First up, here's Freddie Gray.

Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a 40-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president.

Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander-in-chief.

Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing.

Dr Abdullah Rahman Mohammed El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favourite to win his Senate race in Michigan in November, even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathiser.

El-Sayed resents the Next Obama label, which has been attached to him ever since 2017 when, as a smooth-talking and charismatic 32-year-old, he made an audacious but unsuccessful bid to be Michigan's governor.

I get compared to Obama because my name is funny and I'm brown, he has said.

First up, here's Freddy Gray.

Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a forty-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president.

Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander in chief.

Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing.

Dr. Abdullah Rahman Muhammad El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favorite to win his Senate race in Michigan in November, even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathizer.

El-Sayed resents the next Obama label, which has been attached to him ever since two thousand and seventeen when, as a smooth-talking and charismatic thirty-two-year-old, he made an audacious but unsuccessful bid to be Michigan's governor.

"I get compared to Obama because my name is funny and I'm brown," he has said.

Yes.

And the second thing to say about him is that he's an epidemiologist.

He's got a doctorate in public health from Oxford where he also captained the lacrosse team.

And he is leading currently, according to most polls, narrowly leading in Michigan, which is becoming maybe there's a few key Senate battleground states in the upcoming midterms, which are not that far away now, just over a month away.

Michigan may be the most important one because it is currently Democrat.

And if the Republicans win it, then the Democrats have to win five seats in order to regain a majority in the Senate.

So Michigan's very, very important.

It is really Marxist.

Yes.

And the second thing to say about him is that he's an epidemiologist.

He's got a doctorate in public health from Oxford where he also captained the lacrosse team.

And he is leading currently, according to most polls, narrowly leading in Michigan, which is becoming maybe there's a few key Senate battleground states in the upcoming midterms, which are not that far away now, just over a month away.

Michigan may be the most important one because it is currently Democrat.

And if the Republicans win it, then the Democrats have to win five seats in order to regain a majority in the Senate.

So Michigan's very, very important.

It is really Marxist.

Yeah.

But I'm getting far away from the question, which is what does Trump want out of this? Uh, I think the Hu- Houthis is gonna be the thing of the day.

You know, some sort of joint Western show of strength in support of Saudi Arabia.

Trump will try and sort of turn that into, um, the Western tide, you know, turning his way on Iran.

Whether that will be successful is, uh, a very difficult question to answer.

Yeah, I think with, well, as far as Britain's concerned, you know, Burnham's being squeezed in for half an hour before the Japanese prime minister.

They're not gonna get across a lot.

[upbeat music]

That's the big topic across Europe right now, isn't it?

It is right now, and it has been for the last decade or so.

Um, and in America too.

In fact, in developed countries all over the world.

Uh, immigration is the issue of our time.

And Meloni, of course, was elected, uh, came to power because, uh, she talked a lot about clamping down on immigration.

She did it in a language that was very effective, and she has had some success.

Is it a kind of race to go further to the right, pushing back against migration and people's perceived fears? Do, do you think the right is splintering across Europe now?

My favourite Rod article is the following column, which is headlined...

of Northern Madness.

And for listeners who might not remember, Raoul Moat was a man in the North who went mad and started killing people.

And I remember asking Rod to do a column on it.

And he said he wasn't sure and prevaricated a bit.

And then a couple of hours later filed this absolutely hilarious and brilliant column.

And here it is.

It is said

Mm

... with, with the greatest of ease.

I mean, that's kind of a, a kind of flow state that you try to get to as a writer, but often, you know, i- it's very difficult and you kind of, you get stuck and you go over things and you hone them.

But with Rod, it had this kind of, not quite stream of consciousness, but you got the impression he was just able to just kind of produce it very quickly and in a very kind of polished, finished state.

But what's great about reading him is it has that kind of flow, that spontaneity that you don't get with all columnists.

And I think one of the way, one of the reasons he was able to do that, I mean, Fraser talks about having the, the joy of discussing a column with Rod, introducing him to the idea for the first time, you know, on deadline day, and then 90 minutes later, this perfect column would kind of emerge from the fax machine or whatever.

[laughs]

And, you know, he never set it up.

Mm

... because it's very important in the midterms for the Democratic Party that they win Michigan, this senate seat in Michigan.

