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Speaker 1: Jersey and Amanda jam Nation Well.

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Speaker 2: In a career spanning almost thirty years, Nick Bryant came

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Speaker 2: to be regarded as one of the BBC's finest foreign correspondents,

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Speaker 2: covering some of the biggest political news stories, including Trump's

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Speaker 2: years as president. He's got a new book called The

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Speaker 2: Forever War, and he deep dives into American political polarization.

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Speaker 2: His previous book, which I absolutely loved, called When America

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Speaker 2: Stopped Being Great, actually resides on Joe Biden's bookshelf in

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Speaker 2: the Oval Office. As the race to the White House

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Speaker 2: has taken these twists and turns in the last few weeks,

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Speaker 2: we thought there's no better time to get him on.

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Speaker 1: Nick. Hello, Amanda, thank you so much for mentioning my

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Speaker 1: biggest boast in life. The fact that my booked in

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Speaker 1: the over lies.

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Speaker 2: It's pretty impressive. It's pretty impressive. Now you've been around

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Speaker 2: the traps for a long time. But these last few weeks,

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Speaker 2: have you ever seen anything like this in American politics?

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Speaker 1: Oh? Well, history has been coming out as sick and fast,

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Speaker 1: hasn't it. But the answer is yes. I mean, we

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Speaker 1: had seen political violence of the kind that almost the

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Speaker 1: life of Donald Trump. You know, It goes way back.

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Speaker 1: The first Speaker of the House of Representatives survived an

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Speaker 1: assassination attempt. Political violence has always been part of the

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Speaker 1: American story, Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley, Kennedy. They'd already lost four presidents,

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Speaker 1: a lot of other presidents that survived assassination attempts. So

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Speaker 1: although it was shocking, it wasn't entirely surprising that Donald

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Speaker 1: Trump should become the target of an assassination attempt. As

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Speaker 1: for presidents standing down, yep, we've seen that before as well.

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Speaker 1: Most recently, of course, in nineteen sixty eight, when Lyndon Johnson,

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Speaker 1: at the height of the Vietnam War, announced that he

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Speaker 1: would not seek the presidential nomination of his party. The

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Speaker 1: Democrats met that year in Chicago. Where are they meeting

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Speaker 1: this year? They meet in Chicago. His vice president became

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Speaker 1: the nominee. His vice president ended up losing. That is

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Speaker 1: a history. Obviously the Democrats don't want to repeat this

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Speaker 1: time around.

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Speaker 2: Yes, and it's happening much later in the presidential race.

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Speaker 2: This time around. If Biden hadn't stumbled in the we

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Speaker 2: probably wouldn't be in this situation.

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Speaker 1: Now.

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Speaker 2: Do you think it was a good thing that everyone

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Speaker 2: got to see this side of him.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I do, actually, because I'd come to the conclusion

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Speaker 1: earlier than the year that he was just too old.

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Speaker 1: Last year, I actually thought of the movie Weekend up Bern.

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Speaker 1: It's it's the movie where the guy is dead but

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Speaker 1: they pretended it's alive. And I thought there was an

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Speaker 1: argument actually for running Biden even if he was dead

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Speaker 1: and pretending he's alive. But we saw how bad the

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Speaker 1: aging had become. He said it would take Godalmighty to

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Speaker 1: convince him to step down from the race. But it

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Speaker 1: was really far the time. I mean, I think we're

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Speaker 1: in fifteen minutes of that debate performance against Donald Trump,

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Speaker 1: it became pretty clear that he would not be capable

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Speaker 1: of serving four more years. And then it was just

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Speaker 1: a question of how they would blast him out, and

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Speaker 1: they did blast him out. I mean, he was very

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Speaker 1: reluctant to step down, but in COVID self isolation, he

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Speaker 1: being that self sacrifice. He finally hoisted the white flag

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Speaker 1: after coming under some much friendly fire frankly of his

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Speaker 1: own site senior figures, especially Nancy Pelosi. It was once

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Speaker 1: said that Nancy Pelosi can take off your head without

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Speaker 1: you even notice you're bleeding. But Joe Biden would have

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Speaker 1: noticed when she raised the a's issue in the aftermath

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Speaker 1: of the debate. He would have known that his time

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Speaker 1: was running out.

