The News Agents: Prince Harry takes the stand

This is a Global Player Original Podcast.

We are back now with Prince Harry preparing to become the first British royal to take

the stand in more than a century.

He's part of a lawsuit against British tabloids accused of phone hacking.

ABC's Lama Hassan is...

America is getting very excited about Prince Harry appearing as a witness in court in this

phone hacking trial against the mirror.

Here in London, a more quintessentially British take on an encounter that happened in court.

Well, I'm taking a day off my normal parliamentary sketch writing and political sketch writing

duties to spend one day in court 15 at the Rolls Building with Prince Harry.

I thought, given that it was going to be a two and a half hour stretch, that I should

nip to the loo beforehand, and I asked where the gents were, and I was sort of wandered

down there, and there was this big burly bloke outside, and I kind of thought, that's strange

why have they got a bloke guarding the door, but I just pushed past him and he didn't stop

me and I wandered in, and there was Prince Harry washing his hands, and we kind of looked

at each other and I said, hello.

He said hello, and then as men do in the toilets, we then avoided each other's eyes and went

our separate ways.

He was genuinely affable.

He didn't look at all upset to have had his morning ablutions interrupted.

That was John Crace, normally parliamentary sketch writer of The Guardian.

A court reporter and nearly witness to, well, something else from Prince Harry, but he was

just washing his hands, and we'll be finding out more about what has happened in court

on this blockbuster day.

Welcome to The News Agents.

The News Agents.

It's John.

It's Emily.

And later in the podcast, we're going to hear from Anthony Scaramucci, Donald Trump's former

director of communications about what on earth is happening in Republican politics.

We're also going to be taking a look at what's happened in Ukraine overnight with the blowing

of this dam and the kind of epic consequences that could flow from that.

But we're going to start this episode in Court 15 of the Rawls Building in London, where

Harry, Prince Harry, has spent the morning giving evidence.

And the man who's been in the thick of it all, apart from Harry, is Jim Watson, who

is The Guardian's media editor and has been today court reporter.

Jim joins us now from court.

Jim, take us through what's been happening.

There's been the most extraordinary press interest.

You've got reporters from all around the world.

I sat next to some from Austria.

There's people from the US.

The whole world's media has descended on the Rawls Building in central London for this

hearing.

And actually, what they've been treated to is a lot of very technical arguments about

what tabloid newspapers were up to in 2003.

A very calm Prince Harry, where the biggest kerfuffle was really about what you'd actually

have to call him in court because no one really knew what the precedent was with a royal

being addressed.

And a sort of a prince putting forward his case, the tabloid media had ruined his life

and those around him.

So in some ways, it's the same old story, but we're really getting into the weeds about

whether Harry, on a legal basis, can substantiate his claims that he was the victim of phone

hacking by journalists working for the Mirror Group newspapers.

And what was the interrogation of Harry like?

I mean, was it very adversarial?

Would you call it aggressive?

Having sat through quite a few of the hearings in particular early in this trial, the mirrors

barrister was going relatively gently on Harry.

There was a lot of references at the start.

So if you find this too much, feel free to let us know and we'll take a little break.

This was Andrew Green, Casey.

Exactly, yes.

So he's been sort of bigged up as the beast who's going to destroy Harry.

But actually, he's been very deferential.

They had to decide that he wouldn't be called your Royal Highness throughout the hearing.

And he's really been probing and undermining him, not being in any way a supporter of Harry.

His job is to undermine Prince Harry's legal case.

But he's almost sort of politely suggesting that Harry was so wrapped up in the general

attacks by the tabloid media that he lost track of what was actually the Mirror's responsibility

and what was the responsibility of other outlets like the News of the World.

So the general tone of questioning has been, OK, Harry, we accept that you had a horrible

time at the hands of the tabloid media.

We also accept that our newspapers phone hacks some people, but you've got no evidence in

these stories that you're presenting to the court that it was actually us who were doing

it.

You've got no evidence that just because we reported that you're in a pizza express one

day or that your mum was worried about you, you've got no evidence that this was coming

from phone hacking a legal means.

It might have just been in another newspaper.

We might have just had someone who passed a tip on to us.

It might even have been your dad's press officer who was telling us.

Jim, there are two part, really.

One, what was Harry's demeanour when dealing with these questions?

But also, how did he answer the detail, the legal points?

He was incredibly calm.

