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Amanpour
Interview with La Silla Vacia Deputy Editor in Chief Daniel Pacheco; Interview with The Guardian Columnist Jonathan Freedland; Interview with The Financial Times Columnist Gillian Tett; Interview with The Atlantic Deputy Executive Editor Yoni Appelbaum. Aired 1-2p ET
Aired June 23, 2026 - 13:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
[13:00:00]
BIANNA GOLODRYGA, CNN ANCHOR: Hello everyone and welcome to "Amanpour." Here's what's coming up.
Trump's pick, Bill Pulte, begins purging the top U.S. intelligence agency as Democrats warn it's a national security risk. We get the details from
Washington.
And Colombia looks ready to tilt right after a MAGA-backed populist leads the race to the presidency. I speak to a reporter on the ground.
Then --
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: It's about 5:00 out here. The sun has risen on a completely different U.K. and a completely
different E.U.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: -- 10 years since the U.K.'s stunning split from the E.U. We look at the political forces at play, the costs of going solo, and what
could come next.
Plus, how to tell the American story. The Atlantic's Yoni Appelbaum speaks with Walter Isaacson about bringing the U.S. back to its founding promise.
Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Bianna Golodryga, New York, sitting in for Christiane Amanpour.
Mass firings are said to be underway at the U.S. intelligence agency created to prevent another 9/11. Donald Trump's temporary pick for Director
of National Intelligence, Bill Pulte, reportedly showed up at the job before he was actually due to start, demanding a list of every employee in
the office. Pulte has no intelligence or security experience.
Slimming down the DNI office has been a bipartisan issue, but top Democrats are concerned this week's job slashing is chaotic and could pose a national
security risk.
For more on the details, White House reporter Kevin Liptak joins me from Washington. Kevin, so bring us up to speed with these firings that CNN has
been reporting. What do we know thus far?
KEVIN LIPTAK, CNN SENIOR WHITE HOUSE REPORTER: Well, we don't have a precise picture of the scope of the firings or who precisely at the agency
has been let go at this point, but it is clear that Bill Pulte is wasting very little time trying to execute what President Trump has made very clear
are his objectives for his tenure atop the Office of Director of National Intelligence.
President Trump has said explicitly that he wants Pulte to begin slashing through the workforce with a particular eye to individuals that Trump and
Pulte think are trying to undermine the administration. And what one source says is that the deep state firings have begun, which I think gives you
sort of everything you need to know about where exactly he will be looking to slash some of this workforce.
You know, he has been eager to get into this job even before his tenure was to officially begin. He showed up at the office last week to ask for these
lists of staffers at DNI, which caught the incumbent Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, off guard.
And so, you have a picture of how Pulte will be going about this position. President Trump said in a Truth Social post a few days ago that he wanted
Pulte to, quote, "execute the immediate and needed downsizing of the office." President Trump isn't the only person in Washington who thinks
that the ODNI is bloated, potentially become inefficient in the two decades since it was founded in the years after 9/11. Tulsi Gabbard had already
reduced the office by 40 percent.
The real concern you hear is who is going about it. Bill Pulte is not someone who has any national security experience. He's someone who's most
known for using his current position atop a housing agency to go after some of President Trump's perceived rivals. And that has really raised the ire
of some Democrats.
Yesterday, the top Democrats on the House and Senate Intelligence Committee wrote a letter to Pulte saying that given his lack of experience in the
national intelligence communities, that it was difficult to imagine him, quote, "in such a short amount of time, you have already developed fully
informed views as to how to shrink ODNI without incurring risks to national security."
Now, President Trump has said that he will only have Pulte in this job and in acting capacity. In fact, he said that only being an acting and not
being a permanent would mean he was, quote, "less shackled." How long he is in this job, I think, remains to be seen.
[13:05:00]
And just last week, the president pulled back his nominee for the permanent position because he wanted Pulte to have some time in the job to carry out
these objectives. Bianna.
GOLODRYGA: And that is Jay Clayton, who, by any measure, was seen as more of a palatable nominee and pick by both Democrats and Republicans after
bipartisan outrage that Bill Pulte would be nominated for this role. As the president has said that this would only be in an acting capacity. Why would
he go about naming someone like Jay Clayton, only then to tell him directly not to come to his own confirmation hearing and to wait things out?
LIPTAK: I think it was because the president heard loud and clear from a number of Republicans on Capitol Hill their discomfort with having Bill
Pulte in this job. It had threatened the extension of a very important surveillance authority on the Hill. You saw Republicans really digging in
their heels, saying that they wouldn't be able to vote for this until they got assurances that Bill Pulte would not be in this job for a very long
amount of time. And the president coming up with a name in Jay Clayton that many Republicans will be able to get behind.
And so, that is why I think you saw the president rush to put his name out there. But I think it became clear to President Trump after he named Jay
Clayton to this job that perhaps Bill Pulte would not be acting DNI for very long because Republicans in the Senate had fast-tracked Clayton's
nomination. They had set the date for a hearing.
