Who is Usha Vance?
From our UK edition
Freddy Gray is joined by Sarah Beth Spraggins to discuss her piece on Usha Vance, the wife of JD Vance who could be in line to be the next First Lady.
Freddy Gray
Yesterday
Get ready for the rudest midterms ever
When someone is cruel or acts like a bully, you don’t stoop to their level. No, our motto is: 'When they go low, we go high.' – Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention in 2016 Shut up you ugly fuck. – The Democratic party’s official Twitter handle, replying to Stephen Miller, deputy chief of staff for policy, on May 27, 2026. The most disturbing thing about that Democratic response to Stephen Miller is how unshocking it is. We’ve become inured to foul language, even from our political leaders and their social media channels. In our post-literate society, as words lose their power, swearing has become an idle form of punctuation. Donald Trump used to do most of his swearing in private.
The Pope’s AI warning – and how Restore split the right, again
From our UK edition
48 min listen
For this week’s Edition, Lara Prendergast is joined by the Spectator's deputy editor Freddy Gray, associate editor – and host of the Holy Smoke podcast – Damian Thompson and consultant psychiatrist and Daily Mail columnist Dr Max Pemberton. This week, the guests examine the Pope's encyclical about Artificial Intelligence (AI), Magnifica Humanitas, which warns of the cost to humanity that this technological revolution could bring. This marks Pope Leo's first major policy intervention, a warning which Spectator editor Michael Gove celebrates in the magazine this week. Michael says that AI will be ‘as transformative as the Industrial Revolution’ yet decisions ‘about where this technology is going and how it might be deployed are concentrated… in perilously few hands’.
Thursday
Superintelligence: will AI extinguish humanity? With Nate Soares
42 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, to discuss the risks posed to humanity by AI. Warning that sufficiently intelligent AI may stop following human instructions entirely, Soares tells Freddy what, if anything, could keep AI from spiralling out of control.
Sunday
Why are Trump’s would-be assassins so forgettable?
Another weekend, another failed and frankly pathetic attempt to kill the President of the United States. On February 22, a Sunday, Secret Service shot dead an armed 21-year-old male called Austin Tucker Martin, who had entered the Mar a Lago complex, although Donald Trump wasn’t there at the time. America is in a strange condition when a shoot-out at the White House will be soon forgotten On the Saturday night of April 25, the 31-year-old Cole Thomas Allen tried and failed to storm the White House Correspondent’s Dinner at the Hilton hotel in Washington DC. And we all saw what happened there. Earlier this month, in an incident the news cycle quickly moved past, Secret Service shot an armed individual at the National Mall.
Friday
Trump’s lawfare against lawfare
It is of course hacky and hysterical to suggest America is turning into a banana republic. How else, though, can a reasonable person interpret Donald Trump’s settlement this week with the Internal Revenue Service?In January, the President and his two oldest sons sued the IRS for $10 billion over the leaking of their personal business tax filings to the press. Because Trump runs the Justice Department, the case was somewhat farcical: "I’m suing myself," Trump wryly admitted last week. "I’ll say, 'Give me X dollars,' and I don’t know what to do with the lawsuit." This week we found out. IRS lawyers felt their case was defensible on various counts: chiefly because the man who leaked the Trump family files wasn’t working for the service when he gave them to the New York Times.
Wednesday
What does Massie’s loss say about the future of the right?
Congressman Thomas Massie, one of the most vocal Republican critics of Donald Trump lost his fight for re-election in Kentucky to a Trump-backed challenger. Freddy Gray is joined by Spectator contributors Daniel McCarthy and Christopher Caldwell to discuss where Thomas Massie went wrong, how corruption centred around the campaign, whether or not Trump's success is a reflection of the upcoming midterms and the way Europe reacts to Trump more broadly.
Tuesday
Are the haters wrong about Trump’s foreign policy?
35 min listen
After Trump visited Xi Jinping last week, Putin is now expected to meet the Chinese leader in Beijing. Freddy Gray speaks to Francis Pike about these meetings, and Francis makes the case that despite the Iran war, America – thanks to Trump – remains the global super power. Also on the podcast, they discuss Modi's attempts to curb collateral from the oil shortages and why he's a leader like no other.
Sunday
Was Trump’s trip a win for China?
Freddy Gray speaks to Jacob Heilbrunn about China, Trump & America's foreign policy.
Friday
Did the Trump/Xi summit achieve anything?
Air Force One is in the air as I write, whizzing from Beijing back to Washington – and Donald Trump leaves China with many questions unanswered. There were warm words on both sides and plenty of friendly symbolism in the President’s big summit with Xi Jinping. But the fundamental great power tensions remain – over trade, technology, and war and peace in the Middle East and Taiwan. Washington and Beijing agree that Iran should never have a nuclear weapon – though it remains unclear the extent to which China will help reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Its closure hurts the Chinese economy, of course, but China has significant energy reserves and Xi knows that the pain spreads around the world to his advantage.
