LIVE: ENTIRE WORLD ERUPTS as Trump FAILS BADLY | The Weekend Show

It's Sunday, July 19, 2026.I'm Anthony Davis.Welcome to The Weekend Show, where we make the time to consider the news of the week.You can support my work and independent journalism on Substack at TheAnthonyDavis.Our guest today is a financier and political activist and was the largest foreign investor in Russia until he was banned for exposing corruption.Sir William Browder, welcome back to The Weekend Show.

Great to be here.Bill, you, I'm sure, saw Donald Trump's address to the nation.It was billed as something very special that everybody had to watch.Not all the networks carried it, fortunately.But it definitely exposed a very sickly president who struggled through a speech that was supposed to, I don't know, scare people into not voting, maybe?I don't know.

But it definitely gave the impression that he has taken lots of inspiration, maybe from Vladimir Putin or elsewhere, who knows, to try to subvert the midterms and potentially the next election too.Do you get a sense that Trump's dictatorship is growing, is taking hold, or is it actually weakening?And does he seem, as some have said, more pathetic in these times?

Well, the one thing, you know, I'm an expert on Russia, and I'm watching some things happening in America where the current administration is trying to emulate things going on in Russia.First and foremost is all the self -dealing business of government.In Russia, nobody ever went into government except to enrich themselves.And that has never really been a tradition in America.You've seen a few scandals here or there.But now all of a sudden, and I think that even the most MAGA person will acknowledge this, that the people in the Trump family and people in the Trump administration are doing it for money and doing it for for a lot of money.

And that creates a really bad set of incentives.And the incentives are, if they've made a lot of money in government, the last thing they want to do is have the next guys, however that's defined, take a look at what they've done.And certainly, these people right now, Trump and his cronies, don't want a Democratic Congress to start subpoenaing every record and asking questions about every transaction, because that's exactly what they'll do, and that's exactly what any opposition party should do in a situation like this.And so they've embarked on various initiatives to try to make sure that doesn't happen.The SAVE Act is one of them, which didn't seem to get any traction in Congress.And now there's this new sort of initiative to say that that's all previous elections were bastardized by foreign interference and therefore, therefore, whatever is going to happen is going to happen next.

Is it working?Well, the legislation that was proposed didn't work.It hasn't come about.Is this new initiative working?I don't know.We haven't seen the results of it.

There hasn't been a new executive order yet demanding that all votes go through the White House or whatever it is that they're going to potentially do.I mean, the one thing I do see working and seems to be working pretty well is that whenever something really outrageous happens, then the victims of whatever that outrageousness then go to court and the judges in court, whether they're appointed by Donald Trump or Ronald Reagan or anyone in between, are very regularly shutting down these things.And so it's not going the way Russia has been going because the courts have remained pretty solidly independent.As long as that remains the case, I'm very confident that America will come out the other side.Now, if they really wanted to, they could start arresting judges.And if they did that, then perhaps they would scare judges the way they've scared members of Congress.

And if they did that, then judges were starting to make bad decisions based on fear as opposed to justice.then we might be in a much worse situation.

Well, Trump did just fire a judge a few moments after his confirmation a few days ago.I mean, that's definitely on his mind.But just explain to people how Vladimir Putin has managed to remain in power for 23 odd years, you know, skipping between roles and kind of changing the rules of the game as he goes, just so that people can be aware of what Donald Trump might be taking inspiration from.

Well, so Vladimir Putin didn't ever want to give up power.Once he got in, he wanted to stay in, which, of course, I think is the same for Donald Trump.And so what did Vladimir Putin do?He went to all different institutions that had power that weren't him.So in Russia, they had regional governors, and he changed the Constitution so the regional governors weren't independently elected.They were effectively appointed.

And so that eliminated that source of power.Then Putin looked around and said, I don't really like independent media.And so what did he do about that?He basically took over all television stations so that the state controlled all TV stations.

Sounds familiar.

And then after he did that, they went around and started to threaten journalists, imprison journalists, and kill journalists.And so far, we've had in the United States journalists threatened, but nobody so far has been imprisoned and nobody has been killed.If they were to imprison journalists or kill journalists, then I think you'd see a lot of journalists radically, in America, radically self -censoring.Hasn't happened yet.I mean, my fear is that, you know, if they could, if they really wanted to take some of these ICE agents that are, you know, doing all this killing elsewhere, assign them to kill a few journalists, pardon them, and then everyone would be scared out of their mind.And that would be the way that they would go forward if they wanted to pursue that.

