Read the full transcript of British journalist and political commentator Douglas Murray’s interview on Charlie Rose Global Conversation titled “Donald Trump, America, Israel, and Europe”, August 9, 2025.
Introduction
CHARLIE ROSE: Douglas Murray is a British journalist, author and political commentator whose work explores major themes in politics and culture affecting the future of Europe and America. He is an associate editor at the Spectator magazine, a columnist for the New York Post, and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute.
Douglas Murray has written eight books. He was educated at Eton and Oxford and wrote his first one, a biography of Lord Alfred Douglas at age 20. His most recent book, “On Democracies and Death, Israel and the Future of Civilization,” was written after months of on-the-ground reporting in Israel following the October 7 attacks.
His other works reflect his interest in the plight of nations include “The War on the West,” “How to Prevail in the Age of Unreason,” “The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity,” “The Strange Death of Europe.” Other titles include “Neoconservatism: Why We Need It,” “Islamophobia: A Very Metropolitan Malady.”
We are at this moment at an important time. As Israeli operations in Gaza continue and the humanitarian crisis remains severe. We will talk about many things, including Donald Trump, his 10-year influence on America and global politics, the consequences of war in Gaza and Ukraine, the future of Western liberal values and Murray’s self-definition.
My interview with Douglas Murray is another global conversation about America from the experience of those in media, politics, technology, entertainment, business, universities and the law. We will include a variety of voices from the left, right and center in those conversations, including a debate on what Douglas Murray and others have written on Islam which we do not address in this zoom. I am pleased to have Douglas Murray join me. Welcome. It’s a pleasure to have you here.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Very good to be with you.
Israel and Gaza: Netanyahu’s Intent
CHARLIE ROSE: I want to begin this interview with headlines from today’s newspapers. One is “Israelis briefed on war options.” Because you went there and because you have written often about Israel, what is your opinion of what may be the intent of Benjamin Netanyahu with respect to Gaza?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, as I understand it, the intent remains the same as it’s been since pretty much October-November 2023, which is to try to rid Gaza of Hamas and to get back the remaining Israeli hostages.
Those two war aims have been very largely achieved. I think if you spoke to a lot of Israelis on October 8, they’d have said there’s no way any of the hostages are coming home. And yet of course most of them have through a set of means, sometimes rescues, more often negotiations during ceasefires.
The task of finishing off Hamas in Gaza seems to be, along with the remaining Israeli hostages, a very considerable problem. They retain some grip on much of Gaza and I think that some of the discontent that we see around the world at the moment is a result both outside of Israel, but also inside of Israel.
A lot of critics of the government have been coming forward, particularly in recent days and weeks. I think a lot of that criticism comes from the feeling that it’s gone on a long time now and there seems to be little progress. And I think that’s to some extent a valid critique. Certainly there’s been nothing like the progress that was seen against Hezbollah a year ago. And yes, there’s a sort of sense that it’s going on too long.
But if the outside world thinks that, then obviously the citizens of Israel and Gaza think that even more. I think the big, really insuperable problem is the question of what happens with governance in Gaza if Hamas were to be even further denigrated as an organization than it has been. That’s a very, very difficult problem.
The Palestinian Authority in Judea and Samaria, the West Bank doesn’t want to run Gaza, obviously has an intimate fight with Hamas. Are there local tribal groups that can? Occasionally information on that comes up occasionally, hope emerges. But this is a really difficult part of the jigsaw of the wider war.
The Epstein Controversy and Trump
CHARLIE ROSE: The other headline is “Stakes Rise as Epstein’s Subpoena Hits Department of Justice.” Tell me your reaction to the extent of this controversy about the friendship between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: It’s extraordinary, isn’t it, Charlie? I mean, it’s clear that Jeffrey Epstein was, whatever else you say, clearly an extraordinary networker. I think that most people, certainly a large number of people in New York social and public life and wider American life, fell into his orbit.
The most generous interpretation of that is that he was a generous host through lavish parties. The problem is that what we, the public want to know is, where did that cross over with very unsocial activities and indeed illegal activities.
And the fact that Jeffrey Epstein was such a networker means that a lot of people have been named as being in his orbit who haven’t done anything wrong and aren’t indeed accused of doing anything wrong, but are kind of smeared by association.
But then there’s this ongoing problem that the public have with this: how come we know he was a serial predator? How come we know that there are the girls who made accusations against him, said there were other men who they were trafficked to, and the only person who’s gone to prison for this, apart from Jeffrey Epstein is Ghislaine Maxwell.
I think there’s this just ongoing question, and it’s hard to think of a time in American life when there has been such sort of compromising feeling about the higher echelons of both political parties, multiple figures in the media, entertainment world, the universities, the sciences, and much more.
So I think that feeling of just “we’re not getting answers to really quite basic questions” is something that means this whole story is sort of rife for wider conspiracy thinking, because there clearly was some kind of conspiracy in the Epstein network, but we haven’t had it out.
Maybe the Ghislaine Maxwell cooperation will bring something out, but I wouldn’t bet on that.
The Big Stories of the 21st Century
CHARLIE ROSE: I want to come back to some of these issues having to do with the president, but sort of shift to what I call three and four themes that I think you’ll be interested in.
One is what are the biggest stories of the first quarter of the 21st century? I have three suggestions, and you have written about all of them. One is what’s happening to liberal democracy that sort of began after World War II. Two is the rise of China, and three is the impact of AI.
The four things that I’m interested in are what are the risks to the world today? One is obviously nuclear, two is biological, three is climate, and four is technology.
And finally, I cite Peter Baker, who wrote a piece on the 10th anniversary of Donald Trump’s descent down the escalator to announce his candidacy in 2015. And I quote from Peter, he said: “It has been 10 years now, and as of Monday, since Donald Trump descended to the lobby of his namesake tower to announce his campaign for president. Ten years of jaw-dropping, woke-busting, scandal-defying, status quo-smashing politics that have transformed America for good or ill in profoundly fundamental ways. In those 10 years, Mr. Trump has come to define his age in a way rarely seen in America, more so than any president of the past century other than Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan, even though he has never had anywhere near their broad public support. Somehow the most unpopular president in the history of polling has translated the backing of a minority of Americans into the most consequential political force of modern times, rewriting all of the rules along the way.”
If Peter is right, in which he suggests Donald Trump is the most consequential political figure of our time, do you agree with him and what would you add to that?
Trump as a Transformative Figure
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I do agree with that. I think firstly, if Trump had only won the 2016 election, he would have been an extraordinarily important figure in America and indeed world politics. This is somebody who had run for no elected office before. He’d been mulling for decades and teased interviewers and others about whether or not he’d ever swap business for politics. It always looked like he was looking for his moment, but he didn’t see it coming.
He takes one serious run at it and he wins first time, smashing through not, of course, just all of the leadership of the Republican Party, but then his Democratic opponent as well. So if he’d have just done that, that would have been hugely significant.
Whatever your views about him, after January 6, 2021, I think a lot of people had the presumption, “Okay, this was a blip, a strange blip in American politics, and it’s now in the rearview mirror.” His re-election in 2024 makes him without doubt a historic president already for several reasons.
One is just the repeat electoral success in the face of extraordinary amounts of efforts to take him out. I mean, every single possible route was tried and he saw them off and he got the vote. And in a way that many of us didn’t expect. I never expected him to get the popular vote. That was sort of icing on the cake for him and his campaign.
