18/07/2017 Newsnight

Against the odds and against the experts,

And this week, he passes the six-month mark.

We look back to ask - is he as bad as his critics feared,

Has he settled into the job as a more conventional president,

We'll examine the record so far on domestic and foreign

policy, and look at how the White House has been working.

Also tonight, banks beware - is consumer borrowing

It is an amber warning light for us. Our job is to make sure the lenders

are safe and the main risk to the wider economy comes through the

lenders rather than the borrowers. in the past by stories

of underage sex. Now he's accused of running some

kind of abusive cult. We'll hear from the reporter

making the claims. Some never thought he'd make it this

far, but Donald Trump is still president and this week,

he can say he is six months in. Torrid months, with lots

questioning his competence, his legitimacy and his

conflicts of interest. But he's still standing

and contrary to some How is he doing by the standards

of those who never wanted him? And by the standards

of those who did? From this day forward,

it's going to be only America The Secretary of Homeland Security,

working with myself and my staff, will begin immediate construction

of a border wall. Michael Flynn, General Flynn,

is a wonderful man. I think he's been treated very,

very unfairly by the media. Because he wasn't doing

a good job, very simply. No politician in history,

and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse

or more unfairly. I got elected to serve the forgotten

men and women of our country, To really prosper, we must lower

the tax on business. No-one can look back on the election

campaign and see anything other than a Trump victory

that was remarkable, often a result of sewing anger

and discontent and by setting up His was a victory by the ultimate

populist playbook; but it is one thing to win an election with that

kind of campaign, quite At times, he's seemed more

comfortable in election-type rallies with crowds of adoring supporters

in front of him, than he has His administration is an extreme

experiment in populist policy making, and it has met challenges

such as in the reform Just this afternoon,

the idea of repealing The idea now is to let it fail,

and then return to it. Let's start by thinking

a bit about the conduct Joshua Green is the author

of "Devil's Bargain: Steve Bannon, Donald Trump and the Storming

of the Presidency". I spoke to him

a little earlier from New York. Is it right to say that

there are two Trumps - or at least that the one Trump

is pulled in different directions In the White House he's really

split between two groups, the nationalist camp

led by Steve Bannon, who have very hard right,

aggressive, populist impulses. That is the Donald Trump that ran

and won the presidency. But then on the other hand

there is a Trump who comes out of the world of New York real

estate, is very insecure, has always longed for the approval

of the great power brokers on Wall Street and

American government. Trump has stocked his administration

with many of these people, who generally fall under

the rubric of globalists. So this would include his National

Economic Council chairman Gary Cohn, His Treasury Secretary,

Steven Mnuchin, also The war within the White House

during Donald Trump's first six months has been a pitched battle

between nationalists and globalists. Well, nobody is really

winning is the problem. Trump's legislative agenda has

all but collapsed with the death So while there have been some

victories for Bannon's nationalists, primarily cracking down

on illegal immigration, taking a much harder line

against immigrants generally, there haven't been a lot

of victories for either camp and that's a subject of great

concern to everybody Because when things don't go well,

President Trump reacts very badly. One of the concerns was there

was a sort of fruitcake fringe In fact, Bannon was sometimes

attached to that and in your book you talk about Robert Mercer,

the hedge fund guy who financed Bannon and Breitbart,

who certainly had some wacky people, let's say, who he was

supporting beforehand. Have the "grown-ups"

