The British Embassy in Washington, D.C. looks a little bit like a modern-day

Downton Abbey. It's got this impressive brick facade, lots of chimneys.

It is everything you want the British Embassy to be. It's the stately Georgian mansion with fancy art.

And, you know, you expect there to be

corgis running around and butlers and things. Slate's Josh Keating has been inside for the occasional

Christmas party. They're nice parties. There's some kind of like scotch display at the last one I went

to. They did this like special scotch bar set up. And presiding over the

scotch bar was Kim Derrick, who until yesterday was the British ambassador, a career civil

servant. He wasn't exactly known as a firebrand. You know, I've been to a couple like briefings

there. He does kind of, he would do. these sort of off the record roundtables. And,

you know, he never, he was always very respectful and complimentary of the Trump administration,

never even got close to saying anything controversial. And now I know he was saving all his

hot takes for the bosses back in London.

Derek's hot takes could mostly be found in diplomatic cables, confidential cables, cables that leaked

earlier this week. Have you read the cables or what's been reported about what's in them?

Well, I've read the Daily Mail write-up of them, the extremely long daily mail article.

It seems to go on forever.

You know, first of all, this is what a diplomat is supposed to do.

They're supposed to be very polite and deferential and sociable in public.

And then in their cables, they're supposed to give the unvarnished truth to their bosses back in London.

The details in these memos.

The details stung.

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