Will Trump Try To Rig The Midterm Elections? | Christiane Amanpour Presents

[00:00:00]Trump is doing things to try to make it more difficult for people to vote in the next time around. And he kind of intimated that this is the desperate claims of a party which sees its polls lagging ahead of these midterms, i.e. the Republican party.

[00:00:14]>> Subpoena power will be put in the hands of Democrats. And all of these questions about the degree to which President Trump and his family have mixed business of their family and business of government are going to be investigated.

[00:00:27]The defense minister is this sort of young wonderkind who had been credited with really changing the face of what warfare looked like.

[00:00:35]>> We all love Vladimir Zalinski for obvious zalinski. Thank you. That doesn't mean he's perfect. Uh it just means that he's been a great wartime leader. But everybody makes mistakes. I think this is a mistake.

[00:00:52]This is a global production.

[00:00:59]>> Hello everyone. The latest episode of the XFiles this week with me Christian in France. Jamie, where are you?

[00:01:06]>> I'm still in New York.

[00:01:08]>> Okay. Jamie's in New York. And these are the main questions we're going to try to address today. Um, why is President Trump doubling down on what appears to be a discredited uh, you know, claim of Chinese interference in the US elections? Is this all about the midterms? What is it all about? And then secondly, there is an internal division now brewing and basically coming to head in Ukraine. How is that going to affect, if it does, the status on the battlefield and the political status of Ukraine trying to get help? So Jamie, let's uh get right going, but we do have to start just a couple of minutes on that old chestnut Iran. I would say I was a little bit over flippant last week because I said, "Oh, it's a hot war light." But now, Jamie, it does look like after this weekend, it's going to be potentially a widescale war again. Three Americans uh troops have been killed. The US have retaliated. There's this escalation of retaliation. And I don't know what you think is going to happen, but it's I don't think I can call it light anymore.

[00:02:11]>> No, I think uh you're right that things have changed over the last week. I think the killing of US servicemen in Jordan and let's remember what happened here is the United States really has used Jordan as a crucial uh base for everything in the region because the Jordanians are the most willing to allow the United States to do what it needs to do in the region. and the Iranians struck a base and killed soldiers. And my guess is that this will cause a strong reaction by the United States that whatever plans they had for possibly stepping up the war are going to be doubled down and that we're going to be some time before we can get back to ceasefire. even though the fundamentals haven't changed that there's no obvious way for the United States to get the straight of Hormuz open without diplomacy and getting the straight of Hormuz open is crucial to getting the world economy smooth which is crucial to the midterm elections that uh we're going to talk about in a minute.

[00:03:13]>> Yeah, I mean it is all so linked. The only issue there is it would be if there was a plan. My fear is that it is as ad hoc as it was at the beginning of this war without proper proper war planning or at least the president not listening to those within his own inner circle who told him of the potential pitfalls. I'm afraid the same exists right now that it is a situation of of of of escalate and retaliate etc that could really potentially draw in the whole region.

[00:03:43]You know Jamie Max Blumenthal, you know him, I know him. He's the son of friends. Uh, and he's actually been to Iran. He was there for funeral and he's been talking to people there who are, you know, some of the top political analysts according to some reports I was just sent. Tell him that it could really escalate and that Iran is playing for keeps. that this is all about setting down the markers for who will be uh not just in charge but how that region will be shaped. So it's a little bit frightening because as I say I'm afraid certainly that the US side doesn't really have a strategy or a plan and that the Iranian side may just think it's you know on a on a ticket to heaven where it not necessarily the case. I think you're right and just my last thought on this um ticket to heaven is a good word. We have to remember that the Iranian regime even though it's less religious perhaps than when uh the previous leader was in charge is based on an ideology of uh resistance of resistance and that I said it twice because that's what the Iranian regime has been doing its whole life. That's the way they think of themselves. And the question is going to become who has the greater stomach to resist the war that neither side can obviously win.

[00:05:04]There's no warinning strategy other than perhaps an American ground invasion which is not going to happen um I don't think. And so both sides are in this game where they're trying to improve their negotiating position through the use of military force even while each side is um uh escalating. So it's there's no obvious answer to this. I don't have any brilliant wisdom other than to say that I think things are more out of control this week than they were last week.

