speakers in terms of their presentation. starmer and starmer and trump. absolutely. i mean, trump is a is a is like bofis mean, trump is a is a is like boris johnson. he is a real showman. but actually yeah , i do showman. but actually yeah, i do think that i do i do think that. i rubbish i do think that but this week. >> what was his message. this week. it was he said. >> yeah, i can tell you because i was paying attention. >> yeah. >> yeah. >> let me, let me. >> just say from america as well. >> i think very quickly that, that he, that trump did let himself down this week because of, because i don't think the zelenskyy is a dictator. and i don't think that that ukraine is the aggressor in this conflict. but, you know, most of the time in certain certainly in front of a home audience, he is absolutely on track and a good performer. >> peta i will come to you in just a second. let me go stateside, though, to us political commentator and former republican john le boutillier. john, good evening or good morning? good day, wherever you are. what did you make of your

president's speech just then? do you agree with the likes of peter bleksley that it was barnstorming and optimistic, or paul richards here, our labour friend who thinks it was a bit drab and a load of guff? >> tend to the latter. i think trump is a good showman. i heard this discussion, but we got to remember he's never even gotten to 50% of the popular vote in three national elections in america. he's a he's a very polarising figure, the people who love him. and there's a large group that does that. do they really love him? and he's a good performer for them. but what he does is with the other, what, 55% of people, they can't stand them. and when he throws red meat out, when he says some of the nonsense of the past week, which that nice lady just referred to the idea that ukraine was the aggressor and that zelenskyy's a dictator. this is insane. and it doesn't help trump to say these things. it's not helping him, john.

>> he did say he did say rather in that speech that according to many polls, and he cited one yougov poll that the 70% of americans, according to yougov, believe donald trump and his administration are doing the right thing. so you mentioned the popular vote, the 50%. but according to the poll that donald trump just cited, he has got the majority on board. >> okay, first of all, i'm not talking about polls yet. i'm talking about polls yet. i'm talking about polls yet. i'm talking about three national elections, 2016 where he got 43%. >> yeah, got. >> yeah, got. >> that 20 where he got 45%, and this past year where he got 49.4%. he's never gotten to 50% in an election ever. so he is not overwhelmingly popular. and he wants you know, you look at reagan, reagan was pushing close to 60% when he got re—elected. hugely popular. >> but john, i mean, you do accept he has a mandate. no, he won the popular vote. he won the

electoral college. he's not got a mandate. >> well, a mandate for what? you know. >> i mean, everything he he laid out in his campaign. >> well, here's what i think. i think he's already done what other presidents who've been elected with the house and senate of the same party have done, they've overreached early. obama did it. trump did it the first time. they overdo it and they get rebuked. two years into their presidency. he's 35 days into his thing. he's already down in every national public opinion poll underwater in approval versus disapproval. now, there are some things that people do like. but you you mentioned 70%, 70% don't like pardoning violent january 6th criminals. they don't like random cuts of things that people do like like alzheimer's research, cancer research,

nuclear inspectors, all that stuff that why are we cutting that he didn't have a mandate to cut, that he didn't have a mandate to take canada to be the sist mandate to take canada to be the 51st state? well, this is this wasn't talked about in the election. there's no mandate for any of that. >> i think he did. i mean, i think it was clear it was clear that elon musk, during the election campaign was was going to tackle government waste and efficiency. i mean, $20 million of us taxpayer money. your money, john, on sesame street in iraq, in baghdad, $10 million on guatemalan sex changes, $10 million to uganda for circumcisions for men. i mean. >> hold on. all those things are voted on by congress. all of them. doesn't mean they're right. >> who ran congress? the republicans ran. i'm a republican. the congress passed this stuff. this isn't made up out of nowhere. this stuff is all approved by the republican congress. >> right? but doesn't mean it's

right, though donald trump traditionally is. i mean, if anything, he's an independent, though he would if he was here now, i guess, john, he'd call you a rhino, a republican in name only. >> i don't care what he calls me. i was a republican when he was a democrat. okay. i've stayed. i'm a reagan republican. when he was president, all this stuff you read, you know, off about zimbabwe or whatever that stuff was in and happening when he was president. why didn't he get rid of it when he was president? >> well, the argument is, i mean, the answer to that the argument is that he surrounded he didn't know how government worked. he surrounded himself with with what he would call deep state characters such as fauci and so on. and i know firsthand ross ulbricht, the guy who founded the silk road website, who was given two life terms and 40 years with no parole. he was going to pardon ross. during his first term in 2017. he was, his mother has told me he was bounced around by doj deep state, as they would call it, operatives this time around. the argument is from trump and his team that he knows

how to handle government. he knows how it works. >> well, he may know. there's no doubt he's learned more about how to run the government that i give you that. but i don't think in the end, the chainsaw cutting of the federal government is going to end up being a net plus for him. i don't think it's i think already you can see the pushback from the public. for instance, i saw a guy on tv last night from outside philadelphia, went to work for the irs, voted for trump, loved trump, said. i figured trump will know how to cut the government as a businessman. he got fired this week. he's one of the many people losing their jobs, he people losing theirjobs, he said. biggest mistake of my life was voting for donald trump. and, you know, i think you're going to see more and more of that. and i tell you, find me a democracy that in the end ever really cuts spending. they don't do it and they don't. >> do it for your national debt

is teetering on bringing your country down. i mean, likewise, western countries all over the world and the conservative party here. john, sorry, you can hit back at that. >> i agree with you about the debt and which president, in his four years in office, added more to the national debt than any president in history. donald trump, $5 trillion in four years. and so he can talk about the debt. the republicans talk about it. they don't do anything about it. they don't do anything about it. they don't do anything about it. and they're not going to do anything about it now, ehhen to do anything about it now, either. in the budget proposal that's coming up this week, they want to raise the debt ceiling by another $4 trillion. >> well, that shut down the they shut down usaid. and trump was boasting about how he's got border personnel in the beautiful building, as he called it, in the usa building. so that's gone. >> i know. but first of all, usaid is a small amount of money in the big scheme of things. and it's a way for the united states to project peaceful power to

combat, especially the belt and road initiative from red china. and it's mostly good projects. again, done. when trump was president bush was president reagan. these have carried forth and they've gone in and savaged it, even though congress created it, even though congress created it and funded it. and i'm not sure that it won't get restored. >> and jfk founded it. right. is that right? usaid, jfk. >> maybe, but it's always been there. >> it's also john. it's also john. i've been listening to a lot of, you know, mike benz from your side of the pond. he's been on usaid for a very long time. and investigative journalist, usaid, a lot of that were cia fronts for campaigns abroad. you call it soft power. i mean political coups, by the cia's own admission. so i think. >> look, look, my ow