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I
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welcome to a special us election night
edition of Sputnik coming to you from
our Westminster Studio With Me George
Galloway and me gatri and our special
guest our American political expert
Professor inder Jeet parmar before I
turn to him let me just point out that
the British Parliament behind me appears
to be somewhat in darkness at least dark
edged and that might be because the
political class everywhere in the world
is about to enter a period of mour
because although we don't know the final
result of the US Presidential epic
contest what we do know is that it's
been the most dramatic political fight
of the century and I don't exclude
George W Bush's dramatic win in the year
2000 great divisions great cleavages
have been revealed in American society
and it may be difficult for the US to
put Humpty Dumpty back together again
but enough for me a gted uh gifted
amateur let's hear from the professional
professor inderjit we don't know the
final result but we know enough don't we
to know that the political class just
like in the brexit referendum contest
has been
confounded it does look that way up to
now um certainly from some of the
results that we've seen um and it does
seem to be echoing what happened in the
brexit vote which was suggested to be a
very close win for remain but ended up
being a a tight win for for leave it
does suggest really that PO methods are
not reaching everybody who is actually
playing a decisive role in these kinds
of Elections and there are people out
there who are probably previously
politically inactive or not voting
before but who seem to be uh inspired to
vote by the kind of candidacies or or
the campaigns run by people from outside
of the spectrum who are not actually
accepting the status quo quite in the
way that uh people were were believing
that they would well 15% of them were
new voters yeah was that a surprising
number for you well it's not a
surprising number but what is surprising
is that they don't appear in the polls
yeah so that it's clear that the polling
organizations themselves need to do
something in order to reach a wider
cross-section of the population um but
in the end we're all uh reliant on the
most sort of scientific methods of
polling which have been available and
people like um Nate Silva and 538 his
website run by mathematicians and
statisticians of some stature uh
appeared to have been getting it wrong
well let me advance one reason why and
it's a factor in this
election the 15% of new
voters and the tremendous turnout in
places like Michigan which wasn't even
in play a few days ago and which Trump
might well have one if not one then come
very close to
winning this is the poor the working
class in the meanest streets where
pollsters quite frankly don't go and
that reveals another of the issues I'd
like you to comment on there's a bubble
it's a Westminster bubble it's a Beltway
bubble in the United States in which
experts talk to each other when I
predicted on Twitter that Donald Trump
was going to win there was a deluge from
liberals and people from the chattering
class working in television working in
media and so on these people talk to
themselves they have no idea what's
going down on the streets either of
Rochdale and Rotherham or of Michigan
and Ohio I think you're right I think
the fact is that we all live in certain
kinds of bubbles we do talk to each
other we we are kind much more
inward-looking and I think to some
extent that is to do with professional
groups they tend to stick together in
various ways and thereby talk each other
into a reality which may have very
little relationship with what is going
on outside but I think it's also because
various studies done among those
communities have suggested that there
are certain communities which are out of
play um if you look at labor party for
example from the 1980s onwards
effectively went with the sort of
sociological stud which suggested that
the industrial organized working class
was no longer a a coherent grouping
which had a kind of political saleny at
all and therefore the strategy had to
shift to new blocks of Voters who were
much more aspirational they wanted to
enter the middle classes and therefore
they were going to vote differently and
therefore labor had to drop various
elements of its core programs
nationalization clause for and the like
and I think that is actually what has
happened that those people have been
effectively written out of politics and
history almost and I think they are now
making a comeback they are basically
saying that they are not going to be
ignored anymore and they're taking the
opportunities being provided by
unorthodox candidates in this case and I
would say this is being provided to some
extent from left and right in the
American election Donald Trump and
Bernie
Sanders left and right difference is
collapsing and now since Sanders is um
defeat in the Democratic uh nomination
in the primaries um quite a number of
his supporters went straight over to
Donald Trump arguing that it was against
the establishment that had that they
were they backing Bernie sers so they
weren't afraid of his policies and and
his fear mongering I think there is such
a deep alienation from the political
