Elon Eyes European Domination
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Hi, I'm Tara Palmieri. I'm Puck's senior political correspondent, and this is Somebody's Gotta Win. Elon Musk is on a warpath.

for world domination. He started with the US, inserting himself into our politics, and now he has moved on to Europe with an eye on the United Kingdom and Germany, two of the largest economies and superpowers, obviously. So this weekend, he got into a Twitter spat with the prime minister of the UK, accusing the British prime minister, Keir Starmer, of covering up a child sex trafficking ring when he was the chief prosecutor six years

years ago. Obviously, the prime minister denies this and has accused Elon Musk of spreading disinformation on X. But of course, Musk went even further and he called on King Charles III to dissolve the parliament and remove the labor government. Now, he clearly doesn't understand how this works,

But the king can't just dissolve the parliament on his own. He has to be asked by the prime minister to do it. And then the prime minister sets the date for the new election. As for Germany, Elon Musk is going to host the leader of the AFD movement on X this week. It's Germany's far right populist party with some neo-Nazi ties. He's also been supportive of Georgia Maloney, who is the leader of Italy. She obviously comes from the far right populist movement as well.

But as for the UK, he has been supportive of the Reform Party that used to be the UKIP party that led the charge for Brexit for the UK to leave the European Union. It was based on a lot of anti-immigration rhetoric, a populist movement that was ushered in before Trump was even elected just a few months earlier. And Nigel Farage

was the leader of that. He was like the Donald Trump of Europe. He was gregarious. He was incredibly charismatic. And he had been pushing for this for 20 years. He had been out there everywhere, pushing for the exit of the UK from the European Union. And he continues to be the leader of this movement that is now called the Reform Party.

And for so long, he seemed like a natural ally to Elon Musk. In fact, there was reporting that Musk considered giving him $100 million. This would be a substantial amount of money to help him possibly topple the Labour government and to come into power. For so long, or as long as I've been alive, it's been the Labour Party and the Tory party that have switched on and off for power in the British government. But...

Elon Musk turned on Nigel Farage this weekend. He said that he believes in the Reform Party, but that Nigel should not be the leader. That's right. And that's because they disagree over this Islamophobe Tommy Robinson, who is in prison for libeling a Syrian schoolboy. Well, apparently, Nigel Farage thinks that that was the right decision to keep him in prison, and Elon Musk does not, claiming free speech.

But it's been a rift between the two of them. And when Elon Musk tweeted that Farage wasn't up to the job, Farage was uncharacteristically silent, to say the least. He said he was surprised. I'm sure he was bummed to think that he might not get that $100 million from Musk if that was ever really on the table.

But, you know, it just shows how Elon Musk is inserting himself in European politics, how he is craving power and how he is disrupting the systems. And it has French President Emmanuel Macron speaking out against it, the prime minister of Norway. They're concerned with how Elon Musk is using his bully pulpit.

this instrument of Twitter to disrupt the political forces in Europe with a lot of disinformation. And it's kind of interesting to see him turn on his own. And that would be Nigel Farage. As my next guest likes to say, Elon Musk is an unreliable partner. He treats world leaders like he treats his baby mamas. Rahim Kassam is the editor-in-chief of the National Pulse, and he is a former chief advisor to Nigel Farage.

Rahim, thanks so much for coming on the show. Just to kind of get everyone an idea of like how we met, it was back in 2016 in Doncaster in the UK. To me, the middle of nowhere, but maybe that's not a good reference point since I'm from New Jersey. But that was my campaign trail in 2016. I wasn't covering Trump. I was covering that populist movement in your country. And yeah, you were working for Nigel Farage at the time. And it was pretty amazing to see this intense energy for what you guys were pushing, which was to exit the...

EU to exit this multinational group of nation states that some in the group wanted to grow even closer and kind of almost become a United States within Europe, like they had open boundaries. You know, I was there as a Polish citizen.

living in Brussels and able to have all of the benefits of being a Belgian because of the European Union's immigration policies. And they had the free trade policy within there as well and a bunch of other things. But the Brits were like, we don't want any more of this. But tell me about how you ended up in Doncaster. Well, Tara, thank you for having me. Long time listener. First time guest. Hopefully won't be the last.

But I hope I can shed some sort of light on a lot of the things that have been going on in the last couple of weeks, let's say. But yeah, you're right. It goes very, very far back. It goes further back than Elon Musk probably understands. It goes further back, I think, than a lot of people who are just coming to... Maybe they're coming to MAGA in the last four years. Maybe they are...

Just hearing about Nigel Farage and the Reform Party, because I think it's polling, at least in some polls, ahead of the governing Labour Party in the United Kingdom at the moment. But yeah, look, I mean, I was a product of the Conservative Party, the small C conservative movement in the United Kingdom, born and raised in West London.