Thursday
What have Britons got against America?
35 min listen
British favourability dropped sharply sometime around 2016 and then further declined in 2024. Trump is clearly the main driver of negative feelings, although not the only one. There was much antipathy in 2020, which may have been related to the election but seems more likely due to the chaotic scenes that followed George Floyd’s death. To discuss this, Freddy Gray is joined by Ed West, who has written about this for his Substack The Wrong Side of History.
Tuesday
One year of Pope Leo – a promising start?
37 min listen
One year on from when Pope Leo became head of the Catholic church and he remains a bit of an enigma. Is he a Conservative or Liberal? What did we learn from his clash with Donald Trump? Damian Thompson is joined by editor of The Pillar Ed Condon and two Spectator favourites – Freddy Gray and Mary Wakefield.
Monday
What’s going on with the Kennedy Center?
22 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Josef Palermo, who formerly worked for the Kennedy Center to discuss the historical building and whether its cultural and ethos has been ruined by the Trump administration.
Friday
All roads lead to Rome for Rubio
"What to get someone who has everything, I thought," said Secretary of State Marco Rubio yesterday, as he handed Pope Leo a funny little crystal-football present. "Wow, OK," replied Leo, stiffly. It was a useful reminder that Rubio is not always a smooth operator. For all the articles suggesting he has now overtaken Vice President J.D. Vance as favorite to be the 2028 Republican nominee, for all the media gushing over the "Secretary of Everything" in the White House briefing room, Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage. Lil’ Marco can still be something of a robotic plonker on the big stage It was Rubio, after all, who was the first cabinet official to suggest in public that Israel had strong-armed America into attacking Iran.
Thursday
What’s going to happen when Trump visits Beijing?
26 min listen
Freddy Gray is joined by Geoffrey Cain, author of Steve Jobs in Exile, to discuss the significance of China has a global player in international conflict and what could come from Trump's visit to Beijing next week.
Saturday
Martin Vander Weyer, Freddy Gray & Arabella Byrne
From our UK edition
This week: Martin Vander Weyer on British steel and his chat with Andy Haldane, Freddy Gray has been stateside & Arabella Byrne on why she's no fan of the social climbing dog – whippets.
Friday
Lorna Hajdini and the willing suspension of disbelief
"A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has a chance to get its pants on." That old saw is now hopelessly out of date. These days, an apparent malicious falsehood can become global news in a matter of seconds, especially if it contains suggestions that pants might have come off. Human beings love to share shocking gossip, and internet technology means that we can do so at terrifying speed and scale. Social media now resembles the lower-rent tabloids of old, rife with fantastical pieces about aliens or sex slaves and the occult Take, for instance, the incredible tale of the feline JPMorgan executive who "sexually harassed" a junior male staff member.
Wednesday
How the Declaration of Independence made America
King Charles III and his wife Camilla have been on a state visit to the White House meeting Donald Trump and the First Lady. At a state banquet in the evening, both King Charles and Trump gave speeches celebrating the special relationship. The event marked 250 years of American independence. Freddy Gray spoke to the author Michael R. Auslin who wrote the book The Declaration of Independence: History, Meaning and Modern Impact, which explores the Declaration of Independence as a revered relic, a symbol of American ideals, and a manufactured cultural icon in his research.
The inverted imperialism of the royal visit
It’s hard not to feel sorry for Christian Turner, the UK's new ambassador in Washington. He’s only been in post three months, yet he’s already had to handle a string of bilateral crises – none his fault. US-UK relations are under intense strain over Iran, Ukraine and now the Falklands. And the Jeffrey Epstein stench still lingers thanks to his predecessor, Peter Mandelson. The King’s visit was meant to gloss over all that unpleasantness. Word went round last week that a grateful Donald Trump would pack King Charles and Camilla off and promptly declare the US-UK trade deal had been finalized. Then, on Tuesday, the first morning of the visit, news broke of a leaked tape.
Monday
The rise of left-wing violence and why we’re all numb to it
The alleged gunman from the White House Correspondents' Dinner has been named as 31-year-old Cole Allen. He was arrested at the scene armed with a shotgun, handgun and multiple knives. It later emerged the suspect sent a note to family members before the shooting, apologising to parents, colleagues and bystanders for what he was about to do. He wrote 'I apologise to everyone... who suffered before I was able to attempt this, to all who may still suffer after, regardless of my success or failure.' He added that he may have given 'a lot of people a surprise today' and, although he did not name Donald Trump directly in the writings, he did criticise him and mentioned targeting the administration.
