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The Amanpour Hour

Interview With London Mayor And Labour Party Member Sadiq Khan; Interview With National Rally Party Former Leader Marine Le Pen; Interview With New York Times London Bureau Chief Mark Landler; Interview With Bloomberg News Head Of Economics And Politics Stephanie Flanders; Interview With Republican Party Historian Heather Cox Richardson; Archive: Interview With Former President Barack Obama. Aired 11a-12p ET

Aired July 06, 2024 - 11:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[11:00:46]

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone. And welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.

Here's where we're headed this week.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KEIR STARMER, BRITISH LABOUR PARTY LEADER: Change begins now.

AMANPOUR: Labour of love, a fresh start for Britain as voters called time on the Tories.

Also ahead my exclusive interview with the woman at the epicenter of Europe's lurch to the far-right, Marine Le Pen.

AMANPOUR: You're kidding me, right?

Then, historian Heather Cox Richardson on the false equivalence created over a disastrous debate performance versus a violent threat to democracy.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON, HISTORIAN: If you change a presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses.

AMANPOUR: And from my archive, former President Barack Obama, on whether the idea of America can even survive a second Trump term.

BARACK OBAMA, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: You need a president who takes the oath of office seriously.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone.

I'm Christiane Amanpour outside Parliament in London, and we begin this out with the summer of seismic political shocks. Here in the U.K., a historic landslide win for Keir Starmer's Labour Party. Ceremonially invited by the King to form the next government after Rishi Sunak offered his resignation as voters rejected the Brexit aftershocks and 14 years of Conservative rule.

In France, the far right is on the cusp of power after Sunday's second round of Parliamentary elections. And in a moment, you'll hear my world exclusive conversation with party leader Marine Le Pen, who embodies Europe's swing to extremism.

Meanwhile, in the U.S. Joe Biden fights for his political future. The commentary drowning out Donald Trump's own debate threat to democracy and truth.

London mayor and Labour Party member Sadiq Khan has publicly tangled with Trump over his politics of fear and division. I spoke to him about British politics, moving back to the center.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

SADIQ KHAN, LONDON MAYOR AND LABOUR PARTY POLITICIAN: Well, this is a political earthquake that's hit our country. The results in this general election are frankly astonishing.

I mean, normally when a party comes into government, there have been incremental progress made in previous elections. In fact, in this election, you've seen the Labour Party recover from the worst election since 1935, in 2019. The best results you could imagine.

If you and I were speaking, and I think we did four and a half years ago, we were talking about the Labour Party potentially being extinct. Now we're in the cusp of power.

AMANPOUR: So, why?

KHAN: A number of reasons for this remarkable set of results. Keir Starmer became the Labour leader in 2019 and began the task of transforming and changing the Labour Party, learning the lessons of that historic defeat in 2019 and making the Labour Party fit for purpose, listening to the concerns, the anxieties people across the country had to a result where we've made gains in every region of the country.

AMANPOUR: What you said I thought was interesting that he has spent his time as leader reforming the Labour Party, because the Labour Party was seen to have gone too extreme.

There was anti-Semitism, there was just -- it was just too left to be elected, and you saw that for 14 years or more it wasn't.

What do you say to how your country has now returned to the center, given what's going on in Europe, for instance? I've just come back from interviewing Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Rally and that will air, you know, on this program.

What do you say about the trends in the democratic world, in Europe? KHAN: Well, I think people across the globe are going to look to U.K., a new prime minister with a big majority, as a sea of calm. We will now, I think, have at least one term, if not two terms, of a Labour government.

Compare and contrast that with France, the huge uncertainty caused by the elections taking place there now.

Look at what's happening in America in relation to potential changes in November.

[11:04:51]

KHAN: What I'm hoping, those watching this -- investors and people who want to come to, you know, democratic countries, see in the U.K. a source of calm.

Somewhere there's going to be economic stability, where there's going to be economic growth, where there's going to be wealth creation. But also, where people are going to come together.

Whether you go to Italy, France. We saw recently in Germany. We know what's happened with the biggest party in the Netherlands. Huge amount of nativist populist parties rising.

Not in the U.K. The biggest party by a country mile with 410 seats is the Labour Party.