He’s obviously a highly consequential president and there are several things that go back to your issue of the big things in our time. I think there are several issues you just raised which clearly Trump speaks to. He is and always has been since he first ran. He’s the biggest, toughest, nastiest cudgel that some voters can pick up to hit back at the big things in our time that they saw going on and they thought looked like they were just going to keep sliding on: China’s rise against America, China’s economic rise, America’s economic stagnation.
The Migration Challenge
So I would, by the way, add another thing to your list, if I may, which in my view, and I’ve obviously written this at book length, I think one of the big issues of the 21st century, which we’re clearly grappling with everywhere is this simple issue of freedom of movement in the modern world.
I think that people have been wildly underestimating in the developed world, the number of people who want from the developing world to come to the developed world and what that means. I mean, the relative ease and cheapness of travel, the fact that we all have devices in our pockets now, even in some of the poorest bits of Sub-Saharan Africa, you’ll notice everyone has a mobile phone. People can see what life looks like in a better place, and that’s just transforming everything.
And that’s one of the reasons, of course, maybe the biggest reason for Trump’s re-election in 2024 was a reaction to that. We see that in Europe as well. A lot of political parties, governments, have come into office principally on that issue as a counterweight.
And so, yes, I mean, Trump is an enormously consequential figure. And as I say, it’s partly to do with just the fact that he has smashed through everything repeatedly in his career. There’s almost no trick that works against him. He’s like a sort of comic book figure where it doesn’t matter what forces are projected against him. He has a kind of force field and can see things off.
I think that already in this term, he’s done some hugely significant things, the tariffs, the war in the Middle East, and much more. Yes, he’s transformative.
CHARLIE ROSE: What is it about him that you think is misunderstood by his enemies?
Trump’s Political Evolution and Consistency
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Gosh, quite a lot. I think he was more misunderstood in his first term in office than he is now. I think people have got a better sense of him, and I think he’s more competent in his second term simply because I think they expected to get in.
I mean, there are lots of personality issues about him that people have underestimated. I think that in some ways, people there was a sense when he was first elected that it was cynical, that he had basically picked up a set of issues which he saw could help make him win. I think that’s wrong.
I think that actually he has very clear, consistent principles which actually, if you look back at his books and his statements and back 40 years now, are actually remarkably consistent. You know, his statements on unfair trade going back decades are what he’s been saying and acted on now.
So I think he is actually a person of considerable political principle. And they’re quite basic principles in some way, but it’s like the old game of the hedgehog and the fox. He seems to know a few very important basic and fundamental things. And it’s not that he’s faking it.
Like, I don’t think that his culture war stances are actually cynical in the way that a lot of people think they are. I think they’re rooted in a feeling that he has, in my observation, the times I spent with him, that for instance, you know, he loves America, he admires America, he doesn’t like people talking it down.
And to that extent, you know, speaks just naturally to the millions of Americans who feel that their country has been talked down in recent years. I also think, by the way, on a personal level, people have underestimated how just extraordinarily capable he has been of walking through a type of fire that it’s hard to think of any other political leader in our time having gone through.
CHARLIE ROSE: He’s been counted out often.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Oh, I mean, I remember being in the US in 2016. Was it 2015, 2016, when he made the remarks about John McCain, a front page of all the newspapers. And I remember a friend of mine who worked in government just saying, “He’s done, he’s done. You know, when you just can’t say that about a war hero.”
It worked. I think of all the trials, I mean, I’ve seen this with a few political leaders, but none more so than him. Somebody who’s able to be in a courthouse all day and spend the evening campaigning. This is a sort of unique power.
The 2024 Victory: Issues Over Personality
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think that in 2024, he won because of issues or personality?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: It was issues, I think, and the promise that he alone could address those.
CHARLIE ROSE: Issues, whether it was economic immigration.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Economic immigration. And by then, it was so clear. I wrote this in the New York Post, but I was with him and his team at the Madison Square Garden rally, which I was covering in New York. And one, it was about a week ahead of the election.
And I remember something that was just so extraordinary, which was that you saw New Yorkers wearing Trump MAGA hats in the center of New York, having packed out Madison Square Garden. And there were people who you would see at those areas and speak to an interview, who would never have voted for Trump in 2016, might have voted for him in 2020, but would have done so secretly. And here they were in New York dressed in full MAGA regalia.
CHARLIE ROSE: But also after January 6, there were people who swore off of Donald Trump.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Absolutely, absolutely.
CHARLIE ROSE: And then came back.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yeah, I mean to many of us it looked like an absolutely career ending catastrophe for sure. But as I say, he gets a few things really right. I think that when he talks about the border, Democrats, like the left wing counterparts in Europe quite often talk about having a secure border as if it’s an infinitely complicated thing, as if it’s an unbelievable problem you just can’t solve.
The Labour government in the UK talks like that at the moment and Trump said, “No, it’s actually easy to solve. It’s quite straightforward. You just have to secure the border.” And he’s done it.
Foreign Policy Challenges: Ukraine and Putin
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, but at the same time he said things like, you know, he would end the Ukrainian war.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. Oh, well, I’ve said this repeatedly. I mean, when he’s very interesting. These are two wars, both the Middle east war and the Ukraine war that I’ve covered. And it was very interesting watching him on the campaign trail and so on. He kept on saying it would never have happened on my watch. That may or may not be true. It’s a counterfactual. No one knows.
His boast that he could solve both wars and stop them in seconds flat is his most sort of hubristic promise. And I would say, by the way, that the Ukraine war, his promise to end that, has shown itself to be a harder problem than the war in the Middle East.
CHARLIE ROSE: Why do you say that?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, I think he massively overestimated his ability to rein in Vladimir Putin. I think that because he believed he had a working relationship that was being mutually respectful in some way, not needlessly antagonistic and so on as he would see it. I think he thought that Putin would do what he asked him to do.
I mean, you know, how surprising. Putin doesn’t play along and has repeatedly shown the President to be wrong. I mean, the President’s, you know, he promised, Putin promised Trump earlier this year that he would not attack energy infrastructure in Ukraine. 24 hours later, you know, he fires one of the largest salvos against Ukrainian energy infrastructure facilities.
Trump’s Approach to Autocratic Leaders
CHARLIE ROSE: If you look at Hungary and look at other places, he does seem to like autocratic leaders.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: That’s one of the least salutary parts of him, I think, in a way. And at the same time that’s the game he plays. He tries.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, that’s who he is.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: No, that’s the game he plays. So, for instance, he recognizes that with North Korea, nothing has shifted since the end of the Korean War. I remember some years ago, I was in North Korea and I came back and I spoke to various diplomats in the west and everyone was sort of talking about the inevitable question, “When does the regime fall?”
And you’re just like, this is now the third generation of a Marxist monarchical dynasty. This could just go on and on. So in a way, when Trump, it’s a classic thing of people misinterpreting Trump, when Trump says, you know, “Kim Jong Un is my friend, he’s a great guy, you know, look, make us look slim in the photos.”
There’s a way of looking at that, which is how appalling. This is an appalling despot. How could you say anything nice about him? That’s certainly true. But the counterweight is nothing has worked from the. Nothing has so far succeeded in cracking the regime. There’s no way you can isolate North Korea more. It’s the most isolated place on earth, so maybe try something new.
CHARLIE ROSE: I have suggested this and others I see. It seems that he believes that he can somehow, with charm and flattery and person to person communication.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Bring about significant policy changes.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: He’s not the only politician who believes that about himself. I mean, I can think of any number of politicians. I remember Tony Blair, very, very skillful politician. One of his failings was that he believed he was such a great communicator that he could persuade anyone of anything if you just put him in front of them. And that just isn’t so.