Harry talks a lot in his witness statement about the stereotypes that the tabloid press

created for him and the extent to which as a teenager he almost started living up to

them.

If you're being called the spare, if you're being called the underage drinker and drug

taker, if you're getting all of this stuff anyway, he says he started to just live up

to it because he thought, well, everyone thinks that of me.

I might as well just use this cover to do the real thing.

But he was very calm in court.

He was talking a lot about emotions and feelings and the Mirror Barrister was trying to drag

him back to the details of specific stories.

So Harry would say, you know, this was something that made me upset and the Mirror Barrister

would be like, yeah, but did you read it in the Mirror?

Did you read it in the news of the world?

Or did you read it in another outlet?

Or were you even aware of this publication at the time?

And so a lot of it is about Harry says, this is how I felt and how I was treated by the

sort of wider tabloid media.

And the Mirror is trying to bring it back to on the very narrow legal case, yeah, but

was it us?

And have you got any evidence that we were doing the illegal stuff, you say?

Or is it all just a hunch?

Do you just feel that you've no other explanation for how we got this story, Ergo, it must have

been hacking?

And what about the judge?

Because Boil reports he was pretty shirty with Harry yesterday when Harry didn't turn

up and the judge had made this point that he'd expressly directed him to attend on day

one, so they could be available for cross examination.

Did any of that come through?

No, I think that was one of those things that the judge liked to sort of have his authority

respected.

He'd asked Harry to be on standby, essentially, said, well, you know, you're due to give

evidence on Tuesday, but we might finish early so can you make sure you're here?

And Harry had said, no, I'm staying in LA for my daughter's second birthday party.

Now I've organised a second birthday party for a toddler.

They don't know which day the birthday party is on.

You can just shift it a day.

And that's probably what I'd have done that who they don't know, they can't read a calendar.

So but clearly the decision was made in that household that Princess Lilibert had to celebrate

on the Sunday, which was her second birthday party and her dad would not be allowed to

fly to the UK until the Sunday night.

So that timing issue over when the daughter's birthday party was celebrated meant that he

got a bit of a telling off from the judge, but on balance, I don't think it's going to

affect the outcome of this case.

How do you read the mood of Harry's camp and the mirror camp at this stage in the hearing?

Because this isn't a criminal case.

There's no jury.

This is a civil case that is being brought.

So do you think that the mirror will be pleased with the way that they have framed the argument?

Will Harry's team be pleased with the way that he is responding?

Everyone knows and accepts that the mirror's newspapers, the Daily Mirror, the Sunday Mirror,

the people engaged in illegal activity, and they've paid out lots of money to that effect

to many people over the years.

But the mirror is trying to limit those claims.

It's trying to draw a line under them.

They've already had to put aside about 150 million over the years to deal with all of these claims.

And they want to draw a line under it.

And Harry, Harry's clearly motivated as much by having this stuff aired in court.

He took enormous delight in suggesting that Piers Morgan had pursued a vendetta against him

and his wife, Megan, because of the allegations he was putting in this court case.

And he suggests that Morgan listened in on his mother's voicemail messages and his mother,

of course, being Princess Diana.

So in some ways, Harry getting to air this stuff, I get the feeling it's as much part of the purpose

for him as any judgment at the end of it all and damages at the end of it all.

And that's the thing, because so far, there's only ever been one full civil trial

in all of these phone hacking cases.

Thousands of claims, only one, and that was back in 2015 against the mirror.

Rupert Murdoch's New UK has always avoided a trial.

Harry's trying to push them there.

So all of this is really about Harry trying to get the stuff aired in public

rather than just taking a settlement on the steps of the court.

So I guess that's the point, right?

That Harry is not somebody who's looking for money or a settlement or a payout.

If he wants all this stuff to come out, can the mirror ever win this one on technicalities?

The mirror can win it on several grounds.

It could win on the fact that Harry waited too long to file his legal claim,

which is a technical point, but a pretty important one in all of this.

And it could convince the judge that on the balance probabilities,

Harry hasn't got the goods to suggest that he was the victim of widespread phone hacking.

The mirror has accepted on one minor occasion that it did use a private investigator for

illegal means to contact people around Harry.

But basically, there's two grounds.

It could be timed out or it could be no sufficient evidence

that Harry was the victim of illegal acts by the mirror.

This is all quite in the weeds, but as I say,

really the reputational damage is being done to the mirror.

It's existing journalists and editors who still work for the company are being dragged into this.