AMANPOUR: And a very anti-immigrant policy, all of those parties have won by putting anti-immigration at the top of their list.

You were very vocal. I mean, you stepped -- if I might say -- out of your lane in terms of commenting on another country's internal politics. When Donald Trump became, you know, president, the first thing he did was enact that so-called anti-Muslim ban. And you spoke about the danger of these divisions.

Tell me about what you think might happen, the U.S. and the U.K. have a special relationship, what might happen, again, between the two countries?

KHAN: One of the reasons why many of us, you know, comment about what happens in America is because we love America. You've got a special role in relation to, frankly-speaking, the leader of the western world.

We, as the U.K., have a special relationship with the United States of America. I think what you see with Prime Minister Keir Starmer is a mature prime minister who will work with anybody.

He will want to have a constructive relationship with America, and indeed, with the European Union. But it's really important for both of us to realize that one of the reasons why we love each other is because we're candid with one another.

And I'm hoping that candor will take place whoever the president is of the United States. Clearly, I hope it's, you know, a Democratic president, President Biden. But if it's President Trump, I'm hoping there's a cordial, sensible relationship. And I'm hoping, you know, President Trump also learns from his first term.

AMANPOUR: And finally, Labour lost certain seats to the policy. They were disappointed with your party's policy on the Israel-Gaza war, and they lost. There were four at least who lost.

What is Keir Starmer as prime minister going to do differently now that we're nine, ten months into this war and it shows no sign of ending and simply bodies keep piling up in Gaza?

KHAN: Well, you know, firstly, it's really important that we have the humility to learn the lessons of last night's results. They were brilliant results for my party, but we lost three or four good colleagues to independent candidates.

What I'm hoping Labour government does is use its influence over Israel. There needs to be a ceasefire. And there can't be a ground incursion into Rafah. There's got to be humanitarian aid going into Israel.

I think what we'll see very soon is the Labour government making clear what the legal advice is in relation to, you know, arms being sold to Israel.

We need to make sure that Netanyahu stops the killing in Gaza. We've seen 40,000 men, women, and children perish. Almost 20,000 children perish. That's got to stop.

Look, we need a two-state solution. Of course, it's outrageous what happened on October the 7th. Those hostages need to be returned. But aid must get through to Gaza. And we've got to make sure, by the way, the atrocities in the West Bank also stop.

AMANPOUR: Sadiq Khan, London mayor, Labour Party, thank you so much indeed.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Coming up next my exclusive interview with the woman at the heart of Europe's lurch to the far-right. Marine Le Pen even throwing shots at France's national heroes soccer player.

We'll be right back.

[11:08:26]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

Now for my world exclusive interview with the woman at the epicenter of Europe's lurch to the far-right Marine Le Pen.

France is bracing for tomorrow's critical second round vote, which could see the government controlled by a far-right anti-immigrant party for the first time since the Nazi occupation during World War II.

Le Pen has spent ten years trying to scrub the image of her father's National Front from its historic anti-Semitism and Holocaust denialism.

But her renamed anti-immigrant National Rally Party is still considered too dangerous to rule France by two-thirds of voters. As President Macron desperately tries to cobble together strategic voting and alliances among rival parties to stop her.

And I traveled to Paris to get a pulse of her policies if she were to win control of government.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Marine Le Pen, welcome to the program.

Tell me something first, were you surprised when President Macron threw the dice and laid down this gamble? What did you think?

MARINE LE PEN, FORMER LEADER, NATIONAL RALLY PARTY (through translator): I think that he was trying to obtain an absolute majority because he only had a relative majority at the National Assembly, and he thought that by rushing this election and giving a very short deadline, he would disorganize the opposition political movements and that he would come out victorious in the election. But it wasn't the case.

AMANPOUR: As we know, a third of French voters voted for you and for your party, and two-thirds did not. And, as you know, President Macron is trying to get a coalition to stop you, a firewall, so to speak, to stop you becoming the majority in Parliament.

What does it feel like to be considered so dangerous? How does it feel?

LE PEN: We don't represent any danger, apart from making him lose power. In reality, all the energy that he puts into fighting us, it's simply because he knows that we are the alternative movement. We are the ones who can secure an absolute majority.