And, you know, really, really after 2010, when David Cameron went into coalition government with Nick Clegg, who's just been ousted as the as the meta or Facebook vice president for public affairs. You see, everybody, everybody gets promoted up.

I kind of didn't want a government that was in coalition with quite a left-wing liberal party. So I defected to Nigel Farage's UK Independence Party. I remember young... We call the Conservative Party Tories for short, by the way, for anybody who...

I want to know why I keep saying Tory through this podcast. And I remember all these Tories coming to me and prodding me in the chest and saying, you're making a big mistake. There's no future for Nigel. There's no future for this Brexit thing. That was like 2012, 2013.

And of course, it metastasized from there because UKIP, the old party, the precursor to the Reform Party, ended up winning local elections, European elections. And then, of course, the Prime Minister David Cameron had to promise a referendum on the EU membership.

So, I mean, there was a lot. There was a lot that took place over that period of time. And it's kind of similar, like you alluded to, to the trajectory of Trump, to the trajectory of the America First, the MAGA movement. There are lots of little distinctions and things like that. But broadly speaking, those two movements are kind of inextricably linked. I like to think, I really do believe it, that actually Brexit, which happened in June 2016, really gave Americans the get up and go mentality.

vote for Donald Trump, almost the permission, right? The philosophical permission to vote for Donald Trump in November 2016. I'm going to break your heart, Rahim. I don't think Americans knew anything about Brexit, honestly. Remember, Obama went to Westminster to lecture us about it, and there was a big to-do about that. Oh, yeah. No, I

remember, but I feel like the people that voted for Donald Trump, the white working class Americans, I don't think they were paying attention to what was happening in the UK. But I do think it was a wave. I felt it when I was in Brussels. I said, Brexit's going to happen. I can tell. And when I came home, I said the same thing about Trump. I was like, Trump is going to win. There is an anti-globalist

trend going on. People are speaking poorly about their leaders. They don't believe that they are looking out for them. They're wary of immigrants. They thought I was just an American when I was in the UK, right? And so they would talk poorly about these Eastern European immigrants who are coming and taking their jobs, right? I remember there was actual like hate crimes against the Poles at that time too, because they were the Polish plumbers that came in and did the work for less and sent the money over to Poland.

and where it was Zloty's and you could get like 10 Zloty's at the time for one pound. Who knows what it is right now? But I understood it. And I'm not like the type to like arch my back. I want to hear more. I want to hear more. Tell me, tell me how you really feel about it. And there was just so much anger and enthusiasm. It's almost like a revivalist thing to see Nigel Farage on stage at the UKIP conference. It was like CPAC to me. And then there was this woman there who had his face tattooed on her arm. Oh, I know.

I know. Oh, yeah, I'm sure you do. This was the first time they heard Nigel Farage talking about Brexit. He had been going on about Brexit since like 1999. It was a real thing. Basically, like I feel like since the UK joined the EU, it's just not in their DNA for a lot of people to be a part of a larger global national group, especially when they're barely hanging on to each other with the sky.

Scotland secession movement, you know, Northern Ireland, like they're so tribal themselves. Why would they think that they had anything in common with France or Germany? And yeah, it just kind of felt like antithetical to who they are. But, you know, going back home and hearing people kind of speak the same way, like crooked Hillary was like crooked Merkel. You know what I mean? I don't know. I remember I wrote this one story when I worked in Brussels and it was about how the MEPs, these are the members of European Parliament. They represented all their countries, how they were going to get their own chauffeurs.

and their chauffeurs needed uniforms, and it was going to cost 7 million euros, and it went in the Daily Mail, and people were losing it over that. There's something in the DNA of the British people to not want to be a part of this, but I do think a lot of people regret Brexit now, for sure. Yeah, I mean, we're still doing better across the Eurozone than most other major European nations, so I don't know if it's necessarily an economic regret. I think there is a regret over how Brexit was actually performed. Remember, it wasn't Nigel Farage

and UKIP who were in charge of how they actually deconstructed from Brussels. That was up to the governing Conservative Party. In a lot of ways, it was up to Theresa May and Boris Johnson, you know, all of these people who, you made the point, Nigel's been talking about it since 99. Nigel's been talking about it since 92. He was first elected to the European Parliament in 99. And, you know, these guys had campaigned all their lives to stay in

the European Union. Now, Boris flipped at the end because he saw which way the wind was blowing. Most people will recognize Boris as the kind of shaggy-haired, bumbling, kind of cutesy, almost fat Hugh Grant-ish figure from British politics. But he was absolutely useless as a prime minister. And so you did get this feeling that maybe Brexit wasn't going in the right direction. I remember even Donald Trump saying this a couple of years ago, saying, oh, well, we're not too sure how that thing's worked out.