establishment from the way in which the
great thing that people saw about Bernie
Founders and by Donald Trump but they
were far less immersed in the political
class in general and they were talking a
language which was straight and it was
all about inequality the fact that
there's a whole system of politics and
economy and so on which was rigged
against Ordinary People in various ways
and the early part of Donald Trump's
campaign there was quite a lot said
about Wall Street and so on and Wall
Street returned the compliment to him by
giving him very little money indeed but
there there is on left and right and I
think here in lies a deep crisis and the
crisis was represented effectively by
Hillary Clinton Hillary Clinton if you
like was the sort of the the person with
a finger in the Dyke um trying to
personification of the political class
and as you and I have discussed before
it's no accident That Wall Street paid
overwhelmingly for her campaign and gave
virtually nothing to Trump and Hillary
is now paying big time for her
subservience to Wall Street and its
antithesis her uh carelessness about
Main Street because you can't care about
Wall Street and Main Street uh her
support for NAFTA there was no Senator
more assiduous in promoting the North
American free trade area which has
devastated the industrial areas of the
US with production being moved out of
the US
mainly to Mexico so that as we just
heard you can you used to be able to
build cars in Michigan and but you
couldn't drink the water in uh Mexico
but now the cars are made in Mexico and
you can't drink the water in Michigan
and thirdly her antipathy to Russia
which she has mentioned more often than
any other issue in the whole campaign uh
I forget how many times now but it's
hundreds and hundreds of times her
determination to confront Russia in
Syria the danger of our taking America
into yet another War people have
recoiled from all these things yes
correct I think all the opinion polls
and here I think opinion polls have been
correct the attitude surveys from the
time of George W bush around 2005 2006
when the Iraq war or the occupation went
pear-shaped and it broke out into pretty
much a full scale Civil War and you got
the sacking of Donald Rumsfeld the
Secretary of Defense at that time it's
been a steady increase of the proportion
of Americans who do not want the United
States either to be unilateral or to put
itself out there in front of everybody
effectively dominating the world or
Without Partners without un approval and
so on and that if you like that tendency
has been very powerful and that has come
through it came through to some extent
in the sand
base although Less in his campaign but
it came through very strongly within
Donald Trump's own campaign as well and
that has been ignored but Hillary
Clinton is a hardcore mainstream
supporter of the liberal International
order in all its idealized versions from
1945 onwards she believes in all the
alliances and all the treaties and all
the kind of General economic financial
and other arrangements International
Arrangements which have been set up she
is the personification she is the
supporter of it she believes it she's a
she's an ideologue for it um and but she
was the only one who survived if you
like within this contest between 17 uh
uh Republicans who fought in the
primaries and the various Democrats and
so on and forth she was the only one who
survived in the end who supported the
system as it is Donald Trump doesn't
come from within that system in that
same way and Bernie Sanders doesn't
either but they collectively got a very
very large number 29 million primary
votes they got far more than anybody
else so what this was telling us is that
actually the the center so-called Center
which Hillary Clinton represents has
shrunk to a very very small number and
that effectively there are people who
are coming from outside the system who
are saying this system no longer serves
the American people in any way shape or
form well it was said of the Bourbons
that they learned nothing and forgot
nothing and thus they were overthrown in
the French Revolution and that it seems
uh to be the case maybe happening in the
United States this evening is arguably
happening elsewhere and you rightly
identify that it can break left and it
can break right and in the second half
of the show we'll have to tease that out
a bit more because on the face of it
Donald Trump is himself a plutocrat born
with several Golden Spoon in his mouth
fantastically rich and unlikely
Spartacus for the
downtrodden now unemployed workers in in
in Michigan and yet and yet the key
point for the voter seems to have been
that he was not one of them he might be
rich but he's not rich and in the
political class he's not rich and got
his pockets filled with Wall Street uh
uh money
um and of course we've seen it break to
the left here in Britain with Jeremy
Corbin's Victory we saw the strength of
Bernie Sanders campaign in France it's
breaking to the right yes with the front
National and maybe other places too it's
a fascinating and even slightly
dangerous uh prospect that lies ahead of
us but the center cannot hold there'll
be much more where this came from after
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break welcome back to a special us
election night special edition of