[11:14:48]

LE PEN: The far-left does not have that option. So, the danger of which he's talking is a threat to his own power.

AMANPOUR: Do you like -- do you admire Kylian Mbappe, the hero of French soccer?

LE PEN: I'm not much of a football enthusiast, I'll be frank.

AMANPOUR: But as a national hero?

LE PEN: I believe that Mr. Mbappe is a very good footballer, but this tendency for actors, footballers, and singers to come forward and tell French people how they should vote, and particularly to people who earn EUR 1,300 or EUR 1,400 a month, whilst they are millionaires or even billionaires who live abroad, it's starting to not be well received in our country.

French people are fed up of being lectured and advised on how to vote.

AMANPOUR: And so I need to explain. What he said was, "I don't want to represent a country that doesn't correspond to my values, our values. People say, don't mix football and politics, but this is really important, much more important than football. The situation is dire and we need to act."

He didn't tell people how to vote, he just said, you don't represent the kind of country that he would want to play for.

LE PEN: These are people who are lucky enough to be living comfortably, to be protected from insecurity, poverty, unemployment.

AMANPOUR: Can I ask you, because you have spent a long time trying to rebrand your party, to the extent that here you are on the verge of potentially taking power in government.

But there's still a lot of troubling statements from members of your actual current party, including people who are currently, you know, candidates for this election.

(INAUDIBLE) AMANPOUR: No, I just want to ask you, is this acceptable now, in the

-- today's RN?

LE PEN: We had to come up with a thousand candidates in 48 hours -- a thousand candidates.

Let's be very clear. Jordan Bardella said very clearly that people who have made unacceptable comments will be brought before the movement's conflicts commission and will most certainly be excluded from the movement as others have been in the past.

AMANPOUR: But I just want to know, will these people be excluded? Will they be expelled?

(CROSSTALKING)

AMANPOUR: No. They're running right now. They're now candidates. These names.

LE PEN: Madame, forgive me, we have certain procedures.

AMANPOUR: Yes, but you've got an election in three days.

LE PEN: No, but, madame, forgive me, but that's not my vision of justice. We have statutes whereby people in this situation must be called before the conflicts committee, and they will be.

There is a 21-day delay. But believe me, the jurisprudence of our commission is extremely tough, and we do not let this kind of language slide.

AMANPOUR: Final question. The fact that your party did so well in the European elections, and so did Giorgia Meloni's party, and so did AFD. I mean, you know, AFD, as you know, a little bit like the former National Front is very scary.

How do you see Europe changing?

LE PEN: Madame --

AMANPOUR: How will it change Europe?

LE PEN: First of all --

AMANPOUR: I think Trump was used --

LE PEN: -- I strongly dispute the term far-right, which in your country refers to small groups that are extremely radical and violent. If you like the equivalent --

AMANPOUR: You don't think -- you don't think you're far-right.

LE PEN: The equivalent of what we are in the United States is between the center-right and the center-left with regards to ideas. So, I think this --

AMANPOUR: You're kidding me, right?

LE PEN: Yes. Yes. I'm telling you very honestly. I think this use of the term far-right carries a stigma and is very pejorative.

We want a Europe of nations, a Europe that respects the decisions of the people and not a super technocratic structure such as it exists today.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And don't go away because we're coming back with our panel to dissect the political and social aftershocks of mainland Europe's drift to the right and the Brexit aftershocks that returned Britain to the center after Labour's big win here.

[11:19:20]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program and our panel to discuss course correction here in the U.K. after Labour's massive election. The earthquake that could upend Europe if the far right wins in France on Sunday. And the meltdown that's underway in the U.S. Presidential race.

Stephanie Flanders, head of "Bloomberg Economics" and "New York Times" London bureau chief Mark Landler are here with me.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: So, in short. What would you attribute this massive landslide to, back to the center, center-left here in the U.K.?

MARK LANDLER, LONDON BUREAU CHIEF, THE NEW YORK TIMES: I guess I'd say above all, it's a repudiation of the status quo. It's an expression of anger, of fatigue, of frustration with the Conservative Party after 14 years of government.

So, while it's a, a big victory for Labour, a victory on the scale of 1997 with Tony Blair, it's almost less about Labour than it is about the collapse of the Conservative Party.