And then, of course, in Russia were the judges, and the judges We're all scared of either dying, going to jail, or losing their jobs.And so all decisions, all important decisions, not all decisions, but all important decisions, the judges would call up the Kremlin and ask how they should rule on a case.And once you control the media, the judicial system, and I guess in the case of Russia, they control the parliament, but that's already under control in the United States.Then there's really nothing stopping a dictatorship from really accumulating a huge amount of power and a kleptocracy accumulating a huge amount of money.

Many of those points Trump has either achieved or is on his way to, certainly with media ownership.And look at that New York Times story from just a few weeks ago, a couple of weeks ago, about his aeroplane.You know, he took it so personally that they were saying he was flying on the old Air Force One and not the new Air Force One that he seeks to prosecute five New York Times journalists.I mean, that is the same thing, isn't it?

No, no, no, no.He's not prosecuting the journalists.He's subpoenaing the journalists to find out where the leak came from.The moment that he starts prosecuting the journalists, That then crosses that red line and for what it's worth i can imagine that that when the subpoenas go in front of the.Judge the judge will quash the subpoena so let's not prejudge this again the judicial system is working it has been working in all sorts of different areas i mean these people.who have been trying to do all sorts of stuff have been vastly frustrated.

And so America is, the system is holding.I mean, it's scary.The intentions of the administration are scary.They're trying to do a lot of things that on any objective measure are really completely unacceptable, but the judges aren't letting it happen.And so that's the key to watch.If judges start getting personally scared for their freedom or for their safety, then we have a real problem.

But we are currently this close to Donald Trump's former criminal defense attorney becoming the Attorney General of the United States.Do you think things might change then when Todd Blanche takes up his role?

You'll be no different than pan body and body was was taking instructions you know she was taking instructions directly.From from the president i mean maybe he's a better.person at implementing the instructions, but there's no difference.uh uh you know they they want he first nominated matt getz to be the attorney general that's right i forgot about that yeah so i i wouldn't i wouldn't um i don't think it's a personality -based thing because of course the person who works for him is going to going to do exactly what he asks them to do it's just a question and and all these people are are effectively the lawyers for the government the government is a party and then there's other parties and the question is will the judges judge honestly and fairly and and independently or will they um also take instructions.The moment that the judges start taking instructions from the government, then we're in deep trouble.

So let's go back to this speech from Thursday night, which had a lot of people on edge because he kind of preempted what he was going to say.There's a big story coming and you won't believe it.But he didn't present any evidence about China interfering with the 2020 election.He's obsessed with that election, of course.He kind of hates the fact that Joe Biden was the winner.And we're seeing a lot of judges seeking to be confirmed and senior officials refusing to answer who won the 2020 election question.

So this is clearly something that Trump has huge leverage over these people for.But do you think that this is going to kind of play out as Trump has planned?Because to all intents and purposes, this could really backfire.And people are calling for the 25th Amendment off the back of this crazy speech.I mean, it has kind of ramped up pressure against Trump.

Well, everything that Trump has come up with has not worked out as planned.His tariffs didn't work out as planned.His war in Iran didn't work out as planned.His birthright citizenship didn't work out as planned.and about a hundred other things.And so he comes up with a lot of stuff.

He doesn't have anybody who sort of talks him down from the ledge.He then does all this stuff, and it doesn't work out.And so I don't see this working out any better than his Liberation Day tariffs.Is intention the intentions are all there but but the execution is not very effective and so i don't think that this is gonna go anywhere anymore than any other things that he tried to do.

The UK is about to get a new prime minister.Keir Starmer, the outgoing prime minister under this parliamentary system, had a meeting with Volodymyr Zelensky a couple of days ago and said, you know, you're going to win this war with Russia and kind of gave a lot of confidence as his kind of outgoing remarks.It kind of went quiet for a while with Russia, didn't it?I felt like, was Putin kind of sitting back and just watching all the craziness with Iran and Trump making the kind of ridiculous policy decisions and just enjoying the fact that he didn't really have to do much to get his way.Is that what's been happening?I mean, we'll come on to how the war has changed in just a minute, but what's Putin been doing these last few months?