It seemed pretty clear that he could potentially be confirmed within a matter of days. And that is when President Trump last week said, no, no,
no, we're going to hold up this nomination for both the Pulte aspect of it, but also because President Trump wanted to lump in this new voting reform
law that he wants to see passed. And so, it's all kinds of complicated legislative maneuvering.
But I think it all boils down to the discomfort that certainly Democrats feel with Bill Pulte, but also a lot of Republicans, because he has no
national security experience and because what they fear will become a politicization of this very critical intelligence post.
GOLODRYGA: All right. Kevin Liptack reporting to us from the White House in Washington, D.C. Thank you so much.
Well, now it's all but certain. Colombia's next president will be Abelardo de la Espriella. He is a Trump-endorsed political outsider who has vowed a
massive crackdown on organized crime. With nearly all of the 26 million votes counted, de la Espriella leads by a very small percentage. His
progressive rival, Ivan Cepeda, is challenging the results.
This election delivering a rebuke to the left-wing President Gustavo Petro, who had a combative relationship with Donald Trump. Some say this prompted
the U.S. president to put his thumb on the scale. But organized crime and rampant violence were also key issues at the ballot box. For more on all of
this,
I'm joined now by Daniel Pacheco, journalist and general editor at La Silla Vacia in Bogota. Daniel, welcome to the program. So, if, indeed, de la
Espriella is certified as president, this would be a huge shift of direction from the incumbent President Gustavo Petro. It would be a tight
win, but no doubt a win. What message are voters in Colombia sending right now?
DANIEL PACHECO, DEPUTY EDITOR IN CHIEF, LA SILLA VACIA: Hi. Thanks. It's great to be here. Well, the main message is a rebuke to the current
government, the government of Gustavo Petro and to his candidate, Ivan Cepeda. It was a very polarized presidency. Gustavo Petro was sort of a
populist on the left, on his own.
So, this is a referendum on that presidency, and it's the arrival of polarized social media politics and this populist right trend in Colombia,
which has been going through all the continent, through all Latin America, led by Donald Trump.
GOLODRYGA: And officials, as we've noted, still haven't declared a winner. Cepeda's contesting some 33,000 polling stations. You have covered
Colombian elections for years. Does this challenge at this point have any legal merit?
PACHECO: No. It does have a legal merit because the election is finally certified by the Consejo Nacional Electoral, and that will be done in a
couple of days. But we've got some information on the counting, on the second count of the vote, and nothing's changed.
[13:10:00]
De la Espriella lead has widened a little bit, but historically the changes between the first count and the second count don't vary much. This is
basically the president, Petro, who has thrown in unsubstantiated claims of fraud, playing politics, and the left trying to establish a starting point
to a very hard and robust opposition, which we will see in the next four years.
GOLODRYGA: The unsubstantiated claims of fraud that you mentioned specifically is accusing Israel of hacking into the country and hacking the
count to rig all of this and says there's no president until this claim is reviewed.
What does a claim like this from a sitting president say about Colombians' faith in the vote? How much pressure is put on a sitting president right
now from his own constituents when they make unsubstantiated claims like this?
PACHECO: So, we've seen this in other countries. It happened in the U.S., it happened in Brazil, also in our region. Gustavo Petro has been doing
this for a long time, but he has also won big elections. So, he won a majority in Congress. So, I think people at this point are pretty set in
that Abelardo de la Espriella is going to be the next president. And even his party, the Pacto Historico on the left, is already preparing the
opposition and they know they have lost.
So, at this point, it's going to be Petro setting up what might be a heated transition. I don't know how that is going to unfold. But all the basic
factors of power, the armed forces, the judicial system, the electoral system and the politicians and people in general are pretty well set on
that Abelardo has won the election and that there will be a transference of power. It might be difficult, but I think people are more interested in the
World Cup at this point.
GOLODRYGA: I think Colombia is playing now. Are they playing today, tomorrow, playing soon?
PACHECO: Today.
GOLODRYGA: Today. OK. We're rooting for Colombia today. Abelardo de la Espriella got a complete and total endorsement. That was the post from
President Trump. He posted that he won big in all caps. We said, though, that this was a rather tight election when it came down to the final count
here. He came in far under the five to seven points that had been predicted. So, how much of a factor in his win was President Trump's
endorsement?
PACHECO: You know, I think it didn't help him at the end. Abelardo's lead was wider before the Trump endorsement. The way that Trump talked about the
election, it shows that he doesn't really know what happened in Colombia.
But we are expecting this alliance with the United States, which Colombia had historically very strong ties to Washington in the region before the
Gustavo Petro presidency, will become even stronger. And they will unfold in different terms around this Donroe Doctrine, which is basically the
Monroe Doctrine in which the United States had defined Latin America as its backyard in which it could interfere with the Donald Trump addition or
addenda, which means that he will intervene in the issues that he finds important, which are drug trafficking, migration and, in general, security.
