The Lowdown from Nick Cohen

In the 2nd of a 2-part interview, Nick Cohen asks author, academic & commentator Yascha Mounk where next for Trump and his MAGA cult following? Already the President-elect is creating his cabinet of freaks, buffoons and creeps. Trump has already been humiliated in his original choice for Attorney-General - the firebrand former Congressman Mat Gaetz - who's now crashed and burned amid a flurry of lurid sex and drug claims.

So, already Trump's predictably bizarre cabinet choices are causing deep alarm - for example his decision to make ex-Democrat congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard his intelligence chief. Gabbard has been accused of being a sympathiser of both Syria's and Russia's dictators - Bashar Al Assad and Vladamir Putin.

Yascha tells Nick he doesn't think Trump is senile - he sees Trump as definitely the same man as he was back in 2016 - except older and if anything more radical. So what can we expect from a second Trump presidency? For sure, the next four years promises a bumpy ride for the United States and the rest of the world, with an expected U.S.- led trade war and a betrayal of Ukraine, with the trashing of NATO thrown in for good measure..

Yascha says "you normalise Trump, you normalise the extraordinary ... this is not a coherent figure. Let's put it as politely as I can. This is a chaotic figure. This is a figure who makes no sense in charge of the most powerful nation on earth and, and in a sense attempts to kind of rationalise him rather miss the point." In many ways, Trump is a more scary figure than he was back in 2016 when he was still openly hated by many Republicans. Yascha says He has four years of experience. I don't believe he's senile. And I think when you look at how, the beginning of his, transition has gone, he is very organised, very disciplined, not tweeting about random things, making short video announcements about the policies he's going to pursue."

Yascha is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Persuasion Substack - @JoinPersuasion - and also has his own Yascha Mounk Substack column. A man of many talents, Yascha hosts his own podcast, The Good Fight. Yascha's latest and highly acclaimed book - The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time - is published by Penguin. A political scientist, Yascha is also Professor of Practice at the School of Advanced International Studies of John Hopkins University in the U.S.

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

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@Yascha_Mounk , Professor of Practice at John Hopkins University in the U.S., argues that the Democrats wrongly assumed that they would have a growing inbuilt majority because most white people voted Republican and most non white people voted Democratic. Yascha tells Nick, "actually what happened since 2016 is that Democrats gained significant share of a vote among white voters, but they lost an even more significant share of a vote among African Americans, among Asian Americans, among Native Americans, and especially among Latinos."

On race, trans-gender - you name it - Woke ideology cost the Democrats dear. Insistence on politically correct language also helped antagonise particularly working class, less educated people. Yascha says, "working class nonwhite people who may have pause at some of the things Trump says, who might not love Trump, but we say, you know, at least he's not going to judge me for saying the wrong word in some kind of way." Yascha describes as "absolutely false" the assumption that minorities were demanding major changes to the political system, adding, "most African Americans certainly wanted a reform of a police ... the majority rejected any attempt to fund the police less or to defund it'"

Yascha says progressives often ask why they should moderate their views when the radical right is "running on whatever crazy and extreme platform and they don't moderate." He adds, "the answer to that is 'We need to win and currently we're not winning.'" In contrast, Trump coldly and shrewdly saw off the threat over abortion rights by appearing to sell out his anti-abortion base. Yascha says Democrats never once compromised "to get to where the majority of American voters are."

Yascha is Founder and Editor-in-Chief of the Persuasion Substack - @JoinPersuasion - and also has his own Yascha Mounk Substack column. A man of many talents, Yascha hosts his own podcast, The Good Fight. Yascha's latest and highly acclaimed book - The Identity Trap: A Story of Ideas and Power in Our Time - is published by Penguin.

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

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Nick Cohen chats with Tom Baldwin, journalist, author, biographer of Keir Starmer and former Labour spin doctor about how the new government handles future challenges from Donald Trump to clearing up the omni-shambles left by 14 years of Tory incompetence.