Trump on Putin is a particularly complicated one, because in my view, and those of us who’ve been critical of the president on his Ukraine policy, in my view, the problem is that the desire to try something different and do something different has been shown on a number of occasions to get into wild overreach.
I made a very public criticism of the president earlier this year when he said in a press conference that Zelenskyy and Ukraine had started the war and that Zelenskyy was a dictator and that was. I could understand why he might be saying that for some reason to show Putin he was beating up on Zelensky to get something from Putin. But the reality is that’s just flat out wrong. Russia started the war. Putin is the.
CHARLIE ROSE: But he has to know that, doesn’t he?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, the funny thing is that, of course, immediately afterwards, within 24 hours I did a front page in the New York Post with a picture of Vladimir Putin that said, “This is a dictator, Mr. President.” And the funny thing about it was that within about 24 hours somebody said, “Do you still think that Ukraine started the war and that Zelensky is a dictator?” And he said, “Did I say that?”
Trump’s Evolving Ukraine Strategy
CHARLIE ROSE: So when you look at his intent to end the war in Ukraine, do you believe that he has now changed? Do you take seriously what he is now saying about Putin, even to the extent of shortening the time that he has to make a change in his policy?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. I do. I do think that. I think clearly Putin has, by continuing the war and often escalating the war has come to a point of aggravating President Trump, in my view. As I say, he hasn’t given Trump what Trump hoped he would get.
And the 50 day window seemed to me that it’s perfectly possible that Trump did with Iran. And he’s done in other situations something that is akin to that old sort of schoolboy trick of saying, “On the count of three, jump, 1, 2, 3.” Yes, he’s done that before. And it’s possible he’s doing that with Putin at the moment with secondary tariffs and more.
But I mean, my view is that on what you refer to as the admiration for autocratic leaders, I’d say see it another way. I think my belief is that Trump realizes in a world where a lot of countries are not liberal democracies, you’re dealing with some bad people, that very often our own elected leaders in Western democracies have underestimated the kind of people we’re dealing with and that you’ve got to behave differently with them, whether it’s Putin, whether it’s the Mullers, whether it’s Kim Jong Un, and he may be right in that, we’ll see.
But as I say, so far, the failure to end the Ukraine, Russia war is the biggest foreign policy failing that he has so far.
Netanyahu and Israeli Politics
CHARLIE ROSE: A lot of people thought he would have more influence with Benjamin Netanyahu. Did you?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Not especially, no. Because Netanyahu is one of only two Israeli leaders who have ever said no very strongly to an American president, the other one being Golda Meir. And so if it’s not what Netanyahu believes is in the interests of his country, even an American president telling him to do something will not, I think, will not make him budge on a fundamental point.
He might, as with his dealings with Biden around the edges do things. But if it’s a fundamental belief of Netanyahu’s about the safety of his country, I don’t think there’s anyone really on earth who can budge him. I think the readouts about the Biden, Netanyahu conversations in about 2024, where Biden was railing and calling Netanyahu and much more down the phone, I think those readouts are wildly accurate for once.
The Gaza Dilemma
CHARLIE ROSE: What do you think Benjamin Netanyahu wants to do with respect to Gaza?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: You know, there have been plans published by the Israeli Prime Minister, by the war Cabinet in the past about the day after plan for Gaza. I don’t think anyone can say that they aren’t slightly thin. Well, and I think that points to a very difficult problem which is ongoing and it’s been there for, well, 20 years now, which is who wants to own or run Gaza.
I don’t think there’s any Israeli, and I say this for the citizenry as well as the political class, who wants to be risking their life or losing their life in Gaza for the next 20 years as well, even after a ceasefire, just in policing, maintaining security.
I think that when Ariel Sharon made his historic withdrawal in 2005, it was done in a very strong sense of, “We’ve had enough with this place. We just don’t want to keep losing Israeli troops to snipers and kidnap and so on. We just want out.”
But of course, Egypt doesn’t want Gaza. And the Egyptian government’s very, very strong insistence since October 2023 that they were not going to allow a flow of refugees into Egypt has made the situation infinitely more complicated.
CHARLIE ROSE: As I know you know, the New York Times ran a long piece about the fact that the war continues because Benjamin Netanyahu needs for it to continue so that he can avoid whatever legal implications there are for his trial.
Netanyahu’s Legal Challenges and Political Survival
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, I’ve read many pieces about that and they are all equally unpersuasive and uninformed. It’s an extraordinary claim for several reasons. One is that Netanyahu has shown that he is perfectly capable of attending his trial in Jerusalem and running a war and indeed, a country. Like I mentioned that with Trump, he has, he’s in some days, he’s been in court three or four days a week whilst running a war and a cabinet and an economy and much more.
There’s one other reason why this doesn’t stack up, which is the charges against Netanyahu that he’s answering for have been repeatedly shown in court to be just wildly frivolous and are no real threat to him unless a highly politicized judiciary in Israel were to decide it was the best means of taking him out. There have been some of the claims against him are so frivolous that I don’t think they pose any serious threat to him. In any case, he still has another, what, 18 months of mandate. My impression is that he wants to finish this term in office and finish the war.
CHARLIE ROSE: And he’s already the longest serving prime minister in the history of Israel.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Exactly. He’s the longest serving prime minister in the history of the state. He’s been in power for many years. He has little else to prove historically and so on and is already arguably in the position of having saved his reputation from what seemed like just as, I mean on a much more serious level. But just as January 6, so many people thought was going to see off Donald Trump for good. Many people assumed that the security intelligence military failings of Israel on October 7 would absolutely finish Netanyahu. And that hasn’t been the case.
He’s a politician that nobody should bet against in terms of political survival. I think again, it’s easy to view politicians you disagree with uncharitably. It’s very, very easy. And the most unsatisfactory defense, the most unsatisfactory attacks on Netanyahu always come down to the idea that there is something deeply cynical about the man and only cynicism and a desire to remain in office. And the reality is, as anyone who’s ever sat down with him knows, he is his father’s son. He is deeply, deeply, historically committed to his role and believes he has a…
CHARLIE ROSE: Role in his as a defender of the security of the state of Israel.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: And as somebody who’s warned about the Iranian threat for decades. That’s the other. It’s very interesting watching the events in over Iran in the last recent months that they are an example, a rare example I think we can both agree in, in history where you see somebody fulfilling the promise of their own destiny that this was Netanyahu’s belief that he, his job historically would be to make sure that the Iranian revolutionary government never got hold of nuclear weapons. And earlier this year he seemed to have achieved his historic opportunity. I think that’s much more important to understand about him than claims that because he, somebody may have given him some cigars 20 years ago. He needs to cynically…
CHARLIE ROSE: But there is also this he one, he’s, he’s made common cause with some characters in his government so that he could survive as prime minister that a lot of people have been critical of.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Oh, yeah, yes, for sure. The Israeli coalition politics is a nightmare there.
Israel’s International Standing and Public Opinion
CHARLIE ROSE: There is also the notion of what Israel has suffered in terms of world opinion. Now, Israel has always said, you know, been willing to suffer some criticism in order to defend their security. Yes, when they had few friends in the UN or in other places other than the United States and a few other countries. But it has never been, I suspect, as deep as it is now because of the suffering that people see, because of the hunger that has taken place. Do you agree with that or not?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I agree with it partly, yes. I mean, I think that there have been more dangerous times in Israel’s history. I think of 1973, for instance, the oil embargo, which had a real impact economically around the world. I think that the ongoing war in Gaza is undoubtedly tilting what you might call uncommitted public opinion against Israel, by which I mean people who don’t have a strong view either way on the conflict are neither wildly pro Israel nor wildly pro Palestinian, but the sort of larger middle seems inevitably to be being influenced. All the polls in America, Europe and so on show this. And that’s obviously because of the pictures coming out daily.
