sábado, 31 de outubro de 2020

‘There Are No Boundaries’: Experts Imagine Trump’s Post-Presidential Life if He Loses

 



POLITICS

‘There Are No Boundaries’: Experts Imagine Trump’s Post-Presidential Life if He Loses

 

From profiting off his lifetime Secret Service protection to trolling the Biden administration by cozying up to dictators around the world, Trump’s stint as ex-president could be as disruptive and norm-busting as the last four years have been.

 


By GARRETT M. GRAFF

10/30/2020 03:50 PM EDT

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/10/30/imagining-post-president-trump-433704

 

Garrett M. Graff (@vermontgmg) is a journalist, historian and author, most recently of the New York Times bestseller The Only Plane in the Sky: An Oral History of 9/11. He is the director of cyber initiatives at the Aspen Institute. He can be reached at garrett.graff@gmail.com.

 

Being an ex-president can be a cushy and quiet life for the most part. Jimmy Carter builds homes; George W. Bush paints. After leaving the White House, Barack Obama went kite-surfing with Richard Branson on his private island in the British Virgin Islands.

 

None of that, though, seems likely to be in the cards for Donald Trump if he loses reelection Tuesday and in just 80-odd days leaves the White House.

 

A restless figure with few interests outside his own business and political career, no hobbies besides playing golf at his own properties and few traditional friends, Trump thrives on public attention and disruption; this, after all, is a man who couldn’t even spend an entire weekend cooped up inside a hospital while ill with Covid-19 earlier this month and had to take a joyride around Walter Reed Medical Center to wave to supporters.

 

So if he loses the White House, what new phase would begin on January 21?

 

In interviews, historians, government legal experts, national security leaders and people close to the administration have a prediction that will disquiet his critics: The Trump Era is unlikely to end when the Trump presidency ends. They envision a post-presidency as disruptive and norm-busting as his presidency has been—one that could make his successor’s job much harder. They outline a picture of a man who might formally leave office only to establish himself as the president-for-life amid his own bubble of admirers—controlling Republican politics and sowing chaos in the U.S. and around the world long after he’s officially left office.

 

“Can he continue to make people not trust our institutions? Can he throw monkey wrenches into delicate negotiations? Absolutely,” one former Trump administration official says. “He can be a tool. He’ll be somewhere between dangerous and devastating on that extent.”

 

A president unwilling to respect boundaries in office is almost certain to cross them out of office. Experts envision some likely scenarios—a much-rumored TV show and plans to use his properties to profit off his lifetime Secret Service protection, perhaps even continuing to troll the Biden administration from his hotel down Pennsylvania Avenue—and some troubling if less certain ones, like literally selling U.S. secrets or influence to foreign governments.

 

Trump has already mused that maybe he’ll leave the country if he loses, but few expect him to willingly depart the American public stage. He would leave the White House with one of the largest social media platforms in the world—including 87 million Twitter followers—and a large campaign email list with a demonstrated small-dollar fundraising capability that could be used to aid other MAGA-friendly politicians—or, just as likely, to sell Trump’s own wares. And he’s presumably going to need every dollar he can squeeze from his businesses and the office he will have just left. As the New York Times has been documenting, Trump personally and the Trump Organization more broadly has more than $1 billion in debt coming due in the years ahead. If he leaves office, he’ll have to be busy raising the cash to pay it off.

 

Yes, Trump will probably grab the low-hanging fruit favored by ex-presidents past: profiting off the White House with a memoir—though many in the publishing industry don’t think he’ll get that much money for it—and living off a spigot of government money as he settles into the post-presidency. But those presidential traditions will provide just a fraction of the hundreds of millions Trump needs, and are unlikely to satisfy his entertainer’s ego.

 

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“He’s still the leader of a movement,” says Nancy Gibbs, a journalist and historian who co-wrote The Presidents Club about the lives of former presidents. “I’m hard pressed to recall a past president who left office with a movement intact that wasn’t transferred to someone else. I don’t see him giving it up.”

 

Which means, from even those first minutes, Trump’s post-presidency would almost certainly be unlike anything America—or the world—has ever experienced. Assuming he’s able to settle any legal challenges arising from the presidency and doesn’t spend the rest of his days in tax court in New York state, Trump as a 74-year-old man has a normal life expectancy of around 11 years, and most former presidents actually far outlive the average American, so he might have a couple decades to disrupt the world’s most exclusive club of ex-presidents.

 

“It’s a safe bet that many of the rules and patterns of past presidents will not apply to him,” says Gibbs. “I long ago stopped putting limits on what he might do or sell. There are no boundaries.”

 

A career salesman will find himself with more connections around the world than he’s ever had before—and also with more grievances against people he feels mistreated him and forced him from office prematurely. “I put two years as the over-under on groundbreaking for Trump Tower Moscow,” says one former national security official. “It’ll be a huge F.U. to all the Russia coup plotters.”

 

Here’s what might be in store—both the traditional and the very untraditional—for a former President Donald J. Trump—and the unique worries it may raise for the country:

 

The Memoir

As a defeated Trump weighs his post-presidential paydays, a memoir from the bestselling author of The Art of the Deal and 14 other books might be the most obvious move—albeit not quite the record-breaking check he might hope.

 

Usually, presidential memoirs are some of publishing’s most predictable home runs. Even George W. Bush, who sold his presidential memoir for a relatively modest $10 million, a sign of his unpopularity upon leaving office, ended up with a massive bestseller, selling more than 2 million copies in just over a month. Barack and Michelle Obama, together, received north of $60 million for their memoirs; the first installment of his, which is scheduled to be released on Nov. 17, will likely dominate the weeks after the election this year.

 

In conversations with a half-dozen publishing insiders this week, they predicted that a publishing house would pay “mid-seven figures” for Trump’s memoir, closer to the Bush range than the Obama range and a fact that surely would rankle the competitive Trump. Why the comparatively low estimate? While books about Trump have proves some of the year’s biggest sellers—from John Bolton to Bob Woodward to Mary Trump—the ones criticizing him have dramatically outsold the ones praising him. A Trump book would still be a major draw for his devoted fan base, with a potential for seven-figure sales, but it’s unlikely to become the blockbuster of Michelle Obama’s memoir—which might be the bestselling memoir of all time.

 

Also, Trump’s unpopularity and divisiveness are likely to make prospective publishers think twice before rushing to participate in a major auction for the book. The insiders I spoke to all squirmed at the possibility of their own houses tackling a Trump memoir. “There’d be walkouts, protests galore,” one editor said, pointing to the controversy earlier this year when publishing giant Hachette announced it would publish a memoir from Woody Allen. It backed down after widespread criticism and a staff revolt.

 

“I think a lot of publishers would stay away from it,” said one senior editor. “You wouldn’t have 10 publishers bidding—you’d have two and at that point, they can pay whatever they want,” says another.

