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Hello. forward slash voucher. Hello and welcome to the Americano podcast, a series of discussions about American politics, power, and prejudices. This year, 2024, is an election year in America, a presidential election year.

And so we will be doing two podcasts a week, rather than our usual one, because we want to,

and because we know you can't get enough Americano in your life.

I am very pleased to say that today on the Americano podcast, we have someone who's back by popular demand, Sarah Elliott, who is head of the special relationship unit at the Lagartum Institute.

And Sarah, I had so many compliments about you. Last time we had you on, I thought we have to get you back on.

And it also happens that this is the perfect subject for you, because what's in the news today is Lord Cameron's visit to America, which of course touches on that special relationship. It's not looking very special, I think it's fair to say, because David Cameron, to sum up, went to go and see Donald Trump for dinner, we believe, in Mara Lago in Florida on Monday night.

We think, although we don't know that he was trying to pressure Donald Trump on, well, we do know that he was trying to pressure Donald Trump to sort of change the Republican mood on giving Ukraine aid and possibly urging him to

arrange a meeting with Speaker Mike Johnson or to force Mike Johnson to meet Cameron in

Washington because Mike Johnson of course is the key man in terms of getting the Republicans

to pass this bill. But Mike Johnson then snubbed him through Tuesday.

The official reason is that their diaries didn't align or something like that, but there's no doubt

that this is quite a significant snub, is it not, for a British Foreign Secretary to want to meet

and not be able to meet the Speaker of the House of Representatives.

Yes, well, first off, thanks for having me back, Freddie. I am a big fan of the Maricano

podcast. Thank you. Yeah, really interesting development. We have not seen such a public

rejection from the Congress before of a British Foreign Secretary quite like this recently.

But I think we need to put it in context here. There's a lot of stuff going on domestically

for Speaker Johnson. But then we also have to talk about the longer, long-term relationship Cameron has had with the United States,

...