mostly got a grip in No, I don't think that anybody,

any of Trump's camps of advisers ever have a solid grip on Trump

for very long. The cycle we've seen again

and again, we saw this during the campaign,

we've certainly seen it in the White House,

is that for a time, advisers will be able to contain Trump,

to stop him from tweeting or saying or doing outrageous

things but invariably, Trump

loses his patience and will go off director James Comey,

that plunges his administration

back into chaos. And chaos has been pretty

much the natural state of Trump's White House these

first six months. Are there any forces there who think

chaos is kind of a good It wants to kick things around,

it wants to change everything, Bannon, Steve Bannon

has always been a big believer that chaos is good,

it helps Trump. It was during the campaign

where Trump unleashed The problem is that when you're

in the White House, when you're the president,

chaos doesn't actually What Trump needs to do

and what he has so far been unable to do is organise a congressional

coalition of his own party members Tell us a little about egos

in the White House. It was said that Bannon and Trump

fell out when Bannon made Donald Trump is and always has been

deeply insecure, especially And after he was elected

and Steve Bannon entered the popular imagination as this kind of dark

Rasputin, pulling Trump's strings, Saturday Night Live referring to him

as "President Bannon," kind of a running joke, Trump

himself took great offence at that, The only thing that's brought him

back in is the Russia scandal. The fact that has entangled

so many of Trump's senior advisers. Do you think that by the end of four

years there will be something which we will identify,

be able to call Trumpism that will be the Trump doctrine

or the Trump way? I think Trump would like there to be

but it isn't exactly I think Steve Bannon and Trump

the candidate had a pretty clear idea of what Trumpism would be,

and it would be a different third A populism that was less harsh,

more geared towards working-class ordinary American voters

than the typical Republican The problem is as soon as Trump got

into the White House, he took up the same conservative

agenda of the politicians who he'd just vanquished

in the GOP nomination fight, and he has wound up in a cul-de-sac

where he can't pass the legislation that's not popular and so it's not

clear that Trump knows Joshua Green, thank

you very much indeed. Many of those who voted

for Trump, voted for change. We sent a camera out to Alexandria

in Virginia to see what Trump supporters themselves cite

as his biggest achievement to date - The best thing, I think he's

really trying to like, tighten the borders and focus

on security a little bit more. I'm a Trump guy but I'm not

a Trump behaviour guy. But he's doing what he said

he was going to do and the Republican Congress is not

allowing him to do, But other than that,

he's doing what no-one thought he could do and no-one

expected him to do. We just like all of his stands

in the Middle East, all his opinions and sides

and, you know. We stand by him not

doing the France Accord. Because we don't really

believe in climate change. I don't know, starting work

on the immigration thing and the tax, getting

a new tax law started. I think health-care needs

to change drastically. Of course foreign relations

I think need to improve. And jobs, I'm happy

that the stock market I think that might be one

of the best things he's done Voices from Trump

supporters in Virginia. Well, Anne Applebaum

is a visiting professor at the London School

of Economics Institute of Global Affairs and

a Washington Post columnist. Elisabeth Bumiller writes

on politics for the New York Times. Elisabeth, you're going to be our

domestic affairs policy and -- person. You were something of a

critic, you were not a fan in the election campaign. As he settled

into something more conventional than you expected? No, the trouble

with Trump, as your previous interview alluded, is that he hasn't

settled into anything at all. Almost every statement he makes on foreign

policy can be heard in two ways, he contradicts himself. On Europe, if

you listen to the speech he made in Warsaw ten days ago, you can hear

the different strands of his administration in the speech. There

was a nationalist almost apocalyptic stance, against dark forces, and

something that sounded like an ordinary Republican talking about

Nato. You can choose which of those strands you would like to hear. Does

that implied there is a state of paralysis? It sounds like a child in

a car who can turn on the windscreen wipers and so one but doesn't know

how to make the cargo, it has been said. -- make the car go. But he

hasn't crashed the car. We don't have people to do the foreign

policy, he hasn't selected people to work for him and we don't have any

clear direction. He has withdrawn from a few things, he isn't leading

anywhere. His policy in Syria is no different to Obama's. Europe, he has

said different things at different times and in China he appears to be

directed by President Xi. Elizabeth, domestic policy, there has been this

huge setback for his agenda today on health care reform. What do you

think his supporters will feel about the domestic agenda and how far it's

gone? I think they would say that he hasn't done much of what he promised

to do and that they would blame Congress for it, the Democrats. He

has, he's big domestic policies were immigration, building a wall,

repealing health care, and he has, you know, he has not improved the

economy. On health care it has been a big disappointment to him today

because the Senate bill failed and really there is no way forward. It

failed in large part because there were deep divisions within the

Republican party, a number of moderate Republicans couldn't vote

for it because of the deep cuts in Medicaid in their states. At the

same time, some Conservative Republicans were opposed because it

did not cut Medicaid enough. He's been a victim of the divisions

within his own party as well as the fact that the Democrats oppose him.

