Will Robert F Kennedy Jr cause trouble for Joe Biden?
2023-06-23 00:30:05
Every Friday, Guardian columnist and former Washington correspondent, Jonathan Freedland, invites experts to help analyse the latest in American politics. From politicians to journalists covering the White House and beyond, Jonathan and his guests give listeners behind the scenes access to how the American political machine works.
This is The Guardian.
This week, Democrats hoping Joe Biden will secure re-election realize they face a threat from within a presidential candidate descended from a dynasty of Democrat titans.
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is holding steady at around 20 percent support amongst Democrat voters in the latest primary polls.
Already, Robert F. Kennedy Jr...'s bid for the presidency has proven to be unlike anything we've seen in the ranks of the Democrats. Espousing conspiracy theories about everything from 5G masks to vaccines. Some have said RFK is really a fringe candidate of the right, but with Joe Biden's approval rating hitting an all-time low and new numbers showing, RFK Jr.
Polling at 20 percent among Democrats, effectively making him Biden's main internal challenger. How much should the president worry about the risk a Maverick Kennedy poses to his chances of winning re-election? I'm Jonathan Friedland, columnist at The Guardian, and this is Politics Weekly America.
I literally wrote a book about the art and importance of debate. And yet I am telling you tonight that I am tired of the incessant debate-me-bro mantra from conspiracy nuts on social media.
Mehdi Hassan is a British-American broadcaster and best-selling author of Win Every Argument. He hosts the Mehdi Hassan show on Peacock and MSNBC. He's also, I should say, an old friend of mine.
He's a great debate-about-debates following a public war of words between an eminent vaccine scientist and RFK Jr.
Because it is never a good idea for an award-winning, world-renowned, peer-reviewed vaccine scientist to debate an unhinged crank. What's the expression? Never wrestle with a pig? You both get dirty and the pig gets 40,000 new followers on Twitter.
MEHDI, Very good to have you on the podcast. It's one of those things where the name is famous, even if the man himself is not, because people have certainly heard the name. Robert F. Kennedy. They may be thinking, though, of his father, rather than the man we're talking about. Just tell us a bit about who is Robert F.
Kennedy Jr.
And where exactly has he come?
From Well, it's interesting to talk about the Kennedy name in America, because I think people across the world, places like the UK. We talk of kind of royal families and political dynasties. And the U.S. Despite being this democracy that was founded to oppose monarchy and hereditary rule, loves a good political dynasty, loves hereditary politicians. So you have the Bushes, the Kennedys, the Romneys, the Clintons, and I'm sure Donald Trump would love to have one. God help us all. And obviously, Kennedy is at the top of that pile, and there have always been Kennedys in politics.
His sister was a politician, his father was attorney general, ran for president, assassinated. And for many years, people suggested that he should get into politics and he was looking around for a gig. But then he became very, very famous for being a conspiracy nut, pushing anti-vaccine information as long ago as 2019, well before the pandemic. His own sister, nephew and niece wrote a joint piece in Politico magazine, saying We love our uncle, we love our brother. But he's on all of this.
He's doing a lot of damage. So it's funny that people say, well, the Kennedy name. well. Most of the Kennedys in the family have disowned him politically.
Vaccines and anti-vax sentiment is obviously at the heart of all this. Your NBC colleague Brandi Zadrosny wrote recently that Kennedy has his vocal supporters, anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theorists, internet contrarians, billionaire tech Bros, camelot nostalgists and right-wing provocateurs who seem to be pumping Kennedy as a spoiler candidate. Specifically on anti-vax as an issue. Did it give him a big following among that movement, or did it mean, because it is a fringe view, it consigned him to the margins?
I mean, both, Johnny. This is a problem in the social media age, it can be both at the same time. It both made him famous in certain fringe circles, in certain right-wing circles, in certain MAGA circles, in certain anti-vax circles, and he was very popular.
And you want to talk about being an anti-vax figure? When the Center for Countering Digital Hate came up with their top dozen misinformation actors during the pandemic, I mean, RFK Jr. was on that list. He was one of 12 people producing, I believe, two thirds of misinformation online. So him and his organization have done a lot, as I say, even pre-pandemic, with the autism stuff, which did make him, to come back to your point, taboo in many circles.