So, that is going to be an important factor, mainly because there are a lot of friendly presidents aligned to Trump in the region. So, it will be
interesting to see how much interventionism we will see, how much pushback against the growing influence of China and Russia in the region and how
effective they will manage to be fighting, you know, the perpetual drug war against cocaine, which has yielded very few results on the ground here in
Colombia.
GOLODRYGA: That's right. We see Milei, Bukele, Kast. This is seen as a shift to the right within the region. Is this an ideological new wave that
we are seeing or is these just constituents who are frustrated with the incumbents and are basically casting a vote for anybody but the same?
PACHECO: You know, that is a great question because we had a previous left-wing wave, which is being replaced very radically with a pendulum like
going very fast to the right in this election. I think there is something they have tapped into that it was present in 2016. You guys went through it
with the Brexit. We did also with a referendum around the peace accord.
[13:15:00]
So, I think there is a part of Colombians who are identified and who really think that there is an ideological shift. I think it will be key to see
what happens in 2028 when the U.S. elections are coming and when we will actually see if that leadership that stems from the United States is able
to have a second presidency.
And if that influence manages to make a cohesive ideological block in the continent, it will also be very interesting to see what Abelardo de la
Espriella finally turns out to be because he hasn't had office previously.
He has no experience. And Colombia is a hard country to manage. We have armed groups. We have a very strong opposition. You know, he won very
narrowly. We have problems with the health system. We have fiscal problems.
So, it will be very interesting to see if he can be the leader of the new right in Colombia, which has had a leader, a very strong historical figure
in the presence of Alvaro Uribe Velez, which maybe you might remember.
GOLODRYGA: De la Espriella is a novice politician. That is important to note. He was an attorney before that and a controversial one. He was
somebody who'd spent his entire career defending paramilitaries and even a Maduro money launderer. And now, he's basically vowing to dismantle these
very networks that he was defending.
And let's just talk about some of these promises he campaigned on a 90-day crackdown, peace talks, scrapped mega prisons to be built. He would model
on the Bukele fashion that we've seen and basically take a chainsaw to government spending. He won by the narrowest mandate, if not one of the
narrowest mandates in Colombia's history. How much of those promises will he actually be able to deliver?
PACHECO: We'll see. I can anticipate that not many of them, you know, Colombia has not built a mega prison in the last decade and he vows to
build a 10 in his four years. So, those were like the main points in a program of government that was not important in the election because the
election was all about like El Tigre, the lights video produced with A.I., which pictured his opponents in very strange situations.
So, I think we have some first signals, which were his victory speech. He took a very stark turn in his victory speech. He seemed more moderate. And
now, we are waiting to see how he starts building his cabinet. And that will give you a sign of whether he will be a true populist, a hard right
populist, or whether he'll be co-opted by the right leaning establishment, which has governed Colombia with successes and not so many successes for
many decades.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. And we'll be obviously watching his record on human rights as well going forward. Nonetheless, a significant shift in politics in
Colombia today. Thank you so much. Daniel Pacheco will be rooting for Colombia at the World Cup. I know that's what you'll be watching closely.
PACHECO: I hope (INAUDIBLE).
GOLODRYGA: OK. OK. All right. Stay with CNN. We'll be right back after the break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[13:20:00]
GOLODRYGA: We turn now to the U.K. Again, as the country reels from the Prime Minister Keir Starmer's resignation, plunging the country into
uncertainty. The nation is also marking a milestone, 10 years since Brexit.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIGEL FARAGE, THEN-U.K. INDEPENDENCE PARTY LEADER: Dare to dream that the dawn is breaking on an independent, United Kingdom.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: In many ways, a historic referendum in which Brits voted to leave the European Union can inform this current moment in British politics
and how we got here, from political instability to the rise of populism.
Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson rode an anti-establishment wave urging voters to take back control from the E.U. in Brussels, with false promises
of hundreds of millions of pounds extra for the National Health Service. But while 52 percent of the population got on board and opted to leave, 10
years on, the cost is clear. Independent economic analysts estimate that the hit to the GDP is anywhere between 4 to 8 percent.
So, let's bring in two journalists well-placed to unpack all of this, the Guardians Jonathan Freedland and Gillian Tett of The Financial Times.
Welcome, both of you. Let me start with you, Jonathan, just to take a walk down memory lane and get your perspective on where you were that day, ten
years ago, when England officially voted to leave the E.U.
JONATHAN FREEDLAND, COLUMNIST, THE GUARDIAN: Yes, the whole of the U.K. were taken out by that vote. I was in the newsroom at The Guardian
newspaper in the dead of night, all through the night, because I was in charge of our opinion coverage that night. And we saw it turn, because even
Nigel Farage, who we saw there, just as the polls closed around 10:00 at night, said, I think we've lost it, and, you know, consoled his supporters.
And then it turned as the night went on.
