The Remarkable Calm Of Jeffrey Goldberg

’ve just got to Washington, DC. Honestly, it’s exciting to be here in the midst of a crisis, although it’s such a crisis that meetings are being rescheduled left, right and center, which is vaguely irritating.

I’m hearing that, behind the facade, there is some nervousness about the fates of Pete Hegseth, who landed back in DC early this morning, and Mike Waltz. Probably, they survive, is the thinking…But even the most die-hard Trump loyalist knows that “SignalGate” was a very stupid own goal.

You also may recall that I’ve written here before that I am myself part of a group chat of what appears to be right-wing military types and I have no idea if any of them knows that I am on it.

Even some of them threw their hands in the air at the stupidity of it all.

“It was a crazy unforced error” someone posted, followed by the image I’ve reposted above.

There was also a fair degree of mirth.

“He’s running a more fun chat group than we are!” said one wag.

Another: “How can one get added?”

And: “It’s outrageous. They should have added XXX XXXX [our chat name] to this Signal Group!!!”

One (albeit very minor) aspect of the real group chat fiasco that seems to be under-reported is the remarkable flat-line temperament of Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor of the Atlantic who was accidentally added to the Signal group chat. I get that when Goldberg first saw he’d been invited, his instinct was to think, Ha ha I’m being played…But ask yourself this:

If you’d been added to it, and if, as the days went by and the thread gathered momentum, and, you began to realize that the chat may very well not be a hoax, AND that, on Saturday morning you were alerted to the strong possibility there could be a drone strike on the Houthis in two hours…would you have done what Goldberg apparently did when reading the strike was imminent and wait in his car in a supermarket parking lot?

Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates

A Moving Sculpture; Fear Of War Heroes; Countries Compared To Dishes On A Menu…What’s REALLY Going On Inside Russia

Today, in our live chat, Mikhail not only told me what he’s hearing inside Russia and Ukraine after the phone calls between Trump and Putin, and then Trump and Zelensky: he also shared some of his personal journey.

He explains why he knew it was time to leave Russia in February 2022; how the Kremlin tried to break TV Rain, the independent station he worked at years earlier; but he had believed nonetheless that his work was not “in vain”. Until the invasion, when “it became hopeless”.

He also shared some thoughts about his late friend, Alexei Navalny, whom, he reminds us, believed so passionately that there was hope that democracy could live in Russia that he was prepared to die for it. It’s Mikhail’s belief that Navlany’s widow Yulia keeps that torch alight, albeit in exile.

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

Putin Will Suck Up To Trump. But Not About Ukraine….

Every time I talk to Mikhail Zygar, I feel both enlightened and depressed. Today he gave a foreshadowing of the love-fest that’s likely to happen on the call between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, in which Putin will “sell” Trump a hyperbolic narrative about events in Kursk, the Russian territory which Ukraine captured but Russia now appears to be taking back (his story is that the Russians have completely encircled the Ukrainians) – and also he speculates that there is no way Putin is going to give Trump everything he wants – which, at some point will lead to a blow-up. But when?

He says that Putin is thrilled that the West has finally produced a “soulmate” who sees the world as transactionally and cynically as he does. Mikhail walks us through his failed prior attempts to influence Tony Blair and George W. Bush among others. And he explains that most Russians don’t talk about the “war” with Ukraine. The country is in denial. Except, of course, for Putin, who visited the troops in Kursk last week – according to Zygar, for the first time wearing a military-style uniform..

We will be back tomorrow to discuss the call between Trump and Putin – after it has happened.

(And forgive the bad audio at the beginning. Thank you for letting us know so we could fix it…)

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

The NYT’S David Enrich Makes His Debut on Substack to talk about “Murder The Truth”!

David Enrich is the Business Investigations Editor of the New York Times, the former Enterprise Editor of the Wall Street Journal and, no surprise, a very good journalist. In 2020 he wrote an excellent book on Deutsche Bank called Dark Towers that I highly recommend. And then, in 2022, he turned his lens to the law and published: Servants of the Damned about the powerful Washington DC law firms, in particular Jones Day.

He’s got a new book out this week, Murder The Truth that I’ve been diving into and it may be the best yet. It chronicles the fascinating trajectory of the First Amendment in this country and the dangerous direction it’s headed, under attack from the right, without most of us realizing it.

