This is an audio transcript of the FT News Briefing podcast episode: ‘What’s next after Trump assassination attempt’
Kasia Broussalian
Good morning from the Financial Times. Today is Monday, July 15th, and this is your FT News Briefing.
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The attempted assassination of former president Donald Trump is threatening to rip the US apart. And we’ll get the results from a big union drive at an Amazon warehouse in the UK. Plus, Labour is promising to build a lot of new homes.
Joshua Oliver
The magic number in the UK housing debate has been 300,000 new homes a year. But how you deliver is a really difficult issue that successive governments have tried to tackle.
Kasia Broussalian
I’m Kasia Broussalian and here’s the news you need to start your day.
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People in the US are still trying to process Saturday’s shocking assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The former president was injured in a shooting while speaking at a campaign rally in Pennsylvania. One attendee was killed and two others were injured. The FT’s Lauren Fedor has been closely following the aftermath of the attack, and she joins me now. Just to note here, we’re speaking on Sunday afternoon. Hey, Lauren.
Lauren Fedor
Hi, Kasia.
Kasia Broussalian
So what do we know at this point about the suspected gunman and even potentially his motive?
Lauren Fedor
Sure. So the suspected gunman was killed by the Secret Service within seconds of all of this going down. The FBI early on Sunday identified him as Thomas Crooks. He’s a 20-year-old man from somewhere called Bethel Park, which is just south of Pittsburgh, about 40 miles from where the rally took place. We also know that he was a registered Republican, but he had also made a very small $15 donation to a Democratic cause at some point. So there are a lot of unanswered questions just about who he was and what prompted him to do this.
Kasia Broussalian
And I’m sure we’ll find out more in the days and hours ahead. So we know that the FBI has opened an investigation into what went wrong in terms of security at the rally, but what sort of next steps are we looking at there?
Lauren Fedor
Gosh, there are so many different moving parts of this fast moving story. I would say in terms of the investigation itself, the FBI is leading it in conjunction with the Department of Justice, other federal agencies, as well as state and local authorities in Pennsylvania. There is a huge question, and this is something that seems to unite the right and the left right now, about just how the security lapse happened. I mean, Kasia, I have been to more Trump rallies than I can count, and to say that there’s airport style security is an understatement. You know, the Secret Service’s job is not just to protect the president, it’s also to protect former presidents, presidential candidates. And they’re facing a lot of tough questions. So that’s one of the ways I think this is gonna move forward, is they’re gonna be asked to testify before Congress and provide a lot of answers in the days and weeks to come.
Kasia Broussalian
And these gaps in security come at a really important time for the former president. Republicans are meeting this week in Wisconsin for their party convention, and you’re gonna be there. So what will you be looking out for now?
Lauren Fedor
Well, look, we’ll have to see what the security looks like. Right now, there’s just a logistical question of how it’s all gonna work and how they’re gonna keep it safe. But then beyond that, this is just a huge political moment. This is really the chance for President Trump to make his case to the American people in prime time. And it will also be a really, in light of what’s happened, a really interesting kind of moment to see whether the Republican party can a, unite themselves, but b, bring along other Americans who might not have been kind of ready to vote for President Trump before. Now, one thing that I think is very interesting is that Nikki Haley, who was President Trump’s rival on the primary campaign trail, had initially not been invited to the RNC. Since the shooting now, she has been asked to speak and she’ll be speaking on the stage. To me, that gives a hint that perhaps there’s gonna be a little bit more of a unifying message there than we might have anticipated prior to the shooting.
Kasia Broussalian
That’s interesting. And yeah, looking at the bigger picture here, obviously we’re in the middle of a really divisive presidential election. Do you have any insights yet into how this assassination attempt might actually end up shaping the race?
Lauren Fedor
Look, this came at the end of a kind of two week, arguably the two worst weeks of President Biden’s campaign. He has been struggling for weeks since that debate in Atlanta last month, to push back on these concerns from members of his own party, that he needs to step aside so that someone else can run as the Democrat. This now comes in the middle of all of that, right? One of his key arguments was that he was gonna go, you know, laser like in his focus after President Trump. He can’t be that aggressive right now in light of what’s happened and what comes next, I really think is anyone’s guess.
Kasia Broussalian
Lauren Fedor is the FT’s deputy Washington bureau chief. Thanks, Lauren.
Lauren Fedor
Thanks, Kasia.
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Kasia Broussalian
US President Joe Biden gave a rare address to the nation on Sunday night.
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Kasia Broussalian
Biden called on Americans to lower the political temperature in the country.
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Kasia Broussalian
Former President Trump, meanwhile, travelled to Wisconsin as scheduled yesterday despite the attempt on his life. The Republican National Convention kicks off later today.