I think that there is a considerable misunderstanding and indeed a desire to misunderstand what is happening in Gaza. The biggest problem in Gaza in terms of food distribution is that the UN will not distribute food on the ground and stop Hamas from seizing it. And in the end, it has been Israel and to a great extent America in cooperation, left with the responsibility of distributing food in Gaza. And it’s not the case, and I’ve seen this in my own eyes there, that it’s not the case that there is not food getting in. The problem is distribution.
CHARLIE ROSE: But there are people on the ground who suggest that the Israelis have not done everything they could to get the food in the hands of starving people.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. And the two things it’s worth saying about that are, firstly, this massive problem of Hamas seizing aid and selling it on to the people or keeping it for themselves, that is. That is a problem in Gaza. Hamas has now very few ways to fund its war machine. That is one of them.
But the second thing is, of course, and this comes down to a very, very serious problem that Israel faces now, as it has in previous conflicts, is the expectation, and I think actually today, and indeed historically, it’s a unique expectation. I write about this in my recent book on democracies and death cults. The unique expectation that in a war, Israel should be expected and is expected to provide electricity and other supplies, including food, into the territory that it’s fighting in. The Russians are not expected to provide Ukraine with aid or with electricity or with food.
CHARLIE ROSE: Russians have been criticized for their treatment of political prisoners and wartime prisoners.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Absolutely. But it’s very strange that in the case of Israel, there are certain expectations of how Israel is meant to perform that I would argue are a triple standard from the way in which any other army is meant to perform. But yes, this issue, whatever you think about it and whatever the misunderstanding and the mis portrayals and so on, clearly this is having a massive effect on public opinion, which is why one reason why internally in Israel, there are so many people saying to Netanyahu, “You’ve got to come to a halt.” Whereas his argument is if we were to do so, we would give Hamas the lifeline at the very moment before the opportunity of victory.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s also the argument of some of his allies that people object to in Knesset, Ben…
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Gvir and so on.
The Gaza Crisis and International Response
CHARLIE ROSE: Exactly. Let me read from you. Brett Stevens had a column today in the New York Times which you may have seen, I suspect you did. “First and most obviously,” he begins, “the government of Israel needs to rush in abundant qualities and to immediately and undeniably affect food and medicine to the places in Gaza that desperately need them.”
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I come back to this issue. It’s a very banal one, but it’s the difficulty of distributing food in a territory where Hamas still has some significant control and where the UN and other agencies who would normally operate to fulfill this role refuse to fulfill that role, meaning that it’s down to Israeli soldiers to do so. I think this is a unique problem. I agree it should be solved. I agree it should be answered because it’s in the interests of both Palestinians in Gaza and indeed of Israel and its international reputation to address it.
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you agree also that Israel should not try to reoccupy Gaza?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Oh, I mean, I think it would be a nightmare. I think it would be a nightmare. As I mentioned earlier, I think that no Israeli wants to. I mentioned in my in on democracies and death cults, I mentioned one moment in the middle of the Gaza Strip in, I suppose, November, December 2023, and I was just up from the Shifa compound, the humanitarian corridor that was allowing refugees within Gaza who are not Hamas to move from the north to the south.
And I turned to an Israeli colonel that was with me, and I said, you know, being British, I would say, you know, we do small talk. And so I thought of saying, you know, “Do you come here often?” But ended up saying to him, you know, “When were you last here?” No, I said, “Have you been here before?” And he looked at me with one of the saddest looks and he said, “I was last here in 2005, tearing family friends from their houses. And now 18 years later, here I am back again.”
I don’t believe there’s any Israeli in the IDF who wants 18 years from now to be back in Gaza. I think some other answer has to be found to the problem. And that, by the way, is why I wasn’t uncritical of President Trump when he speculated the other month about trying something radically different, like allowing people who want to leave the war zone to leave. But Gaza is part of an intractable problem, and unfortunately for Israel, it’s an intractable problem that the world is obsessed by. The North Cyprus problem is also an intractable problem, but nobody talks about it from one year to the next. And it’s by no means a problem for the Turkish government.
CHARLIE ROSE: Bret Stephens ends his column by saying what you just said. “If Netanyahu makes the colossal mistake of trying to reoccupy Gaza for the long, long term, then no thoughtful person can be pro Israel without also being against him.”
DOUGLAS MURRAY: It would depend on the parameters of it happening. I as I say, isn’t it fascinating that of all of the challenges Israel has faced since October 7 and before, the problem of Iran’s nuclear facilities has proved to be relatively easy. The problem of taking out Hezbollah’s weaponry in the south of Lebanon and its leadership across Lebanon has proved to be miraculous, not easy, but extraordinary. And it’s Gaza that is the insoluble problem.
I have heard of, there has been for a while speculation there could be a multi country cooperation in the area, maybe involving the Saudis, the Emiratis, the Israelis and others to have joint different responsibilities within Gaza. Somebody could be in charge of security and so on. But that plan is, it seems already to be still far away.
CHARLIE ROSE: But doesn’t it need a ceasefire before.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: It needs a ceasefire and much more? I mean, if you look at Gaza, it’s not because the Israelis have been bombing indiscriminately, but because when you clear house to house in areas that have been very heavily mined, very heavily booby trapped and so much more, there’s hardly an undamaged building that I’ve seen in Gaza, I cannot see how you would get any international cooperation to rebuild Gaza. If the people rebuilding it think this is going to happen again in a year’s time or anything more, obviously has to be a ceasefire. Otherwise rebuilding and much more just cannot begin.
Rising Antisemitism
CHARLIE ROSE: Do you think there’s a rise in antisemitism in the world?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Without a doubt. And without a doubt.
CHARLIE ROSE: And is part of that rise, because what people are seeing on television…
European Concerns About Israel and Anti-Semitism
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Actually think it isn’t. I think it could be a component, but I would say that that’s putting the cart before the horse. I believe that the world’s obsession with Israel, Israel’s security, Israel’s government, Israel’s government’s actions, its military’s actions, betrays something that’s latent there already.
There is no other country in the world that has for so many years suffered such an extraordinary amount of international attention. And there is of all of the stateless people in the world or people who don’t have states again, there is no, from one year to the next major push to give the Kurdish people who do not have a statehood, statehood. And the world does not obsess about this question.
The Palestinian question is used against the state of Israel as a way to keep demonstrating Israeli iniquity. And I think there are several reasons for that, very deep reasons. In Europe, by the way, you’re different in Europe and America. The left has its own reasons for doing this with Israel. The right now has its own reasons for doing this with Israel.
For instance, we now see a rise of right wing anti-Semitism on the fringes, hopefully at the moment still. But for instance, a dislike of Israel for being what they see as being an ethno state, which it isn’t, but a belief simultaneously that Jews push migration elsewhere and therefore Israel is uniquely guilty on the left. There are all sorts of variants of this themselves.
But consider the fact that for instance, in Europe, it is European soft powers like Germany, Sweden and others that are always the first to accuse Israel of certain crimes. And if you just stand back and you say why would Europeans be accusing Israel of for instance, setting up a Warsaw ghetto like thing or a concentration camp, or of committing genocide and much more, I’m afraid.
