for many years and he always polled
00:27:32.720very well with a large section of the public and uh his final initiative on that side of his career
00:27:44.480was he had the idea of a certain type of reality television based on corporate life and he spoke
00:27:52.320to someone at nbc and they went joint account on it they set it up he starred and from day one for
00:27:59.44014 years he was he was market leader in prime time in his slot now i never watched one an episode of
00:28:05.360this thing but he pulled five to 25 million viewers every week for 14 years and and i put it to you and
00:28:14.560to your viewers but in being so successful in the in the real estate business in the toughest city in the world
00:28:24.720uh and reviving so quickly from a real economic crisis and with such ingenuity and in becoming an
00:28:34.400instant and for a prolonged period television star something that is proverbially millions of americans
00:28:43.120spend their whole lives trying to do without much success um and then in inventing this method of
00:28:49.760translating celebrity of a stylistically indifferent kind to say the least into political popularity
00:28:58.400and then changing parties seven times in 13 years looking for the moment to go for a nomination
00:29:06.080and then doing it being dominated by one of the major parties and contrary to all expectations winning
00:29:12.880the election in all of that i believe that he achieved more before he became president than any previous
00:29:21.280president except those who were president who had been instrumental in founding the country and setting up
00:29:29.120its institutions washington jefferson and madison and those who successfully led great armies in just wars
00:29:37.840grant and eisenhower and and uh and uh and and so he he contrary to this presentation and portrayal of
00:29:47.360him as just a goon and a a boor and a charlatan i mean there are those aspects to him he does he did come
00:29:57.440to the presidency as an extremely accomplished person and a very talented person and he has been in policy
00:30:05.280turns i think an extremely successful president well it's so interesting because from your book i i i
00:30:11.440kind of learned things i just didn't really know about him like his forays into professional wrestling
00:30:16.960and the sort of showmanship of it all but you make it seem like it was all sort of strategic and in really
00:30:22.720connecting with a base of sort of blue-collar people uh that that he really built his populism
00:30:29.120on top of so can you maybe talk a little bit about how you know he he transitioned from being this sort
00:30:35.920of well-known reality tv star that was you know outspoken and over the top but but also that he was
00:30:42.640able to connect uh with people who were forgotten by the other parties and so how how did he turn his
00:30:48.480his life experience into this huge political uh populism and the movement that we saw emerging in 2015 2016.
00:30:56.080it's a good question and and he i only know this because i know him and he's said some of this to me
00:31:06.080he saw that in the united states unlike most countries there is not necessarily any bias against wealthy
00:31:17.760people uh no one in the history of the country was as successful politically as franklin d roosevelt who made
00:31:25.520absolutely no attempt to pretend that he was an ordinary working man i mean he he um
00:31:34.320uh you know he had a monocle like his cousin theodore rodeville he had a cigarette holder
00:31:40.480and uh he spoke in a very patrician accent and part rich new york and part ivy league and uh
00:31:50.560uh but he was a compassionate man he he presented quite faithfully quite accurately
00:32:00.240as an intelligent and a wealthy man who genuinely cared and not in a condescending way but with genuine
00:32:07.920solicitude for the less advantaged people and and trump saw that he and john f kennedy and lots of other
00:32:17.200wealthy people nelson rockefeller and adlai stevenson could do this stevenson and and and he thought that
00:32:25.440that he could go at one better because he could actually identify quite closely with
00:32:35.200with the um with the working class he could be a kind of rich archie bunker and this isn't an act with
00:32:42.480him that is sort of what he is and again you go back to the socioeconomic composition of new york city
00:32:50.000all the ones i just mentioned somewhere from new york like nelson rockefeller and franklin d roosevelt
00:32:54.720but others weren't but they but but they were from that sort of milieu uh uh ivy league educated and
00:33:02.080wealthy people from wealthy areas you know if you remember adlai stevenson who ran for president against
00:33:07.600general eisenhower he was a very elegant public speaker and he was called an egghead at the time
00:33:13.920he's an intellectual rich intellectual well he had he really appealed to the working class of america
00:33:24.640because he understood they were getting shafted he actually was quite observant all through from when
00:33:31.040i first knew him in the late 90s all through the period until he ran for president he was following these
00:33:36.720things closely and he did not approve of uh free trade agreements that consisted of