But look, the way I say it, the way I tell it to people is that America declared its independence in 1776. You didn't really get functioning independence after Hamilton's report on the subject of manufacturers, after recognizing that you do need your own jobs-based, manufacturing-based, economic-based. And that was about 1815. So it takes time to do these things. We haven't had a government in the UK that has kind of taken the Brexit mantle and run with it.

And now you've got a government, of course, in the Labour Party who kind of want like a half and half, half in, half out agreement, what they call associate membership with the European Union. But it's against the backdrop of all of that that I think you're seeing the Labour Party kind of plummeting. It was only elected, by the way, over the summer. It's already plummeting in the polls, plummeting in support amongst its own base. And of course, who's there waiting to pick up the pieces?

Nigel Farage, if Elon Musk lets him. Talk to me about this Elon Musk interest in the UK. Is this just part of some sort of world domination plan setting up Starlink and Tesla up for success? So it's like, okay, now I own the US president, let's move on to the UK and start my own and elect leaders all over the world who feel like they own me for their success. And so, you know, I know that you have said publicly that $100 million from Elon Musk could go a long way for the reform party.

I guess at this point, you guys are looking at the Conservative Party as a party that you could sort of consume, you could say, and then take on power through. Whereas I think during Brexit, you sort of took over the Labour Party in a lot of ways. Like a lot of former Labour voters, like a lot of former Democrats ended up voting for Trump. And it was kind of a similar thing in that way. But why is Elon suddenly so interested in the UK? Besides the fact that he's a South African who obviously kind of grew up with the colonizer, you know,

I'm sure that had something to do with it. Yeah, he's yearned to colonize. What does the man with all the money in the world want? He doesn't want more money. He wants power. The thing, he doesn't have power, right? And you'll see this take place in Italy at the moment with his tour of Giorgia Maloney. She was with Trump last night at Mar-a-Lago, by the way. Yeah. Look, I know Giorgia. I've known her for the best part of a decade. And she completely changed as a result of Elon's involvement with her.

And you'll see that with Trump as well. Like the H-1B visa issue that like rocked the political right over Christmas break, at least online, right? Everybody was fighting each other over this. And Trump comes out in favor of it. And it's like, hold on a second here. Like this is not MAGA. This is not America First.

And so I want to make clear that I actually think that the reform party should refuse any advances from Elon Musk and refuse any cash. So you've changed your mind on this? Well, I think it would look, here's the thing, a hundred million dollars, a hundred million pounds, whatever it is, that silly number is the equivalent to five election cycles in the UK. You know, most parties spend about

15 to 20 million on an election cycle. It's not like here where you need, you know, $7 billion or whatever it is now. Um, yeah. And I think, I think they should refuse it. And I do think I've changed my mind on it. Having seen how he's behaved. Yeah.

Look, I always give Soros as the example, right? Before Soros comes along and starts stroking checks to the Democrat Party, the Democrat Party still classed itself as a pro-American worker party, a pro-union party, a small, you know, an anti-war party.

And then suddenly all these corporate donors, of which I guess, you know, Soros is probably the most identifiable, come along and fundamentally change. And by the way, the same thing happened with the Tea Party, right? The Koch brothers came along and completely bought and sold the Tea Party movement. And so I think to avoid something like that,

You just have to keep big money interest out of your political parties and out of your political movement. You can't do that in America anymore because we have super PACs. Well, you have to get rid of it. I mean, this is the thing that, you know, you guys are playing whack-a-mole with the speaker over here. And I keep telling Republicans, hey, you know, you can knock down Kevin McCarthy and you can knock down Mike Johnson. You can knock down Tom Emma and do whatever you...

But unless you get the money out of that situation, all of these people lining up are going to be the same person. They're just a facsimile of the wider problem. That's something that I don't want in British politics. And Elon has shown himself to be that guy. Interesting. And you liked Elon Musk for a while. You were a proponent of him. I don't know if I'd go that far. Because remember, we have reported for a long time on the National Pulse about his links to China, how much money that he takes in investments. I wouldn't say a proponent. I would say...

I was definitely somebody who cheered him on when he seemed to be going in the right direction. But as soon as he stopped going in that right direction, you know, the New York Times once said that I am kind of the ombudsman of the political right. So, you know, I'm more than happy to call balls and strikes when I see them. And this guy right now, I think,

is actually, you know, people on the left will say dangerous for democracy. That may well be true. I would say he is dangerous for the political right worldwide. He says Britain needs reform now.

