Is Trump a Russian asset? Fiona Hill on the President she worked for | The News Agents

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Some people say, is Donald Trump a Russian asset?

He actually had a very different risk calculation.He got emboldened.Trump himself is very prone to conspiracy theories.

Are you the one who would say to him, I mean, this is batshit?

Trump would sometimes pick up on things.He'd realize this is Russian propaganda.He's become a kind of King George.

King George was mad, wasn't he?Today you'll be hearing the unmistakable voice of Fiona Hill, the Durham girl who worked for Donald Trump, has been right at the heart of his first administration and has got plenty to tell us about the state of the world.

And she's also been a key person in advising this government on what it needs to do now that we have an unreliable partner in America.Welcome to the News Agents USA.It's Jon.It's Maitlis.And Fiona Hill is this remarkable figure that when I was living in Washington you suddenly heard this kind of key figure who's part of the national security establishment in America and you think that ain't no American accent she's speaking with.She is from the North East and she's got a fascinating backstory.

She became a key person advising Donald Trump in the White House, was with him on a number of overseas trips and is trying to advise him in terms of relations with Russia, which is her expertise, and worked very closely with John Bolton, the National Security Advisor, and then took part in the first impeachment trial of Donald Trump, which, as you might imagine, didn't exactly put her in Donald Trump's shoes.Good books.

Yeah, she is a fluent Russian speaker, as you'll hear later, and a witness in those House hearings of November of2019.And she is also the Chancellor of Durham University.So she sort of straddles, as it were, the UK and her extraordinary knowledge of the US.And she spends a lot of time thinking very closely about security, about our defence, and about the position that other countries are now having towards America under Donald Trump, this sort of overly bright shining star who sucks up everything around him.

Yeah, and she was co -author of the strategic defence review that Lord Robertson, George Robertson, has written and which the government has got really cross with George Robertson about after Robertson said, you know, the government was being complacent about national security and was talking the talk and wasn't walking the walk.So she's also playing a role, even though she lives in America and is very rarely in the UK, in kind of a very key part of UK politics right now.Well, we're delighted to be joined by Fiona Hill.I want to start, we're obviously going to talk a lot about Donald Trump, the difference between the first term and the second term, and the way that international relationships have developed or deteriorated.And it seems that the British ambassador Christian Turner has been overheard on a hot mic saying to school children that America's only special relationship is not with us the British but it's with Israel.What do you make of that?

Well, it's capturing something that at present is accurate.I mean, the United States and Israel have gone to war together against Iran.And that obviously is indicative of a very deep and very important relationship.And it was done, of course, for Israel'ssecurity.Now, there are historic reasons, you know, for why the United States is so heavily invested in the relationship with Israel.

I mean, the United States was one of the first countries to recognize the creation of Israel.I mean, there have been some tensions, you know, obviously, in that relationship over time.But of course, if you look at the composition of the US population in terms of religious affiliation, and we also know that often Judaism is at least linked or associated with an identity that goes beyond just a pure religious affiliation, rightly or wrongly, let's just stress that, because that obviously is controversial.But you don't always think, for example, that people who are Presbyterians are all Scots or people who are Church of England, just using the kind of British examples, are all English, for example, Episcopalian.But there is a tendency to associate that with a larger identity.And of course, the largest population of people who identify as Jewish outside of Israel is in the United States, about 7 million.

Now, of course, there's all of the back and forth about the implications of all of this, but the United States has been very committed to the support of Israel for a long time.There is a very important constituency in terms of voters and others who support Israel.There's lots of exchanges back and forth.But over time, I would say certainly from the first Trump administration onwards, you've seen a much closer relationship emerging with the government of Benjamin Netanyahu, which I think has been quite different from part perhaps, you know, more of a general support of Israel that we might have seen under previous administrations.

You go back to the Suez crisis and Britain gets into massive trouble with America for starting a war in the Middle East that America disapproves of.And now Britain is in trouble for not getting involved in a war that Donald Trump has started with Israelthat didn't get congressional approval.The UN were totally sidestepped.And now Donald Trump is berating NATO for not doing more.What does this tell us about how Donald Trump sees the world order, if he does at all?

