Scotsman Daily Bulletin Friday 25 August

The Scotsman

Transcript

00:00 Hello and welcome to the Scotsman's Daily Bulletin for Friday. I'm Alan Young, Deputy

00:06 Editor of the Scotsman. I'm joined today by our World Editor, Jane Bradley, to take a

00:11 look at some of the headlines. Hi, Jane.

00:13 Hi, Alan.

00:14 Let's firstly have a look at the front page. And we lead today on a story from our health

00:21 correspondent, Joseph Anderson. He has been digging into the drugs deaths figures in Scotland

00:29 and has discovered that hundreds of deaths are being left out of the official figures

00:35 which are recorded in England and Wales. Now, it is important to say that this is not a

00:41 new development. This is a historical way of counting. So the story earlier this week,

00:47 the drugs deaths were going down, is still a fact. But what it does point to is that

00:54 drugs linked deaths not being recorded in Scotland potentially mean that we have an

01:00 even worse problem than we thought. And as everyone knows, Scotland is the drug deaths

01:06 capital of Europe, not a title to be proud of. Fantastic piece of work from Joseph. I'd

01:15 recommend you read that at Scotsman.com. And in today's paper, we of course have our daily

01:22 festival guide as the festival comes to an end. All the action from Scottish clubs in

01:28 Europe last night as well. And pictured on the front, US climate envoy John Kerry speaking

01:35 in Edinburgh yesterday. Overnight, however, another US politician was making the headlines

01:42 too, too late for Prince Jane. But Donald Trump handed himself in to the county jail

01:51 in Georgia, got out soon after, we should say. But this really was a historic appearance,

01:59 not least because he had his mugshot taken. And there we go.

02:05 He did.

02:06 A stern face there. But this is going to be a historic, historic image.

02:12 It really is. I mean, I feel a bit like I'm having my mugshot taken today, just where

02:18 I'm sitting to do this broadcast. I don't look any different to Trump. So I can't really

02:23 criticise. But yes, it is an absolutely historic image. I mean, it's the first time a president

02:27 has ever had a mugshot taken. Obviously, it's the first time a president's been indicted.

02:31 But this particular case isn't the first time a president's been indicted because Trump

02:35 has been indicted on many occasions in the past few months, as we all know. But yeah,

02:40 the mugshot is, I mean, it's just iconic, isn't it? The description, I think, that the

02:48 official record show is that he has strawberry blonde hair, which is a lovely little touch,

02:53 I think. But yeah, I mean, the whole thing, he is just seeing this as another chance for

02:59 publicity. You know, his arrival at court was at a time when a lot of Americans were

03:04 sitting down to watch the news. It was all live. He just sees it as, you know, he's being

03:09 victimised and he sees this as positive publicity for himself, really. He was in the court for

03:15 about 20 minutes, I think, and then he came out, he's had to pay massive bail. And now

03:20 he's just getting on business as usual, still planning on running for the next presidential

03:25 election if he can.

03:26 Indeed, and far from being embarrassed, as some people might be, having their image taken

03:33 by the authorities. Essentially, he's turning this into a campaigning image now.

03:38 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, he even last night came back onto X, the social media platform

03:43 formerly known as Twitter, for the first time in a long time. He sort of left that under

03:48 a kind of cloud of stroppiness. So he's back on that. He's tweeting on that, sorry, X-ing

03:54 on that. And yeah, he's using this as a great chance to get himself in the media again.

04:01 I mean, no publicity is bad publicity, seems to be his mantra, doesn't it?

04:05 And there doesn't seem to be much doubt that he is going to end up as the Republican nominee

04:10 now.

04:11 Yeah, I mean, I've heard a bit of talk over the last couple of days, people saying, oh,

04:15 you know, is this the final straw? You know, is that not going to happen? But yeah, I mean,

04:20 it is still looking like he's got a pretty good chance. So yeah, we'll have to have to

04:24 wait and see. But as far as he's concerned, that's happening.

04:27 If we want to consider the possibility, just for a minute, that he's also involved in the

04:35 Watts court cases, he gets convicted, and he maybe even ends up with a jail sentence

04:42 that wouldn't necessarily bar him from being elected as US president.

04:47 Absolutely. Technically, there is nothing to stop him running for president from behind

04:50 bars. There is literally nothing to stop him doing that. And if he became president, he

04:55 then could again, potentially, though this has never been tested, but he could potentially

04:59 be in a position where he could give himself a pardon, a presidential pardon. So yeah,

05:04 this is something that is being talked about as a possibility under US law, though it's

05:08 never actually happened. So we don't know what would happen if that did come to fruition.

05:14 Indeed, absolutely fascinating times ahead. Thank you very much for talking through that,

05:19 Jane. Please keep an eye on Scotsman.com throughout the day for all the very latest news and analysis,

05:25 including our final Fringe First Awards. We'll have a video and a report from that later

05:32 on today. If you are on the site, please do subscribe and then you will not miss a thing.

05:38 And if you're out and about today, please do pick up a copy of the paper from me and

05:43 from Jane. It's bye for now.

05:45 [END]

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