[00:05:34]>> Yeah. And that's the problem. Out of control and potentially laying the groundwork for another forever war, which is the last thing anybody wants and needs. And as you say, uh, neither side can really win. And I'm sure neither side really wants to escalate in the way they're doing right now and continue these forever wars. So, okay.

[00:05:50]Now, let's talk about President Trump and more domestic policy as you know because the whole world watched it. It was the World Cup final in New York, New Jersey at the Metife New Jersey stadium on Sunday. As we know, Spain won. Messi didn't h but President Trump was there.

[00:06:06]Now according to reports he got some booze but I noticed very carefully when he was being uh greeted by all the teams that some of the team members you know didn't give much attention to any of the leaders on the stage and some of them really did give him a good old handshake and a little squeeze of the body. I don't know he might have been wearing a bulletproof vest. He looked a little bit robust. But anyway, all to say that President Trump remains a very divisive figure at home. And he had a very unusual intervention this past week whereby he had a prime time television address, which frankly almost no major news organizations covered in prime time. We'll get to that in a minute. But it was all apparently about warning America that China was involved in election interference and trying to say that China had somehow, you know, tipped the scales in the 2020 election. Over a period of years, starting during the 2020 election cycle, the People's Republic of China carried out what is believed to be the largest compromise of election data in history, resulting in China's illicit acquisition of 220 million US voter files.

[00:07:23]>> Your comments, Jamie, what do you think watching it or hearing it, reading about it from the US? Well, remember in my last job, one of the things that I did was study Chinese, Russian, and Iran uh disinformation practices. So, the subject matter is something I'm quite familiar with. And uh the facts haven't changed. Um if there were a country that interfered interfered in our elections in recent times, it was Russia and it was in 2016 and that's been firmly established by multiple uh reports and examinations and studies. Um, the Chinese always try to find things out.

[00:08:00]They do intelligence gathering. And despite all the claims and all the release of documents and all of the hoopla around this speech, there was nothing in there that made it evident that anything China did had an impact on the choice of voting uh by the machines.

[00:08:19]In other words, the elections were uh free and fair. um the there was no evidence that the the tabulations could be changed by an outside power. So the only question is whether the outside power tried to influence Americans.

[00:08:34]China, Russia, Iran, other countries are always trying to influence Americans, trying to promote uh dissension in our ranks, trying to get one side fighting with the other. Uh that's been happening for many many many years now. Um it happens more now because of the open internet. But what President Trump didn't do, and even his own party isn't following it, is really reopen the case for 2020, which is what this was all about. Somehow he just can't stand the idea that he lost and that President Biden was certified. And he's looking for ways to show that wasn't true. And I guess we can get to this, lay the predicate for claims about the future, which we can talk about.

[00:09:13]>> Yeah. Just a couple of observations. Uh we know because of what's reported and what's written that American intelligence agencies who've actually looked into the 2020 found no evidence at all to back up any claims of Chinese interference. So a 2021 report by the US National Intelligence Council said that it had quote high confidence that China did not interfere in the 2020 presidential presidential. We assess that China did not deploy interference efforts and considered but did not deploy influence efforts intended to change the outcome of the US presidential election. And they would, wouldn't they? The Chinese came out with what I thought was a pretty robust uh rebuttal. You know, something like a vile lie, said the spokesman uh from the foreign ministry in China, and we have, you know, no intention and no interest apart from what you said, knowing and trying to figure out what is going on.

[00:10:04]and he kind of intimated that this is, you know, the the desperate claims of a a party which sees its polls lagging ahead of these midterms, i.e. the Republican party. And Jamie, I don't know, but I I did quite a lot of reading and there's one school of thought in the United States and in the sort of, you know, political uh class which suggests that actually if you I'm quoting from Politico, if you strip away the typical Trump hallmarks from rigged and stolen elections to punishing broadcasters, what we saw was a pretty vanilla, sneakingly boring policy speech.

