it's going to be an interesting day. i mean, what's, for me, i think it's going to be so different from when he took office in 2017, right? i mean, that inauguration day was very much marked by his american carnage speech. this american carnage stops right here and stops right now. - there was a lot of people who were protesting. we saw those pink hats from all the the women's march. and it's a very different vibe in washington this time around. it feels a lot more celebratory. a lot of, you know, corporate america has shown up and poured millions of dollars into the trump campaign, the trump inaugural committee, excuse me. so, i think it's going to be a very different vibe this year.

what do you guys think? 0h, forsure. and the fact that you're also seeing this incredible line—up of tech ceos. i know we've talked about the incoming administration's tech policy in the previous pods, but the fact that you're going to have on the dais where president trump is, sundar pichai of google and mark zuckerberg and elon musk and jeff bezos, thatjust goes to show how different this inauguration will be. and, in fact, even the administration and the presidency to when he was entering the office in 2017, and you do get the sense also that there is a bit of a muted attitude here in washington, dc, as well — washington, dc, a liberal city. and i wasn't here in 2016 into 2017, i know caitriona, you were and courtney as well. but, you know, it feels like the vibe itself of that resistance, if you will, to donald trump is very different, also, in part because of his decisive victory in the election. i think as well, in 2017, you had, in this city anyway, a whole pile of people who had been here for eight years with the 0bama administration.

the democrats were used to kind of running the city for that length of time. they were so taken in shock, caught off guard by the election of donald trump that and that upset and that anger was kind of coming from a place of surprise and shock. whereas this time around, the democrats have only been here for four years underjoe biden, and they came in on the back of a trump presidency. so the town has been very mixed for those four years. and the whole time that joe biden has been in office, and definitely for the last two years anyway, donald trump has been there, bubbling away, simmering away, very much a part of the scene. not ceding the limelight or the control in kind of any way of the focus to the sitting president, joe biden. so, he's been part of the conversation in a way that he wasn't running into the 2017 inauguration. but i was on the capitol steps that day, and, again, it was a really cold day, and i had all those hand

warmers and foot warmers. but what we did see were a lot of protests, which i haven't heard as much about protests being organised this time around. and we saw a lot of scuffles, we saw a lot of people arrested, and actually the coverage in the days after the inauguration was about people appearing before courts, court hearings here for democrats and anti—trump protesters who had been arrested. and of course, we had that famous crowd size issue about how many people were on the national mall. and we'll have to wait and see how many people will be here this time around. i suspect there will be a lot more notwithstanding those below freezing temperatures. what do you guys think? i think you're right. i think there was this feeling of donald trump, you know, not only the democrats being caught by surprise, but donald trump being caught by surprise. right? and so, he and his allies were very much, you know, political outsiders coming in the last time around, and this time, you know, there's dozens — there feels like dozens more parties that are being set up.

as you said, a laundry list of of billionaires and tech ceos coming into town for the event. and i think there is a confidence within the trump, you know, transition team itself about how this day is going to go and how they're going to take office and what they're going to do on day one in a way that they didn't necessarily understand or comprehend the scope of what was happening when he was sworn into office. what do you think, sumi? i mean, we keep hearing that they're far more prepared for not only this term, but also this inauguration. and i think we'll probably see that reflected in donald trump's speech as well.

you touch on the fact, courtney, that that american carnage speech for his first inaugural address in 2017 was markedly seen as incredibly dark, a dark image of where the us stood at the time. and we've heard from so many people who have spoken to the president elect since the election that he's in a very happy mood, that he feels confident, he feels that he's in a much better place because of that decisive victory in the election. and, you know, he's going to, the day ahead of the election, hold this massive rally here in washington, dc, as well, at a big basketball and sports arena in the centre of the city. we're going to see people like kid rock performing and and the village people. i think that tone might perhaps be filtered through in the words that he delivers as well. we don't know for sure. and, of course, you know, some of the parts of the election campaign leading up to the election were dark in some of the rhetoric that we heard donald trump use. so it could be that that's not the case, but i don't know.