Sputnik we're talking with Professor
inderjit parar a very considerable
expert on American Affairs and indeed
politics in general uh Professor I'm
getting news that the Mexican peso has
gone through the floor at the
possibility maybe edging towards a
probability certainly a possibility of a
trump presidency the Dow futures are
down 300 when they were up yesterday
several hundred uh on the prospects of a
a comparatively easy Clinton
Victory if Trump is to be the president
of the United States what will the
impact be on markets and on foreign
capitals around the world that's a
really good question and it's it's
likely to be very very negative um the
American economy um is is strong but
confidence in the American economy needs
to be strong too and it would look as if
America's entering a period of increased
instability as a result of if Donald
Trump wins the
election there's two things here one is
if the House of Representatives remains
in uh Republican hands seems likely and
the Senate remains in Republican hands
too also seems
likely then if that those are true and
Donald Trump wins he has been rowing
back on a number of his
anti-conservative
positions on taxation for example of the
rich uh and on welfare spending and so
on as well uh and has appointed uh the
former president of the Heritage
Foundation Ed felner to his campaign
transition team team he has also taken
up the Heritage foundation's U blueprint
for reform military policy which is
contradictory to his broader statements
about the what appeared to be America
first or isolationist some people say
about drawing back a lot more and being
sort of uh more selective about the kind
of engagements that they would take
place if those are true then what we
could then see with a transactional
president uh like uh Trump would be
would be the ability to do deals with
the Republican held
Congress I you're you're you're
absolutely right that in fact the
likelihood is that Trump will make a
sharp right turn if he enters the White
House but that will leave the voting
base that just put him in seething with
anger once they realize that because the
Heritage Foundation has nothing to offer
the unemploy steel workers in Ohio right
correct correct so there will have to be
something so this contest is between the
devil and be abub isn't it I don't know
who that is but beab is another okay
Satan Satan and the devil okay well yeah
I I'm not a religious person so I don't
know about Good and Evil so much but I
but it is a it is a very very difficult
choice for American people because in
the end this is a billionaire we're
talking about someone who is has evaded
taxes or avoided taxes at the very least
hasn't paid very much tax over the years
paid for 18 years believes it's a very
smart thing to do he says that that
makes me smart and he's also going to
organize the biggest tax giveaway
probably since George W bush before him
and
probably deeply damaged the federal
government's finances I don't think
there's very much that he's going to be
able to offer in a big way to those
industrial workers in Michigan and in
Pennsylvania and in other places where
they feel threatened by Hillary and by
those free trade agreements that she
called gold standard and so on the fact
is though however that politics is
politics and in the end they're going to
have to do something to have some kind
of a concession to those workers and he
has suggested infrastructure spending
for example u in various ways without
too an FDR uh in in the in Waiting that
we just haven't not quite FDR not quite
FDR but certainly someone who can see
that in order to
solidify some kind of a basee you're
going to have to do something practical
well I tell you know how they like the
third way over there my wife's got a
third way she wants Obama to stay on I
mean if Obama could just declare that he
he can't find his shoes and will until
the 29th of January yeah yeah he can't
find his shoes he can't find his coat
and hat so he's just going to have to
stay there how do you see as we now come
to the end of it how do you see
President Obama's uh uh
Legacy I think there are many ways in
which one can look at a legacy and I
think I think history will probably see
Barack Obama as one of the very best
presidents and probably a great
president in time he's leaving at a very
with a high very high level approval
sort of Bill Clinton of course yeah uh
but I think he when you look back at
2008 um you have the Iraq War crisis you
have the Meltdown of the financial
system uh in the United States and
having its Global
repercussions you have he's probably
inherited I think in my view a legacy
which was a kind of combination of
Franklin Delena Roosevelt in 1932 lynon
Johnson around 1966 when the uh Vietnam
war is going pear-shaped and probably
about 1976 with Jimmy Carter when
Vietnam has there's been a defeat there
and the level of demoralization and a
desire for change is so great within the
American population and it's Global
standing is so low so when you inherit
all those crises uh and you come through
in in with two terms as the first
African-American president too with a
massive kind of uh racialized campaign
against him run by uh who we may think
may be the next president um then we see
actually somebody who's got great uh
