[This transcript was generated automatically from audio using AI and hasn't been reviewed by a person -- it can contain mistakes, including plausible-sounding sentences that were never actually said. Treat it as a starting point, not a verbatim record.]

[0:10] Hello, I'm Lewellen King, the host of White House Chronicle. Thank you for coming along. My guest today is David Smith, the Washington
[0:20] Bureau chief of the Vodian newspaper, the Great British newspaper, which now has a large readership in the United
[0:28] States. Indeed, has a whole United States edition. It is very influential. It's also got a certain asset,
[0:37] And that is, it doesn't have a payable.
[0:40] So that you don't read two paragraphs of the newspaper
[0:44] and suddenly you can't read anymore without sending money.
[0:48] It is my pleasure to have David on the broadcast today.
[0:51] Not only has he worked in Washington and London,
[0:54] but he also was the Africa bureau chief for the Guardian.
[0:59] David, welcome to the broadcast.
[1:02] Thank you for having me.
[1:03] Would it be reasonable for, it's my pleasure? Would it be reasonable for me to say that you have
[1:10] wreckage in Washington and wreckage in London? And how much worse is the wreckage in Washington?
[1:18] Well, it's hard to compare, but yes, both countries are actually devastated by the coronavirus pandemic
[1:25] And the economic fallout, some would say, two of the worst performers in the world, really.
[1:34] I think Britain, I believe, has the highest death toll in Europe, America has the highest
[1:41] death toll on the whole planet. Many would say the people responsible for that are the leaders
[1:50] Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, both of whom symbolically enough became infected and fell
[1:56] with coronavirus. And that kind of spirit there would be Bolsonaro in Brazil, of course.
[2:04] And it's taken the table economic toll on both countries, even as China surges ahead and is already
[2:10] growing again, fully in America, millions of jobs have been lost. It's not much better in Britain.
[2:18] Although there was a different government approach to state funding of wages, a huge investment
[2:26] in the arts sector, which of course has been wiped out. And of course, the National Health Service,
[2:34] which is, I was just reading under the biggest strain in its history of more than 70 years, trying
[2:38] to cope with this. So often American Britain do seem to go hand in hand and sadly that's the case
[2:46] again with the pandemic committee coming for us. Of course, you have an interest in the arts,
[2:52] your wife is a well-known American actress. It must have been quite rough not being able to work,
[3:00] as it changed your home life. I mean, normally an actress works at night and suddenly you're married
[3:07] 24-7 as the rest of us are. How is that going, David?
[3:12] 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,
[3:22] exactly a year ago, and it's somewhat eerie looking back at the photos of the opening nights.
[3:29] There's a packed audience, there's this cast members mingling together afterwards, but whole way of life has been wiped out.
[3:38] Let's come back to what we should be talking about,
[3:41] well, I always like to talk about the theatre having one
[3:44] spin the theatre critic in Washington,
[3:48] how do you see the Biden administration?
[3:51] I read, I think it was this morning that he has a choice
[3:55] between governing and being liked,
[3:58] and these two may be in some considerable contingent.
[4:03] Yes, okay, I'll give you the toughest inheritance
[4:06] for any president, since Franklin Roosevelt and the Great Depression, it's fairly familiar territory
[4:13] to Biden having been with Barack Obama when he took over during an economic crisis. It's extremely
[4:20] difficult. But we were talking about the CSRI, I just interviewed one academic who said this
[4:26] is a matter just the end of Richard III, the exciting charismatic despots is leaving and being replaced by
[4:33] boring kind of a seventh who at least is a steady hand of government. So I think Biden is going to
[4:40] first of all tackle the coronavirus pandemic to try to get a hundred million vaccinations
[4:45] in a hundred days. There's a 1.9 trillion dollar economic recovery package. Now in theory, if people
[4:54] on the ground feel the effects of those things, governing well and popularity will actually
[5:00] a dovetail quite nicely. But I think that the downside is that if things go wrong and it's
[5:08] very tough for any president, then of course you will get blamed. Of course there's a very
[5:13] noisy element of Donald Trump supporters who still believe election was stolen, who will be looking
[5:20] to attack Biden, backed by conservative media. So it's going to be a very rough ride. Biden is
[5:27] you believe the best person to do this as a bridge builder as someone who's worked across the
[5:32] aisle but there are those who say he's very naive that Washington politics has changed a lot
[5:39] and you're given about five minutes before he's coming under fire not only from the Republican
[5:45] right but but also progressives on his left flank who say he's not moving fast enough.
