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Hello, I'm Lewellen King, the host of White House Chronicle. Thank you for coming along. My guest today is David Smith, the Washington

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Bureau chief of the Vodian newspaper, the Great British newspaper, which now has a large readership in the United

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States. Indeed, has a whole United States edition. It is very influential. It's also got a certain asset,

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And that is, it doesn't have a payable.

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So that you don't read two paragraphs of the newspaper

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and suddenly you can't read anymore without sending money.

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It is my pleasure to have David on the broadcast today.

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Not only has he worked in Washington and London,

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but he also was the Africa bureau chief for the Guardian.

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David, welcome to the broadcast.

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Thank you for having me.

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Would it be reasonable for, it's my pleasure? Would it be reasonable for me to say that you have

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wreckage in Washington and wreckage in London? And how much worse is the wreckage in Washington?

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Well, it's hard to compare, but yes, both countries are actually devastated by the coronavirus pandemic

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And the economic fallout, some would say, two of the worst performers in the world, really.

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I think Britain, I believe, has the highest death toll in Europe, America has the highest

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death toll on the whole planet. Many would say the people responsible for that are the leaders

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Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, both of whom symbolically enough became infected and fell

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with coronavirus. And that kind of spirit there would be Bolsonaro in Brazil, of course.

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And it's taken the table economic toll on both countries, even as China surges ahead and is already

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growing again, fully in America, millions of jobs have been lost. It's not much better in Britain.

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Although there was a different government approach to state funding of wages, a huge investment

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in the arts sector, which of course has been wiped out. And of course, the National Health Service,

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which is, I was just reading under the biggest strain in its history of more than 70 years, trying

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to cope with this. So often American Britain do seem to go hand in hand and sadly that's the case

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again with the pandemic committee coming for us. Of course, you have an interest in the arts,

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your wife is a well-known American actress. It must have been quite rough not being able to work,

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as it changed your home life. I mean, normally an actress works at night and suddenly you're married

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24-7 as the rest of us are. How is that going, David?

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Oh, well, we're doing fine, thank you. Yeah, my wife Andre Harris Smith was just in a play at the studio theatre in Washington,

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exactly a year ago, and it's somewhat eerie looking back at the photos of the opening nights.

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There's a packed audience, there's this cast members mingling together afterwards, but whole way of life has been wiped out.

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Let's come back to what we should be talking about,

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well, I always like to talk about the theatre having one

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spin the theatre critic in Washington,

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how do you see the Biden administration?

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I read, I think it was this morning that he has a choice

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between governing and being liked,

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and these two may be in some considerable contingent.

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Yes, okay, I'll give you the toughest inheritance

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for any president, since Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, it's fairly familiar territory

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to Biden having been with Barack Obama when he took over during an economic crisis. It's extremely

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difficult. But we were talking about the CSRI, I just interviewed one academic who said this

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is a matter just the end of Richard III, the exciting charismatic despots is leaving and being replaced by

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boring kind of a seventh who at least is a steady hand of government. So I think Biden is going to

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first of all tackle the coronavirus pandemic to try to get a hundred million vaccinations

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in a hundred days. There's a 1.9 trillion dollar economic recovery package. Now in theory, if people

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on the ground feel the effects of those things, governing well and popularity will actually

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a dovetail quite nicely. But I think that the downside is that if things go wrong and it's

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very tough for any president, then of course you will get blamed. Of course there's a very

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noisy element of Donald Trump supporters who still believe election was stolen, who will be looking

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to attack Biden, backed by conservative media. So it's going to be a very rough ride. Biden is

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you believe the best person to do this as a bridge builder as someone who's worked across the

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aisle but there are those who say he's very naive that Washington politics has changed a lot

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and you're given about five minutes before he's coming under fire not only from the Republican

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right but but also progressives on his left flank who say he's not moving fast enough.

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Well that's interesting because one of the things that he's going to have to deal with

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is the high expectation level of expectation.

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He has from the progressives.

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For example, it is said that he is going to immediately cancel

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because he's stone pipeline.

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Well, this has been four to 15 years

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involves international relations,

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because he's very precious to Canada.

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And almost without any due process,

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he's going to say he's going to yank the permits.

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That's not really a very good beginning if you want to bring people to yellow.

