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Donald Trump has said he 'would love to see a unified Ireland,' asking 'how could it be bad.'
During his trip to Ireland, he said that' it may as well happen now', and that it would be 'a great feather in everyone's cap.'
Matt Frei is joined by political-scientist Josephine Harmon to dissect Donald Trump's latest statements and his impact on politics.
Listen to the full show on the all-new LBC App: https://app.af.lbc.co.uk/btnc/thenewlbcapp
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0:00
Has anyone told him on the plane over that this is politically quite explosive
0:03
I don't think he understands the context in general of these things. He's just throwing stuff out there
0:07
I'd love to see it unified. I have friends on both sides
0:11
Great people. They're Irish people. How can they be bad, right? You have essentially an entertainer in the White House, and he entertains
0:19
We need to find our own Trump. We need to find a Donald Trump on the left
0:23
who is as loud and as obnoxious as Trump is, in order to win the next presidential election
0:28
He speaks from the gut. And that has a kind of resonance with voters who are sick of the kind of institutional politics
0:34
The left let themselves down because at the end of the day, they still believe in principles
0:40
It would almost be impossible for them to move away from this idea of institutionalised politics
0:44
It would be the end of the left as we know it. So famously, Donald Trump doesn't like to take holidays
0:51
He never really takes a weekend off. You would have thought that he might be, you know, keeping a low profile this weekend, but he's not
0:57
He's in Ireland. And as we speak, I'm watching pictures of him live
1:01
He's about to give yet another press conference. He's already met the Taoiseach this morning
1:05
He's met the Irish president this morning, who's got very left-wing views
1:09
I wonder how that meeting went. I'd love to have been a fly on the wall on that one. And of course, as ever, he's thrown out like sort of popcorn or confetti, a few kind of jaw-dropping lines
1:18
So, for instance, you know, he thinks that he would love to see a united Ireland
1:22
I have friends on both sides, great people. They're Irish people. How can they be bad, right? I'd love to see it unified. I think it would be a great feather in everybody's cap if that happened. It's going to happen eventually
1:38
Mr. Martin, you know what? The way I look at it, it's going to happen eventually. It will happen now
1:43
Now the UK will have something to say about it, obviously, but I think it would be a great thing. I mean, how can it be bad
1:50
He then also commented about the Falkland Islands and said if there should be another war between Argentina and the UK
1:56
he doesn't think the Navy is going to make it all the way down there. He may have a point on that one, I'm afraid to say
2:01
Well, the Falkland Islands is very interesting because here we go again. I remember as a young boy, pretty young boy anyway, but the Falkland Islands
2:12
I think it was a different country at that time, the UK, a little bit
2:16
But they went in and they took it over. I'm not sure they're doing that they have a little problem with immigration they have a little problem with energy
2:26
and they have some other problems they have to take care of so I don't know you know I don't know if they're going to be
2:30
willing to travel that far that is very far away you know you talking about weeks by by phone though So joining me to discuss all this in the studio I very happy to say is Josephine Harman
2:45
Assistant Professor of Political Science at Northeastern University, former lecturer in politics at New York University
2:50
Welcome to the studio. Thank you very much, Matt. So, um, United Ireland
2:54
I mean, what do you make of, you know, Trump's mindset, here he is in Ireland
2:59
Has anyone told him on the plane over that this is politically quite explosive? No, I doubt it
3:03
I don't think he understands the context in general of these things. He's just throwing stuff out there
3:07
And there's this incredible... I think it's a result of having a kind of politainment environment
3:12
You know, you have essentially an entertainer in the White House, and he entertains. And so I think..
3:17
I doubt he's done any of the background reading about the sensitivities involved, either for the UK or for Ireland
3:21
But who knows? He might well be right. He might well be right. And it's a sort of gut instinctive thing to say. Exactly
3:28
And maybe, you know, the thing is he says so many things, doesn't he? that we just now it's a bit like a burglar alarm going off all the time that's right you ignore it
3:34
you can't keep up with it that's right i think that really underlies his appeal as he speaks
3:38
from the gut and that has a kind of resonance with voters who are sick of the kind of
3:43
institutional politics you know we're in a very anti-institutional moment i think
3:47
and so you know as usual it'll be water off a duck's back i think that you know neither the
3:51
leaders nor the voters will particularly pay attention because it's trump doing trump i had this argument with an american friend the other day who who's not a trump fan and he said
3:59
you know he lies all the time and he's so fake and I actually said he is being authentically fake
4:05
while being fake so there's an authenticity around Trump about Trump that you know he believes what
4:11
he says in the moment when he says it he might then forget about it two seconds later he might
4:15
actually even have been lying but but he has captured the secret source of politics like few
4:20
other politicians I've observed you know and authenticity matters doesn't it very much so
4:25
Well, that's right. And I think this is what makes him such a unique figure, I think, is he has a sort of, I don't know how much we can say here, but I think he has an unusual personality. And in a strange way, that has a mass appeal. You know, the leaders of, you know, whatever it is, great political movements or great religions, you need to have this kind of charisma that's quite unique and quite unusual
4:46
And that's the strange thing about Trump's personality. It's his personality weirdness that enables him to have such a huge effect, I think, and to resonate so far
4:56
And to have this kind of Teflon coating where he doesn't seem to be affected by anything like you or I might be
5:02
