Hello and welcome to the Spectators Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics and the Trump presidency in 2017.

I'm Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of the Spectator.

I'm joined today by Douglas Murray, who is of course Associate Editor of the Spectator and the author of The Strange Death of Europe.

And we're going to be talking about Donald Trump's tweets and the future of the special

relationship.

Douglas, when you saw on Wednesday, I assume you saw on Wednesday that Donald Trump had

retweeted Britain first three times, retweeted three Britain first videos, what was your

reaction?

What was your first thought?

I was surprised,

as I think most people were, at the same time, they're not shocked. I mean, it should go without

saying, one which is the US president didn't retweet internet memes of any kind.

That secondly, if he were to retweet them, they should be

truthful things, and that thirdly, they would not come from Britain first as a source.

Yes.

In all of these ways, President Trump, sadly, damages a very important cause, which he himself could lead, which is the cause of trying

to push back against the global trend towards Islamic extremism.

By retweeting erroneously captioned videos, the first of which was obviously the case,

he damages that because he gives oxygen to people

who would say that the whole thing is equally made up. I think incidentally that the second and

third videos, which he retweeted one of ISIS fighters smashing a statue and the third, apparently them throwing a young man off a building,

which I understand to be the content.

...