what do you think, caitriona? what are you expecting to hear him say in that inaugural address? well, i mean, the big question is going to be how long is he going to speak for as well, right? given those temperatures? i mean, i was looking this up before i came to talk to you guys in 2017. he spoke for around 17 minutes or so. joe biden spoke for around 20 minutes or so. again, it was very cold that day. but i mean, we know from trump rallies that the average kind of trump rally speech can be two hours or even longer. and obviously he'll give that big speech on sunday. he hasn't held a rally for quite some time. so that will, you know, allow him to kind of deliver some of his points then. i think an inaugural address is a far more focussed address, and that's what we heard from him the last time around. and interesting that american carnage speech that he gave, i mean, we heard joe biden give his farewell address this week, and that was quite dark. i mean, that was uncharacteristically dark. today, an oligarchy is taking shape in america of extreme wealth, - power and influence that literally threatens our entire democracy. | not naming anyone by name, but it was quite clear

that he was talking about donald trump, and elon musk, and mark zuckerberg and all these guys and about that kind of power balance between extremely wealthy individuals and people who have power over the technology that just dictates every part of our lives now. so, i think we'll hear him, you know, try and state... set himself up on a presidential moment and kind of draw a line under some of that negativity that's gone on before now. and certainly it's a moment for him to also lay out what he sees as priorities for his for his presidency. and i've been thinking a lot about day one. obviously, it's a critical milestone for any president when they enter office, and he had this experience once already. but it's an opportunity to put some of those promises that he made on the campaign trail into action with executive orders.

so these are directives that a president can use to make binding policy without going through congress. there are executive actions as well, which we're expecting, which are more like rules and regulations. but we've heard that donald trump spoke to republican senators and said he wanted to issue 100 executive orders on day one. it could be day one, two and three, because 100 executive orders is quite a lot, and i look back at the last three terms, and in the first 100 days is usually what we take as a marker, and i see donald trump signed 33 executive orders in his first 100 days in 2017. president biden signed 42 executive orders in that same period of time in 2021. so, again, 100 would be obviously blowing all of those numbers out of the water on a first day. and i was listening to steve bannon speak at an event earlier this week where he was saying, you know, the first time around it was shock and awe, right? that president trump would trump would shock and awe all of us. this time i'm calling it days of thunder, because it's truly going to be a pace that we're not at all prepared for.

but look, i mean, i don't know what you guys think, but the clear priorities that, that donald trump has set on day one is immigration. so deportation, closing the southern border, revoking, you know, the ability for migrants to come in and claim refugee status, perhaps putting title 42, that pandemic era restriction back in place. but i mean, courtney, what do you think we're going to see on day one? days of thunder, shock and awe. yeah, i mean, i think you're right. i think immigration sort of takes the cake in terms of top priorities. he could declare a national emergency declaration in order to re—route money to, you know, funnel or to fund some of that bolstering of the border enforcement. we've also heard him talk about on day one, wanting to impose tariffs on imported goods from mexico and canada. so i'd expect something along those lines as well. but i think within those first few days, you know, they definitely are coming to make a point and sort of shake things up. and i think part of that has also been staffing up at a faster clip

than they did in the first term. and, you know, ithink when he was sworn in, i think he had only something like 25 key posts named to his administration, and this time, i'm pretty sure it's more than 50, have already been named, and they've already started, you know, hiring some of these lower level positions. he's getting, you know, intimately involved in that hiring as well and, and conducting some of those interviews. and part of that is just making sure that they're, you know, maybe a more well oiled machine than they were in that first administration to try and enact some of this, some of these policy priorities right away. yeah, i totally agree with you there. i thin,k i'm going to put my neck out here and say, i think he can do 100 executive actions in those first couple of days.

