Nick Cohen talks to Andrew Gawthorpe - historian, substacker and researcher of the modern and contemporary United States at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands - about Donald Trump's cataclysmic first week in the White House.

The first week of Trump's 2nd presidency is turning out to be an even bigger disaster than anyone feared. With pardons for violent thugs and unprovoked threats against traditional allies, the U.S. is rapidly turning into the world's first banana republic super power!

Trump has issued pardons for a notorious international drug dealer, a man convicted of possessing child pornography and hundreds of violent extremists convicted for the January 6th attack on the Capitol. He has spread chaos and fear throughout the government, firing senior federal officials and even nobbling cancer research, as well as initiating initiated trumped-up investigations into the Biden administration. He has even threatened to abolish the country's federal dIsaster response body, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, FEMA. Trump has also given officials unprecedented authority to expedite deportations for up to one million immigrants who entered the country with government authorisation through two key Biden-era programmes.

Trump has already threatened allies - notably Denmark over Greenland - and predictably made threatening noises about aid to Ukraine. He has pulled the U.S. out of the Paris climate accords and the World Heath Organisation. Monstrously, he has suggested ethnically cleansing Gaza of Palestinians and dumping them in Egypt and Jordan. He's slapped 25% tariffs on Columbia for refusing planeloads of deported illegal immigrants. And all this before the end of his first weekend!

Andrew Gawthorpe @andygawt explains an increasingly bat-shit U.S. to his baffled readers in his highly thought of Substack column America Explained.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 dials up Washington to speak to namesake & fellow commentator Ben Cohen, editor of The Daily Banter website @thedailybanter about the coming Trumpian Terror, that starts in earnest following this week's presidential inauguration. The world is likely to witness the emergence of the U.S. as the world's biggest banana republic, headed by a billionaire oligarchy out-going President Joe Biden warned us all about.

Ben expects a revanchist reign of Terror from Donald Trump, with a purge of his enemies in the judicial system, the media, government and possibly even the military. '"There was a hit list ... that was just being shared in right wing circles," says Ben Cohen ." We know that the federal government is going to be raised from top to bottom of anybody they perceived as being loyal to Biden or the Democrats."

Ben says it's likely that politicians, military and government employees will be forced to an oath of loyalty to Trump, just as nobles and peasants were forced to sign oaths to medieval monarchs. Ben thinks this will also involve signing up to the biggest, baddest lie of all - that the 2020 presidential election was "stolen" by the Democrats. Ben adds, "I do know that a lot of people I know in government are busy, wiping their online profiles...because they're very worried about what the incoming administration is going to be doing."

The new Trumpian dystopia will descend very rapidly, says Ben. We can expect mass deportations of immigrants, attempts by Elon Musk to slash government spending by a staggering 80 per cent and a series of trade wars sparked by Trumpian tariffs. "It's going to be worse than you think it could possibly be," is Ben's grim prediction. He adds, "we are in uncharted territory and we are in with a government that is more radical than any government that I've seen in my lifetime, at least in America. I can't think of...and that's including the first Trump administration And that was generally a failure - the first Trump administration -because they weren't organised. But this is different."

Read Ben's The Banter Substacks here and listen to his podcasts here.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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This week Nick Cohen @NickCohen4 talks with Steve Richards @steverichards14, political commentator, author, broadcaster & historian about the threat posed to the Labour government by in-coming U.S. president Donald Trump & the menagerie of far-right weirdos like Elon Musk who has been launching a barrage of inflammatory tweets at the government since last Summer.

Steve and Nick explore the post-war history of the U.S. - UK relationship which hit a severe low during the 1956 Suez crisis. But Steve says the threat posed by Trump & his gang was "much more dangerous." Eisenhower's administration was recognisably stolid & solid; Trump's government of MAGA nutjobs & fanatics looks set to be even worse than his first administration. The inauguration is only days away and already Trump has threatened to annex Canada, Greenland and the Panama canal! Brexit and Trump have made UK isolated from Europe & the U.S. "The British electorate has changed dramatically," says Steve. So, Starmer must be bold in dealing with the UK's isolation and continue rebuilding the country's relationship with Europe. Starmer's caution "isn't working", says Steve, adding, "it's risky being cautious, but they haven't realised that."