Well, it does get back, actually, to that point about the relationship with Israel.This has been extraordinarily close.one in terms of intelligence and, you know, in terms of political relationships, also focused on the creation of the Abraham Accords.I mean, that has become a kind of a cornerstone of US policy in the Middle East as well.And I think when you're referring back to Suez, the United States had a very different position on how it saw the Middle East unfolding at the time.It saw France and the UK, I mean, there's a certain irony in all of this, of course, as colonial powers that were still kind of basically trying to intervene in a way that the United United States at that time disapproved of.

And, you know, as the relationships have shifted, of course, if you think back to 1956 and Suez, the French realise that their relationship with the United States wasn't too special.And they tended to chart their own path in terms of their affiliation with NATO and other choices they made, including on their nuclear defence, for example.And the UK took the opposite decision to kind of double down on the relationship and try to hug the United States closer.But over time, all these tensions have built up with the United States and the United Kingdom.If you think back to Iraq and 2003, of course, it was actually another war that was decided on in conjunction with the United Kingdom then in 2003 with Iraq.I mean, Tony Blair and the Blair government were heavily involved in that decision making about Iraq.

But, you know, fast forward 23 years, we've obviously had a lot of shifts.And I think that this is actually what we're looking at here.We've got a shifting world order.We've got shifting perceptions of alliances.Donald Trump and people around him have felt that the UK, along with many other European countries,notwithstanding the UK's involvement in Iraq and before that in Afghanistan, have not been moving in step with the way that the United States' emphasis on its global posture has shifted.

Now, again, I said this is not without irony, because in the national security strategy that was published just last year in 2025, the United States seemed to downplay its positions and interests in the Middle East.It had the Western Hemisphere, its own region of Palau, Mexico and all the West at the top, basically restoring the defensive posture of the United States within its own region, immediate region.Then, of course, was the Asia -Pacific.We've been having this pivot in the United States towards Asia, going back to the Obama era, but actually still very much emphasizing that China and what was happening in the Asia -Pacific was uppermost.And then the Middle East was after that.But I think think, you know, that point in 2025, that idea of the Abraham Accords, that kind of cornerstone keeping Iran at bay, you know, would have been, I think, from the United States perspective, very much settled.

Now, obviously, those circumstances have changed.But we did see the United Kingdom and Europe, there was a bit of a shout out to the UK and Ireland as sort of having still a special affection in the United States thinking about Europe.But it was very much clear from the national security strategy that the whole intent was that Europe was going to pick up the slack, move on, that the United States was no longer in fact, this has been again, back to Obama and even earlier, an admonition to the UK and Europe to stand on your own two feet.you know, do more in terms of your, you know, support for your own defence, etc.But you've never really got away from that tie that the United States is very much still responsible for Israel's defence and protection as well.

I want to ask you, Fiona, about the way other countries respond to Trump.They used to use that phrase, you know, watch the hips, not the lips.In other words, let's see how he, he actions rather than what he says.But it seems now that we're in a new place, which is How do we, how do countries, or how does the press, or how does the media respond to this man that is literally absolutely at the centre of sort of everything right now?And in the first year of his second administration, 2024, it seemed that everyone was trying to be compliant.Everyone was trying to make the right moves, you know, turn up with a gold bar, do the right trade deal with him, you know.

And this year, there has been a reset, like the sort of the blindfolds come off and we've seen him in Venezuela and we've seen him in Greenland and we've seen him in Iran and people have gone, oh, right, we're backing off.I'm just trying to get a sense from you, whether you recognise that as a kind of, as a movement away from Trump and whether it's making us safer or less safe?

Well, look, I mean, in terms of the how things are all going to play out in this very turbulent and difficult geopolitical context, you know, that question of safer or less safe.I mean, we are in many respects less safe than we were before already because of all of these rifts and these ruptures.the fact that, you know, the UK and other allies were not consulted about the decision to go after Iran, take out the Ayatollah and the leadership and then to, you know, basically move forward with, you know, an operation where I think, I mean, even within the United States itself and very much so within the United States, there was already a reckoning intelligence and other circles that highly likely, if not inevitable, that Iran would close the Strait of Hormuz.So that already gives you a kind of a sense.And I think I just want to get back to the question is the way that you framed it.I think what people are seeing now that they didn't perhaps see the first time around, and perhaps people like myself and others have something to blame of that, that there were a lot of constraints and checks and balances still around Trump.

