June 5, 2024 • 11 mins
It’s been an intense year politically in the United States, with both the presidential election and Donald Trump’s trial and conviction.
His sentencing is next month, but before that is the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden, taking place June 27th.
Nick Bryant, a former US Correspondent and author, has written a book about the hate and decisiveness in the States and the role it plays in its history.
The book is titled ‘The Forever War: America’s Unending Conflict with Itself’.
Bryant told Mike Hosking that the past reflects the current times, and Donald Trump is as much a product of American history as Nixon, JFK, or Ronald Reagan.
He said that a lot of presidents have had surprisingly authoritarian tendencies, and the American people like this kind of president, the strong man type.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's hard to work out just how big a mess
America and his politics are right now. A former president
looking for a return to the White House, a convicted
criminal with more judicial action to come, of course, the
incumbent with the son in court on gun charges as
we speak at a bid at house in Congress, in
a state of almost permanent dead locker. But there is
a lesson or two in history here, the Forever War,
America's unending conflict with itself. It's out today. It's a
(00:22):
brilliant look at where America has been and how those
threads lead us to today's unresolved issues. It's written by
our very good friend Nick Bryant, who is back with us.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Nick. Good morning, Mike. Thank you for those kime words.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And it's a very very good book. I've only got
the electronic version, so I've been wading through it, so
when you get the hard copy out, I expect one
with a little signature at the front of you wouldn't mind.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, You've always been very supportive, and my books are
always a labor of love, and it's great to shadow
with people who love America as well. I'm a fascinator,
but I know you're in that category.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
And having said that, your last book, When America Stopped
Being Great, ended up I read in this book on
Biden's bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, that's a great story and a great thing to happen.
That was a die happy moment for me, Mike. I mean,
there's an audience of one that you want to target
with a book about America. It's a president of the
United States. I popped up on Morning Joe one morning,
you know that show on MSNBC, and I was talking
about this new book I'd written, When America Stopped Being Great.
I didn't realize that Biden was a huge fan of
(01:23):
Morning Joe, or at least he tends to watch it
most mornings. I think while he was shaving or something,
he heard me talking about it. The friend later that
day said, Joe Biden just mentioned your book. I couldn't
believe it. He hadn't mentioned it by name, but he
mentioned a new book that came out that sounded very
much like mine. And then a few weeks later, somebody
on Twitter notes, Nick Bryant will be happy with this.
(01:43):
It was a picture of Joe Biden in the White
House with Anthony Blincoln, his US Secretary of State, there
was a little pile of books on the shelf behind. Yes,
what I zoomed in and thought that my book was
amongst them, and it was such a thrill mic. I mean,
for somebody wh's been writing about American politics for most
of my adult life, who ended up with a book
in the over office, that was really was a special moment.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It's fantastic, you say, as was filled with very good lines.
The news cycle is the historical cycle in microcosm. So
in broad terms, you're arguing that if we looked a history,
we can see why we are here today.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh, we really can. But it's a history, mate, that
we tend to forget, or deliberately raise or just overlook.
I mean, what I argue in the book is that
Trump is just as much a product of American history
as Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan
or FDR or Abraham Lincoln. But it's the stuff that
(02:36):
we tend not to think much about these days. For instance,
you know, demagogues have always raised their heads in American history.
A lot of the presidents have had surprisingly authoritarian tendencies,
including some of the great heroes of the story Abraham Lincoln.
He shut down three hundred newspapers that he didn't like,
a clear violation of the First Amendment. He suspended Habeas
(02:59):
corpus during this Civil War, another violation of the Constitution.
FDR again, you know, a liberal hero. The Democrats absolutely
adore FDR. But similarly he was quite authoritarian in some ways,
trying to maximize them as much presidential power as he could.
But the thing is, Mike, I mean FDR. He busted
(03:21):
the norm set by George Washington that you only serve
two terms. He kept on winning re election and that's
the point. The American people like this kind of president
who was very strong, a kind of strong man president.
And Annada Roosevelt always said. The line in his inagural
address that got the biggest applause was not the famous one,
The only thing that they have to fear is fear itself.