But why hasn't he just built a semblance of war, a piece of the

war? It can't take somebody that long to go in and just show them...

Because we have a system where there is Congress and the White House and

the Supreme Court, and Congress appropriates the money for such

things and Congress did not give him the money in the Budget. They gave

him just enough to repair about 70 miles of the wall, which is

repairing a fence on the border. The border is over 2000 miles long. So

he keeps saying he wants the wall. In fact it's going to be very

difficult financially to build it. Right. Is it the situation,

Elizabeth, that populism meets the complexities of government, and is

that the way of characterising this experiment in populist

policy-making? Well, I think that all so what happened is Trump had no

experience in government before. He ran a company and it was a family

business and that kind of situation with the chief executives, he has

discovered, and he said this publicly, is how difficult it is to

get things done, because you have to bring along Congress, you have an

opposition party and you also have courts that go against you. That was

the way our system was set up and he is finding that there are checks and

balances in the American government. OK, one of the Sears was that

somehow this guy with this rather chaotic way of doing things, very

capricious, would undermine institutions, the great institutions

of the world or the United States. Do you see any of that going on? --

one of the fears. Yes. There are some things he hasn't been able to

undermine but we have ethics laws in the United States. This was a very

small story but the head of the office of ethics in the US resigned

this week because he said it was pointless to try to enforce the

rules any more. A lot of these things were norms and rules and

regulations rather than actual laws, but people conform to them and Trump

doesn't and his family doesn't conform to them. But in terms of

leadership, was it...? We could almost say it was angular Merkel

that leads the West, but... He has made various different kinds of

statements about Nato and we have to assume... You know, we can take

which ever one we want to believe. But the idea that the US was the

leader in trade and was the country that believed in more economic

interaction with the world, that doesn't exist any more. The idea

that the US was a convener of other nations and could reach mutual

agreements, that doesn't work any more. So the idea that the United

States was a power in the Pacific, that could fall under question as

well. So a lot of the assumptions made about American power have been

undermined. It has only been six months and he's been very lucky in a

way because there hasn't been a major crisis. Well, North Korea...

Well, that hasn't happened yet and nobody has invaded a country,

nothing for him to respond to, so we haven't seen how an administration

that doesn't have any foreign policy staff will react to a foreign policy

crisis yet. Let's go back to the domestic agenda. This issue of

undermining institutions and integrity and the things that have

built up over hundreds of years in the US - tube eye that there's been

some of that going on or not? Sure, but in many ways I am more positive

and I feel that this is a lesson in how the government is supposed to

work. She's right about the ethics violations but look at what happened

to health care. It did not get through Congress. Look at his two

travel bans. They were struck down by a court and he had to come back.