He wasn't uninhibited and unconstrained.I think there were more people who were willing at that point to basically push back.at some of the positions that he wanted to take.

But were these positions that you recognised from your work alongside him in the first administration?Yes.So he always wanted to do this stuff but he just got pushed back?

I think there were some things that he actually had a very different risk calculation.So I think he was more cognisant of the fact that some things could go wrong the first term.So I think what we've seen over the course of a very quick course of his first year is he got emboldened by his ability to kind of impress his will, both at home and abroad.And the really periods, I mean, a lot of people have said, why is there no pushback in the United States against President Trump?Well, you are starting to see it now.But at first, I think he's starting to see it on all kinds of different fronts.

It might not be coalescing, but he is getting pushback at home from the courts because they take quite some time to build up here.Maybe not in the way that people might want from the Supreme Court, but certainly you're still getting the undercutting of his position on tariffs, for example.You saw in Minneapolis and in Minnesota, people in the population there pushing back.You're getting a lot of questions actually in the Congress right now about, you know, the necessity, as you were already saying there, John, about was this really wise to attack Iran?As you said, I mean, the Congress didn't have any say in this too.There's all kinds of questions, you know, about this and questions about, you know, the kind of natures of the, you know, the relationships, you know, as a result that have

playing out across the Middle East.But you are starting to see a lot of people at the level of the states and big cities and the kind of question the way that Trump is behaving.And of course, I think that you've got a couple of watershed moments.Iran is definitely one of them, because the fallibility of the premise has now been proven.And all of the people who Trump would have seen as naysayers about talking about Iran going forward with the closure of Strait of Hormuz.I mean, this was well known.

It's one of the reasons why previous governments didn't do anything.And also within Israel itself, it was well known.I mean, you see within Israel, many of the intelligence people, both retired and current and former generals saying exactly the same thing.This was magical thinking that there would be no response like this from Iran.But prior to that, you've got Greenland.And, you know, you've also then had this whole series of insults and calling out Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office.

incident after incident where I think it's really got people focused now that this is a person who is uninhibited and basically just now does whatever he wants and he's not even responsive to public opinion or even to, you know, voter opinion.We'll see what happens in the midterms in his own country, let alone internationally.Oh, the fight with the Pope is another one.I mean, this is kind of an irony to me.You know, we talk about papal infallibility, but Trump's basically saying, no, I'm infallible.I don't Donald Trump and the Pope is very fallible.

I mean, taking the Pope on theology, on just war theory and on just any of his pronouncements.I mean, Trump has at this point, you know, in the kind of the American lexicon, you know, sort of, you know, that expression jumped the shark, gone a bit too far.This was from Happy Days and the Fonz in some kind of ridiculous end of show.I mean, I remember that.I'm not sure that everybody remembers that.remembers this, where Fonz is out water skiing and jumps over a shark.

And people think, oh, OK, they've lost it.They can't come up with any more plot lines.And I think that feeling is starting to happen in the US, that Trump is just going too far now.

So you've talked about the unrestrained Donald Trump.You've talked about the relationship with Netanyahu.I want to talk about another relationship, which is the Trump relationship with Vladimir Putin.You were in the room with a few of them, very few people in Helsinki, ahead of that news conference that they gave together.What is it?Look, some people say, is Donald Trump a Russian asset?

And I know it sounds a preposterous thing to say, because the Russians are controlling him as a spy working on behalf of the Russians, on behalf of the Kremlin.

But what is it?Well, it's basically like President Xi of China, there's this whole idea that for Trump he has very few peers on the global stage and of course from his point of view it's the ultimate strongmen are the people that he associates himself with.So as he's dissed the Pope and dismissed the Pope, that's kind of removed as one person with global reach and global recognition.And as far as he's concerned, the people who've got the most control, the most power, the most authority are Vladimir Putin on the one hand and President Xi on the other.And then within that, we started talking about the erosion of the UK -US special relationship, which has been ongoing for quite some period of time.But within that, there is a very special relationship with the royal family and with the king, and prior to that with the queen, because they have a cachet that Trump also doesn't have.