I think what we see is people speaking to very, very deep existing prejudices, not just anti-Semitism, but in the case of Europe, as the old joke goes, rather dark joke. But you know, the Europeans will never forgive the Jews for the Holocaust. And if you can accuse Israel of committing crimes in the 21st century that some European countries committed in the 20th century, then you can kind of drop your own historical guilt.
These are very, very deep psychological motivations to accuse Israel of doing things, whether it is doing them or not. And I think that that exists already. And as I say, I think that is the very, very deep factors that are causing the rise of anti-Semitism on the political left, the political right in Western countries, in non Western countries.
MAGA Movement and Middle East Perspectives
CHARLIE ROSE: Is within the MAGA movement, you know, various opinions about war per se, certainly the Ukrainian war, but, and, but also about war in the Middle East.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. And I think the one reason for that is the enormous good luck we have in America, which is America has never been, certainly not for a long time, at any meaningful risk of land invasion. If you extrapolated out what happened to Israel on October 7th to the US it would be equivalent to, I think I worked out it would be equivalent in population terms to 44,000 Americans being killed in one day and 10,000 being taken hostage.
And if you ask American public opinion about what they would do in that, I don’t believe that Americans, the vast majority of Americans wouldn’t say we’d do anything to retaliate to that.
CHARLIE ROSE: Anyone, most of the people that have looked at that believe that Israel should have retaliated after October 7th.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. What a lot of people. Just to finish that point about America, it’s very hard for many Americans to consider what it is like for an invading army, like the invading army of Hamas on the 7th to roll into your territory in the same way it’s impossible to conceive of what it is like when Vladimir Putin’s tanks are 20 kilometers from your home. So I think that that is one important factor.
I think the second is, and I’ve said this for many years, I think I might have said it first during the 2006 Lebanon War. There is a very peculiar thing to do with wars involving Israel, which is the extent to which internationally people force Israel, the international community forces Israel to some kind of ceasefire before it has been able to achieve its strategic objectives.
And as a result, wittingly or unwittingly, the international community sets up the status quo for the next round of the conflict. What I mean by that is, for instance, if Israel had been, as it were allowed to finish off Hezbollah In Lebanon in 2006, there would not have been an Israel Hezbollah war again from 2023 until the current day.
If it had been allowed to destroy Hamas in 2010, you would not have had to have had another Hamas Israel war several times in the succeeding decade. I believe that the demand to return to some kind of status quo ante is a mistake because my observation, I’ve said it many times, is that we have a Western presupposition these days that conflicts end by getting around a negotiating table and hammering it out. There are cases when that is true.
Iran as the Root of Middle East Conflicts
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, there are also people who suggested that one of the issues in the Middle east with Hamas and Hezbollah was the fact that they did not go after sufficiently the head of the snake in this case describing Iran.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: That’s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: This was the time that at long last Iran was attacked by Israel and the United States.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. And that has been, I think now historians will see that what is it, what it has been since October 7th has been pulling a sort of weave from a rug slowly until you can pull the whole thing out. And the thing at the end was always the government in Tehran, which has been funding these proxies of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and so on. That was the ultimate goal.
But then, as I say, just to finish the point, I think that it’s important to just bear in mind that historically most wars end not because of a negotiated settlement, but because one side wins and one side loses and Israel can never afford one major loss.
Ukraine War and Negotiated Settlements
CHARLIE ROSE: But are you going to say when there is a demand for a negotiated settlement to the Ukrainian war that this is not the appropriate direction to go?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I’ve said repeatedly with the end of Ukrainian war that it’s almost equally insuperable at the moment. Because when I was last in Ukraine a couple of months ago, I was on the front line with a battalion whose homes were literally, you know, either behind enemy lines or very, very close to them.
And so when I heard people in the west talking once again about just giving up certain regions of Ukraine to the Russians in a negotiated settlement, I thought, you’ve no idea. This is. People do not voluntarily give up their houses. And in fact, many, many Ukrainians I spoke to, by the way, believe that if Zelensky had been forced to some kind of negotiated settlement earlier this year, that the Ukrainian army would have fought on anyway.
CHARLIE ROSE: So why was Donald Trump so late in coming to that recognition of the courage and bravery and suffering of the Ukrainian people.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: My suspicion is that it comes down to several things he really does have. Again, I think it’s something people misunderstand him, but it’s a very basic thing. He genuinely wants to stop the killing. He just sees the killing and he wants it to stop Russians.
CHARLIE ROSE: But the only way to stop the killing is negotiated settlement with Vladimir Putin in which he gained some of the territory of Ukraine.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, this is the big disagreement between the Europeans and Trump on this because Trump and some people around him seem to be under the impression that Ukraine was all Putin wanted and, or ever wants. And as I’ve said many times, I remember it was in Georgia after the 2008 war when he invaded the country of Georgia.
If you go and speak with our friends in the Baltic states, none of them think or go to Warsaw, absolutely none of them think that Ukraine is all Putin wants. So why Trump seems to sometimes suggest that he would like to feed the crocodile in the case of giving up certain regions? I don’t know. I mean, I think the mineral deal.
CHARLIE ROSE: It’s naive, is it not?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I wouldn’t say it’s naive, but I think it’s misguided, that belief. Yes, I think that’s misguided. I think the mineral deal was an attempt to do something where Trump could claim a victory with his base, the Russians could pretend they had something, and Zelensky could pretend he’d given something in.
CHARLIE ROSE: Which the Ukrainian pledged some of that mineral wealth to the United States in exchange for the continued support.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. And by the way, of course, which.
CHARLIE ROSE: Is now, as you know better than me.
DOUGLAS MURRAY:
CHARLIE ROSE: Reflected in a deal in which they sell arms to the Europeans and the Europeans give them to the Ukrainians.
NATO Spending and European Defense
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, you know, it’s an interesting one that, because it goes back to this thing in Trump won. There were lots of people who said Trump was anti NATO, anti the Western alliance, and much more. And again, it was an ungenerous and wrong headed interpretation. He has said, as many American presidents had of both political parties for many decades, that the Europeans should pay their own darn way in NATO.
CHARLIE ROSE: But everybody, every other president has said the same thing, Vladimir.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I know, but nobody ever got them to.
CHARLIE ROSE: That’s true.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Nobody got them to. Until Trump pulled out the biggest, bulliest truncheon and started to intimate that he would leave the Europeans alone. But if the Europeans, and I include the British in this, if they, if Vladimir Putin is the threat they, I think, genuinely see him as being, then it is inexplicable that they couldn’t meet their NATO requirements in terms of spending.
And, you know, when I hear people like a German chancellor talk about Putin as an existential threat or a former head of the British armed forces saying we might have to have conscription in the UK because of Vladimir Putin, I think. Well, in which case you wouldn’t be talking about 2.5% of GDP being spent on the military, would you?
There’s been this, and I think that Trump is right to say this is your problem first, and so you pay up for it and don’t expect the American taxpayer to be helping you more than you’re willing to help yourselves.
European Support for Palestinian Statehood
CHARLIE ROSE: But what’s interesting about this also is that suggesting how so many things are tied together in the modern world. Some of those European countries are stepping forward to support a Palestinian state.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, yes. Inevitably, the president of France has suggested this. It seems that the sort of.
CHARLIE ROSE: Good chancellor of Germany, I think, as well.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I think he’s gone close to it. Has he?
