Trump accuses UK of "an act of GREAT STUPIDITY!"
Newscast
BBC
4.3 • 6.6K Ratings
🗓️ 20 January 2026
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Today, the UK Government has defended its decision to hand over the Chagos Islands after Donald Trump called the deal “an act of GREAT STUPIDITY!” on Truth Social.
Adam and Chris put the president’s comments to Darren Jones, Chief Secretary to the Prime Minister, and ask whether Keir Starmer’s relationship with Donald Trump is being tested by his social media posts.
And, we hear Darren Jones’ vision for reforming the civil service, including a digital state and changing following a speech he gave on Tuesday morning at a London tech company.
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New episodes released every day. If you're in the UK, for more News and Current Affairs podcasts from the BBC, listen on BBC Sounds: https://bbc.in/4guXgXd Newscast brings you daily analysis of the latest political news stories from the BBC. The presenters were Adam Fleming and Chris Mason. It was made by Miranda Slade with Chloe Scannapieco. The social producer was Joe Wilkinson. The technical producer was Michael Regaard. The assistant editor is Chris Gray. The senior news editor is Sam Bonham.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.0 | So Chris, it's another day where kind of all the action has been on Donald Trump's social media channels. |
| 0:12.0 | Yeah, completely. So I woke up this morning and I turned on the radio and I was sort of kind of half asleep. |
| 0:20.0 | And I, hang on a minute. Something quite big happened here, hasn't it? And then 10 minutes later, I turned on the radio and I was sort of kind of half asleep. And I, hang on a minute. |
| 0:21.5 | Something quite big happened here, hasn't it? |
| 0:23.7 | And then 10 minutes later, I'm on the radio talking about it. |
| 0:26.1 | So the first thing was he published some screen grabs of private messages. |
| 0:30.6 | He'd received from Manuel Macron and to the Secretary General of NATO. |
| 0:34.3 | So that was one thing. |
| 0:35.6 | Then he posted this kind of, you called it a rant, didn't you? |
| 0:38.8 | Yeah, I think that's a reasonable description. Yeah, about the government's deal that it did with Mauritius to hand the Chegos Islands, which are British territory, over to Mauritius. And I'll read out the whole post on truth social from Donald Trump. So here's what it says. It is quite a long warning. Shockingly, our brilliant NATO ally, |
| 0:54.9 | the United Kingdom, is currently planning to give away the island of Diego Garcia, the site of a |
| 0:59.5 | vital US military base to Mauritius and to do so for no reason whatsoever. There's no doubt that |
| 1:05.4 | China and Russia have noticed this act of total weakness. These are international powers who only |
| 1:09.7 | recognize strength, which is why |
| 1:11.5 | the United States of America, under my leadership, is now, after only one year, respected like never |
| 1:16.2 | before. The UK giving away extremely important land is an act of great stupidity and is another |
| 1:21.8 | in a very long line of national security reasons why Greenland has to be acquired. Denmark and its European allies have to do the |
| 1:29.8 | right thing. Thank you for your attention to this matter, President Donald J. Trump. |
| 1:34.5 | I like your audible capitalisation going on there. But maybe we needed sort of Matt Ford's to do it |
| 1:39.7 | in a kind of Trumpian-style voice. I don't know. Maybe. I think people can probably hear Donald |
| 1:43.9 | Trump's voice when they hear it, though. |
... |
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