As soon as the actual results came in, you saw the areas that, you know, were traditional Labour heartlands, post-industrial areas, many of them,
had voted to leave and voted in huge numbers. And so, by dawn, it was very clear this had happened. And I remember feeling extremely glum that
something hugely significant had happened, that the country I love had moved to sever itself from its nearest neighbors, and that this was against
the will of so many people.
The young were hugely against it. Scotland voted against it. Big cities voted against it. So, the margin was so narrow for such a huge and profound
move. And I think, as you said in that introduction, more or less all the evidence that's come in in the 10 years since has shown that this really
was a needless act of self-harm, for which we're still paying the price.
GOLODRYGA: Of course. Thanks for that correction. I said England, and it was the United Kingdom as a whole that voted to leave. By a narrow margin,
forgive the American here.
Gillian, it was 10 years ago that one of Brexit's leading campaigners, Daniel Hannan, who made this promise about what leaving the E.U. would mean
for Britain and its future. Listen to what he said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
DANIEL HANNAN, THEN-EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT MEMBER, BRITISH CONSERVATIVE PARTY: The British people will be the chief beneficiaries. We will benefit from
getting our democracy back, our laws back, our borders back. And above all, we'll be able to trade with the whole world and be a global country
pursuing its maritime and global vocation.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
GOLODRYGA: Ten years on, how much of that promise, Gillian, has been delivered?
GILLIAN TETT, COLUMNIST, THE FINANCIAL TIMES: Well, it's very hard to hear those words without feeling a tremendous sense of bitterness, because that
has not played out at all.
I was in New York when the Brexit vote happened and was very shocked. These days, I'm both writing for The Financial Times, but I also oversee King's
College at Cambridge, and we just had a big conference on Brexit. And one of the interesting facts that came out of that is that two-thirds of
British people now think it was a bad idea to leave the European Union, but only one-third actually want to rejoin.
And the reason is that in some ways, Britain's gone through the equivalent of a protracted divorce for the last 10 years, where you have two parents
who are so focused on arguing with each other all the time that they actually forget to look after the kids. And in this case, there's been such
a sense of political poison around the word Brexit and endless arguments about it that many of the key structural challenges facing Britain have
simply not been addressed to do with productivity, infrastructure, education, things like that.
So, Brexit has not just been damaging in terms of the economic cost of losing those trade links or having to reformulate them. It's been
desperately damaging in terms of the distraction it's provided as well, and that is an utter tragedy.
[13:25:00]
GOLODRYGA: And, Jonathan, one of the promises that the Brexit supporters had run on and campaigned on was taking back control of the country. They
promised stability. Here we are 10 years later. Britain is about to see its seventh prime minister in 10 years. Is that chaos Brexit's doing or is it
just bad candidates?
FREEDLAND: No, it is certainly related because Britain didn't used to change prime ministers or anything like this regularly. As you say, it will
be seven in 10 years. Before then, you'd have to go back 40 or 50 years to have had that number. So, it definitely did release a kind of poison into
the system, but also a volatility.
But I think above all, what it did was that it was both symptom and cause of this instability. Symptom in the sense that there were huge numbers of
voters who were just desperate to see a change in their life. Wages stagnant really since the crash in 2008. Somebody -- one commentator puts
it, the country hasn't had a pay rise in sort of 20 years. People wanted to do something that would change things. And therefore, they thought leave
meant leaving your current reality rather than staying in it. And so, they voted leave.
This, of course, didn't bring that promised change. If anything, actually, it's made it worse because the economic circumstances are even harder. And
so, therefore, this frustration and this need for change is constantly looking for another outlet, another lever to pull. And each time it only
breeds more frustration and more impatience. And I think that's what we're seeing in our political cycle now is a kind of collective national
impatience. Right. We've tried that. It didn't work. Next. Who can come along next time?
But that desire for huge change, I think, was the driver for Brexit, which raised all these false hopes. You heard it there with Daniel Hannan. The
disappointment itself has become this kind of doom loop of frustration and impatience. And it's just getting, the cycles are getting narrower and
narrower.
GOLODRYGA: And, Gillian, Brexit supporters were also promising that leaving the E.U. would jumpstart the economy. They were predicting that the
U.K. could turn into Singapore-on-the-Thames, that without all the regulatory hurdles and the red tape imposed on from Brussels, that you
could actually start to see free markets and the economy and trade thriving.
So, then why are we now disputing whether this was actually a net negative for the economy, anywhere losing from 8 to 2 percent in GDP growth over the
last 10 years?
TETT: Well, there were always two contradictory views of Brexit presented by the pro-Brexit camp. One was for the equivalent of Singapore-on-the-
Thames, a very open free market international economy without too much regulation, et cetera., et cetera. The other was for a much more backward
looking, paternalistic little England model, which had a very different vision of how Brexit would play out.
The hedge funds and others who backed the idea of Brexit wanted the first model. In practice, the politicians who came in had been aiming more for
the second. And one of the bitter ironies of Brexit is that in the intervening 10 years, in some ways, Britain's actually become more
European, both in terms of our political system, because we now have not just two main parties and a third minor one. We've got basically five or
six parties competing with each other, very Continental European, although we don't have the coalition building traditions of Continental Europe,
unfortunately.
