Thank you for watching! In the face of unrelenting disinformation and authoritarian actions, clear truth-telling and independent media are a necessity. If you value pro-democracy journalism, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber to my newsletter. Paid subscribers empower this work and gain access to exclusive benefits. Your support makes a difference.
While NATO shoots down an Iranian missile headed toward Turkish airspace in a war America’s allies didn’t start, Donald Trump is obsessing over his ballroom drapes.
It is the defining tension of this moment: a president who cannot sit still, surrounded by men who are giddy about death, dragging a world that didn’t ask for this war into the middle of one, all while he enriches himself. That is where we opened this week’s Across the Pond live podcast.
James Matthewson joined us from Edinburgh for what became one of the most honest, personal, and wide-ranging conversations we have had on this show.
James is a BBC and Sky News contributor, a former Labour Party adviser, and a working-class kid who has spent years navigating media institutions with his principles intact. That last part matters more than it sounds, and we will get to why.
We started where the news demanded we start: Europe’s reaction to the US-Israeli war on Iran. We talked about the NATO missile intercept over Turkey, Starmer’s Iraq War haunting, Spain’s Sanchez standing alone, and the shifting, contradictory justifications coming out of Washington.
But what this conversation really became was something bigger. Because the same qualities that make Trump a disastrous wartime leader, the inability to be still, the compulsive need to exert power, the total absence of character-affirming decisions across a lifetime, are the same qualities that produce bad men, bad media, and bad politics. The thread runs all the way through.
We also got personal. James talked about being offered a lobbying job for defense companies manufacturing weapons for Israel and turning it down. I talked about being approached by right-wing sponsors and saying no. Both of us sat with the question that every person with ambition eventually faces: What are you willing to trade for the money? We both agreed that we would never trade our principles and character.
By the end, we were talking about Alyssa Liu and the radical act of moving through the world with joy and pursuing greatness without pressuring yourself into misery. I promise it all connects.
If more men decided to find inner peace than give in to their rage, we wouldn’t have the world we have today. We wouldn’t have “Operation Epic Fury.”
This was one of my favorite conversations I’ve had here, and trust me, you’ll want to watch the whole thing. The live chat was popping off, and if you were there, thank you! If you’re here now, welcome.
You can watch the full conversation above and read key takeaways below.
Europe Is Walking a Tightrope & Starting to Wobble
The E3, Germany, France, and the UK, have tried to thread an impossible needle: condemn Iran's retaliation, avoid fully endorsing the war, and stay useful to Washington without getting pulled into a conflict most of their publics never voted for.
James has been making the rounds on UK news shows all week. I asked him simply: how is this landing? What has it been like since Friday? What followed was a ground-level view of a continent trying desperately to hold a position that gets harder to hold by the day.
The NATO missile intercept over Turkey was the week’s biggest escalation. We immediately flagged what it means structurally: Article 5 states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all. The fact that an Iranian missile was heading toward Turkish airspace, and that NATO had to shoot it down, puts that clause in play in a way it has never been with Iran. It is now a live conversation in allied capitals.
James explained that Starmer’s entire position rests on one distinction: defensive yes, offensive no. The UK agreed to let the US use British bases for defensive strikes on Iranian missile sites, but drew a hard line at offensive operations. As James noted, this is not just legal cover. It is political survival. Starmer is the first Labour PM since Blair, who took Britain into Iraq, and that war’s legacy still poisons everything Labour touches on foreign policy.
When Trump called Starmer ‘no Winston Churchill’ in the Oval Office, James gave me the full context. Starmer had actually seen an opening here politically. Resisting Trump plays well domestically. But the immediate result of any pushback is public humiliation. Behind the scenes, US officials reassured the British government that the relationship was fine. James’s read: the tension is real because the UK keeps denying Trump what he actually wants.
James broke down the Chagos Islands dispute for our American audience, because it barely registers in US coverage. There is a US military base called Diego Garcia on those islands in the Indian Ocean. Trump initially backed Labour’s deal to hand the islands to Mauritius, then reversed course when the Iran strikes started, with Nigel Farage and Steve Bannon lobbying him against it. Trump called it ‘that stupid little island.’ Nobody was sure at first if he meant the islands or Britain itself.