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, exactly.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: And Keir Starmer in the UK is threatening to do it. It’s of little importance in a way, because I think the era in which France or Britain have the gift to create states in the Middle east is long past. And neither Emmanuel Macron nor Keir Starmer seem to realize that.
But they could all unilaterally declare that there should be a Palestinian state, and it will make not a darn bit of difference to the creation of a Palestinian state, because nobody can answer how the PA in the west bank and the ruling of Gaza can be done. Even if you were to do land swaps in the west bank, no one can solve this problem.
And unfortunately, we have some very stupid politicians in all of these countries. This is way beyond them. I mean, this would be way beyond this. Maybe Henry Kissinger and Thomas Jefferson and a couple of others could solve this problem, but I do not believe David Lammy in the UK or Chancellor Metz in Germany can solve this.
European Concerns About American Support
CHARLIE ROSE: Yeah, I’m interested in your interest in, and your fascination with Thomas Jefferson, but that’s a subject for another day. Let me make a couple of points. One is that friends of mine in Europe say that people in Europe, leaders in Europe worry if the United States and Donald Trump as president would come to their support if they were attacked. Do you believe that? Do you believe the fact that they do worry about that? And do you think it’s true?
Trump’s Connection to Europe
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I don’t think it is true. I think that, as I said on Donald Trump’s, President Trump’s recent visit to Scotland, he and I know this to a lesser extent, I think the vice president, J.D. Vance, do have a genuine and very deep love of the old continent.
In the case of Donald Trump, this particularly comes from his Scottish roots. I knew his mother, his late mother, who was from the same island in the Outer Hebrides as my grandfather. And they, he has very, very strong feelings about those roots. And they’re not fake, they’re very deep. Does he have very deep feelings about other bits of Europe? I would have thought less so.
CHARLIE ROSE: But the point is, you know, would he come to, under the NATO charter, would he come to the rescue if they were attacked by Vladimir Putin?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I actually don’t have any doubt about that. But if NATO countries were attacked, I think he would recognize that that was absolutely necessary for America to intervene. His hope always is that one, again, very simple but straightforward negotiating tactic of his to avert such conflict will work.
And that tactic is using the madman theory for your own advantage, which is, you know, if you do this thing, I may do this crazy thing in response, and even if you 10% mean it in the eyes of your opponent, they won’t do it. That’s going to be remaining as negotiating strategy. But I don’t have a doubt that he would actually help NATO allies were something even worse to occur.
CHARLIE ROSE: That reminds me of the quote from Sonny Liston after Muhammad Ali, before Muhammad Ali defeated him, he said, “I’m not scared of any man except a crazy man.”
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Absolutely, very, very wise thing to be scared of. Somebody told me that one on the negotiations with Kim Jong Un in Singapore some years ago, when Trump won that one of the American delegation had Kim Jong Un come over to him at the end of a dinner and say, “I have a question for you. Do you trust me?”
Defining Conservative Philosophy
CHARLIE ROSE: When you are asked to define your conservatism, who do you cite as part of your essence as a conservative?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, I come from a, I suppose I’m part of a, and come from a specific tradition of conservatism, which is a bit different to American conservatism. It’s the conservatism, I suppose, of Edmund Burke to Roger Scruton, which is, I’d say, like Roger Scruton used to say, that it’s less of an ideology and more of an instinct.
And it’s the instinct that Burke wrote about. It’s the instinct that things that have survived and existed have done so for some reason, and that one ought to have some reverence for things that have lasted. Some suspicion of change, some intense skepticism about people who come up with utopian ideas, and a reverence for the past. And I would add to that a gratitude for the past. I think that’s absolutely key.
CHARLIE ROSE: The.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: The sense that one should, if you have had the great good fortune to be born in a, as I was in a country like Britain in the late 20th century, that you should be grateful for your good fortune and instead of having the revolutionary instinct to overturn things, should see yourself as an inheritor whose job is to pass it on.
Trump’s Republican Party vs Traditional Conservatism
CHARLIE ROSE: Is that conservatism that you just defined alive and well in America, or is Donald Trump’s Republican Party something very different?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I think it’s different. I think it’s different, without a doubt. I remember talking many years ago with the late Robert Bork about this, who, about the deep problem of how America could have a conservative tradition, considering that had been founded on revolutionaryism. This.
CHARLIE ROSE: This is a.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: This has always been a big problem.
CHARLIE ROSE: You’re Thomas Jefferson.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, it’s always been a big problem for American conservatives. And I, but I would say that in the.
CHARLIE ROSE: Case of Trump, but not Ronald Reagan or.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: No, you’re right. I would say that it’s that if there’s one instinct on the right that has propelled Trump, and I don’t say by any means that this is a laudable thing, but I think it is. Conservatives get used to fighting the next battle they’re going to lose.
And in time, there inevitably will come people who are fed up of losing, and they’ll notice, for instance, their opponents doing certain tricks, and they will decide at some point we on the right are mugs and we’re going to do the same thing back at them as they’re doing to us. And what that ends up with is a complementary whirlpool on both political sides, which I’ve described at its worst as being the desire not to beat your opponent politically, but to hurt him.
Economic Conservatism and Modern Challenges
CHARLIE ROSE: In addition to those sentiments, I asked the following. You know, I thought conservatism, as certainly reflected by Ronald Reagan, was for less government, balanced budgets. Although last president to give us a balanced budget was Bill Clinton, I think.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: Balanced budget, low deficit.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yeah.
CHARLIE ROSE: As a percentage of GDP. To draw down the debt. Yeah. And to make sure that defense was well funded.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yeah.
CHARLIE ROSE: That doesn’t seem to be Donald Trump.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, the defense well funded is.
CHARLIE ROSE: No, no, I don’t mean just by defense. I mean the crossboard of those issues having to do with deficit and debt and, yes, and also respect for institutions.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, well, the respect for institutions, it presents a very big problem for the right because many of the institutions, I mean, one thinks of higher education have become so deranged that many people on the right have simply decided, give up on them. You’ve got to do something completely different. That may be a valid response or not, but at some point, you, you, you.
I mean, my belief, and I’ve said this many times, is that the job of a conservative is if an institution goes rotten is to rebuild the institution and to save it, not to simply have the instinct to burn it down.
On the issue of the budget, yes. I mean, watching the debt ceiling being raised again and again, this is going to be a big problem. And maybe it has been a big problem since 2008 for the right, which is that problem of. I mean, Reagan could presume that people understood that capitalism worked.
I think after 2008, many people, and partly as a result of the quantitative easing and much more, the printing of money, basically decided that capitalism wasn’t working for them in the way they thought it would. And if you can’t accrue capital, there’s no inevitability that you’ll become a capitalist.
So I think that a lot of what would be conservative economic views have, people have lost faith in them, including on the right. I think this is a shame. I think there’s still a very, very good argument to be made for a balanced budget, for not making reckless spending commitments.
CHARLIE ROSE: And they have no real appreciation or support for tariffs either.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: That’s right. Absolutely. That would have been, Reagan would have been bemused by the current fight list. But again, the situation has changed. I mean, once China entered the WTO, the rules did change. I mean, America was being undercut, the American worker was being cheated, and China was both a member of the club and breaking the rules.
So that’s where the conservative has a problem, which is we want to preserve the things we have, but the rules have changed and that’s where you have to adapt. But you have to adapt in such a way that you don’t burn down what is good.