i think because a lot of people outside of president elect trump himself have been thinking about this moment for a long time. there are republican and conservative think tanks in this town and elsewhere who have... they've told me they've drafted these memos well in advance of now. so it's a matter of, you know, copying and pasting essentially one of these memos into an executive action and donald trump putting his signature on it. i think he's made such a big deal of everything he's going to do on day one, and he is a guy that tends to follow through on what he promises. he delivered on a lot of campaign promises the first time around. i expect we'll see that again, and there are a lot of things where he can get an easy win, so he can hit the media circuit, whether it's podcasts or the old fashioned media like ourselves here at the bbc, although we are very flexible and agile and modern as well, and he can actually claim credit for, "look, i told

you i was going to do something on immigration on day one. "i did, in actual fact, i signed it in the capitol building "when i walked off the steps," because there will be that signing ceremony which is traditional now for presidents, and they sign the various nominations, and they can sign executive actions and memorandums at that point as well. so i think we'll see that. the question is signing executive actions and presidential memorandums is one thing, translating it into action immediately is another thing and potentially takes other people. so, you know, as you made the point there, assuming the kind of signature one about the mass deportations and the immigration, we've heard from so many people working in that area that it's physically not possible to identify, you know, arrest, detain and then deport those numbers of people on that one day. and we've even heard from president elect trump and some of the key people around him kind of roll back that, that it's not going to be every single person, that they're going to start with people who have criminal records and so on that are already in the system. but i do think he's, you know, he's a guy that likes superlatives. he likes wins.

he likes big numbers. so we can expect that fast and furious type of vibe next week. yeah, indeed. and he also likes that short term return, doesn't he? and to your point, caitriona, some of the stuff will indeed take a bit longer. i mean, he's talked about bringing down prices for americans. that was the driving issue for many voters in this election cycle. and in interviews after the election, he did say that it might not be possible to bring down those grocery prices. i think he said, you know, "0nce they're up, it's hard to bring them back down." he's talked about eliminating some federal regulations as a way to go at those grocery prices. but, you know, the effect of eliminating those regulations until they get to actually lowering prices, that's a much longer time period. so to both of your points, you know, he's going to be looking for some of those quick and easy victories. what i'm curious to see is one of the more controversial

promises that he's made, which is to pardon some of those january 6th rioters. we know that that's something he has promised. he's been questioned on this repeatedly, and he's kind of, you know, been a bit vague about what he would do. he said, of course he would pardonj—sixers. but when asked about those, for example, who had been involved in violence against capitol police officers, he hasn't exactly answered that. so, i really wonder what we're going to see from him on that. and as you said, caitriona, there are people who have been working on some of these memorandums and orders forfour years, literally since the last election. they believe that donald trump would be elected again and some of them would believe that he didn't lose the 2020 election, which we know is not the case, but very curious to see how quickly all of these get worked through. it's interesting that you bring up the january 6th pardons as well, because that's something that i had written down, because i think this day, you know, is is going to be

so interesting in that it is part of his plan to try and reshape the narrative around donald trump, rright? there's there's a sense of vindication here that i think of his plan to try and reshape the narrative around donald trump, right? there's there's a sense of vindication here that i think we'll get in the speech, but it's about sort of retaking, reclaiming his story, right? and it will happen at the same time as we havejoe biden, who is a man who staked his his presidency on trying to abolish donald trump. and now he's ending his presidency with donald trump's return to washington. so this is, you know, you have these two competing narratives happening at the same time, these two men who are sort of, you know, connected in a way, their legacies are connected. and i think the january 6th thing is a big part of that story, especially considering, you know, where the sentiment was in the republican party about donald trump just four years ago. and so, you know, with his return

to the white house, i wonder if that's going to be one of the the things we see first in those first couple of days. and i wonder, in fact, may he do that within the capitol building in those minutes after, because, i mean, the symbolism of doing that in the place where, you know, those crimes were committed that that those people have been convicted of. reversing that and pardoning those people in that place would be really so symbolic about, you know, trying to achieve what you're talking about, courtney, there. you mentionedjoe biden, and i know this is the path to the presidency, but maybe let's talk about the path out of the presidency for a quick minute. joe biden, his last few days in office, notjust as president, but in public office offices, he's held various offices for 50 years, senator for 36 years, vice president for eight and now