And as a corporate, it is struggling in the wider current newspaper industry

and being dragged down by the costs of dealing with these claims of things that happened 20

years ago in most cases.

I'm really struck by what you said, Jim, because it seems to me that what you could easily

extrapolate from this is that the mirror group win the legal case,

and they are not found to have hacked Prince Harry's films in the way that has been alleged.

But Harry wins, because as you describe, you have got the world's media right before you

and you have got freedom to say whatever you like in court because of the privilege of court

reporting and everything will get reported around the world.

So Harry is able to point his finger most decisively at the mirror and other tabloids,

and the mirror might just walk free without any fine as a result of it.

That's possible, but remember, Harry is just one of 100 people involved in this case.

We've all framed it as the Prince Harry case.

Really, he's just the one high-profile name that people want to talk about.

Harry might not have been a victim, the judge could rule, but the judge could also rule that

all the other claims can keep going on and the costs keep eating away at the mirror.

So there's almost multiple verdicts that could come out of this, and as ever with any court case,

once you're dragged into it, you're almost certainly going to come out a bit worse for where.

I kind of see an outcome possible where almost everyone involved is a loser,

but Harry will be hoping that the judge will side with him.

Thanks so much for joining us again.

Jim Orson from The Guardian there. Fantastic. Thank you very much indeed.

This episode started with an encounter in the urinals, and this part of the episode is also

going to end with one, because the best political story I ever heard concerned John Major when he

was Prime Minister and Michael Hesseltine, who was the Deputy Prime Minister.

They had gone up to Manchester after the bombing of the Arndale Centre.

They'd been shown around by the fire brigade where the bomb had gone off,

and both men needed to go to the bathroom.

The fire chief said there was a pub just across the road outside the secure zone

where they could go. They walk in there. There is a three-booth urinal.

There is this big bloke in the middle smoking a cigarette, having a wee.

And Hesseltine goes on one side of him, and Major goes on the other,

and he looks around to his left, and he sees the mane of Michael Hesseltine,

and does a double take. And then he goes back to concentrate on what he's doing,

and then he turns his head the other way, and he sees John Major.

And before the guy is able to make any exclamation, John Major goes to him,

no one will ever believe you. This is why politicians dream of a pre-smartphone age.

We'll be back in a moment with the mooch, Anthony Scaramucci.

This is The News Agents.

Welcome back, and in a moment we're going to be discussing all things politics, USA,

and the upcoming kind of race and who's in and who's out.

And we've got the most spectacular guest, the former comms director to Donald Trump,

who lasted a mere 10 days or 10 and a half days, or maybe if you're really being generous,

11 days, Anthony Scaramucci. But before that, I would also say that The News Agents USA

is about to be born in the USA. On June the 20th, we're going to be launching

our debut episode of News Agents USA, which will be a weekly podcast available

on Global Player initially. And we're going to do All Matters American.

It gave me a heart attack. I thought you were going to say daily, but it's debut.

Yeah, it's a weekly episode, which is going to be sort of reuniting of the old ways of campaign.

When once we did a podcast for some other organization.

Yeah, but it feels good because we are now in the beginning of the home straight to the

US presidential 2024 election. We should bear in mind that American elections start a long time in

advance. And when Donald Trump's involved, they end a long time afterwards too.

So that's News Agents USA, where we'll cast an eye over America. Do you see what I did there?

Yes, I did. Very clever.

So today, we have got the former vice president to Donald Trump, entering the race to beat

Donald Trump for the Republican nomination in 2024. That relationship, like so many

relationships with Donald Trump, didn't end well. On January the 6th, Trump supporters

could be heard chanting this when they took over Congress.

Let's just take you back to how it all began, as they say.

Mike Pence, who'd been the governor of Indiana, who had been seen as a sort of boring mate to

Trump's successes and sort of noise, if you like. And he thought that Mike Pence was going to do

very well with particularly the sort of Christian right, the conservative right.

He's evangelical. He famously made that statement quite early on that he'd never have dinner

with any other woman than his wife. It was a sense of this sort of incredibly

correct, gray, conservative counterbalance to all the orange of Trump. And four years on,

Mike Pence has finally come out with his own version of events on that fateful night

that the Capitol was stormed. He's written a book, but he probably doesn't really stand

a chance because he is not Trump, and yet he is very much linked to Trump. So the question that

any of the commentators will pose at the moment is about Lanes. What is your lane? We know that he

wants to run to the right of Trump. We know that he wants to run to the sort of evangelical voice

in the Republican Party. But does he have any clear direction, any way through to the presidency?

