My guest is Kim Darrag. Lord Darrague is a former British ambassador to the United States

from 2016, 2019. Before that, he was the UK's national security advisor when David Cameron was

Prime Minister. And prior to that, he was the UK's permanent representative to the European Union.

Welcome to the podcast, Kim.

Thanks very much, Paul. Pleasure to be here. Well, obviously, you were very much in the thick of it

back in the US when Trump was in his first iteration back in 2016. So the very few people

know more about the political scene in the United States, the new yourself. We're recording this just after their details have been announced,

or some details have been announced, rather, of this US-UK, so-called trade deal.

I'll be asking you in a moment what you think about that.

But before we do that, I thought an interesting way to start this conversation

is to try and explore the ways in which the rest of

us who aren't drinking the maga, a cool lady if you like, underestimate Donald Trump. It's so

easy to dismiss him and most of us may be guilty of that as an idiot, a psychotic individual,

a narcissist, somebody who has no real intelligence. But to what extent do you think

there is some kind of method in his madness? And specifically, which are the areas where we are

guilty all of us of underestimating Donald Trump? It's a very good question, Paul, and one that we

don't ask ourselves often enough. And as you said, I was in Washington for his first election victory

and for two-thirds of his first term. And he was massively underestimated. I remember going,

or actually I remember hosting a what we used to call a pundits breakfast in the residence,

where we would get the leading Washington political commentators, the guy who runs the cook

election website, I mean really the top bunch in January 2016. And I said to them all, I knew here, tell me about the political scene and the prospects for the election.

And one of them said, you're at an interesting time because there is this phenomenon, this shooting star, Donald Trump, who is currently leading in the polls.

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