A row broke out on BBC Question Time last night over none other than Donald Trump.
Presenting from Philadelphia in Pennsylvania in a US special, the show asked the panel and the audience what they thought about the Republican nominee’s character, just three weeks away from the presidential election.
British American political commentator, Mehdi Hasan, said he believed when it came to Ukraine, Trump will be “horrifically much worse” than the current White House administration.
He said: “He’s made it very clear he will allow Vladimir Putin to set the terms of any agreement in Ukraine.”
Trump has refused to say who he wants to win the Ukraine war, just that he wants it to end.
Hasan continued: “The guy who adores foreign dictators, including Vladimir Putin, is not the guy who is going to do those negotiations.”
Trump notable called Putin’s invasion of Ukraine “savvy” and “genius” back in 2022.
Hasan also recalled reports from earlier this week that Trump had sent Covid tests to the Russian president during the pandemic.
“I don’t think he is the person who should be allowed to do negotiations with Putin, I think that would be a huge huge mistake,” the commentator said.
As presenter Fiona Bruce reminded the panel Trump has suggested he could resolve the war within “one day”, Pennsylvania state representative, Republican Martina White, defended the ex-president.
She said: “He’s a very good negotiator, obviously.”
Ignoring the laughs from the audience, White said he was a “peacetime president, whether we like it or not,” saying that meant there were no new conflicts involving the US, during his administration, whereas now there are “wars breaking out, left and right”.
Hasan also eviscerated Trump’s character, saying: “Funnily enough, when you poll Republicans today, they say character doesn’t matter.”
Claiming that’s because they have seen who their candidate is, Hasan described Trump as “the most amoral man to reach the presidency in modern American history”.
“We’ve all seen him in action,” he said, describing him as a “thin-skinned narcissist, self-obsessed with petty vendettas and personal grievances, a wannabe-autocrat”.
“No, I don’t think he has the character. I think character matters, and he certainly does not have the character to be president,” Hasan said, triggering a round of applause in the room. “He doesn’t have the moral fitness, the mental fitness.”
When Bruce asked him about the character of Trump’s rival, Democratic nominee and vice-president Kamala Harris, he said: “The trouble is when you say, ‘there’s two people we’re talking about,’ one of them is Donald Trump, so it really doesn’t matter who is on the other side when it comes to character!
“We could pick a random person walking down the street in Philly and they would have a better character than Donald J Trump.”
However, one person in the audience furiously hit back at Hasan, saying: “I think some of the things you said need to be fact-checked, I think you are really off centre. Trump is not a politician.”
Hasan interrupted: “He literally is.”
“But what you can say about that man is that he cares about this country,” she said, stopping to frown at some of the audience who laughed at her remarks.
She said Trump had put his life on the line and his family’s character, adding he had the “balls” to stand up for the US.