Socialism in America
CHARLIE ROSE: You wrote a column about the Democratic nominee for mayor of New York who is a socialist. You think in America there is any appetite for socialism?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: There obviously is in New York City. In New York City, not in. If Zohran Mamdani wins the mayoral race in New York, the Republicans should open bottles of champagne because they will get a clean sweep of everything afterwards. They will be able if in fact.
CHARLIE ROSE: There is some indication that the Republicans may be in trouble leading into the midterm elections. A Mamdani election as mayor of New York would give the Republicans enough firepower to resist that. In your judgment, they’ll be able to.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Point to him endlessly as an, well, the failure of his promises, the failure of his policies. He won’t be able to institute much of it. What he does do will be a disaster. I think it’ll be an enormous boon to the Republican Party.
But on the question of socialism in America, you know, I genuinely think that one of the odd things, it goes back to your list of things in the 21st century. One of the odd things is we aren’t as inoculated as we thought we were to certain political viruses.
And my friends in Eastern and Central Europe, for instance, of my age, and indeed younger, certainly older, cannot believe that somebody would be arguing for socialism in New York City. They’re amazed by it. But I have to say to them, look, Americans have not been inoculated to this to the extent that we expected. You may have been in Poland, you may have been in Italy, in other countries and, but they have not been. We have not been in America.
Europe’s Decline
CHARLIE ROSE: You have also argued that Europe is in decline.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Oh, that’s unarguable. That’s just an observation.
CHARLIE ROSE: Well, okay. And what is rising in its place? I mean, is it simply the rise of autocracy?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: No, I think it’s just decline. Unless things culturally and otherwise. Well, I mean, Angela Merkel said in, I think, 2010, she made a very pertinent observation which, like most pertinent observations made by politicians, led to nothing. She said, “We in Europe have,” this was the figures then, “12 and a half percent of the world’s population, 25% of global GDP and 50% of global welfare spending.”
She said, “In other words, something is going to have to change radically if we want to maintain the lifestyle that we’ve become accustomed to.” And in the 15 years since she said that, nothing has changed meaningfully in Europe. The welfare commitments remain wildly high. The demographics remain unbelievably challenging.
And you can feel it in some countries in Europe. You could see how they could turn around. You can feel in the air everywhere, from Britain to much of Eastern Europe, you can feel this. It’s rather like I described it in the Spectator a while ago, as you know, with, it’s always said that if a man or a woman makes a huge fortune and in, and their children will rarely be able to pick up the mantle or continue the company.
By the time that you’re their grandchildren, they’re studying interpretive dance at Berkeley, and by the fourth generation, you’re back to poverty again. There’s something like that feeling in Europe that we’re on the third generation somehow, that we’re spending down what has been accrued culturally, socially, philosophically, as well as economically, and that a lot of people have just decided, I hope it, like, remember that great line of Larkin’s, “I thought it would last my time at least.”
The Rise of the Right in Europe
CHARLIE ROSE: But at the same time, I also remember that before Trump, there was Brexit. Now people point to the rise of the right, and in France, and they define those right positions in many cases as autocracies.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I don’t define them as autocracies. I think they’re Europe and France. No, I mean, I don’t think that the National Rally is autocratic. I mean, even if you take the case of Orban in Hungary, I mean, there are going to be elections in Hungary next year, and it’s perfectly possible he will lose them.
CHARLIE ROSE: But people, let me just interrupt. People would define tenets of autocracy in his case as how he’s treated the media and other factors.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes. I mean, there is always a hilarity of some of the Western critiques of Orban, indeed, the Polish party that just lost government last year. There is a, there’s one in particular that amuses me, which is not just the claims that there’s media bias and much more, but in particular the issue of the judiciary.
This comes up in Israel as well. American politicians will call their counterparts in Jerusalem and Budapest and berate them for the politicization of the judiciary in their countries. And you want to say, “Could you tell us how you do it in America and whether there’s any political involvement in this?”
I’m not by any means saying that anything goes, but there are some legitimate criticisms in these countries and some illegitimate ones with Europe. It’ll come down to a very, very basic thing, which is can real nativist bigotry of the far right be kept out, and can legitimate public grievance that is often called far right be permitted?
CHARLIE ROSE: And what are examples of both?
The Challenge of Political Labels in Europe
DOUGLAS MURRAY: For instance, if you’re concerned about mass immigration, you should not be deemed to be far right automatically, any more than you would say that somebody who called for social justice should automatically be called a communist. You know, we should have some hygiene in our language.
And I believe that the problem in Europe is, and I’ve thought about this and traveled extensively to look at this over the years. The problem is, is that every European country is its own special minefield. And the extent to which this is the case cannot be overstated.
Every country after the 20th century in Europe has a type of political trauma and we are understandably very, very fearful of the return of anything that looks like National Socialism. And we have early warning detectors in our society. I would argue that those early warning detectors are such a way that the tripwire goes off slightly earlier than it should do and ends up accusing people who shouldn’t be accused of things they’re not guilty of. At the same time, it’s understandable.
I was recently in Germany the week before last, constant negotiation discussion about the Alternative for Deutschland party. And there is going to be again a real problem in the 21st century with this. If you talk about the real far right, real autocracy in Europe, there is general mainstream loathing of it. But in response to some things that have happened in recent decades, it has been politically expedient for parts of the political mainstream to call people far right who are not.
And I have no doubt, and I’ve said this many times, that whilst there will be far right people in Alternative for Deutschland, I don’t see that in its mainstream leadership like Alice Weidel. I don’t see the right wing parties in Scandinavia as being Nazis in waiting. But it’s, it’s, to use a phrase I’ve often used, this stuff requires political brain surgery and you require somebody with a scalpel and an extremely steady hand to draw these. And unfortunately in the media and in politics, this operation is being performed by people wearing boxing gloves.
Finding Common Ground in America
CHARLIE ROSE: Looking at the division in America, what’s the best way to bring it to problem solving?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I think in other countries which have been politically divided in democracies, I very rarely seen it as badly divided. It has been in America in recent years. I think Britain after the Brexit vote is a comparable one. But I suppose I would say that the most important thing is to find things of agreement, find things to agree on.
CHARLIE ROSE: And that might, what might they be?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, they might be very basic things. For instance, I think it’s deranged of the sections of the radical left to keep negatively rewriting the American story. In other words, to rewrite it in an entirely accusatory, guilt ridden way. I think that’s madness and I think that the people who’ve done that have very largely done it precisely in order to cause division.
But there might just be things you agree on what your role is as a country, and I don’t mean on the world stage, but for instance, has America been a force for good? I would say that if the divide, if America were divided between a left who thought it hadn’t been a force for good and a right who believed it had been, and they exacerbated each other’s tensions, you could have no national unity.
But if you could just come to an agreement, that broadly speaking, again, the same thing with Britain. Broadly speaking, we’ve had our mistakes, we’ve had terrible things that have happened in the past. Like every country, we have our history. But that broadly speaking, we’ve been a force for good in the world. That would mean that every other debate and disagreement would be more easily addressable. It’s very basic, but it’s rather like that thing of, you know, if you want to find agreement in a marriage or a relationship, you know, you’ve got to find the things you agree on.
CHARLIE ROSE: And that’s exactly what I’m asking.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, but one thing would be, you know, do we want this to continue in its recognizable form? I mean, that’s a very basic and deep one.
CHARLIE ROSE: But what do we want America to continue in its recognizable form?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, I mean, one of the horrors of recent years to me in America, I wrote about this in “The War on the West,” has been seeing the American past ransacked in such a negative light. And for instance, one of the things you can always tell today is if you go to an institution set up to tell the American story, it will be very considerably portrayed in a negative light.