There was then a new one but the Supreme Court allowed a part of the

travel ban but the courts were reacting the way they were supposed

to. And then I would argue the press as well. Obviously he's been very

tough on the press but I also think this has been a good run for the

press because we have healthy administration accountable and we've

written a lot of stories and exposed a lot of stories. There have been a

lot of investigations and we've been on the Russia story quite a bit, so

I think that's working as well. I'm looking at it in a more positive

way. A different perspective but an interesting one. Thank you both very

much indeed. The Grenfell Tower fire has

naturally got everyone looking very hard at building design,

not least local authorities worried about the stock of renovated

towers on their estates. It's clear we need an audit

of what we've got, with what materials bolted

on the outside. And this is where it

gets interesting working There are three ways to get

a building signed off. The key words are "limited

combustibility". One, you can clad a building

in material that is all of limited combustibility, as that

won't burn badly. Two, you can use elements

of combustible material, but it has to have been fire-tested

to see that in its particular combination, it is of

limited combustibility. And three, if the combination hasn't

been fire-tested then you have to have a desktop study that shows

it is materially the same as stuff So if the material isn't

all resistant to fire then it needs to have been tested one

way or another. But guess what - councils cannot get

the the test results. I'm joined by Lord Porter,

Gary Porter, who is the chairman A very good evening to you. I hope

I've summarised the position adequately. But, look, you want to

know the results of different combinations of materials and how

they have got through fire tests. Yes, we've been arguing since just

after the day of the fire that the whole thing should be tested and not

just the core of the panels, and those tests need to be properly

tested, and we are pleased the Government has agreed they will do

that, or the experts have, at least. Once those tests have been done,

they need to be made public, and more importantly, the result is done

by the private sector, which are subject intellectual property

rights, also need to be done. But they've done those tests before,

haven't they? To be able to say, yes, we can use that combination

because we've tested it. They have been done but we are yet to see the

results. Those companies are under no obligation to share the results

with the wider public. Had you asked them? We have asked them and we've

asked members of the public require that the contractual basis means

that is shared. So the testing companies or the cladding companies?

The BR East says they cannot share the results. They have said they

can't share those results because they are subject intellectual

property. So quite seriously, you want to know which cladding

combinations are safe and stack up in systems, and they simply say, we

cannot tell you. Because the tests they've done belong to the companies

they've done the tests for. So you ask the company, then? That's what

we're doing now. With putting pressure through councils, housing

associations... But do they not just send you the results? Will they? I'm

happy -- I'm acting on the basis of this new story tonight and I expect

companies will be rushing to tell the Government, here, have access to

all our data! But you find it slow and a bit lethargic. Try to find

somebody who has had access to them. There is a worry that the testing

system, rather than as a way of stopping unsafe things, has become a

system for, well, let's see if there's a way we can get this to

pass. Is that your one? My worry is that the public will never have

faith in what is done unless it is done in a transparent way. If we

want people to feel safe in a tower block we have to convince them that

all the information is out of the public domain, and for me as a

council leader and representative of a council, that's what's important.

I'm not looking for somebody to blame. I'm looking for somebody to

reassure the public that it is safe to be in those buildings. Presumably

the Government could instruct the lads, you will tell us what the

results are of the tests you have had done. -- the laboratories. But

they are not part of the Government. Well, emergency law... You would

need to talk to a lawyer! I don't know what would be needed. It is not

just the cladding, it is the installation. We argued from the

start that the installation is almost certainly going to be a

contributory factor in some instances. Not at all, because there

are some Willie could types out there, but there are some that like

fire. -- there are some very good types. It needs to cover the whole

of that system. I used to be a bricklayer and I think all buildings

should be clad in bricks and not any other material, but that is just a

personal interest! Thank you very much.

If you weren't worried about enough things already,

here's another one - consumer credit.

For all the lessons of the financial crash that started ten

years ago this summer, the Western world has

not really found a way to stimulate spending,

activity and growth without letting debt grow.

In the 2000s, it was US sub-prime mortgages that

kicked off the crisis, but it is unmortaged

credit here that is now the immediate concern.

They've supported spending and perhaps given a rather

flattering impression of our economic performance.

Unfortunately, consumer credit has been growing much faster

than consumer incomes, and that can't go on forever.

Our business editor Helen Thomas has been looking at the data.

# Oh, the credit card blues sure will get you down

Loans, leases, leverage - call it what you want,

the UK is amassing more of it, and that raises questions

The Bank of England is keeping an eye on lending to Britain's

What seems to be happening is that lenders are willing to make credit

cheaper and expand the supply of it into new areas, and that's why it's

an amber warning light for us, because our job is to make sure that

lenders are safe and the main risk to the wider economy here actually

come through the lenders rather than the borrowers.

The regulator has told banks to hold more capital,

It will also stress-test potential losses.

This is British households' debt relative to their income.

It rose before the financial crisis, fell sharply, and now it's

That includes mortgages, though, which have been pretty steady.

The problem is consumer lending, here in red.

