The Edition: Empire of Trump, the creep of child-free influencers & is fact-checking a fiction?
Best of the Spectator
The Spectator
4.4 • 785 Ratings
🗓️ 16 January 2025
⏱️ 42 minutes
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Summary
In the cover piece for the magazine, our deputy editor and host of the Americano podcast, Freddy Gray, delves into Trump’s plans. He speaks to insiders, including Steve Bannon, about the President’s ambitions for empire-building. Could he really take over Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal? And if not, what is he really hoping to achieve? Academic and long-time friend of J.D. Vance, James Orr, also writes in the magazine this week about how the vice president-elect could be an even more effective standard-bearer for the MAGA movement. Freddy and James joined the podcast, just before Freddy heads off to cover Trump’s inauguration. (1:00)
Next: the child-free influencers waging war on motherhood
Kara Kennedy also writes in the magazine about the popularity of social media influencers advocating child-free lives. It’s well documented that more and more young people are choosing not to have children. However, while some might think this is about championing different lifestyles, Kara writes that many of these influencers are, in fact, shaming those who choose to have children. What motivates them? Kara joined the podcast alongside Brittany Brantley, an influencer who started out in the child-free community, before choosing to have a child. (16:58)
And finally: can fact-checking ever be objective?
Following the news that Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta will reduce its fact-checking service, Matt Ridley examines the world of fact-checking and declares the practice ‘corrupted’. Matt argues that fact-checking is riddled with bias – can it ever be objective? Matt joined the podcast alongside The Spectator’s very own fact-checking team, Sam McPhail and Michael Simmons – who get a positive mention in Matt’s piece. They lift the lid on how the magazine approaches fact-checking. (26:58)
Hosted by Lara Prendergast and William Moore.
Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Spectator magazine is home to wonderful writing, insightful analysis, and unrival books and arts reviews. |
| 0:06.1 | Subscribe today for just 12 pounds and receive a 12-week subscription in print and online. |
| 0:11.2 | Alongside that, you get a 20-pound John Lewis or Waitrose voucher. |
| 0:14.7 | Go to spectator.com.uk forward slash voucher. |
| 0:31.5 | Hello and welcome to the edition podcast from The Spectator, where each week we shared a little light on the thought process behind putting in the world's oldest weekly magazine to bed. |
| 0:36.5 | I'm Laura Prendergars, the Spectator's Executive Editor. |
| 0:39.6 | And I'm William Moore, the Spectator's Features Editor. |
| 0:42.3 | This week, Freddie Gray explains Donald Trump's imperial ambitions. |
| 0:47.2 | Kara Kennedy examines the creep of the child-free influencer, |
| 0:51.1 | and Matt Ridley lifts the lid on the world of fact-checking. |
| 1:00.3 | Look, the Panama Canal is vital to our country. It's being operated by China. China. |
| 1:08.3 | That was President Trump being somewhat undiplomatic about his views, with comments on places |
| 1:14.0 | ranging from Greenland to Canada to Panama. And so in this week's issue, the spectator's |
| 1:19.6 | deputy editor and host of our Americano podcast, Freddie Gray, wonders whether President-elect |
| 1:25.2 | Trump really does hold imperial ambitions. |
| 1:28.6 | He writes the cover piece for the magazine this week and looks ahead to Donald Trump's inauguration on Monday of next week. |
| 1:35.0 | He argues that Donald Trump's plan is now just to make America greater. |
| 1:39.9 | In the magazine this week, we also have James Orr writing about J.D. Vance. |
| 2:04.0 | James is a close friend of J.D. Vance's. And he looks at how Vance is the actual future of Maga. So we were joined by Freddie and James. And I started by asking Freddie whether he really does think that Trump is serious in his plans to annex Canada and Greenland. Well, nobody ever thinks Trump is serious, but quite often he is. |
| 2:08.9 | And I've spoken to sort of a few people in Maga World, people who are going to be joining the administration. And they say, you know, all sort of Europeans and people at the British |
| 2:13.0 | embassy think, oh, it's just a negotiating tactic. He's just sort of doing what he does. |
| 2:19.0 | But they say, no, you know, he's very, very serious. |
... |
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