Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Hello, and welcome to a couple of Europhiles. My name is Bailey Alexander, and I'm here with my partner Francis, coming at you from Lake Garda, located two hours from Venice and one hour from Europe's most romantic balcony in Verona. And we like to discuss cultural realities because we've experienced life in a lot of countries, and specifically, we cover European politics. And today, we will start with the chaos in Germany, because I hear a lot of podcasters talking about Merz as if he's the Chancellor. But, hey, not so fast. So what say you, Francis, about the current coalition in Germany?
[00:00:40] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, Merz is talking very loudly and emphatically about what he wants to do, but he's not the Chancellor. Okay. So, you know, this is not so fast. Indeed. Essentially, in order to run Germany, you need a majority in the Bundestag, which is their parliament. And Merz only has 29% or 28% change of the people in that body. So he needs coalition partners to get over 51%.
And he is having a really hard time getting that organized. The reason he's having a really hard time getting it organized, and he's really digging himself into a big hole, is that he has ruled out a coalition with the AfD, which is the second largest party, because he thinks they're fascists. So he says, under no circumstances will I do a coalition with the AfD, which is a concept in German called the Brandt Mauer or the Firewall, which basically no way are we going to cross that line and do a coalition of the AfD. So his options are he has to do a coalition with the spd, which massively lost the election and which is really unpopular with the Germans at the moment.
Or he can do a coalition with the Greens, but the problem with the Greens is that the csu, or the Bavarian half of the cdu, CSU coalition, which has been together since Germany was founded, they've ruled out a coalition with the Greens under any circumstances. So his only choice is to do a coalition with Olaf Scholz or his replacement in the spd. And the SPD know this, so they're insisting that he violate the rules, the constitutional rules on the budget deficit and, you know, not pursue his tactics on migration. Essentially business as usual. Same thing that everybody voted against. And this is infuriating, all of his current support.
So he really has a hard time. In order to get the SPD to be in a coalition which would only give him a majority of two or three seats, he will have to basically betray everybody who voted for him and the Young Conservatives There's a group of conservatives that have at least 26 seats in the Parliament. They've said that they will not tolerate the increase in the deficit spending and the betrayal of the migration promises that he made to everybody. So if they don't join 26 MPs he doesn't have a majority. So there's at least a 50, 50 chance that he will never be Chancellor because he's essentially pissed off everybody and it's chaotic at the moment. Nobody really knows what's going to come out of the negotiations. Either he caves and breaks the Brandmauer and basically goes with coalition with the AfD, which would give him a working majority, but the AFD will insist on the migration issue and non support of Ukraine and so forth and so on, or he violates everything and tries to do the coalition with the SPD and then finds out that his own party is voting against him. So he has doesn't command a majority in the Parliament and therefore cannot be Chancellor. So it's very interesting to watch.
I typically make predictions on the results of elections and I'm pretty accurate. And at the moment I wouldn't want to bet on Merz as being the Chancellor. But I have no alternative to propose that I'm willing to actually make a real prediction on it because it's so up in the air and chaotic that we don't know what's going to happen next.
[00:04:47] Speaker A: So as far as the timeframe, I think last time on the pod we discussed, just as you said, there's dozens of meetings that need to happen. So how long will this take?
[00:04:59] Speaker B: Yeah, that's another open question. It can take months.
The thing is that most people don't understand how governments work because they don't work the same in different countries. See, in Germany, the country is run by the Chancellor. Okay? The President is there to, you know, invite people to tea and support the constitution and do some ceremonial things. But the real government work is done by the Chancellor. To be Chancellor, you need to have a support in the Parliament, the lower house of Parliament, the burnestag, of over 50%. If you don't have that, you're not the Chancellor. So the big task for me or whoever wants to be Chancellor now is to negotiate with all of the parties to form a coalition which keeps everybody more or less happy. No one's going to get everything they want, but you know, they need to be more or less happy to support each other so that they have a 51% command of the Bundestag in order to be Chancellor and run the government.
Germany extremely rarely has an over 50% victory in the Bundestag elections. It's always less than that. And then everybody goes into coalition with various parties.
Merkel went into coalition with the fdp. She then had to go into coalition with the SPD at the next election because they didn't have enough seats. So there's always these negotiations. What do you want? Which ministries do you want? You know, what are your policy positions? What are your red lines? How can we figure out what will work for everybody so that everybody's not happy, but everybody has a working relationship that allows them to govern? So that's how Germany works.