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Yeah, he'll certainly take some criticism for that, but I think it's an indication of how, for

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start the Biden presidency, will be to the left of both the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not only on economic issues,

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and the idea of state intervention generally. But specifically, it's a different world on the

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climate crisis. And I've spent identified by this one of the four major crises he has to tackle

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along with the pandemic, the economy and racial injustice. And he's signal disintent from the

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start, so the John Kerry as a climate ambassador overseas, there's been a lot of involvement with

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the progressive less than the specific only issue of the climate crisis, so I was particularly

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surprised by the keystone decision, but I think it is going to be a point of tension going

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forward, a gradual withdrawal from fossil fuels, how quickly that happens. I'm sure Republicans

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will seize on that to accuse Biden on destroying jobs. Just as they try to do during the election

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but didn't really gain much traction.

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It's hard to say that you're going to rebuild

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the infrastructure if your first action

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is to arrest an infrastructure project.

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It's going to be quite an explanation

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he's going to have to give.

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It does look as though it is a sort of immediate stop

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to his left wing when it really wasn't to my mind needed.

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It seems to me that there are a whole bunch of things he has to do.

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He's in danger, maybe, of giving the climate too much emphasis and an abandoning a lot

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of other environmental issues, like the condition of the oceans, for example.

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There are many, many environmental issues besides the amount of carbon, which the United States

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puts into the air, which has decreased substantially since 2005, continues to go down, not

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particularly by government action, but because of the actions in the primarily the electric

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community itself dictated not by altruism, but by economics. Cole became an economic,

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the low cost of wind and solar may make natural gas and the economy. But meanwhile, it is the

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you feel burned to make the electricity in this country, and many others. Because you want to get

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rid of it, doesn't mean you can do that instantly. It's an extraordinary turnaround, I think

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has to form, and I think you're right in that he and other world leaders have to forcefully

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make the case that this is not just purely out of it as a nice thing to do, that there has to

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a real economic imperative for action. I think Europe arguably especially Germany, the UK and others,

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so far have been more persuasive on that. It's time for America to embrace that case as well

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and what's interesting is you are seeing some of the old oil giants in the US, some of the

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in it, did you come for this? And, calm, because actually moving themselves in that direction

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and one of the patterns of last four years is sometimes that the business and private sector

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has been ahead of the federal government under Trump on all sorts of issues. But also the

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big question now is just like the Conservative Party in the UK, will the Republican Party

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Finally, understand the reality of the climate crisis and what needs to be done and understand

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that it can be good for business and can make the economic sense.

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Britain is facing a very special situation, it is back on its own, along with a part of Europe.

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And one of the expectations, certainly fed by Trump, was that there would be some extra special

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relationship with the US and there would be an enormous amount of trade across the Atlantic.

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And how do you see that shaping up and is Britain will work in the correct and looking to the US for enhanced trade and a better relationship?

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Or was that simply a political pipe dream?

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I think Laura pipe dream.

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I think Britain is not in a good place right now.

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With this, there was a sense in 2020 America corrected what I would argue was a horrendous mistake, Joe Biden can restore the country to some sort of norms and deal with all these crises.

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is the UK, however, just dug in deep on it's mistake, as I would say it, and I think most

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of my Guardian colleagues would, that Brexit is a very poor choice. It will have all sorts

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of economic negative implications and diminishes Britain's place in the world, and of course,

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Brexit was confirmed, rather than the last an hour before the United States, a trade deal was struck

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with the EU, but now it leaves Britain and I states have been the world, but I think

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dropping down the rankings, certainly in terms of America's perception, as striking

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that during the presidential debates between Biden and Trump, the word Brexit was never

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uttered once. And if you're sitting in the White House now, your biggest concerns are China and

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Europe has a block and and Britain has some way down the list. And if you have the state department,

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and you want to know what's going on in Europe, I think you probably, you're less likely to call

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London now as a gateway, you're more likely to call Berlin or Paris. And then on top of all of that,

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you know, Johnson and Trump were somewhat Kingred spirits, even in their appearance and in

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their bustling of norms and their larger-than-life personalities. So there was hope for a speedy

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trade deal and next special relationship there. Sadly, that's a Britain that's over now.

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I think Biden and many Democrats think Brexit is a terrible idea. Biden and Johnson have never

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met, so we'll see how that goes. I think many Democrats remember, so in the comments, Johnson has

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made in the past, for example, criticizing Obama's Kenyan ancestry and making him biased against the

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The UK's best hope type thing, Carl, the fact that it is investing in defense and remain

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an important intelligence and military partner is investing in the climate crisis, which

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is certainly in tune with Biden's priorities.

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And of course, this year, the UK will host the G7 and a big climate summit.