 

Many publishers have dedicated conservative imprints, which might find a Trump title irresistible, but the clearest route for Trump might be to follow his son’s model and self-publish. Donald Jr., after publishing a bestseller last year that sold more than 280,000 copies but attracted controversy because of the bulk purchases by groups like the Republican National Committee, decided to self-publish his follow-up book earlier this year—a move that usually guarantees more uncertainty in distribution but a higher percentage of the underlying sales.

 

Trump’s bald-faced record of deceit, lies and spin in the White House and on the campaign trail—he’s averaging one false or inaccurate statement every 45 seconds at reelection rallies—might give him an even better reason to skip the traditional publishing houses and self-publish: He’d be able to say anything he wants, exactly how he wants to say it, with no pressure from an editor or a publisher’s skittish corporate lawyers.

 

The Government Dole

As he leaves office, Trump would have the chance to decide how and where to set up his post-presidential life—and where to direct a spigot of taxpayer dollars that will continue to flow to him for the rest of his life. Former presidents are eligible for a range of taxpayer-paid benefits, including a roughly $200,000-a-year pension for life, about a million dollars a year for travel and office expenses, and so-called franking privileges, the ability to send mail postage-free. The law does stipulate that such offices have to be inside the U.S., so that would prohibit Trump from using the funds to set up his office in, say, a nonextradition country.

 

Trump would even have the right to use a special government-owned townhouse on Lafayette Square, across from the White House, reserved exclusively for former presidents visiting Washington, although it seems hard to imagine Trump forgoing the chance to stay in his own hotel just down Pennsylvania Avenue.

 

He’ll also inform the Secret Service what homes and offices he’ll want secured on an ongoing basis as a former president. Unlike other former presidents, Trump could presumably direct much of the spending intended to protect him back to his own properties and own businesses, just as he’s done while in office—charging the Secret Service $17,000 a month for a cottage at his Bedminster golf course, $650 a night for his room at his Mar-a-Lago resort, and even $130,000-a-month for the military to run a command center out of Trump Tower in New York, a place he’s rarely visited at all as president. The Secret Service even paid $179,000 to rent golf carts and other vehicles this summer at his New Jersey resort.

 

Where Trump will set up “home” is an open question: He moved his voting residence from New York to Florida last year—so it seems unlikely he’ll return to set down roots in Manhattan—but in converting the 17-acre Mar-a-Lago into a private club, he agreed years ago that he couldn’t live there year-round and the club closes for the unpleasant Florida summer, so he’ll have to find a second home elsewhere. If he declares that he’ll be living permanently at some combination of Mar-a-Lago, Bedminster, Trump Tower in New York, and the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C., the Secret Service might well be paying millions of dollars to the Trump Organization for years to come.

 

The Donald J. Trump Presidential Library (and Theme Park?)

Another area that will be top of mind as Trump leaves office will be his plans for a presidential library and associated taxpayer-paid archives. Such endeavors usually become the centerpiece of a former president’s world—part educational center, part shrine, part day job. Carter’s work around the globe through his Carter Center in Georgia even earned him the Nobel Peace Prize in 2002, a prize Trump clearly covets himself. Presidential libraries are always grandiose and expensive projects—Obama’s in Chicago is expected to require half-a-billion dollars raised from private funders, despite having nearly all-digital archives—intended to bolster and cement a president’s legacy in exactly the way the president wants. While every president is focused on shaping a historical legacy, no former president seems likely to eclipse Trump’s interest in restarting his personal brand immediately.

 

Trump’s ambitions for his library seem likely to exceed past imagination; presidential libraries and their associated centers usually are arranged as nonprofits or have related foundations that support the government-paid work of the National Archives and Records Administration, which technically runs the library and archives. Most see a few hundred thousand visitors a year.

 

“As a matter of ego, you can imagine why it would be in his nature to have it be the biggest, largest, goldest and most visited presidential library—more theme park than library,” Gibbs says.

 

Trump could easily re-imagine the very essence of such an endeavor, turning his presidential library into a for-profit arm of the Trump Organization that becomes a mecca for his devoted MAGA fans the country (and world) over—a “Trumpland” Florida tourist attraction to rival Disney, SeaWorld or Universal Studios, complete with regular guest appearances from his family members, live broadcasts from Trump’s own media endeavors and no shortage of Trump-branded merchandise. It’s not hard to imagine, at least in near-term years, attendance in the low millions—a potentially rich branding exercise. Having the Trump Organization bankroll a for-profit Trumpland might also skirt an embarrassing situation for Trump: Most presidential libraries receive large corporate and foundation donations, but post-presidency, Trump’s divisiveness would presumably limit normally controversy-averse corporations from pitching in.

 

Many presidential libraries contain scale or even full-size replicas of the Oval Office; imagine the possibilities for MAGA tourism of renting out the full-size replicas of the Oval Office and Lincoln Bedroom at Trumpland—complete, perhaps, with Trump’s own upgrades: Gold gilt and improvements like the high-pressure showerheads he so loves in the bathroom.

 

A grand undertaking like a presidential library might also allow some opportunity for self-dealing—think Trump choosing to put his library on land he already owns and then overpaying himself for it—and given the Trump family’s propensity for misdirecting charitable funds and the bizarre ways that tens of millions of dollars disappeared into his overfunded inaugural and reelection campaign funds, fundraising for the Donald J. Trump Presidential Library would seem to present a unique opportunity for further enrichment or payments to family members.

 

Tensions have existed between past presidents and their official archival records before; the caretakers of Nixon’s image spent decades in dispute with the National Archives over the portrayal of his presidency, and Bill Clinton famously glossed over his Monica Lewinsky scandal in his library, where it was labeled as the “Politics of Persecution.” It’s not hard to imagine similar—and worse—disputes arising between professional archivists and historians and Trump loyalists over how the “Russia Coup” and the “perfect” Ukraine call will be portrayed in official history, not to mention Trump’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic—all another reason that Trump may abandon the traditional model to tell his own story in his own way.

 

The GOP’s Mega-MAGA-phone

It’s possible that, if he loses reelection, Trump may wake up January 21 in Mar-a-Lago and find himself exiled and forgotten by a Republican Party eager to move past him. It’s possible too that Trump will decide to forget about Twitter, bury @realDonaldTrump and live out his days quietly golfing with his friends and admirers and holding court at the Mar-a-Lago buffet in the evenings, before settling in to watch Sean Hannity’s show in peace and silence.

 

Possible, but unlikely. Trump, unloved by his father, has spent his entire life craving public adulation and attention and possesses a unique—almost algorithmic—understanding of how to maximize the spotlight shining on himself. Almost everyone agrees he seems likely to want to remain in the public eye—setting up a novel circumstance where a new president might assume office while being critiqued publicly minute-by-minute or hour-by-hour by his predecessor.