And until there is a coalition, there is no government.
[00:07:02] Speaker A: Because Trump arrived, we're entering a new era. Right. So it's kind of like the fin de siecle of the old school, of the old eu.
And we see a lot of politicians really trying to position themselves. We know that Macron is using some very strong language.
Maloney came out with a rather odd comment that seemed to Ukraine had. Could enjoy the security of NATO without specific membership. So we see her trying to find her way because normally, or shall we say, historically, Germany was the economic powerhouse. And you relied upon them for. For finance, and then in France, historically, not during Macron's time, but you relied upon France for diplomacy, you know, diplomatique.
But this is truly a new era, and with all of these divergent interests, you know, the Baltic states and then Poland. But let's. Let's go into Macron, because I. I think there were some protests yesterday. Some. How was he trying to position himself?
[00:08:14] Speaker B: Yeah. So Macron is just a delusional character these days. Very sad. The issue is really at the heart of the European Union now. What Trump has done is he has exacerbated the situation and really shone a spotlight into the divergent philosophy, if you will, of what the future of the European Union should be.
We've always been fairly supportive of the European Union because of the four freedoms and the economic benefits that the EU has provided to its members. But the EU essentially is supposed to support the treaties. Okay. And the treaties are mostly economical. Okay. And what the. What is happening is that the EU is trying to position itself more like the United States of Europe. Okay? So they're trying to take over areas that are not explicitly stated in the treaties and centralize the power because they feel. Macron and his camp feel that Europe needs to be more centralized in order to compete with the other superpowers, the United States, China and Russia, on the world stage. So that's the one thing is a centralization drive. It's going into Brussels, where you have this unelected, very incompetent commission president, Ursula von der Leyen, pushing all sorts of ideas. But really it's France that is pushing, is the big champion of that. And Merz is kind of supportive of it as well, but he's not chancellor, as we've just discussed. So he's still, you know, figure out whether he's going to be there or not. The other side of the coin, which is championed by Meloni, is that Europe is a collection of sovereign states which each get to decide what they want to do for their own citizens, who elected them. Okay? And Europe should stick to the treaties and not try to insert itself into all sorts of other things that no one has agreed that they should be responsible for.
So Meloni is fighting to prevent Europe from just filling the power vacuum and basically declaring itself in charge of defense and all these other things that von der Leyen is pushing and Macron is pushing. So there's a big clash between Meloni and Macron, essentially for the soul of the European Union. Like, what is it going to be? Is it going to be federation of sovereign states, or is it going to be a United States of Europe? Okay? And if it were a United States of Europe, then you should at least elect to the leader of it and not have some, you know, secretary bureaucrat running the place. So, you know, it's, it's, it's very vocal. There's a lot of passion around this. And Meloni is also trying to hold the different, the fraying elements from falling apart entirely. You have Orban and Ficio who are basically pushing the independent state thing and saying, you know, Trump is right, we don't care about Ukraine. Ukraine is none of our business. Let him. Let him rot. And then you have, you know, Macron saying, we're going to send troops and Starmer getting involved again. He's not even in the European Union, but he's sitting there making noise over in his little island. But the point is that Meloni is trying to balance that, and it's extremely difficult because she doesn't want to completely piss off the Central European powers because they control a lot of the funds, the recovery funds and the payments and so forth and so on. And she doesn't want to get into the same position as Orban, where he gets his fronts frozen. But on the other hand, she doesn't want to piss off Trump and the Americans with whom she has a good relationship, and she's basically saying, I'm going to try and bring, you know, try to put Humpty Dumpty back together and, you know, try to bridge the gap and get everybody back on pay, on side with the West.