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So, there's some way to get it back on track with Biden, who is the pragmatist, but overall,

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I think a trade deal is a long way off and Brexit will actually harm rather than help the UK's

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relationship with the US.

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For the benefit of our listeners on serious examiners, voters, general 1204, you are listening

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to White House Chronicle.

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I am the Wellington King, the program's host.

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My guest today is David Smith, Washington, Bureau Chief of the Guardian.

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Something that governments, democratic governments across the world have

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But to deal with is disinformation, fake news, both spread by governments and by individuals and

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by political entities. How are we going to deal with that? How are we going to know what the truth is?

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Eastern Europe is very worried about disinformation flowing out of Russia. In this country, we have

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the example under the Trump administration, or an awful lot of people came to believe that

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one, the election, because he said so, and because what he said was backed up on social media

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by his supporters, you and I are in the information business and have been all of our professional

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careers, and yet we don't have the same impact now as say a just a misinformed statement on social media,

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And the media companies are trying to deal with this, but they become censors.

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What are your feelings about this whole wall of wax?

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This whole mess that is information, just information.

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And our role as journalists trying to unravel some of it.

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Yeah, it is a mess.

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I think Barack Obama has recently identified this information as the number one threats to democracy

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for a private company to have that power to effectively silence the president of the United States

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is a tricky thing and what does that mean for the future? You also, just generally, a lot of

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people with much more expertise than me being asked, what are we going to do about this disinformation

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crisis and they will often hold up their hands and say, I don't know. It is such a such a

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the tricky problem and you can certainly see some of the moves in Congress against the Section

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230 law suggesting that at least Internet companies should police harder and be held responsible

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for the content on that platforms and the total battle Trump, there's one example of that, so

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I think we should and probably will see more pressure from civil society, more pressure from politicians

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from the law for internet companies to regulate what what appears. But I don't know if that

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will be enough. I don't know if I can Hoover up every website out of there. And then also,

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is anybody literally going to walk into the Fox News studio and say, you know, you

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must stop pushing Trump's conspiracy theories. I feel uneasy if they did and I think a lot of people

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words. So I like all those other hundreds I mentioned. I really have a sense of fact for answer

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for you. I think that you have to find some third way and that is maybe a new kind of concept

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of liable to hold the people and maybe you have to go along and remove the 230 protections that the

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a liberal regime, but where it's third, where it's not the common carrier, not the tech company

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that is censoring, but society as a whole. And we've had that pretty well in the general

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media for a long time. Or if you said something, I'd read just about someone in print or

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or even verbally, you would drive it into court more so in Britain and in the US, but even in the

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as I now used to be a publisher paid for Bible insurance, we have to have that third way,

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that break, but for the company that carries the information to apply the break, which seems to

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me to be more than dangerous, it seems to me to be suicidal long-term. It gives a power that no government

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has to private companies, and that's quite informally and international private companies.

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But going back to this information, it's not just an American problem, it's a huge

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problem, particularly in Eastern Europe, where the disinformation lies coming out of Russia.

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In a torrent, they have a huge setup in Russia, just producing this information, which

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they peed into the internet and elsewhere, but also the stage events.

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I was told in Eastern Europe, for example, if you heard there was skinheads in this happened,

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I think, in Lithuania, not quite certain, they sent reporters down and then he was skinheads

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stirring it up. But in reality, they were Russian agents. They were skinheads. We don't know what the

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is any more, I'm going to have to find mechanisms for finding it, which was the old role of journalism

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that I'm not sure we favourable of doing it anymore.

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It's hard, isn't it?

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George Orwell's 1984 or Stalin's Soviet Union and others, and Russia today, there is that original

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concept of disinformation being something very centrally organized by a state and both brain

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or people and organizing fake rallies and so on. And from that perspective for a long

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time, America, the Western Nimble democracies were much healthier. It was a free-for-all

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anybody could write anything. But now it transpires that even the free-for-all that the

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well of information can get poisoned very quickly. And it's not necessarily, well, some

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say with Trump, it was, but in general, not necessarily a central state government doing it, but

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private companies, private individuals can get, can push lies very far. And one of the

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biggest challenges now for Joe Biden's presidency is going to be how to bring those people back

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if you like, you know, there were 74 million who voted to Donald Trump, which was a record for

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incumbent presidents and secondaries of Biden's total. It's fair to assume there's a very significant

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chunk of those 10 to 4 million who are more sort of moderate and well, listen to Biden and

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you know, a get-able that all the evidence we see in surveys and people that I interviewed just a

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couple of weeks ago to Trump rally in Georgia where they were, you know, not one of them believed

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fighting with the legitimate winners. Some of them were talking about stopping up rounds of ammunition

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for civil unrest and so on, that the people who have disappeared down rabbit holes on the internet

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with QN on, how does Biden, how does any president try to connect with them when they appear

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to be occupying alternative sense of reality. And this is the impact of technology in the internet

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that there's no playbook for based on the past. Isn't the way to challenge the Biden to change

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the subject. You get off these contentious issues and not to look as though his only purpose

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is to reverse everything that Trump did, but to go to a new place to change the subject.

