18/02/2017 Dateline London

Welcome to dateline London. The Trump White House is running like

clockwork. But how dysfunctional is it? Israel and the Palestinians? A

two state solution or no state solution? With us are our guests. US

presidency is sometimes have a fairly rocky start. President

Harrison died after a month in office. The Trump White House is a

total shambles according to the critics. Fights with Congress and

rows with the media are common. But a war on the judiciary, judges and

the intelligence community is unprecedented, so how good is this

well oiled machine? Trump has some supporters outside the mainstream

media. The terrifying press conference last week, I don't see

how anybody could have any doubt that this man is unfit for the

presidency. Question is, what happens now? His vice president and

secretary of defence or in Germany. They are saying precisely the

opposite of what he's been saying, both about Nato and Russia. Is that

men to send out Peshmerga send out a signal that the world should ignore

the lunatic we are locking up in the attic in the White House and we are

running the government, we are running the foreign policy of the

administration. -- is that meant to send out a signal. We have

absolutely no doubt Russia is a serious threat to world Law and

order, in the Ukraine, etc. Listen to us, not him. That's dangerous. It

possible solution to the problem but dangerous. Some world leader Katich

trial at his word and decide he is the voice of this administration and

therefore go on that premise. -- some world leader could take Trump

at his word. Also, what happens when it becomes apparent he's been

sidelined? What happens to the rage and frustration he has stoking up

against foreigners, Muslims, the world generally. That is a

terrifying prospect. He did promise to drain the swamp. It may be that

those people in the swamp in Washington have been knowing what to

do in recent years even though they've not done it very well.

Expertise sometimes comes in for and affairs. In terms of foreign policy,

what we've seen with Trump is he's gone back on his own words. He said

he possibly would not adhere to the China policy. In terms of your point

you made earlier of whether this administration is in a shambles

ready, we need to keep in mind a couple of things. One, by any

measure, it is in shambles. People have been ousted, people have

resigned, some have had to withdraw from their nomination. You had an

ill thought out travel ban. It has already been suspended by judiciary,

etc. On the one hand you have that reality. But this is a president who

is still as he was as a candidate who isn't interested in objective

reality. He is trying to create an alternative reality that he is

selling to his supporters and using to rally. We saw that. That may be

effective. Mainstream media, as we know from polls in America, is less

trusted than all editions. It is very calculated. -- less trusted

than politicians. Why was this press conference in the afternoon? That is

because his base are often people watching television in the

afternoons. He's gone over the heads of the media. Then he can berate the

media. And then communicate his version of reality to the people who

support him. Rachel? I think that's right and we need to be mindful of

that. We would be watching that press conference and seeing a

complete car crash. And also seeing really dangerous displays of racism

and anti-Semitism. And then his reactions to a free press, you

know... One of the most important things in an American democracy, the

way he has called them out as liars and betrayers of the people, like

the judiciary, very dangerous for a democracy to have its elected leader

saying things like that. At the same time, look at the reaction in things

like Fox News, and it is favourable. Some of it. You are right. Even Fox

News has gone off. You are right. But it is about look at the way this

man faces down hostile, lying, nagging media who keep hitting him

over the head with useless details. And look at how masterful and in

control he is. It's interesting, that same audience is attached to

the second Amendment of the US Constitution, which is guns, not

attached to the first Amendment, the right to freedom of speech and for

people in the media to comment on the executive faction. That isn't

the frame it is being viewed with. The framers, it is the fault of the

media. The media is respecting the first Amendment because it is

habitually lying and trying to undermine our democratically elected

leader. I think that view clearly has a lot of traction. When the

media is thinking about and talking about how to respond to Trump and

how to deal with Trump, what do you do when you are basically being

controlled in a White House press search? Boycott it, not it live?

That has be one of the considerations. Some journalistic

organisations are saying we should not bear some of these things live.