There was simply a general recognition that their time was up, voters had had enough, and they took it out on them in a very spectacular fashion.

AMANPOUR: And not just their time was up, Stephanie. I mean, I've heard even from a former Tory MP who was defenestrated by Boris Johnson for opposing his Brexit plans and the rest, that it was the lack of integrity that was shown amongst the top leaders.

[11:24:52]

AMANPOUR: It was the flame out, as he said, you know, one of our prime ministers who lasted less time than an actual, you know, lettuce on the international stage.

They really had some bad leaders.

STEPHANIE FLANDERS, HEAD OF ECONOMICS AND POLITICS, BLOOMBERG NEWS: Yes, and I think they -- when you've seen -- one of the things that's been the theme of the campaign is pollsters pointing to the collapse of trust in politicians. And when people kind of looked around for who were those

politicians that had presided in the last 14 years over this collapse in trust, it was, of course, all the Conservative Party.

But I would say it's, you know, as long as the kicking of the Conservative Party went along with a really brutal first-past-the-post system, I mean it is extraordinary to say --

AMANPOUR: Yes, that's historically so.

FLANDERS: Yes. But except for they've never had a situation where the Labour Party could get fewer votes and still announce --

AMANPOUR: Fewer votes than last time.

FLANDERS: Fewer votes than last time. And actually double their number of seats and, you know, get -- on less than a third of the vote, get nearly two-thirds of the seats.

So, I think there was also that factor. But, you know, Labour had made itself electable under Keir Starmer, and we will see what happens next. AMANPOUR: I mean, the point is that is the system here. We can talk about the fairness or not, you know, infinitely, but I mean, the point is that is the system here. What they care about is the building behind us and how many bums (ph) on seats they have to be able to do the people's business.

And I was actually taken by Keir Starmer's speech in which he tried to inject a sense of anti-cynicism again. We want to be the party of service for the people. We want to actually have you, you know, rebuild your faith in what government can do if we try to do things that you want together.

LANDLER: I think part of that reflected his recognition that if he can't get a measure of goodwill from the public, he could find himself in two or three years right where the conservatives found themselves.

In other words, in an atmosphere of deep distrust, of lack of goodwill, of suspicion that politicians are in it for themselves, the public is not inclined to give the government a lot of slack.

And slack is what he needs because he has very little money, he has an enormous set of problems, and in order for this to work, he needs the public to kind of roll with the party a little bit, and with the government.

So, I think that was almost a bid for a measure of goodwill that hasn't existed for a very good reason over the last few years.

AMANPOUR: So, let's discuss then what is happening. Because in France, it is very ideological what's happening. Marine Le Pen, the head of the National Rally, the rebranded National Front, which is a far-right party, you know, she seems to be the woman of the hour.

What is that going to mean on the national stage? Well, first to France, do you think?

LANDLER: Well, I mean, the interesting thing, and we don't know the answer yet, is how the second round of voting works out, and what kind of position the far-right wind up in, whether it's a sort of a political paralysis or whether they're really able to carve out a cohabitation (ph), which would be a very different era for the French.

It'll be also interesting, it's going to be a while before the presidential election comes and Marine Le Pen will have time to continue this rebranding process.

And I sort of am interested to see whether she takes a page from Giorgia Meloni in Italy. And also, the extent to which there's any overlap with the Reform Party and the populist wave, which got a little bit of momentum here in this election as well.

And then lastly, of course, the Donald Trump factor. Whatever happens in France would presumably be somewhat affected by the direction the United States takes in November, and of course, that we don't know at all. AMANPOUR: And she wouldn't be -- you know, she wouldn't be engaged when I asked her who she wants to win in the United States. Although, you know, her policies are very much aligned with Trump's.

But Stephanie, you know, the markets in France reacted positively when she didn't win an outright majority or a majority in the first round. And we talk about pragmatic technocrat government returned here.

All the independent analysts, economics, say that her figures for fixing the legitimate, you know, cost of living pain in France just don't add up. What can the French people expect?

FLANDERS: No, and you already have. I mean, France is -- we know that Italy has a debt problem, but actually what's been creeping up on everyone is the debt problem that France has.