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And isn't that going to be the challenge for Boris Johnson too, as the fallout from leaving

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Europe who comes more apparent?

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Yes. The current subject is so dreadful. I think they do have to try to change it.

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Biden, his entire campaign framing, of course, was redeeming the sole of America.

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And he's celebrated a sort of being entertaining and a healer.

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I'm not sure I've yet detected the change of subjects.

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You're alluding to in what he's come up with,

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in the way that Barack Obama was all about hope and change

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and this sort of image of a new, exciting,

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America, Biden feels more like sort of triage and fixing

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what's broken. And so many Boris Johnson elected with a healthy majority. There seem to be

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probably there of a fresh start, but of course it'd be completely dragged down by the pandemic

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and all those troubles. So I think early on in both cases it's going to be hard to escape the current

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paradigm.

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And, you know, neither of them are sort of young fresh faces as we've seen

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sometimes elected in the past, whether it's John F. Kennedy in America or Tony Blair in Britain.

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But certainly, it is crucial for someone like Biden to get away from this hyper-partisan

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on every issue just the poison of the Trump years and trying to move the nation on from there.

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Early in the broadcast, you made reference to how China has come out of its troubles with the pandemic

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and its impact showing economic growth, quite substantial and healthy economic growth while

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the democracies are not doing very well at all. We are going to have to deal with China,

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collectively all were going to be split into two. What do you think the result will be? Do you think that Europe will go into a separate camp dealing with China and

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the US to deal with it separately? Or do you think that we will hold together and have a common front in the issues that confront us?

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of the China? I don't know, I would expect the latter. I think some of Joe Biden's early work

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will be rebuilding all those alliances with the European partners, if you remember how close

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For example, back above I was to Angela Merkel and and and and you trumped all that up for four years, but with the actually blink of the secretary of states, I think almost, almost quicker than some of the domestic issues, I think Biden will be able to

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some of the old international status quo and it won't take long for American Europe to

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realize they have more shared interests in solidarity and that China is not authoritarian government

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that does things very differently and does pose a threat. Some could argue that Trump perhaps

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slightly inadvertently perhaps clumsily,

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did at least soundly alarm about the rise of China

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in a way that has presence have not done

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and has put that issue on the map.

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By, I don't know, we'll just take a more sophisticated approach

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and realize that it may be work quite sort of revive

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the transphositive partnership in Asia,

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but realize that American Europe really need each other

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this moment when China is on the ascendant. David, in conclusion, what cheerful news do you

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have for us? How is the God you're doing in America for? I think it was tremendously

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cheerful news that despite everything including that onslaught of disinformation, you talk about

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the American system held and record number of voters join election, join election,

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Trump judges throughout Trump's lawsuits and Biden is the president. And that's for the

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Guardian. We've had a very successful year particularly within the U.S.,

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sometimes nine million readers a day, sometimes more. And actually, despite the pandemic,

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done relatively well financially. The website is completely free for everyone to access,

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you know, we believe they should not be a price on information. And that's obviously relevant

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to be a issue of attacking disinformation out there. But also our model encourages readers to make

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donations like sort of public accept to broadcasting. And that's been tremendously successful with

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great hope for all those who have given money to help Gody and Journalists and keep going.

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Well, I'm glad to hear it. In nine million visitors on a website is pretty impressive.

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Really quite extraordinary. Would like to thank you and all the best. Chills.

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Thanks a lot. That is our show for today. Do remember you can relax your work here at home.

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you don't really need to wear a tie.

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I do, I don't know why, but where are the masks?

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I've been so used to the masks,

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I think it's a normal scene of the affairs,

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although I would like to know what people look like.

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You know, but somebody's serving you

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at a store or even when you've got past in the street,

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you do wonder what they really look like.

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That will be such a bonus when we know again,

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what people look like.

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Until next week, all the best.

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Cheers.