They have global recognition and global respect.They may not have the same kind of power.in a constitutional or real pragmatic sense as she and Putin do, but for Trump there are people who are at the apex or at the very top of a vertical of power.And as far as he's concerned, you know, if you went round the man in the street and said, who's this?I mean, chances are, most people would recognise Putin and Xi, even if they couldn't come up with their names.Oh, that's, you know, the Russian leader, or that's the Chinese leader.

And of course, most people would recognise either, you know, Queen Elizabeth II, now deceased late Queen, and then, of course, King Charles.And that's kind of what Putin, you know, for him, for Trump is, he wants his respect, and he wants to kind of bask in a way in reflected glory of Putin.But is it more than that?

I mean, the question that I think has surrounded this whole relationship is, does Putin have something on Trump, which makes Trump constantly bow to his will, rather than favouring Zelensky?

Yes, he has.something valuable and tangible that Trump wants, which is his respect, his adoration.

But not compromise.

Well, look, that's compromising, right?It's very compromising because if you are a KGB agent, you're looking for someone's biggest weakness and vulnerability.How can you manipulate them?And how can you turn them into an asset, witting or unwitting?If it's witting, you're obviously with money and all kinds of things and compromising material, which we all have on Donald Trump.I mean, come on.

I mean, how many lawsuits have there been?You know, how many exposés of things that he's done and said?And the corruption in the United States now that people are documenting is phenomenal of him and around of his family.So what could Putin possibly have that be more than that?Very clear.I mean, perhaps there is something, but, you know, Trump has been going to Russia since the 1980s.

And it's very clear that he responds to flattery.And even, you know, at the time of his first visits, everybody is seeing him as a sort of celebrity business person.has political aspirations, so of course they would be courting him.And so Putin is playing on that desire to be recognised as the greatest world historic figure.The first few things that Putin said about Trump, even when he hadn't really met him, was something about he's a very, he used this Russian term, яркий личность.And яркий is, you know, it was translated as bright, unique.

I mean, it can also be a slightly kind of backhanded compliment in the kind of Russian sense.Yeah, he really stands out.It's kind of, yes, you are unique.Shines a bit too brightly.Yeah, a bit too brightly, exactly.He's a bit of a person you don't see too often around.

And so Putin's very carefully doled out access to him for Trump.I mean, he'll say things when he wants to kind of lure Trump in that, you know, suggest that he said nice things about him and Trump immediately kind of responds.You know, in a way, I mean, it's it's almost as if they're in a kind of relationship, you know, something of a kind of romance where Putin is making sure he's a bit hard to get.And he's making himself a bit aloof and a bit inaccessible.He's not pandering and fawning all over Donald Trump.And same with Xi.

And obviously the king is not doing this either.So in a way, he is turning him into an asset because Trump wants to have basically Putin's respect and praise at all times.And he also is a bit intimidated by him as well, I would say.

And he's clearly learnt from Putin's playbook.He's learnt about the power of destabilisation of truth, right?you know, we are talking sort of three days after another attempted assassination.And you will know, we all know, that America is full, the internet is full of people who actually just don't now believe it, right?They don't believe what they saw inthe Washington Hilton.

They don't believe what they saw at Butler, Pennsylvania, that we are now entering into a place where we are doubting things that should be fundamental fact.I mean, is there any doubt in your mind that any of those attempts happen?Does that feel a ridiculous question?

It is a ridiculous question.But yes, it's obvious that that is the realm that we're in now.And it is a realm of misinformation, deliberate disinformation, that, again, is a vulnerability for exploitation from the outside.So, I mean, if you think about Russia and getting back to this, you know, what does Putin have?I mean, again, he knows that Trump himself is very prone to conspiracy theories.that Trump lives in a world of memes and all kinds of tropes and on his truth social, and he will actually take on board anything that is fed to him.

This is another massive weakness.I mean, when I was in the first administration, Trump would sometimes pick up on things.You realise this is Russian propaganda.That's actually what I said in the first impeachment.And the Russians are just amplifying all of this because they know that Trump will believe it.And if you think about the downing of MH17, the Malaysian Airlines flight across Ukraine, for example, remember the Russians said, oh, this was a CIA action or, oh, this was, you know, the Ukrainians firing on what they thought was Putin's plane that was crossing over territory nearby.