That rose by about 10% over the last year, much faster

Credit card debt is growing quickly, here in yellow,

but the real eye-catcher, this blue line, car finance,

has been growing at over 15% a year since 2013.

The reason for that is a fundamental change in how we are

Well, we're not really buying them at all.

It's boosted business here, a busy showroom owned by Pendragon,

A whole generation of people has been brought up with a different

mentality, and so if you look at a device like that, you know,

my kids would think it very strange that you would go

What they're looking forward to is the end of the contract

and when they can refresh it with the latest model.

Well, why would it be any different in cars?

Four out of five new cars are now financed with something called

That means a monthly payment for two or four years,

then you upgrade to the latest model or pay a pre-agreed lump

Making a decision to buy a car is now a smaller decision

psychologically because people are committing to make smaller

payments for a shorter term, and whereas historically somebody

would think about spending ?15,000, now they're probably thinking

about making payments of ?240, ?250, and then doing the same thing

again potentially two or three years later but getting a fresh car

But people actually tend to keep paying their car loans.

They need their cars to get to work or to get the kids to school.

A slump in used-car values could mean losses for lenders.

But the Central Bank thinks even a 30% drop would only mean

But cars aren't all we've been shopping for.

With longer and longer interest-free periods,

personal loans have been getting cheaper and cheaper.

Overall, credit has been more easily available as companies

What does this build-up mean for the banking system,

the financial stability, and what about the UK economy?

Would a slowdown in debt-fuelled spending mean hazards ahead?

Jim Ballantyne used credit cards to start a business but his debts

mounted after a serious accident left him unable to work.

He's now tackling that with the help of the money advice service.

I wish I could explain better what I haven't dealt with it sooner.

When I contacted the debt change charity,

they went through a budget for me and told me what I already knew,

which was that it was unsustainable and there was absolutely no way

I could pay these debts, and that I should write to these people,

and gave me a form letter to do so, and yet it's taken me three or four

months actually to get around to doing that.

I think burying your head in the sand is very common.

More consumers are only paying the minimum balances on their credit

cards and the Bank of England last week reported to signs that default

If you look back over the last few years, it's very typical for lottery

If you look back over the last few years, it's very

on consumer debt to be more than ten times those

on mortgage lending, and that's why banks

and their exposure to consumer debt generally are a key driver

of how strong they are, how resilient they are.

As we've seen so many times in the past, lending standards

in this market can go from the seemingly fairly

responsible to pretty reckless fairly quickly,

and that's why after a period of rapid growth, we're taking action

to make sure this market evolves in a sustainable and prudent way.

Is this house of cards already teetering?

Losses on consumer credit mount when unemployment rises.

It still at multi-decade lows for now.

But tighter credit is only one pressure on households.

Real wages are falling, saving rates are at record lows.

Consumer spending, the powerhouse of the economy,

They'll keep sending them cards till you get into so much

Robert Kelly, better known as R Kelly, is undisputed as one

of the most important R singers ever.

He's sold tens of millions of albums, he's been at the top

of the music industry for three decades.

His most pop-y and familiar track, I Believe I Can Fly,

# I believe I can touch the sky... #

He's written for Michael Jackson, collaborated with Jay-Z,

played professional basketball and been a hero to many fans.

# I see me running through that open door.

But his image has been more than a little tainted by persistent

allegations of sexual predation of underage girls.

The weird story of his annulled marriage in the '90s

to the singer Aaliyah - she was 14; the lawsuits

against him by women who say they had underage sex.

In the 2000s, he was charged with videotaping sexual acts

And then yesterday, Buzzfeed's Jim DeRogatis alleged

that he is keeping six women in a kind of abusive cult,

He denies he has abused women, or had underage sex.