What does that mean? Well, that's the Reform Party slogan. When Nigel talks about that, he's talking about root and branch change of how the political system operates. I'm sure a lot of your listeners will understand that we kind of have somewhat of an archaic system. You know, you have a house of lords and the lords are appointed by the government of the day and

And, you know, it's just all extremely antiquated. Courage. Yeah, and it's all grace and favor and political, you know, big political donors get lordships and all this stuff. And it's just, you know, to the average outsider,

Brits, Americans, you name it, all around the world. It just looks like a crooked system. And that's because it is, in a lot of ways, a crooked system. Westminster is tiny. Westminster is like five square blocks. That's the political hub. You have a tea room. I had tea in there once. I loved it. Yeah. And there are three taxpayer-subsidized pubs inside Parliament. It's just all this antiquated stuff. Not that I dislike the pub culture, but...

But yeah, I think when you look at reforms, every party had to put out a manifesto in the UK. When you look at what they're talking about, it's actual root and branch reform of how the political system operates, how democracy works, so that it's more localized and that there's more consultation.

with people on a day-to-day basis, it's not necessarily representative democracy so much as it is direct democracy. And that was, of course, what Brexit was, right? It was an exercise of the largest exercise in direct democracy that Britain has ever seen. It was a referendum. You guys do that all the time, though. You do referendums all the time. We do them too. How is that more of an exercise in direct democracy? I think a lot of the people that voted for Brexit

were not fully informed of how much their lives were going to change, what a cutting off direct trade or free trade with the European Union was going to affect their lives and their businesses. I don't think that they were fully aware. I think they liked the idea of it. I think that they thought that Brussels was corrupt and too bureaucratic. I don't think they understood the true economic impacts on their daily lives of Brexit. I don't disagree with that. But I also think that if you polled most of the people that voted for Brexit and said, would you rather your sovereignty...

Or, you know, the Bank of England did a financial, you know, readout of the net benefits of

European Union membership, and it came to about a pound per person in the United Kingdom per year. And most people, if they're polled about this, do you want your sovereignty? Do you want to be able to make your own rules? Or do you want to be part of this to be a tiny bit richer? They'll say that they'll take their sovereignty. And that was the argument, by the way, that Obama didn't understand, that David Cameron didn't understand, is that for these people, it wasn't just about the economic argument. It's the same thing with MAGA, by the way. There are plenty of these conversations

conversations about tariffs that are perfectly reasonable conversations to have about who's actually going to pick up the price for those tariffs. But it's not about the GDP argument. A country is more than just an economy. And so that was the argument that won on the doors. And Nigel Farage is somebody that goes around the country nonstop. He's been doing it since the early 90s.

He had a strong anti-immigration message as well. They thought that they were also going to have immigrants from India and Pakistan also leave the country, not just Eastern Europeans and other Europeans. Some people were misinformed in a lot of ways. A lot of it was like, we want Britain to be white Britain. I mean, it's not white. I don't know if I agree with that. But then again, I would talk to people who were of Indian descent or Pakistan.

Pakistani descent. And they would also say, like, I want Brexit because they believed that their jobs were also in threat. Sure. But look, my parents, my parents were British subjects in India when they when they migrated and they migrated through Tanzania, came to Britain. They were already British subjects. Right. So for that, the idea of being British as an identity was not alien. It was already inculcated. They already spoke

Perfect English. You also drank tea all the time. 100%. I mean, you know, I wrote a book a couple of years ago called Enoch Was Right about this very controversial British parliamentarian from the 1970s who gave an incendiary speech about mass migration. And...

You know, one of his closing lines in all of it was when the Brit and the Indian meet at a party, they go into a corner together and they say, let us dream our dream together. You know, he was such an Indiophile and he recognized that there is this massive overlap between those kinds of people, entrepreneurial spirit.

all of that. And that, you know, the British really left their mark on India. And I think in a net positive way, to bring it back to Brexit though,

You'll find that a lot of those people who wanted an end to mass migration, they had already been promised it for like 10, 15 years. The Conservative Party came to power in 2010, promising to bring net migration down. It actually tripled under the Conservative government. So the resentment factor went up and up and up.

And yes, I don't believe that anybody thought you were going to get mass deportations as a result of Brexit in any kind of major way. I don't think there were more than 5% of Brexit voters who believed that. But I do believe that people thought they would get an end to mass migration. And instead, I think Britain's now about a million last year. It's not insignificant. Right. It is a diverse country. But then again, I mean, they've had a presence all over the world. So I'm not surprised to see that it's reflected in that.