On Spain, I pointed out that Sanchez has gone further than any European leader, refusing all military involvement even after Trump threatened a full trade embargo. His line: Spain will not be complicit in something bad for the world just to avoid reprisals. James noted that for Sanchez, like Starmer, opposing another Western war in the Middle East is actually safer political ground domestically than supporting it.
The Shifting Justifications Are Headspinning
One of the clearest throughlines in our conversation was the sheer incoherence of the stated rationale for this war. James put it plainly: there have been at least three distinct justifications offered, and each one quietly buries the last. That is not accidental. The shifting objectives function as cover.
Justification one was nuclear capability and self-defense. As I pointed out, Trump himself had previously claimed Iran’s nuclear program was already obliterated in prior strikes. You cannot claim an imminent nuclear threat from a program you already said you destroyed. James agreed: the whiplash from justification to justification is intentional. It keeps everyone chasing the latest rationale instead of holding the original one accountable.
Justification two was liberating the Iranian people. James’s response to this was direct and unanswerable: you do not free people by killing them. He said it plainly. Over 100 schoolgirls died in strikes on Tehran. Those girls were not working at a plutonium enrichment facility. The bombs do not discriminate between the regime and the people the regime oppresses.
Justification three is regime change. James was clear on why this is a fantasy from the air: you cannot change a regime with bombs alone. It requires boots on the ground, ownership of the country, and handing power to someone else. We both know where that ends. It ends in Afghanistan. It ends in Iraq.
I brought up Trump floating Kurdish proxies as a potential ground component inside Iran. I further connected it to the betrayal in Northern Syria, where Trump abandoned the Kurds after they did the work of defeating ISIS, leaving them to be eviscerated by Turkey. I noted those same Kurds would have been part of the new Syria we see today if Trump hadn’t abandoned them. Why would any Kurdish faction trust this administration’s promises now?
I made the point that landed hard in the chat: the internet in Iran has been cut. Trump gave speeches directly addressing the Iranian people while they had no way to receive them. If this were genuinely about empowering dissidents, Starlink access over Iran would have been the first move. It was not even discussed. James’s response: he is standing up in a baseball cap, talking to people who can’t hear him. That tells you everything about how thought-through this actually is.
Two Men Who Need War To Stay In Power
We spent time on the structural dynamic that I think gets underreported: Trump and Netanyahu are not just allied. They are both using this war as a survival mechanism. James put it well: the tail is wagging the dog.
I laid out the Netanyahu timeline because context matters here. Before October 7th, he was facing massive street protests over his attacks on the Israeli judiciary and was politically nearly finished. Then Hamas attacked, and it gave him everything he needed to stay in power. He brought the far right into his coalition to do it, and now he won’t stop. The moment the guns go quiet, the accountability returns. James and I both have real anger at Hamas for the destruction they unleashed on the Palestinian people. That needs to be said. But Netanyahu was waiting for that excuse, and he used it.
James described watching Netanyahu in an interview this week and said he had never seen a man more visibly thrilled in the middle of a catastrophe. His eyes were glowing. I called him a horrible human being, and James agreed. The important distinction we both made: that is, Netanyahu the man, separate from the state of Israel and separate from the Jewish people, who he has weaponized as cover for his own political survival.
I made the point about Trump that I keep returning to: he walked into 2025 having won everything. He beat the prosecutions. He got his revenge. He could have been calm and vindicated. Instead, he immediately became his worst self, enriching himself through crypto, using the federal government to pay himself with taxpayer money, and starting a war Americans never asked for. The character-affirming decisions were never made across a lifetime. You become who you decide to be.
James made an observation that floored our chat: when the strikes started, and Trump came out to take questions, he started talking about the ballroom he is building at the White House. Bombs were dropping on civilians while he talked about interior decorating. James said what we’ve all been thinking here in the US: in any other country, at any other time in history, a leader doing that would have been relieved from office.
The Well-Funded Effort To Shift Independent Media To The Right
This is where the conversation took a turn that made it something more. James and I shared something genuinely rare for people in media to say out loud: we’ve been approached with money that contradicted our values, and we refused.
I told the audience about the right-wing sponsored content solicitations I still receive despite my entire output being pro-democracy and anti-disinformation. I connected it to a young Black woman, James debated on YouTube, who was arguing that England should be white and Christian, including herself, a daughter of a Nigerian immigrant. I argued that the far right did not persuade her. They bought her. That is how it works for Black conservatives.