At this stage, it's pretty hard to see. Now, we've also got in the field, and this is important.

There are a lot of names, but you don't need to worry about the names, but there are an awful

lot of candidates who are already in the field vying for the Republican nomination. You've got

a South Carolina Senator, Tim Scott. You've got Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador.

You have got Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor. You've got one or two others who are maybe less

known. You've also just had Mike Pence going in. You've got the former governor of New Jersey,

Ron Christie going in. And the more the number of names increases, the greater the chance is that

Donald Trump comes through. Because the way the voting system works going by state, by state,

by state, you accumulate delegates. And because Donald Trump is so popular, he will just drive

through the middle and be able to pick up so many nominations that he becomes unstoppable.

So Donald Trump is probably delighted that there are more names and more names and more names

of hats going into the ring to be considered for the Republican nomination.

Yeah, I think we should be careful when we say Donald Trump is so popular. Donald Trump has,

we know, an established base. And it's a base that has just basically hunkered down and loves

him more with every indignity or every egregious act he commits. And this base stands, we think at

between 30 and 40%, let's call it, I don't know, 33, 35% of the Republican party. So it's not that

everyone in the Republican party loves him. They don't. But of all the candidates currently standing,

he is the one with the most solid group of supporters. The other thing that is in this race,

in the background, in the shadows, are all the lawyers and the possible criminal cases against

Trump. And right now, we know that the Department of Justice is meeting officials,

as speculations growing, that these classified documents that were taken from the White House,

from his time as president, and holed up in his holiday home in Mar-a-Lago,

are now coming into the fall as a possible area in which he is indicted again.

So Donald Trump's legal difficulties are huge. He's got a family that is not fully

behind him this time round, unlike in 2016. And remember, in 2016, he won the nomination

without getting a majority of the delegates. So Donald Trump looks very well set. But you just

get this nagging feeling, talking to people in America, that he might not yet make it to

the point where he runs again for the 2024 presidency.

We're going to talk now to Anthony Scaramucci. He's a name that is associated with a period

of 10 and a half days. He calls it a Scaramucci because that is the entire length of his career

working for Donald Trump in the White House. It is a time that you get the sense from talking to him,

he now kind of enjoys but bitterly regrets as well. He doesn't think that Donald Trump was a

great president. He doesn't support him anymore. He actually tells us that he'd be more likely to

vote for Biden in the race against Trump and Joe Biden. But we ask him about the lay of the land

within the Republican Party right now, his own ambitions down the line and whether he thinks

that Mike Pence has a chance. No, he doesn't stand a chance. But then again, it's American

politics so anything can happen as we all know in American politics. So if you're in the race,

technically you stand a chance. Remember, anybody that gets the Republican nominee

sort of has a 50-ish percent chance to win the presidency. That's how close things are right

now. But no, I don't think he stands a chance and I think he's taking the lane, we'll have to see

what lane he takes. But if he's taking, I'm Donald Trump but smarter lane or I'm Donald Trump but

calmer lane, I don't see how that wins. There is a lane in my mind that's totally different

than the Trump lane, which is more of an entrepreneur's lane, which is akin to what Barack

Obama did in 2008. Let's just remind people of that. Barack Obama was up against the Clinton

establishment and the traditional Democrats and he built a new market as a political entrepreneur.

He went out and expanded the Democratic Party and he had a pincher move on the Clintons.

So there is an opportunity to do that to Donald Trump. There could be a transformative leader,

somebody that thinks differently than Trump, that doesn't necessarily hurt the Trump base

but just explains to people that there's a more beautiful, colorful mosaic of America out there.

Have you got someone in mind? Not yet actually, no. We'll have to see. Governor Christie is going

to announce this week he will take it to Donald Trump. He probably has the best skill set to do

that but we'll have to see how he campaigns. But somebody needs to come around that base,

if you will, and grow that party. Otherwise, that party is really...

I'm going to get this out of the way early. You're not going to stand.

I'm running for reelection of my marriage Emily. I'm trying to stay married.

That's not an answer.

No, I'm not going to stand but I mean, who knows? I mean, there's a governor's race in

2026 in New York. Maybe we'll do that. We'll see.

That's interesting. I want to go back to your Chris Christie point.

Maybe. We'll see. You look like...