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I do want to get back to Elon and his interest in reforming Britain now. Nigel Farage called Elon a hero. He said he's very pleased with Elon backing our party. I have a hard time imagining anyone but Nigel Farage leading the party, except yourself. No, that's not happening. If Elon says, I need a new person to run a reform party, you're not going to go back and do that? Firstly, I would never take that call from Elon Musk. Secondly,

I have long given up any direct political aspirations. That was a long time ago. That was a many number of Rahims ago. So what's the beef with Farage? What's the problem? So the way I understand it is that Elon likes to collect people, right? And he thought he was on his way to collect Nigel Farage. Nigel Farage doesn't work like that. I mean, believe me, people have come to him with big checkbooks beforehand.

and asked him to change his position. I mean, remember, the Conservative Party tried to do this over the Brexit issue to kind of put him in a box, say, look, we'll just, you know, maybe you'll get a lordship, maybe you'll get a peerage, you know, all this stuff. We just need you to calm down on this issue or that issue. We need to talk about this.

That's just not who he is. He's always been his own man. He's like your version of Trump. Totally. Totally. I think probably even more independent minded than Donald Trump is because, you know, I think Nigel has been doing this now since the early 90s. Trump is still quite new to politics in the grand scheme of things.

And so Nigel's kind of dug in this issue about the grooming gangs, Keir Starmer, all of this stuff is being weaponized in a way that I think is really, really terrible. And I say that as one of the first people who ever wrote about this back in 2014. I say this as somebody who helped Tommy Robinson out of prison in 2018. This is the street activist who is now in prison that Elon is championing.

in a big way on X. And this is where the fight really lies. Elon is trying to kind of push Tommy Robinson as a figure

on Nigel Farage and the Reform Party without really understanding that, A, it's not really how British politics works, mate, but B, there is longstanding animosity between those men that actually will push Nigel Farage away from Elon Musk in a greater way than Elon could ever understand. And that shows how green Elon is to all of this stuff. And I think combine that with the H1B stuff,

and by the way why is he talking about the grooming gangs now he's doing it because he knows he got humiliated last week over the h1b stuff or two weeks ago whenever it was well trump sided with him ultimately on the h1b it's you know the america first base threw that back in his face and said absolutely not we're not with you on this issue and and by the way it wasn't even that they disagreed that you should have a level of visa that people can come in and do those jobs he

They disagreed with his idea that it should be protected in the way it is and it should be expanded even further. And so he put his foot in it and then he gloms onto this, you know, 15 year old grooming gangs issue, which I think is disgusting, by the way, because he's using the suffering of these young girls to distract from his own political flub.

And I just think that's who Elon is. He's just kind of a toddler who throws public tantrums every so often. It does seem like he just pops off randomly. You never really know what you're going to get. Has Farage responded yet? I mean, Farage

Farage doesn't seem like the type to bite his tongue unless I guess there's money on the line. I got to tell you, I mean, Nigel Farage, to me, is a very gentlemanly figure. He doesn't go off half-cocked like I do. Oh, come on. No, I mean, look, he's mature. Okay, I remember when I was covering the European Parliament that there were actual brawls. Oh, yeah. Members of the European Parliament that were from the UKIP section were actually fighting over

on the floor. Like, like it was, but not Nigel. It was ruckus. We don't have that in America. I've never seen anyone swing at the other person on the floor of the parliament. Okay. Yeah. Listen, I mean, it's, it's, it's a tradition or, you know, all across Europe, you see these, right? These videos breaking out in parliaments all across Europe from time to time, our parliament, by the way, uh, the way the, uh, benches are, they're actually two sword lengths away from each other, the government benches and the opposition benches. And the

And they were made that way so that you basically had time to think about whether you wanted to draw your sword and go the whole way. And we're supposed to think you're the genteel ones, right? The combative nature of parliamentary politics, I think, has a long, deep and welcome traditions. But a lot more problems could be solved if they just went outside and had a little fencing match.

But no, Nigel is definitely matured in the last 10 years. He definitely, you know, has gone through immense political growth. And you have to, right? Because now he's not just a fringe figure. He's not just leading a protest party. They're actually on trajectory. If the current electoral trajectory continues, he is on path to be the next prime minister. Now, the next election isn't until 2020. Do you really believe that he could be the next prime minister?

I truly believe it. How? So British politics is mostly performed at a local level, a branch and association level. That is 10 to 15 local activists who go out and leaflet and knock on the doors. Remember, you can't take out television ads. You can't take out radio ads. Those things are banned. So everything has to be leaflets through the doors, knocking on doors and reaching actual voters. True grassroots. True grassroots billboard campaigns.

And there's no other party currently that can field an operation like the Reform Party can. They're about to pass 200,000 paid members of the party. To put that into context,

The Conservative Party, the party of government, the party that has occupied the government of the United Kingdom. Well, they're not the party of government right now. I mean, it's the Labour Party. But they're known as the party of government because they've been in government more than any other party has over the last 150 years. The Labour Party. Firstly, Labour's got no money. The Tories have got no money. The Tory membership base is now around 100,000.

And the average age, I believe, of a Tory member is about 76 years old. I'm not surprised. Those people are not knocking on doors in the freezing cold on a cold and wet night in Stoke, right? It's just not going to happen. Who is making contact with these voters every single day? It's reformed.

