I'm Charlie Sykes. Welcome back to the To the Contrary podcast. Donald Trump did not get the coalition of the willing. Instead, he got a wall of no, which led to an epic Trump meltdown and tantrum. But what does the rest of the world make of this and what is next for NATO? A lot to cover.

And joining us on the podcast, our good friend Ed Luce from the Financial Times.

First of all, welcome back, Ed.

Great to be with you, Johnny.

Okay, I want to talk about one of the strangest stories of the week.

You called Donald Trump. You picked up your cell phone and you called Donald Trump and he answered,

this actually happened. You called the president and he answered the phone. Yeah, it was.

It's one of the most Alice in Wonderland moments I've had recently. He answered the phone

and was very happy to chat for eight minutes.

In fact, the call was lost after about four minutes.

And I thought, oh, shit, I've lost the president.

And then he called back and he goes, oh, the line went down.

He called you back.

Yes.

Okay, he called you back.

Okay, so what did you chat about, Ed?

You know, Ed and Donald, what were you chatting about?

So I'd just launched straight into questions and they were about his appeal for Allied help in unblocking the straight of Hormuz.

And I knew that earlier in the day, which is, I think, why he was happy to talk,

or to rant, really, earlier in the day he had had a call with Kirstama in which he'd come up with

British Prime Minister, with the British Prime Minister in which he'd asked for offensive help

and not received it.

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