Well, I mean, so just because we're not talking about it doesn't mean that they're not focusing on that war.And what I would say is that actually The distraction, as you describe it, is a distraction from the United States.So there was a moment in time when Donald Trump was trying to get Vladimir Zelensky to give up territory and agree a deal, which Putin could have never achieved militarily, that Donald Trump thought he could strong arm him into taking.And he did that by withdrawing U .S.military aid to Ukraine,

by withdrawing support for Ukraine at the United Nations, by publicly humiliating Zelensky at the Oval Office, by demanding an unbelievably unfair mineral rights deal to supposedly pay back military aid that had been given by the previous government. AndAnd so Trump was spending a lot of time on Ukraine on behalf of Putin against Zelensky.And then he got distracted.Trump had his big success with Maduro, snatching Maduro.And then he thought, OK, on the back of that success, he's going to go into Iran.Iran turned out to be a quagmire, and it continues to be a quagmire.

completely caught up in this quagmire.And so while he has not been focusing on forcing Zelensky to do something which would be unacceptable to the Ukrainians and Europeans and everybody else, he's also, in a certain way, allowed the Ukrainians to get on with things without all this weird international pressure coming from the United States.And it used to be that the United States, when it did supply weapons to Ukraine, supplied those weapons with unbelievable conditions attached, saying, President Biden said, we'll give you weapons, but you can't fire them into Russia because we're so afraid of an escalation.We're so afraid of Putin doing something terrible in response to that.And so the Ukrainians were just sitting there saying, what do we do then?Wait for the 100 ,000 soldiers to cross the border and then fire the weapons?

Now, all of a sudden, Trump has said, You know, you're cut off.And so he doesn't have any moral authority or any ability to pressure the Ukrainians to do anything at all.And so, well, well, Trump has been distracted.The Ukrainians have been doing something which has been unbelievable, which is they've taken their drones and they've taken their missiles and they've taken whatever they have, and they'vefired them on all different economic targets in Russia, specifically oil refineries.And you can see every day there's a new refinery in Russia burning.

They can be 2 ,000 kilometers away, or they can be a few hundred miles away, but they're burning.And then they're firing on the oil export terminals.in the Baltic Sea and in the Black Sea, and they're firing on boats.There's 120 ships in the Azov Sea.And all of a sudden, Russia's got a real problem.They can't resupply Crimea.

There's gasoline shortages.And most importantly, the average Russian who didn't really think this war affected them is dramatically and personally affected.They can't get gas for their cars.If they can get gas, It's this weird low -quality gas that will burn up their catalytic converters.Unless you have a 2005 Lada, which is their homemade car, your BMW is going to start burning up.And so all of a sudden, the Russians have real problems.

And in a certain way, this is the result of Trump taking his eye off of off of Russia and Ukraine and applying it elsewhere.I think that Putin would love it if Trump was paying more attention to this conflict.

Trump's shortcomings are the cause of other issues.So will this economic catastrophe for Russia, it's like an energy crisis within Russia now effectively, will it force the elite around Putin to maybe push for peace or, I mean there was talk briefly of Putin maybe being forced to step aside himself.I mean, I doubt that would happen, but what about those oligarchs or the people that can control the purse strings?

There's not a chance.There's a 0 % probability that anyone is going to challenge Putin.Putin is fully in control.He's a totalitarian dictator.Every person who's supposedly wealthy is not independently wealthy.They're dependently wealthy, dependent on Vladimir Putin.

At any point, he can take away their wealth, he can put them in jail, or he can kill them.There's been a few high -profile examples.There's a guy named Moskovich, who was one of the largest farm owners in Russia.He was arrested.They renationalized his $7 billion farmholding company.He's sitting in prison right now.

There's many other examples.Their oligarch who owned Domodedovo Airport had his airport taken away.And so all these guys are just sitting there, you know, wishing that this wasn't happening, maybe cursing at their dinner table, but never even speaking to anyone on the phone about this because they're so afraid.And so there's no pressure on Putin.The main problem is that he's at war.He's in a war with another country's military.

They fire stuff at him.He fires stuff at them.um, the problem with is that as they're firing stuff at him, um, it's degrading his economy and he's got less money and less resources because They continue to fire stuff at them.And so there may be a point I don't think there's going to be a point where where ukraine wins the war because russia has literally 10 times the personnel 10 times the resources to continue fighting and even if their economy is being degraded Putin will starve the whole country before he gives up in Ukraine.But what it does mean is that there may be some unspoken agreements, like Putin says quietly or winks to Zelensky, if you stop hitting our oil refineries, thenstop hitting your civilians.

That could be the kind of thing that happens.And then the war sort of focuses on the front line.And at the front line, the Ukrainians have set up a drone kill zone where anybody who crosses into that zone gets killed.And one drone operator can operate 100 drones seeking out any warmth or heat and just killing anybody who's in that zone.And so Putin can draft more people into the army and send them to the front line and then they'll get killed on the front line.And I mean, my prediction on how this war ends is not with a grand peace treaty or a big agreement.

It just grinds down slowly First, they stop firing at each other missiles because, you know, it's just equally painful on both sides.And then the front line gets narrowed down to a frozen conflict and eventually it just quiets down and sort of North Korea, South Korea -like as opposed to a grand treaty.

