Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency for the new Spectator USA website.

I'm joined today by Paul Wood of the BBC and in this week's magazine, Spectator magazine, we have, we both

have articles. I have taken the line that a lot of, I'd say, people have taken, it's not very original

of me, but that the, my argument is that the media has really humiliated itself and that this

has actually been very beneficial to Trump.

You sort of reverse ferret a little bit, if I dare say so, but you do actually say that

the stampede is going too far in the other direction now and people are forgetting that there's

actually quite serious stuff that has come up as a result of the Mueller investigation. Is that a fair summation of your argument? Yes, it's certainly a victory

for President Trump and people who seek to ignore that are just going to make themselves look

ridiculous and there are one or two people still who are blowing the same collusion trumpet

that has been blown for the past two years.

I would say there's a danger in rushing one way and then rushing back again.

And we should stop and say first of all we don't actually know what Mueller said.

We have a very few fragments of what he said conveyed by a political appointee, the Attorney General William Barr.

Mr. Barr said that there was no

finding of collusion. When he actually quoted Robert Mueller's words, it was that they had been

unable to establish collusion. That's the kind of thing a criminal prosecutor says when he doesn't

have the evidence that would convince the jury beyond reasonable doubt, that is overwhelming

evidence.

We're now hearing in reports in the New York Times this morning that the report is at least 300 pages.

Judge Andrew Napolitano, a very interesting, somewhat out of tune commentator on Fox News, says it's 700 pages.

What the hell's in the rest of the report? Can't just be no collusion full stop, a lot of people are saying. And I suspect, unless the sources have been completely lying to us the past

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