And just so many.It was it was a plane that was filled with corpses.that the CIA had produced from somewhere.This was literally in one of the ideas.The same thing with the Skripal poisonings in Salisbury.The UK did it to itself, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

There's all of these players all the time.But these are the kinds of players that Trump likes to engage in as well.Thinking about the accidental shelling or missile attack on the girls' school in Iran, Trump immediately says, well, maybe that was Iran.I mean, it can't be no.He doesn't really believe it, though, does it?He wants to believe it, but he also wants to deflect in the same way.

And again, there's a vulnerability in all of that.When you yourself are playing in that realm, it's one of the reasons I think the first time around many of us resolved that the reason that he did not want to go after Russian disinformation operations was because he wanted to engage in them himself.And if you go after foreign malign actors, you have to go after domestic malign actors, because they're using the same techniques.You know, the role of super PACs, the political action committees, that's what Putin has.I mean, essentially the troll factory that Evgeny Prigozhin used to run.And so in the sense, John, you're asking that question about being an asset.

I mean, that's how Trump is an asset, because he's got all these vulnerabilities, these weaknesses, these frailties, these vulnerabilities.He loves a good conspiracy.

And were you the one who would say to him, I mean, this is batshit.You can't, you know, this isn't serious.And how did he respond when you or Bolton or whoever would say this stuff to him?

Well, I mean, I didn't get a chance to say these things.I mean, you certainly said them publicly during the impeachment, but I'm not the kind of person that he would listen to.Bolton would try, John Bolton and HR McMaster.I mean, there were lots of his, you know, senior staff, the DNI at the time, Dan Coats.Gina Haspel when she was the CIA director, Pompeo, Mike Pompeo as well, and everybody would try to kind of refute these.And there's no one doing that now?

Yeah, I think it's highly unlikely that someone's doing this now.Now, the people around him, many of the people around him, including the current CIA director, of course they know better.But there's nobody really then trying to push back against all of this.And frankly, they can't.I mean, he's on the phone 24 -7 with people.He's on Truth Social every five seconds.

He's got all kinds ofpeople, you know, making memes and things for him that he's obviously not doing any quality control over.And I think, you know, the biggest risk at this point is just how many people can manipulate Trump.And I think that will be, you know, part of the questioning of, you know, as I said before, I mean, there are good reasons why the United States has a special and particular relationship with Israel.But I think there'll be a lot of questions later on as one, you know, goes back to this about how much was Trump, you know, manipulated or persuaded by things that he wanted to hear, rather than kind of listening to the alternatives.And that's kind of part of the problem.

Putin and others feed him things that he wants to hear.Yeah.

More from Fiona Hill in just a moment.

I want to talk about the people around Trump a little bit more.You were talking about the current CIA director.Let's look at the director of the FBI who's currently grappling with his new nickname, J Edgar Boozer.This is Kash Patel refuting allegations that he's an alcoholic on the job.Is it likely that Kash Patel can last in his job, that Tulsi Gabbard will last, that Peter Hegseth will last.These are all people who seem to be very loyal to Trump, who seem to be doing exactly what he wants, but don't convince large swathes of the American public that they can do their jobs.

Well, I think you've just hit the nail on the head there at the very end, because we saw with Kirstie Noem and others, Kirstie Noem, that I'm extraordinarily loyal to President Trump.I mean, loyal to a fault.But then she started to get too much blowback.and he started to feel that that made him look bad.the spending, some of the ways that she handled questions on Capitol Hill.The same thing with Pam Bondi.

He's better at firing women, isn't he?

Well, yes, I mean, I'm afraid so.And actually, you see that in the Pentagon as well, that most of the senior people who have been fired are women and then minorities, black generals.And in fact, actually, if you look at the federal government, the largest number of people who have been fired are black women.who were in senior positions across the federal government.That's why I'm telling you NDEI is it?It's quite insulting for anybody to think like, particularly women of an older generation like myself, nobody did any favours.

So the idea that you're there because you know, some guy, you know, was passed over is pretty ridiculous when you see the handful of people who are those senior positions.But the point, you know, more is, for getting back to what you were talking about, with the people who've lost their jobs so far, you see, there started to be a backlash against him.And so if he starts to perceive that this is making him look bad, I mean, he wanted those people in place.And obviously, Congress didn't do their jobs thoroughly, because, you know, there was plenty of reasons for not, you know, basically accepting the candidacies at the time.And the hearings, you know, we saw it became more of a partisan game.And even people who had qualms were pushed and, you know, very much pushed and pressed to overcome these, those very issues that they all raised at the time about people's abilities.