president for almost four. and he has said he will go to the inauguration, which we know donald trump didn't go to his inauguration, and he'll be there to witness that handover, that transition, the peaceful transition of power. and then he and jill and the outgoing as she will be then, vice president kamala harris and doug emhoff will go out the back door. it's usually done quite kind of discreetly and quietly, isn't it? they go out there and get into a helicopter, and then go to an airfield and get on an aeroplane and head off, usually for some sunshiny holiday, and get out of washington while their belongings are removed from their properties and the new families move in. but i'm just wondering, you know, i've been thinking a lot, particularly this week, as we had the speech from joe biden about what will he do next? where will he go? he has spent almost, so much anyway of his adult life in elected office, and now he's facing into kind of the unknown. and i think there's a sort of bitterness there, too,

as well, in terms of, you know, this isn'tjust him ending his presidency, this is this is the capstone to his career. this is his legacy of, you know, five decades of service. and, you know, it ended in a way that i think he didn't expect or want it to. he was pressured by members of his own party to step down from the campaign, and i think he's spent the last, you know, remaining months trying to tie up some legacy pieces. he got the hostage deal that he wanted just in the nick of time. but i think he's also thinking about what will be said about him in the history books. and we heard a bit of that in his farewell speech. l it will take time to feel the full. impact of all we've done together. but the seeds are planted, - and they'll grow and they'll bloom for decades to come.

it didn't necessarily go the way he wanted, but i think he hoped that some of the legislative achievements and policy achievements will be felt later on. and some of those infrastructure projects that he sees as really key to america's future, things like replacing lead pipes and making sure there's broadband internet access across the country, that the effects of those will be felt down the road. and i'm sure he's hoping that he will be given credit for that down the road. but it really strikes me what discord there is, often, it seems, between president biden and his image of his presidency and how the american people feel. you know, if you look at the polls, ever since the withdrawal from afghanistan, he's been a deeply unpopular president across the board. and, you know, of course, he has had some support from democrats, but as we went into this election year, we saw that support ebbing further and further away, in part, and perhaps in large part

because many americans saw him as too old to be able to run. but i found it interesting, i think it was last week that he had said in an interview that he still believed he would have beat donald trump in the election, and then said that he might not have been able to serve the entire term. so, two contrasting thoughts there, but it does seem that the bidens and i would say the first lady, jill biden, as well, see his presidency as a great success in achieving some really progressive agenda items, what was wanted from, in particular, the progressive part of the democrat party, but also a platform that would serve everyday americans, as he had promised. and yet he's leaving office with such low popularity levels. and, you know, both democrats and republicans, perhaps looking back, wishing things had been different. and if you speak to democrats, they are, many of them who i've spoken to anyway, are kind of angry with him that he didn't step aside earlier or, you know, i mean, he spoke when he came into office about being the bridge, you know, ie to the next generation, and he wasn't and, you know, trying to seek that second term

until he stepped aside, a lot of democrats feel that he's actually left the party in quite a weak position. they're kind of listing a bit. they don't have an obvious leader. they don't quite know how are they supposed to come up against president elect donald trump and the republicans on capitol hill? are they supposed to have a hard resistance and say everything they do is terrible and awful and bad, or are they supposed to try and coexist with them and work with them and try and achieve some of those bipartisan issues that affect americans of all persuasions in this country, and that at the end of the donald trump term, that the democrats will be able to say, you know, "we did this with the republicans. "we're not all, kind of," negative about donald trump. and it's it's a question that they seem to be really battling with. i think you hit the nail on the head. i mean, this weekend there is actually a women's march,