Anything's possible in America, right? You know that.

Right, but you've got political ambitions to lead.

No, I actually don't have political ambitions but I think that the situation is so ridiculous at

this point that, you know, whether it's a guy like Jamie Dimon or another business executive,

they could probably do better than what's going on right now.

But the fact of the matter is that politics doesn't allow that. I mean, there's no way that

Jamie Dimon can run for the presidency with a billionaire on Wall Street.

No, no, no. That politics does not allow for that but I think the American people are exhausted

by the current political leaders. I don't think that they're satisfied with the current political

leaders and I don't think that because of the barriers to entry and look at what they do to

people. I mean, we're talking about my 11-day experience. I mean, they desecrated and hammered

me over the 11 days. Most business leaders don't want to go through that. They don't want to stomach

that. But I've already been through that so I'm cool with it.

So who or what would make this race harder for Donald Trump, do you think?

Less Republicans would make it harder for him. You know, obviously an indictment in Georgia

would make it harder for him. He's got this issue now with the documents as you know.

He also has the January 6th investigation.

Just explain. The documents we're talking about, the ones that the FBI is investigating,

may or may not have been flooded in Moralago over the weekend.

Yeah. No, he's basically, he took classified information out of the White House. He had

military secrets that were of high order felony sort of secrets.

But is this actually going to lose him votes or lose him support?

Well, no, but what it does is it hammers him and it fatigues the people around him. So

just remember, like if you hit a rock one time, no impact, two times no impact,

a thousand times hitting the rock, it eventually shatters. And so he'll be up against it. He'll

be facing an indictment in Manhattan. He has a possible indictment coming in Georgia.

He's got the Department of Justice looking at these documents and he has the January 6th

insurrection where in the testimony, some of the testimonies very damning towards him. Now

his base will say that's no problem. He'll win the presidency and the nomination from

the jail cell and he'll operate the government from an American prison and all of that stuff.

But is that reality either? It probably isn't reality. I mean, that stuff is very fatiguing.

And I think very tellingly, Emily, his children are not that into it.

Jared and Ivanka said, no Moss. We don't want anything to do with the politics.

And he's a guy that wants to be around these people. So we'll see.

If he drops out of the race, it will not be surprising to me. If he just says, you know,

fakes a health issue or does something like that, because there's just too many things that are

going on right now against him. And everyone's expecting that not to happen,

which is why I'm going to be the contrarian here and suggest that it could.

You think he could pull out the race altogether?

I think he could pull out before Iowa, fake an illness, kids aren't into it, too many indictments,

being harassed and hassled. Yeah, I think he could.

Okay. So you talked a minute ago.

And I think that's why so many of these other guys are jumping in.

Because if he pulls out, then the flame feels a lot flatter.

You mean, so they think that this is going to happen too?

Yeah, I think there's a feeling in the Republican Party among the announced

candidates that Trump is going to pull out of the race, which is why their political

consultants and they themselves are to the right of Trump or they're at Trump's level,

because they don't want to upset his base. Does that make sense?

Yeah, yeah, that would make sense. I wonder whether there is a degree of wishful thinking

in you saying that, because I know you believe that it will be awful if Donald Trump were to win

again. My other question is, when you talk about kind of who the runners and riders are.

He's way more polite than you, by the way.

Yeah, she's rude. I don't ever pretend to be polite.

I wonder if there's like a little bit of wishful thing. I mean, so it's very polite.

Yeah, it was British, you see.

But if it's not going to be Trump, surely it's going to be DeSantis.

Because if you look at the field, you're kind of thinking it like a race.

This coffee table is more charismatic than DeSantis. This coffee table is less boring

than Ron DeSantis. Have you seen Ron DeSantis operate?

Yeah, I have.

Okay, come on. You can watch Ron. Remember, these people are coming.

He's also very brittle and thin-skinned. I mean, he kind of gets irritable really easily.

He boycotts interviews. He doesn't like, let me tell you something.

If Ron DeSantis makes it to the nomination, I will be shocked. Because that, I mean,

you guys have seen it up close and personal. He's about to go into the media sausage grinder

and a spotlight as hot as the sun. And if he can survive all that, given his nature and his

personality, I doubt that, but God bless. And that's not wishful thinking on my part.

That's objective thinking. That's just looking at him. Moreover, whether you guys like this or not,

or anybody likes this or not, this is an entertainment job. This is a popularity contest.