They still voted, yeah.So the question is really whether it makes him look bad and if this starts to make him look bad then yes they will go.

So assuming and assuming is going to do a lot of heavy lifting in this sentence but assuming that the midterms go badly for Trump as a lot of people are predicting and he's out of power in 28 and there is a new presidentin there.Does the Republican Party snap back to some kind of normality or is this fever where you can have this rampant corruption or you can just have these kind of statements being made that have no relationship and no grounding in truth continue?

You know, all of this depends on the scale of a loss in both the midterms and then in future elections.And if we can actually get through all of these elections, you know, relatively unscathed in terms of actually seeing, you know, the democratic systems.Are you confident?No, I'm not actually as confident as I wish I was, because, you know, in many respects, the United States electoral system is very resilient at the state level.But what President Trump has done is talk it down.like he's talked pretty much everything down in the United States, to the point that people no longer have the faith in those institutions.

And when you see reduced trust, you also increase polarization, because people do not believe anymore that these institutions are benevolent or neutral, in the sense that they believe that all of them have been captured, you know, by one group over another.So what President Trump has done is reduce people's faith in electoral systems that, as my former colleague Chris Krebs as well was saying, were incredibly resilient and actually produced, you know, in 2020.Isn't he now wanted for treason or something?Yes, Chris Krebs, yes, exactly, being pushed after by President Trump, you know, basically calling him a wise guy and all kinds of things because he was wise enough, you know, to kind of point out that the 2020 election was one of the most robust and, you know, well conducted elections in history.American history and got an accurate result.to actually run for office to say that they believe that the 2020 election was stolen is in the case itself a major point because you see in polling that so many people believe that was stolen.

So that's why I say I hesitate because if you've got so many people believing that elections don't matter, elections are stolen, that they don't want to vote, that they don't see this as a kind of part of their citizenship and they feel that they have no agency, you've already got a major problem.That makes it much more difficult because you'd have to have a mandate for change to tackle the issues moving forward about How do you reconstitute the Republican Party without the kind of MAGA?features that it's had up until now.So it's all about loyalty to Trump or whoever Trump is selecting as his heir.How do you make Congress do its job and go back to being the primary factor in American politics?How do you address this issue of the unified executive and whether the president should have all of these powers, which have accrued to the presidency over time?

This wasn't how everybody envisaged it.And look, it goes back, in fact, to Clinton, George W. Bush, Obama, all of them started to use executive orders more and more and more.And that's really the kind of problem here.And they haven't changed the legal system, but people have acquiesced in these executive powers and these executive orders.And that's where your problem is.And so we need a refresh.

And in many respects, 250 years on, maybe you need to go back to the states and have the states and their governors and mayors of major cities be part of the thinking about how do you refresh you know, American democracy from the bottom up, not just from the top down.

I think one of those questions is also for us in a way.It's unfair to ask you, but it's how we, how the media, how America's media covers Trump now.I was reading Timothy Snyder, the political scientist who actually, you know, moved abroad.

I mean, he's basically next to us, he's in Canada now.He was in Austria before that as well.

Right.And he was saying, when peoplesays something, there ought to be a column that says Trump says this, as opposed to us reporting everything as news.If Trump says that Iran's caved in, if Trump says that Iran's on the verge of collapse, if Trump says that, you know, NATO's failed and whatever, we have to distinguish between the things that are newsworthy because they're true and just news because Trump has said them.Right.So I guess one of the questions I'm asking is whether you think that, you know, we are getting left behind, that we are old fashioned, that we have to find a different register for how we cover Trump and his administration, and whether you think we're doing the job?

I mean, not us, but you know.

No, I think that's absolutely right.And I think that, you know, Tim, you know, as usual, is onto something there.Because again, Trump believes in his own infallibility.I mean, he thinks he's Jesus.He thinks he's God.He thinks he's the Pope.