Since the 1964 Supreme Court decision in the case of the New York Times Co vs Sullivan, American journalists have enjoyed greater freedom than journalists almost anywhere else in the world, including in my native Britain. That’s because the court, then under the leadership of Earl Warren ruled that if a journalist was writing about a public official, that person would have to prove “actual malice” in order to establish libel. In other words, if you were a public figure you couldn’t successfully sue for defamation if the journalist had simply gotten their facts wrong. You had to prove they showed a “reckless disregard’ for the facts – ie that they knew their facts were wrong and published them anyway.

This led to a much higher burden of proof for US plaintiffs who are bold-faced names, institutions, and private individuals, not simply public officials – than elsewhere in the world.

It’s true that the Warren Court was possibly the most liberal court in US history. But, interestingly, the conservative legal scholar, Robert Bork, who will be familiar to listeners of my Audible series: Pipeline to Power – was a big supporter of the Sullivan decision and the way the Warren court interpreted the First Amendment.

Enrich chronicles the narrative of how since 2016 a number of high profile personalities on the right, including Peter Thiel, Sarah Palin and – of course – Donald Trump, as well big corporations, and others, have brought litigation that may well end up with a reversal of the Sullivan decision.

It’s happened piece-meal and, for the most part, in the shadows. Enrich argues that recent opinions penned byJustices Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch could well portend the end of the free speech protections afforded by Sullivan – and why this matters.

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

I Forked Out Big, Big Bucks To See Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal in Othello. Should You?

Something different from me on a Monday.

I notice that over the weekend the New York Post published a well-timed articleabout how out-of-control the cost of Broadway tickets has gotten, with Othello,starring Denzel Washington and Jake Gyllenhaal, breaking new records, even though the show is only in previews. Per the Post, you have to pay an extraordinary $900 to sit as far back as Row M. And the show hasn’t even officially opened!

So, I saw Othello last week. I booked a while ago, so maybe that’s why I did not pay anything like $900 apiece for my tickets (which were actually phenomenal – in Row B). But I did pay a lot more – by a margin of $300 or so – than the other shows I’ve also forked out for recently, which include: King Lear; The Nutcracker; Aida; Swan Lake; Redwood (a big mistake, as I wrote here), Glengarry Glen Ross; Good Night and Good Luck; The Portrait of Dorian Gray – and because I trust the impeccable taste and recommendations of the editor of Town and Country, Stellene Volandes in her new newsletter: Buena Vista Social Club.

So, was Othello worth the very, very big bucks?

Well, some context before I give you my thoughts.

Obviously, I am not an official critic or it wouldn’t be kosher for me to tell you what I think based on a preview. (The “official” theater critics aren’t supposed to write the reviews before the Opening Night, which is March 23, because that’s when they get free tickets to see it and the show is deemed now “set” for the rest of its run. But given the astronomical cost of a “preview” ticket, and the fact that the show only runs through June – I think the notion that a person shouldn’t write about it now is absurd).

Also, I have seen a lot of Shakespeare in my time.

That’s because I majored in English Literature at Cambridge University in the UK where we were lucky enough to spend an entire semester studying only Shakespeare. All of my English lit class dabbled in the theater, some rather more deeply than yours truly whose only memorable turn on stage was in The Importance of Being Earnest as the slightly snotty Gwendolen Fairfax (a role that some of the wags said was pitch perfect for me because it didn’t require any actual acting).

Even so, my time at Cambridge ingrained in me a love of theater and the performing arts. I was lucky enough to be surrounded at the time by a deep bench of serious talent who now comprise a Who’s Who of Big Names in Drama and Directing. My tutorial partner was Oscar winner, Rachel Weisz. Others in my class: Sacha Baron Cohen; Ol Parker (the writer and director of Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again!); Jez Butterworth (Tony Award Winner and, most recently the script writer of The Agent on Amazon Prime starring Michael Fassbender); David Farr (who wrote Hanna, adapted John le Carre’s The Night Manager for TV, and is associate director of the Royal Shakespeare Company)….and a host of others. So, you get the point…suffice it to say, yes, we had the kind of college experience many people fantasize about. We immersed ourself in the five ps: poetry, plays, politics, “practical criticism” and partying…and we haven’t really stopped since.