And the economy as a whole, or the direction of policy, has gone more and more, if you like, European and being sort of quasi-socialist in many ways.
And that is very, very, very ironic indeed. And to get out of that, Britain's going to really have to think very hard about how it unleashes
animal spirits with a, you know, much more dynamic set of economic policies. They desperately need it right now. But the destruction of Brexit
and arguing about that has prevented the government from finding those.
GOLODRYGA: And Britain's exports of goods and services have been reduced by about 12 percent, agriculture and food exports falling about 30 percent.
But there has been some upside as well when we talk about the investment in artificial intelligence, let's say, and even renewed interest in financial
services in the United Kingdom.
When you're weighing the pros and the cons, are there any benefits economically that we have seen transpire, Gillian?
TETT: There are benefits, for sure. Certainly, having a more flexible and nimble A.I. regime could potentially be very helpful for the U.K. if it
took a really full advantage of that. It's worth pointing out, though, that France has also got a very extensive tech and A.I. sector, even within the
E.U. So, you can't just say that being inside the E.U. kills off your tech and A.I. industry at all. So, that's one advantage for the U.K.
[13:30:00]
And again, having more freedom around the financial services could be a major advantage. But the signs are that the population doesn't want massive
deregulation of financial services or, indeed, almost anything else right now. And that's part of the problem.
GOLODRYGA: And even a burgeoning A.I. industry in the U.K. pales in comparison to what we're seeing in both the United States and China, where
there's a lot of Jonathan, let's talk about something else that voters were promised, and that was control of immigration. Instead, arrivals hit record
highs.
Has anyone been held to account for some of these false promises, whether it's the NIH seeing an increase in revenue because of this, or a promise to
really clamp down on immigration?
FREEDLAND: No, I don't think anyone has really been held to account. I mean, only in the sense that perhaps one of the big faces of the leave
campaign, Boris Johnson, was elevated, became prime minister, which in some ways maybe was his goal all along. But he was driven out of office, but not
because of this. He was driven out because of his breaking of COVID lockdown rules rather than his broken promises. But people do refer now to
the Boris wave of immigration.
So, here was the guy heading up a campaign that was really fueled by and driven by fears and antipathy to immigration. And yet, the numbers
rocketed, as you say, in the years after Brexit. I think that has changed a lot of the politics around this issue, because nobody can now say, well,
the way to keep migration numbers down is leaving the E.U. Quite the reverse. The immigration numbers absolutely leapt after our exit from the
European Union.
And I don't want to sort of trade poll numbers too much with Gillian, but I think she said, you know, only a third favored rejoining. There is a steady
stream of polls that actually show a settled majority of British voters would favor rejoining. And a huge majority would favor much closer
relations. They don't necessarily put it high on their list of issues. That's definitely true. But they have come to that view that it was a
mistake, and if we could rejoin, we should. The question is how you turn that into a political issue.
At the moment, the politicians are way behind. They don't want to touch it, because it was so divisive, so polarizing. But I think voters, particularly
younger voters, the next generation, are ahead of the politicians on this. And they do think that if a country makes a hugely wrong decision, then the
best thing to do is to unmake that decision. And I think in the next five, 10, 12 years, you're going to hear more and more about that.
GOLODRYGA: That is an interesting point to make, because those who you're arguing oppose Brexit are not touching it right now, even though the polls
show that perhaps even the majority of those in the U.K. now would favor rejoining.
But even those who were its strongest advocates, like Nigel Farage, he's rarely defending it at the same rate and the same enthusiasm level that we
saw at the time as well. Yet Reform U.K. is stronger than ever. So, how do you explain that? Is it just other social issues, Jonathan, that he's been
able to grasp onto?
FREEDLAND: Yes, indeed. You've analyzed it exactly right. He has moved as an issue away from Brexit. He hardly speaks about it anymore. It's as if
it's a sort of embarrassing secret from his past. He barely talks about it. He moved on to migration. That's harder now because the numbers are coming
down, but he still goes hard on that.
And with looking over his right shoulder, where there is a far-right party breathing down his neck, he's going deeper and deeper into those cultural
issues, culture war issues. Even, you know, just a couple of weeks ago, trying to inflame opinion here after a young white man was stabbed and
police didn't go to his aid and he called for cold, pure rage.
I think he's trying to ignite divisions, exploit divisions, feast on grievance, but not really talk about Brexit because that is embarrassing.
He's the guy who, you know, ran the restaurant where everyone got food poisoning. You know, he brought to the country Brexit and he didn't. We're
choking on it now still. So, he doesn't talk about that.
And I wonder whether his party is, when you say stronger than ever, there's some indications that he maybe was at its peak six, nine months a year ago,
but he's fallen short in two or three, what Americans call special district elections, these small parliamentary elections for individual seats. Three
times in a row now, they were expected to win and didn't, or could have won, but didn't.