 

Ex-presidents of both parties usually go out of their way to stay quiet, at least for some period of time after leaving office. In March 2009, in his first speech as a former president, George W. Bush said he wouldn’t critique Obama at all. “He deserves my silence,” Bush said. Eight years later, in their first meeting post-election, Obama told Trump, “We now are going to want to do everything we can to help you succeed because if you succeed, then the country succeeds.” Later, explaining why he’d stayed almost silent even as the Trump administration unraveled so much of his legacy, Obama said in 2018 as he eased back onto the public stage, “Truth was, I was also intent on following a wise American tradition of ex-presidents gracefully exiting the political stage and making room for new voices and new ideas. We have our first president, George Washington, to thank for setting that example.”

 

It’s nearly impossible to imagine Trump’s abiding by any of those sentiments—it’s hard to even imagine Trump’s Twitter fingers staying still all the way through a Joe Biden inaugural address.

 

Meanwhile, there’s reason to believe the Republican Party may not be quick to turn on Trump, even if he’s badly defeated on Tuesday.

 

In fact, ironically, the bigger the GOP wipeout that accompanies a Trump defeat, the more Trump would likely continue to control the remnants of the party. Trump’s ascendency since 2016 has dramatically rearranged the ranks of the Republican Party in Washington and nationally; roughly half of the 241 Republicans who were in office in January 2017 at the start of his term are already gone or retiring. Any sort of broad loss on Tuesday would further wash away the very swing districts and candidates most inclined to move beyond Trump, leaving just the most solidly Republican districts—GOP areas where Trump’s approval ratings remain sky high and whose representatives would conceivably be the last to risk abandoning him. Republican candidates even far down the ballot are competing over who loves Trump more, and Trump’s scattershot approach to policymaking and betrayal of long-held conservative beliefs means the only ideology that unifies his party today is adulation of him (and, perhaps, the QAnon conspiracy theory). The intellectual inconsistency of the current party was made all too clear by the summer decision at the Republican National Convention to forgo a traditional party platform and simply offer a blanket endorsement of whatever Trump wanted to do in a second term.

 

Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer and hold a shirt that says Trump 2024 at a rally at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum on February 19, 2020 in Phoenix, Arizona. President Trump says he will be visiting Arizona frequently in the lead up to the 2020 election.

Supporters of President Donald Trump cheer and hold a shirt that says Trump 2024 at a rally on February 19, 2020, in Phoenix, Arizona. If Trump does not win re-election this year, he could run again in four years. | Caitlin O'Hara/Getty Images

 

Instead, Trump—with his all-powerful Twitter feed and fundraising list—might become the party’s most reliable megaphone and kingmaker, akin to the role Sarah Palin played in 2010 amid the rise of the Tea Party after her 2008 defeat as John McCain’s running mate. In that sense, it’s possible that the 2022 midterms and the 2024 presidential race would actually be the most MAGA-friendly GOP primaries yet, conducted almost entirely on a stage designed by Trump himself, with supplicants parading through Mar-a-Lago to kiss the ring and an entire generation of GOP stars molded in his image. And that’s even before considering the Trump family’s direct influence—say a titanic Ivanka vs. AOC campaign in New York for Chuck Schumer’s Senate seat in 2022 or Donald Jr.’s campaign for Congress (or even the presidency) in 2024, as he becomes the next-generation MAGA standard-bearer.

 

This path of influence might prove one of the most stable visions ahead, assuming a relative level of normalcy from a man who has time and again demonstrated anything but. In fact, this entire piece and its imagined premise of a Trump post-presidency assumes that Trump and those around him would, at least superficially, if not graciously, accept a loss and that he would be content to just grumble loudly from the political balcony à la Statler and Waldorf in The Muppet Show.

 

There are darker visions and scenarios in which Trump never does accept a 2020 defeat, is pushed reluctantly from the White House in January, and moves to assume some more explicit mantle of a wronged leader-in-exile. Al Gore, after his acrimonious defeat, traveled across Europe and grew a beard, instead of setting up an opposition government in the lobby of the Willard Hotel across from the White House. But imagine if he had wanted to contest the election long past Inauguration Day?

 

Imagine that on January 21Kayleigh McEnany begins broadcasting regular news briefings from the Trump Hotel a few blocks down Pennsylvania Avenue from the White House; picture the 45th president hosting congressional leaders in a replica Oval Office reconstructed inside his hotel to plot GOP strategy and rail against the injustices done his supporters, using Twitter to stoke ongoing protests and MAGA-nation resistance across the country and touring to show up at boat parades and host his signature rallies. What if Trump wakes up each day attempting to explicitly—not just passively—undermine a Biden domestic policy at home and foreign policy overseas? He could go as far as even appointing his own “shadow cabinet,” fundraising off his aggrieved fan base as they underwrite his most loyal aides like Mike Pompeo and Mike Pence, who would also be out of office alongside Trump and casting about for how to chart their own political futures. They could hold their own political meetings, press conferences and appear every night on Fox News to stir the national political pot.

 

Rather than being able to focus on combating the pandemic and restarting the economy, Biden could find himself consumed on a daily basis by responding and batting away Trump’s latest conspiracies and complaints, and the nation consumed by an unprecedented roiling, low-grade political insurgency unlike anything the country has ever experienced. One open question, though, is how much hold does a defeated Trump end up having on the nation’s attention as time goes by? What seems wild on January 21 might become background noise by late February. As one media expert said to me: “The question is how much people stop listening to him?”

 

A Media Venture (But Not An Empire)

Almost no matter his approach to his successor—merely disgruntled or actively hostile—Trump will surely want to be listened to, which is why he might look for a platform to keep himself in steady communication with the national movement of the disaffected he's fostered over the past five years as he seized and remade the Republican Party.

 

“He should go where his genius takes him,” says one expert. “He’s a genius about attention. Where is that most easily monetized? He’s a man in constant need for attention and exceptionally good at commanding and holding it.”

 

Rumors have long circulated that the Trump family would try to build its own media empire. Some have speculated that in 2016 Trump had been planning to launch “Trump TV” if, as even he expected, he lost the presidency to Hillary Clinton; one reporter even swore to me he saw a sign on the camera riser at Trump’s election night victory celebration reserving a spot for “Trump TV.” Earlier this year, there was conjecture that the Trump family and its backers might be interested in boosting and formally partnering with One America News (OAN), the upstart Fox challenger that has become an all but unofficial Trump TV.

 

But many around Trump doubt that’s where his ambitions truly lie. Starting a media company would be tremendous work and capital intensive, and unless he was set up as the front man for deep-pocketed investors willing to do the heavy lifting, it hardly seems like the type of project a man who spent nearly a year of his presidency golfing would take up.

 

At the same time, establishing some sort of regularized media engagement will almost certainly be necessary as part of a unified brand-building and cross-promotion exercise—just as he used campaign appearances in 2016 to promote his branded wares before it became clear he’d actually win the nomination. In the future, think a Trump talk radio or TV show where the commercials are hawking Trump steaks. Even as president, the Trump family has continued to apply for additional trademarks around the world, presumably for future projects and products.