00:33:42.880importing unemployment into the united states and he didn't buy the line that the u.s had any obligation
00:33:49.760to to do that for other countries he wanted he wanted all these developing countries to develop he was
00:33:56.000certainly uh in in favor doing things helpful to mexico and other places to raise their standards of living
00:34:03.840but not at the expense of the american worker and so he could identify with these people and and then
00:34:11.280as you say so you i you mentioned implicitly that great scene of the silver dome in pontiac michigan
00:34:19.360where 95 000 people paid seemed sheer the hair off the head of dean's mcmahon head of world wrestling
00:34:26.560federation who he by the way named his wife the director of the small business administration as a kind of
00:34:33.120consolation for all that but you know it's hard to imagine a nelson rockefeller or a member of the
00:34:39.600roosevelt or kennedy families pulling off a stunt like that you know but but it it worked for for
00:34:46.320donald and he he had this growing constituency whose views he could articulate and it was quite genuine
00:34:53.200because he identified with the workers he'd worked with them in his father's company in his summer
00:34:59.280job and he has he gets on perfectly well with ordinary people like that he just happens very wealthy man
00:35:07.840and as i said the american working class doesn't dislike rich people it it dislikes snobbs naturally most
00:35:15.200people do but if in the united states if you're if you if you're a an unpretentious person and do well
00:35:26.000financially people tend to admire that rather than envy it and think well he can do it i can do it too
00:35:31.200that is you know the whole american mythos is one of um hard work and you and there's nothing you
00:35:39.440can't do you can get anywhere no matter how humbly you begin well donald didn't begin very humbly but
00:35:45.440but he still was kind of an inspiration to these people because he was a rich man who cared about them
00:35:51.520and was kind of one of them not in that way of a benign respect for them like a semi-aristocratic
00:36:03.360person like roosevelt would have uh but as one who was really one of them at heart but had done very
00:36:11.600well as they could do and he would help them do it it was it was a genius insight into the american
00:36:19.600political process and the american national psychology and he connected the two and here
00:36:25.360he is in the white is and you know he may win or not i personally i think he probably will but whether
00:36:32.320he does or not he he's made his point it was an astounding accomplishment absolutely so you know
00:36:40.000and and he kind of came onto the scene you mentioned that he switched parties nine times in in the decade
00:36:44.880prior to uh coming to the republicans and and and running but you know the republicans at that point
00:36:51.440were sort of stagnant they were they were heading in a different direction uh jeb bush was the sort of
00:36:56.160presumed uh nominee prior to trump sort of bursting onto the scenes and you know you you kind of wonder
00:37:03.680like as a guy who was a total outsider he really shocked the sensibilities of so many conservatives uh he
00:37:09.840wasn't really fully on brand with the whole you know free market free trade mantra that that that
00:37:15.120conservatives and republicans really rally around and yet somehow as an outsider he just managed to
00:37:21.200push his way right in and and you you talk about in the book how he was different than other outsiders
00:37:26.240you know people like uh ralph nader or ross bro that were never really taken all that seriously and
00:37:31.440didn't really have a shot whereas whereas trump found a moment um to to come on to the republican scene so
00:37:37.200maybe you can uh talk a little bit about uh what it was like you know why he chose to to go with the
00:37:43.360republicans and how he really just managed to to blow up the establishment and secure the the nomination
00:37:48.560for president well he at one time thought of a third party candidacy and in 2000 he won two primaries in
00:37:57.280the progressive party in the united states uh for a great many years whenever there's a third party other
00:38:04.560than these there were southern segregationist parties but when there was a third party running through
00:38:10.960a country they they called themselves progressive that started with theodore roosevelt who was an ex
00:38:18.400president who decided that he should retire after two terms though he'd only won one election he
00:38:24.480succeeded president mckinley when he was assassinated and he hand chose his successor william howard taft then
00:38:31.760he took a dim view of how taft had performed as president so ran to unseat him as the republican
00:38:39.200nominee and and and and go back as president as the republican candidate but you they you know they
00:38:46.880he won the primaries but the party elders wouldn't let him in you see so he was so irritated he ran a
00:38:53.760third party called the progressives and the effect of it was to make the democrat woodrow wilson the
00:38:59.360president's famous election of three presidents and and uh it never worked i mean in 1924 the
00:39:07.280progressives split the democratic vote not the republicans this time the democrats and but they
