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James Matthewson and I talked through one of the most consequential news cycles of this entire administration. Trump threatened to wipe out a whole civilization. Then he backed down. And the world woke up to a shaky “ceasefire” that leaves Iran with more leverage than before this war even started.
This is Across the Pond, my weekly Wednesday live with James, a BBC and Sky News contributor, former Labour Party adviser, and one of the most clear-eyed voices on what this political moment looks like from the UK.
We both ended up in the same place: furious, exhausted, and determined not to let the “ceasefire” be used to memory-hole Trump’s genocidal threats.
We covered the “ceasefire” terms, which don’t include halting Israel’s strikes on Lebanon, and why the outcome is objectively worse than the world before this war. We talked about why we cannot let the media normalize Trump’s genocidal rhetoric just because he pulled back at the last minute. We got into James’s abusive relationship framework for understanding what Trump is doing to the American people. We talked about the global far right as a collaborative movement. And we talked honestly about the personal cost of doing this work, the death threats James has been receiving, a decade of racist DMs in my inbox, and why none of it is going to stop us.
We closed where we needed to close: on hope.
This was another great conversation. You can watch it in full above and read key takeaways below.
Trump Backed Down. The World Is Worse Off Than Before The War.
Trump threatened genocide. Then he moved forward with Iran’s 10-point plan as the framework for negotiations, not his own 15-point proposal. The Strait of Hormuz, which was open before this war, is now under Iran’s monetized control. Lebanon is still being bombed. And the man who started all of this is calling it a total and complete victory. It is not.
I laid out the terms plainly. Iran’s 10-point framework includes the lifting of all primary and secondary sanctions, continued Iranian control over the Strait of Hormuz, potential U.S. military withdrawal from the Middle East, an end to attacks on Iran and its allies, and the release of frozen Iranian assets. The Strait, which was open to free shipping before February 28, is now being tolled by Iran. James confirmed this in real time: ships are already being rerouted through a natural corridor between two islands at the northern end of the Strait, where Iran is reportedly collecting payments of around two million dollars per vessel. That did not exist before this war.
James walked through the full accounting of what this war produced. A country that every U.S. president for fifty years had managed to avoid all-out war with is now more radicalized, not less. The civilian population of Iran, which previously wanted support in overthrowing their own government, now sees the U.S. as just another tyrannical force. Over 1,600 Iranian civilians are dead. More than a million people are displaced in Lebanon. Global energy prices are still elevated. And Iran ends up with more than it had at the start.
The ceasefire does not extend to Lebanon. Israel is continuing its assault on Beirut. James noted that as we were speaking, Beirut had just undergone some of the worst bombing it had seen. I made the point that what we accomplished here was spending enormous blood and treasure to reopen a strait that was only closed because of a war the US started. The primary objective of the war became fixing a problem that the war itself created. That is not a victory. That is a circular catastrophe.
We Cannot Move On From Trump’s Genocidal Rhetoric
The ceasefire proposal is being used to turn the page. The coverage has moved to deal with the terms, oil prices, and what comes next. James and I refused to turn the page. What Trump said on Easter Sunday and what he said the morning of April 7th are not normal political statements. They are not negotiating tactics. They are genocidal rhetoric from the President of the United States, and they cannot be memory-holed.
I made the point that is not being made loudly enough. Trump threatened to wipe out a whole civilization. He said a civilization will die tonight, never to be brought back again. That is not a pressure campaign. That is not deal-making. That is a president threatening to eradicate a people. Imagine being on the receiving end of that threat, in that country, as a human being. The most powerful nation on earth just told you that you might cease to exist by tonight. That people shrugged because a fragile “ceasefire” followed does not make what was said acceptable. Words have to matter even when Trump acts like they do not.
