Why Has The World Gone Insane? - Douglas Murray - #928

**Chris Williamson** (0:00)
Douglas Murray, welcome to the show.

**Douglas Murray** (0:01)
Very good to be back with you in your native Austin.

**Chris Williamson** (0:04)
Yes, you're here for 24 hours. Salubrious.

**Douglas Murray** (0:08)
Wonderful. Watching your success with great admiration.

**Chris Williamson** (0:12)
Thank you.

**Douglas Murray** (0:13)
And great pride as well in a way. I don't know why I feel pride, but I just-

**Chris Williamson** (0:16)
You definitely contributed to it. I think I managed to get you to take a dice roll many, many years ago, five years ago, six years ago.

**Douglas Murray** (0:23)
That's right. I think I was doing the matters of crowds and you were in your place in Newcastle with a mold on the ceiling.

**Chris Williamson** (0:28)
Wasn't mold. It was because, as I explained for a long time, it's because I had a Yankee candle addiction, which also actually is something to be embarrassed about, not quite as bad as mold. And I had to get it repainted. After our episode, the Internet shamed me so much, but I had to get the ceiling of my old bedroom repainted.

**Douglas Murray** (0:50)
And now you're here in Austin.

**Chris Williamson** (0:51)
You're lucky me now.

**Douglas Murray** (0:52)
It's great to see you.

**Chris Williamson** (0:53)
Well, you too. Trump's been in office for 78 days. What do you make of his efforts so far?

**Douglas Murray** (1:03)
Mixed, I think, as with anyone. He got the very, very large and considerable mandate, won the popular vote, made it pretty impossible for people to criticize him from the election onwards.
The first couple of months has been very little, I think, pushback or rallying around against him. Then inevitably, there are things that are now happening. You may have noticed if you keep an eye on the markets or anything like that, which very much people are going for him on. But yes, I mean, it's kind of early days, but a mixed bag, I'd say.

**Chris Williamson** (1:45)
It feels like a lot's happened.

**Douglas Murray** (1:48)
Well, a lot has happened.

**Chris Williamson** (1:49)
Seventy-eight days.

**Douglas Murray** (1:50)
Yes. I mean, one of the things you can say, whatever your views on Trump, you can say with certainty, and I did head of the election have since, which is that he does what he says he's going to do. So whether it's tariffs or foreign policy or domestic policy, border, he campaigns about it and then he does it, tries to do it. And I am always quite amused by the people who are surprised at that. What's he doing with all this tariff stuff? Every rally I covered of his tariffs was a big thing. So yes, there are some corners of it, principally the Ukraine stuff, which I'm concerned about.
But it's early days.

**Chris Williamson** (2:39)
There's a sense of sort of the move fast break things thing.

**Douglas Murray** (2:44)
Oh yeah.

**Chris Williamson** (2:44)
That I think is kind of sexy in Silicon Valley and tech and building businesses and stuff. Not convinced how perfectly it ports across onto governance.

**Douglas Murray** (2:58)
Well, the normal problem that people find when they get elected, and in fact, I think he had in his first term, is that it takes four years or so to work out which leavers you can pull, and something happens, and which leavers pull, and you get a big clown appears, and which leavers you pull, and just absolutely nothing happens. I think he's come in this time knowing which leavers to pull, and a lot of presidential orders and much more.
It's certainly more efficient and effective so far than his first months in office in the first term. I think things like the border are huge accomplishments. Very, very big reason for his election was we've got to sort out the border. We can't just have a porous border with Central and Southern America, and indeed the rest of the world. Border crossings have gone down to almost nothing.

**Chris Williamson** (3:58)
Is that right?

**Douglas Murray** (3:58)
Yeah. I think that the removal of illegals who have no right to be in America and have been committing crimes whilst in America or very dangerous criminals is a very good place to start. Inevitably, when you do that, some people will holler and wail like the mayor of Boston who insists that somebody who's been paying taxes all their life in Boston and whose predecessors also paid taxes in Boston, have the same rights as somebody who recently broke into Boston and wants to squat there on the street shooting up.
Quite a lot of people disagree with that. There are lots of people, of course, who are finding a way on the deportations thing to criticize him, some of which is perfectly legitimate, which is, of course, stuff like, there have been some cases of people who have been deported who haven't done nothing wrong. That's also something that always happens when you try to institute a policy like that. I don't think it means you don't institute the policy, it means you do it better. Yeah.