 

“Whatever he does, he’ll be a bad actor in the media environment,” says one political observer. “Even if the Republican Party abandons him and says ‘Trump who?’ he still has enormous reach to people who are disaffected and violent. ‘Stand back and stand by.’ I’d imagine he’d want to stay public in the same way he did with birtherism—but dialed up a notch. He wants to be relevant. He’s been very successful creating this dark and chaotic political environment. That makes him powerful even if he’s not holding office.”

 

As another expert says, “He’s going to do whatever it takes to stay in the conversation—and it’s going to take being ever more outrageous to stay there.”

 

One particular challenge Trump might pose domestically is if he becomes a nexus for disaffected, hawkish military or intelligence officers who want an outlet to criticize the Biden administration—just as former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani became a conduit during the 2016 campaign for disgruntled New York FBI agents unhappy with the bureau’s treatment of Hillary Clinton. (Yes, you read that right: Ironically, national security experts fear that Trump might become his own player in the “Deep State” resistance to his successor that he’s long railed against as president.)

 

“If a President Biden takes us back to a worse version of the Obama administration—an apologizing version of America that pulls back from aggressive action overseas—I can totally see him becoming that pathway,” says a former Trump administration official. As another intelligence professional says, “It’s Rudy on steroids in terms of introducing disinformation.”

 

One reason it will be likely be important for Trump to build and maintain his own megaphone and media platforms is that it seems unlikely Trump will benefit as much as his predecessors from what has become one of the most lucrative outlets for former national leaders: The cushy, high-priced paid corporate and university speaking gigs. Hillary Clinton made more than $22 million in speaking fees, addressing corporate groups (Gap paid $225,000 and Goldman Sachs paid $675,000 for three speeches), trade associations (the National Association of Chain Drug Stores paid $225,000), civic gatherings (the World Affairs Council of Oregon paid $250,000) and colleges and universities (UCLA paid $300,000). Still, while he might not exactly become a regular on college campuses and at Wall Street retreats, Sun Valley or other elite haunts, there are plenty of foreign governments, universities or companies that would have little compunction about welcoming Trump with open arms and presenting him with a hefty paycheck.

 

The Trump Brand on Steroids

The simple truth is that six-figure speaking gigs probably wouldn’t get Trump where he needs to be financially; the Trump Organization will need to be prioritizing seven-, eight-, and even nine-figure business deals. As Trump surveys his earning opportunities, it seems almost certain that—as troubling and stubborn as he may prove in domestic politics—his real chance to upend presidential tradition and American government lies overseas, the place where his richest business deals are likely to go down, too.

 

Trump could choose to become the post-presidential equivalent of Dennis Rodman, globe-trotting at whim to advance his interests, collect checks and tout his ongoing relevance. Once he leaves office, there’s nothing to stop him from entering into lucrative and questionable business deals the world over—and he’d likely find a certain type of country or company all too eager to engage with him. “His mischief is much more international than national as an ex,” says a former senior Trump administration official. “There’s nothing [about leaving office] that diminishes his utility as an instrument of a foreign power.”

 

Trump’s past business practices already illustrate the possibilities: A hotel in Baku, Azerbaijan, which the New Yorker labeled “a corrupt operation engineered by oligarchs tied to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard”; recently revealed questionable business deals in China; and of course the Trump Tower Moscow project that he evidently pursued even as he ran for president. The possibilities for such deals post-presidency will expand exponentially and likely prove particularly necessary to secure the requisite cash flow to hold off the estimated $1 billion-plus in debt owed by his entire business empire.

 

 

In the years before the White House, the Trump Organization had largely become a branding entity—licensing the Trump name to products and projects rather than owning them outright or developing them himself. That may continue to be a smart play post-presidency, providing steady cash without a lot of the headaches of running enterprises.

 

Trump As Strongman Validator

Even more lucrative than the Trump brand, though, would be selling Trump himself. Look for Trump to be wooed not by the nation’s top adversaries or allies, but instead by the secondary and tertiary global powers who want the imprimatur of U.S. recognition and respect and are willing to roll out the red carpet for state-visitlike celebrations, perhaps all under the guises of fancy ribbon-cuttings of new Trump-branded projects.

 

Intelligence professionals can envision, for instance, Trump standing on the world stage alongside his favorite global strongmen—say Turkey’s Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte, Hungary’s Viktor Orbán or Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro—bragging about his new joint development deals and the world leaders willing to host him even as they reject entreaties from President Biden. Think “Trump Tower Damascus will be a new start for my peace-loving friend Bashar al-Assad.” Or even imagine Trump, Rodman-style, turning up courtside at North Korean basketball games with his buddy Kim Jong Un in Pyongyang, just as Joe Biden turns up the pressure on the Hermit Kingdom’s nuclear program.

 

Current presidents often deploy former presidents as roving global diplomats par excellence, ambassadors without portfolio but owed the highest level of respect. Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, for example, have both been sent to North Korea to work out delicate negotiations. But it’s unlikely that a President Biden would ever turn to Trump for help on touchy geopolitical problems. And it’s unlikely Trump would give it. Instead, experts imagine Trump as free chaos agent—more or less what he’s been inside the White House, but with even less staffing, process or official restraints.

 

“Undermining our will, effectiveness and attempts to reassert our values and effectiveness? He’d be 100 percent willing to mess with that 100 percent for personal gain and continued notoriety,” says a former Trump administration official. “Imagine you don’t have Jimmy Carter out there doing your bidding, you have Donald Trump sitting down with these guys and offering them a stage to sell themselves.”

 

Trump, who has brokered what he sees as a historic opening between Israel and other Middle Eastern countries largely by excluding Palestinians from the process, might be particularly inclined to undermine any attempts by future presidential administrations to restore their voice or rebalance power in the Middle East. Similarly, if a President Biden moves aggressively against any of the regimes Trump befriended as president, Trump wouldn’t necessarily stand on the sidelines.

 

“He could become the best friend, underminer, impediment to reestablishing any kind of normalized relationships the United States seeks in the future. He’s able to be there offering a different perspective. You’ve now created in him a negative-pressure relief valve,” says the former Trump administration official.

 

As another expert told me, “When it was his job to put the country’s interests first, he didn’t put the country’s interests first. Why would we expect anything different after?”

 

There is no precedent for a former president’s conducting his own freelance foreign policy—and certainly not one that would go against the expressed policy of his successor. (Perhaps the closest analogue is the complex plot by former vice president—and Alexander Hamilton killer—Aaron Burr to form a breakaway republic in the then-southwestern United States with perhaps himself as emperor.) While the U.S. does have laws against citizens attempting to carry out their own foreign policy—it was concerns about that so-called Logan Act that helped launch the investigation of incoming Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn as he spoke to the Russian ambassador about Obama administration sanctions—the law has never been used in American history. As president, Trump has said he thought that former Secretary of State John Kerry violated the Logan Act in his one-man diplomacy to preserve the Iran deal as it was under attack from the Trump White House. The bar to deploy the Logan Act against a former government leader would be presumably high and prove as much a thorny political question as a criminal one. “We all shit all over the Logan Act [as useless], but at what point does that cross over into a legal issue? If he’s going to be trying to obstruct the foreign policy of the United States, what does that mean?” wonders the intelligence professional. “Talk about a complex investigation and case to bring.”