This is not a hiring selection process. This is who's coming into my living room tonight.

Who can I stomach or tolerate? President Biden was a counterdote to Donald Trump during a time

of a pandemic and where Trump's media onslaught over Twitter was absolutely exhausting to the

American public. And so we'll take the grandfather over the crazy uncle that lives in the attic.

But this is a totally different race now. Let me ask you, do you think Ron DeSantis has the

personality to be the president? From what I've seen and everything I've heard,

I think Ron DeSantis is going to be a very difficult cell doing retail politics and

getting the American people to back him. But if it's not Trump and it's not DeSantis

and it's not Pence, then who is it? And if it's someone different that is running for the Republicans,

then the Democrats have a huge problem because you can see how Biden can beat Trump.

I struggle to see how Biden can beat anyone else in the field.

Yeah. Well, remember the demography of the country and you know the country well,

but the demography of the country has changed dramatically over the last eight years. And so

the Democrats have a clear advantage in terms of the population and the bias of the population.

They have a higher registration number. I think they're at 33%. Republicans are at 29%. Of course,

the largest voting block is the independence that's over 40 now. But yes, I think it's a tougher

race for Joe Biden if it's not Donald Trump. But I think he wins handily if it is Donald Trump.

But again, there's so many variables, right? I mean, he's got the situation with Kamala Harris

and the secession problem. I don't think anybody wants Kendall Roy running the company, right?

I mean, you know, she's... You're saying that... He should replace her.

Kamala Harris is Kendall Roy.

100%. I mean, you know that. I mean, you're laughing at that because it's so true. But isn't

this the news agent podcast where you're supposed to speak the truth without any spin?

The point about the Kendall Roy spoiler alert is that he spends his whole life thinking he's

going to get it and he never gets it. A lot of people are looking at Kamala and saying,

if Joe Biden is reelected, then she has every chance of being the next or the...

Yeah, so it's a competence analogy. Was Kendall Roy competent for that job or not?

And I think ultimately the answer to that question was no. And I think the American people

rightly or wrongly and no disrespect to the vice president, but is she competent to handle the

job or not? Why would you say no disrespect when you're about to flag her all?

Because she's probably a nice person. I'm not trying to be disrespectful. I'm just trying to

be objective. He's got a bit of British politeness there. No disrespect, but you're not up to it.

She's not up to that job. And by the way, we have become so politically correct and we've become

so tuned into virtue signaling that we're no longer evaluating things at the objective face

value. But on that basis, there's no way that Biden can remove her from the ticket now.

Well, don't say no way. Of course, there's a way, but will he do it or not? And the answer is no,

he will not do it. Because it makes him look weaker. Or it's going to alienate...

If you replace Kamala Harris with Lloyd Austin, that would make him look weaker.

It suggests that he thinks there's something not quite right with his ticket.

Okay. So why would that make him look weaker? That would make him look smarter. I'm shuffling

the personnel deck here to strengthen my ticket because of the virtue signaling and because

the outcry will be that he's replacing an African American woman on the ticket and it'll be a

crater that will go off in the sort of political correct virtue signaling business of American

politics or British politics. And you know all the reasons why he won't do it. But the question

is, should he do it? And the answer is yes, because it would strengthen his ability to win

reelection. And if we were back in the 1930s, John Nance Gardner, he was gone.

So if we asked you to stick your neck out... Pretty far out.

I know. Your neck is never wound that far in.

Yeah, exactly.

But if you were really to put your neck out... Yeah.

Who do you think the 2024 race will be between?

Well, it's going to be Biden and Harris. I do believe that on that side.

I think it's too early to tell on the Republican side. I will be helping Governor Christie.

You know, he's a personal friend. And I think he has the best chance to

prosecute and litigate the case against Donald Trump. And so if he knocks out Donald Trump,

him standing next to Ron DeSantis, I mean, he's way smarter. He's a better retail politician.

And he's more polished guy than Ron DeSantis.

Just remind us... So be it Ron DeSantis.

So Chris Christie was the governor of New Jersey. He ran in 2016.

He was one of the very early ones to fall out. And then on Super Tuesday,

he's standing like a hostage at Mar-a-Lago with Donald Trump, supporting Donald Trump.

He endorsed him, yeah.

That's going to be held against him by a lot of people. But I think, again,

it's a different time. And you have to look at where we are today, not where we were yesterday.

And Governor Christie has the chops, if you will.