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Speaker 2: Wow, And so Kamala Harris looks like she'll be the

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Speaker 2: Democrat nominee. What do you think? What's America thinking? Can

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Speaker 2: she do it?

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Speaker 1: Oh? She's certainly rapped up the base, and she's had

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Speaker 1: a really good start to a campaign. I mean, often

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Speaker 1: the metric of political says in America is how much

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Speaker 1: money you can raise. It speaks of a kind of

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Speaker 1: deeply flawed system, really, but she raised the colossal amount

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Speaker 1: of money within twenty four hours. She has clearly rapped

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Speaker 1: up the Democratic bait that base. It looks now more

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Speaker 1: like a stark choice, doesn't it. Previously it looked like

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Speaker 1: a kind of dottary old man up against a crazy

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Speaker 1: old man. Well, it looks a very stark choice now

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Speaker 1: with a kind of younger woman. But it's worth saying.

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Speaker 1: I mean, she is actually on the older end of

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Speaker 1: cande seeking the presidency. She's fifty nine years old. She'd

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Speaker 1: be sixty by the time she takes office. Most of

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Speaker 1: the post war presidents, like Kennedy, like Obama, like George W. Bush,

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Speaker 1: like Jimmy Carter, like Bill Clinton. They were younger than

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Speaker 1: she is. So she isn't that young historically speaking, but

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Speaker 1: she's a lot younger than Donald Trump. But she does

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Speaker 1: give this youthful air. She's been in Wisconsin in the

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Speaker 1: last few hours, which is a key state, and she's

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Speaker 1: really setting up this race as a contest between a

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Speaker 1: prosecutor and a felon.

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Speaker 2: Unbelievable. I know you've written about this before that when

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Speaker 2: you were a kid, America was everything. You grew up thinking,

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Speaker 2: what an incredible country. How does the world view America now?

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Speaker 1: When I was a kid, I think the world did

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Speaker 1: regard America as a beacon of democracy. I think now

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Speaker 1: they regard it not just as a dumpster fire. It's

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Speaker 1: more like a dumpster inferno. I mean, I don't know

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Speaker 1: whether you're watching the Republican convention wow last week. I mean,

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Speaker 1: it was just crazy stuff and it did look more

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Speaker 1: like a cult than a political party. You know. I

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Speaker 1: decided that it wasn't a great place to bring up

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Speaker 1: the family with my wife, and we always said that

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Speaker 1: when our kids realized why they were doing drills at school,

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Speaker 1: which are the shooter drills. We were living in New York,

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Speaker 1: it would be time to come back to Australia. And

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Speaker 1: it's a country beset by so many problems now. And

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Speaker 1: you know, it used to have this great sense of

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Speaker 1: positive exceptionalism, and now I think it's got this sense

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Speaker 1: of toxic exceptionalism. It's a country you don't want your

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Speaker 1: country to be like anymore.

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Speaker 3: And there was a story that I read in World

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Speaker 3: War Two that they managed to build the B seventeen

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Speaker 3: bomber and then during COVID they couldn't rummage enough know

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Speaker 3: how to get masks out there.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's tragic. I mean I went to

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Speaker 1: a university in the States that basically invented the future

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Speaker 1: am I t in Boston, and you know when I

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Speaker 1: was there as a young kid, I just associated America

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Speaker 1: with the best stanners of living in the world. The

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Speaker 1: first experience is that in California during the Los Angeles Olympics,

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Speaker 1: when they brought that guy with a rocket pack into

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Speaker 1: the arena. America could sort of pull that kind of

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Speaker 1: stunt off. But a lot of other countries can do

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Speaker 1: it as well, And a lot of countries don't have

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Speaker 1: the problems of school shootings of mass shootings and police

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Speaker 1: brutality of the OPI or crisis, all the problems that

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Speaker 1: now seem emphatically American.

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Speaker 3: Well, nigga's great to talk to. You can get your

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Speaker 3: hands on the forever worn now at all good bookstores.

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Speaker 3: Have a look in the Oval office. There it is

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Speaker 3: just sitting.

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Speaker 2: No, that's the former one. That's the when America's stopped

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Speaker 2: being great.

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Speaker 3: To have your whole back.

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Speaker 2: You haven't got long while he's there.

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Speaker 1: Get to it, Nick, exactly great to tell you us