HANDLING THE ORANGE MENACE

Tom @TomBaldwin66 says Starmer will probably adopt a strategy of subtlety with Trump, saying, "The way to deal with Trump is not to match him for making noise or be your own kind of populist.

The answer is not to be like Trump; it's to be the opposite of Trump. It's not to turn the other cheek, but just to learn to ignore some things. Separate the froth of social media from the actual substance of his decisions ... He's going to try and get the best out of Trump. deals he can. He's going to try and find places of ambiguity and endurance, and do his best to exploit those, rather than reinforce dividing lines with him. And you know, that's what good prime ministers and good diplomats do."

TRUMP & THE FOLLY OF BREXIT

Nick points out that the #Trump victory has only further exposed the folly and recklessness of #brexit, particularly as it seems certain that Trump will launch a series of trade wars that will leave the UK dangerously exposed to a ruinous US tariff regime.

Trump is so economically illiterate that he appears not to understand that tariffs are paid by importers, not the exporting nation, and will mean higher prices for U.S. citizens if they want anything from oversees, from a new i-phone to a Japanese car. Tom says the UK maybe shafted trade-wise but still punches above its weight in terms of military power and security, both of which could prove crucial in the dangerous days ahead. Tom says, "we have real presence at the Table and we have Europe has a real interest in working with Britain in a way that it doesn't have to work for Britain in terms of giving us a better deal for our exports  security is not about self interest. It's about mutual interest."

STARMER & THE POPULIST THREAT

Tom said a key Starmer objective is to see off the populist threat in the UK through good governance and improving public serves. If any criticism can be laid at the door of the new government, it's that it has not done enough to fully expose the disgraceful shit-show Labour inherited from the Tories. "I think the best argument you can make, particularly in government rather than opposition, is to actually show that governments can work," says Tom, "and that government can actually deliver real progress for working peoples, as government would put it."

The paperback version of Tom's bestseller, Keir Starmer, the biography, is out now with a new updated chapter on the election campaign and Labour's first few weeks of power..

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

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SO, HOW DID WE ALL GET IT SO WRONG?

Pollsters and pundits predicted a close-run race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, but the consensus was that Harris had led consistently in the polls and that her victory seemed assured given the massive financial resources at her disposal, the apparent momentum and the slickness of her campaign, particularly compared to the bizarre circus of her opponent.

THE LEFT - IN A BUBBLE RAP?

Nick Cohen chats again to Washington DC-based journalist and podcaster Ben Cohen about Trump's shock landslide. Two weeks ago, Ben told The Lowdown he was confident that Harris would win - based mainly on so-called quality polling. Ben agreed that journalists from the left can operate inside a bubble and can often fail to realise how much people outside the bubble disregard or even hate them and their views. Leftist idealism and a belief in the stupidity and mendacity of the opponent can sleepwalk you into believing that people share your worldview, and are motivated by the same values.

FAILURE TO TACKLE WOKE & FACE UP TO REALITY

Ben @thedailybanter said Trump's opponents - buoyed up by the polls and the huge Harris crowds - possibly indulged in wishful thinking but they also made the mistake of not clamping down on the more wokeist tendencies on their side that played into Trump's hands and helped him scare voters away from Harris. "The left has eaten itself," Ben tells Nick."It's become a kind of parody of itself ... I've been writing about this for years, that identity politics is going to cost them the ballot because most of the country doesn't understand it."

Nick also says Joe Biden should have made it clear 2 years ago that he would only serve one term. Where did the predictions all go wrong and how much blame can be laid at the feet of the Democrats? In the end, Biden was forced off the Ticket after his calamitous presidential debate performance leaving Harris only 100 days to turn things around for the Democrats. Ben says, "it was... an insurmountable task."