It's interesting how drones have really changed war zones.in terms of you know not not just the not just strategy but but cost as you say i mean it's it's barely a fraction of the cost of these of these missiles yeah and it's it's completely both in in russia ukraine conflict and the u .

s iran conflict what what what seems to be happening is that the whole concept of a superpower doesn't exist anymore.And yes, the United States has the most powerful military in the world, and they can completely and absolutely destroy anything they want to destroy.But that doesn't stop a country with large landmass for guys to sort of jump out of the bushes, launch a drone, and then go after a valuable economic asset somewhere.And that's what the Iranians are doing and that's what the Ukrainians are doing.And it's asymmetric.You know, rich countries are rich and they don't want their valuable stuff getting destroyed by these drones.

And at the moment, and I stress at the moment because I think the technology will change probably pretty quickly, but at the moment there is no countermeasure to these drones nobody seems to be able to know how to shoot them down or even if they can shoot them down they can only shoot down ninety five percent of them and five percent get through and then the five percent they get through it valuable oil refineries valuable data centers or whatever and so it creates this true asymmetry and i guess there's always been a symmetry in wars i mean look we uh you know the united states Eventually withdrew from vietnam eventually withdrew from from iraq and eventually withdrew from afghanistan because i need and all those types of things made the war so painful that nobody wanted to carry on with them and so.This is a higher form of the symmetry instead of an idea you have this drone and and.And these drones are easy to make and very damaging for the recipient and and.And so it really does change the whole nature of warfare.

A few weeks ago, Trump agreed to give Ukraine the right to produce Patriot missiles, these interceptor missiles to help Kiev defend against Russia's ballistic missile attacks.Why was or how was kind of Trump convinced to kind of make that change?Because he really had pulled back completely from, as you said earlier, any support for Ukraine.And did that decision you know, in light of the drone warfare.I mean, does that decision help Zelensky in any way?

Well, I don't know how he made that decision.I'm not privy to those conversations.I mean, I can imagine that in the United States, most people support Ukraine.Nobody supports Putin.And a bunch of surveys just came out showing it didn't matter whether you're Democrat, Republican, independent, everybody supports Ukraine.Everyone supports military aid for Ukraine.

And that translates into Politicians feeling the same way and so the late lindsey graham who was a big big friend of ukraine was probably.You know calling trump twice a week saying give them patriots and various other things and many other republican senators that i know would have had the same view and and so.I can imagine that he probably relented because he was getting harassed by so many people who he needed something from in other areas and said, okay, yeah, they can have those Patriot licenses.And of course, those Patriot licenses, it's going to take a while for them to get up and running.I imagine that they'll be a lot quicker than any other country because of the necessity, but still, it's not an immediate reprieve from what everybody's terrified will happen this winter is that Russia will just bombard heating plants and all the other civilian infrastructure that keeps Ukrainian people warm and alive.But who knows?

The Ukrainians are extremely industrious.If it really has been granted, and I'm not sure if it's a final decision or just an intention, but if it's a final decision, the Ukrainians will get on it with absolute efficiency.

You mentioned Lindsey Graham.It would be remiss of me not to ask you your opinion about the speculation that his sudden death might have had something to do with Russia.He was making a speech just the day before about Ukraine and bringing a bill to Congress aboutsupport for Ukraine.Is this something we should consider or is it not really up for discussion?I mean, you know, there's been lots of talk of poisoning and everything else.

Well, I mean, so let's just put the facts down.So Lindsey Graham was a huge friend of Ukraine and a huge enemy of Vladimir Putin.A lot of Putin's sidekicks were even talking about having Lindsey Graham assassinated.That's the first thing.Second thing is Lindsey Graham had a particular policy which would have strangled Russia's economy, which is the sanctions bill on the buyers of Russian oil.And he's been talking about that for 18 months.

He's been trying to and getting everybody in Congress behind it.And he succeeded in doing that.And he announced a day before he died, that the president has now agreed to support that.He is in a country which is neighboring Russia, where there's lots of Russian spies hanging around.And you have a lot of Russia's spies have the capacity and the history of poisoning people in all sorts of different scenarios.Alexei Navalny, my friend Vladimir Karamurza.

Alexander Levinenko.

tried to kill the Skripals, and so on and so forth.And the list really goes on and on and on and on.And so they poison.They poison a lot.And so Lindsey Graham returns from this country where agents operate, where they have the capacity to poison, they have the interest of doing something, and he suddenly drops dead.And so what I would say, not to be a conspiracy theorist, is to say we should, for justice for Lindsey Graham, we should absolutely eliminate that as any possibility because it would be just the worst

thing in the world if that really had happened.And it's probably a low probability because he comes from a family with hereditary heart disease.But if that had really happened, that would be highly unjust for us to say, well, we shouldn't bother checking that out because that sounds conspiratorial.We should check it out.They should have done the most detailed medical forensic examination just to rule that out.And I don't think it's a high probability, because I think there's a lot of other reasons why it could have happened.