[00:10:39]Basically, they say that what he pointed out more was having to harden election infrastructure. You know, there's a version of the speech that any president could have given. In other words, it wasn't the stur and drang and big threat according to this uh school of thought that it could have been, but we know that Trump is doing things to try to uh make it more difficult for people to vote in the next time around. Right.

[00:11:04]>> Well, that's right. And that's the big story in the United States. You know, it's as an American, I have to admit, uh, it sometimes seems repetitive, but I have to say that when one looks at the things the president and his team are doing to try to skew the results of elections in the future by changing people by getting people to uh, change their views or hiring people who only admit or say that the 2020 election was stolen to try to interfere in the running of our elections. And I say that because everyone has to remember, especially outside the United States, that states run our elections. The federal government doesn't run the elections. Sometimes they help states.

[00:11:46]And some of the things that came out of this speech is that it would be nice if the federal government were to help harden some of the systems and prevent the possibility of interference through cyber security techniques. But President Trump has uh frankly just uh uh eliminated all the parts of the US government that used to do that work. So we know that that's not what his objective is. And speaking of China, remember the biggest threat from China's interference in our political system comes from Tik Tok. Tik Tok was supposed to be banned, but President Trump decided for his own reasons, and I don't know what they are, to make an arrangement by which Tik Tok really wasn't banned. And if you look at Tik Tok, it's obvious that it skews towards things that are designed to undermine support for the United States government. Whether that's on Gaza, whether that's on Iran, whether that's on uh what happens in the United States.

[00:12:38]All the analysts have looked at Tik Tok and say if you follow their basic algorithmic uh tendencies, you make it seem like America is a very dangerous and troubled and and and difficult place to to be. And so I I find it ironic that President Trump allowed Ti Tik Tok to go forward under Chinese control really ultimately. Yeah. Um and yet blaming chi China. I think the Chinese were kind of smart about this. They don't want to royal the relationship with President Trump right now because they seem to feel like things are going their way.

[00:13:12]And so they criticized his critique and I think they're going to move on.

[00:13:17]>> Yeah. And just to build on that a little bit in terms of you know election election security actually as we know Trump has rolled back some of those very agencies whose job is election security.

[00:13:28]So it's a very mixed message. So I think based on that, the fact that President Trump has a history of saying whatever benefits him regarding this idea of 2020 and election security, um most of the networks did not carry it on their broadcast linear services. Not CNN, NBC, ABC. They did it on their digital service, their streaming service, which historically has much fewer viewers. But CBS with Barry Weiss as the editor-inchief deciding that they were going to run it. But apparently they only ran it for about half or maybe maybe almost all of it. I think it was a half an hour speech. They ran 15 minutes of it and then did some uh factchecking afterwards. But I find that interesting.

[00:14:12]Jamie, do you have any can you think of any recent presidential speech uh that the networks Okay, of course I forgot to say Fox did run it in its entirety. Um that the networks basically wouldn't run. It's very rare.

[00:14:27]>> It is very rare. I think it happens uh towards the end of an administration sometimes when the the networks feel the administration is trying to manipulate public opinion in some egregious way.

[00:14:39]They don't always break into their coverage and run it live, but it's very rare. Um and I it's not the first time this happened.

[00:14:46]>> I think it happened. I'm just coming into my head. Didn't it happen to Biden?

[00:14:49]He gives it to I think I think it even happened to Clinton. He was once upset about it if I remember correctly.

[00:14:56]There's always a bit of a battle there.

[00:14:58]But look, uh, what President Trump said >> um, wasn't newsworthy in the end, and that's the important point. And when I looked at how people responded to it, um, look, the numbers are exactly what you'd expect. Um, those who are strong Trump supporters believe him. That's roughly half or a little bit more than half of the Republican party. and the other Republicans don't believe this stuff. Um, and that brings us to the question of what will happen in the midterm elections because this election is going to be about turnout. Who's going to vote? Uh, America's elections are always close. It's always a few percentage points. There are no big sweeping victories. There's no very rarely, you know, an overwhelming decision on one side or the other. It will be about turnout. And if Republicans don't show up because of President Trump's low approval rating and because they're disappointed in their e the economic performance under his presidency, um I think the Democrats are going to be motivated and they will turn up. That's my basic prediction. Um how big a jump that will make it, I don't know. Uh the numbers right now suggest that there's a much greater enthusiasm gap than ever before between Republicans and Democrats and that President Trump's approval ratings are very low. That's encouraging if you're a Democrat, but I've lost my ability to frankly judge how these things come out.