France is the other country that's not sticking by the European Union rules on borrowing. It has, you know, one of the biggest debt stocks in the -- in Europe now, and no signs of it really coming under control.

I think it will be interesting. I think the reason why the markets were calm was not just that she didn't get a majority, but as we've seen over the course of this week, you've had this funny horse trading between the far -- you know, across -- between the center and the far- left trying to make sure there's only one candidate to stand against the Rassemblement National.

They seem to have been remarkably successful, given how extreme many of those left-wing parties are.

I think the market's very happy that the left is also probably not going to be in a position because their -- if anything, their policies are even more extreme and would do even more damage to the balance sheet.

[11:29:50]

AMANPOUR: So now let's go over to the United States and how the kind of meltdown is -- how will it affect Europe and the Transatlantic alliance?

Let's just say there is another Trump presidency. People have seen it, people have tried to Trump-proof over this side of the Atlantic.

LANDLER: I've long detected a sense of fatalism among Europeans. Europeans, I think even more than Americans, will tell you, we know it's going to be Donald Trump. They just feel that's the trajectory this race is on. So as you say, they've been hedging a lot already.

What's very interesting about the U.K. is it's now elected a center- left government with potentially a foreign secretary whose claim to fame was his close ties with President Barack Obama.

So I think at a minimum, they'd have to be very concerned about what a Trump United States would look like. On the other hand, it's also worth noting that Theresa May had an absolutely dreadful time with Donald Trump when she was the prime minister, a conservative prime minister.

And Boris Johnson may have fared slightly better because of this sort of surface similarity between the two of them --

(CROSSTALKING)

AMANPOUR: He still didn't get his trade deal.

LANDLER: Didn't get his trade deal. And I think leaders have found, whatever their stripe, that dealing with Donald Trump is fundamentally a very difficult thing, and that would be true of whoever won this election.

AMANPOUR: And what do you think, Stephanie, particularly in the vital area of the alliance and NATO?

FLANDERS: I think there's going to be enormous concern about Ukraine, obviously, immediately. I mean, we saw President Zelenskyy this week say, look, if Donald Trump has a plan for ending this war overnight, please tell me now, because I would like to end it now rather than six months' time.

And there's that, he was joking about it, but obviously, there is that fear. And I think that's primarily where you'd be focused short-term if you're concerned, as I think you'd have to be, about the U.S. pivoting very strongly away from support for Europe on a security standpoint and towards Asia. There's a strong argument they would be continuing defense but investing in Asia.

On the sort of more day-to-day level, I mean, I think the assumption has always been that President Trump would win. And what you find here in the financial community and across Europe, the same as you do in the U.S., there's a remarkable number in the business community who seem to be quite relaxed about Trump winning and expect money to be flowing to the U.S. and want to attach themselves to the U.S.

AMANPOUR: Interesting.

Stephanie Flanders, Mark Landler, thank you so much indeed.

LANDLER: Thank you very much.

FLANDERS: Thank you.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: And when we return, were back in the London studio for the rest of the hour with historian of the Republican Party, Heather Cox Richardson, who warns the 24/7 coverage of the Biden campaign meltdown obscures Trump's debate performance and his repeated assaults on the legitimacy of the coming U.S. election.

And then from my archive, this time last year, I asked former PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA what happens to democracy if Trump wins a second term.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

OBAMA: Having been President of the United States, you need a president who takes the oath of office seriously.

[11:32:44]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.

Now since throwing his party and campaign into crisis mode after that debate, President Biden has now attempted to clear the air in an interview with ABC's George Stephanopoulos. But this comes after the nation's largest newspaper and most renowned pundits have urged him to drop out of the race.

But historians like Heather Cox Richardson say the country's focus should be firmly on the threat posed by a second Trump term, his mountain of lies and his threat to American democracy, not just on the president's age or rusty voice.

Richardson is the author of the popular "Letters from an American" Substack newsletter, a historian of the Republican Party. And her most recent book is "Democracy awakening".

She laid out her deep fears for the country when we talked.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: Heather Cox Richardson, welcome to our program.

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, BOSTON COLLEGE AND AUTHOR, "DEMOCRACY AWAKENING": It's always a pleasure.