THE INEVITABLE TRUMPIST TSUNAMI OF REVENGE AND STUPIDITY

Ben says everyone is filled with dread at the coming tsunami of Trumpist lunacy. Ben predicts Trump's regime will combine brutality with his trademark incompetence. He expects Trump to rip the U.S. - yet again - from the Paris Accords, undermine Nato and other international alliances - possibly fatally - betray Ukraine to Vladamir Putin and set up detention camps for immigrants - and that's just for starters. "We're in for a very scary few years, I would say," Ben tells Nick. "And we'll see how well American institutions can withstand the assault that's about to happen."

Ben adds, "The guy is a cockroach. He survived two assassination attempts, he survived two impeachment trials. He survived the democratic machine that raised, you know, several billion dollars, over a billion and a half dollars in two months, that's what Kamala Harris raised, and it was to defeat him."

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

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

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Nick Cohen chats to Tim Walker @ThatTimWalker - journalist, columnist, commentator and playwright - about the appalling state of British journalism and how our news agenda is being driven by an increasing deranged, obsessive and extremist Tory press, mainly doing the bidding of their creepy billionaire non-dom proprietors.

Brexit, Trussonomics, Boris Johnson and his buffoonistas, Austerity - you name it, there wasn't a terrible idea or person from the radicalised right in recent years that failed to enjoy the 100% backing of the Tory press. Now, its hacks serve up nothing burgers followed by trifles in frenzied attempts to smear and destroy the new Labour government.

Tim harks back to a relatively sane age not so long ago when newspapers tried to educate its readers about the world around them, and occasionally expose wrong doing. These were the days when news was something someone somewhere did not revealed and the rest was advertising. But journalism has changed radically in recent times - and not for the better - thanks mainly to social media destroying mainstream media models and advertising streams. Alongside that, political phenomena from Brexit to immigration have helped drive The Tory press to new heights of lunacy. Increasingly, media funds go to platforming radicalised right media blowhards, extremist politics, and gobby know-nothing weirdos from mysterious think tanks funded by dark money.

The aristocrats of journalism were once reporters who investigated wrong doing and broke stories. Now the money goes increasingly to the radical right commentators whose extremism and opportunism have helped them harangue and con the country into one disaster after another. What's worse, the MSM like the BBC repeatedly give these media charlatans airtime.

Read Tim Walker's Substack column A Point of View.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick Cohen chats to Washington-based journalist & substacker Ben Cohen about the November 5th presidential election - considered the most fateful and important poll in recent U.S. history, possibly since the election of 1861 that ushered in the presidency of Abraham Lincoln and the American Civil War.

Ben @thedailybanter says dodgy billionaires and rightwing pollsters are trying to con people into believing that the election is still incredibly close with dubious polls and betting odds in order to help facilitate a determined Trumpist post-election "stop the steal" campaign to put the fascist Hitler fanboy and multi-convicted felon back in the White House.

But Ben says the quality polls still show Harris in the lead across the country and in the so-called "swing states" and that she "win comfortably". "I could fall flat on my face and be, and be laughed at by the rest of the industry," admits Ben to Nick. " But, I'm not convinced that it's going to be as close as people think it's going to be. I think Kamala Harris is going to win comfortably."

Ben is sure that the women of the U.S. will turn out in big numbers to vote for Harris - mainly thanks to the decision by the Trumpist Supreme Court to overturn Roe-Wade and give individual states power over abortion rights and IVF access. This election has become a fight not only for the White House and the fate of the free world - particularly Ukraine - but also over women's bodies. Ben tells Nick, "I think what people are underestimating is the women vote, who are going to come out. This is a post Roe-Wade environment where Donald Trump is widely regarded as being responsible for repealing abortion rights in America."

But how can the election be so close when it's between a distinguished public servant like Kamala Harris, who has run an immaculate campaign, and the preposterous sociopath Donald Trump, indisputably the stupidest man ever elected president and one who attempted to overturn the 2020 election through violence and lies? Ben blames the emergence of the radical right media in the U.S., "I couldn't understand it, but having lived in America for decades now, the infiltration of the Murdoch media and the right wing hate radio and the industry, the conservative media complex is powerful, he says."