[5:51] Well that's interesting because one of the things that he's going to have to deal with
[5:56] is the high expectation level of expectation.
[6:01] He has from the progressives.
[6:03] For example, it is said that he is going to immediately cancel
[6:08] because he's stone pipeline.
[6:10] Well, this has been four to 15 years
[6:13] involves international relations,
[6:16] because he's very precious to Canada.
[6:19] And almost without any due process,
[6:22] he's going to say he's going to yank the permits.
[6:26] That's not really a very good beginning if you want to bring people to yellow.
[6:35] Yeah, he'll certainly take some criticism for that, but I think it's an indication of how, for
[6:44] start the Biden presidency, will be to the left of both the Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, not only on economic issues,
[6:53] and the idea of state intervention generally. But specifically, it's a different world on the
[7:00] climate crisis. And I've spent identified by this one of the four major crises he has to tackle
[7:07] along with the pandemic, the economy and racial injustice. And he's signal disintent from the
[7:13] start, so the John Kerry as a climate ambassador overseas, there's been a lot of involvement with
[7:21] the progressive less than the specific only issue of the climate crisis, so I was particularly
[7:27] surprised by the keystone decision, but I think it is going to be a point of tension going
[7:35] forward, a gradual withdrawal from fossil fuels, how quickly that happens. I'm sure Republicans
[7:41] will seize on that to accuse Biden on destroying jobs. Just as they try to do during the election
[7:49] but didn't really gain much traction.
[7:51] It's hard to say that you're going to rebuild
[7:55] the infrastructure if your first action
[7:58] is to arrest an infrastructure project.
[8:03] It's going to be quite an explanation
[8:05] he's going to have to give.
[8:08] It does look as though it is a sort of immediate stop
[8:12] to his left wing when it really wasn't to my mind needed.
[8:17] It seems to me that there are a whole bunch of things he has to do.
[8:21] He's in danger, maybe, of giving the climate too much emphasis and an abandoning a lot
[8:28] of other environmental issues, like the condition of the oceans, for example.
[8:33] There are many, many environmental issues besides the amount of carbon, which the United States
[8:39] puts into the air, which has decreased substantially since 2005, continues to go down, not
[8:46] particularly by government action, but because of the actions in the primarily the electric
[8:53] community itself dictated not by altruism, but by economics. Cole became an economic,
[9:02] the low cost of wind and solar may make natural gas and the economy. But meanwhile, it is the
[9:11] you feel burned to make the electricity in this country, and many others. Because you want to get
[9:18] rid of it, doesn't mean you can do that instantly. It's an extraordinary turnaround, I think
[9:24] has to form, and I think you're right in that he and other world leaders have to forcefully
[9:34] make the case that this is not just purely out of it as a nice thing to do, that there has to
[9:39] a real economic imperative for action. I think Europe arguably especially Germany, the UK and others,
[9:47] so far have been more persuasive on that. It's time for America to embrace that case as well
[9:55] and what's interesting is you are seeing some of the old oil giants in the US, some of the
[10:03] in it, did you come for this? And, calm, because actually moving themselves in that direction
[10:10] and one of the patterns of last four years is sometimes that the business and private sector
[10:15] has been ahead of the federal government under Trump on all sorts of issues. But also the
[10:23] big question now is just like the Conservative Party in the UK, will the Republican Party
[10:29] Finally, understand the reality of the climate crisis and what needs to be done and understand
[10:35] that it can be good for business and can make the economic sense.
[10:39] Britain is facing a very special situation, it is back on its own, along with a part of Europe.
[10:45] And one of the expectations, certainly fed by Trump, was that there would be some extra special
[10:51] relationship with the US and there would be an enormous amount of trade across the Atlantic.
[10:58] 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?