AMANPOUR: So Heather, after that debate, there has been -- from party grandees to obviously the media grandees, to a whole load of people, including grassroots, a CBS poll said something like 72 percent of those who were polled after the debate say Biden should step down. Are they wrong?

RICHARDSON: My interest is not in Biden or Kamala Harris or Trump or whomever he might choose as his vice president. My interest is less in them that in the long-term sweep of American history.

You know, I want the whole picture. And in the whole picture of American history, if you change a presidential nominee at this point in the game, the candidate loses and it loses for a number of reasons.

First of all, because the apparatus of the party for the election is set up around somebody else.

Second of all, because the news is only going to report all the growing pains of a brand-new campaign, including all the opposition research that the opponents are then going to throw at people. AMANPOUR: And the only time in recent memory that's happened was when President Johnson decided not to take up the nomination of his party. And that was, frankly, if you will -- if you remember, he's something like -- you know, the saying went, if I've lost Walter Cronkite over Vietnam, then I've lost the American people.

So, there is precedent to this. But as you say, then the replacement candidate did lose.

[11:39:51]

RICHARDSON: That's correct. And again, there are some parallels there in that one of the things that Democrats were furious about in that election of 1968 was that they hadn't voted for the person who was at the top of the ticket, Hubert Humphrey, at that point.

And in this case, of course, the primary voters in the Democratic Party who are the most loyal people have voted and they voted for Joe Biden.

For all the people who are focusing on Biden right now -- and as you mentioned, I'm a historian of the Republican Party -- the Republican Party is in crisis and they are as well doing something unprecedented, which is trying to run for president somebody who not only has 34 criminal convictions, but also tried to overthrow the will of the people in the 2020 presidential election.

So I think that -- again, right now, I think the idea that the focus is on Biden is a bit misguided, at least from my perspective, because I don't care if we elect Biden or Harris or anybody else. I care that we recognize that running currently against that ticket is somebody who is trying to destroy our country.

And after the July Republican National Convention, that in fact, the American narrative is going to look very different.

AMANPOUR: It's really interesting. And just to contextualize what you just said on the debate stage, Trump refused to say that he would accept the result of the future election. Only he said if it was fair and legal.

He also talked about an economy that all, you know, reasonable economists say would jack up inflation and essentially an import tax would be a tax on the American people, those tariffs. So, on and on he was saying things that experts have said would actually not work to the benefit of most of the American people who he claims to be representing.

AMANPOUR: Finally, you have sat down face to face with Joe Biden. Was the man on Thursday, the man that you know?

RICHARDSON: No. But -- no. I mean, he's clear. He has utter command of what he's talking about and so on. But I want to emphasize, to my mind, my impression of him is right -- you know, it's what I've seen. He bears responsibility for that performance on the stage. I don't want to make excuses for him. That's not the way this game is played. What I would say, though, is that it is a mistake to look at him and say, oh, we've got a problem and not to look at Trump and say the same thing.

And then to look at their performance in that office and say, we would rather have the man who couldn't get anything done and who really just worked with other authoritarians around the world than the man who has really managed to protect American manufacturing and so on.

I care deeply that the American people have an entire picture of what is at stake in this election. And where we are right now, after that debate is not giving us that picture.

It is my expectation following the Supreme Court's recent decisions that that balance may be restored, but if it isn't restored from the higher reaches of our government and from the media, the American people sure better do it themselves because we have five months to make sure we get to the 250th anniversary of the American Republic. And if we don't come out right in November, we're not going to make it.

AMANPOUR: That is a dramatic way to end this interview. Heather Cox Richardson, thank you so much for your analysis and your historical perspective.

RICHARDSON: Thank you for having me.

(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: An after those assists from the Supreme Court rulings, the New York judge in Trumps hush money election interference case has now delayed the sentencing from next week until September 18.

Up next from the archives, sitting down with Obama in Greece, the cradle of democracy. What the former president said about countering the threat of a second Trump term.

That's when we come back.

[11:43:55]

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

AMANPOUR: Welcome back.

And for a surprising twist in the tale on who voters really want in the wake of the U.S. Presidential debate, a Reuters/IPSOS poll this week showed Biden and Trump neck and neck ahead of November's election.