But it'd be totally unjust for Lindsey Graham to say, oh, this is a conspiracy theory.We shouldn't even think about it, which when I went on Twitter and said, we should just look at this carefully and rule it out, people started jumping on me saying, oh, that's so disrespectful.And I think it's respectful.Lindsey Graham was actually a friend of mine, and he was the most robust when it came to supporting Ukraine.We should just make sure that that didn't happen to him.

Did you, like me, notice that Donald Trump was very quick to dismiss the idea that it could be anything other than a hereditary heart issue?He kind of jumped on that when he was asked by reporters that it definitely wasn't Russia, definitely wasn't Russia.It just, I mean, it did stink a little bit, didn't it?

Well, I mean, we've seen this all over the world and in Britain, where which is my home country.They didn't want to do any type of public inquest into the murder of Alexander Litvinenko.They didn't know that the British government, the U .S.government, all governments want to just try to sweep this stuff under the carpet, because if it was true, could you imagine?Could you imagine if it was true, if it did happen?

What what would have to happen to if if, you know, in that very low probability scenario that that the Russians did that?To kill a leading U .S.senator, you know, it's much easier for any head of state.whether it's Trump or anybody else, to say no, no, that couldn't be the case because the alternative was just unthinkable.

But it did seem like Trump yet again was defending Vladimir Putin, whether the details were there or not, it seemed like his default was to support his friend Putin.

Well, everybody would have done that, even if they hadn't been a friend of Putin, just because the geopolitical consequences are so damning.In that particular instance, he was just doing what any normal head of state would have done, which is to try not to go into that area, because that would require declaring war on Russia if they killed a leading US senator.And that's a decision that no head of state would want to take.

But Saudi killed Jamal Khashoggi and Donald Trump didn't seem very interested in that either.And he was an American New York Times journalist.

a Washington Post journalist.He wasn't a US senator, he wasn't a friend of Donald Trump's.

Right.

That's a big difference.

Yeah, and he had a foreign name and I suppose Donald Trump was probably less interested in that too.Bill, in Trump's address to the nation, as weird as it was, he talked about China as the enemy, kind of again trying to reframe China.One minute Xi Jinping is his best friend, the next minute they interfered with the election and this cannot be allowed to happen.We have, you know, a lot of journalism has been describing the shift of the world order.As you see it, is America still the superpower or is Trump's behavior, especially over tariffs and similar, actually caused the axis to shift and some say he's actually given more power to China and more power to Russia and potentially India and other nations and that the US has become a bit of a laughingstock on the world stage considering as you said earlierthat nothing he touches goes particularly well.

Well, I think that America is still an amazing superpower.America has the reserve currency of the world.America has the biggest economy in the world.America has the most powerful military in the world.But it doesn't help that to use every bit of leverage in every different situation with every different person, including people who are supposed to be our friends and allies and put them on the defensive.And so you end up in a lot of situations where America could be much more powerful if we worked with people.

as opposed to alienated people.And that goes with the whole tariff debate, that goes with the whole NATO debate, that goes with the whole Greenland debate, that goes with all these different situations.And does that mean that America is finished or done?I think not.I think that whoever is the next president, no matter whether it's a Democrat or Republican, one of the first things they'll do will be on a reset and restore relations with America with the rest of the world.And I think the rest of the world will breathe a big sigh of relief and say, thank you very much.

We would love to restore relations.And I think that as we restore relations, you know, the soft power can be restored.And, you know, there'll be people who aren't going to be buying U .S.weapons systems in the future in fear that four years from then, the next president will do something similar.But You know, generally, I think that most people just want to, you know, live a quiet life.

I can remember after Trump lost in 2020, Bill Maher, the comedian, said it was like having, during that first Trump years, having somebody with a jackhammer outside your window every morning at 5 a .m.and then it just suddenly stops and you can sleep at night.And IAnd I think most countries just want to get on with their lives, run their economies, not have fights with anybody on any given day, and quietly build up their strategic resilience for real situations and real conflict with countries like Russia and Iran and North Korea, and not have fake fights over nothing, like what's going on right now.

Well, he's fallen out with Spain this week because they stood up to him over NATO and other things.And he announced that he doesn't want the US to deal with Spain at all.No trade, no nothing.