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And now for some company news. It’s shaping up to be a big day for Amazon. Results will be released from a union vote at the tech giant’s warehouse near Coventry, that’s one of the biggest towns in the Midlands. Workers there are expected to back union recognition and it would be a first for the company in the UK. If the ballot measure passes, it could be a pivotal moment. You see, Amazon has worked pretty hard to prevent employees all over the world from organising and it’s been fairly successful. But unions in the UK are hoping that the new Labour government will give them more influence and stronger rights.
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The Labour party has promised to get Britain building again. But UK home developers are saying hey, hold your horses, that might not be as doable as you think. They’re warning that it’s gonna take at least a year to start increasing the housing supply, and the number of new homes is actually expected to fall in 2024. I’m joined now by the FT’s Josh Oliver. Hey, Josh.
Joshua Oliver
Hey.
Kasia Broussalian
All right. So can you give me a bit of background on the state of the housing market and the supply of homes in the UK right now?
Joshua Oliver
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, the housing supply is linked to the broader housing market because, you know, the biggest component of new homes being built are being built for sale by big commercial and housebuilding companies. So that means that they are ultimately building the number that they think they can sell. I think, you know, the rest of the world may have moved on a little bit from the mini-Budget of the fall of 2022. You know, it’s kind of easy to forget about Liz Truss in her incredibly short term as prime minister, where she, you know, made basically an economic announcement of unfunded tax pledges that sent the market into a complete spin and led to mortgage rates really shooting through the roof in just a matter of weeks. And the sales market for new homes and for all homes hasn’t really recovered since then, which is why you have seen a real slowdown in the pace of new home supply. And that has meant that, you know, starting from an OK position, we are now moving towards a pretty grim position in terms of new housing supply.
Kasia Broussalian
Got it. So companies, they’re only gonna build what they think they can sell and they don’t really think that they can sell a lot because of these super high mortgage rates. So how does that square up with the plan that the Labour party is pushing right now?
Joshua Oliver
The magic number in the UK housing debate has been 300,000, so 300,000 new homes a year. But how you deliver is a really difficult issue that successive governments have tried to tackle. You know, the key issue here is planning reform. So you know, the system of building permissions, very bureaucratic, very slow. It’s very difficult to get spades in the ground. So Labour has promised a set of planning measures, with more to come that they hope will add up to a major change and just make it that much easier for people to build. But it’s also partly just about, you know, that messaging about leadership. And Labour is trying to say, we’re all in. We are the party of getting stuff built.
Kasia Broussalian
And are UK home builders actually buying that message? I mean, do you think that these changes will actually make a difference?
Joshua Oliver
Yeah, I think there’s actually quite a lot of optimism around right now from developers and others that we have a government that’s made this such a priority that, you know, put it front and centre, that’s sending all the right signals. But I think there’s also a recognition that this whole system moves very, very slowly. So from the day that you decide to make a change, it takes a long time for that to feed through the system that results in a new home being built because, you know, there’s land coming through development, there’s planning, then there’s getting on site, getting buyers through the door. So once you have the kind of, you know, event occurs that triggers a change in the trend of home completions, it just takes a long period of time for that to feed through. And that is a consequence of the kind of practical reality of it takes a while to go from kind of the starting gun to the home being finished and the keys being handed to a new buyer.
Kasia Broussalian
Yeah, there are a lot of steps to this process, and that obviously takes some time. So I guess then even if homebuilding were to pick up next year, is that target, that 300,000 new homes a year target, actually realistic? You know, at least eventually?
Joshua Oliver
The government has said that they’re confident they can hit the target. Some builders think that it might be possible, but I do think it is a real, real challenge. I mean, the target of 300,000 new homes a year has not been hit in the UK for almost half a century. And in the period of time where we were posting those numbers, you had a very significant component of building homes directly by the public sector, which has not been something that, you know, is a major feature of the market for many decades. Without that element, you’re gonna have to do something pretty special, I think, to see those numbers recover from what has been a multi, multi-decade trend in the UK, that it is difficult to push, you know, new home completions above that kind of magic 300k line.
Kasia Broussalian
Josh Oliver is the FT’s property correspondent. Thanks, Josh.
Joshua Oliver
Thanks.
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Kasia Broussalian
And finally, we’d love to hear a little bit more about you, how you read and use the FT, and what you like about our show. So we’re running a short survey and there are some goodies involved. Anyone who takes part by August 31st will be entered into a free prize drawing to win £1,000 or your local equivalent. So just go to ft.com/FTsurvey2024. Now that’s a mouthful, so I’ll say it again, ft.com/FTsurvey2024. There’s also a link to that in the show notes and the terms and conditions for the drawing.
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This has been your daily FT News Briefing. Make sure you check back tomorrow for the latest business news.