[00:16:27]I think it will depend a lot on what's going on in October and November where this war stands. Um but I think the important point here is that it's going to be about enthusiasm. It's going to be about turnout, not so much the traditional policy positions because everybody kind of knows where the Trump administration is and the Democrats opposition. Yes, individual candidates will matter, but I think it's really about how energized the opposition to Trump is versus how uh reluctant some Republicans are to vote this time around.

[00:17:00]>> Why? I mean, it's a dumb question, but let's just ask it. We know that the war has contributed to obviously the kind of economic pain that Americans rejected the Democrats and voted for Trump in 2024. Right now they're facing economic pain again because of this war and the inflation and the high cost of, you know, filling up their vehicles and all the rest of it.

[00:17:24]What would happen from a US perspective since you're there? What would the landscape look like if the Republicans lost the House? what what does that mean practically to people to the political class uh to people's lives if they lost the house and maybe even the senate but let's just stick with the house >> yeah I think people need to lower their expectations of what it will mean u in our system the president still has enormous power and especially on the subject matters that we talk about foreign affairs uh the congress has traditionally shown very little spine when it comes to uh exercising the power that it really does have the power of the purse and the power to declare war.

[00:18:06]They don't exercise those powers when it comes to foreign affairs. So I think in foreign affairs I think the impact is going to be rather modest if if at all.

[00:18:16]Um what it will do and this is what Republicans and the Trump team are worried about is it will increase the investigative power of the House, the oversight power of the House. There won't be much in the way of domestic legislation. the one bill that was passed, the big beautiful bill he called it, uh will probably be the last big piece of legislation under President Trump if the House goes Democratic. But what will happen is subpoena power will be put in the hands of Democrats. And all of these questions that we all know have been out there about the degree to which President Trump and his family have mixed business and and of their family and business of government are going to be investigated. I think, frankly, they're going to be investigated for the rest of my natural life because there's so many unprecedented things that have happened.

[00:19:02]In almost every big foreign policy decision, someone has shown some connection to someone investing in some family member's money. I'm not saying those are the reasons why it happened, but I'm just saying that over and over again, we see uh links. That's what the House of Representatives can do well. it can use its subpoena power to investigate and I think the courts will back up subpoenas for uh uh investigation of matters of government that are within the purview of the House of Representatives. So I think it'll just make this even messier if it could be messier.

[00:19:37]>> Yeah. But also it would make him a really lame lame duck if if that happened. Although he has executive uh orders and the executive powers that he's been able to use.

[00:19:46]>> Well, yes. But again, I just have to say and I think for our audience particularly, I know much of our audience is interested in the world um on world affairs, the president's power is very strong. Um he can make decisions about war and peace apparently without really consulting Congress. He's done that more than any other president. Um, and I think uh diplomacy um uh perhaps uh this whole tariff question might get uh another round of real involvement if the house steps up and tries to block tariffs and the Supreme Court backs them up. So there's a few areas where the president's foreign policy powers may be scaled back. But I think it people really should remember that when it comes to the daily business of peace in the Middle East, the war in Ukraine, all of those things, uh, that the president's powers in foreign policy over the years have grown. And President Trump has shown an incredible willingness to use the the maximum power that that his lawyers say he has, which has often been challenged.

[00:20:49]>> Yeah. So, we're going to talk about the unfolding war in Ukraine in a moment and the latest Phillip, so to speak, uh the upheaval inside the Zalinski government.

