← Christiane Amanpour Presents: The Ex Files
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A
This is a global production.
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B
I think we should talk about the assassination plot. Here's yet another report of Trump potentially being in the crosshairs of the hardliners or whoever inside Iran.
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Israel wants Trump to think the worst possible things about the Iranian regime. That's what these they've done since the beginning.
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B
The US as you remember a week or so ago, apparently indirectly warned the Iranian negotiators that Israel might be planning to kill the top Iranian negotiators. It's a vicious cycle of plots and warnings and who knows what's going on.
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A
Very, very smart people trying to do something they think is good for their country can come up with some of the most cockamamie ideas that I've ever heard. And this is a cockamamie idea.
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B
I think Zelenskyy's counterattack into Russia is actually now impressing Trump. But Jamie, Putin still shows no indication whatsoever that he's given up his, even his maximalist dreams.
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A
When Hollywood tries to come up with scripts, they couldn't have come up with one like this.
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B
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the latest episode of the X Files with me Christiana Manpour in
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A
London and Jamie Rubin in New York.
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B
So here are the questions we're going to try to pose and to answer Iran's Trump assassination plot. How seriously should we take all that? How will Lindsey Graham's death, Senator Graham and Iran hawk affect the Iran war and US Foreign policy more widely? And later on, does the far right in Europe threaten the future of NATO, not to mention the far right in the United States, this growing movement. And we'll have our recommendations as well. So let's get to the Iran latest. Jamie, amidst all these questions we just posed, and we're going to hopefully get to, is a real resumption of what you call what you could call a hot war. Light, not a cold war, not a full scale hot war, but still a hot war. Would you, would you describe it as that?
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A
I don't know whether hot or light or half war, half diplomacy. Coercive diplomacy maybe would be the word that I would use. I think what's going on here is that both sides are limiting the types of military action they're taking in the hopes of returning to diplomacy. Because I don't think either side wants a return to full scale war. The Trump administration seems to think that by attacking targets that are generally focused on the Strait of Hormuz, they can pressure the Iranians into opening the Strait of Hormuz. That hasn't happened yet. That was supposed to be the big result of this ceasefire agreement, the successful reopening of the Strait of Hormuz. And that's where I think the source of the problem is.
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B
Right.
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A
The administration seems to think it can improve the Iranian actions by using force. And the Iranians seem determined to say that's not going to happen. When you hit us, we hit you back.
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B
And on the other hand, the Iranians seem to be even those who sort of realize that the American war game had not been gamed well enough and didn't work really. But the Iranians may be in a state of over, over extending themselves, over negotiating and actually potentially finding themselves in a bit of a multi headed hydra decision making process inside. Listen, we'll talk about that in a moment, but first I think we should talk about the assassination plot. Here's yet another report of Trump potentially being in the crosshairs of the hardliners or whoever inside Iran. So the latest one is, is, is about the. Apparently Israeli intelligence discovered some chatter that this was being considered. They did discover an actual plot, but that this was being considered. How seriously should we take it? Trump has started talking about it now.
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A
It's hard to know. I don't have access to this information anymore. I will say this, it does look like that was the reason why they didn't use the new Air Force One when he left the last NATO summit in Turkey. Israeli intelligence is a complex thing. We know that in certain occasions they have done amazing things, the pagers with Hezbollah to put them bombs in pagers and then be able to destroy foot soldiers or kill them or harm them. Amazing things over the years. But they've also done terribly stupid things, trying to poison Khaled Mashal and then having to give the, the antidote back, believing, not believing that Hamas could attack them on October 7th. I mean, talk about an intelligence failure. So I think when we hear that something is Israeli intelligence, some people immediately assume it must be true. I've read and tend to think that this is a. Yes, people talk about responding to the death of the Ayatollah, the Ayatollah Khomeini, and they talk about it, responding to it. But I tend to think that the Israeli intelligence report is more intended to influence than to inform.
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B
Okay, so that's interesting. You mean to influence Trump as he considers this ongoing diplomacy with Iran, which by the way, he says is going on or has authorized it to go on, despite the fact that he says there's no ceasefire and we're continuing to hit them, but also authorizing diplomacy.
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A
Israel wants Trump to Think the worst possible things about the Iranian regime. That's what these, they've done since the beginning. But we're going to talk in another moment about another Israeli intelligence idea that shows you that they don't always have a very good grip on how Iran works, on how Iran's decision making is made and what will lead to change inside Iran. So I just would hope that whoever is reading these reports has a skeptical eye because the Israeli record on Iran's political developments and Iran's leadership and Iran's decision making has been a mixed record. Let's be clear.