So, could we be seeing a re-run of the so-called "Red Wave - that wasn't" saga of the November 2020 mid-terms when the Republicans talked up the prospects of a crushing defeat for Biden's Democrats, only for the washing ashore of a large damp squib?

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

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 latest Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond explores the recent humiliating capitulation by the @washingtonpost proprietor & Amazon boss @JeffBezos to Donald Trump.

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Nick Cohen chats to The Guardian's celebrated and much loved Guardian parliamentary sketch-writer John Crace about the pitiful state of UK politics over the last 14 years - dominated by the interminable shitshow of Brexit - a calamitous epoch that's seen John stick his pen into a line of Tory duds from Cameron to Sunak.

It's been such a dog's breakfast that John has long come to the conclusion that even his dog Herbie could have done a much better job of running the country! So John @JohnJCrace has a new book out from Herbie's point of view - Taking the lead - a dog at Number 10 published by Constable. Herbie's political career starts with a chance encounter with Sadiq Khan's Labrador which lands our hound hero landed Herbie a job working as a special advisor to Ed Miliband in 2014. He then goes on to work with Cameron, the "Maybot" (aka Theresa May), Bunter Johnson and is then rewarded with a ringside seat for the Liz Truss clown car & Truss's blink-and-you'll miss it premiership.

In a highly entertaining interview, John even posits the perhaps rather ungenerous theory that Liz Truss may well have been responsible for the demise of Queen Elizabeth II - having visited Her Majesty at Balmoral just two days before her death. That may be a tough rap even for Truss! Or did the Queen have a premonition of the Kwarteng-Truss mini budget and associated follies and simply come to the conclusion - at her age and stage - that it was as good a time as any to shuffle off the mortal coil? You decide!

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick chats to the Swedish Axel Gordh Humlesjö, the award-winnning Swedish investigative journalist and author about Vladamir Putin's agents have corrupted the West's banking system to fund the an illegal and genocidal war against Ukraine and their own fraudulently funded life-styles.

Axel @axelhumlesjo co-authored The Honey Trap, a book that exposed how Putin's Kremlin laundered billions through one of Sweden's most important banks - Swedbank - initially by using honeytrap sex agents to gain Kompromat on senior bank executives.

The astonishing story of the corruption of Swedbank - often described as "the most Swedish of Swedish banks" - sheds a bright light on how the Russian state has targeted banks in the West to launder money, by-pass sanctions and fund its war against Ukraine. It's how Putin and his oligarch cronies effectively turned London into "Londongrad". It has enabled the Kremlin to gain astonishing influence over large parts of Europe's financial systems and to undermine the foundations of the West itself.

Axel explains to Nick @NickCohen4 how a lot a lot of the money has been funnelled through banks, different kinds of shady, companies and dodgy offshore accounts. Russia has then used this money in a range of different ways - trying to influence political elections and referendums and funding extremist parties. Even now Russia - yet again - is thought to be using it resources to secure the election of Donald Trump as president. Putin is desperate for his stooge to be back in the White House - confident Trump will do his bidding and betray Ukraine and force it to accept surrender on Russia's ignominious and dangerous terms.

Even more tragically though, Russia's state kelptocrats have even funnelled money from the people of Ukraine and others to line their own their own pockets and use it to by-pass sanctions and fund the Russian war machine.

Danske Bank - the largest bank in Denmark was also used by Russian entities in what was described as the world's biggest ever money laundering scandal.Almost €1 trillion of suspicious transactions flowed from Estonian, Russian, Latvian and other sources through the Estonia bank branch of Danske Bank from 2007 to 2015. In December 2022, Danske Bank pleaded guilty and agreed to a $2 billion fine in a case from the US Department of Justice.

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Swedish authorities are also starting to mete out punishment to the executives who destroyed Swedbank - including former chief executive Birgitte Bonnensen who the Swedish Appeal Court sentenced last month to 15 months in prison for gross fraud. But the damage to the West - it security and financial systems - is long-standing.