[00:20:59]Um, and today, as we record, we have a change of democratic uh uh executive in the UK. Prime Minister Starmer is being bid farewell by the king and the king is welcoming the new still Labor Prime Minister Andy Burnham. We'll see where that takes the UK particularly in relation to foreign policy and American the American relationship. So in a moment we're going to talk about Ukraine. Some might think the latest issue is uh of their own making. So what I'm talking about is the government fell uh and the president reassigned people and reshuffled but it kind of was sparked by this big big fight I guess disagreement within the military uh complex there. So the defense minister Mikail Fedorov was fired or re he will be reassigned says Zilinski and it apparently is based on a big argument that he's been having over the last 6 months of his tenure with the commander of all Ukrainian forces uh that is General Alexander Cerski. Cerski is based mostly in the east. I met him in KKE when I interviewed him. I got the first foreign interview with him and that's where he's based because that's where the war is happening in the east.

[00:22:13]So Fedorov, the foreign minister, the the the defense minister is this sort of young wandkind who had been credited with really changing the face of what warfare looked like. Heavily tech uh uh uh underpinned lot of drones, lot of basic tech fighting. and Cerski believed that there should be some service paid to the old-fashioned boots on the ground, you know, all the sort of artillery, tanks, and all the other things that you need to fight a grinding war on the front line. So, there was a big uh issue between them and again again Zalinsky essentially sided with his commander and Fedorov gets the boot.

[00:22:57]What do what do you make even if not the details of this but whatever you think about what it means when they have an internal >> brewhaha >> look um we all love Vladimir Zalinski for obvious say it again Zalinski thank you um we all love President Zalinski um he's shown incredible uh grit and determination uh to help his country survive this incredible onslaught that doesn't mean he's perfect. Uh it just means that he's been a great wartime leader, but every everybody makes mistakes. I think this is a mistake. Um he should have found a way to uh avoid a split in the military. Look, the this battle I suspect from what I understand of military operations and military units is about the power of personnel.

[00:23:47]It's about who decides uh promotions, who decides whose teams get the biggest um amounts of money. It's about orders and and and groups. You find in the military that there are real uh you know factions that develop and I think the old guard was tired of seeing this younger group uh climb too quickly and too fast and they fought back and this battle was brewing. But on terms of the substance, I think it's perfectly obvious that the younger group with its focus on drone technology and and can do makeshift uh uh you know, finding a way to get the job done without the traditional ground uh battle um is what has turned the war around. And I think Zinsky knows that. I think the old guard knows that as well. They believe me, they don't want to see their soldiers killed. And I think what Zinsky has done in the past when he's made a mistake like he did, I guess it was six, nine months ago about corruption, he fired some anti-corruption unit and there was a protest and then he turned around. I think he's going to find a way to turn this around to avoid this becoming something that splits the country, which really would be to Russia's advantage and that's the sad part about it.

[00:25:00]>> Not to mention split the military doctrine. I mean I I was reading some articles written inside Ukraine by uh their publications and uh you know there also there's a huge amount of this basically laid at the foot of recruitment and as you know the Ukrainians have had a really difficult time recruiting more soldiers, more people for the front. uh Russia hasn't had such a bad time, but President Zalinski was talking to his cabinet regarding all of this or at least to his party faction, servant of the people, and he was reported to have told them that if, as they think, Putin announces another mass mobilization and apparently scheduled for September 23rd. If he takes that, you know, big big decision to do another mass mobilization on the Russian side, then Ukraine has to start thinking right now about how to mobilize in order to meet that. And that has been very difficult which is why a lot of this technological progress and superiority that they pursued and that they you know pioneered really the Ukrainians has been so incredibly important because Jamie as you and I have said many many times the incremental gains on the battlefield are literally that and even now Russia are being reversed so it's like inches on the battlefield and yet it hasn't changed Russia's or Putin's um strategic political views of how to bring this to an end. So if really Putin is thinking about another mass mobilization, that means he hasn't changed his mind one single bit. Well, how do you read that, Jamie? If he's, you know, potentially planning to announce something on September 23rd.

[00:26:46]>> Well, we'll have to see if he does that.