So, I'm not sure about whether we've passed peak Farage. We may have done, but he doesn't want to talk about what has been his signature contribution
to British politics. Huge, which was taking Britain out of the European Union. I think even he and his own supporters know best not to talk about
that.
GOLODRYGA: And he may even be facing a challenge from an even further right party as well at this point. Gillian, a lot has changed in the last
10 years. The world looks quite different. We have Russia's war in Ukraine, obviously. We had the war in Iran, October 7th.
[13:35:00]
Some things, though, have not changed, and that is who was in the Oval Office just a few months after the Brexit vote. We saw the election of
Donald Trump here, and some had perhaps naively assumed that if the U.K. had separated itself from the E.U., which the President of the United
States, we know, has long viewed negatively, that perhaps the relationship between these two countries could be stronger. How do things look now?
TETT: Well, there's been a very nasty awakening, I think, for the British people because they believed the whole rhetoric around the special
relationship for a long time. And yes, in ceremonial, symbolic terms, it's still there. King Charles did a truly fantastic job when he went across to
America, you know, a few weeks ago and managed to really feast on that special relationship meme, that symbolism.
But the reality is that Britain is pretty small in American eyes. Many Americans I speak to around the White House are pretty scathing, both about
Europe and about Britain as well. You know, there are many other bigger challenges to focus on. And Britain's strength has traditionally been
acting as a hinge, if you like, between the U.S. and the European Union, and actually as a hinge for other bilateral relationships as well. And of
course, being out of the European Union makes it harder for the U.K. to do that.
So, the first, you know, key for U.K. to win respect in the U.S. will indeed to be creating an economy that's vibrant, to have a military that's
vibrant, not starved of money, as it currently is, and to have some sense of political stability. I mean, at the moment, the tragedy of Britain is
that it looks like Italy in terms of its politics, or looks like Italy used to be in terms of its political upheaval and turbulence. But without the
good food and without usually as much sunshine, it's very sunny right now.
GOLODRYGA: Listen, do I need to defend the U.K. now? I do think that the food and the restaurant scene has quite improved. I actually love eating.
TETT: (INAUDIBLE).
GOLODRYGA: I'm also --
TETT: (INAUDIBLE).
GOLODRYGA: Sorry. What did you say? Yes.
TETT: If you are an investor right now in the gilt market in the U.K., it's very hard to use the models they used to use to actually game out
what's going to happen politically or economically, because there are now so many parties jostling with each other. And because we have a first pass
system for voting, it's not like Continental Europe.
You know, small swings in the vote can have incredibly big impacts in terms of the composition of the next parliament. And that's really hard for
investors to try and model or predict.
GOLODRYGA: Yes. I mean, I think that there could be another way to sum up what these last 10 years have been like. And you'll recall that there was
great fear in the E.U. that this would cause a domino effect that other nations would want to follow suit. That didn't happen. So, perhaps there is
your telltale sign that this didn't go according to plan.
Jonathan Freedland, Gillian Tett, great to have you on. Thank you so much for joining.
TETT: Thank you.
FREEDLAND: Good to be with you.
GOLODRYGA: We'll be right back after this short break.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
GOLODRYGA: Well, America's 250th anniversary of independence is approaching. And when it comes to celebrations, the rivalry between
President Trump's Freedom 250 group and bipartisan nonprofit America 250 signals a fray in the country's unity and founding ideals.
[13:40:00]
So, how do we tell the American story when we can't agree on a common narrative? Yoni Applebaum is the Deputy Executive Editor of The Atlantic
and he examines this question with Walter Isaacson.
WALTER ISAACSON, CO-HOST, AMANPOUR AND CO.: Thank you, Bianna. And, Yoni Applebaum, welcome back to the show.
YONI APPLEBAUM, DEPUTY EXECUTIVE EDITOR, THE ATLANTIC: Thank you.
ISAACSON: We're about to celebrate our 250th. Why is it important that we have a narrative, a narrative of our history in order to celebrate our
birthday?
APPLEBAUM: You know, this was a country built on an idea that we are each equal to each other and that we are committed to a common project. And in a
nation that is built around an idea, not to be able to tell that story, not to be able to call back to that common past, a past that even new arrivals
to this country are able to adopt as their own, leaves us unable to come together in any kind of national celebration and leaves the future of that
project, I think, uncertain in itself.
ISAACSON: Well, you talk about us having a narrative that's sort of based on values rather than being a nation that's based on land and heritage and
common backgrounds. Let me read you a sentence from the piece you wrote in The Atlantic. You say a nation defined by blood and soil built around a
shared religion or ethnicity can survive divergent narratives. To a country built on an idea, though, and bound together by a shared understanding of
our history, the inability to tell a common story might well prove fatal.
I mean, fatal, that's a punch of a word. You know, why could it be the death of us all?