But his opinion poll ratings are rock bottom. They keep going down
5:06
But mind you, they've been there before. We've seen that before. We've seen that before. And he managed to rise up again
5:11
So there was this interesting meeting in Texas in Dallas this week For the first time the Republicans had a convention for the midterms Normally these conventions take place before a presidential election They had it for the midterms which in itself I guess is an indication that they
5:24
panicking a little bit about the result. And at that convention, two things happened that
5:29
for me, were remarkable. One, Donald Trump more or less offered every American
5:33
if the Republicans win a $5,000 bribe, which would then cost a total of 1.4 trillion US dollars
5:39
which is about you know a 40 percent of the aggregate debt of america i don't think that's
5:44
going to happen no i think it's highly approved by congress that's not going to happen but the
5:48
other thing is that jd vance positioned himself as the heir apparent yes do you think that jd
5:53
vance who is clearly smart but also let's say has been well i mean he's he's written one very
5:59
good book and there's an intelligence there i mean that maybe trump doesn't have but he's also
6:05
been on a very transactional political journey. Can you imagine him as Trump's heir? Well, you know
6:11
it's hard to say, really. I mean, it's a two-horse race between the Republicans and the Democrats
6:15
and the fact is the Republicans, sorry, the Democrats, don't really have their act together
6:19
They're in this strange moment that I think a lot of left-wing parties have been since the onset of
6:25
the popular stage, which is they don't know whether to go radical or centrist, and they're
6:29
riven between the two options, and I think that happened in Britain, but in a more kind of dilute
6:33
way and it's happened in a lot of different places and it's hard for the left to have a cut
6:37
through either as the set at the center or the radical we think about Podemus and the other
6:41
movement so I'm not sure what their strategy is going forward and so if there's a vacuum
6:46
who knows Vance may be able to make inroads it's possible because this problem of where the left
6:52
and the center left find their point of gravity is replicated across democracies everywhere you
6:57
know we've got the same thing we're seeing it right now in Germany with the destruction of the
7:01
SPD and suddenly all these left-wing parties, including former communists, are rising to the
7:05
fall. We had the same thing, you know, you described Spain, similar. France, of course
7:11
you know, Mélenchon, you know, disappears for years and suddenly he's back there with Marine
7:16
Le Pen. So I interviewed this guy called Hassan Paiké, who's a democratic socialist activist
7:22
not a politician, in the United States. And he's been saying, we need to find our own Trump. We
7:27
need to find a Donald Trump on the left who is as loud and as obnoxious
7:31
as Trump is in order to win the next presidential election. Yes, and Gavin Newsom gave that a shot, didn't he
7:37
But it didn't quite work because he's a deeply institutionalised Democrat. And so I'm not sure they can pull off that act
7:42
The hairdo gives him away. He's too slick. That's right. I mean, what was it they called him? A cross between, what, Sparkle
7:48
Ken Doll and the American psycho guy Patrick Bateman which is a kind of killer line really But no that right I mean I think well it going back to left populism as a theoretical idea which was in O and Laclau and there been this longstanding idea in the sort of tradition
8:04
of the left, you know, dovetails with a certain kind of populism. I think, though, that the
8:10
modern left would find it hard to pull off, not least because, as we said before, there's
8:14
a kind of entertainment subtext to this and a kind of, without wanting to be pejorative
8:20
There's a kind of group dysfunction at play, I think, within the way that Trump operates and the relationship
8:27
some of you might call it a parasocial relationship. I'm not sure that you can replicate that as a rational strategy
8:33
I think it comes from a very emotional place and that's what we don't understand. Often people in the liberal centre don't understand this is a different kind of politics at play
8:41
and you can't just whip it out as an electoral strategy because it is authentic, as you say
8:45
And also, and it is emotional. think back to that line during the Brexit campaign
8:50
take back control no one cared about the statistics on the trade it's about the emotional thing
8:55
so I just wonder also to what extent the left let themselves down
9:00
because at the end of the day they still believe in principles whereas the right think of themselves
9:05
as an insurgent opposition movement and therefore anything goes exactly I think that's absolutely right
9:11
and I think the way that a range of right wing populists
9:16
talk about the left is as the establishment. And the particular point they're trying to get across is polemical
9:24
So I wouldn't advance that. But they have a point insofar as, you know
9:29
the centre-left has, I think, put forward a vision of politics that's deeply ingrained within institutions
9:36
It would almost be impossible for them to move away from this idea of institutionalised politics
9:40
It would be the end of the left as we know it. It would be maybe, as you said, a return to a more..
9:44
or early 20th century leftism that we haven't seen for decades. You know, the revolutionary Marxist wing, which is just long dead and probably isn't coming back
9:54
So I think the left is in a really strange, stale state right now
9:58
But ultimately, in 10 seconds, if you don't mind, you know, whoever wants to defeat either Donald Trump in the United States or indeed here, you know, Reform UK
10:06
you've got to find a language that is authentic, but also resonates with voters
10:11
and their very, very real concerns about things like jobs and inflation and war coming to our doorstep
10:17
That's right. And that means radically changing the intellectual ysis that we have of politics at large
10:22
And I think we're quite a long way from doing that because we're still invested in spin and in polling
10:27
And that's the difference between the modern left and the populist right today, I think
10:32
Fascinating conversation. Josephine Harmon, great to have you in the studio
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