And of all the countries.We're still trading with Spain.There's still tens of thousands of Americans getting off the flights in Madrid and spending money in Spanish hotels.He can say whatever he wants.Trade carries on.They're buying from us.

We're buying from them.People are traveling there.They're traveling to Spain.Spain is going to be in the finals of the World Cup in the United States.It's all happening.And so I think he says all this stuff.

And after a while, people start to tune it out, the 100 % tariffs and the no tariffs.And the war is on.The war is off.There are good guys.There are bad guys.You start to become inured to the whole thing.

But you talk about going back to a normality, and my fear is that it's kind of impossible to do that with a guy who's currently in charge who wants to be the last president of the United States.He does not care for future elections.Can you imagine him conceding an election?Can you imagine Republicans conceding an election going forward?I mean, it does seem, especially with the election interference, whether it be the SAVE Act or any of the other mechanisms, that all of their efforts are designed to remain in power.There's too much at stake, you know, not least him and me.

criminality.

Well, he certainly has that intention.But as when we started our conversation, what I would say is that the institutions of America are holding.Journalists so far have been arrested and killed.Opposition politicians have not been arrested and killed.And judges haven't been arrested and killed.And as long as those institutions hold, intentions may be bad.

intentions may not be honorable.But the execution of those bad intentions hasn't worked so far.And there's no reason to assume that the bad intentions will follow through into policy in the future.That has to be the hope.And so I'm still an optimist, very much of an optimist about America.America is not Russia.

America is a country where people believe in the rule of law.People are disgusted by corruption.People want fairness.And if there isn't, it's not going to work.And I think that even the people who, like, look in Minneapolis.They didn't stay in the, you know, the ice.

people didn't stay in Minneapolis.The people of Minneapolis stood up to them.Yes, there were some absolute horrific murders that took place in Minneapolis.But at the end, they went with their tail between their legs and left.And I think that's the America which, you know, and as I say, it could be a Democrat or a Republican that comes in.Nobody is going to have the same interests as Donald Trump does in terms of ruining relations with foreign countries and upsetting economic trade and financial markets.

Everybody is going to want to calm things down, no matter what party they come from.

We've seen massive protests in Maine over the last week or so, off the back of two killings there too.The people are responding, they are rising up.they are taking this on without fear.Communities are doing that and so I agree that people power is often what is required.Let's just talk about Iran for a moment because obviously this is the biggest story in the world right now and I mean it could have gone away a long time ago if Trump had been successful with negotiations or this memorandum of understanding or anything but it all seems to have fallen by the wayside.One minute Iran are the best people and they're great negotiators and Trump is celebrating the current or the new leadership.

And the next moment he's saying that they're insane and they're mad, they're crazy, and that we have to kind of bomb them to oblivion.I mean, it's obviously affecting markets, not just stock market, but energy markets, too.This doesn't seem to show any sign of abating, really.Is it Trump that's stopping this war from ending?

Well, so the war is, there are two parties at war.There's the United States and there's Iran.And if you remember, the first act of war was to assassinate the leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khamenei, a very bad man who had just recently killed somewhere between 20 ,000 and 40 ,000 Iranian citizens who were protesting for democracy.So he's a very bad guy.And so his assassination, of course, was welcomed by most people outside of Iran and probably most people inside of Iran.But if you go and kill the head of state, and then his son is the person in charge, what does Trump expect?

That all of a sudden, you know, back -slapping Banami?I mean, you know,Iranians, by the way, can tolerate literally 100 times the pain that America can tolerate.They've been living in a painful circumstance for like decades.And America is a booming, economically vibrant, wonderful country, and the slightest bit of pain causes us problems in a democracy where people vote on the basis of their economic pain.And so the Iranians are saying, you know, go ahead and bomb us.

We're going to we're going to continue to exert.You know, we're mad at you and we're going to exert our leverage.And so I don't even know how you get the Iranians to stop exerting their leverage because their leverage is very significant, at least in the medium term.As long as they control the Strait of Hormuz, then the oil, the oil either doesn't get out or they can extract some huge economic rent from all the people on the street of Hormuz.As long as the Iranians have drones, they can continue to hit big allies of the United States in the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar.They can also hit any American military bases.

And so the Iranians are kind of torturing us right now.And it's pretty clear that Trump just wants to kind of wish that he hadn't started the war so he can end it very quickly.But now it's their fault.They don't want to end it.And they're trolling him.And they're torturing him.

And they're torturing us.And of course, he's the leader, the most powerful man in the free world who's getting tortured.And so he's in a completely unwinnable situation right now.It's hard to know what he can do.And he kind of gave them all sorts of things that they didn't deserve at all in order to try to get an end to this war.And they didn't want to end it.