00:39:13.120only got one state in wisconsin you just can't do it and trump figured that out so he's waiting for an
00:39:19.760opportunity for the nomination of one of the two big parties he didn't really care which one it was and
00:39:25.360um and then as the time went by and he saw that uh when we get towards the end of the george w bush term
00:39:35.760uh the republican nomination was not going to get you into the white house because it was such an
00:39:41.520economic catastrophe people that you tired about the involvement in the middle east and other things and
00:39:49.120um and and and he didn't want to run against an incumbent president so when when obama was coming up to
00:39:56.480retirement and and it would be new candidates from both parties he saw that was his chance and uh and
00:40:05.920you may recall that when he and melania came down the escalator in june of uh 2015 to announce his
00:40:15.680candidacy for the 2016 republican nomination it was greeted with absolutely convulsive derision
00:40:23.040everywhere in the country it's the most hilarious thing anyone had ever heard of we're just going to
00:40:27.760be a a shambles and um and and then you know actually the problem with that theory was that he knew the
00:40:38.960voters better than the so-called experts did i mean absolutely nobody except a couple of people saw any
00:40:47.040potential for what he was doing newt gingrich was one who did but uh the nobody in the media did that
00:40:54.640that is audible or visible and and almost nobody in the political community but you know in the early
00:41:02.320primaries he was doing quite well so there was a precedent for that jesse jackson had run quite
00:41:08.000strongly for time in the primaries and and some others said you mentioned ross perro he you know
00:41:13.600he did run he ran as an independent and and he took 20 million votes from george bush senior and that's
00:41:20.880how the clintons got into the white is because the elder president bush allowed this absolute charlatan
00:41:27.760ross perro to split his party and but this was different trump was running for the republican nomination
00:41:34.240and and there was no you know there was no incumbent president or vice president running for that
00:41:40.240nomination so um uh he started out in a level playing field except he was the only person
00:41:48.560uh in the history of the united states to win the nomination of a major party without ever having held
00:41:55.680any public office elected or unelected or or a military command except for wendell wilkie who was nominated by the
00:42:03.360republicans in 1940 for the great honor of running against franklin d roosevelt which is impossible you
00:42:09.520couldn't beat roosevelt nobody could be he won four straight elections as president but the um uh but
00:42:16.960trump saw his opportunity and and if you recall he he did well from the early primaries and his vote kept
00:42:23.040growing and they had this theory that well the most of the candidates will drop off and then there'll be
00:42:29.920one anti-trump candidate and he'll win but but it didn't work that way as the primaries moved around
00:42:37.040the country trump was running equally strongly in all regions it wasn't as if he was only getting votes in
00:42:43.840the south or the midwest or something everywhere he was doing well and uh and and it just took it it just
00:42:53.280has has has taken the uh american political establishment to now and they still haven't
00:42:59.520got there but i've had all the time from nine from 2015 to the present to try and take on board the
00:43:06.160idea that there's an inordinate number of americans who actually approve of this guy and and you know
00:43:11.680they think they have him now they think they're about to throw him out next week but i i don't think they
00:43:16.000are well it's so interesting to just reflect back on those early days you know during the republican
00:43:21.760primaries he was just so wildly entertaining and you didn't really know whether he was serious half
00:43:26.480the time um but but eventually you know he he just really began to speak uh to the country you know
00:43:32.640everyone would agree that washington was totally broken everyone agrees that there's this growing
00:43:37.200sort of underclass in in america whether you know you read uh jd vance's uh hillbilly elegy or um
00:43:43.840charles murray's coming apart you know this this faction exists that everyone was ignoring
00:43:48.640and trump really connected with and i i think eventually republicans kind of came around
00:43:53.840um but but but but then even after trump was elected president in 2016 the the way that the
00:44:00.240media treated him there was no there's no self-reflection and you write about this in your
00:44:03.920book there was no uh you know moment of pause where where journalists and and other elites in
00:44:09.360washington said okay what did we miss what did we get wrong let's try to correct ourselves
00:44:14.080everyone just sort of doubled down on this this idea that trump was uniquely evil and that he was
00:44:20.000going to destroy the country and that we're going to go into world war three and that he was just this
00:44:24.560horrible horrible force for evil and and yet you know the trump presidency started to look more and more