I didn’t share any of this for credit; I shared it because people need to understand how systematic this targeting is. They come specifically for people who have audiences and principles. The offer is always calibrated to your bank account, your ambition, and what they think your number is.
James discussed how he was approached for a lobbying job, space sector, framed carefully, that turned out to represent three defense companies manufacturing weapons for Israel. The money was good enough to make him pause. He said no.
James’s friend cut through it immediately: they were not buying his expertise. They were buying his voice. His credibility. The job was designed to make him complicit, and the salary was designed to make him not notice the difference. James said he has slept soundly every night since he turned it down.
The path from the first compromise to becoming a full grifter is shorter than people think. It does not happen in one decision. It happens in hundreds of small ones. I pointed to Marco Rubio because you can see it on his face. The misery of a man who knows exactly what he traded and feels the weight of it every day.
James shared something about his grandmother and grandfather that I think is one of the most honest things said on this show. His grandmother used to tell him: You are too poor for principles. You cannot afford values. His grandfather was a revolutionary communist who would have given his last penny to stand on his. James leaned on his grandfather’s lesson when it mattered. That is a lesson for all of us.
This is why it’s so important for grassroots support to fund independent media.
The Manosphere, Misery, & The Men We Need Instead
We ended up here because it is actually where all the other threads lead. The men starting unnecessary wars, the men selling their principles, the men raging at Alyssa Liu for skating with joy. It is all the same underlying condition. Men who cannot sit still with themselves. Men who were taught that greatness requires misery, that power requires domination, that strength is something you perform rather than something you live.
The manosphere sells young men a version of themselves built entirely on pretense. Be ripped. Be stoic. Trick a woman into choosing you. James asked the question that exposes the whole con: once you get her through performance, then what? You cannot sustain a real relationship built on a character you invented. All of it collapses the moment you stop performing.
James and I both noted that we grew up in households shaped by women. I have a mother and two sisters. James was raised by a mother, who he lost in 2020. He said he has always been more comfortable around women than men, and that having real friendships with women changes how you see them entirely. You don’t view them as objects. That one shift makes most of the manosphere’s worldview fall apart immediately.
I brought up Olympic gold medalist Alyssa Liu. She has said publicly that the worst that could happen is she messes up a routine, and she is okay with that, and won with visible joy. A MAGA account responded by saying she needed a conservative man to put her in line. My read: that is not anger at her. That is rage at her peace. A grown man watching a young woman succeed entirely on her own terms and being unable to tolerate it.
I pointed out that Trump is the ultimate endpoint of the Andrew Tate path. He walked into 2025 having won everything and immediately became his worst self. Not peace. Not satisfaction. More aggression, more acquisition, more chaos. Because he never did the inner work that would have let him enjoy any of it. I also made the connection to the countless other men in our political and media landscape who chose the same path. You can see it on their faces.
The spiritual reawakening I called for at the end of this conversation is not religious. It is the choice to look inward, to find the stillness, to let the stillness tell you the truth about what you actually need. That is the hardest thing. Not the six pack, not the Mercedes, not the job offer you should not take. The misery is a choice. Joy is also a choice. Most of the men running our world are too afraid to make it the right one.
Bottom Line
The Iran war, the sellout economy of right-wing media, and the male loneliness crisis are not separate conversations. They are the same conversation. They are all downstream of what happens when men who have never sat still with themselves get access to power, money, or a platform. Trump cannot stop. Netanyahu cannot stop. Hegseth is gleeful about destruction. And in the media ecosystem feeding the politics that enabled all of this, the same dynamic plays out at every level. Someone gets offered a job, a sponsorship, a paid trip, and the question is always the same: What are you willing to trade?
James and I both said no this week. We will keep saying no. And we will keep doing this show, every Wednesday, because the antidote to all of it is exactly this: honest conversation, shared humanity, and the stubborn insistence that you can be ambitious and decent at the same time. That character should always run a little ahead of ambition. That joy is not weakness. That stillness is not complacency.
The world is in turmoil right now, but that doesn’t mean we have to be. Make sure to take some time to cultivate your inner peace. That’s the message I leave you with today.
If this conversation moved you, become a paid subscriber to Ahmed Baba News. And make sure to subscribe to James Matthewson’s Substack, too. Independent journalism only survives when you back the people doing it.