I called out a specific media failure by name. On CNBC, a host asked whether Trump’s threat to eradicate a whole civilization was an upside risk or a downside risk for investors. That question was asked. Is genocide upside or downside for the market? That is what we have normalized. I said directly that journalists, commentators, and independent media people have to be anchors to reality. You cannot journo-speak your way through a genocide threat. You cannot sanitize it into a palatable policy analysis.
James was unequivocal on the media accountability point. He said he will be asking that question every day for the rest of his life, as long as someone is standing at that podium. There is no subjective framing that softens what Trump said. Trump said a whole civilization dies tonight. That specificity, that certainty, that dehumanization cannot be treated as just another news cycle moment and then moved past. James put it plainly: Trump killed decency. He killed morality. That is what happened, and we should not let anyone pretend otherwise.
Trump Is Gaslighting A Nation
James offered a clear framework for what Trump is doing to the American people. This is not just bad policy. This is not just incompetent leadership. This is an abusive relationship. And the threat followed by the “ceasefire” followed by the victory lap is textbook manipulative behavior.
James described the moment in the Edinburgh cafe when everyone’s phones started pinging. An American couple on holiday, passing their phone back and forth, looking sad. Students looking shaken. People in Edinburgh and all over the world are having their peace shattered because one man woke up and decided to threaten to annihilate a civilization. James asked the question I think about constantly: How have we got to a point where one man’s emotions, one man’s cruelty, one man’s ego can impact the lives of so many? And then James answered it with the framework that landed: this is an abusive relationship. Threatening violence and then not following through is classic abusive behavior. It keeps everyone in a permanent state of stress and uncertainty. That is the point.
I added my own version of that night. I was wondering whether I needed to cancel my dinner plans with my wife because the president might be decimating civilian infrastructure while I was at the table. That is not a normal thought to have. That is a thought produced by a man who is repeatedly manufacturing crises, ratcheting up anxiety to the absolute limit, and then backing off so he can declare victory while everyone else processes the damage to their nervous systems. James said he had been booked provisionally for multiple media appearances set to go live if the worst happened. He sat alone, painting miniatures at 1 a.m., wondering whether he was about to watch footage of innocent people being bombed in their homes by a democratically elected Western leader.
James noted that his therapist in Edinburgh is now hearing about Trump. A UK therapist talking about the actions of an American president in therapy sessions. That is the scale of this. I noted that I am in therapy too, and that I recommend everyone see a therapist at least weekly right now because these are not normal times. They are traumatic times. The people in Iran and Lebanon are bearing the most direct weight of this, but the collective trauma is reaching everywhere. James framed it precisely: he is gaslighting a nation. He is abusing a nation. And that will be his legacy.
The Rot Trump Identified & Exploited
Trump did not create the rot at the center of American politics. He identified it, monetized it, and gave permission to everyone carrying it to let it out. That is what his rise really did. And now the world is grappling with a monster of our own making.
I made the point that Trump is the id of American materialism and shamelessness. He looked at the ugliest impulses in the country, the depravity, the anger, the resentment, the desire to stop pretending to be polite, and said: This is profitable. Do it. Lying gets you power. Shamelessness works. Depravity is actually the move. And then he did it, and they all enabled him. It is not just one man. As commenters in our chat kept correctly pointing out, it is the Republican Party that had multiple accountability moments, from January 6th to his first impeachment to his second, and chose cowardice every time. If Mitch McConnell had convicted Trump after January 6th, we would not be here.
James observed that traditional conservatism has essentially vanished. He said he cut his political teeth battling Tories in the UK, classical conservatives with their sense of decorum, presentation, and propriety. He cannot find them anymore. They have all gone far right. The conservative party in the UK saw Trumpism, saw the power it generated, and decided to emulate it. Now they have politicians saying Muslims praying in public makes them sick. That is what happens when you adopt the frame. I made the point that the far right is a globally collaborative movement, and we are both watching it operate across our respective countries in real time. I noted that JD Vance being in Hungary with Orban is not a coincidence. It is coordination.