And it's not just vaccines, the stuff he says about 5G, you know, being chipped to be surveilled, Bill Gates trying to control the world. Just this week, he went on a podcast with Jordan Peterson that YouTube had to take down. Where one of the crazy claims he made was that the water is making kids transgender. He is really, really out there. Some of the stuff he says about Ukraine, even if we move away from the vaccine stuff, some of the stuff he says about Ukraine could have come straight from the Kremlin.
He has chosen this lane where he is appealing to anti-establishment. Quote unquote folks on far left and far right. Which is why you have people like Roger Stone and Steve Bannon saying, maybe he could be part of the Trump movement, maybe he could be part of the MAGA movement. And, you know, my friend Molly Jong-Fast from Vanity Fair made the point. Why do we think it is that a bunch of right wing billionaires are pushing RFK juniors candidacy? Why do we think that is? Is it because they care about Medicare for all?
I suspect not.
Yeah, I mean the position on vaccines and that kind of conspiracy theories, they've been there. As you say, those positions have been around a while, and it was linked with, you know, the MMR vaccines and autism. That was one of the claims, as you say, utterly discredited. Is it fair to say that these positions, while always there, moved from the wild wild fringes to something closer to? Not quite mainstream, but moving inwards with the COvid-19 pandemic? And that suddenly mainstreamed some of these opinions, relatively speaking. And was that, in some ways, a sort of turning point for RFK Junior himself? That he's been able to ride this wave of distrust? Which went from being really a very kind of minority, and now it's got a lot more attention.
Yeah, because what happens in the pandemic is on the one hand. You have the early days of the pandemic. Where social media companies and media organisers are cracking down on quote-unquote, misinformation, disinformation and saying we're not going to allow this stuff. And RFK Junior is one of these people who gets, I think, banned from Instagram, though not Facebook, if memory serves me correctly, and yet all these people are banned. Johnny, As you've seen, they're all back now. Thanks to Elon Musk, thanks to a post-pandemic kind of discourse, which says, Oh, we went too far. And Mark Zuckerberg recently did an interview saying, Well, a lot of the things we were kind of blocking online turned out to be true. I don't actually agree with that, but that is now the prevailing rewriting of history, that too much stuff was censored. And that we should have had more people questioning masks and vaccines as thousands of people were dying every day from COvid-19. So there's been a kind of rewriting of history.
And your point about mainstreaming? You have to put that in the bucket with the Republican Party. Because if you look at the polling, the shift in anti-Vax sentiment has come almost exclusively on the right.
It used to just be a right-wing thing, used to be something that lefties, liberals, people of all politics and none would indulge in, right. And Marianne Williamson? When she ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. She was kind of condemned for her kind of anti-vax views. And she had to come out and say, I'm not an anti-vaxxer. But what we're seeing in the last year or two is on the right. Where you've got growing numbers of Republican parents saying not just no to Covid vaccines, they're saying no. We don't think that children should have to be immunized before they start school, the kind of mandatory vaccination schedules, get rid of that. To understand American politics, to understand anything in American public life right now, Johnny, you have to understand everything is partisan.
Culture wars are everywhere, and therefore vaccines are no longer about what's the best science, what's the best health option for you and your family. It's simply, Are you a Republican or are you a Democrat? If you're a Republican, then you're going to be skeptical of this stuff because you're being lied to.
So, in that sense, RFK Jr. has kind of ridden that wave. Which is so bizarre. Because he claims to be on the left and is running in the Democratic presidential nomination, not in the Republican one.
Yeah, I mean, the politics of this are quite hard to read. Because on the one hand, he has the support, as you've mentioned, of the likes of Roger Stone, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones has spoken admiringly of him. And yet, on the other hand, you know, you have these not obviously right wing figures like the former Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey or the actress Alicia Silverstone supporting him. Very puzzling. But then there comes this revelation that his group, according to Media Matters, the media monitoring group that his group, Children's Health Defense so-called, was active on the far right social media platform GAB in 2021. Apparently courting the support of white supremacists, QAnon, conspiracy theorists and even others with openly neo-Nazi views.
RFK Jr. himself has hosted on his podcast multiple wackadoodle and fringe right figures. He's called Joseph Ladapo, who is Ron DESantis, surgeon general in Florida, who has been accused of doctoring reports on the effects of the Covid vaccine. To make it look bad, he calls him a friend, he's had him on the show.
So yeah, the whole thing I find absurd. But there are some people on the left who are buying this stuff and the reason they're buying this stuff. John Which comes back to what we talked about earlier is there's a lot of dissatisfaction with Biden. There's a lot of dissatisfaction with the Democratic Party. And RFK Jr. in between.