All of these memes are telling you what he thinks.He says the only check on him is his own gut, his own morality, you know, which I think should give everybody pause.And his goal is to dominate.I mean, he's a revolutionary.He is a world historic figure.He's like Genghis Khan and Napoleon and, you know, Alexander the Great.

And remember, a lot of these people, Ivan the Terrible, you know, the terrible term in Russian is actually awesome or kind of great as well in a kind of a different way.These are people who, you know, really had an enormous impact, but often in a negative way.You know, Napoleon, you know, kind of made, you know, left us behind the metric system and all kinds of, you know, kind of reconstruction.But I mean, he also had some pretty negative impacts.And this is what we're dealing with at this particular point.And this idea that you're giving him, you know, in the media and elsewhere, the benefit of the doubt of infallibility is pretty ridiculous.

Do you think we are?I mean, that's a big claim.Because people pass the Pope and his statements.People pass Putin.People pass Xi.So people pass Prime Minister Starmer every five seconds and other world leaders.

Why is that not happening with Donald Trump?And he's having an outsized influence on the entire world.

I mean, do you think the media in America should be more responsive when somebody is getting pulled up, when a woman's getting called a pig, or when somebody's been called a liar?I mean, do you think there should be more of a collaborative response to him?Or is that just naive?

No, there should be.And I mean, basically, what he's doing is he's doing what every, you know, autocratic, you know, want to be or authoritarian leader is doing.He's dividing the media against each other and you know, picking and choosing favourites.You know, there's this veneer of accessibility that anybody can call him up.We could probably call him up now if we had his telephone number.He'd probably answer and, you know, join us on air.

But that isn't, he isn't being transparent at all.He's manipulating everybody.So if you had been part of the press corps in Russia, you would have seen this.The Kremlin has everybody just waiting on bated breath for whether you would get an audience with Putin.And I took part in those Valdai discussion clubs, which are exactly that.The whole point is that you can't do or think of anything else because you're just waiting for that moment, for the audience with the great man, the big guy himself.

And that's what Trump's done.He's manipulating everybody.He's trying to get everybody in his thrall, in his orbit, so that they can't think about anything else.He can't do anything else.And so you can't report on news, you can't report on what else is actually happening in the world.

But in a geopolitical sense, political leaders in Europe have to decide what the hell they're going to do.And I know you took part in the Strategic Defence Review in Britain and kind of saying that we need to bolster our defences.Is NATO done?Are we now on our own?Are we now needing to forge a European kind of defence system?which has America as no real part in it?

Well, America's part may be different and diminished for some period, but I have actually a feeling that it'll come back again, but in a different form.Because as I said, you know, there are I mean, America is not a united states in the way that it was either.You're starting to see the 50 states in different ways exert themselves because Trump is dismantling the federal government.And so that redistributive part of the federal government's role of sending funds for all kinds of things to other states.the American states, particularly the so -called blue states or states that didn't vote for Trump, or as far as he sees it, are in the same position as the UK or Germany or France or Sweden.They're not America anymore.

Yeah, he's saying they're not America.That is exactly what's happening.And so they're all going, well, hang on a second.Aren't we paying taxes?Aren't we part of the United States of America?250 years ago, was Florida part of America?

Don't think so.Many of these so -called red states, Texas, Florida, they weren't part of the original 13 colonies.And if you start to think about America's history, this is actually bonkers, what he's doing at the moment.Because he's basically undermining that whole sense of how America is fraying it as well.The United States states are in the same kind of position as, you know, all of the allies are, and Canada.And of course, the predatory statements about Canada, 51st state, or Greenland as the 51st state, depending on which one you're going after first, Panama, Cuba, I'm going to take this, I'm going to take that, these have all had an impact.

And remember, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization does also include Canada.And Mark Carney has just in the last week or so talked about not just setting up a defence fund that he was trying to get the UK and others to join in, but also a fund to pool Canadian resources, a kind of solidarity fund.fund, to basically de -risk from the United States, to start to kind of build up more of Canadian internal capacity for trade across Canada from Nova Scotia to Alberta and to get Canadians to kind of think about what they're doing.

That works for trade, it doesn't work for defence, I guess, right?