CHARLIE ROSE: As soon as you say that, I mean, I think of all the stories of America in a positive light.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: You do, you do. But the question of whether a generation coming up has been taught the same thing is a very serious one. I don’t see in the campus radicalism on the United States. I don’t see the level of gratitude and reverence for the institutions that there should be. I see fermenting revolutionaryism and anti-Americanism running rife. And it’s largely because they’re taught it.
I said in “On Democracies and Death Cults,” I quoted a student at Columbia. It was so sad to me that he said this. He said when I, he was involved in the encampments and he said, “I’m a first generation, low income, first generation of my family to come to the university. And when I got here, I was taught the rich history of protests that existed here. And I decided that I wanted to be part of it.”
And what I’m saying is imagine what it is like. Imagine how different it would be if when somebody has the great good fortune to go up to university, to an American university like Columbia, they learn the great things and ideas and people that have come from it and learn how lucky they are to have their place in that story. This is a change of mindset, which is just necessary to do because otherwise we’re teaching people into a radicalism and a hatred which no good can come from.
The Balance Between Criticism and Reform
CHARLIE ROSE: As long as I would add this caveat. As long as to talk about reform, to talk about positive change.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: And positive evolution is not considered to be anti-American or anti-Israel or anti-Europe.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: We have to figure out how. Do you have a conversation?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I agree. And action.
CHARLIE ROSE: Not just conversation, but action.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes.
CHARLIE ROSE: That allows for different ideas. And there are many different ideas between right and left and conservative and liberal and center, without people saying, you are anti-American, you’re anti-Israel, you are anti.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I completely agree. I think that you could go back. I often think of a quote of the late Jeane Kirkpatrick who said at some point that her own political evolution was in part informed by the anti-Vietnam protests. And I remember she said somewhere that the thing that pushed her towards the more conservative side on watching those protests was she said that she had no doubt that there were flaws in America as a country, but for in order for America to improve as a country, it had to survive.
There seems to me to be a considerable wisdom in that, is that if some. And this is what I sometimes describe as the difference between a critic and an enemy. It’s not hard to tell the difference between a critic of your society who wants to improve your society and an enemy who wants it gone.
And sometimes people say, how do you make that delineation? And I say, look in the same way that I can tell it as an individual. If my mother tells me that what I’m wearing doesn’t look great on me, I’ll believe her. Because my mother may be a critic, but I know she wants me to do well. But if somebody clearly hates me and says they loathe my outfit, I’d be unwise to listen to their advice.
Personal Reflections and Self-Definition
CHARLIE ROSE: How do you think you are misunderstood?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I don’t know, because I spend very little time.
CHARLIE ROSE: I know, I know you would say that, but. But I ask you to give it a moment. You know, when you read some assessment of what you do, you ever think they don’t get it or they don’t understand me.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I suppose to some extent, yes. Probably one that I’ve noticed is that I believe that I’m writing and defending in a tradition which is what I understand as liberal. Of course liberal is a very shape shifting term which changes across borders but in the true sense a defensive liberalism in the classical sense. That’s where I feel all my instincts to be. I rub along pretty well with everyone and so on.
So occasionally I’ve been surprised when I see people portraying me as if I was some closed minded to the world nativist or something like that. I have, I haven’t had that for a while but I have had it in the past and yes, I suppose when I’ve seen that I’ve been rather bewildered.
But I mean it’s hard to say how you might be misinterpreted when I really, I really do think, particularly in the age of social media, it’s too easy to get dragged into thinking about how people think of you and I genuinely don’t do that. My orientation in life is to say what I think is true and to maintain the good impression in the eyes of the few people I respect.
CHARLIE ROSE: I’ve often said you have to define yourself.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Yes, yes, I think that’s right.
CHARLIE ROSE: You do it by your work and your values, what you write and, and as old fashioned as may sound. Are you at core a kind person?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: I believe that the people in my life would say I am and I suppose it’s an unusual person who would think of themselves as unkind but I believe so. I remember my late friend Clive James who you must have come across. Yes, he once said something that rang through with me. He said, “You know, sometimes in my public writing I come across as a rather gloomy and doom laden person. But it’s odd because my experience of myself in my life is that I’m rather jolly happy go lucky kind of guy.”
I think I feel the same thing actually, which is that in my life I think I’m a rather pleasant and so on person. I suppose that sometimes, inevitably with some of the causes I take up and some of the arguments I’m involved in that doesn’t necessarily come out.
The Role of Journalism in Modern Society
CHARLIE ROSE: But what’s the role of journalism in today’s society and how do we best serve that role?
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Well, I would think it’s. We’re not doing well in public perception these days. Most opinion polls show journalists as being in public eye in terms of trustworthiness, somewhere between politicians and household burglars. In no particular order. There’s very low public trust in journalism.
And I think it’s because of one thing in particular, which is at the age of social media has meant that journalism is not just. It’s not just that mistakes can be seen. It’s that journalism itself has become transparent to the public. They can see through things that they wouldn’t have seen through 30 years ago.
And so I believe the role of journalism should be to tell truth, to expose truth, to expose lies and to be able to be trusted. I suppose that would be because when a democracy is working well, the role of journalism is so key as that sort of counterweight to the political class. Speaking up, I’ve often said, also speaking up for. You know, there’s this thing in journalism where people, journalists love to be praised for saying what no one else will say.
But I always say that also there is a great importance in the role of saying what a lot of people would love to say but just don’t have the opportunity to say, to speak for majority opinion as well as minority opinion.
But we are going to go through a wild ride on this because, as you know, I mean, the status of a mainstream in journalism is just changing all the time and we’ll probably lose some major papers in the US and other countries in the coming years. And you know, I don’t know where it’ll end up. All I can continue is to use my voice where I can. I’m very lucky to have that. I never, never, never underestimate the great good fortune of having a voice.
CHARLIE ROSE: And readers, their stakes are so high. It seems to me if you look at those things that we have experienced in terms of the things that are the four risks that I cited at the beginning, nuclear biology, climate and technology. I mean, lots of people worry that if the United States doesn’t win the race to dominate AI and the Chinese do, that will have consequences for us and our global leadership.
Finding Perspective Through History
DOUGLAS MURRAY: That’s certainly true. The race is always on, though. I sometimes console myself and I try to console readers and people I meet when they… Some people can easily slip into catastrophism and sometimes one should be catastrophic. But it’s hard to do all the time.
I always console myself by reading history because it’s such a wonderful reminder that it was always like this and that even in periods of what seemed to us to be relative calm in a country, the times were filled with just as many alarms and crises as our own day, as many fears, as many worries, as many plagues, and much more.
So that doesn’t mean that I have an attitude that is fatalistic or pessimistic, but simply that I think it’s consoling to remember it’s always like this. It always was like this. And that the future has never been clear and that, as C.S. Lewis beautifully said, “Human life always existed on the edge of a precipice.”
CHARLIE ROSE: An appropriate place to conclude this conversation. Thank you so much.
DOUGLAS MURRAY: Been a great pleasure, Charlie. Thank you.
Related Posts
- President Trump Remarks on US, Israel Attacking Iran (Transcript)
- President Trump on Economy, Energy in Corpus Christi, TX (Transcript)
- Bulwark Podcast: w/ Susan Glasser on Trump’s State of the Union address (Transcript)
- Douglas Macgregor: US-Iran Diplomacy Fail (Transcript)
- The Truth About Trump’s State of the Union w/ Sen. Bernie Sanders (Transcript)