APPLEBAUM: I think that you can look back at previous crises in American history, most notably the decades leading up to the Civil War, where there
was a radical disjunction in the stories that Americans told themselves about what the country was and what it stood for. Those can be really hard
to resolve.
I think a lot of Americans, and I number myself among them, are worried about where the country is at present, concerned that increasing number of
Americans no longer believe in this nation's promise, no longer see themselves as part of a single common project, but instead are concerned
that there may be more than one narrative that has taken root, that they may be at odds with each other. And that's an incredibly difficult thing to
resolve.
ISAACSON: So, tell me, what is, in your mind, the national narrative? How do things become coherent?
APPLEBAUM: You know, I think that there are three narratives that are out there at the moment. The one that I think most Americans still subscribe to
is one that emerges over the last 50 years. And it says, look, America as a country founded on a set of ideals. Those were good ideals. They are
timeless ideals. It's also the case that we have seldom lived up to them, that the 250 years of the American past are a continual struggle in which
we measure ourselves against those ideals.
On the whole, we've moved forward and sometimes we have moved backwards. We've applied those ideals unequally to different groups at different
times. But the project, the grand American experiment, remains worth pursuing, even if, like most aspirational ideals, we don't always live up
to the founding vision.
ISAACSON: And that was what I think was taught in the '60s, '70s, '80s. Why did that unravel?
APPLEBAUM: You know, it's come under attack from both flanks at once. On the left, there's a revolution that happens in the study of history. The
doors to the academy widened. Women are able to enter the historical profession in large numbers. Members of the highest minority groups enter.
This is a wonderful advance for the country. They set about telling many of the forgotten and neglected stories. They set about weaving in to the
fabric of American history many of the darker episodes that had received insufficient attention. That's a positive development.
But as time goes on, instead of those being the contrapuntal notes in sort of a national tune, they become dominant. They become the only things that
are pursued and taught by some scholars.
ISAACSON: Are you referring in some ways to the 1619 Project then? Because I know you write about it quite a bit in this piece.
APPLEBAUM: That is an element of the 1619 Project, that it looks back and says, you know, the defining moment in American history is the start of
slavery, not the Declaration of Independence. And it comes out of a scholarly tradition that has flourished in the previous 30, 40 years that
says the things that are distinctive about America are its wrongs, its sins, that these are the things that differentiate America from other lands
and other nations.
[13:45:00]
ISAACSON: Wait. And you're talking about the 1619 Project, let's make sure people understand that it was a project done by The New York Times and
others, a whole group of people that had a big impact in the past five or 10 years, right? Explain who did it and what she now says about it.
APPLEBAUM: Well, it was put together by a journalist at The Times named Nikole Hannah-Jones. What she did was put together an assemblage of
scholars to contribute essays that wouldn't just be about the black experience in America, but would try to rewrite the American narrative
centering the black experience, not telling a separate story, but retelling the national story from that perspective.
In many ways, it reflected the fruits of this new flourishing of scholarship that we get as the diversity of historians who are telling the
American story increases. There's lots of really good history in that project. But on the whole, the frame is that America starts in a dark place
and remains a country defined by its injustices. That is the overall thrust of the project.
And it provokes a furious backlash from the right, which has in any case been pushing back against this sort of history for decades and which says,
no, you're getting America all wrong. This is a nation that was conceived with godly purpose. And to the extent that we have sometimes deviated from
our high ideals, that's a matter for the footnotes, that the key notes to sound about American history are only the triumphal ones.
If we have deviated from our ideals, it's not to say that those conceptions were ever flawed or that the men who made those mistakes shouldn't be taken
to be representative of the American project. We should focus on the things we've done right. And that triumphalist narrative, a sort of a hyper-
American narrative, comes to take root on the right.
And President Trump in his first term, in response to the 1619 project, launches a 1776 commission that will try to advance a patriotic history.
Instead of emphasizing only the bad in American history, it will try to look only at the good.
And so, you get this this sort of downward spiral as the right and the left put forward to diametrically opposed versions of history. And neither one
looks anything like what Americans tell us they believe about the past or want to learn about the past. Overwhelmingly, Americans say our country is
complicated. I want to know the bad and the good. I want to grapple with the complexity. I want the full picture. I want the honest truth. That's
where most Americans are. It's not the narrative that you can find on either extreme at the moment.
ISAACSON: You talk about how both sides of the far left, the far-right, have tried to grab the narrative and make it their own in different ways.
And that that's caused part of this problem. But you also write about another cause of this problem, which is we quit teaching history. Why did
we do that?
APPLEBAUM: You know, it was one of the remarkable things I found researching this was sort of an unexpected downside of the educational
reforms in the Bush administration that the No Child Left Behind reforms. These were intended to make sure that schools throughout the country were
not failing their students by imposing national standards and testing rigorously to make sure that schools met them.
They agreed on standards for math. They agreed on standards for English. They shoved history to one side, not because they thought it was
unimportant, but because it was so fiercely contested that threatened to sink the entire endeavor.