Saying all the crazy stuff is also saying stuff people want to hear about. We need to take on corporations, we need to take on big pharma, we need to rein back a militaristic foreign policy. We need to be spending more at home.
Like, that stuff resonates with lefty folks. Our bombs, our drones, our armies are incapable of stopping the gun violence on our streets and schools, or domestic violence in our homes. I see the same link here as my father and Martin Luther King saw about the Vietnam War.
On the point about him running as a Democrat in a way, one thinks that that must be just obvious because he's a Kennedy. Or is there something more to it than that?
I think it's obvious because he's a Kennedy. But also, you know, Joe Biden is not facing a serious mainstream primary challenge. So he's facing RFK Jr. and Marianne Williamson, two fringe figures who are polling better than people thought, but he's not facing an actual threat.
Most sitting presidents don't, and those, by the way, those sitting presidents who do face primary challenges, serious ones, tend to lose. George Bush Jr. Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford. So, you know, that's something that people forget about when they say, well, why isn't there a primary? Well, you know, it's a pretty self-serving point from the party in.
Power. I can see why the Democrats are unhappy about this. Even the threat from RFK. What I meant was, why doesn't RFK run on the Republican side, since that would seem to be his natural home? It's a great question.
He should, given the crowded field, he'd probably do pretty well, he'd probably be polling higher than Nikki Haley and Tim Scott and others. Again, to explain to a global audience, a British audience. I cannot overstate how beloved he is among far right circles right now. How many right wingers come to his defense.
He's on Fox all the time, I think he announced his candidacy, or did one of his first post announcement candidacies on Tucker Carlson's Fox Show when it existed. They love him on Fox. So yeah, he has great name recognition on the right. And by the way, I should also point out the Qanon crazies on the right, they're obsessed with the Kennedys.
Remember, they think that John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and was going to come back with his dad last year in Dallas? So there's even a greater obsession with the Kennedy name these days on the right than on.
The left? Let's just talk for a few minutes about his media strategy. He was been making some headlines this week because of an appearance on the Joe Rogan podcast, which is a has a huge audience. In fact, we can hear a little bit of that right now.
But what do you think happens when you get into office? Like, if you're talking about your uncle who's assassinated and you believe the intelligence agencies were part of that, what happens to you? Well, I've got to be careful and I'm aware of that, and I'm not, you know, I. I'm aware of the of that danger. And you know, I don't live in fear of it at all. But I'm not stupid about it and I take.
Precaution. So there's Kennedy on Joe Rogan. He's also said that he particularly likes podcasts as a form of communication because they, his words, allow him to outrun the censorship juggernaut. And you just think about how often these rebel or Maverick candidacies find a new media strategy with Donald Trump. It was social media, it was Twitter.
But do you think that RFK Jr. has thought this through and is thinking by building out an audience via these podcasts? He's also been with Jordan Peterson. That he actually has got enough here that gets him out of the fringe and sort of in front of tens of millions of.
Oh, very much so. And Joe Rogan puts you in that place. And I think, again, it comes back to what is his end goal. I don't honestly know, I think he knows he's not going to be president.
He's not going to be the president of Canada. So is this just another grift? We know that the anti-vaxxers have made a lot of money out of the pandemic. And I think that he sees this as an opportunity to get huge name recognition. The thing about people like Robert F.
Kennedy Jr. Now in the social media ages, he could lose badly tomorrow in the Democratic race, but he's not going away now. Johnny, Once you've got that name recognition, once you've got that circle of followers, especially on the cultish right, you're set for life. And I think we see that a lot with people on the right right now. In social media, a lot of it is all just about making lots of noise, getting lots of attention and then monetizing it.
And I suspect that if it's not at the front of his campaign, it's certainly in the back of his mind. As that's going to be the soft landing. Once this is all done and dusted, you're not going to get rid of it. Look at Tulsi Gabbard, just take her as an example, she ran for president with a ridiculous race.
She was never going to win, and yet she's translated that into a career on Fox. Now she's basically attacked the Democrats, she's embraced the right. She's guest hosted Tucker Carlson Show.
I can see that RFA, you know, because of the genetic condition he has with his throat. Maybe he's going to be a broadcaster, but he's going to have a great career on the right post this election campaign. And, you know, he's back on social media. A lot of social media companies say, well, we can't block a presidential candidate. So it's helping him in multiple ways.