And so if I were sitting in the White House advising him, I don't even know what advice I would give to him, because you don't want to give the Iranians everything they want, because they would become the most powerful malignant country in the world if they had all the money that they want to get from all this thing.They still have nuclear ambitions.But at the same time, I don't think anyone wants to devote troops on the ground in Iran to occupy the country.And so it's really a very ugly, horrible, unwinnable situation.And I don't know what he should do, really.

He's trying everything.I mean, it is a little embarrassing, the flip -flopping.You mentioned the other Gulf nations.Iran has been hitting them even more in the last few days.And then Trump was like, I'm taking over the Hormuz and I'm charging a 20 % tariff on movement.And then apparently somebody told him that that was not going to work.

And so he then changed his mind on that and said, oh, I've come up with a better idea.Instead, these nations are going to invest large amounts of money in the United States.It's a kind of out to save face.As you correctly say, there doesn't seem to be any strategy.Donald Trump clearly is the wrong person for the job in this moment, but all of his negotiators have failed too, from Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff and J .D.

Vance, and they've fired so many people in the State Department who probably would have brought experience to this subject.So maybe there just won't be an end, or maybe the U .S.will have to retreat with its tail between its legs.

I don't think it's a question of good negotiators versus bad negotiators or people with knowledge and.people without knowledge.We're in a fundamentally terrible situation right now because the Iranians have nothing to lose and everything to gain by carrying on with this war and carrying on with high oil prices and carrying on threatening their neighbors.And there's really nothing that we can do or say to stop them from doing that.And it doesn't matter that they're ready to be pounded with bunker busting bombs and all the other things that are happening, because it doesn't change the military guys in Iran who are making these decisions aren't the ones who are being bombed.It's the bridges and the infrastructure and whatever.

And so they're ready to carry on.And so it's an impossible situation.And obviously, a war that should have never started.And other presidents who were trying to contain Iran did other things to try to stop them from developing nuclear weapons, but understood that the Strait of Hormuz was their big wild card that they could call on.And nobody understood this whole idea of drones hitting neighboring countries.And now that the genie's out of the bottle, it's pretty hard to put back in the bottle.

And at this point, it wouldn't matter who was the president.It's an impossible situation.

You mentioned the bombing of bridges.Many people have said that now this crosses over and crosses the line where international law is being compromised and that you're only supposed to hit military targets and Trump doesn't seem to care about that.And then this same week, we hear Marco Rubio announce that they're going to attempt to dismantle the International Criminal Court.It seemed very much like an admission of guilt.They know that they've crossed a line in Iran.Of course, there was

the girls' school that was hit on the first or second day of the war, killing around nearly 200 children and teachers.Do you think that this announcement by the US that they are going to try and dismantle the ICC is another example of this isolationist attitude and trying to discredit any kind of international organization that tries to hold countries to account?

Well, I think their intention to dismantle the ICC will be as successful as their as their liberation day tariffs and their war on Iran.I think that the rest of the world is going to carry on being, or actually many countries in the rest of the world will carry on living by a rule of law, abiding by common values and principles, and waiting for this fever to pass in America.I don't think the ICC is going anywhere quickly.I think that the United States doesn't have the ability to do that.And it really is, you know, as a person who spends most of my time working on rule of law, human rights, and anti -corruption, I think it's a terrible idea and everybody should resist it.

But what does it say about America?I mean, there have been, you know, Trump did write an executive order very early in his presidency that he doesn't recognize the jurisdiction of the ICC.And I mean, Benjamin Netanyahu did a similar thing.But to attempt to dismantle it, and they're going to do that by discrediting it and going to other countries and threatening to not trade with them if they recognize the ICC.I mean, what does it say about this administration?

Well, America used to be the North Star when it came to human rights.anti -corruption rule of law whenever i was trying to get anything done in the world america be the first country i get a law passed in or a regulation placed on and then other countries would follow.And America has now, at least temporarily, abrogated that role.Again, I'm an optimist.I don't think that's permanent.I think the fever will break.

I think that America will come back and perhaps come back stronger after going through this dark period.But it doesn't say anything good for the moment.But I don't think we should extrapolate too much.The great thing about America is it's a country that self -corrects.When things go wrong, they fix them.The people of America are good people.

The average person believes in justice and rule of law and human rights.And I think that when it's all said and done, people will look back on these times and say, these were dark times.It was a terrible thing that happened.We're going to fix them.We're going to put in guardrails for the future.And that's how America will be five, 10 years from now.