00:44:30.960successful um from a especially from a policy perspective you know the economy was doing really well
00:44:36.560he decimated isis uh the middle east you know feels calm and peaceful compared to to the past few
00:44:44.160decades america's energy independent there's just so many things from a policy level um that that you
00:44:49.840could point to and say wow this guy is is a really successful president yet he never gets any kind of
00:44:54.800credit um or recognition from the media instead you know we went full-on uh russian collusion and all
00:45:01.840these allegations about him uh stealing the election so lord black what is it about about trump why why
00:45:09.840can't people accept him as the president why can't he have why couldn't he have a normal presidency uh you
00:45:16.320know what what what is it about him that really just triggers the media i think it is um it's not just
00:45:23.280the media remember he ran against the whole establishment as you said at the outset um jeff bush was the
00:45:31.600favorite but as you know if you in the eight consecutive presidential terms from 1981 to
00:45:43.7602013 eight straight turn you had one or other member of the bush or clinton families as president
00:45:50.560vice president or secretary of state eight terms in a row and and these families were and and not that
00:45:56.720they were doing it cynically but in fact they were passing these great offices back and forth between
00:46:02.640themselves and and the country got awfully tired of the bush clinton do a lock on the on the government
00:46:09.840and and i mean they weren't bad the clintons and the bushes that's not the issue uh but but but there was
00:46:17.200a sort of presumption and stagnation in the whole thing and you've got in the post reagan years you've got this
00:46:24.720bipartisan establishment in washington where the white house would change every eight years but the
00:46:30.720cadres of important people just beneath the white house or within it but just adjacent to the president
00:46:36.960and bill were essentially the same people for the two parties and then each party had their own but they
00:46:42.640were all chunny together and it just became a smaller and smaller in group and and trump was running to
00:46:49.520break that up and and you know the establishment got pretty comfortable running the country and
00:46:54.800changing the white house every eight years but basically everything else remained the same and um
00:47:00.880and uh he particularly i mean he ran against the whole system they're against all the factions of
00:47:07.040both parties he ran against the bushes as much as the clintons and obama and and he he he accused the
00:47:14.960national political media conducting a whitewash for the little in group that were just running a log
00:47:21.280rolling and back scratching operation for themselves while the interests of a large section of the
00:47:26.640population went down the drain and the public was very sensitive to and responsive to that argument
00:47:35.920because there was some truth to it but from the standpoint of those who were running the gravy train
00:47:41.520he was a mortal threat to them and they responded as people or all animals do when they're when their
00:47:48.800livelihood is threatened and and and so you know that they don't confine themselves in legitimate
00:47:54.720argument the cloth committed and they've locked arms and and now in the last week we've seen the
00:48:01.120extraordinary spectacle of um the media sandbagging even news corporation one of the country's biggest media
00:48:10.080companies because the new york post is steadily exposing details of the biden family's financial daring
00:48:18.080do while joe biden was vice president now i would give joe biden the benefit of the doubt i don't see
00:48:24.160any evidence that american policy it was altered for corrupt reasons because of uh backhanders that the
00:48:31.040biden family were taking from various interests in in russia china and ukraine i don't see that
00:48:38.080any evidence that foreign that american policy was altered because of that although it has to be
00:48:42.800looked into but what did happen is that biden lied about it he said he didn't know anything about his
00:48:48.160son's financial activities it's now obviously knew a great deal about it and and was implicated but so
00:48:55.200you know lying to the public is not a crime but it doesn't do wonders for your political capital but
00:49:00.640in this case the media are now desperately trying to pretend that that is a non-issue it's an
00:49:06.720irrelevancy it it's counterbalanced by the fact that trump had a bank account in china when he was
00:49:12.400contemplating doing business there which did not have a large balance in which he closed two years
00:49:17.120before he was president as if that has anything to do with with these allegations but for their part
00:49:23.360they are desperate to get rid of this guy because if he wins again he really is going to drain the swamp
00:49:30.160and they really will be pushed out of georgetown and replaced by other people and and uh i'm not
00:49:37.120saying that what trump would put in its place would be a absolutely clean system but that's not the
00:49:42.880american tradition the american tradition goes back to andrew jackson the so-called spoiled system when