I want to go back to where we started. At the top of the show. We heard a clip of you outlining this war of words between Kennedy and the vaccine scientist, Dr. Peter Hotez, about the RFK's anti-vax position. You've had, Dr.
Hotez As a guest on your show, you talked about him being stalked by anti-vaxxers.
The debate with RFK Jr. I've discussed this issue with him many times, by phone and by email. And the problem is, you know, he just keeps on moving the goalposts.
And in that conversation, you cautioned Dr. Hotez against engaging in a public debate with RFK or with the anti-vaxxers. I'm interested to hear why you say that, and also whether that would be your same advice to Joe Biden. Whether he should not get into a debate on any kind of platform with RFK. Jr.
In terms of Hotez and RFK, Jr. And the broader point about debating anti-vaxxers, No, I am against it, I'm all for debate. I love a good argument, but I don't believe in bad faith debates with conspiracy theories. I don't believe in debating whether up is down, black is white, hot is cold.
I think that's a waste of everyone's time. And it only emboldens, energizes, elevates. The conspiracy theorist, the bad faith artist, the bullshit artist, the disinformation peddler. And people are going to debate, debate. What are you afraid of? Well, science is about debate, you do it in peer reviewed journals.
You do it between people who actually have qualifications, are able to talk about. The idea that Joe Rogan, who himself has pushed anti-vax misinformation, was going to neutrally moderate. A debate between an environmental lawyer, which is what RFK Jr. is, and a world renowned vaccine researcher, which is what Dr. Peto does? No, there's no value in that at all. They win just by you agreeing to take part in a quote unquote debate with them.
We're two equal sides, there aren't two equal sides on vaccines. So no, I don't think anyone should indulge the idea that there are, um, and but then on your point about Biden, Look, I don't think people should debate anti-vaxxers. I don't have anti-vaxxers on my show.
I wouldn't interview RFK Jr.
To take him apart. But the difference is Joe Biden's running in a Democratic presidential primary. It is a difference when you're running in a primary field with certain rules. Look, what's happening on the Republican side, they're all arguing about the rules there, you know? To go on the debate stage on the Republican side. You have to take an oath that you will support the nominee, regardless of whether they are a convicted criminal. By that point.
So these figures, Medi. Let's put the anti-Vax issue to one side. And the business of him polling at up to 20 in, you know, a respectable poll for CNN. Lots of Democrats I speak to say, Yeah, that's just not anything about RFK. That's a kind of, uh, anti-Biden vote. And what it's expressing is a fear about, particularly Biden's age. And it's a way of Democrats saying, we're worried about going into an election with a candidate, an incumbent president, who is over 80..
Is that your read, too, of this surprisingly large number for for RFK, and even that 8 we can chuck in for Marianne Williams?
Yeah, I think it's twofold. I think definitely age is a factor. Any Democrat who tries to tell you that age isn't a factor is nonsensical. Whether it should or shouldn't be a factor is a different argument, but it is a factor even amongst Democrats. He will be the oldest president ever.
Um, he would be what? 86 by the end of a second term? uh, were he to be reelected? Um, and I think, uh, that's a factor. And clearly, uh, when you, you know, when you see these polling numbers. For Marianne Williams and RFK Jr. That is a form of expressing dissatisfaction for a sitting president.
People will don't want the president to win, I would say. Joe Biden often uses this line that, you know, don't measure me against the almighty, compare me against the other guy. And the other guy looks likely to be Donald Trump. Again. Donald Trump isn't exactly a young guy himself.
I think he's only three years younger than Biden, he's in his late seventies. In terms of mental competence, I don't think there's ever been a president, uh, who's had less mental competence than Donald Trump. So in that sense, the age factor kind of goes away if it's Biden versus Trump, I think.
If it's Biden versus Desantis, I think the age factor will be a much bigger issue. I think that's Biden's control. Biden should be messaging much better, he should be telling a much better story at saying and doing much more. Democrats, as ever, uh, are weak on the messaging front.
And if you look at, for example, polling out, um, from the way to win think tank, they found a poll in May, Johnny, staggering numbers. Only 22 of Latino voters and only 33 of Black voters were aware of. Quote Any specific thing Joe Biden has done to improve their lives? Which is a phenomenally shocking number.