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B
Yeah. Now let's just get the Trump timeline on this assassination attempt. Now, as we've said, and maybe we didn't say it, but did happen over the weekend, over the six days of the funeral, the huge state funeral across many cities in Iran and detouring through Iraq, there were very, very hardliners who said, as Jamie pointed out, that we will kill Trump because he killed our Ayatollah Khamenei. That's, you know, very, very like the Great Satan and death to America and all the rest of it. We don't know how much executive power is behind that. So this is what Trump told the New York Post when the Wall Street Journal first raised this issue of Israeli intelligence. No new plan from Iran. But he said Tehran had always wanted to kill him for years. No, no, Israel came up with nothing. No, no, he said, I've been number one on Iran's kill list for a long time and it's the way life is. You know, partly that goes back to his assassination order on then Rudd's chief force, the external arm of the irgc, Rasem Soleimani back in his first term. Then he says, I have. The only thing I can tell you is that if there's anything like that comes out, I've left instructions to just literally bomb them at levels that they've never seen before. He said that, you know, there are thousands of missiles locked and loaded, pointed at Iran, aimed at the Islamic Republic of Iran, thousands more to immediately follow should the government act. He said orders have already been given and the US Military is ready, willing and able for a one year period of time, subject to extension, to completely decimate and destroy all areas of Iran. And then he signed off with his now common signature. Praise be to Allah. So that's where we are. But like you said, there's no actual evidence of an actual plan, just a warning that maybe somebody was thinking about it.
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A
Yeah, look again, it's a new world now. I read Those things. And I don't know what to think other than to tell you that my gut instinct tells me that there's nothing dramatically new here, that the President's security is going to be protected, that the Iranians are busy rebuilding their country. They did once have an assassination plot that apparently got a little bit far down the road. If you remember, they were trying to kill the Saudi ambassador in a restaurant inside Washington. They hired some, some basically criminals from, I think it was Colombia. So it just tells you that sometimes these things are blown wildly out of proportion, especially now. And I bring up Saudi Arabia because it's interesting that in the current environment, Saudi Arabia not been struck by Iran. They've gone after Kuwait, they've gone after Bahrain. The Fifth Fleet's headquarters have been bombed over and over and over again. Saudi Arabia has not. That tells me that some diplomacy must or is likely going on between Saudi Arabia and Iran. And it tells me that the Iranians are limiting what they want this war to turn into. And my legs are shaking a little bit. If it moved the camera, I apologize for that.
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B
Why are they shaking?
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And they just sometimes shake early in the morning, so I had to rearrange them.
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B
Okay, okay. While you're, While you're shaking and rearranging, let's just point out the following, that amidst all these assassination plots and stories of, and reports of, etc, the US as you remember a week or so ago, apparently indirectly warned the Iranian negotiators that Israel might be planning to kill the top Iranian negotiators, and they are the Foreign Minister Abbas Arachi, and the speaker of the Parliament, National Security leader Muhammad Bar Gaf, who are the faces and the interlocutors for any of these negotiations to try to end this war. So it's, it's, it's a vicious cycle of plots and warnings and who knows what's going on. I mean, I hate to be flip, I'm not being flip. But as you say, it's a whole new world, and we just literally don't quite know what's going on, including what on earth is going on with the actual substance of, of what they're meant to be negotiating over. What. Let's go back to the Memorandum of Understanding, okay, Jamie? Because for a week or so or more now, we've been yammering on about a Memorandum of Understanding as if it's set in stone. And then all of a sudden it's been declared null and void by Trump and the ceasefire is over. And it seems to be. Right, Jamie, sort of centered on the failure to resolve the issue of the Strait of Homo. So do you want to look into this text on the Strait of Hormuz in the Memorandum of Understanding?
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A
Yeah, I'll do my best. Look, this was drafted sloppily. I think it's obvious that both sides interpret it differently. The United States, according to Secretary Rubio, is never going to accept the idea that Iran has unique control over the Strait of Hormuz, while Iran believes that the words of the paragraph 5, I believe it is, make clear that in their minds, they are in charge of the Strait of. Of Hormuz and agree for a certain period of time not to charge tolls. When you say, I agree for 60 days not to charge tolls, that implies that after 60 days, you can charge tolls. If you can charge tolls, that sort of says you're in charge. This is why it's vague, it's sloppy, and this is. I think what broke the ceasefire, is that Iran didn't like the fact that the United States was helping ships go through a route where they didn't have control, through the route closer to Oman. And so whether it was the government itself or some parts of the government which didn't like the agreement in the first place, launched attacks on those ships, and thus a series of actions took place which bring us to right on the verge of whether we're calling it a, you know, near war, hot war, hot cold war, coercive diplomacy, hot war, lights. And so interpretations of diplomacy is what you need professionals for. This may have been the best they could get, I don't know. But clearly they're going to have to go back to square one on this paragraph 5 and figure out how to get the Strait of Hormuz open, because that's what both sides, I think, want. I know this all sounds horrifically complicated, and it is horrifically complicated, because it's a war where both sides somehow think they have the upper hand. And the truth is neither of them do.