I admire your optimism, and I appreciate that there is a certain patriotism that goes with it.I suppose I see it through a European lens, and it does seem even more shocking, I suppose.And maybe that's because the default, as you say, always has been that America tries to do the right thing, but with the wrong guy in charge, surrounded by people who seem to be as corrupt and as willing to break things.It's much quicker to tear down institutions than the time that it took to build them in the first place.So the rebuilding of the institutions that he's destroyed, not to mention the standing of America on the world stage, that's going to take longer than four years though, isn't it?This could be generational.

I think it'll be a lot quicker than that.I think that it'll be a very attractivewho steps in and says, we need mature, honest leadership.People will gravitate to that.We've seen it before.Things change quickly.

They change quickly negatively, and they can change quickly positively.I'm generally a glass half full The last half empty, I should say, person.I'm usually the pessimist, but the worse things get, the more optimistic I get, because I think that most people, no matter what, this is not what we want.We don't bring our children up to behave like this.We don't want our neighbors behaving like this.And I think that the pendulum will swing radically in a different direction towards honesty and truthfulness and justice next time around.

It would be nice.Gavin Newsom is very attractive, so hopefully things may change if he's in charge.But I recognize that people are feeling a lot of pain at the moment when they look to themselves and their own situation in the economy, but also when they look to the atrocities in Iran and in Gaza and also in Ukraine.I mean, it is very painful at the moment for people.There is a collective anxiety, not least with with ice this kind of i mean i've i've compared ice to the to the wagner group in in some ways you know putin's private army with your experience would you say that there are similarities there No, not at all.

I mean, you know, after killing one person, ICE was run out of town by a bunch of people, you know, banging pots and pans and screaming at them.With the Wagner group, I remember there was this video that Yevgeny Prigozhin produced where somebody was doingand he took a hammer to their head, finishing them off.It's a whole other order of magnitude.And we're nowhere near there yet.And so, yes, there's all these sort of green sprouts of horribleness, which we hope don't grow into anything, but we're so far away from that.

I don't think that it's even remotely comparable.

And of course Putin did away with Prigozhin himself in the end, didn't he?

Indeed, indeed.In a very public, in a very demonstrable way.

Yes, interesting how these stories, it's almost like, I don't know, I honestly feel like Russia to me, represents a kind of dystopian future for America unless people get out and vote.There wasn't a huge outpouring of voting in the primaries.Do you think that people are going to feel much more engaged because of these atrocities, because they feel anxiety for their neighbours being abducted by ICE?Do you think there's going to be a groundswell in the midterms, considering that Trump is kind of threatening that it's going to be unfair and that there isn't such a thing as a free election anymore.

Well, he can say whatever he wants.I mean, if you read the betting sites, they're all predicting the House going Democratic, and the latest numbers I've seen show the Senate going Democratic.And so, I mean, of course, anything can happen.We're a long way away, and in America, you know, two weeks is a long time, and it's not until November that these midterms happen.But I think that people will be People are not happy with the status quo.People are not happy with the economy.

People are not happy with Iran.And they're going to vote with their feet, and they're going to vote with their lives.of people will show up.And I think that that's why Trump is holding press conferences about accusing China and so on, because he sees the writing on the wall.And if and when the control of Congress changes to the Democrats, every single day there's going to be hearings and subpoenas and impeachments and all that kind of stuff.Going into every detail of every transaction that's ever been done, every pardon, every investment, every trade in his stock portfolio, all this stuff is going to be scrutinized to the nth degree, and that's all that's going to be talked about.

And of course, any domestic agenda, that's out the window because Trump won't have the votes to do it.

That is his biggest fear, isn't it?That, you know, this kind of short -term corruption, this making as much money as possible.I mean, there was this week talk of him selling truth social posts to the highest bidder and this kind of insider trading there.I mean, we are looking at somebody who seems to be so overt with their corruption that it could actually push his own base away from him because their lives are not getting better.

Also, I don't think that the Supreme Court's decision that the president is immune from prosecution would stand in those situations because there is, I mean, of course, the Justice Department now is not going to prosecute the president, but a future Justice Department can say that there's a very big carve out to say that if he did it in his presidential powers, and there's a lot of things where I think that that will be put up to question.So, I mean, you know, it's a very uncertain future for Trump, which is, again, why he would be so worried about who's going to come in after him and try to prevent that from happening.But at the end of the day, you know, this is not America.This is not the United States.America stands for to have all this type of stuff.

Okay, we have to finish, but I'm so grateful to you as always, Sir William Browder.Thank you for joining The Weekend Show.

Thank you.

I'm Anthony Davis.Don't forget to support me and independent journalism on Substack at The Anthony Davis.I'll come back next Sunday with a brand new special guest and more factual news to discuss on The 5 Minute News Weekend Show with Midas Touch.