She's not going to succeed, I don't think, because Trump has had it with Europe. He's not going to support NATO and he certainly hates the European Union, preferring to do deals directly with the member states, which supports Meloni's position of a Commonwealth of Independent states rather than a centralized United States of Europe. So this is a very interesting time because we don't know who's going to win that fight, but that fight is fundamental to the future of Europe, and we'll see. Europe is going to survive. You know, everybody talking, a lot of Americans are talking, oh, it's over, Europe's finished. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Europe's been declared finished. I can't even count how many times. And it's never been finished. And it is the cultural superpower of the world. So it's highly unlikely that Europe is going to, you know, finally croak. Right. It's going to find a way to resolve these issues. And a lot of the globalists, Macron in particular, Merz, these guys are on borrowed time. Macron doesn't command a majority in his parliament. So at any point that he wants to spend money, he can't actually just decide that without getting the support of some of the nationalist factions, like Marine Le Pen in France. Merz, as we've discussed, doesn't have a coalition and isn't the chancellor. And Meloni is the only one of those three that actually has the support of her people. And it's growing. The Italian voters are supportive of Meloni's position and her fight with Europe. Some of them are cautious and don't want her to piss off Europe to the point that it becomes like Hungary. But all of them don't believe that anybody elected Von der Leyen to tell them what to do. So it's a very awkward time for everybody out there.
[00:14:41] Speaker A: Yeah, Maloney really is trying to. To stand ground. Interestingly, I think Italy is coming from a position of strength. You know, we recently received 40 billion of investment from the UAE. Musk is investing. And people would be surprised to hear that the Italian economy is doing all right. Our gas prices didn't go up because they secured contracts through the Transmed pipeline with the Algerians and the countries down South. For 20 years, we lived in a lot of different countries. We lived in Prague. We saw their standard of living rise. We lived in Amsterdam, which was doing fine. We lived in Romania, which their standard of living went through the roof. You know, we. We saw the EU benefit individual countries specifically, and no one has taken more money than Poland. So Poland seems to be a. Their role seems to be very odd. You know, at first they were just very pro Ukrainian war, and then, of course, they were flooded with Ukrainians, and then they became less pro war. And again, this has so much to do with the distribution of funds. Whereas when we spoke about the EU in the past, it was a very positive force for all of these independent countries economically. And now, like you said, Meloni is trying to fight that very dark force of trying to centralize everything and dictate what the independent states should do. What's the latest on Romania? Because this. This is very tricky.
[00:16:10] Speaker B: Yeah, Romania is the next hot spot to watch. Okay. Colin Georgescu is polling around 45%, and they're not even sure that he can run because the courts are trying to forbid him from running.
They have accused him of several things, obvious, I don't know because I'm not there, but it sounds like it's a smear job, right? They planted things at his house. Russian propaganda and cocaine and shit. And I just don't believe any of that.
That doesn't mean it's not true, it's just highly unlikely. Anyway, his support has increased dramatically since they started picking on him because the Romanians do not like interference in their politics at all. So that is to be watched. The election is in May.
So far he has submitted. Callan Giorgescu has submitted his candidacy papers, and the question is whether the courts will allow them to be accepted as a candidate. But even if he doesn't, somebody in his party will run and will most likely win the next candidate after him, who is also basically standing on a platform that says that he shouldn't be admitted because any outside interference in remaining elections is bad. Only he's polling 20%, so he's got an over 20 point lead over the next candidate. And everybody else is small.
So, you know, he looks like he will well be the next president of Romania, assuming that the European Union doesn't manage to interfere in that election, which they are trying to do. I mean, Van der Leyen is doing some very dark things. She's been found to interfere in the Hungarian elections and. And in the Slovakian elections. And now she's messing with Romania in order to get people that she. Who support her in power. And that is totally undemocratic and she's going to fail miserably in, in that effort because people don't like being told who to vote for. Not in America and not in Europe. So it's very important.
[00:18:24] Speaker A: What's going on is, you know, Trump is, has decided that America is no longer in the regime changing business. Right. So this is a profound shift. So what it's done, it's exposed a lot of the hot spots in Europe and a lot of the divisions. And when you think about America used NATO for, for all of these wars, you know, for Iraq, one could argue that Assad, now that we've just recently, the last two nights, seen the pogroms in Syria, you know, Assad was arguably not so bad. Gaddafi was not so bad. Saddam Hussein was not so bad. They certainly didn't improve any of these areas. They made them far worse. All of these forever wars. I'm happy to hear that America is no longer in the regime changing business. But they used to use NATO, what is it? Reinstein, the air base to launch Ramstein.
[00:19:20] Speaker B: Ramstein is the biggest air base in American air base outside of America.
But it's not the only one. There's Aviano in Italy. There are several others. America has 900 bases outside of America. And Trump is going to close some of them, maybe all of them. I don't think he'll close all of them, but he's definitely closing some of them because he feels that it's a complete waste of money for America to try and police the world.