which, as you guys remember, eight years ago was a sort of watershed moment of defiance of trump's election, right? there were, ithink, 500,000 people convening on washington. there were sister marches across the country, around the world, and you haven't heard really anything about it. it's actually been rebranded as the people's march, and it's involving a whole host of different organisations and activist groups, which i thinkjust speaks to where the, you know, so—called resistance movement is, which is sort of non existent, right? and i think that also feeds into this point of where the party is in trying to figure out what's their unifying strategy. and i don't know if you guys saw the, the video that a group of senators put out last week. um, but it was it seemed to to hit strike a chord within the party where they sat down and they proclaimed, we are not. here because of who we are against.

we are not, here because of who we are against. we are here because of who we are for that. it's not the party of, you know, anti—donald trump. it's a party that stands for something, and theyjust need to figure out the messaging around that. and figure out what that is that they do stand for. right, well, we are out of time for today. we've been on a path to the presidency. we're almost there. and we have some great news to report, which is that we'll be back! we have to get a new name, though. we're not ending on the steps of the capitol. next monday, we will have episodes taking us right through the first 100 days of president donald trump. and we'll have courtney with us, too, which is great. good luck for the next few days, girlies.

hello there! it's looking pretty chilly as we head into this weekend. we're importing some colder air to the south of the uk from the near continent around this large area of high pressure, which has brought pretty benign weather for the past week or so. a lot of dry weather continues into this weekend. like i mentioned, it will be turning colder, and there will be some morning mist and fog, some dense fog around, which could linger through the day for england and wales. this big area of high pressure is bringing the fine, unsettled weather, but we've got this plume of colder air to the south of us being drawn up on a very gentle southerly breeze. so for saturday then, it's a cloudy start for many. some sunshine from the word go for northern scotland. more of a breeze around northern and western areas through the irish sea, so that will help break up the cloud here. so we should see some sunshine for parts of wales, northern england, northern ireland, northern scotland. but i think for large parts of central, southern and eastern england, it will stay rather grey and gloomy, with some murkiness and only 11—5

degrees, it will feel quite cold. but a little less cold across the north west of scotland. but with that colder air in place, saturday night will be a cold one. we'll see, ithink, a bit more of a widespread frost and some dense mist and fog patches across england and wales. very little change to the pressure pattern as we head through sunday, but this weather front will try to edge into northwestern areas, but it won't get far because it's bumping up against high pressure. so a cold, frosty start with some fog around, which could be slow to clear for england, certainly central and eastern parts. the best of the sunshine, again, across northern and western areas. this weather front will bring some rain to western scotland and northern ireland into the afternoon. temperatures here 10 degrees where we have some less cold air, but for most, it's a chilly day, 3—8 celsius. sunday night much the same, rather cloudy, a few gaps in the cloud, allowing temperatures to fall where we see the gaps. this is where we're going to see frost down to —2, —3 degrees, but less cold for western scotland and northern ireland as that

weather front moves in. the weather front moves away. we stay in a benign pressure pattern though, through monday and tuesday. but from midweek, we start to see high pressure retreating and that will allow lower pressure to begin to move in off the atlantic. so there are some changes to the weather as we push towards the end of the new week. so, the short term, it remains quite cloudy and cool with limited sunshine, and then it's more unsettled and a little less cold by the end of the week.

the israeli cabinet has voted to approve a six—week ceasefire in gaza. it's the first phase of a deal which — if implemented in full — will end the 15—month war in gaza. their meeting lasted more than six hours, with some ministers who threatened to resign arguing the agreement rewards hamas. the first hostages are due to be released as early as sunday. in return, israel says it will release dozens of palestinian prisoners. they include some detainees as young as 16. hamas will return 33 israeli hostages over six weeks. these pictures are from egypt where trucks are waiting to bring aid into gaza. under the deal israel will allow 600 trucks ino gaza every day — that's 12 times more than at the moment. the president of the palestinian authority, mahmoud abbas says it is

prepared to assume full responsibility of gaza.