00:49:48.720he came in he fired the whole top half of the civil service which was an unheard of thing to do prior to
00:49:54.160that it had been the presidency had been held by rich virginia plantation owners alternating with the
00:50:01.920adams family in massachusetts and they'd all run a nice tight little shop for themselves now they founded
00:50:07.920the country and they were great men some of them very great men but and and all of them good men but
00:50:14.080andrew jackson this populist from tennessee he was a drummer boy in the revolution not a general or a
00:50:19.680governor and swept them all out through the bag and baggage you know revoked the charter of the national
00:50:26.960bank and then and expanded the franchise and expanded the country to the west and and and and it grew
00:50:35.120you know he put his own people in and they weren't necessarily better than the others but the system is
00:50:40.640based on the idea that that that you change you know you just don't have the same people running
00:50:45.680the country forever and and there was an absolutely non-violent and and smoothly assimilated example of
00:50:55.120that with president reagan i mean you may recall you may be young to recall but some a lot of your
00:51:01.040viewers would recall that when he came into office he was represented as a lunatic as well and even though
00:51:07.840he'd been the governor of a great state for two terms he was representative as a kind of right-wing
00:51:13.200nutcase and a man of limited intelligence who had been selling 20 mule team borax and pv advertisements
00:51:19.840and flacking for the general electric corporation and played in a lot of grade b movies although gore
00:51:25.760vidale not someone i would normally quote as he said that's a terrible injustice he's one of the greatest
00:51:32.000actors in world history who had the misfortune to play in some great big movies but but reagan smoothed
00:51:38.480them down did what he wanted which was to cut taxes induce a real capitalist boom and and win the cold
00:51:46.240war he knew the u.s could face russia down and he and it did and and and everyone was happy and then he
00:51:53.360didn't really tear the washington political class apart uh so so they they they indulged him they
00:52:01.280didn't bother him and and they never really went after him in that iran country nonsense so i started
00:52:06.960up a bit about it after watergate everybody in washington got um contaminated by the idea that you
00:52:16.320could criminalize policy differences and that absolutely strictly judicial proceedings could be
00:52:22.080introduced into politics we saw that this past year of the spurious impeachment of of of trump but um
00:52:29.360uh the the this this group that i referred to and they're talented people and they're patriotic
00:52:35.600people most of them are probably pretty good but they're smug and they're complacent and they
00:52:40.560haven't done such a brilliant job i mean the the previous 20 years to trump were the worst years of
00:52:46.400presidential misgovernment in american history worse than the 10 years before the civil war and
00:52:51.840worse than the three terms between woodrow wilson and franklin roosevelt that gave us the great
00:52:56.800depression and isolationism and prohibition and uh and you know they had a terrible record they had
00:53:03.920an economic catastrophe human uh disasters and humanitarian disasters with the millions and
00:53:11.360millions of refugees and endless war in the middle east to no good purpose for the u.s uh and and
00:53:18.160and trump was right to say they're not doing a good job so that's what you've got these people and
00:53:24.400their tenacity and fanaticism are are unable to accept that trump such an outlandish and egregious
00:53:31.600character as he is in some ways could be for real and they they're repelling the barbarian it's just
00:53:37.840raised the drawbridge and the people will have to decide sorry by the way one thing the conduct of the
00:53:44.960the media as you said has been a disgrace and and this is dangerous because as all surveys show
00:53:50.960independent professional surveys harvard university and so forth uh pew research center 95 percent of
00:53:57.680the national political media is hostile to trump and they just make it up it's not it's not a matter of
00:54:03.280just giving more space to the opposition it's a matter of slinging mud at the president inventing things
00:54:08.480and and and uh just malicious falsehoods and and throwing them at him and all polls indicate that
00:54:15.840the public respect of the media is under 20 percent now this is a dangerous situation you cannot have
00:54:21.600a functioning democracy without a free press you can't have anyone intervene with the free press they
00:54:26.400have to be free and and yet if the public is so disrespectful of them the continued existence of a free
00:54:33.120press will not become or at least will feast to be a a matter of great public urgency and and and
00:54:41.040and uh what we need is a more honest and and respectable press that re earns the respect of the country
00:54:52.880and uh and i i i my theories if trump loses the election they will say well there it is we did it