(03:42):
It was actually where he said, you realize that might
have to alter the balance of the constitution here and
the wartime powers in peacetime. That got arousing a line
of applause, and it shows Americans always been recepted to
that kind of strong man leadership.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, exactly. So when the book starts an inauguration day
and you're on the first train out of Washington. You're
not staying behind with you mates for a drink. Was
that for you sort of the beginning of the end
that you kind of like you'd fallen in love with America,
arrived in America, covered America and something wasn't the same.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, Washington that day was like a garrison tan. It
had thirty five thousand troops that were stopping American from
fighting American. That for me was absolutely tragic. They had
a green zone they called it in Washington. That was
terminology used in Baghdad. I mean literally, Washington looked like
Baghdad on the Potomac. And Biden's most memorable phrase from
(04:37):
the inaugural address was democracy has prevailed. But he didn't
say it in a sense of celebration. It was set
out of a sense of profound relief. And you know,
he was speaking on an inaugural platform. Might that only
two weeks earlier had been the staging post of January
sixth rebellion. And I remember turning up early that day
that US Capital was festooned with red, white and blue
(05:00):
bunting like all the inaugurals are. But it really could
have been still sequested by yellow police tape, and somebody
had decided to test the auto to you, and they
were putting on the words of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's
most famous sermon, and the word that day really struck me.
Lincoln had asked, can this nation endure? And I thought
(05:25):
that question still resonated all those years on as America
was just tearing itself apart.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're also arguing the country has to make peace with
the two hundred years before the sixties, because we talk
about the sixties a lot. Do you think they ever will?
Do you think, as you said, that people don't think
about it. It is what it is, and we've got
this new, weird, crazy Norman. It will be what it
will be.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It's two Americas. But division has always been the default.
I mean, that's the key argument of the book. Independence
or Victory over the British brought about independence, but it
didn't bring about instant nationhood. That wasn't a given. They
really had to work that. There was a feeling in
the early years, indeed, that America might become two, three,
four different confederations split along regional line. So you know,
(06:09):
the division has always been there. I'm pretty pessimistic about
American in this book. But what I don't think will
necessarily happen is that Americas slide into civil war, certainly
not on the scale or nature of the civil war
that we saw in the eighteen sixties. But what I
also think is America won't reach a state of civil peace.
(06:30):
The divisions are so deep now, the alternative realities that
Americans have are so deeply embedded. And one of the
big arguments of the book is one of the reasons
why America is so divided is that so much of
its history remains unresolved.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Nick interesting. At the end, you arrive in America, of
course at JFK. You leave JFK, Lady Liberty, New York.
You're looking at and you didn't look back. And that
was a couple of years ago. Now you end up
in Australia, start a new life. As you lead your
new life in Australia, have you looked back to you
regret it in any way, shape or form or not.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Mike, I haven't been back to America for almost three
years now now. During my adult life, I've never gone
more than twelve months without being in America. I've lived
in America for the biggest chunk of my adult life.
You know, I started covering Washington for the BBC in
the Clinton years. They sent me over for the Monica
Luizki Scanda, which at the court of the Bill Clinton scandal,
(07:31):
of course, and I covered Clinton. I covered Bush. I
was there on nine to eleven. I was there the
night Obama was elected. I the night Donald Trump was elected.
We were both there, weren't we. We were at the Hillary
Clinton what was supposed to be a celebration. You know,
I have been absolutely fixated with America, and my mind
frankly has not migrated. I mean, you know, the first
thing I do in the morning is check the New
(07:52):
York Times at the Washington Post and see what's happening
in America. But I haven't been back, and I think
that's crucial. You know. We were glad to get away.
In the end. I think, you know, my kids have
reached the age while they realized why they were doing
those shooter drills in their schools. My wife and I
had always said that would be the moment we leave.
Married an Australian who was born in New Zealand actually Takapuna,
(08:12):
and we decided to come back, and we haven't had
an urging to return. And I think this speaks of
I talk about a faith displaced. That I loved America
as a kid. It changed me togther as a teenager,
I became a lot more confident. Frankly, I ended up
at universities I would never even have thought of applying
to had I not gone to America as a sixteen
(08:34):
year old and really started living out a version of
my own American dream. And I've always loved America. At
times of my life, I would have happily taken up
American citizenship, and I still have that deep love for America.
But I don't want to live there, partly because it's
got so crazy, partly because it's got so violent, partly
frankly because it's willing to countenance the return of Trump.