So, in my not entirely ignorant opinion, is this Othello worth it?

Read on at Vicky Ward Investigates

“Roy Cohn would be extraordinarily proud of Trump”

Watch here my interview with the infamous conservative political consultant, Roger Stone. We discuss everything from Roger’s take on the excellent movie The Apprentice; his and Trump’s relationship with Trump’s one time mentor Roy Cohn; he reveals Trump texted him last night after the State of the Union speech…and more.

Is it just me or, when I ask him about JD Vance at the 16.50 mark, do you detect a subtle warning to the Vice President to stay out of the limelight?

We move on to chat about the Musk/Trump relationship. Roger refuses to join the doom-mongers. And he takes us inside his relationship with Richard Nixon and recaps how Trump first got on Nixon’s radar.

And I was especially interested when he revealed at 23:55 that Trump still asks him from time to time, somewhat baffled “Why did Nixon throw in the towel?” He makes an interesting observation about how the internet and proliferation of media has been a game-changer.

At the start of the interview he reveals that, in their fifty years of friendship, in all their one-on-one meetings and calls, Trump has never once expressed fear. Rage, yes. Anxiety that he might lose – or, given the legal tribulations of the last four years, go to jail – no. Stone says that the only other president who had a similarly thick skin and unrelenting optimistic outlook (my phrasing) was Ronald Reagan.

He reiterates something that I think we sometimes lose sight of given Trump’s celebrity. That it’s very hard to get to the top in politics unless you can really perform for the cameras.

At the end I remembered something my dad said to me not so long ago. He phoned me up from the UK and said: “I don’t get why the Democrats don’t field the obvious candidate for President.”

Who? I asked.

“George Clooney” he replied.

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

Lev Parnas to Trump: Let Me Conduct Shadow Diplomacy in Ukraine…Again.

Great to chat with Lev after so long.

Watch, particularly around the 19.40 minute mark and you will see that, in all seriousness, he is fielding calls from Republicans and Ukrainians who say it would be smart for him to get back on Trump’s radar and for Trump to send him to conduct shadow diplomacy in Ukraine! Again! Despite his history with Trump, he’d like to do it and believes it would be beneficial.

Why?

A. Unlike the people currently around Trump he knows the players in Ukraine and he understands their culture and the language.

B. He believes there is a valuable minerals deal to be done, but not the one that is on the table right now which, Lev believes, is not beneficial to either the US or Ukraine, but beneficial to Russia (thanks to the input of Kirill Dmitriev and Jared Kushner, he says). The way to get at a truly beneficial deal is through the Ukrainian oligarchs, he believes.

C. All sides cannot save face in front of the cameras. In the shadows, he can.

D. He’d be happy to go all in for Trump, again.

(That’s Lev, for you!)

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

Live chat with Mikhail Zygar on the historic showdown between Trump, Vance & Zelensky

If you want to know just how delighted Vladimir Putin was by today’s extraordinary meeting in the Oval Office, the blow-up between JD Vance, Donald Trump and Vlodymyr Zelensky, pay particular attention to what Mikhail says around the twenty minute mark in our conversation: If you can believe it, Russians are now naming their children “Trump”.

What happens as a result of the ugly impasse now in Ukraine? In Russia? In Europe and elsewhere geopolitcally?

Watch the conversation at Vicky Ward Investigates

The Idaho Four, Trump, Zelensky, Epstein….

Watch the video on Vicky Ward Investigates

My Chat with Russia’s “Last Journalist” Mikhail Zygar

Hi All,

So my chat with Russian journalist and author Mikhail Zygar was as fascinating and as on point as I’d hoped given the quickening narrative around US/Russia/Ukraine relations. And a reminder, that in Trump foreign policy: all roads always lead to Jared Kushner.

I cannot believe that Mikhail’s scoop of yesterday has gone so under-reported: namely that it was Kushner and his Russian counterpart Kirill Dmetriev who put the talks in Riyadh together.

For those who missed my earlier post about who Mikhail is, and that backstory, here’s a refresher.

Watch the conversation on Vicky Ward Investigates