sort of resilience and uh great power um
and I think we'll probably be able to
say at the end that he probably saved
American capitalism by some of the the
bailouts that he organized and carried
out and so on whether he solved the
basic problem I don't think he did and I
think that is part of why tonight's
election uh would seem to indicate that
he didn't I have a far less idealized uh
version of the Obama years but I'll
Grant you he certainly could have been
much worse if uh if uh the Republicans
had defeated him uh it would would have
been worse I would rather look at it
that he had a fantastic opportunity
America was sunk it it The Wall Street
was defunct bankrupt the country was
mired in unpopular Wars he could have
been the FDR he could have really
changed America and as we an EMB like
the one the one of course he was a
professor I mean the last guy had the
The Alibi of being stupid but President
Obama is anything but stupid now I mean
of course compared frankly with Hillary
Clinton or Donald Trump he's a more
attractive uh figure but I I rather
think his president say will be seen as
a kind of nothing 8 years that no
nothing really went badly wrong but
nothing actually really changed for the
better either I mean you you mentioned
race
Professor black people are being gunned
down by by police officers on the
streets of the US at a rate that I've
never seen in my lifetime yeah correct
but at the same time on the
international platform he did make the
peace approaches at least see he he
avoided war with Iran which a right-wing
Republican might not have avoided he
avoided uh a war with Russia although
the confrontation in Syria is now a very
uh dangerous place and he may have teed
up a war uh but he could have done
better that's all I'm saying he was the
first africanamerican and he was elected
with such a gale of uh idealistic
support he was so clever I met him once
walked on a march with him standing
shoulder to- shoulder long before he was
president of course and I was struck by
how donish how professorial uh he was um
anyway enough about Barack Obama what
about the future what's the likely
foreign policy implications of a trump
victory
will his first meeting be with President
Putin do you
think I don't know that would be a
dramatic thing to do you know yeah it
would be
dramatic the foreign policy of uh Donald
Trump uh there is a a general set of
statements he's made about questioning
the amount of uh
um sort of support foreign allies of
America are giving uh in defending
themselves so in Japan and South Korea
and so on as well as in
NATO to some extent he's just a more
extreme version of most American
Presidents who've always said to the
Europeans and to the Japanese and to the
South Koreans you got to pull your
weight a bit more that there's too much
pressure on the United States we're
giving up too much of our resources we
after all have all these thousands of
troops to defend you you've got to carry
bigger share of the burden he's just
said it out loud and he's questioned it
much more whether he would actually do
anything very much in practice is the
big question what would he actually be
able to do in terms of uh changing the
relationship within with NATO and with
and America's role within it and in same
in the case of Saudi Arabia in the
Middle East or in South Korea or Japan
that's the difficulty because the
intelligence Community the National
Security communities the military
Community overall those people in the
upper echelons of those have generally
speaking rejected the overall approach
that Trump has been talking about so
when he would be able to get enough
people of caliber and experience and so
on to serve under him would be a would
be a really interesting question enough
experts um the uh the Persian Gulf
countries Saudi Arabia ital have been
throwing Millions perhaps vainly uh into
the Clinton coffers over these last
years they've lost out big time uh I
don't think Donald Trump has much time
for the the uh potentates of the Persian
Gulf area do you think there might be a
a change of emphasis Visa the Arab world
with Trump as
president that's difficult to say
because his attitude towards Israel
hasn't been particularly critical in
fact he's gone out of his way to court
Israel he started off not very critical
but he did make a stand in the beginning
yeah many many candidates for the
presidency start off critical of Israel
at the beginning of their campaign uh
just like Barack Obama did and they end
up somewhere else by the end of it
Israel is the sort of strongest armed
power in the M he's not going to turn
his back on Israel but he might just
watch this space turn his back take a
very different stance towards Saudi
Arabia and the other cluster of
satrapies uh around it the Yemen War for
example you might take a very very
different point of view well we don't
know the
of course it could be President Clinton
thei we'll have to wait until later in
the morning but it's looking
increasingly like President Donald Trump
Professor I sincerely mean it alas we're
out of time that's all we've got time
for but you can stay in touch with us on
social media on Twitter rtor Sputnik on
Facebook Sputnik on Russia today it's
goodbye from MRI and from me George
Gallow it's been presidential
all
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