Has actually done a lot of good things he did do. The American Rescue Plan, which put a lot of money into the American economy, helped growth, brought unemployment to over 50 year low. Uh, you know, cut child poverty, at least in the first year and a half, you know? He did do the bipartisan infrastructure, did do a bipartisan gun control Act, did do the Science and Chips Act, you know, did do the Inflation Reduction Act. Record amount of investment in climate change and bringing down drug prices, all this stuff. But when you talk to ordinary Americans, I talked to friends and family members, I have no clue. You know, politics is about perception.
It's not just about numbers, stats, facts and figures. So the Democrats and Biden really have to work hard there. And why RFK Jr. is able to pick up support is because a lot of people in the progressive left are disappointed. That Biden started off strongly. Uh, but hasn't done enough on immigration reform, on police reform, on voting rights. He hasn't delivered in the way that they wanted him to.
So Kennedy has some powerful initials RFK, uh, but Biden has, uh, some painful initials, which is Abb, anyone but Biden. And he's that is helping RFK at the moment, that he is the sort of parking place for that. So some of that skepticism that there is around Biden, and he said he needs to deal with it. I just wonder if what that adds up to then is what you're in effect calling for is that the White House needs to do a big communications effort. Partly about their own positive messages you've sketched out, but also to tell people to tell Democrats. Look, RFK is not a safe place for you to put your dissenting sentiment. You can't park your worry about Biden in the RFK lane, because if you do, you're backing an anti-vaxxer with reviews that are more akin to the Trump.
Uh, right, first of all, do you think they should go now aggressive against RFK because he's polling 20 and D? And different question from whether you think they should. Do you think they will?
I don't think they should, I don't think they will, I think the. I think the way he defeats RFK is not by going off to RFK, other people can do that. Um, I think the way he does that is by promoting himself.
One of the big moments where he got polling bump was after his state of the Union. Where he's, uh, heckling, where he's being heckled by Republicans. And Biden's calling them out and making them look like fools on social security, uh, that is when Biden does well, when Biden calls out the Republicans as semi-fascist, call that MAGA as semi-fascist, even though Democrats ran a mile in the media. You know, clutched pearls. That is when he's at his best, when he's more aggressive, when he's confronting Republicans head on, when he's selling himself, even when he's using humor. Uh, Biden had a good line recently about Rupert Murdoch, making him look like a young kid. I think that, you know, you've got to engage with the age issue, you've got to engage with what have you done for us, Joe? And you've got to win both those arguments.
Don't you think he needs surrogates, not him, but surrogates, to go negative on RFK and tell people about his views on anti-vaxxers and so on?
I'll be honest, I think he needs surrogates to go negative, not just on RFK, but on Trump and on the Republicans. I mean, we haven't talked about the fact, Jonny. The polls show, some polls show Trump beating Biden, which when you think about it, is ludicrous. The man is twice indicted, twice impeached, refused to leave office, and yet some polls show him neck and neck with Biden.
Some show him beating Biden now. That is the real problem, the real problem. I was in the UK on a book tour a few months ago. As you know, you know, people were saying to me, Well, it's not going to be Trump, it's going to be Desantis.
I know people around the world are shocked by this. But no, Donald Trump is the runaway favorite to be the Republican presidential candidate, even if he's on trial come November 2024. And, by the way, under American law, he can run from a prison cell, too. This is not the UK. As Eugene Debs famously did a hundred years ago. Presidential candidates can run from prison.
So I actually think the bigger issue for Biden is going negative on Trump and making sure that he actually pushes himself forward. You know, they put out a diktat, Jonny, the DNC and the Biden administration. The Democrats shouldn't be talking about any of Trump's legal troubles. Leave it to the DOJ. That's madness. Nature abhors a vacuum.
That should be going all out, pointing out that the Republicans right now are being led by a guy accused of multiple serious crimes in multiple jurisdictions.
RFK Jr. is obviously a headache for Joe Biden, and there is no shortage of those just this week. On Tuesday, Joe Biden's surviving son, Hunter Biden, agreed with the Justice Department to plead guilty to two tax charges and accept terms. That means he can avoid getting prosecuted on a separate gun charge. And even that involved some of the past admitted history of drug use and so on. All of this being in the news is not easy for Joe Biden.
And on top of that, another political headache, in a way coming from his own side, and that is the emergence of this new, supposedly moderate centrist.
Body or party called No labels threatening to run in the presidential contest of 2024 as an alternative to both Democrats and Republicans. And talk of their candidate being the supposed moderate, self-styled moderate. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia, with him as the potential, as talk of him as the potential presidential candidate for this, no labels. All of it adds up Mehdi to another headache.