[00:26:47]I kind of doubt that he's going to uh force a large mobilization because what I've been reading and what I've been seeing and what I've been hearing suggests to me that the war is starting to come home to the Russians in many different ways. Whether that's what happened in Crimea where the whole region was virtually cut off and all the vacationers had to come home. whether it's gas lines, diesel price fuel, uh seeing drone attacks, knowing about uh the war affecting Russians across the board. I don't think that's a particularly good time to try to get a large mobilization, especially when I think this number is about right. We're finding out that every month something like 30,000 Russian soldiers are either killed or wounded on the on the front line mostly from drones from these modern attacks that are the uh uh result of these pioneers of this new way of war. So um look I've been worried for a long time that uh Vladimir Putin doesn't understand that he's losing let me put it a different way that he's not winning and not going to win. um at some point he will realize that. I just don't know when it is. It doesn't seem imminent. Um but it could happen at any time. It could happen a month from now. It could happen two years from now. That's why it's so important for the Ukrainians to retain their uh spree core because remember it's their fighting for their own homes and their willingness to fight for their freedom and their democracy that has enabled them to stand up against a much larger and much better equipped force. their motivation level is what the difference is. And so I certainly hope that Zalinski doesn't do anything in this intervening period that affects in any serious way the motivation of the Ukrainians because that has been the thing that has been the most heartwarming good news story if there is one in the world in the last few years.

[00:28:40]>> And yet it is the them and us because many many Ukrainians because there isn't a forced mobilization and not at the front. They're sitting, no, I don't mean to say that in a flip way, but they're in the cities which are increasingly, as you know, under attack by uh by Russia, but they're not on the front line. And those on the front line have been there for four years. You know, I mean, as long as this escalated war, the full-scale invasion has started, they have been almost no PTO, as we like to call it in the West. Uh they haven't had hardly any uh time away from the front.

[00:29:12]And I'm just reminded that the last time uh this kind of you know internal division over how to fight the war uh basically exploded was when at that time Zalinsky removed his commander-in-chief uh Zeluji who was so popular and it all revolved around would there should there be a mass mobilization of formal conscription and call up and uh I just think that that's really interesting that that was the big issue Then that led and now he's the ambassador in in the UK, but one of those, you know, definitely led to the um to the firing of this time the defense minister, not the commander-in-chief. Uh when I say firing, I guess firing, re reallocating, re repositioning him, says Zilinski. He wants to give him another job in the um in the government. So, we'll see. Just very briefly before we get to our recommendations, uh do you think this internal you know bruhaha is going to affect the way allies look at Zalinski Ukraine and the and the war effort?

[00:30:19]>> Not in any serious way. I do think there will be some calls from the leaders of Europe to uh I think the younger group has a lot of supporters throughout Europe. the many of the people connected with the drone uh and and new technology warfare are helping Europeans in building up their systems. I think they have strong support and I think the Europeans who matter the most here are going to weigh in and that's why I think Zilinsky will find a way to, you know, put a band-aid on this wound that he inflicted on himself. Let's face it, he probably should have found a way to force them to work together. Uh he couldn't do that. um and and he's going to have to fix it. But I don't think it will fundamentally change the views of the Europeans that this war is existential for them because I think that's what existential means. But I do think it will cause them to to push very hard on Zinsky to do something to uh prevent this from becoming a wider uh rift in the country.

[00:31:17]>> Yeah. Okay. So, in a moment, our recommendations. Jamie, you go first.

[00:31:22]>> Great. Well, just um I tend to get my news from a variety of sources, but the two main sources I think people probably know are the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal because they have the most uh incredible reporters who do the job of uncovering things, finding things out, and putting them forward in a factual analytical way that I learn from, >> i.e. journalism.

[00:31:44]>> Journalism. Exactly.

