Welcome to the Colette Podcast. My name is Claire Lehman and I am editor and chief of Colette.

Colette is where Free Thought lives. We are an independent grassroots platform for heterodox ideas and fearless commentary.

Our podcast is a team effort and is jointly hosted by myself, associate editor Toby Young,

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Welcome to the Quillett podcast. I'm Jonathan Kay.

Every once in a while someone asks me my opinion on Donald Trump.

Will he get impeached? Will he get reelected? Why is he so popular? Why is he

so unpopular? What I usually say in reply is, why do you care about my opinion on this subject?

I'm part of the vast majority of pundits who said, way back in 2016, that this guy didn't have

a hope in hell of becoming US President.

That's what we all thought back then, or most of us at least. So why four

years later would my opinion matter? I got Trump wrong. I have no credibility. But someone who does

have credibility is veteran political writer Mark Halprin.

Long before 2016, way back in 2012 in fact, Halprin attended Trump's speech at a major U.S. political convention and then told

the national television audience that, yes, this guy could become a major political force.

And so now that journalists are weighing Trump's chance of re-election, Halprin is someone worth listening to.

Halprin's new book, How to Beat Trump, America's Top Political Strategies on what it will take,

distills lessons that Halpern gleaned from interviews

with 75 Democratic strategists.

The main takeaway is that Trump is going to be hard to beat, especially if the Democrats don't put forward a nominee with broad appeal.

...