In a very, very close race between two candidates, a third candidate can be a quote unquote spoiler can take away votes from one side or the other and swing a race. And I would remind your listeners that of the seven states in 2020 that were won by less than three percentage points, Joe Biden won six of them. Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada. all swing states all won by Joe Biden by less than three percentage points. In fact, he won Wisconsin by less than 21,000 votes out of over 3 million cast. Super, super tight.
Wait for it. Having said all that, I do want to make one point. I was someone who was very down on Biden. In 2020, I supported Bernie Sanders. I said, Joe Biden is not going to win.
Biden proved me wrong, he won, he won big by 7 million votes overall, right? He's impressed me in some ways, he's disappointed me in many others.
But what I would say is that it's madness to write him off at this point, you know? Barack Obama in 2010 had Hillary Clinton, who hadn't even declared she didn't run against him, but there was talk of her primering him. She was at what 35 40 of the polls. People forget that Ronald Reagan in 1982, a majority of Americans said Reagan should not run again.
He's too old, he hasn't done enough. Reagan did run again and won in a landslide 49 out of 50 states. So I do think this idea that we just say, well, Biden's in trouble, well, Biden should go.
I just think, a it's too soon, and B, Biden's proved in the past that he can win and he can win big.
Do you have advice for him on how he can deal with this no labels thing? Because I'm with you on how significant even just a few thousand votes could be. Remember, Donald Trump famously was looking for just 11,000 votes in Georgia? So even if these parties get 1 or less, they can make all the difference. What, again? White House team team Biden sitting around? What's the what's the tactic they should be deploying?
I think Joe Manchin has done what he stands for, but he claims to be friends with Joe Biden. And I think Biden's going to go all out. Whatever. It's got to be carrot stick, whatever it is. To get Manchin to make sure he does not run for president, because if he does, that will be bad for Joe Biden. No doubt about it. Which is why Manchin, who's an egomaniac, keeps dangling it out. So whatever you know, give him a cabinet job, give him whatever he wants. In that sense, there's going to have to be some horse trading, because no. Unfortunately, Joe Manchin does have power, just as he had power in the last.
Election and he's got power now, so it is a problem. But I think the big issue still is Johnny that Biden needs to be selling himself. He doesn't need to worry about no labels, he doesn't need to worry about a tight race if he's able to persuade people that. Hey, look at me, look at what I've achieved, look at what I've done.
Don't believe all the crap you're hearing.
MEHDI We we always like to ask our guests on the podcast a what else? question something completely different. This time, it's back to the question of Donald Trump and the indictment against him. Some surprised that the judge in the case, Trump appointed judge Eileen Cannon has set. What many observers think is an aggressive schedule for advancing the case, suggesting that the tentative trial date could be as soon as August this year. There have been talk that maybe it wouldn't happen until after the election, which would obviously help Donald Trump. What's your read?
I'll be honest, I was surprised by that. I'd like to kind of read into it more and see what twists and turns of what hidden factors are. If it was August, that would be a shock. There is reporting that that date is likely to change. I mean, look, I'm not going to trust that Eileen Cannon is a neutral arbiter of this case until I see much more.
So far, she's shown herself to be a Trump shell, and this is not just me saying that as a critic. She was literally overridden by the Higher Court, a conservative higher court, twice last year. When she first started getting involved in this documents case, she is a Trump appointee, she's very young.
She has very limited criminal trial experience, she's a federalist society member. That conservative right wing group, you know, I do think it is, you know, people on the right say it's Banana Republic for America to try a former leader. Actually, most countries try former leaders. What's really Banana Republic about America right now is that a former president can go on trial and have a judge he appointed be the person who adjudicates. A person. You could then appoint and promote if he were to return to the presidency.
I mean, it's amazing that she doesn't have to recuse herself. I find that shocking.
Mehdi Hassan, host of the Mehdi Hassan Show on MSNBC. And still with many friends and admirers on this side of the Atlantic. Thanks so much for speaking with me for Politics Weekly America.
Thanks, Jonny.
And that's all from me for this week. Before I go, can I suggest you listen to this week's episode of our sister podcast, Politics Weekly UK? Always right on the money with what's going on in Westminster and beyond. But for now, it's goodbye. The producer is Jack McKay and the executive producer is Maz Ebtehaj.
I'm Jonathan Friedland, thanks as always for listening.
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