[00:31:46]>> Good oldfashioned journalism. People often ask me what it's like government decision- making is like and how decisions are made and and there's a story in the Wall Street Journal that I think is a great example of what it's really like to be in government. Um it's a story called the CIA operative who spied on the UAE, the United Arab Emirates and played a role in its AI win. And this is a story that affects all of us in a way because it's about the decision of whether to make the UAE uh get availability of American specialized chips for uh artificial intelligence and there were fears uh inside the government and this story talks about it so I'm not saying anything new that there was too much of a connection between a big company in uh the UAE and China [snorts] and the United States couldn't figure out what to do couldn't decide how to do it and had a big struggle internally and then decided to send off one of their CIA operatives to try to uh convince the United Arab Emirates to change their ways so that these chips could move forward. And they did. Um, but it's a story uh in the Wall Street Journal. It's a long story. It's a unique story. It's what they call an exclusive in the business that I find very accurate as to how government really works. You can like the outcome or not like the outcome, but it talks about individuals and the role they play and how decisions are made and what ended up happening on a subject that will be important to all of us. Which role which way the UAE goes if it really is going to end up in China's pocket that's not going to be good for anybody or did it change its ways and and become an ally of the United States on this important subject of artificial intelligence. So for those interested in this subject, it's obviously a spy story. So, it's always interesting. Uh, but it's also about wealth and the UAE's wealth and how government decisions can be made because they're always hard decisions and this was a hard decision and this story really puts it uh out there in a in a very accurate way.

[00:33:47]>> Well, this week mine is also from the Wall Street Journal. I will go and read that one actually because I I didn't.

[00:33:54]Um, so this actually is about the Israeli government and it's trying to shore up its very very big problem in the United States, which is falling support. Um, and it's doing it with the help, according to the Wall Street Journal of Influencers, Trump insiders, and guess what? Millions of dollars of AIdriven tech. So there's a slight there's a slight connection between our two. But so here's the thing. uh certain is Israeli officials, certain parts of the government apparently are basically paying influencers and those with as much might as possible inside the United States to change this increasingly bad view of Israel that Americans are having. Some 60% of American adults now have an unfavorable view of Israel according to the pup poll which we've cited and this one was in March and it's driven by its handling of Gaza. So in contrast, or rather in counterpoint, Israel is basically trying to funnel millions, tens of millions of dollars into what the Wall Street Journal describes as a somewhat quicksotic effort to beat back that tide. Uh directly paying conservative media and other such thing. And even this week, and I remember being quite, you know, I don't know why I keep quoting JD Vance, who by the way, he and his wife had their fourth child. Congratulations.

[00:35:13]He included he accused Israel's influence campaign of trying to undermine US negotiations to end the Iran conflict. Uh basically using these words, some Israelis are manipulating and trying to change American public opinion to keep the war going indefinitely. This is what he told the great uh is he a MAGA podcaster? I don't know, but the very popular Joe Rogan.

[00:35:35]And guess what? Apparently, a contract worth more than $45 million uh that the Israeli government recently signed was with Brad Pascal, who you know is a longtime ally of President Trump. So, it's all, you know, it's all I don't know roundabouts and roller coasters and wheels and why don't they just get their policies right? If everybody would just get their policies a little bit more right, they wouldn't have to go spending all this money to convince >> trying to change everybody's mind. Yes.

[00:36:09]>> Well, look, those are our recommendations. Could I just end with an observation again that I read, but it made me sort of chuckle inside. As we know, the World Cup was absolutely amazing. It it it it electrified the Americans uh ordinary people who saw all these fans and and different teams coming from all over the world. the the the teams and the fans likewise were really energized by the welcome they got in the United States. But there's a uh something that's been noticed about the crashing silence by the very far right parties here in Europe that none of them have addressed the fact that their national teams owed a lot to let's say their immigrant backgrounds. that the national teams were made up of people of color, people who've come from all over the world to their nations and have really, as always, really, you know, paid their dues and more so and of course they always shine when we see every single day, every single night, what they do for their country and for the world and for sport. Um, but because it reopens this question of national identity, the far right just have not wanted to go there. So, I thought I'd just end on that and say congratulations to all those wonderful immigrants. Guys, thank you all for listening. Don't forget you can you can listen for free on Global Player, but you can also watch by subscribing to our YouTube channel.

[00:37:32]You just go searching Cristiano Presents the XFile, subscribe, and then you can actually watch everything we do as well as listen to it. And then our next episode, as you know, will be our Q&A episode that'll drop on Thursday. And you know how to get us by email and by social media. That's all we have time for. Bye-bye from France.

[00:37:52]>> Goodbye again from New York.

[00:38:00]This has been a global production.