And the, I suppose, predictable result was that schools that started struggling on math or English to meet the standards would cut the classroom
time devoted to history and social studies on average by a third in the years right after NCLB passed. That high schools, which had often athletic
coaches who it needed to find full time jobs for, you know, move them out of English and math classrooms and into history classrooms where their
performance wasn't going to be evaluated in the same way, the school's funding wouldn't be tied to it.
History became sort of the neglected stepchild of our K to 12 educational system. And that's not to say that there aren't fine history teachers out
there, that there are many who are laboring mightily in America's classrooms. But it is sort of the ironic result of history having been so
important to everyone that they couldn't agree on what we should teach, is that history has received fewer resources. History instructors are much
less likely to have a degree in the subject that they're teaching than teachers in other subjects. It has become something that really gets short
shrift in the educational system.
[13:50:00]
ISAACSON: And so, now, as we go into the 250th, give me some examples of where you see the abandonment. These are your words, the abandonment of the
effort to tell the American story. And could we have used I think we missed the chance. Could we have used this anniversary celebration to restore
that?
APPLEBAUM: You know, we've had two presidential administrations involved in planning the 250th in a heavy way. The Biden administration failed in
one direction rather than create ten poll unifying events or really try to put any kind of narrative behind the celebration. It leans in sort of an
almost caricature of the progressive approach to these things.
It launched a big oral history initiative to ask every American to tell their own story. It created sort of downloadable kits that local
organizations, museums, historical societies could use to brand the things that they were going to be doing anyway. Every individual, every community
was encouraged to tell the story for itself. But there was really no ability to pull together anything common for fear of what would be
excluded, who would be offended.
And so, there was a total abdication. On the other hand, the Trump administration has come in and it very much loves spectacle. It has wanted
to create big events. What it has not had any desire to do is to create unifying events. These events that we've seen so far, like the UFC match on
the South Lawn, have been semi-partisan spectacles that put the president right at the heart of it. He's now scheduled to kick off a big state fair
here in Washington, D.C. with a speech putting, again, a more partisan valence.
It's a group he personally controls, which has taken over much of the celebrations. A group called Freedom 250 has really seized the funding and
the mantle from the congressionally chartered America 250 Commission.
And so, if the Democrats couldn't think of any unifying story for the country to tell itself, the Trump administration has tacked hard in the
opposite direction. It has a story it wants to tell, but it is a narrowly partisan vision and one that excludes many Americans.
And so, we're left with really an absence of the kind of unifying spectacle. And that's really strange. It's often been the case that these
anniversary years have come about in really difficult moments. It's not as if this is a unique challenge. It is a unique failure.
ISAACSON: One of the expressions of the partisan forces ripping apart history came with the monument removals and then the backlash to the
monument removals. Why did that all occur and what effect did that have?
APPLEBAUM: You know, the protest movements that began by targeting the Confederate memorials took the classic tack of the left through most of
American history and said there are things that are not living up to American ideals.
Erecting a statue of somebody who took up arms against this country is a betrayal of basic patriotism. That was the initial argument. And it
garnered broad public support for the removal of those Confederate memorials, but very quickly spun well beyond those bounds. And instead of
leveling that same critique, it resulted in the removal of many other statues of historical figures for various sins they were said to have
committed.
And at that point, it sort of jumped over into the kind of narrative of the American past that stresses the sins above the triumphs, that says to the
extent that any particular historical character can be tied to wrongdoing, that then that person is no saint and shouldn't be memorialized. But all of
our founders were not saints. Very few of us are saints either.
And so, the holding down in the spasm of iconoclasm of many, many statues left, I think, a great many Americans feeling as if their own understanding
of themselves and their country was being threatened. And we saw a sudden and dramatic ebbing of support for that movement and a backlash against it.
And now, Donald Trump is promising a statuary park with 250 great Americans, including statues of many folks who were removed in that spasm
of iconoclasm.
So, you know, again and again, we see the cycle of action and counter reaction instead of an effort to bridge the chasm and to find the common
things that we can rally around.
ISAACSON: Yoni Applebaum, thanks so much for joining us.
APPLEBAUM: Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
[13:55:00]
GOLODRYGA: And finally, World Cup fever is well and truly here, and not even a two-hour storm break in Philadelphia could stop the party. I
actually watched this game yesterday.
France fans are seen here celebrating and singing following their national team's rain-soaked victory over Iraq and Algeria claimed their first
victory in the tournament against Jordan. It's a win that not only brought great joy at home, but also a shared triumph for Lawrence, Kansas, home of
the Algerian squad's base camp. It's a small college city that's embraced the team as its own. Some have dubbed this tournament as a giant
international sleepover. And seeing these scenes, it is hard to disagree.
Best of luck to all of those playing incoming matches. England's playing today, I believe, and Colombia as well, as we noted in the show earlier.
All right. That is it for now. Thank you so much for watching, and goodbye from New York.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[14:00:00]
END