 

 

Most helpful to America’s adversaries overseas, though, would be that Trump’s ongoing tweeting and public appearances would simply serve as a constant reminder of America’s political instability. One of the reasons that Russia originally interfered in the 2016 election was simply to undermine the legitimacy of western democracies, and Trump’s ongoing tradition-shattering continues to underscore that message and lead other countries to doubt the moral superiority of American democracy.

 

Trump as Official (or Unofficial) International Consultant

Engaging with a former president offers other potential benefits for foreign powers. There does not appear to be anything beyond a sense of patriotism that would stop a former president from offering up the nation’s geopolitical, surveillance and intelligence secrets to the highest bidder and signing, say, a $10 million-a-month consulting deal with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia—a regime Trump has assiduously courted in office while brushing aside its most egregious actions, like the murder of Jamal Khashoggi. In certain ways, he could even use his final weeks and months in office to aid certain foreign countries that promise to pay him or his company later.

 

Presidents and vice presidents, as constitutional officers, are exempt from the normal security clearances and nondisclosure agreements that come with access to the nation’s most secret information. In fact, the entire classification system derives from presidential authority and the president is legally allowed to declassify anything at any moment for any reason. Trump has from time-to-time appeared either to make public unique American capabilities or to reference even more secret ones, and he famously revealed highly secret foreign intelligence during an Oval Office meeting with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak and Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov.

 

As president, Trump has surely learned secrets worth literally trillions of dollars—information about U.S. espionage capabilities, intelligence assets on earth and in outer space and nuclear and war plans, as well as the quirks, perversions and predilections of leaders and politicians the world over. Normally, former presidents have remained tight-lipped about these secrets after leaving office, but that’s more about tradition, integrity and their own sense of duty than it is about the law. It would pose an uncertain legal question whether such freedom to share secrets continues on post-presidency. While the technical answer would almost certainly be “no,” the sensitivity of prosecuting a former president would make the bar enormously high—and presumably require a deeply egregious (and known) violation of government secrecy to even consider any action. “Can an ex-president be prosecuted for exposing classified information? There would be obstacles,” says one senior former government attorney. “It would be a novel argument that criminal laws apply to him.”

 

There might be some hoops for a former president to go through to do specific types of business with a foreign power—like registering as a foreign agent, under the Foreign Agents Registration Act law that tripped up Paul Manafort and others in Trump’s orbit. But as long as Trump files the correct paperwork, he would be as free to work with foreign governments as any other private citizen. As a former intelligence leader says, “His ability to lobby for the Saudi nuclear deals or Goya beans, if it’s got a dollar sign attached, he’ll try for it.”

 

 

Pumping Trump for secrets, though, wouldn’t necessarily come as part of a paid consulting gig. In fact, intelligence leaders and officers who have been around him in the White House doubt he’s paid enough attention to details or retained enough information to be that useful in turning over secrets. “He really doesn’t know that much,” says the former Trump official. “I don’t really believe he’s got the depth of knowledge to go explain to a foreign power the level of penetration that the NSA has gotten into various systems. I don’t think he can undermine the sources and methods of U.S. intelligence. He doesn’t know enough with enough fidelity to be actually destructive.”

 

Instead, the secrets most likely to leak out of Trump’s mind are exactly the examples we’ve already seen in public: places where the U.S. possesses a unique weapon, capability or protective measure that fascinates him and that a foreign power could glean from wining, dining and coddling him amid a long-term business engagement or friendship. “In the 8-year-old kid that inhabits him, the things that would stick with him are details that he would think are neat or powerful,” assesses one former counterintelligence officer. “It’s going to be someone who hits his buttons, someone who can play him and make him blurt it out that way. Like ‘Oh, you in the U.S. aren’t all that powerful,’ and he goes, ‘Oh yeah? We can do X!’ [I worry] there are infrastructure things and security details—this beautiful armored vehicle, they’ve got jetpacks in the presidential limo!—in the context of boasting that he would give up—details about continuity programs, resilience or security of the U.S. government.”

 

But it might not all be about money for Trump. Another reason that a Trump who loses reelection might mostly look inward to his existing supporters and outward to friendly foreign nations for friendship and admiration is that he’ll likely be excluded at home from the normal celebrations and honorary roles that typically flow to presidents.

 

When Kate Andersen Brower interviewed Trump in the Oval Office for her new book on former presidents, Team of Five: The Presidents Club in the Age of Trump, he fully admitted he expects to be ostracized by his predecessors. “I don’t think I’ll fit in very well,” he told her. “I’m a different kind of president.” Even as president, he’s largely eschewed the moral leadership aspects of the office and the role of the nation’s healer in chief, skipping most of the high-profile funerals and memorials during his presidency—and even panning the legacies of people like John Lewis and John McCain—and it’s hard to imagine him hitting the state-funeral circuit as a former president. Nor does it seem likely that he’ll pursue humanitarian projects, akin to the Carter Center or the Clinton Foundation, or invest his time in mentoring future generations of leaders and Americans, as the Obamas do, or tending privately to causes like wounded warriors, as George W. Bush does.

 

“None of those are things you imagine him having the slightest interest in—or being invited to participate in,” Gibbs says. “He likes being around the people who like him.”

 

Not even the most ardent West Wing fan fiction writer would stage Trump and Obama teaming up on future endeavors, as Clinton has done with both his predecessor Bush 41 and his successor Bush 43, leading W. to call Clinton his “brother with a different mother.”

 

Whenever—and if ever—Trump becomes a former president, he will pursue the job just as he’s pursued being president itself: On his terms, answering only to himself and keeping his own counsel, reinventing almost every aspect of what Americans think of the office and its traditions. As Brower says, “President Trump is an island.”

A ‘Red Mirage’: What If President Trump Claims A False, Early Victory?


'Red mirage': the 'insidious' scenario if Trump declares an early victory

 


US elections 2020

The situation could develop if the president appears to be leading on election night before all votes are counted – and for some officials, it’s too realistic for words

 

Tom McCarthy

 @TeeMcSee  Email

Sat 31 Oct 2020 06.15 GMT

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/31/red-mirage-trump-election-scenario-victory

 

Scenarios for how an election disaster could unfold in the United States next week involve lawsuits, lost ballots, armed insurrection and other potential crises in thousands of local jurisdictions on 3 November.

 

But there is one much simpler scenario for election-night chaos, centering on a single address, that many analysts see as among the most plausible.

 

The scenario can be averted, election officials say, by heightening public awareness about it – and by cautioning vigilance against carefully targeted lies that Donald Trump has already begun to tell.

 

Known as the “red mirage”, the scenario could develop if Trump appears to be leading in the presidential race late on election night and declares victory before all the votes are counted.