The Honey Trap, Swedbank, Russia and the World's Biggest Money Laundering Scheme by Axel and his colleague Lars Berge was described by the respected author of Putin's People and Washington Post journalist Catherine Belton as " A fantastic, page-turning book about how Russian intelligence infiltrated Sweden’s biggest bank and used it as a vehicle for money laundering. It is one of the most gripping spy adventures I’ve read..."

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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Nick Cohen talks to Phillips P. O'Brien - the American author, historian and professor of Strategic Studies at the University of St Andrews about the West's bungling over Ukraine.

First the West's so-called "intelligence community" catastrophically miscalculated Ukraine's ability in fighting Russia, believing Putin's criminally insane invasion of February 2022 would be over almost before it started. Ever since then the West has been messing #Ukraine around at every turn, micromanaging President Volodomyr Zelenskyy's @ZelenskyyUa military response in accordance with its own interests, rather than those of the Ukrainians, and denying him the weapons he needs to take the war decisively to Russia.

Phillips describes the West's failure as "the triumph of too much imagination". Western leaders had imagined a Russian military that doesn't exist. They have imagined an escalation threat from Russia that doesn't exist. "So actually what they're doing is letting their imagination of what they would expect to happen," says Phillips.

@PhillipsPOBrien blames the US in particular for trying to micromanage war which means #Ukraine has been denied weapons it desperately needs. Phillips tells Nick, "you cannot micromanage a war. That what you can do is help Ukraine to win it. And that you can do. You can give Ukraine the weapons and let them use it in such a way that you know, you could at least defeat the Russian military that you could have some control over."

Mistakenly, the West clings onto the notion of the so-called "escalatory ladder" where giving Ukraine the weapons it desperate needs leads eventually to a nuclear retaliatory strike from Moscow. Phillips describes this as illusion - just like the other Western bogeyman of the war eventually toppling Putin and leaving Russia in dangerous chaos, creating an even greaer threat to the West.

Phillips says the result: the world now has a "Goldilocks war" that's "not too old, not too cold" where the Ukraine is allowed only to wear down the Russian military, but not break it. Phillips says this strategy has lead to "the sort of quagmire we see now."

You can read Phillips own regular Substack column - Phillips's Newsletter.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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The political commentator and Tory observer Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone reports back directly to Nick Cohen from the Conservative Party Conference in a wet and windy Birmingham where four rather mediocre and charisma-lite candidates are vying to be - astonishingly - the 6th Tory leader in 8 years!

Nick found the Tories weirdly euphoric at suddenly finding themselves not in charge of sorting out the huge mess they have created and dangerously deluded about themselves and their policies. Neither the party leadership contenders strutting the light fantastic at Birmingham nor the dwindling and ageing party membership showed any contrition for the disasters they have visited on the country - mainly austerity, Brexit, Boris Johnson and Liz Truss - deciding instead to double down on their old batshit obsessions from leaving the jurisdiction of the European Court of Human Rights to their failed Rwanda scheme and busted immigration policies.

Seemingly buoyed up by Labour's current rocky poll ratings, the Tories seem eerily confident that their failed doctrines and continued lurch to the extreme right will somehow entice the electorate back into the fold by 2029. After all, it must be the voters who got in wrong on July 4th! However, the moderate so-called "one nation" Tory wing of the party are silent, apparently not yet prepared to hold the right wing Europhobes to account for the hole they all find themselves in.

Meanwhile, the far right is on the rise in the UK, as evidenced by the riots, and are hoping to draw in supporters disillusioned by the Tories and all too easily manipulated by the its lies and hate-filled narratives. The Farageist hard right even claims it can destroy what's left of the Tory party and replace it at the next election.

Nick Tyrone @NicholasTyrone writes for Substack as Neoliberal Centrist Dad - nick.tyrone.substack.com - a must read if you're desperate for the return of sanity to our national political discourse.

Nick Cohen's @NichCohen4 regular Substack column Writing from London on politics and culture from the UK and beyond is another must-read.

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