[11:09] Or was that simply a political pipe dream?
[11:13] I think Laura pipe dream.
[11:15] I think Britain is not in a good place right now.
[11:20] 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.
[11:38] is the UK, however, just dug in deep on it's mistake, as I would say it, and I think most
[11:45] of my Guardian colleagues would, that Brexit is a very poor choice. It will have all sorts
[11:52] of economic negative implications and diminishes Britain's place in the world, and of course,
[11:57] Brexit was confirmed, rather than the last an hour before the United States, a trade deal was struck
[12:03] with the EU, but now it leaves Britain and I states have been the world, but I think
[12:08] dropping down the rankings, certainly in terms of America's perception, as striking
[12:13] that during the presidential debates between Biden and Trump, the word Brexit was never
[12:20] uttered once. And if you're sitting in the White House now, your biggest concerns are China and
[12:29] Europe has a block and and Britain has some way down the list. And if you have the state department,
[12:34] and you want to know what's going on in Europe, I think you probably, you're less likely to call
[12:38] London now as a gateway, you're more likely to call Berlin or Paris. And then on top of all of that,
[12:47] you know, Johnson and Trump were somewhat Kingred spirits, even in their appearance and in
[12:52] their bustling of norms and their larger-than-life personalities. So there was hope for a speedy
[12:57] trade deal and next special relationship there. Sadly, that's a Britain that's over now.
[13:04] I think Biden and many Democrats think Brexit is a terrible idea. Biden and Johnson have never
[13:11] met, so we'll see how that goes. I think many Democrats remember, so in the comments, Johnson has
[13:17] made in the past, for example, criticizing Obama's Kenyan ancestry and making him biased against the
[13:28] The UK's best hope type thing, Carl, the fact that it is investing in defense and remain
[13:32] an important intelligence and military partner is investing in the climate crisis, which
[13:37] is certainly in tune with Biden's priorities.
[13:40] And of course, this year, the UK will host the G7 and a big climate summit.
[13:47] So, there's some way to get it back on track with Biden, who is the pragmatist, but overall,
[13:51] I think a trade deal is a long way off and Brexit will actually harm rather than help the UK's
[13:59] relationship with the US.
[14:02] For the benefit of our listeners on serious examiners, voters, general 1204, you are listening
[14:08] to White House Chronicle.
[14:10] I am the Wellington King, the program's host.
[14:13] My guest today is David Smith, Washington, Bureau Chief of the Guardian.
[14:19] White House Chronicle as nation-wide on 200 television screens and worldwide on voice
[14:25] in America, television and radio in English and is translated into Chinese.
[14:33] We are now available as a podcast on Apple, Spotify, Stitcher or your favorite audio
[14:40] program.
[14:41] If you would like to receive my weekly columns by email, just email me at thewellinking1atgmail.com
[14:53] Something that governments, democratic governments across the world have
[15:00] But to deal with is disinformation, fake news, both spread by governments and by individuals and
[15:09] by political entities. How are we going to deal with that? How are we going to know what the truth is?
[15:15] Eastern Europe is very worried about disinformation flowing out of Russia. In this country, we have
[15:22] the example under the Trump administration, or an awful lot of people came to believe that
[15:27] one, the election, because he said so, and because what he said was backed up on social media
[15:33] by his supporters, you and I are in the information business and have been all of our professional
[15:41] careers, and yet we don't have the same impact now as say a just a misinformed statement on social media,
[15:52] And the media companies are trying to deal with this, but they become censors.
[15:58] What are your feelings about this whole wall of wax?
[16:01] This whole mess that is information, just information.
[16:06] And our role as journalists trying to unravel some of it.
[16:10] Yeah, it is a mess.
