Hello and welcome to The Spectator's Americano podcast, a special series of discussions about the biggest political event of this year, the 2016 US presidential election.

My name is Freddie Gray and I'm Deputy Editor of the Spectator. Today I'm joined by Jacob Heilbrun, who is editor of the national interest and author of They

They Knew They Were Right, The Rise of the Neocons.

And I think later we're going to be joined by Sam Tannenhouse, who is an American historian,

biographer and journalist. And today we're going to be talking about neocons in Trump land.

Can the neo-conservatives attach themselves to the new Trump administration, or will they be

rejected? So, Jacob, you wrote a piece for us online this week about how the neocons are attempting

to sort of get involved in Trump land and become part of the new administration. Can you explain,

and bear in mind an English audience, who probably aren't too aware who the neocons are in Washington, what's happening there? Are the neocons being successful in wooing the Trump

administration, or is the Trump circle rejecting them? Well, I think, how about if I first briefly

give a clips notes version of the neocons who were the intellectual cadre of the Bush administration

who were both vehemently pro-Israel and championed the Iraq war with figures such as

Paul Wolfowitz and others who are in the Defense Department

or on the staff of Vice President Dick Cheney.

And they promoted the Iraq war as the, as what would be kind of a domino effect, that

if you liberated Iraqis, they would, they would greet the Americans with flowers

and candies, and it would be a replica of World War II, where we transform Germany and Japan

into democracies. So the example of Iraq would lead to a wave of democracy in the Middle East, including

Iran and Saudi Arabia.

Needless to say, things didn't quite turn out like that.

The neocons became reviled.

George W. Bush's presidency collapsed amidst acrimony and anger. Barack Obama came in as the man who

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