James’s point about Mike Johnson crystallized the Republican enabling dynamic perfectly. You can see Johnson sitting there cringing at Trump’s garish language like a perverse uncle at the dinner table. He does not really like it. It makes him uncomfortable. But he is fine with it because Trump is making him powerful. That is all Trump had to do because he was never one of them in the first place. He is a base individual driven by base needs. And he got them all in line behind him by offering them exactly what they wanted: power and money, no decency required.
The Cost of Speaking Truth
James has been receiving coordinated death threats, three in the past week, with identical language about acid attacks, from three different accounts. I have spent a decade getting the N-word in my DMs on social media. Neither of us is stopping. But we are not pretending it does not cost anything either.
James described the three threats in detail. Same language across all three accounts, threatening an acid attack, saying they had his address, saying they would change his life forever. He reported them to the police through a broadcasting inbox. The police expressed sympathy but did nothing. What struck James was not the threats themselves, which he was largely desensitized to, but the reaction of someone close to him who heard about them for the first time. Their shock made him realize he had been blocking it out. He acknowledged it for what it is: he should be scared. He is choosing not to be because he knows the objective is intimidation, and he will not give them what they want.
I told my own truth. Ten years of racist messages in my DMs and replies. Growing up in Virginia, I had face-to-face run-ins, too. I have become desensitized to it, which is its own kind of telling. But my reframe is genuine: whenever I get it, I think about the fact that the person behind that keyboard, sending that message to a stranger, is miserable. That is the truth of it. No matter how Trump has made being a bad person seem profitable, these people are not rewarded with anything except being horrible people nobody wants to be around.
James made the broader point that these people exist because Trump told them this is the way. Be callous. Lead without empathy. And then when everyday people try it, they do not get the power or the money. They just become people nobody wants around. James knows people who have lost family members to this radicalization, people who have disappeared into the rabbit hole entirely. The grief of that is real.
Visualize Spring In the Shire
We closed where we needed to close. Not on the ceasefire terms. Not on the death threats. On hope. On what is coming. On visualizing spring in the Shire.
The results from yesterday told the real story. In Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, Marjorie Taylor Greene’s old seat, the Democratic candidate overperformed far above where Kamala Harris ran in that same district in 2024. Republicans are cooked. Trump is overreaching. Every data indicator, the polling, the marches, the No Kings protests, the special election swings, is pointing in the same direction. Democrats are about to go crazy at the ballot box, and the American people’s decency is going to strike back.
James gave the marching orders I think everyone in this community needs to hear right now. He will not have anyone in this chat feeling guilt or shame for being authentically themselves, living with joy, and putting their hearts on their sleeves. Nothing is wrong with you. Hold your head high. Have dignity. James has one word for what his politics is about: dignity. He wants everyone to have it and to live with it. That is what we are fighting for.
James invoked Sam’s speech from “The Lord of the Rings.” By all rights, we should not even be here. We did not choose this. We did not want this. But this shadow is but a passing thing. When Sam looks up through the clouds and sees the light, he knows it will be springtime in the Shire again. That is where we have to keep our eyes. That’s what we need to do. Visualize the spring in the Shire that is coming. Visualize how you will feel the morning after the midterms. Remember how you felt in 2020 when people were celebrating in the streets of New York like it was the end of Return of the Jedi. We made it then. We are going to make it again.
Bottom Line
Trump backed down. The world is far worse off than before the war. The Strait of Hormuz is now being monetized by Iran. Lebanon is still being attacked by Israel. And the man who threatened to wipe out a whole civilization is calling it all a total and complete victory.
We are not moving on from what Trump said. We are not letting the ceasefire erase the genocidal rhetoric. We are not pretending this is normal.
But we are also not giving up. Not even close. The swings we are seeing at the ballot box, the fracturing of Trump’s own base, the polling collapse, and the marches all point in the same direction.
This shadow is but a passing thing. There will be springtime in the Shire.
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