But in a hypothetical matchup, they really want former first lady Michelle Obama to enter the fray saying she's the one Democrat who could properly thump Trump, which brings us to this week's archive selection, my trip to Greece this time last year to interview her husband, the former President Barack Obama, in the birthplace of democracy when he sounded the alarm on a whole world of challenges from a second Trump term. (BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

AMANPOUR: You did give a speech. Your last speech as president about a week after president Trump won. And you talked about your faith in the, you know, the solidity of the democratic ideals. A lot as happens since then, right?

OBAMA: That's true.

AMANPOUR: Do you still feel that way? Do you feel democracy will win.

[11:49:43]

OBAMA: I do believe that democracy will win if we fight for it. And that democracy is not self-executing. It depends on the engagement of citizens and an active mobilization of people around the belief, not just in any particular issue, but the belief in self-governance and rule of law and independent judiciary and a free press -- all the civic institutions that go into making a democracy work.

And I think it is indisputable that a combination of forces have put enormous strains on democracy and that we've seen a backlash against democratic ideals around the world.

AMANPOUR: What happens if Donald Trump wins again. It's said that the institutional guardrails of American democracy was strong enough to survive a one, a one-term presidency. Are they strong enough to survive if that person personality wins again?

I won't -- I won't speculate on the outcome of a future election. Obviously, I'm a Democrat. I've got a deep --

AMANPOUR: I mean the institute --

OBAMA: -- interest in the outcome. But I'll -- I'll make a general statement which is having been president of the United States you need a president who takes the oath of office seriously.

You need a president who believes not just in the letter, but in the spirit of democracy and the essential spirit of democracy is that as president of the United States, you are just one representative of the people in series of co-equal branches. There are checks and balances to the system.

You are subject to those checks and balances. You cannot ignore them. You cannot make your own rules. You cannot view the Justice Department as your personal law firm. You cannot ignore norms and guardrails that have been put in place to assure that your self-interest isn't what drives these institutions, but is rather the interests of the American people.

And so if you have anybody who's occupying met office who disregards that higher -- that higher purpose then you're going to have problems.

The good news is that through the mechanism of voting, the American people are going to have the opportunity to reaffirm their belief in American democracy.

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AMANPOUR: A clear warning from the former president and also a clear call to get out and make votes count come November.

When we come back a show stopper addressed (ph) (INAUDIBLE) here in the U.K. from the world's most famous performance artist Marina Abramovic.

[11:52:53]

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AMANPOUR: And finally, a show-stopping performance by artist Marina Abramovic who silenced a quarter of a million people at Glastonbury for seven whole minutes as she morphed into the symbol of peace and led a huge group meditation on the state of our world.

Perhaps she was thinking about the endless violence in the world, sometimes self-inflicted when she told me about her infamous 1974 performance "Rhythm Zero" that almost ended in calamity when she let members of the public interact with her however they wanted.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

MARINA ABRAMOVIC, PERFORMANCE ARTIST: In the first it was six hours. The first one, two hours of activity, they had -- they cut my -- they give me roles that they cut my shirt, then they put the pins in the rose into my body. Then they cut a (INAUDIBLE) and the suck my blood on my neck.

Then they -- then they -- you know, carry me around.

AMANPOUR: And somebody did point a loaded gun at you?

ABRAMOVIC: Yes. And then another person came and took the gun throw out to the window. It was so much violence.

AMANPOUR: But at what point do the guards have the responsibility. Marina, you could have been killed.

ABRAMOVIC: I know.

AMANPOUR: Somebody could have not just nicked your neck. They could have gotten your jugular.

ABRAMOVIC: But now we talk about performance. When you go into state of performance you're not you. You're -- you know, you're not little Marina who can start thinking what all hell could happen. You're super Maria. You're the higher form of yourself, and then everything is possible.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

AMANPOUR: Nearly 50 years later. And Abramovic is still stunning audiences with her thought-provoking performances.

And you can watch our entire conversation and all my interviews at Amanpour.com.

That's all we have time for. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online as podcasts at cnn.com/podcasts and on all other major platforms.

I'm Christiana Amanpour in London. Thank you for watching. And I'll see you again next week.

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