He would rather do business with China, do business with Russia and do business with individual European countries. But he's not interested in propping up a European Union that's run by globalists who interfered with the American election and basically didn't make any, any bones about supporting his opponent in the election. So he's not going to forgive them for that. And they're basically pushing their luck. The Balts are essentially Vander Leyen's biggest allies in this because they're tiny, they're mosquitoes, right?
They're like a million people or something like that, and they want to pick a fight with Russia. And Russia is like laughing, right? They're like, we don't need to worry about the Balts because they're not going to do anything because they don't have any people. So they're like, well, we're going to get all of NATO involved in fighting Russia. In fact, some of the Balts are talking about preemptive strikes against Russia in the forlorn hope that they're going to be protected by Article 5 and bring all the rest of NATO into the conflict. Now, Trump has stated categorically that he's not going to do that. And the Turks have stated categorically that they're not going to do that. If you pick a fight with Russia, you're on your own. If Russia attacks you, that's a different matter, because that's Article 5. But you don't get Article 5 protection if you pick a fight.
And this is the same with America. America started fights, dragged NATO into them, but it wasn't really NATO. It was a coalition of the willing.
Oh, we're going to go to Iraq and we're going to support things. The Italians went after the war was over as peacekeepers to help clean up the mess. But, you know, only the Brits went in to actually fight, you know, with the Americans in. In Iraq and other places. But America's strong enough to do things like that. You know, the Brits and the. And the others are a joke militarily. They're never going to be able to fight the Russians without American support. And Trump has made it pretty clear that he's not interested in starting World War iii, and he's not interested in picking fights for no reason. So the fight for the soul of Europe, I think, would have happened anyway even if Trump wasn't there, because the Europeans, people like Orban, Fico, Meloni, even the Spaniards, to some extent, they're not into being told what to do by the Greeks. They're not into being told what to do by Brussels, especially since von der Leyen is not elected. Von der Leyen runs around. She's come up with a defense plan. She has no mandate to make any defense commitments whatsoever, but she's telling everybody that they have to spend 800 billion euros on defense. I have a plan. You know, I'm like, well, the guy at the bar has a plan, too, but that doesn't give him the right to tell us what to do. The defense is a national thing, and it has never been given to the European Union to do. They're pretending that it is, but it's not defense. There is a NATO thing, which is not the European Union, and that is in flux because America is looking like it's pulling out of it. But Europe, the European Union has no mandate to do any defense stuff. The French would like it to and the Balts would like it to, but they're being countered by all of Southern Europe. And, you know, that is the fight. That is the existential fight of The European Union. Trump has his own fight with the deep state in America, and the European Union has a fight between centralization and globalization and sovereign, independent states. And we don't know who's going to win that fight. But no one is going to put their hands down and not fight. This is really crucial to the future of Europe, and it's going to be the defining moment of, of what we do going forward.
[00:23:56] Speaker A: I think what happened when the war broke out in 2022 is Europe was. I'd never seen it like this. It was truly paralyzed by propaganda. We were cut off from rt, cut off from everything. And so I think that kind of feeds into the current state, the current dilemma. You find that Macron and merits what they're trying to do. And Van der Leyen, of course, they're trying to drive all these narratives. I think they're just going to fall like, you know, like heavy balloons eventually, but it's not going to stop them from trying. And I think this is what they're doing. They just continually try to tell these stories. Zelensky, obviously, is, is a, is a problem. I think that there's a lot of protests going on here. And I think that, like you said, the most important aspect is that Merz and Macron are, are just on shaky ground in their own country.
[00:24:51] Speaker B: Yeah, they don't, they don't have a mandate to pursue what they're pursuing, especially Merz.
