Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
Donald Trump has been running for president for at least a decade. His campaign did not start on 16 June 2015, when he descended that golden escalator in that eponymous tower in New York. It began on 19 November 2012, days after President Barack Obama had defeated Mitt Romney, when Trump registered a trademark application
‘I don’t think anyone knows,’ someone close to Donald Trump told me at the end of last week. ‘My guess is he does but that’s just a guess.’ My question, of course, was ‘Is Donald Trump still going to announce?’ — despite the mid-term disappointments for his movement and the increasing certainty among Republican analysts
Has the reputation of any American statesman been more effectively trashed than that of Richard Milhous Nixon? Donald Trump’s, perhaps – certainly the forty-fifth president inspires loathing on a scale matched only by the thirty-seventh. Nixon and Trump have a few other points in common. Both men built coalitions through appeals to forgotten voters. They
30 min listen
This week Freddy is joined by Matt McDonald, US managing editor of The Spectator, who is covering the midterms from Georgia. What will the result of the run-off be there and could this decide who takes control of the Senate?
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On the podcast: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray says the only clear winner from the US midterms is paranoia. He is joined by The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss whether the American political system is broken (00:52). Also this week: Isabel Hardman writes that Ed Miliband is the power
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Freddy Gray speaks to Yoram Hazony, the author of Conservatism: A Rediscovery, about the midterm results, and what happens next to national conservatism in the United States.
Election night, folks – America decides! Except, it doesn’t. On 8 November 2022, as on 3 November 2020, the polls closed, the votes came in and, er, nobody appeared to have won. Everybody now looks nervously again to the state of Georgia, which is probably too close to call and will be decided in a run-off
Is it a red wave? A ripple? Or a trickle? Nobody quite knows. However, what looks certain is that the Republican blow out that many right wing pundits were anticipating has not happened. Crucially, the Democrats have won the crunch Senate race in Pennsylvania. John Fetterman, the man who had a stroke just a few
‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said the 19th century senator Mark Hanna. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ The maxim remains true in 2022. Public polling is all well and good, and useful in its way. Yet in a country as sprawling and complex
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Freddy Gray talks to the journalist David Marcus, author of Charade: The Covid Lies That Crushed A Nation, ahead of the midterms.
Well, that round of party unity was fun, wasn’t it? Rishi Sunak, the pragmatist, ushered in an unfamiliar sense of calmness and competence as he entered Downing Street. It has lasted less than a week. Yet again the newspapers are chock full of ‘senior Conservatives’ gunning for each other: the target this time is Suella
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Freddy Gray talks to Galen Druke, host of the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast on ABC News, as the midterm elections fast approach.
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On this week’s podcast: After the markets saw off Kwarteng, Trussonomics and now Truss herself, James Forsyth writes in The Spectator that the markets will be driving British politics for the foreseeable future. He is joined by Britain economics editor at the Economist Soumaya Keynes to discuss the institutions now dictating government policy (00:56). Also this week: Looking ahead
Here we go again – another leadership contest, another round of intense Westminster blather. Lightweight would-be commentators may feel their energy flagging as they prepare to analyse this next phase of high-level political violence. But alpha bluffers do not fret. We know that there is no such thing as a ‘tired talking point’ – although
42 min listen
Republican strategist Luke Thompson returns to Americano to give Freddy Gray the lowdown on how things are shaping up ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Towards the end of the summer, almost in a spirit of contrarianism, well-informed Americans started talking about President Joe Biden and the Democrats winning again. It had been a bad year, these pundits conceded, but Biden was suddenly on a ‘hot streak’ and, as the November midterms approached, the Democratic party finally had some political
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Freddy Gray talks to Dr Samuel Gregg, a scholar at the Acton Institute and Distinguished Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research, about his new book The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.
‘Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience,’ says Meghan Markle in her strangely throaty professional podcast voice. ‘It minimises what they’re feeling. And you know it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going to the point where anyone who has been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell.
20 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to Madeleine Kearns, staff writer at the National Review, about President Joe Biden’s decree that cannabis possession should no longer be a federal crime. Is this a vote winner or will the decision end in disaster?
Aggggghhh! Woooaaaah! Urrrggghhhh! Those screams you hear are ten thousand self-appointed financial experts howling into the existential abyss. The Bank of England this morning announced its ‘operation’ in the gilt market, and every pundit with a social media account is thrashing around in the ever greater ocean of economic jargon and incomprehensible data. It’s hard
