Exclusive media partner: The New York Times

Newsletter

Receive regular updates about forthcoming events and other news from Intelligence Squared

Thanks

You have been added to our mailing list and will now be among the first to hear about events.

Play video1:32:10

Watch

Donald Trump: An American Tragedy?

Is a Trump presidency the cataclysmic event many are portraying it to be? Or could it be the shock that democracy periodically needs to shake it out of its complacency?

It’s over two months since we woke up to the shock news that the next president of the United States will be Donald Trump, and the whole world is trying to read the runes and work out what the next four years will hold for America and the rest of the world.

Many are decrying Trump’s election as the end of democracy and the beginning of fascism. Others, observing that he is already watering down many of his more extreme threats, are willing to see a silver lining in at least some of his avowed policies. To weigh up these conflicting attitudes and gauge what a Trump presidency might actually look like, Intelligence Squared brought together a high-profile cast of Republicans, Democrats, historians and former political advisers.

Given what we know of Trump’s character (he’s been described by clinical psychologists as a case-book narcissist), perhaps the most pressing question is how much power he will actually be able to wield in office. To what extent will he be able to take executive action to push through his plans, and how much will the constitutional checks and balances work to rein him in?

At home, his supporters (and even some on the left) have welcomed his economic plan to revive America’s impoverished areas by building new infrastructure. His critics, however, see this as a con – nothing more than a tax-cut for the wealthy construction sector and its investors. And then there’s trade. While Trump’s promise to tear up international trade agreements won him millions of votes amongst blue-collar workers who feel left behind by globalisation, most experts believe such a move would cause a recession that hurts the rust belt more than free trade ever did.

When it comes to Trump’s foreign policy, opinions are again divided. His negative stance towards NATO has sparked alarm, particularly in eastern Europe which sees the alliance as a bulwark against an increasingly aggressive Russia. To others, Trump’s apparent willingness to work with President Putin could mark the start of a new east-west détente that should be welcomed.


Speakers

Chair

Jonathan Freedland

Guardian columnist, author and broadcaster


Guardian columnist and former foreign correspondent. He is the presenter of BBC Radio 4’s contemporary history series, The Long View, as well as two podcasts, Politics Weekly America for the Guardian and Unholy, alongside the Israeli journalist Yonit Levi. He is a past winner of an Orwell Prize for journalism. He is the author of twelve books, the latest being The Escape Artist: The Man Who Broke Out of Auschwitz to Warn the World.
Featuring

Anne Applebaum

Pulitzer Prize-winning historian whose latest book is Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends (Remote)


Historian and political commentator. Her books include Gulag: A History, which won the Pulitzer Prize, Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956, which won the Cundill Prize and Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine which won the Lionel Gelber and Duff Cooper prizes. She is a columnist at The Atlantic and a senior fellow of the Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University. She divides her time between Britain, Poland and the USA. Her latest book is Twilight of Democracy: The Failure of Politics and the Parting of Friends.

Philip Bobbitt

Professor at Columbia University


One of America’s leading experts on constitutional law who is a professor at Columbia University. A life-long Democrat, he has worked extensively in government for both Democratic and Republican administrations, and has been described by Henry Kissinger as ‘the outstanding political philosopher of our time.’

Mary Dejevsky

Weekly columnist for The Independent


Weekly columnist for The Independent and regular contributor to The Guardian. She focuses primarily on international affairs and Western-Russian relations and is known for frequently taking a view counter to the establishment consensus. She has written that there are reasons to be optimistic about Trump’s foreign policy.

Stacy Hilliard

Former Vice Chairman of Republicans Abroad


Former Vice Chairman of Republicans Abroad and Chair of American Voices International, a non-partisan Political Action Committee (PAC) representing Americans living overseas. She also worked with the White House Advance Team under President George W. Bush, as well as Mitt Romney’s first gubernatorial campaign in Massachusetts.

Steve Hilton

Former director of strategy for David Cameron


Former director of strategy for Prime Minister David Cameron. He is co-founder and CEO of Crowdpac, a Silicon Valley political tech start-up, and teaches at Stanford University. In the presidential campaign he backed Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton, saying “You don’t have to agree with everything Donald Trump says or does to conclude that he would make the most positive, practical difference in the real lives of real people.”

Ted Malloch

CEO of the Roosevelt Group


CEO of the Roosevelt Group, former Senior Fellow at Oxford’s Said School of Business, who has served on the executive board of the World Economic Forum. Last year, he wrote in Forbes Magazine that Donald Trump is the new Theodore Roosevelt. He has been tipped for a role in the Trump administration.

James Rubin

Former Assistant Secretary of State


Assistant Secretary of State and Chief Spokesman for the US State Department under Madeleine Albright from 1997-2000, during a major Clinton administration push for an Israel-Palestine peace deal.