(08:56):
I mean that looks like it's not a strong possible ability,
but certainly a pretty good possibility. So you know, for
all those reasons, I think we're better out of America.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Just switch countries. Briefly, because you've been in the UK
with the speech at Cambridge, I know recently, and you
write a very good piece in the Sidning Morning here
all the other day. I'm assuming you assume, like we
all assume, that the Tories are done for Is it
because the Tories have been in power so long and
all governments that have been in power for a long
time time does them or have they done something particularly
(09:26):
egregious and the polls might be right and it could
be a wipeout.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I think both of those things are true. I think
any government is trying to sort of win a fourth term,
which is essentially what the Tours are trying to do. Struggles,
you know, I think most governments tend to get booted
out after ten years, don't they. I mean, we've seen
that in India this very week. You know, Mody's obviously
going to be the prime minister, but with a reduced majority,
and it was a surprise to money. But again it's
(09:51):
that kind of anti incumbency feel of somebody who's been
around for a long time. But I also think the
chaos of the Tours is obviously a significant re I mean,
Britain's have more prime ministers over the last four or
five years in Australia in the ashes of political chaos
piecing in Australia at the moment, and I think that's
(10:11):
one of the reasons. I mean, Keir Starmer is a
pretty boring labor leader, you know. I described it in
that piece as you know, having all the charisma of
a packet of frozen peas. If there's any frozen peas
listening today. I apologize for the slur, but it's you know,
it's I think it's just a lot of people that
are set up for the sort of chaos of the tourist,
(10:32):
the post Brexit chaos of the tourism, even though they're
not particularly enthusiastic about a labor government. That's what we'll
get in Britain.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, exactly, mate. I will be in New York and
October November, so you won't be. So that's a shame.
So we'll have to work out some way to get
together in the ensuing period. But in the meantime, all
the very best with his latest book. And it's always
a thrill to catch up and chat with you, Mike.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It's always a pleasure to talk to you. I will
hope to get there in Updow November, so let's have it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well, there you go, it's on, see you there. Nick
Bryant out of Sydney, for us this morning. What was
it the Travitt Center of the Cab. I'll look it
up and tell you in just a couple of moments.
It was a night to remember. I can tell you that.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
It's hard to work out just how big a mess
America and his politics are right now. A former president
looking for a return to the White House, a convicted
criminal with more judicial action to come, of course, the
incumbent with the son in court on gun charges as
we speak at a bid at house in Congress, in
a state of almost permanent dead locker. But there is
a lesson or two in history here, the Forever War,
America's unending conflict with itself. It's out today. It's a
(00:22):
brilliant look at where America has been and how those
threads lead us to today's unresolved issues. It's written by
our very good friend Nick Bryant, who is back with us.
Speaker 2 (00:30):
Nick. Good morning, Mike. Thank you for those kime words.
Speaker 1 (00:34):
And it's a very very good book. I've only got
the electronic version, so I've been wading through it, so
when you get the hard copy out, I expect one
with a little signature at the front of you wouldn't mind.
Speaker 2 (00:43):
Oh, You've always been very supportive, and my books are
always a labor of love, and it's great to shadow
with people who love America as well. I'm a fascinator,
but I know you're in that category.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
And having said that, your last book, When America Stopped
Being Great, ended up I read in this book on
Biden's bookshelf.
Speaker 2 (01:00):
Yeah, that's a great story and a great thing to happen.
That was a die happy moment for me, Mike. I mean,
there's an audience of one that you want to target
with a book about America. It's a president of the
United States. I popped up on Morning Joe one morning,
you know that show on MSNBC, and I was talking
about this new book I'd written, When America Stopped Being Great.
I didn't realize that Biden was a huge fan of
(01:23):
Morning Joe, or at least he tends to watch it
most mornings. I think while he was shaving or something,
he heard me talking about it. The friend later that
day said, Joe Biden just mentioned your book. I couldn't
believe it. He hadn't mentioned it by name, but he
mentioned a new book that came out that sounded very
much like mine. And then a few weeks later, somebody
on Twitter notes, Nick Bryant will be happy with this.
(01:43):
It was a picture of Joe Biden in the White
House with Anthony Blincoln, his US Secretary of State, there
was a little pile of books on the shelf behind. Yes,
what I zoomed in and thought that my book was
amongst them, and it was such a thrill mic. I mean,
for somebody wh's been writing about American politics for most
of my adult life, who ended up with a book
in the over office, that was really was a special moment.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
It's fantastic, you say, as was filled with very good lines.