 

The red mirage “sounds like a super-villain, and it’s just as insidious”, the former Obama administration housing secretary Julían Castro says in a video recorded as a public service announcement to voters this week.

 

“On election night, there’s a real possibility that the data will show Republicans leading early, before all the votes are counted. Then they can pretend something sinister’s going on when the counts change in Democrats’ favor.”

 

In the scenario, Trump’s declaration of victory is echoed on the conservative TV network Fox News and by powerful Republicans across the US. By the time final returns show that in fact Joe Biden has won the presidency, perhaps days later, the true election result has been dragged into a maelstrom of disinformation and chaos.

 

To some officials, the scenario is too realistic for words. A potential multi-day delay in counting votes is anticipated in Philadelphia, whose mostly Democratic votes are crucial for Biden to win in Pennsylvania, currently the state the quants see as most likely to tip the election one way or the other.

 

After counting only 6,000 absentee ballots in the 2016 election, the city of Philadelphia, where Democrats outnumber Republicans seven to one, expects to receive and count as many as 400,000 mail-in ballots this year, with the coronavirus pandemic raging.

 

All of those ballots will be counted inside the city’s cavernous convention center on Arch Street, beginning at 7am on the day of the election, by an army of poll workers, including many new recruits, using recently purchased equipment.

 

The delay that officials know will be required to finish the counting could be enough time for Trump to sow doubt about the result, an effort the president has already begun.

 

“Bad things happen in Philadelphia,” Trump said at the first presidential debate in September, warning about “tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated” and “urging my people” to watch polling sites carefully, despite there being no evidence of widespread fraud in US elections.

 

Current and former Pennsylvania officials and activists say that the antidote to the “red mirage” is as simple as the scenario itself.

 

The public must understand, these officials say, that Philadelphia will not be able to report its election result on the night of 3 November, and may not be able to do so for days afterward, owing to the extraordinary circumstances that the pandemic has wrought.

 

In turn, the surge of Democratic votes out of Philadelphia, when they do land, will probably create the perception of a huge swing in the state to Biden. And finally, that swing could well be large enough to erase a lead that Trump might build up in rural counties elsewhere in the state – to appear to turn Pennsylvania from “red” to “blue” – and to potentially decide the entire election.

 

“All votes will not be counted by midnight on November 3,” said Tom Ridge, a former Republican governor of Pennsylvania and homeland security secretary under George W Bush who decries Trump’s “absolutely despicable conduct and rhetoric” about the election.

 

“Because of Covid-19, there’ll be millions of mail-in votes that it’ll take several days to tally,” Ridge said in a phone interview. “One of the ways to reduce the anxiety level is to remind Americans of that reality, and call for peace and patience so that every vote can be counted.”

 

The blood-curdling thing about the red-mirage scenario, for some analysts, is that some aspects of it look more like a certainty than a scenario.

 

 People should know that there will not be a result on election night

Lisa Deeley

 

“People should know that there will not be a result on election night,” said Lisa Deeley, chair of a three-member panel of Philadelphia city commissioners that runs the election. “So people will go to bed and we won’t have that count finished. But we will be working continuously, through the night, to make sure we get that count as quickly and accurately – we won’t sacrifice accuracy for speed.”

 

“The key term is ‘election week’,” said Patrick Christmas, policy director of the non-partisan Committee of Seventy good government organization in Philadelphia. “There’s no longer going to be an election day here.”

 

As plausible as it is, however, there are also many reasons why a “red mirage” scenario might not unfold. Biden could put the race away with a win earlier on election night in a key battleground state such as Florida. Or Biden could win the state of Pennsylvania, where he leads by 6 points in polling averages, without needing the last 200,000 or so votes out of Philadelphia.

 

Alternatively, a “red mirage” for Trump might develop elsewhere in the country, outside of Philadelphia – anywhere that a big city in a swing state, from Milwaukee to Miami to Cleveland, ends up taking a long time to report results.

 

But the enormous task that Philadelphia faces in counting an unprecedented number of mail-in ballots while observing social distancing and other coronavirus mitigation measures means the city is in a uniquely difficult spot.

 

Making life more difficult for Philadelphia election officials, negotiations broke down last week between the state’s Republican-led legislature and the Democratic governor to allow the processing of mail-in ballots – meaning removing the ballots from their envelopes and smoothing them for insertion into counting machines – before election day itself.

 

Florida allows weeks for such early processing, as do North Carolina, Arizona and other battleground states, making it possible for those states to report results promptly on election night. Wisconsin, another key battleground, does not have early processing, while Michigan allows just one day for early processing.

 

“It’s very sad to me, it’s very troubling, that the political parties couldn’t agree on this,” said Ridge, who is involved in two bipartisan organizations to secure the ballot, Vote Safe and the National Council for Election Integrity.

 

At the Pennsylvania convention center in downtown Philadelphia, mail-in ballots are already on site, under lock and key, waiting for election day.

 

Promptly at 7am, officials will begin to feed the ballots into new extraction machines that use suction cups to open the ballots’ outer envelopes so that officials can remove an inner privacy envelope containing the ballot. Then the ballot must pass through the extraction machine again. Then the ballot must be smoothed, and then put through a counting machine.

 

 The key term is ‘election week’. There’s no longer going to be an election day here

Patrick Christmas

 

Many representatives from each party will be allowed inside the convention center to observe the process, but arrangements for media to be inside have been shelved. Any ballot whose validity is contested – perhaps because the voter neglected to use the inner envelope, rendering a so-called “naked” ballot – must be reviewed by commissioners in a process that has not been publicly described.

 

“There are challenge guidelines that are outlined in the state election code, and we will follow those guidelines,” Deeley said.

 

Some election observers fear that the presence inside the hall of Trump supporters could create an opportunity for havoc – especially with concerns about coronavirus – that could interrupt the operation in a way that could allow Trump to amplify his claims of fraud in Philadelphia.

 

Deeley said election officials were prepared for attempts to tamper in the election.

 

“There’s security at the convention center,” she said, and pointed to statements by Philadelphia’s district attorney, Larry Krasner, that the city was ready to prosecute election-related wrongdoing.

 

“He announced he’s ready to go, and that’s not going to be allowed on Philadelphia election day.”

 

In each election, voters entrust their neighbors who volunteer as poll workers to tally election results, and that trust is as well-placed this year as in years past, no matter what Trump says, Ridge said.

 

“For him to suggest that these local officials would engage in willful, intentional, massive fraud, in order to discredit or delegitimize the process, is unfathomable and unpresidential,” Ridge said.

 

“We’ve hopefully begun to inoculate and educate Americans around the necessity of patience so that every vote can be counted.”


sexta-feira, 30 de outubro de 2020

What now for the BBC?

 

• The War Against the BBC by Patrick Barwise and Peter York is published by Penguin on 26 November.

What now for the BBC?