And Abdul El-Sayed is, uh, he has, as I say in the piece, impeccable 21st century internationalist progressive credentials.

He was a blue at Oxford and lacrosse, captain of the clo- lacrosse team at Oxford.

He went to a public university, but he came from quite an affluent suburb of Detroit.

He's a gym buff.

Uh, he's got a beard, and he walks out on stage to Tupac Shakur's, uh, Changes rap, which I'm sure Spectator listeners will be very familiar with.

Hmm.

So that is why everyone is doing everything they can to try and get those who are currently in Parliament to realise the consequences of not taking this seriously.

I think it's a sort of fitting end to the Stalmer premiership.

I mean, it's sort of classically bad policy, classically badly announced.

It's not enough, but we also don't have the money.

You know, that's the impression everybody gets.

We can't afford to do this.

And even if we could afford to do it, it's not enough.

Predictions for this party?

So that is why everyone is doing everything they can to try and get those who are currently in Parliament to realise the consequences of not taking this seriously.

I think it's a sort of fitting end to the storm of premiership.

I mean, it's sort of classically bad.

policy classically badly announced.

It's not enough, but we also don't have the money.

You know, that's the impression everybody gets.

We can't afford to do this.

Predictions for this party.

Mm

... before my time.

And I think before then too, it was, it was a kind of, it was a, a popular summer party.

I remember when I was little, my father, who occasionally worked for The Spectator, uh, coming back and saying to me, "There was an awful lot of cocktail eyes at the party tonight." And I've learned what cocktail eyes means, which means it's when someone's looking around for someone more important than you to talk to.

And I think there's still occasionally-

Mm

... who died three years ago, our low-life columnist.

Uh, and he used to love coming.

Mm

... before my time.

And I think before then too, it was, it was a kind of, it was a, a popular summer party.

I remember when I was little, my father, who occasionally worked for The Spectator, uh, coming back and saying to me, "There was an awful lot of cocktail eyes at the party tonight." And I've learnt what cocktail eyes means, which means it's when someone's looking around for someone more important than you to talk to.

And I think there's still occasionally-

Mm

... who died three years ago, our low-life columnist And he used to love coming.

He'd always come early to the party, and he'd text me and he'd say, "I'm in the Two Chairmen.

Up first, Freddy Gray.

When it comes to foreign policy, Donald Trump is neither hawk nor dove.

He's a dealmaker who plays differing sides off each other.

In so doing, he ends up disappointing warmongers and peaceniks in equal measure.

On the 28th of February, when he launched Operation Epic Fury, Trump's more dovish supporters felt betrayed.

The president who had campaigned against regime change wars began a new conflict by channeling George W. Bush.

To the great proud people of Iran, I say tonight that the hour of your freedom has at hand, he said.

made up from Tehran's frozen money and aid contributions from Gulf states.

Freddy, do you think that AI is changing the way that people think about religion?

I think so, yes.

Uh, I think there's, uh, because w- they're really talking about, you know, Silicon Valley talks a lot about creating God.

Wall Street now talks about what happens when people create God.

So obviously, that has religious implications.

But there was an interesting study recently which said that people who believe in God are more inclined to feel optimistic about AI, and I would've thought it's the opposite because I think I believe in God, and I feel very, very negative and gloomy about AI.

I think it's terribleTo Damian's point, I think the, uh, the, what was really interesting in the encyclical was that the Pope talked about post-humanism and transhumanism, um, in quite a critical way, and said, you know, "This can never be the human experience.

We, for generations, we haven't really had to address about what it is to be human.

Do you think that Trump is essentially to blame for losing his temper in the middle of the night and, uh, tweeting out really quite vituperative messages about the pope? Or do you think that the pope's messages about the Iran war were a little bit confusing about, you know, what constituted a just war?

Uh, I think you could maybe say Pope Leo's statements were a little bit confusing, but I think the blame largely lies with Trump because this is what Trump does.

He blows things up, and he causes acrimony, and he tweets outrageous things and then follows it up by depicting himself as Christ and then denying that it was Christ and that he thought it was a doctor.

He, he does crazy things online.

He explodes the media all the time.

But I think what, what was interesting, and you wrote a very brilliant piece about this, Damien, was that it revealed the deeper tensions between not the leaders, the, the, the president and the pope, but the Vatican and Washington, the bureaucracy of Washington and under Trump.

