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Interviews

Jon Sopel on Trump’s America: ‘This is the most challenging journalistic assignment that I’ve had’

Inside Trump's White House

A Year At The Circus

Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America Editor and author of the breakout political book of 2017, If Only They Didn’t Speak English, takes us inside the chaos of Trump’s White House.

Welcome to the White House. 
 
At the heart of Washington, there is a circus. It's raucous, noisy and full of clowns. Reporting on it is a daily cacophony. Four major stories can blow up and blow out before breakfast, and political weather systems are moving at warp speed. The one thing absent from the weather forecast is the tranquil eye of the storm. That we never see. 
 
In A Year at the Circus: Inside Trump's White House, BBC North America Editor, Jon Sopel, takes you inside Trump’s West Wing and explores the impact this presidency has had on the most iconic of American institutions. Each chapter starts inside a famous Washington room, uncovering its history and its new resonance in the Trump era. 
 
You are invited to step inside the Oval Office where Trump called for loyalty from FBI Director James Comey, and experience life as a reporter in the Briefing Room, where the tense relationship between the media and the President is played out. Guiding you through these rooms, Jon reveals the inner workings of the Trump White House and details the key moments and conversations that have unfolded within its walls. 
 
From Kim Jong-un and Kavanaugh to Merkel and the Mueller Inquiry - this is your insider guide to the Washington Circus. Roll up, roll up ...

Notes From Trump's America

If Only They Didn't Speak English

The definitive book on the making of Trump's America from the BBC's North America Editor, Jon Sopel. Now updated with an exclusive new chapter.

Jon Sopel may be the sanest man in America.  He is certainly one of the most insightful … Immensely enjoyable

Jon Sopel nails it … If Only They Didn’t Speak English is an entertaining and enlightening stock take of how we got here.

A wonderfully readable, perceptive account of what America looks like today through the eyes of a seasoned, informed but ultimately sympathetic observer. He addresses head-on such difficult questions as why it is America's most God-fearing opponents of abortion who are also the most passionate supporters of the gun lobby and the death penalty. He reminds us that President Trump's "America First" policy is nothing new – but that America made an invaluable contribution to Western Europe's defence of its liberty in two world wars. And he describes graphically how US Presidential politics became Reality TV in 2016, leaving us, rightly, with a deep sense of unease about the way fake facts and bare-faced lies, often encouraged by enemies of democracy abroad, now pose a real threat to the survival of our values and institutions. Read it alongside the late, great Lynne Olson's Citizens of London and J.D. Vance's Hillbilly Elegy.

Sir Peter Westmacott, Former British Ambassador to the United States

Jon Sopel tries to explain the madness of Trump's America with an elegant sense of stoic bewilderment. Brilliant

Emma Kennedy,  Actress, Writer and Broadcaster

'You see, if only they didn’t speak English in America, then we’d treat it as a foreign country – and probably understand it a lot better’ 
 
‘the sanest man in America’ – Bill Bryson 
‘Jon Sopel nails it’ – Emily Maitlis 
 
**With a brand new chapter, charting Trump's first year in power** 
 
As the BBC’s North America Editor, Jon Sopel has had a pretty busy time of it lately. In the time it’s taken for a reality star to go from laughing stock to leader of the free world, Jon has travelled the length and breadth of the United States, experiencing it from a perspective that most of us could only dream of: he has flown aboard Air Force One, interviewed President Obama and has even been described as ‘a beauty’ by none other than Donald Trump. 
 
Through music, film, literature, TV and even through the food we eat and the clothes that we wear we all have a highly developed sense of what America is and through our shared, tangled history we claim a special relationship. But America today feels about as alien a country as you could imagine. It is fearful, angry and impatient for change. 
 
In this fascinating, insightful portrait of American life and politics, Jon Sopel sets out to answer our questions about a country that once stood for the grandest of dreams, but which is now mired in a storm of political extremism, racial division and increasingly perverse beliefs.

Jon Sopel

Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others

Fear and loathing on the 2020 campaign trail... 
 
 
'26 February, White House Briefing Room 
The coronavirus feels like it is changing everything. Suddenly it's not just a public health emergency; it has the potential to upend this whole election...' 
 
In UnPresidented: Politics, pandemics and the race that Trumped all others, BBC North America Editor Jon Sopel presents a diary of an election like we've never quite seen before. 
 
Experience life as a reporter on the campaign trail, as the election heats up and a global pandemic slowly sweeps in. As American lives are lost at a devastating rate, the presidential race becomes a battle for the very soul of the nation - challenging not just the Trump presidency, but the very institutions of American democracy itself. 
In this highly personal account of reporting on America in 2020, Jon Sopel takes you behind the scenes of a White House in crisis and an election in turmoil, expertly laying bare the real story of the presidential campaign in a panoramic account of an election and a year like no other.

Jon Sopel

Books by Jon Sopel

Articles featuring Jon Sopel

Jon Sopel on Trump’s America: ‘This is the most challenging journalistic assignment that I’ve had’

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