 

Charles Moore may be out of the picture, but the intensified attacks against the corporation are real, and its chief enemy is the government. It’s time to explode the myths

 


by Peter York

Fri 23 Oct 2020 12.00 BSTLast modified on Fri 23 Oct 2020 13.24 BST

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/oct/23/what-now-for-the-bbc?fbclid=IwAR2VPLi78f1KLGKSUKazx2Zkp7xDTpM_ORwgycUoTvPdtLnAkdGTsmtARyo

 

So Charles Moore isn’t going to be chairman of the BBC after all. Perhaps he withdrew because he was upset by Julian Knight MP, Conservative chair of the digital, culture, media and sport select committee, saying that appointing him would be like a convicted fraudster running a bank. Perhaps it was the money: one story goes that he had negotiated for nearly three times what the current chairman Sir David Clementi is paid. Will we ever know? That’s not to say there’s no other speculation. Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun, is apparently applying and, if appointed, he says the first thing he’d do would be to sack Emily Maitlis.

 

There was even talk of appointing George Osborne as chairman, the man who has done more harm to the BBC than anyone, before he ruled himself out. And there remains the possibility of Paul Dacre using his forthright turns of phrase at the morning briefings of regulator Ofcom, with its higher ranks of economists and former Whitehall mandarins. I can’t quite see it. Yet even if none of the most notorious BBC-haters ends up in either chair, the act of trailing their names before the start of the appointment process may well have deterred some candidates from applying.

 

On 27 September an article in the Times quoted an anonymous government source who said an “all out war” is “being waged on the broadcaster by the government … the most concerted attack it has ever faced”. In February Tim Shipman in a Sunday Times piece also quoted an anonymous “government source” saying they would “whack” the BBC licence fee: “We are not bluffing on the licence fee. We are having a consultation and we will whack it.”

 

When exactly did that language creep into government briefings? What other parts of the constitution need whacking? The judiciary? The civil service? Parliament? The Electoral Commission? Nonetheless, the recent stories centring on Moore and Dacre – widely attributed to Dominic Cummings – did their job. They thoroughly gaslighted the BBC and its many supporters.

 

The only real qualification either Moore or Dacre had was that they hated the BBC and constantly said so. They weren’t just “critics”, as they were described. Nor was their “Conservatism” important – the BBC has had many Conservative chairmen. These jobs have never been reserved for “liberals”; rather the opposite.

 

The story was intended to put the wind up some people and enthuse others. It is all part of the new way this government does things – a Trumpish pre-emptive kind of rumour, followed by a vague not-quite-denial from an official source – in this case the culture secretary Oliver Dowden.

 

But the newly intensified attacks against the BBC are real, and the attacker is the government. This PM seems to be the most hostile towards the BBC of any in living memory – including Margaret Thatcher.

 

The threats to the corporation are piling up: they include its taking financial responsibility for the (£750m) free TV licence-fee concession for the over 75s. This responsibility was palmed off on the BBC from what was originally a central government welfare payment – like the two billion a year winter fuel allowance – in a secret process by the then chancellor Osborne in 2015 with no public consultation, but six meetings between Osborne’s team and Rupert Murdoch’s. If the BBC is forced to pay the whole sum it will face drastic cuts.

 

And there’s another “whack” potentially due. The government wants to decriminalise non-payment of the licence fee – which would cost the corporation at the very least £200m. Only five years ago, a Conservative-commissioned independent review rejected the idea, but the government set up a new public consultation. (Though that closed over six months ago, it mysteriously hasn’t reported yet.) And then Ofcom is about to review the BBC Sounds radio streaming initiative for competitive impact, just months after they’d said the BBC should do more to engage younger audiences.

 

 People want to destroy the BBC to create a US-style media ecology in the UK – and they think their time has come

 

The world’s most admired and successful public service broadcaster now faces hits to its income of anywhere between £500m and £1bn. (A billion would be around a third of its current public funding.) And the recent attacks come on top of far deeper cuts than people have realised. In March 2020, consumer group Voice of the Listener & Viewer (VLV) analysed the BBC’s finances. The results are astonishing: since 2010, Osborne’s funding cuts have reduced the net public funding of the BBC’s UK services by 30% in real (inflation-adjusted) terms. It’s remarkable that the BBC’s services have held up so well in the circumstances.

 

Using VLV’s figures, the net public funding of the BBC’s UK services in 2019-20 was £3,203m. In 2010-11 it was £4,580m in the same (2019-20) money. If the BBC’s public funding had merely kept pace with inflation, it would be 43% – nearly £1.4bn – higher than it is now.

 

Against this background of cuts, the cultural skirmishes we’re used to between the BBC and politicians have become all out war. There are people who aren’t ashamed to say that they want to destroy the BBC and create a full-on American-style media ecology in the UK – and who think their time has come. The context is the surge in rightwing populism and its emotive hot-button campaigning, combined with certain toxic effects of the internet, and finally the increasing influence of American political techniques of all kinds. We know now that this particular war has been planned for some time – in fact since 2004.

 

According to Cummings: ‘The right should be aiming for the end of the BBC in its current form.’

 

As the Guardian has revealed, in a 2004 blog from his shortlived thinktank New Frontiers Foundation, Cummings set out his plan to discredit the BBC and create a new US style media landscape in the UK. His objective wasn’t veiled in conventional thinktank talk about free markets or other abstractions. Achieving the goal was essential, he said, if the Conservatives were to gain and hold on to power, because he believed – in paranoid fashion – the BBC was the “mortal enemy” of the party.

 

The inspiration he cited was work done by the American right – financed by the fossil-fuel billionaire Koch brothers and their billionaire friends – to discredit the US “liberal” mainstream media and shift the US political centre of gravity rightwards – as documented in Jane Mayer’s superb book Dark Money. According to Cummings: “The right should be aiming for the end of the BBC in its current form.”

 

The BBC, Cummings wrote, had to be discredited by a combination of monitoring and perpetual trolling, including leaks and “stings”. And then a brave new world could be built in the UK. This world would have three key elements. The first was a Fox News type partisan rightwing TV broadcaster. The second was the kind of shock jock phone-in radio station you find all over America – which made stars of Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck. Finally, the UK should remove the barriers to big money political campaigning as they had in America. This would mean that, say, billionaire Conservative supporters such as Lord Ashcroft could buy political advertising in TV ad breaks, and make politics a game for the super-rich.

 

It was a strikingly modern plan for 2004. And Cummings advised that – because establishing new broadcasters and changing the law would be highly visible, contested and expensive – the right should get on with discrediting the BBC straight away, quietly online. At the time he was an outlying rightwing campaigner; now he is chief strategist, and there’s every sign that the plan is being put into effect.

 

 Research shows people certainly trust the BBC far more that they trust the politicians and rightwing newspapers telling them not to

 

Researching the war against the BBC, my co-author Patrick Barwise and I were struck by how intensively the corporation appeared to be “trolled” online – both on excitably named websites such as Biased BBC and on YouTube. Apparently far away from the smart Westminster political world of MPs, journalists and SW1 thinktanks, there was a raucous world of people who ranted about the BBC as “commies”, and sometimes “paedos” and “goons”. The point of such “Astroturf” (fake grassroots) campaigns is to convince the world that a minority, partisan and planted view is a widely held natural one – something “real” people are very worried about.