And I was in Washington recently, and I, I went to a very interesting briefing at The Pentagon where they talked about this story that had kind of done the rounds on Democratic Twitter, um, had caused a bit of aggravation that somebody, allegedly Elbridge Colby, the Under Secretary of, of War, I think is his title, had said, uh, had threatened that Washington might recognize the Avignon papacy because of the current disputes over the national security strategy and what America's trying to do in Latin America, assert primacy in Latin America, which makes the Vatican very uncomfortable.

Do you think there's e- an element of that? I mean, certainly, you know, Catholic affairs are being discussed at the highest levels of American politics and, and on both sides of the aisle.

Suggestions welcome to martin@spectator.co.uk. Next, Freddy Gray.

It's hard not to feel sorry for Kristian Turner, our new ambassador in Washington.

He's only been in post three months, yet he's already had to handle a string of bilateral crises, none his fault.

US-UK relations are under intense strain over Iran, Ukraine, and now the Falklands, and the Jeffrey Epstein stench still lingers thanks to his predecessor, Peter Mandelson.

The King's visit was meant to gloss over all that unpleasantness.

A grateful Donald Trump would pack King Charles and Camilla off and promptly declare the US-UK trade deal had been finalized.

Then on Tuesday, the first morning of the visit, news broke of a leaked tape.

Freddy, what's your take on things as they stand?

Well, I think over the weekend, there was sort of growing panic in the kinda upper echelons of the Republican Party as to what was going on with the war.

There was these Israeli strikes on Iranian oil fields that caused a lot of aggravation between kind of the top tier of the Pentagon and the Israeli military as to what the objectives were.

Uh, this obviously put an upwards pressure on the oil price, and I think that is obviously something that is very-- Trump is very concerned about.

And while you're hearing a lot of very victory-oriented rhetoric, let's call it, from Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump, there is a kind of sotto voce concession, I wouldn't even call it a concession, but a kind of a tacit admission that this war can be got out of quite quickly because a lot of people are thinking it has to be got out of quite quickly because the Republican Party are thinking about the midterms in November.

They are seeing the polling, which is showing that the vast majority of Americans are uncomfortable with this war, and they are feeling the heat.

And Freddie, if Donald Trump wants to wind the conflict down, how easily can that be done?

Well, I think that's the, that's the real key question at the moment.

Mm.

But with our energy costs as they are, it's not going to happen.

This is very high energy intensive stuff that we're talking about, and Britain just cannot do it unless we get our energy prices under control.

And nothing the Labor government is doing, with E- Ed Miliband driving the energy agenda, is going to correct that.

So that is a, that's a really important point that I think the, the Trump administration understands.

I mean, they're drill, baby, drill, but not just drill, baby, drill.

Any energy policy that will help produce more energy.

Mm.

Freddie, do you think Trump sees things this way, that negotiations are still open?

I don't think Trump thinks about negotiations so much.

As, as he says about trade, uh, "It's complicated and it's not complicated." Um, so I think as far as he's concerned, uh, they've got an agreement over the line, and it's for the minions and ministers to sort out the detail.

Um, I, I think it seems as though, judging from his appearance outside Turnberry, uh, just now, uh, it seems as though he's understood that the British government is keen to press him on Gaza.

Just before they went in, he turned to the cameras, he said, "We are going to talk about Gaza," because he'd slightly fobbed off questions.

Whether he sees eye to eye with, uh, Keir Starmer on, on that question is, is another matter.

Uh, I suspect probably not, judging from that.

Do you know where the president sort tends to stand now on this Israel and Gaza conflict?

Sure.

But they are, they are a, a legal anomaly, and, uh, I think that they're not ideal in many ways.

What this story really makes me think about is the sort of legacy of the war on terror.

Steve Saylor called it "invade the world, invite the world," and I think he was right.

It was a controversial thing to say when he said it, but, uh, this story very much ties into that.

After the war on terror, we started getting involved in a number of countries in ways that we shouldn't have done, military invent- interventions, uh, which backfired catastrophically, and we faced a population migration backlash from that, and this is a classic example of it.

And this, the fact that it's been covered up for so long speaks to how institutions, authorities knew that they had made big mistakes, um, and we're still living with the consequences.

Yeah.