Because there are so many factual errors. Let me put it to you that

the media is an easy target, whereas the court and intelligence services

are things that are much more dangerous for any politician. It's

true. It is a great danger for any politician to attack the court, the

institution. I have agreed with everything that has been set. In

Europe you have the same situation. If you see the way Francois Fillon

and Marine Le Pen have coped with the problems of illegal funding, of

misappropriation of public funds, they have used the same as Donald

Trump, going above the media because they are liberal, perceived as

liberal, biased, against them. They've gone directly through social

media to the people. That has allowed them to get away with, at

the moment, with murder. I think Trump is doing the same. Does it

work in the same way? Twitter seems to work very well for Trump. It is

working for Fillon who has -- it is working for Fillon and Marine Le

Pen. It is the journalists and the seasoned politicians, those who are

perceived as the establishment, who they are going up against. I'm not

sure that this is exactly what resonates with his base, with the

people who are trying to give him a pass and support him. You can talk

all you want about Russian interference. It's not having any

traction with the people coming to his rallies. He will have another

huge rally in Florida which is just a continuation of his campaign. Why

is that? It is bizarre because it is contradictory to his friendliness to

Russia. He won't have a bad word said about Vladimir Putin. The whole

thing is incoherent. It is a succession of facile and absurd self

contradictions. Yet nobody seems to be worried about that. He has this

America first refrain, which he is selling to impoverished parts of the

country, which really have been locked into depression for a very

long time. The rust belt of America, the terrible unemployment

blackspots. He's inciting those people to believe he can cure their

problems. Won't that be the test? Whatever people think about the

performance we saw this week of the test will be will there be more

jobs, are people more better off, will taxes be cut? What will happen

when those things fail? Exactly. They might not. He has an

administration that doesn't seem to be equipped to deliver those things.

Neither does it seem to be the agenda of a free-market

fundamentalist to be able to... You know, it isn't their ideology to

deliver that. We are talking about infrastructure, as well. What will

happen when that fails? Against whom will there be rage? The main

problem, a side of the political, is the economic. His electorate were --

his electorate will be disappointed. More than anything, control of

immigration, protectionism, investment infrastructure, that

means inflation. Inflation means higher interest rates. Higher

interest rates, it's his electorate that will suffer via mortgages.

Everybody describes him as a far right character. The infrastructure

spending is straight out of Franklin D Roosevelt's deal. Public spending

on a massive scale. Republicans in Congress don't like that. This is a

peculiar political package. The post-industrial nature of the

economy means he isn't going to be able to restore the heavy duties of

manufacturing jobs that have disappeared in the rust belt. These

people will be just as unemployed. Unless they are somehow employed on

these great infrastructure projects which America cannot afford. Because

it would exacerbate the national debt. That common with tax cuts.

That leaves the Republicans with a big problem. -- that coming with tax

cuts. Do they stick close to him until the next election? They would

certainly cut and run if they saw his poll numbers plummet. They are

first and foremost politicians. This goes back to a point we were making

earlier both about the economics being the important part of the

selection. People who were feeling disenfranchised economically and not

having their lives improved. Assuming that doesn't happen, it

also goes back to the control of the message that Donald Trump has been

putting out. Who will they blame? He will claim obstructive Congress.

Immediate attacking everything he does. Or a judiciary who are banning

the things he does. That will still appeal to his base. They will feel

he is being obstructed. It is about keeping that narrative under

complete control. The debt cuts, one must wonder, how on earth, if the

analysis we've heard around this table is anywhere near correct, how

on earth could you lose this election? How can you be such a

shambles, and they are. We've heard about the French left, the British

left isn't in great shape, either. It isn't just an American problem.

It isn't. That is what is staggering about this. The capacity for self

reflection amongst, you know, the left, the progressives, in the US,

as in the UK and across Europe, seems to be sorely lacking. To be

able to look at the situation in which the far right is resurgent and

has been enabled. And to not understand what those factors were.