But I think that's what Canada is trying to say as well, we can do this on defence.And we also have within NATO now things like the Joint Expeditionary which is the UK with all the Nordic and Baltic countries and Canada wants to join this as well.And the question there is, can you use that as a platform for doing more on defence, more on coordination politically and on other levels as well?So I do actually think that there is a lot that can be done by Europeans.There's all kinds of discussions all the time now about all kinds of defence bonds or European Defence Bank.You think about Europe after World War Two, setting up the European Coal and Steel Community.

You could do that on a defence and trade and other cooperative basis, thinking about some of the things that you would want to address.And you are seeing a lot of momentum in other places.I think the UK, getting back to where we started, has been a bit mesmerised and caught up in the idea that we had a special relationship.And now we're kind of realising that we actually haven't and we haven't had it for a very long time.There is a very special relationship between, what Trump would like it to be, between him and the King and the royal family, but really the UK is going to have to, as we've talked about in the Strategic Defence Review and as everybody's been talking about recently, rethink the nature of these relationships.It doesn't mean jettisoning.

the United States, because there's still a lot of, I think, very beneficial trade, a lot of it is with regions again, as well, and with states.And I talked to some of the people from the British American Chamber of Commerce, just kind of a week or so ago in DC, and a number of USstates,S.states, I think 10 or 11, want to have their own independent relationships within this, to have agreements on thinking about how they would bring more British investment to the United States.They don't want to end the relationship with Britain.

So on the political level, we might have tension, but on the level of states and cities, there's a huge interest in still doing business with the UK and being associated with the UK.The UK is still one of the biggest investors in the United States.And so, you know, this, I think there's a lot of there there still, but at the level of dealing with Trump, he's become a kind of King George.You know, with the colonies, you know, the UK is a colony.United States states are colonies again.He's sending out ice and the National Guard is the Hessians.

You know, it's a weird, you know, kind of recreation of 250 years ago.We need a bit of a revolutionary spirit to put it in a different place.

And King George was mad, wasn't he?

Well, it turns out, I mean, maybe, you know, at times he had his difficulties, right?I mean, I think there's a lot of, you know, different history now about, you know, his problems with porphyria and other things.I think it was the sickness and he had his moments.But, you know, someone had to say it.That is right.But, you know, we've got our moments at the moment as well.

Fiona Hill, real pleasure to talk to you.Thank you so much.

Thank you very, very much.

The News Agents USA.

So it's good to know that you get repeats in America.And once again, Jimmy Kimmel, the late night host, is in trouble again with the White House and fresh demands that he be fired and you'll remember a few months ago he was fired and then unfired.A few nights ago he made this joke on his late night show which remember is a political satire.

Our first lady, Melania, is here.Look at Melania.So beautiful.Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow.

So Melania was not particularly happy with that.And she replied on Twitter, Kimmel's hateful and violent rhetoric is intended to divide our country.His monologue about my family isn't comedy.His words are corrosive and deepens the political sickness within America.Now, as you can imagine, that has generated a certain amount of blowback from people saying, Dear Melania Trump, have you met your own husband?And they have retweeted some of Trump's own words about, for example, the recent death of Robert Mueller, former FBI director, where Trump just said, I'm glad he's dead.

And why I think this is having such an impact right now is because after that third attempted assassination on his life in the ballroom of the Washington Hilton on Saturday night, the same platitudes have come out from everyone, from Obama and from David Lammy and from Mamdani and everyone in between saying there is no place for political violence in our life, in our societies, in our civilisations, in our countries.And the rest of us are kind of pulling our hair out saying, oh, Hello.Have you met the man at the centre of all the political violence rhetoric right now?He is the one and only Donald Trump.Not that he's the only one, but that he has put violent political rhetoric right at the heart of pretty much everything he says every day.

And there is just that small other issue which the Americans have lectured us on extensively, which is the importance of free speech.If you believe in free speech, then Jimmy Kimmel can make whatever joke he likes on television.If the audience turn away from him and there are no ratings, you can be sure that Disney executives will fire him very, very quickly indeed.But it's not for the White House that believes in free speech and the sanctity of free speech and Donald Trump has a platform called Truth Social where free speech is venerated for them to start calling for Jimmy Kimmel to be defenestrated.

So we have one question.Do you think ABC is going to fire Jimmy Kimmel again?Or have they learned that that doesn't work?We'll find out and then we would report back to you.

We'll see you next week.

Bye bye.

Bye for now.

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