Meertz promised in his election campaign that he was going to do things, and he has now gone back on all the major promises, mostly around immigration and support for the defense spending and blowing the budget. He promised he was going to be fiscally conservative, and he's basically going right along with Schultz's plan to spend another 800 billion of German money by increasing debt. And that is not how you win votes in conservative parties. In Germany, the Germans are very conscious of how to manage money, which is why the European Central bank is in Frankfurt, because the rest of Europe knows the Germans are pretty good at managing money. And this is freaking out the German voter, like, a lot. So Merz is on very shaky ground, but Macron is also on very shaky ground. He doesn't have a majority in his parliament. And basically Marine Le Pen is biding her time and she should sweep the presidential elections when they finally get held, because people are sick of Macron in France. So Macron. And if the two big powers in Europe are on shaky ground, the third biggest power is Italy, and she has a coalition. She's not in a majority position. But her coalition is pretty solid behind her, and she is listening to her people. And she has defied Brussels on the migration strategy. She's insisted on the Albanian program that she has to handle migration. And the Italian courts in Crotone just gave her a resounding victory where they told Brussels and the NGOs that they have no right to decide Italy's migration policy and that it's a sovereign thing. And we don't care what you think in Brussels. So we haven't seen Vanderlyen's reaction to that court ruling, but, you know, that's supporting Meloni. Meloni is hard on migration. She's tackling it. She says, I'm going to deal with it. I'm dealing with my defense. I'm dealing with my foreign policy. And I will decide. I will decide along with my coalition partners what the Italian people want to do, not Brussels. So that's a very strong stance. She's doing it, quote, unquote, diplomatically. And that's why she looks like she's vacillating, but she's not. Orban, who is just really hardcore, but she is trying to forge her own position, and she's serious. Right. Orban is a small economy.
For all that, he's a very loud character.
He is tiny. Italy is a power. Italy is a founding member of the union. And people cannot ignore the Italian position on these things.
So we'll see what happens. And then, of course, what's that?
[00:27:54] Speaker A: Even though they may try. And, you know, I just wrote a book called Personal Legends of Piemonte, And I interviewed 12 Northern Italians, and I wrapped 12 stories around them, showcasing their motivations, their daily lives, their aspirations, and how they, in fact, managed to fulfill their own destiny. But the final chapter is basically Never Underestimate Italy. And especially right now. It's just like I said, I think Meloni is coming from a position of strength, and I think you just have some salient points. And also, my book is in both Italian and English. The first half is in English and the second half is in Italian. So if Italy is on your bucket list, which it must be, you can actually brush up on your Italian. And I apologize, Francis, if I'm. If I'm cutting you off, but I did want everyone to know that I have another podcast. It's called Life is Like a Detective Novel. And basically, it's. I give. I provide 15 minute excerpts. You could treat it like an audiobook because I'm reading from each of the stories. You don't get to read the Interviews in English or Italian. But I give you a taste of each of the stories and I think what people, why we talk about Italy. We, we not only live here and Francis is half Italian, he's also half German, so he unders. He worked in Germany for many years and he's worked here for many years. But people just seem to cast off Italy so readily. But Italy has a vast repertoire of tools at their disposal. Made it through Covid fine even, even though they were hit first and hardest, which I find quite interesting. And then I wrote this book and it was just very illuminating because it goes specifically into the lives of the Italians and how they think and how they respond to tragedy. And what's so interesting about now is Germany does not respond well to chaos. They, they move cautiously, they move slowly. Italy does not. And everyone laughs at Italy. Like, oh, you're like Greece with all of your debt. No, in fact, there is no personal debt. These people have money in their savings account and they're, they don't spend money in the same way. They don't even think about money in the same way. Shall I say me as an American, how I think about money? So they have, they have a quality of life and approach towards life. They have such an appreciation for the details. So they're often operating under the radar. Their trade is fantastic. Like you said, they're an agricultural powerhouse. They may not be an economic powerhouse, but that does not mean that their trade.
[00:30:30] Speaker B: You'd be surprised. I mean, Italy has a lot of interesting things. I mean, Leonardo is the best helicopter manufacturer in the world. High technology stuff. It's a partner in Airbus. It's building the sixth generation fighter jets with the English and Japanese. You know, Italy is, is a high tech country that is basically attracting investment. They've always had trouble with it because of their tax structure, but Melon is changing that. And that's how she attracted the UAE and that's how she attracted Musk.
[00:31:05] Speaker A: When you look at France, which we know very well, you. Francis goes there quite often. He just finished up a project. But in France, everything is centralized. In Germany, everything is centralized. But here in Italy, it really is 20 specific reasons with different tax structures, different lifestyles, different everything. So I think that this is one thing that works on Italy's behalf.