Steve says it's clear the Tories, particularly Kemi Badenoch & Robert Jenrick, have decided to throw their lot in with Trump/Musk & help them attack the government. "They have made a decision & they are going to ride these bonkers wild waves as much as possible," says Steve in relation to the the latest Musk X assaults including his deranged libels against Starmer over grooming gangs. Steve says of today's Tories: "they're a revolutionary party now...they're not the party of one nation kind of moderates."

Steve is an accomplished political commentator, author & podcaster. His latest book Turning Points: Crisis and Change in Modern Britain, from 1945 to Truss is published by Macmillan & his regular podcast Rock and Roll Politics is a must listen.

Read Nick Cohen's regular and compelling Substack column Writing from London

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Nick Cohen talks to investigative reporter & author Peter Geoghegan, the UK's leading journalist exposing the dark money and cash from right wing extremist billionaires that's been driving UK politics since the ill-fated 2016 Brexit referendum.

Peter @PeterKGeoghegan explains how Donald Trump's election victories, Brexit and the failed Liz Truss experiment have helped fuel a crackpot anglocentric extremist right wing movement that has taken root either side of the Atlantic. In London, Tufton Street so-called "think tanks" a-wash with dark money mainly from U.S. billionaires and corporations have been influencing UK politics - helping to drive a number of right wing culture wars from climate denial & Europe to Ukraine and the NHS.

This UK-U.S. phenomena was recently best exposed by the "National Conservatism Conference" in London in May 2023 which heard from a number of extreme right voices from either side of the Pond. Peter tells Nick: "You have a growing link between that sort of Trumpist right, the MAGA right, and ... the Right to the Conservative Party, Robert Jenrick, Liz Truss, people like that, all have strong links."

Peter says even if Trump stooge Elon Musk does not or cannot make good on his promise to bung Nigel Farage & his Reform gang a reported £100 million, the story has already boosted the radical right in the UK.

But Peter is despondent about the prospects of stopping foreign cash fuelling extremist politics in the UK. The Tories castrated the Electoral Commission, & Sir Keir Starmer shows no appetite to tackle the issue. Peter says Labour will reportedly not change electoral law because it "could stoke populism" if the government is seen to react to the threat posed by Trump, Musk & Farage. Peter adds, "I think is a completely crazy position to take, to say that we're not going to do something that we are actually philosophically in favour of ...because it, it might create a couple of bad headlines.

Peter Geoghegan's must read Substack is Democracy for Sale & his best selling book Democracy for Sale: Dark Money and Dirty Politics is published by W.F.Howes Ltd.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen reads the runes for 2025 with fellow Substackers and writers - Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker and Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone.

2025 promises to be full of nasty surprises - particularly following the inauguration of Donald Trump as the U.S.'s 47th presidents. Pardons for the thugs and insurrectionists of January 6th looks baked in and the impacts on Ukraine could b deadly.

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View. Tim, an established Fleet Street columnist and journalist, has written several plays including Bloody Difficult Woman about Gina Miller's brexit legal battle with Theresa May. He has a new political play in the new year on BBC Radio 4.

Nick Tyrone is an author, activist, policy advisor and commentator and keen observer of the Tory party whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

For a moment, tune out of Cliff Richard and Slade Christmas hits and Fairytale of New York, and instead tune into The Lowdown from Nick Cohen as he chats over the shitshow that was 2024 with Lowdown stalwarts Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone & Tim Walker, @ThatTimWalker on a whole list of topics including Trump, Gaza, Ukraine, Brexit, the bungling of a new new Labour government.

Guests Tim and Nick hand out special Lowdown awards for the key people and events of the year including Biggest Bore of the Year, Hero of the Year, Worst event of the Year,

Happiest event of the Year and Biggest disappointment of the Year

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View. Tim, an established Fleet Street columnist and journalist, has written several plays including Bloody Difficult Woman about Gina Miller's brexit legal battle with Theresa May. He has a new political play in the new year on Radio 4.

Nick Tyrone is an author, activist, policy advisor and commentator and keen observer of the Tory party whose Substack column as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - is a must read for those of us desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NickCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Nick Cohen chats to Peter Oborne, Conservative commentator, reporter and author extraordinaire about the growing threat posed to the UK by the radical right in politics, press and from the other side of the Atlantic.