The news cycle is the historical cycle in microcosm. So
in broad terms, you're arguing that if we looked a history,
we can see why we are here today.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
Oh, we really can. But it's a history, mate, that
we tend to forget, or deliberately raise or just overlook.
I mean, what I argue in the book is that
Trump is just as much a product of American history
as Richard Nixon or John F. Kennedy or Ronald Reagan
or FDR or Abraham Lincoln. But it's the stuff that
(02:36):
we tend not to think much about these days. For instance,
you know, demagogues have always raised their heads in American history.
A lot of the presidents have had surprisingly authoritarian tendencies,
including some of the great heroes of the story Abraham Lincoln.
He shut down three hundred newspapers that he didn't like,
a clear violation of the First Amendment. He suspended Habeas
(02:59):
corpus during this Civil War, another violation of the Constitution.
FDR again, you know, a liberal hero. The Democrats absolutely
adore FDR. But similarly he was quite authoritarian in some ways,
trying to maximize them as much presidential power as he could.
But the thing is, Mike, I mean FDR. He busted
(03:21):
the norm set by George Washington that you only serve
two terms. He kept on winning re election and that's
the point. The American people like this kind of president
who was very strong, a kind of strong man president.
And Annada Roosevelt always said. The line in his inagural
address that got the biggest applause was not the famous one,
The only thing that they have to fear is fear itself.
(03:42):
It was actually where he said, you realize that might
have to alter the balance of the constitution here and
the wartime powers in peacetime. That got arousing a line
of applause, and it shows Americans always been recepted to
that kind of strong man leadership.
Speaker 1 (03:55):
Yeah, exactly. So when the book starts an inauguration day
and you're on the first train out of Washington. You're
not staying behind with you mates for a drink. Was
that for you sort of the beginning of the end
that you kind of like you'd fallen in love with America,
arrived in America, covered America and something wasn't the same.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, Washington that day was like a garrison tan. It
had thirty five thousand troops that were stopping American from
fighting American. That for me was absolutely tragic. They had
a green zone they called it in Washington. That was
terminology used in Baghdad. I mean literally, Washington looked like
Baghdad on the Potomac. And Biden's most memorable phrase from
(04:37):
the inaugural address was democracy has prevailed. But he didn't
say it in a sense of celebration. It was set
out of a sense of profound relief. And you know,
he was speaking on an inaugural platform. Might that only
two weeks earlier had been the staging post of January
sixth rebellion. And I remember turning up early that day
that US Capital was festooned with red, white and blue
(05:00):
bunting like all the inaugurals are. But it really could
have been still sequested by yellow police tape, and somebody
had decided to test the auto to you, and they
were putting on the words of the Gettysburg Address, Lincoln's
most famous sermon, and the word that day really struck me.
Lincoln had asked, can this nation endure? And I thought
(05:25):
that question still resonated all those years on as America
was just tearing itself apart.
Speaker 1 (05:31):
You're also arguing the country has to make peace with
the two hundred years before the sixties, because we talk
about the sixties a lot. Do you think they ever will?
Do you think, as you said, that people don't think
about it. It is what it is, and we've got
this new, weird, crazy Norman. It will be what it
will be.
Speaker 2 (05:46):
It's two Americas. But division has always been the default.
I mean, that's the key argument of the book. Independence
or Victory over the British brought about independence, but it
didn't bring about instant nationhood. That wasn't a given. They
really had to work that. There was a feeling in
the early years, indeed, that America might become two, three,
four different confederations split along regional line. So you know,
(06:09):
the division has always been there. I'm pretty pessimistic about
American in this book. But what I don't think will
necessarily happen is that Americas slide into civil war, certainly
not on the scale or nature of the civil war
that we saw in the eighteen sixties. But what I
also think is America won't reach a state of civil peace.
(06:30):
The divisions are so deep now, the alternative realities that
Americans have are so deeply embedded. And one of the
big arguments of the book is one of the reasons
why America is so divided is that so much of
its history remains unresolved.
Speaker 1 (06:49):
Nick interesting. At the end, you arrive in America, of
course at JFK. You leave JFK, Lady Liberty, New York.