It's reform. And this is, you know, and people are hearing from reform all the time. Is this a MAGA blueprint with the officers? Are you guys doing the same sort of thing that they did for Trump in the primary? It's all some strategy type stuff. Yeah. It's almost similar to that. Yeah. You can see these branches, especially like Tory branches being, you know, leeched away into the reform apparatus. And Nigel, look, you've got local elections coming up in May, October.

of this year, the Reform Party is going to... I'm going to go over for it. You're more than welcome to join me. Should I come? Somebody's got a win, goes to the UK. Heck yeah. The Reform Party is going to absolutely sweep those local elections. And that is a stepping stone that they need to build that branch apparatus. Because then you can control local authorities. You're actually in charge of local government decisions. And if you can show competency at that level, then the electorate will trust you with British Parliament, with the national...

electric cycle. So I think it is well within grasp, but I also say this, you know, I'm not typically an optimist. I think everything has to go right for Farage and he's never, he's never, you know, the guy's been in a car crash, a plane crash, he's had cancer, you know, he's been attacked by Brussels. He's been attacked by Elon Musk. Um, so, you know, he, he understands hardship and he understands trouble and,

he will go through his fair share of it in the next couple of years. So, you know, we'll see. But he's on the right path. He's on the right trajectory. What he seems to be excelling in right now is his TV show on Channel 4. That seems to be a place where he's doing well. He is very theatrical. But I wanted to ask you, I mean, he has asked for a bigger role. He wants to be the intermediary between the UK government and Trump. And I feel like the fact that he is frequently seen at Mar-a-Lago, he is in Washington, that obviously...

you know, heightens his profile, certainly after Brexit, when some people may have been angry with him about the outcome or felt that he hit the road afterwards and went into television, that, you know, he didn't suffer the brunt of it. Well, it's

It's okay, because I'm friends with the new leader of this, you know, America. So it gave him some prominence. Is that what he's doing right now? Is that why he's trying to stay close to Trump, stay relevant in the UK until he's elected? I mean, but then I saw that a UK representative shut that down and said that he can't be the go-between, the British government and the US government. So what is he doing here? Why is he hanging out with Trump all the time, unless he just wants to be relevant and famous? Okay.

get elected. Um, well, Guy DeFerrari is already very famous, um, at least, at least in the United Kingdom, right? So, so he doesn't really need that. And he's headlined CPAC and the turning points and all of that sort of stuff. So he doesn't really need that level of, of, of fame and access for that stuff. Uh, what he needs is the legitimacy of having, you know, the, the global superpowers leader, the leader of the free world endorsing him as he just did at the, uh, you know,

I was emceeing the New York Young Republican Gala over Christmas, and Trump sent in not one but two videos endorsing Nigel Farage

as well as other people who were speaking at that event. And Nigel spoke at that event. Steve Bannon spoke at that event. Corey Lewandowski, Dan Scavino, a bunch of others. And so, you know, Nigel understands that he can parlay that power into electoral relevance in the United Kingdom. And it's done him a great lot of good to be seen with and around Donald Trump. It really has cut the rug out from underneath the Conservative Party and its leader, Temi Badenoch.

Um, it causes the labor party all sorts of problems because, you know, they don't know kind of what, you know, Trump is back channeling to Nigel or what Nigel's back channeling to Trump. You've, you've got this issue at the moment with Chagos islands, um, and the Diego Garcia base that the labor party are trying to hand back to control to Mauritius. And, you know, Nigel's done a very good job of kind of telling the incoming Trump team and the incoming national security team, like, Hey, hang on a second. The Brits need this island. You guys also need this base as well for national security reasons.

So that's causing Keir Starmer a lot of problems. Nigel wants to serve his country and he wants to serve his country in any way he can. So if Peter Mandelson or whoever's going to be the next British ambassador to the US comes along and asks for his help, he'll help them. The problem is the political establishment in Britain don't want to give him that credence and that credibility because that elevates him further up and that makes him kind of the prime minister in waiting.

almost. The other part of it is, let's go back to Doncaster, where the hat that you see behind me here is the original MAGA hat brought to me by my girlfriend at the time from San Diego to Doncaster. And I was wearing it in Doncaster. And actually, it was Nigel who came up to me and said, we're not really sure about the Trump thing. Is it going to be Trump? Is it going to be Cruz? You better take that off just in case. And I said, absolutely not.