And is he going to go in and just wreck it? Is he going to be the person that says,

I'm not going to get the presidency, but I'm going to bring Donald Trump down?

Well, I think he's not thinking that way. I think he's thinking, I'm going to take

Donald Trump down. And if I take out the proverbial king, that makes me the successor.

I think that's how he's looking at it.

And you think he can do that?

I think he can do it, yeah.

Who are you now? Who are you? Because you went to work for Donald Trump.

You got fired. I don't know whether you hate Donald Trump now because you think he's a bad

president or because you got fired. Nothing per...

But you're a Republican now?

Let's fast forward. When Trump fired me, I took it like a man. I never complained about it.

Never blamed anybody but myself. Totally accountable for my own firing.

For the two years after I was fired, I'm a loyal Republican. I tried to advocate on behalf of

Donald Trump and his policies. I was on the Bill Maher show. Bill asked me about the women of the

squad, the four women that Donald Trump said should go back to the countries they were in.

It's Eleanor and the Democrats.

So you could go back. By the way, three of those women were born in the United States,

the irony there. One was naturalized from that.

What was an irony? It was racism.

Well, it was full on racism and it was full on American nativism.

Right.

And so Bill Maher said to me, I was literally on his show

defending Donald Trump. He said, well, what about this comment about the women

going back to the country they originally came from? I said, I don't like the comment.

They said that to my Italian-American grandmother in the 1920s. It destroyed or hurt her feelings.

It's a form of racism. It's a form of American nativism.

He's the American president. He knows better. He shouldn't do that.

When the show ended, Bill said to me, well, Trump's going to come after you hard.

And I said, why is that? He said, well, you were seven for eight for Donald Trump,

but you got to go 13 for 10 for Donald Trump, which is, of course, mathematically impossible.

And so tomorrow he's going to start lighting you up on Twitter.

And I bet Bill dinner at Craig's that Trump was not going to light me up at Twitter.

Sure enough, the next day he was lighting me up, but I'm a New Yorker.

You know, I think I called him the fattest president since William Howard Taft because I

know he hates being so fat. And then we just started the fight as typical New Yorkers would fight.

And then, you know, we got into it. And then I said, okay, this guy's clearly crazy.

If he's coming after a guy like me who supported him, defended him after I got fired,

there's a screw loose in the wheelhouse up there. And, you know, he will not be able to win the

presidency next time. And of course he didn't. So I'm a Republican.

You're going to be and you're going to be Chris Christie's campaign manager.

No, no, no, I'm going to work for him. I'm going to help him. I raise him money.

And are you going to make that a dirty New York fight?

Not going to, yeah, no, I like fighting. And so I will be fighting Donald Trump.

He should not be the president again. Okay. Remember, he is a existential threat,

the American democracy. He's a threat to the American constitution.

He's a global threat. If you think about the way he thinks about the world, remember,

his view of the world and Steve Bannon's view of the world is to bring the United States back

to the 1890s, where it's an insular country and it's literally walled off and figuratively walled

off from the rest of the world. This is a disavow of the David Ricardo principle of global

trait. Okay. He wants to go in the exact opposite direction of where the world needs to go if you

want global peace and global prosperity. And so, no, you have to fight against Donald Trump.

But you ask me the question, I'm a lifelong Republican, but I'm a patriot first and a partisan

second. If it's Trump versus Biden, I will work tirelessly for Joe Biden. If it's Biden versus

a Republican who I think is a reasonable candidate, like Chris Christie or Nikki Haley,

or somebody that can do the job responsibly, I'll stick to my Republican roots.

The mooch. Thank you for coming in. Mr. Scaramucci.

You're very polite, John. I'll be a little rougher on Emily though.

Always. Be a little rougher on Emily.

Do you think so?

Yeah, I'm going to be your media coach. I'm going to help you. I'll call me when she's

beat you up. I could book in for an hour long session on how to handle maintenance.

Yes. That would be great.

Yeah, do that.

Thank you.

I'm telling you, I can help you.

Thank you.

Nice to see you.

Nice to see you too.

So a couple of things that I learned from that exchange. One, what I've always suspected.

I met Scaramucci on the White House lawn when he was serving for Donald Trump,

and I wondered about his presidential ambitions there. And what we learned is that,

if they're not presidential, at least they're gubernatorial. He wants to enter the race to be

New York's governor, perhaps in a couple of years. He's supporting Chris Christie,

and he doesn't think that Donald Trump is going to last till 2024. I mean, sorry,

presidentially rather than mortally.

