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Hello and welcome to The Edition, the Spectator's weekly podcast discussing some of the most important and intriguing issues within our pages each week with the writers behind them.

I'm Cindy Yu. In this episode of The Edition at Christmas, I speak to editor of Spectator USA, Freddie Gray and President of Harper's magazine John Rick MacArthur about the year in American

politics. At the start of 2019, Trump was locked in a fight with the Democrats over the funding

for his wall, leading to a week's long government shutdown. As Trump faces impeachment this week,

how much has changed this year? Freddie, let's start by considering the year that Trump's had.

I mentioned the impeachment just now. Other than this, has he had a good year?

It's very hard to say. I think overall, yes, it has been a good year. If you think back to the

beginning of 2019, he just had the midterms, which would, he lost Congress, the House of Representatives,

and it was widely sort of portrayed as a, as a real drubbing for him. I'm not sure quite sure

how much for drubbing it really was historically, but there was a sort of feeling that

he was in trouble there, and then you still had the Mueller report, which there was a lot of excitement that he was in trouble there and then you still had the Mueller report

which there was a lot of excitement about

and this idea that he would sort of be exposed

as a kind of Russian asset.

That turned out to be a damp squibb, put it mildly,

and he got a lot out of that.

He got a little political capital, I think,

about the fact that the Democrats

...