[16:11] I think Barack Obama has recently identified this information as the number one threats to democracy
[16:20] for a private company to have that power to effectively silence the president of the United States
[16:26] is a tricky thing and what does that mean for the future? You also, just generally, a lot of
[16:34] people with much more expertise than me being asked, what are we going to do about this disinformation
[16:39] crisis and they will often hold up their hands and say, I don't know. It is such a such a
[16:46] the tricky problem and you can certainly see some of the moves in Congress against the Section
[16:53] 230 law suggesting that at least Internet companies should police harder and be held responsible
[17:01] for the content on that platforms and the total battle Trump, there's one example of that, so
[17:08] I think we should and probably will see more pressure from civil society, more pressure from politicians
[17:13] from the law for internet companies to regulate what what appears. But I don't know if that
[17:22] will be enough. I don't know if I can Hoover up every website out of there. And then also,
[17:28] is anybody literally going to walk into the Fox News studio and say, you know, you
[17:33] must stop pushing Trump's conspiracy theories. I feel uneasy if they did and I think a lot of people
[17:38] words. So I like all those other hundreds I mentioned. I really have a sense of fact for answer
[17:44] for you. I think that you have to find some third way and that is maybe a new kind of concept
[17:53] of liable to hold the people and maybe you have to go along and remove the 230 protections that the
[18:08] a liberal regime, but where it's third, where it's not the common carrier, not the tech company
[18:16] that is censoring, but society as a whole. And we've had that pretty well in the general
[18:24] media for a long time. Or if you said something, I'd read just about someone in print or
[18:30] or even verbally, you would drive it into court more so in Britain and in the US, but even in the
[18:37] as I now used to be a publisher paid for Bible insurance, we have to have that third way,
[18:46] that break, but for the company that carries the information to apply the break, which seems to
[18:52] me to be more than dangerous, it seems to me to be suicidal long-term. It gives a power that no government
[19:01] has to private companies, and that's quite informally and international private companies.
[19:10] But going back to this information, it's not just an American problem, it's a huge
[19:16] problem, particularly in Eastern Europe, where the disinformation lies coming out of Russia.
[19:24] In a torrent, they have a huge setup in Russia, just producing this information, which
[19:31] they peed into the internet and elsewhere, but also the stage events.
[19:39] I was told in Eastern Europe, for example, if you heard there was skinheads in this happened,
[19:45] I think, in Lithuania, not quite certain, they sent reporters down and then he was skinheads
[19:50] stirring it up. But in reality, they were Russian agents. They were skinheads. We don't know what the
[19:57] is any more, I'm going to have to find mechanisms for finding it, which was the old role of journalism
[20:04] that I'm not sure we favourable of doing it anymore.
[20:09] It's hard, isn't it?
[20:12] George Orwell's 1984 or Stalin's Soviet Union and others, and Russia today, there is that original
[20:23] concept of disinformation being something very centrally organized by a state and both brain
[20:29] or people and organizing fake rallies and so on. And from that perspective for a long
[20:35] time, America, the Western Nimble democracies were much healthier. It was a free-for-all
[20:40] anybody could write anything. But now it transpires that even the free-for-all that the
[20:46] well of information can get poisoned very quickly. And it's not necessarily, well, some
[20:52] say with Trump, it was, but in general, not necessarily a central state government doing it, but
[20:57] private companies, private individuals can get, can push lies very far. And one of the
[21:04] biggest challenges now for Joe Biden's presidency is going to be how to bring those people back
[21:10] if you like, you know, there were 74 million who voted to Donald Trump, which was a record for
[21:18] incumbent presidents and secondaries of Biden's total. It's fair to assume there's a very significant
[21:23] chunk of those 10 to 4 million who are more sort of moderate and well, listen to Biden and
[21:30] you know, a get-able that all the evidence we see in surveys and people that I interviewed just a
[21:37] couple of weeks ago to Trump rally in Georgia where they were, you know, not one of them believed
[21:42] fighting with the legitimate winners. Some of them were talking about stopping up rounds of ammunition
[21:46] for civil unrest and so on, that the people who have disappeared down rabbit holes on the internet
[21:53] with QN on, how does Biden, how does any president try to connect with them when they appear
[22:00] to be occupying alternative sense of reality. And this is the impact of technology in the internet
[22:07] that there's no playbook for based on the past. Isn't the way to challenge the Biden to change
[22:15] the subject. You get off these contentious issues and not to look as though his only purpose
[22:23] is to reverse everything that Trump did, but to go to a new place to change the subject.