I think that's really interesting, and it kind of chimes with a number of other things.

Although it looks like, at the moment, you would have to say, a rerun of 2020 of Biden versus Trump,

there is still such a long way to go. And there are so many forces. We've talked about the legal

difficulties that Donald Trump faces. But the fact that his family isn't on board this time,

in the way that they were last time.

Is massive.

It's massive. And the fact that Jared and Ivanka, I haven't seen a photo of them

with Donald Trump. I haven't seen Melania Trump, this hugely photogenic person,

who was often to be seen at Donald Trump's side. Sometimes you felt suffering going through this

motion, but she was there. You haven't seen her. And so you do wonder whether Donald Trump is

sort of rather isolated. He's got his cheerleaders, sure. And he's got that kind of tight coterie of

people around him who want to do MAGA the rerun. But I kind of wonder whether there is something

in what the mooch says.

And on the other side, I was fascinated last night, I was talking to a group of largely Americans

who said, you know, the trouble with Joe Biden is his vice president is Kamala Harris. And I was

really surprised by that. And they said, no, unimpressed and can't see how you can vote for

Joe Biden without thinking that she is going to take over, that she is going to, and these, you

know, as a group of very liberal women, but they had basically made the assumption that if you vote

for Joe Biden, you're probably going to get at least one year, maybe two years of Kamala Harris

somewhere along the lines. And so that is actually playing into their decision making process and

what they think about the Democrats right now too.

I think one of the things you don't get in Britain is you remember that Kamala Harris

was this woman who made history, the first African American, the first woman to be the vice

president. Actually, it's hard to exaggerate how unpopular she is in the US, particularly

among Democrats who feel that she's just not quite up to the job and hasn't delivered on that.

But the feeling is that she is unsacrable. So therefore, Biden has to keep her on the ticket.

The old line about the vice president is you are a heartbeat away from the presidency.

When Joe Biden is going to be 82 by the time he takes office,

she is a very faint heartbeat away from taking over the presidency.

We'll be back after the break with the latest in Ukraine.

This is the news agents.

Welcome back. If you were listening yesterday to the news agents, you'd have heard a saying

that maybe the Ukraine conflict has reached a seminal moment. And then you wake up to the news

that someone, Russians say it's the Ukrainians, the Ukrainians say it's the Russians,

have blown this dam that is causing massive evacuations, is causing floodwaters to rise

across a vast area will make it much more difficult for the Ukrainians to cross the

Dnieper River. And this dam is not the size of a football field. You know, when you fly

to Heathrow Airport, you see this little reservoir just below before you land. This is

like a hundred times bigger than that. It is vast. And a bomb or explosives have been placed

that has blown this dam. And it looks like the Russians have the most to gain from this.

Because we've talked about the Ukrainians counteroffensive and this is going to probably

stall it. Zelensky's advisor aid has called this ecocide because they think it risks ecological

disaster. It's 150 tons of engine oil that is now leaking into the Dnieper River as a result of

the explosion of Kakova and this dam. And they think that this will basically risk further oil

leakage, ecological disaster, towns, villages, obviously animal habitats, but the industrial

facilities in the area. It is hard to compute really how big the impact of this could have

on the villages of Ukraine and the bits of Ukraine that have been taken by Russia

as a result of what they've done. Well, let me just give you a very simple way of

picturing it, if you would. Imagine a dam has burst in London. It is now affecting areas in

Brighton 50 plus miles away. So in a few hours, the floodwater has reached 52 miles away from where

the dam is. And that is awesome. And it's about food security as well, of course, because every

time you take out a bit of Ukraine that then can't produce food, you are basically removing

the fact that it is competitive in world food markets as a market, as somewhere that exports

grain, you are basically removing its ability to keep itself afloat. The nightmare of the West

and the NATO countries has always been that Vladimir Putin would use a tactical nuclear weapon

on the field of battle. This isn't that, but it's not far short. If it is Russia, and just on the

basis of who gains most from this, it does seem it will be Russia that gains the most from being able

to thwart the Ukrainian counteroffensive. It is pretty epic what Moscow has ordered, if it does

indeed turn out to have been Moscow, that ordered the blowing of this dam. We'll be back tomorrow.

We'll see you then. Bye-bye. Bye.

Machine-generated transcript that may contain inaccuracies.