You're looking at and you didn't look back. And that
was a couple of years ago. Now you end up
in Australia, start a new life. As you lead your
new life in Australia, have you looked back to you
regret it in any way, shape or form or not.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Mike, I haven't been back to America for almost three
years now now. During my adult life, I've never gone
more than twelve months without being in America. I've lived
in America for the biggest chunk of my adult life.
You know, I started covering Washington for the BBC in
the Clinton years. They sent me over for the Monica
Luizki Scanda, which at the court of the Bill Clinton scandal,
(07:31):
of course, and I covered Clinton. I covered Bush. I
was there on nine to eleven. I was there the
night Obama was elected. I the night Donald Trump was elected.
We were both there, weren't we. We were at the Hillary
Clinton what was supposed to be a celebration. You know,
I have been absolutely fixated with America, and my mind
frankly has not migrated. I mean, you know, the first
thing I do in the morning is check the New
(07:52):
York Times at the Washington Post and see what's happening
in America. But I haven't been back, and I think
that's crucial. You know. We were glad to get away.
In the end. I think, you know, my kids have
reached the age while they realized why they were doing
those shooter drills in their schools. My wife and I
had always said that would be the moment we leave.
Married an Australian who was born in New Zealand actually Takapuna,
(08:12):
and we decided to come back, and we haven't had
an urging to return. And I think this speaks of
I talk about a faith displaced. That I loved America
as a kid. It changed me togther as a teenager,
I became a lot more confident. Frankly, I ended up
at universities I would never even have thought of applying
to had I not gone to America as a sixteen
(08:34):
year old and really started living out a version of
my own American dream. And I've always loved America. At
times of my life, I would have happily taken up
American citizenship, and I still have that deep love for America.
But I don't want to live there, partly because it's
got so crazy, partly because it's got so violent, partly
frankly because it's willing to countenance the return of Trump.
(08:56):
I mean that looks like it's not a strong possible ability,
but certainly a pretty good possibility. So you know, for
all those reasons, I think we're better out of America.
Speaker 1 (09:06):
Just switch countries. Briefly, because you've been in the UK
with the speech at Cambridge, I know recently, and you
write a very good piece in the Sidning Morning here
all the other day. I'm assuming you assume, like we
all assume, that the Tories are done for Is it
because the Tories have been in power so long and
all governments that have been in power for a long
time time does them or have they done something particularly
(09:26):
egregious and the polls might be right and it could
be a wipeout.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
I think both of those things are true. I think
any government is trying to sort of win a fourth term,
which is essentially what the Tours are trying to do. Struggles,
you know, I think most governments tend to get booted
out after ten years, don't they. I mean, we've seen
that in India this very week. You know, Mody's obviously
going to be the prime minister, but with a reduced majority,
and it was a surprise to money. But again it's
(09:51):
that kind of anti incumbency feel of somebody who's been
around for a long time. But I also think the
chaos of the Tours is obviously a significant re I mean,
Britain's have more prime ministers over the last four or
five years in Australia in the ashes of political chaos
piecing in Australia at the moment, and I think that's
(10:11):
one of the reasons. I mean, Keir Starmer is a
pretty boring labor leader, you know. I described it in
that piece as you know, having all the charisma of
a packet of frozen peas. If there's any frozen peas
listening today. I apologize for the slur, but it's you know,
it's I think it's just a lot of people that
are set up for the sort of chaos of the tourist,
(10:32):
the post Brexit chaos of the tourism, even though they're
not particularly enthusiastic about a labor government. That's what we'll
get in Britain.
Speaker 1 (10:40):
Yeah, exactly, mate. I will be in New York and
October November, so you won't be. So that's a shame.
So we'll have to work out some way to get
together in the ensuing period. But in the meantime, all
the very best with his latest book. And it's always
a thrill to catch up and chat with you, Mike.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
It's always a pleasure to talk to you. I will
hope to get there in Updow November, so let's have it.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
Well, there you go, it's on, see you there. Nick
Bryant out of Sydney, for us this morning. What was
it the Travitt Center of the Cab. I'll look it
up and tell you in just a couple of moments.
It was a night to remember. I can tell you that.
Speaker 2 (11:11):
For more from the Mic Asking Breakfast, listen live to
news talks it'd be from six am weekdays, or follow
the podcast on iHeartRadio.
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