And actually how the centre-left was complicit in that. And enabled it

and allowed it to happen. The fact that it is not the success of the

far right, so much the loss and failure of the left. I find it

disturbing that we don't even seem to have started that conversation by

which the progressive left looks at how can we learn, and how can we

move? There isn't an obvious answer. What happens to the political voice

in the post-industrial age of what used to be called the industrial

proletariat. What happens to the employee interest when the employer

and employee dynamic fails. When fewer people are employed because

robots are doing mechanical stuff. Or foreign labour is. This is a

crisis for the left because it doesn't speak for anyone.

But there are new faces on the left that are doing well. Justin Trudeau

is doing well, Macron is doing well. The guy in Germany who might do

well. Same in Italy... But they are countries who haven't

tried it. We had a great left success in Tony Blair which Cameron

emulated. That centrist conspiracy, that runs for a while, and then

working class people begin to say what about me? That is the stage the

country has to reach. Tony Blair may be coming back in our politics.

The majority of the voters today are not working class disenfranchised.

The majority of the population are entrepreneurs, and people who are in

the white collars. I don't think that's true. I think the reality of

what you've been talking about, the thing Tony Blair corroborated as

much as Cameron, the economic devastation that it has inflicted on

people, it isn't a working-class thing any more. It is actually most

people. Most are struggling. The middle class.

That is what Theresa May keeps talking about. And Ed Miliband. Not

having a solution for that is a failure of centrism. The trial of

globalisation is dead. We've done well on globalisation. Now we are in

retraction of it. Now we have to find a balance between protectionism

and globalisation. The globalisation of labour has been

one of the big forces. The idea that there are migrating tribes of

particularly young people who can move across borders, take

unemployment, it is the stable populations that want to buy homes,

raise families, live in the traditional way, who feel they are

being pushed out by itinerant labour. Just a final point about the

Russia question. The Russia question has been nagging for months. Nobody

knows quite where this is going. We know there is intelligence in other

investigations, the house and Senate intelligence committee, why has this

not got more resonance? I think it is divorced from economics.

Economics was the key message in the election campaign. Russia, when it

was a Cold War threat, it loomed large in people's imaginations in

America. It doesn't do the same now. Had you changed this over and said

it was China who was hacking into e-mails, China that was influencing

the election, I think the reaction would be different. I think you

would find people who are now rather passive about, in their response to

Russia, saying China, which represents a great economic threat

to the US, is interfering in our affairs, it would be a different

response and that is part of what is animating this lack of response to

the Russian question. Let's move on. Israel and Palestine -

and a two state solution involving land for peace -

has been the core of the Middle East Now President Trump has floated

the idea of a one state solution, and also suggested moving the US

embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. In Israel a "one state" solution

means a Jewish state. To some Palestinians it means

a secular state in which Israelis and Palestinians would live

side by side. But either way would Palestinians

be in the majority - making this, again, no

solution after all? You could say it's good to rethink

the Middle East peace because after 30 years of talking about two

Estates solutions it hasn't gone any. Certainly that's true, it

hasn't gone anywhere, and anybody who has spent time in the region

will be able to say, look, on the ground, in real terms, because of

Israel's settlement expansion, and the way it has expanded into

Palestinian land, has made the two state solution impossible.

Practically impossible on the ground. 650,000 settlers in the

occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. And arranged in a way

that makes a continuous Palestinian state just impossible. And a lot of

people will say that the two state premise, parameters that have been

in operation for these decades in the international community, have

given Israel a cover, that they have allowed this expansionist policy to

take place under the cover of a supposed attempt to solve the

conflict. But on the other hand, when you have a US president, quite

clearly walking away from those parameters, then, of course, that's

going to enable the far right, the expansionist right, in Israel. And

give them permission to be even worse. He did say, Trump did say,

look, basically if it's OK with Israel and the Palestinians.

Anything you guys want! I'll go along with it. Look at the way that

was read. You have the far right celebrating a new era. You have the

education Minister under Benjamin Netanyahu's coalition government,

and also the leader of the right-wing pro-settlement Jewish

party. The Israeli flag has been replaced, it would seem. Given the

Israeli flag is already waving across Israel we can only assume he

meant that about Palestine. And the land marked for a Palestinian state.