00:54:59.440you know we the press did it because they've been conducting the biden campaign biden is just a
00:55:04.240sideshow sitting in his face he's a little guy from delaware has been around for 50 years but he
00:55:09.520couldn't lead america across the brooklyn bridge this campaign has been has been conducted by the media
00:55:14.800on his behalf well absolutely i mean you mentioned hunter biden's laptop and you know it seems like in
00:55:21.120some ways the cover-up is worse than the crime because you know so many people have now been exposed
00:55:25.920to the idea that facebook and twitter are picking and choosing what what what they deem
00:55:31.600newsworthy and and and everything else you know they get hidden um in in your book you talk about
00:55:37.920a lot of this sort of disconnect between the media narrative about trump whether it be on on women you
00:55:42.960know the idea that that he's just this horrible uh you know misogynist compared to the reality where
00:55:48.880he has all of these strong women surrounding him not just on his campaign you know with Kellyanne Conway and
00:55:53.840Hope Hicks and um Sarah Huckabee Sanders and his own daughter but also throughout his career he he
00:55:59.200he gave women opportunities to to lead projects that that had never been done before but but there's
00:56:03.680just so many instances of of this whether it was um you know violence at his campaign rallies apparently
00:56:09.600uh you know supposedly he was the one that was inciting it but then we learned that there were
00:56:13.680actually paid democratic operatives um we had the whole uh russian disinformation thing that that
00:56:20.080supposedly he was colluding with the russians and and that the the basis of it was the steel dossier
00:56:25.760which in and of itself turned out to be russian disinformation and now you know the media is
00:56:31.120saying that they're not sharing the hunter biden story because it looks like it could be russian
00:56:35.760disinformation even though there's i mean there's just so much confusion national intelligence agency
00:56:40.480and the fbi have said that there's no evidence of that right i mean to me and you come from a media
00:56:47.120background you you know you built all these successful newspapers to me the media is gaslighting
00:56:52.320the public and the public is starting to see through it and and i think it's it's going to back
00:56:56.560backlash or maybe it already has uh backfired on them um because people just don't really trust the
00:57:02.480media and you just mentioned that you know you can't have a successful democracy without a media
00:57:07.760but but what i'm seeing is is sort of a partisanship divide of the media like i can't i can't trust
00:57:12.560cnn or any of the mainstream media anymore so i'm going to go and get my news from you know ben
00:57:18.080shapiro and the daily wire or you know go seek out the the new york post or focus exclusively on fox
00:57:23.840news because i know what i'm going to get there but then you have this sort of increasing uh polarization
00:57:29.760so i just wondering you know do you think that there's any solutions or any coming back from this or
00:57:35.360are we just sort of on this path now where we're going to continue to to be divided um and and we have
00:57:41.120these irreconcilable differences uh no the united states is is a certainly a viable country it's it's
00:57:48.240a rough country and there is a temptation for example amongst the british i mean technically
00:57:54.240i'm british and indeed a member of the british parliament and the british think in large measure
00:57:59.600that the americans are essentially somewhat similar to themselves it's another english-speaking country
00:58:06.480and uh with institutions despite the fact that the us was created in a revolution
00:58:13.920to throat the british head substantially based on british common law and british parliamentary
00:58:20.720electoral traditions and therefore they're kind of our american cousins and and there is that aspect of
00:58:26.400them and to this day there there would be substantial pockets of largely influential people in in new england and new york and
00:58:42.240the northeast in particular that that would qualify as as being well acquainted with britain and somewhat
00:58:50.160sympathetic to it and and in themselves conducting themselves in a way that that would justify that
00:58:58.480description that i just gave but uh the united states isn't remotely like britain and the fact
00:59:08.160that it speaks english it dulls people into thinking that there is a similarity between the two countries that
00:59:14.240does not really exist the ethnic composition of it as you know is not mainly the british isles
00:59:22.800when mr churchill addressed the congress at the end of 1941 and said what kind of a people that they
00:59:29.440think we are this was part of his thing you need to portray it as one great english-speaking people's
00:59:36.640cause you know which obviously served britain's interest and and he as a man his mother was an american
00:59:44.560to some degree was very sincere in that but um
00:59:51.840the america dressed had more people of german italian and irish
00:59:58.000descent than of british you know english or scottish and and those three groups that i just said were in general in the world at that time not