Something died inside Peter Oborne @OborneTweets when he saw Sir Keir Starmer recently bound across the floor of the House of Commons to talk to Nigel Farage. Neither Labour nor the Tories seem prepared to take on Farage - not on the failed shitshow of Brexit nor on his negative message on immigration. "What an extraordinary state of affairs!" says Peter. adding, "It's shattering. I mean, Farage is, is a bigot. His finances and the way he runs his sort of, his party, astonishing, full of dreadful people who shouldn't be seen in public, and yet somehow, it's very like Trump, that is, and they cannot find a way of tackling him or seem not even to want to."

Peter had high hopes before the election of Sir Keir Starmer, believing his working class background and record of solid achievement before entering politics helped made him an attractive political force But he now says of the PM, "he comes over as a nothing somebody's blown around by the wind". Peter believes the Labour government's current timidity is driven by an addiction to focus groups - something it shares with the Tories." He adds, " it's one of the sicknesses of our time."

Peter says Tory party is now "a vehicle for thoroughly unpleasant people and who don't understand what Britain is about" and that he same can be said of the press that used to identify as Conservative. He says, "They [right wing press] flourish by going after vulnerable minorities they're wrong about almost everything."

Peter is disturbed by Trump toady Elon Musk's threat to fund Reform, saying "what is happening here is indeed a takeover of Britain, culturally, socially, politically, and there's a massive attempt to do it economically by the United States. And it's only just started." The UK should tell these extremist far right forces to "get lost", Peter adding, "we're now moving into a world, an authoritarian world, which wants to destroy liberal democracy."

Peter Oborne is an associate editor for the Middle East Eye . His latest book published by Simon & Schuster is The Fate of Abraham: Why the West is wrong about Islam

Nick Cohen's @ latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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Nick Cohen chats with Imran Ahmed, the CEO of the U.S.-based Center for Countering Digital Hate about the fight against the forces of online hatred and extremism that pose such a threat to western values, democracy and civilisation. What can the West do to face down the out-of-control moguls who control the social media giants and profit from a tidal wave of digital hate and extremism?

Social media is destroying the truth and the currently chaotic information system is leading to authoritarianism. Imran says, "The information ecosystem has evolved in recent years and has been entirely commercially driven and has been without the consent of people - quite often - forced upon us." Imran adds people should have the ability to force change on the social media giants.

Conspiracy theories, extremist views, disinformation. misinfomation and outright lies are increasingly dominating social media more and more. Imran says extremist political movements were "benefiting from mobilising conspiracy, theory communities, hate communities, and that wasn't just happening in the U.S. You know, the lazy assumption is this is a Trump thing. It's not." He adds, "What social media platforms have done have taken... those fringe ideologies, [&] churn them into the mainstream."

Imran is one of the few to have taken on by Elon Musk and survived to tell the tale! Back in March, Imran comprehensively defeated Musk in the courts when a U.S. judge threw out attempts by the Trump boot-licker to gag Imran's CCDH organisation. But, so far, the West hasn't been as determined to take on the Leviathans of digital. "It is because of a lack of will and a lack of confidence, I would argue, amongst European and United States, lawmakers, that we have failed to hold them accountable'", Imran tells Nick, adding, "that's in part because, you know, this is difficult for us. We are true believers in Britain and in the United States in freedom of speech."

Imran says the local deli is subject to far more regulation than online social media moguls and that has ledt us all exposed to thr abuses of social media power as we saw in the U.S. presidential cam paign when. Elon Musk flagrantly put X, formerly TWITTER to the service of Donald Trump. Imran asks "How on earth can it be that social media platforms are the only businesses in America that are not subject to negligence law or any kind of scrutiny whatsoever?"

Imran Ahmed founded the CCDH in December 2017. He frequently appears in the media as an expert in online malignant behaviour (identity-based hate; misinformation; extremism; fake news; trolling; and social media). Imran is a trustee of the charity, Victim Support. He was appointed to the Steering Committee of the UK Government's Commission on Countering Extremism Pilot Task Force in April 2020, and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond.

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