The fact they have been so enabled and given permission by this is bad.

As is the fact that the Palestinians, in a way, have been

abandoned. As much as, you know, the occupation and the settlement

project was carrying on they at least had some level of diplomatic

protection that has now been completely removed. There was a good

reason why there was never any resolution of the one state, two

state condition, because nobody wanted to try and settle this. It

was an insoluble problem. Nobody would be happy with a single

solution. That is why what he said was ignorant and absurd. He said

I've looked at the one state, the two state, whatever makes you happy,

what ever you like I will go along with it. He seems to be unaware of

the fact that there is no one solution that satisfies both sides.

And to go back to what you said earlier, his own UN on boy has said

in contradiction, that the two state solution is the basis. I'm worried

about asking this... Has he moved back from the idea of moving

embassy? Yes. Today. He didn't understand the complexities

involved. The sensitivities. He puts out things that he then has to

retract. I think it really puts us in a no solution can. They two state

solution in practice it is now impossible. In principle it won't be

accepted by either side because it would destroy the Jewish nature.

Palestinians will not accept being second-class citizens in a single

state. What has definitely changed, and I've talked to a lot of people

in the Gulf, there is a new mood because of Iran and there is less,

how can one put it, less overt hostility to the Israeli state in

some countries than there was before. Clearly Israel has played

quite well in order to get rapprochement and with Saudi Arabia.

To come back to the one state, one state is impossible because it

doesn't work. We have seen it in Yugoslavia, we see today in camera

room, you cannot put the people who are so hostile to each other in one

state. -- Cameroon. It isn't working. But at least you can say it

is containment for the West to have that solution. Even if it doesn't

work. We use are priced it came up so early? What tends to happen with

American presidencies is they don't do much about the Middle East until

the end of their term because they cannot do much. Many around him feel

strongly about it. He wanted a great success. He wanted to launch

something that would seem to undo previous foreign policy and would

produce miraculous result. He doesn't seem to understand why

nobody has been able to produce a miraculous result in the past, even

with the most painstaking peace negotiations. It is terrifyingly

ignorant. A business deal, basically. He thinks it is. That is

why he says if you'd two can be happy I will go along with whatever

that is. One possible outcome of this is, you know, if the US is

going to openly abandon what it has effectively abandoned in practice

for the last few decades, ie a commitment to the two state

solution, because whatever previous administrations have set in reality

Israel has flouted international law with regards to building

settlements, and that has been the biggest obstacle to the two state

solution. If Israel has abandoned that it might make room for European

countries that have for some time been disgruntled with the way the US

has handled this process, and have a different take. It might give them

come as a bloc, step up and step into a field where the perception is

that the US hasn't been the honest broker and the honest mediator. Good

news for Janet. I think Trump will now agree with you. It will force

the Europeans to go further in integration politically,

economically, and thanks to Trump we can face... In the mind of... Janet,

Europe will do well, and you will be with the lunatics in the White

House. He is encouraging disorder. I think

it will actually create rifts in Europe which will be very serious

and destructive. Eastern Europe is getting worried about the fact that

Western Europe isn't interested in defending them. It depends where you

mean, because of Germany. Do you really want to see Germany rearmed?

Nato is there at the moment. It has been a funny month, Janet, I

wouldn't rule anything out at this stage. Do you actually think that

this could make the European Union, Britain aside, when it leaves,

stronger? Absolutely. Because for the first time the European Union is

to take its destiny. The US is out. Britain will be out. Janet is making

the point that they are very disunited anyway. Hungary isn't

going in the same direction as France, for example. The threat from

Russia is serious for these Eastern European countries.

For us what will be important is that politically we have a voice. In

the middle East we have a voice. A United voice on trade. That will

make Europe a much stronger. Good luck. We will have to leave it

there. That's it for Dateline London this

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