And I still remember when Bannon was a Cruz guy as well. And I had to convert him over to Trump too during the early parts of the primary. So if your listeners want somebody to blame for all of this over the last 10 years, you

You can look squarely here. So you're saying you had better political instinct than Nigel and Bannon? Many people would say that I couldn't possibly comment. Okay, so obviously the UK could be in a precarious situation with Trump's promises to increase tariffs and he's lessened his commitment to provide security to the UK. How great of a threat do you think this poses to the UK? And is there any way that

Nigel Farage could save the day. Yeah, absolutely. I think, you know, there have already been conversations that I understand about carve-outs for the United Kingdom. We know that Trump is obviously...

Has a soft spot for the UK, his familial links to Scotland, his relationship with the late Her Majesty the Queen. And we know that in a post-Brexit world, really the number one, see Brexit allowed the UK government to go out and make its own tailored trade deals.

with individual nation states and indeed with the EU itself. The problem is the Conservative Party and the Labour Party actually have had no interest in doing that because they're more interested. Yeah, they don't have a trade deal with the US. They don't have a trade deal with America. Do you have a trade deal with anyone? I think the Japanese have one with us. I think the Australians now... How's that working out? You know, it could be better. But...

The Americans have this ability, the incoming Trump administration has the ability to kind of completely make Brexit a functional

success by just agreeing to a one-to-one bilateral trade deal. I think they'll actually do it. And I think it will be done because Nigel Farage keeps popping up at Mar-a-Lago and talking to the right people about this. Now, he'll never get the credit he deserves, sorry, not probably in his lifetime, at least. But that will ameliorate everything that you talked about earlier about any, you know, we call it regret, right? Any Brexit regret that lingers on.

and it will allow the country to move into a new economic prosperity period. As I say, though, if you look at the numbers, Britain is still outperforming most of its Eurozone competitors. Well, it was already one of the top economies in the world. Sure. Why we could afford to do it. Are you comparing it to Estonia? You know what I mean? It's not really. Italy, if you look at the underlying numbers, Britain is outperforming. Now, listen, we don't have a lot of inward investment coming in. We don't have a lot of manufacturing base. So there are some problems to be solved. But

But if Nigel can convince Trump to have that carve out, especially on the tariff regime, he will be a national hero. He'll be an international hero. I do want to just talk about something before we finish. What this Washington is going to be like. I mean, when Trump first came to power in 2016, it was kind of funny, right? There was all these guys who were like super MAGA, kind of represented the white working class, and then the Bannon type Breitbart.

type like yourself, you know, coming over, except obviously it came from the UK, but like the Stephen Millers and, you know, Jeff Sessions and his crew. And then obviously there were the New Yorkers like Jared, the Ivanka and Gary Cohn and Dina Powell and like people that Trump had known from New York as well.

But this time around, there's going to be a new crew coming through. Well, there are a lot of people from Florida this time around, thanks to Susie Wiles, right? Like there's a huge Florida contingency and people were not very excited about his win. They were questioning him. He didn't have a strong mandate. He's coming in with a strong mandate, but there's also these tech bros that are coming in. Like,

Elon Musk and his friends, David Sachs, everyone that has sort of, you know, donated to the Trump campaign and now think we deserve a piece of the pie in Washington. We have a say. These guys were always the villains in Washington. And now they're going to kind of come in there, you know, swaggering around and just sort of wonder what do you think is going to be like? I think Elon Musk makes Steve Bannon look tame when you think about it.

Yeah, I think Elon Musk makes Steve Bannon look like the grown-up in the room, which should terrify a lot of people. But look, I hate to break it to you, but the way American politics works is the people who do write the big checks do get the stroke. And that's on all sides, on both sides, up, down, left, right, whatever you want to call it. So yeah, you do have this weird, socially awkward crowd

of tech bros who are flocking to capitol hill and downtown dc right now i know them because some of them are my friends ish what do they eat because republicans always go to steakhouses right but where are they going they're not your typical republican that wants to go to a steakhouse they're like rfk types that don't eat you know things with dyes in them right they're they're kind of a different i almost wish they were more like rfk times because look i'm a big proponent of the

the natural wines and the nose to tail and, you know, actual clean eating. You're sophisticated already, okay? Yeah. European palate. I mean, sue me. Those guys, I actually, there's a lot of them who, it surprises me quite a lot just how uncultured they are for how wealthy some of these people are. You know, they'll be picking up, they'll be picking up, I mean, I don't want to denigrate any national brands here, so I won't, but, you know, things that aren't exactly healthy.

Things that are very quick and deep, they're not thinking about their own well-being. They're thinking about how effective am I and who am I networking with today? It's a very socially awkward way of going through life. And you can say that about a lot of people who, when they first enter politics, they kind of forget to be a human being and they kind of operate as these weird automatons and try and be something that they think they're supposed to be. You're going to see a lot of that in Washington over the next couple of years. You're also going to see a lot of people who aren't used to being told no.

