Jonathan Swan

speaker

222 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 19 Jul

Jonathan Swan’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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recordings per month · last 12 months

Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Rest Is Politics: Leading · 198. How Trump’s Imperial Presidency Really Works · 19 Jul 2026 podcast

Because the person who's dealt with Trump the best is Xi Jinping.

Trump completely got spooked last April when China refused to back down and just went tariff for tariff with him.

He got up to 145%.

We show in the book, he just says, holy shit, and then sends Scott Besant off to Geneva to de-escalate.

Ever since then, Trump has been in full-on appeasement mode with China.

How can we soften everything?

How do we get a nice deal, a nice way of doing?

He watered down the national defence strategy, taking out more hawkish references to China.

There is only one China.

That's my point.

No, that's my... This is my whole point, Alistair.

So we don't matter?

In a sense, yes.

If you are a small or a middle power, you're only good for, like, flattery, you know, come give him the embossed card, come see the king, this and that.

And the thing I find so interesting about the UK, again, I don't pretend to understand your politics particularly well.

I, you know, read and listen and try to educate myself from afar, is the only way the UK can actually deal with Trump in a way that will get his attention and...

not just be this sort of pat on the head.

Can you imagine a more humiliating thing that he could have done to what he did to Keir Starmer recently before, you know, before he even had a chance to, you know, Trump basically pre-announces this with like a couple of complete lies about the whole thing.

You were fired.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

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