[00:31:33] Speaker B: Yeah, Germany is the same as Italy. Germany is also broken into maybe 16 regions. I believe Bavaria is not the same as Brandenburg. The former East Germany is all voting AfD. There's some significant differences between the regions in Germany as well. But they treat them differently, right The Germans are all collaboration work together. The famous triad, the workers, the government and the unions and the companies all working together for the benefit of Germany. Italy is all free for all, chaotic on the outside thing. The Italians don't like being told what to do. But instead of arguing like the Germans would, the Italians just ignore people who are telling them what to do, and they just go away and do their own thing. Mostly they're not into fights.
[00:32:24] Speaker A: Long time ago, they lost the desire to tell other people what to do. And this is part of the reason people enjoy this country so much and why they come here. They find it so relaxing. It's because they don't project their own reality onto other people where so many other cultures specifically do that.
[00:32:42] Speaker B: Yeah, you know, it's, it's. America was very guilty of this and Trump has more or less stopped that, which is great. You know, it's like, do your own thing. You know, figure out what you want to do and do your own thing, but don't drag us into it. We don't need to have a position on every single thing. You guys can do whatever you want. And the Italians are very similar in that respect.
The, the French are like, oh, we want to do this, and therefore everyone else must want to do this. And you're sitting there going like, no, we don't. You know, you do whatever you want to do. If you want to go to Ukraine and send your troops there and get them massacred by the Russians, then you do that. You go right ahead. You know, God bless you. We don't really, unless you're threatening us, because the Russians may decide that we're involved. You know, you could do whatever you want, but we're not coming. We're not going to be there for you if they attack you on your home soil. We will be there because Article 5. But otherwise, if you want to pick a fight with other people, you do that, go right ahead. It's not our business.
And that is one of the reasons why Italy got along so well with the North Africans. Right. They never tell. You know, they did have a moment in their history when Mussolini invaded Libya. He invaded Libya was actually not so anti Italian, but Ethiopia was pretty anti Italian. And this is a stupid idea. Let them do their own thing. And France, on the other hand, has basically got all these troops in the Sahel, and they always tell these guys what to do. And Italy's like, let them do what they want to do. And people appreciate that. The Algerians appreciate that. Tunisians appreciate that. And that's why the transmit pipeline works is we're getting our gas from North Africa very successfully because we made an equal relationship with those people. We didn't tell them what to do. So I think that's a very key element of the Italian character that is undervalued. But if everybody would just relax and not tell people what to do, it would be great, wouldn't it?
[00:34:49] Speaker A: Just. I mean, I just revisited Gore Vidal's Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace, and in that book, he documents over 200 wars, beginning at the Berlin airlift in 49 to the war in Kosovo in 99. And he documents over 200 hot, cold and tepid wars. And of course, those tepid wars, they would fall under the U said umbrella. These are very interesting times, very chaotic times, and some countries respond better than others. But what Francis and I do like to do is we do like to explore the cultural realities because they are very different over here in Europe. But what has been exposed are the hotspots like Romania, Moldova.
[00:35:35] Speaker B: Yeah, we'll see what happens. But it's all going to shake out this year. By end of 2025, we'll know exactly who wins that particular fight, and we'll see. Right. The globalists are bigger nations, stronger nations, maybe, but their leaders who are driving them into this fight, don't have their popular support. So, you know, if there's an election and Marine Le Pen wins in France, Marine Le Pen thinks that just like.
Just like Meloni, she thinks France first, we don't need to get involved in other stuff. And, you know, the AfD have made it very clear that they're anti spending all of the German money in Ukraine. They want to reconcile with the Russians, reopen the pipelines, use the gas, and fix Germany's economy, which was totally ruined by Schultz's incompetence and their actions in support of Ukraine during the last three years. Now, I get why they supported Ukraine. I mean, partly it's because the Americans wanted them to, and partly because they had genuine empathy with the invasion of Ukraine and so forth and so on. I get that. But they also need to remember who elects them. And their voters don't want all the factories to close because they don't have any energy.
So, you know, it's a great. It's a perfect storm in Germany. They close the nuclear power plants, they rely on windmills, and then they wonder why their energy costs went up five times, and all of a sudden their cars can't be sold because they cost too much to make in Germany. So it's all related and it's complete incompetence, which is Trump's point.
[00:37:16] Speaker A: Right. So I just think that America has its own deep state and Europe has its own deep state, and these are turbulent times. So, hey, thank you so much for listening. And please check out my website at bailyalexander. Com. I've got a book signing on April 10th in Rome in the Eternal City at the Almost Corner Bookshop. So, hey, ciao for now. And ahrivederchi.