 

The latest seems to be “Defund the BBC”, a campaign that grew earlier this year, in June, from a Tweet coming from James Yucel “just a student in his room” reacting to the “defund the police” demand from Black Lives Matter. Yucel turned out to be a media-experienced Conservative activist working as an intern for a Tory MP. And an analysis of the online spread of the campaign suggested that its astonishingly rapid growth and generous initial fundraising was anything but random. Now, four months later “Defund the BBC” has employees from Westminster thinktank land, proper funds, and is putting up posters attacking the corporation.

 

There are at least two Fox News-like plans for rightwing broadcasters under way – one, News GB, to be chaired by Andrew Neil, has already had investment from the American Discovery Channel. Rupert Murdoch, the owner of the Trump-supporting Fox News in the US, is also reported to be planning a UK TV news service.

 

•••

 

During our research we kept hearing deep and damaging misunderstandings about the BBC – myths, endlessly repeated by people who either should know better, or really did know better and were deliberately spreading lies. Such people were often connected to opaquely funded Westminster thinktanks, rightwing newspapers and grumpy reactionary politicians. The misconceptions can be divided into two categories: complete myths and widely held but doubtful beliefs.

 

The complete myths:

1 “Lots of people don’t use the BBC but are still forced to pay the licence fee or go to prison.” In reality, only a tiny (although unknown) number of households pay for the BBC yet use none of its services – unlike with many other public services that cost much more. The £157.50 licence fee (43p per day) gives every household member unlimited access to all the BBC’s services for a whole year. The only time the BBC’s total household reach has been measured, in 2015, 99% of households used it in just a single week. No one is jailed for licence-fee evasion. The Conservative-commissioned 2015 Perry review recommended against decriminalising licence-fee evasion, describing the current system as “broadly fair and proportionate”.

 

2 “The BBC is bloated, wasteful and inefficient.” Not according to the data. The corporation puts most of its income into content – mainly original UK content (in which it’s by far the biggest investor) and distribution. Its overheads are actually below the average for media and telecommunications companies.

 

3 “It’s the best-funded public broadcaster in the world.” No, it isn’t: both Japan’s NHK and Germany’s ARD both receive more public funding.

 

4 “It does things that should be left to the market – crowding out competitors and actually reducing choice.” But studies of the BBC’s market impact have consistently found it to be minimal and nowhere near enough to reduce overall choice.

 

5 “In 2015, it agreed to fund free TV licences for all over-75s but has now reneged on that agreement.” This is simply untrue.

 

6 “If it didn’t overpay its senior managers and star presenters, it could pay much or most of the cost of free TV licences for all over-75s.” This, too, is wildly untrue. The BBC generally pays its managers and presenters less than the market rate. If, nevertheless, it cut to £150,000 per annum the pay of everyone currently paid more than that, the annual saving would be only £20m – less than 3% of the £750m annual cost of free TV licences for all over-75s. Which services should it cut to cover the other 97%?

 

The three widely held beliefs that are mostly untrue:

1 “Its news and current affairs coverage is systematically leftwing.” The evidence from independent academic research is that the BBC constantly strives to be impartial in its political coverage and, when it departs from this, it tends towards over-representing the establishment, right-leaning view – increasingly so over the last 10 years. Its coverage tends to be biased in favour of the government of the day, but more so when the Conservatives are in power.

 

2 “It’s anti-Brexit.” The only evidence of systematic anti-Brexit BBC bias comes from the opaquely funded monitoring organisation News-watch, which never publishes its methods and results in peer-reviewed journals and never debates them. Independent academic research reaches very different conclusions, suggesting that the BBC’s coverage was largely impartial both before and after the 2016 EU referendum – and when it was not, it marginally favoured Leave rather than Remain.

 

3 “People no longer trust it.” Despite decades of constant attack from rightwing media, politicians, rightwing Westminster thinktanks and, now, shadowy websites and channels, the BBC remains by far the nation’s most trusted news source. Research shows people certainly trust it far more that they trust the politicians and rightwing newspapers telling them not to.

 

•••

 

The positive case for the BBC is familiar: it creates social cohesion within the country – “One Nation” – and develops the UK’s “soft power” externally – “Global Britain”. Both things are, we are told, important to this prime minister. Without the BBC we would be more fragmented, we wouldn’t share the same realities, we would be more vulnerable to disinformation and polarisation.

 

Recent research from the University of Zurich examined the factors that make nations more or less “resilient” to sweeping disinformation, such as conspiracy theories. One key resilience factor is the existence of an independent public service national broadcaster at scale, such as the BBC. The US – nearly off the researchers’ scale in its vulnerability to such conspiracy theories as QAnon – has never had an equivalent-sized public service broadcaster.

 

The BBC has had a good lockdown – the nation trusted it to tell the truth about the crisis, and its news programmes’ ratings shot up. And, over the months, attitudes to “public service” changed too. People talked about “our NHS”. Even the influential Institute of Economic Affairs, a constant critic of the NHS’s funding and advocate of increased market involvement (and, no coincidence, a consistent critic of the BBC), toned it down over the period – it just wasn’t a good look.

 

The BBC is publicly owned (but not state-owned or the “government broadcaster”), not owned by City shareholders, private equity or mysterious interests headquartered in overseas tax havens. It’s fascinating how many of the BBC’s opponents, those who accuse the corporation of being unpatriotic, are themselves based offshore.

 

The powerful economic case for the BBC is less well known. It simply spends far more on British TV content than anyone else. It has pump-primed the development of the creative industries since the second world war. And its constant inventiveness, from programmes (Killing Eve, I May Destroy You) to technology – such as developing the iPlayer when Netflix was practically a baby Blockbuster – has raised Britain’s game. The BBC ups its competitors’ games too, it obliges them to invest more in local content.

 

There’s a lot that needs fixing at the BBC. But it’s not what its enemies say (obsessive wokeness, or its alleged metropolitan worldview: half its employees are outside London, and the numbers are rising). It’s the historical timidity and caution at the corporation’s centre – understandable after all the bashings from successive governments. It’s the avoidance of stories that annoy governments, with the “burden of proof” excuse.

 

There is a case for thinking through the licence fee arrangements as the world changes, but it’s not as urgent as the BBC’s enemies pretend. There needs to be a properly independent review, driven by public interest, not the commercial interests of its global billionaire competitors or the paranoia of its political enemies. Whatever happens, the BBC needs to be made politician-proof. Since its foundation it has suffered from an ambiguous relationship with government, which has made it susceptible to political pressure through its funding. As the current war against the BBC escalates, it needs to get the hands of government from around its neck.

 

• The War Against the BBC by Patrick Barwise and Peter York is published by Penguin on 26 November.