[22:32] And isn't that going to be the challenge for Boris Johnson too, as the fallout from leaving
[22:37] Europe who comes more apparent?
[22:41] Yes. The current subject is so dreadful. I think they do have to try to change it.
[22:52] Biden, his entire campaign framing, of course, was redeeming the sole of America.
[23:02] And he's celebrated a sort of being entertaining and a healer.
[23:07] I'm not sure I've yet detected the change of subjects.
[23:12] You're alluding to in what he's come up with,
[23:14] in the way that Barack Obama was all about hope and change
[23:18] and this sort of image of a new, exciting,
[23:23] America, Biden feels more like sort of triage and fixing
[23:28] what's broken. And so many Boris Johnson elected with a healthy majority. There seem to be
[23:38] probably there of a fresh start, but of course it'd be completely dragged down by the pandemic
[23:43] and all those troubles. So I think early on in both cases it's going to be hard to escape the current
[23:51] paradigm.
[23:54] And, you know, neither of them are sort of young fresh faces as we've seen
[23:58] sometimes elected in the past, whether it's John F. Kennedy in America or Tony Blair in Britain.
[24:08] But certainly, it is crucial for someone like Biden to get away from this hyper-partisan
[24:17] on every issue just the poison of the Trump years and trying to move the nation on from there.
[24:26] Early in the broadcast, you made reference to how China has come out of its troubles with the pandemic
[24:33] and its impact showing economic growth, quite substantial and healthy economic growth while
[24:39] the democracies are not doing very well at all. We are going to have to deal with China,
[24:46] 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
[24:55] 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?
[25:03] of the China? I don't know, I would expect the latter. I think some of Joe Biden's early work
[25:16] will be rebuilding all those alliances with the European partners, if you remember how close
[25:26] 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
[25:46] some of the old international status quo and it won't take long for American Europe to
[25:52] realize they have more shared interests in solidarity and that China is not authoritarian government
[26:00] that does things very differently and does pose a threat. Some could argue that Trump perhaps
[26:10] slightly inadvertently perhaps clumsily,
[26:13] did at least soundly alarm about the rise of China
[26:16] in a way that has presence have not done
[26:18] and has put that issue on the map.
[26:22] By, I don't know, we'll just take a more sophisticated approach
[26:25] and realize that it may be work quite sort of revive
[26:30] the transphositive partnership in Asia,
[26:32] but realize that American Europe really need each other
[26:37] this moment when China is on the ascendant. David, in conclusion, what cheerful news do you
[26:46] have for us? How is the God you're doing in America for? I think it was tremendously
[26:55] cheerful news that despite everything including that onslaught of disinformation, you talk about
[27:00] the American system held and record number of voters join election, join election,
[27:07] Trump judges throughout Trump's lawsuits and Biden is the president. And that's for the
[27:14] Guardian. We've had a very successful year particularly within the U.S.,
[27:21] sometimes nine million readers a day, sometimes more. And actually, despite the pandemic,
[27:28] done relatively well financially. The website is completely free for everyone to access,
[27:36] you know, we believe they should not be a price on information. And that's obviously relevant
[27:40] to be a issue of attacking disinformation out there. But also our model encourages readers to make
[27:48] donations like sort of public accept to broadcasting. And that's been tremendously successful with
[27:54] great hope for all those who have given money to help Gody and Journalists and keep going.
[28:01] Well, I'm glad to hear it. In nine million visitors on a website is pretty impressive.
[28:08] Really quite extraordinary. Would like to thank you and all the best. Chills.
[28:14] Thanks a lot. That is our show for today. Do remember you can relax your work here at home.
[28:20] you don't really need to wear a tie.
[28:22] I do, I don't know why, but where are the masks?
[28:26] I've been so used to the masks,
[28:28] I think it's a normal scene of the affairs,
[28:31] although I would like to know what people look like.
[28:34] You know, but somebody's serving you
[28:36] at a store or even when you've got past in the street,
[28:40] you do wonder what they really look like.
[28:43] That will be such a bonus when we know again,
[28:46] what people look like.
[28:47] Until next week, all the best.
[28:49] Cheers.