And it's like Elon Musk, you know, they'll throw their tantrums and they may throw very big public tantrums if Susie Wiles or Donald Trump or somebody tells them that actually, you know, you can't have things exactly the way you want it. That's not how this works. We have, you know, we have several branches of government. We have oversight. We have all of this stuff. It doesn't work like this, you know,

intergalactic dictatorship. It's not a dark enlightenment, Kurt Jarvin, you know, weird benevolent dictator situation that you've got going on here. But that is my biggest worry is that a lot of those tech bros have subscribed to a political philosophy where they truly believe that democracy, American democracy, representative democracy, uh,

is passe and it needs to be replaced by Elon as dictator. It's a tech oligarchy. Yes. That's what they think. Completely. It's techno-fascism. It leans into the transhumanism stuff with people being implanted in microchips and things like that. I was talking to a friend of mine at the New York Times about

about this and just saying it's so funny to watch Elon Musk turn into the big brother from 1984. And that's what we're seeing in real time right now. So I think people are right to be extremely, extremely

skeptical over those people. And listen, the good news is I'm on the political right. I don't think anybody can be in any two minds about that. But if I'm saying it and I'm looking out for it, then I think we might be able to just keep these people in check. Okay. Well, we shall see what's to come. We'll know soon enough in like, what, 15 days now, 14 days? Inauguration. I'll see you there. You're having a big party, right?

I probably shouldn't announce that. There's parties all week. It's crazy. And it's probably going to be snowing again as it is right now. So it should be a fun time. Look forward to seeing you there. What do you think Trump's going to say at his inauguration speech? It's going to be some weird shit, right? That is an absolutely phenomenal question. And the reason it's a great question is I haven't even thought about it yet, but I should have. And that

that is a reflection on you because I think that will form the backbone of the first 100 days. I think he'll certainly mention a mass deportation program. I think he'll certainly mention the tariff program. But I also think he is inclined as a human being. Look, I've met him so many times now. I've interviewed him. I've really gotten to know him as much as you can, right, as a human being. He is always trying to find common ground. He is always trying to find...

at least some way that you and he can identify with each other. So I think you can expect to hear a lot of that as well. Unity, common purpose. Really? Because that was not his message during his first term. Correct. And as much as I enjoy... You think he's different this time around. Like you say, he comes with a different kind of mandate this time around. And I think he'll want to flex the magnanimity of that. So you think that he was in a defensive crouch?

and more divisive because he didn't have quite the mandate because a lot of people questioned the legitimacy of his presidency. I think the most memorable two things of his first inauguration, like of the day itself, were... Him bitching about the crowd's eyes. No, no, exactly. And his really dark speech. Right. It was American carnage.

And it was sending Sean Spicer out to have an argument over crowd size. Right. And I just don't think he's there anymore. Why? Because he's thinking about his legacy. Is that what you think? To an extent, he'll be thinking about his legacy. But I just think he feels a lot different from back then. He feels like he really, truly like he kind of lucked into it last time. But when I went up to see him, it was two days after the 2016 election, and I

And I went up to Trump Tower and to the penthouse. And I was the first non-campaign person to go up and see him. And he turned to me, the first thing he said, well, besides do you want a Diet Coke on a golden tray? The first thing he said, which is true, was, so is this a big deal?

And I was like, what do you mean, Mr. President-elect? It's not a big deal. And he said, the election, me winning the election, is it a big deal? I was like, yeah, it's kind of a big deal, you know? And I just think he was surprised. He was taken aback. There was this feeling that he kind of lucked into it or fluked into it because... So even he thought that he faked it a bit. I think he realized that he won because Hillary was quite repugnant to ordinary voters rather than him being attractive.

This time around, I think he feels like he's earned it a little bit more. And that comes with some swagger. Okay. Well, we'll see if he uses that swagger to unite or to, I don't know, be even more aggressive with his adjustments.

agenda. All right, Rahim, thanks so much for coming on the show. We'd love to have you back on. We'll see what happens in this unhappy romance between Nigel Farage and Elon Musk. Will he be a homewrecker between Farage and Trump? Will Trump ditch Nigel as well because of Elon? The good news is it's like watching the greatest reality TV slash soap opera you could possibly imagine. The bad news is we're all affected by it. There are consequences. All right. Thanks so much for coming on the show. Cheers.

That was another episode of Somebody's Gotta Win. I'm your host, Tara Palmieri. I want to thank my producers, Christopher Sutton and Connor Nevins. If you like my reporting, check me out everywhere at Tara Palmieri. That's T-A-R-A-P-A-L-M-E-R-I. You can see me on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, YouTube. You can check out my work at puck.news slash Tara Palmieri and sign up for my newsletter, The Best and the Brightest. You can use the discount code Tara20 for 20% off a subscription at puck.news.

I will see you again on Thursday.