Whatever the truth of the allegations, it's perhaps

remarkable that his career has progressed as

I'm joined by Jim DeRogatis and freelance journalist

Jim, let me start with you. Take us through these allegations. One of

the women today said she is fine and isn't being held against her will,

nothing to worry about. Yes, her parents say she is brainwashed, that

is their work, and the victim of a cult, our world, and Buzzfeed's

report, which I worked on for nine months, has two sets of parents and

three women who bravely spoke on the record, two who were involved in

sexual relationships with Kelly and one of whom worked as his personal

assistant and saw this behaviour for a long time. They say that these

women are mentally and physically abused. They are told when they can

eat, went to sleep, when two bays, that they must not before entering

or leaving any room, and to turn and face the wall if any male friends

are present and how to sexually pleasure him in encounters that he

records and their cellphones are taken away, they are separated from

friends and family and given a new cellphone that is only used to

communicate with him or with his permission. Extraordinary situation

you are describing. Take us through the allegations. There is a lot of

history here. Take us through some of the allegations because you have

worked on them in the past as well. I broke the story in 2000 of him

consistently abusing his position of wealth and fame to pursue illegal

sexual Asian ships with -- illegal sexual relationships with underage

girls. In a video prosecutors alleged showed him having sex with

and you're in aiding in the mouth of a 14-year-old girl, it came to me at

Chicago Sun Times and he was indicted for making child

pornography, it took six and a half years to go to trial and he was

acquitted by a jury of his peers. I believe this is classic rape

culture. The victim, the young girl on the tape, her mother and father

never testified. The jury heard from 36 other witnesses, friends,

basketball coach, teachers, who testified that it was the girl and

that was her age, and she was acquitted. There have been numerous

civil law suit filed that said that either Kelly had illegal sexual

relations with them when they were underage or he video taped

encounters without their knowledge. Important to say that he has denied

the allegations. He has paid large cash settlements to the women who

have sued him. You went to his school, Jamie, and you saw the cult

of personality that at least gave a kind of power that he had over

people. I did. I was a freshman at the academy when I first saw R

Kelly. He would come to visit teachers, the music department's

various teachers and we would always see him leaving with a girl. And I

think it was one of the worst kept secrets. We didn't think much of it.

While ready knew that he had a fondness for young girls. I don't

want to presume his guilt here but obviously girls have said that they

had underage sex with him. What reaction is there when people come

forward and say that? Do people blame the girls or the man? There is

a tendency to blame the girls. When I read about this in 2013, we were

taught that it is usually on the young girl to steer clear of the

predator. If she puts herself in the line of danger then it is on her, if

horrible consequences befall. It's so ingrained in us that we don't

really, we don't really interrogate it. So when the story broke in 2000,

you know, a lot of us were reading the Times back then thinking,

finally, someone is bringing this to light because no one ever talks

about it. Some would say that there is a race elements to this, that

society asks fewer questions about the welfare of black girls than

white girls. Is there anything in that or is it pure celebrity

culture, people think that celebrities are celebrities? There

are a lot of things, including the fact that these girls are

African-American. I think there is a Georgetown... There is like, it was

recently found that black girls are seen as older compared to white

girls and are less vulnerable. That, coupled with R Kelly's hometown hero

status sort of made it easier for him may be to take advantage of

these girls. Jim, can I ask, in some ways, I don't want to presume guilt,

I want to be open-minded, but some would say that it is amazing that

someone with so much said about him doesn't have a tiny brand. -- a

tarnished brand. In the UK there is a lot of concern about these issues

right now. And I think there is in the US as well, with someone like

Bill Cosby and you have spoken about Jimmy Savile. I'm mystified about

this. It is hard to walk far in the music amenities in Chicago on the

west and south sides and now in Atlanta and not find young women who

have been damaged by their associations with Kelly, allegedly.

There is a 25 year Trail of lawsuits, the Aaliyah marriage, the

trial for child pawn and the video tape is a horrifying documentary of

a rape, I believe, and now these parents want their daughters home.

Thank you both very much indeed. We will leave you with the work of

National Geographic, capturing a hummingbird drinking in a wind

tunnel, the work of Anand Varma. # Oh my hopeless wonder music Mac

you can't come in # You can't come in

# You don't live here any more # Creepy conjurer...

That evening, some southern areas have seen quite a few thunderstorms

going through this evening and they will continue tonight and into

tomorrow, drifting erratically over northern England, Scotland and some

in Northern