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B
And the truth also is that this was not an issue before the war was launched on Iran by Israel and the United States. And also Trump's wild swings in language. You know, just about a week or so ago, while they were in negotiations, he had called the regime strong and smart. Next thing you know, he's calling them scum because of this breaking of the MOU understanding. Does.
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Does.
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Does it matter, the rhetoric?
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A
I don't think it does. I think President Trump has said so many things about Iran both ways, and has shown an ability to turn on a dime over and over again. You know, in politics, we used to call something a flip flop. And that was supposed to be a criticism. And you got criticized and were shown to be not serious if you flip flopped on an issue. And that was politics in America. President Trump has made flip flopping part of his diplomacy. So I don't think we need to worry about his language. I do think we need to worry about, you know, the motivation for this war. And I'm surprised I'm going to throw this softball to you. What about that other intelligence report we were reading about this week?
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B
Oh, my God. Oh, my goodness. Just, just a note on flip flops. You remember when I, before I knew you, actually, in 1994, in a live television press conference, your president, who you were working for, Bill Clinton, gave a foreign policy speech at cnn and I accused him of flip flopping over Bosnia. And he was mighty not happy. He was not happy. Sadly, it was true, but he was not happy. Okay, so I thought it was a farce when we first read it that Israel's much vaunted Mossad had decided that Ahmadinejad, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who Western officials decide to call Mahmoud Ahmadina jacket because they didn't know how to actually pronounce the name. The famous or infamous Holocaust denier. You know, people bashing fundamentalist, somewhat crazy and nuclear. You know, strongman. You know, when the first reports came up that Israel was thinking of grooming him for a position of leadership should the idea of a regime collapse transpire, I, you know, I didn't know whether it was true or not, but it was certainly farcical. Now, our good friends at the New York Times who truly have great sources, there's Ronan Bergman in, in Israel who has all the deep dive with Israeli intellig. There's Fanoz Fasihi, who has the deepest dive on all sectors of the Iran, the Iranian regime and other people. And then their colleagues based in the United States as well have come up with a practically, you know, TikTok of how Mossad decided to recruit Ahmadinejad for potential leadership or for actual leadership. It starts with, oh my gosh, they're meeting him in, in Hungary, in Budapest at a university. And this, this is David Barnea, the then head of Mossad. And things just you know, basically keep developing until you get to the first day of the war when they apparently the Israelis tried to bust him out of semi house arrest, that he was under by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards and take him away and put him in another safe house. Anyway, the whole thing failed And Jamie, as you know, the Mossad, I don't even know what to tell what, how to, how to call it the Mossad story to Trump about how if you killed the whole top leadership, Ahmed Khamenei and the whole lot on day one, the whole regime would collapse. The whole thing is, is really asked backwards. And I'm so surprised this is still going on.
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A
Right. And your point I want to emphasize, you know, when people hear the word Israeli intelligence over the years, it's developed a very fine reputation for, you know, doing some amazing things. And it has done some amazing things. But I think this story shows you how very, very smart people trying to do something they think is good for their country can come up with some of the most cockamamie ideas that I've ever heard. And this is a cockamamie idea. Yes, Ahmadinejad may have desired to return to power, but the idea that he thought he was going to return to power on the heels of an Israeli generated coup d' etat of some kind or military action just strikes me as almost hysterically stupid.
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B
But apparently it was their idea, not his idea. Look, here's hilarious. I love some. There's a couple of paragraphs I'm going to read from this New York Times. It's just the goal to set in motion the plan to topple the current regime and install Mr. Ahmadinejad. The plan failed. That's a single sentence. The plan failed. How about this? My favorite line about this loony otherwise known as Ahmadinejad, quote, he abandoned his signature oversized khaki windbreaker and began wearing tailored suits. He groomed his messy beard, appeared to get Botox treatment and began learning English. They are describing how all of this, plus his allegedly movement towards whatever reform and more moderation set him up as the perfect candidate to run.
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A
You know, when Hollywood, when Hollywood tries to come up with, when Hollywood tries to come up with scripts, they couldn't have come up with one like this. And JB though, nobody would have believed it. And I just, I just don't understand how it, but look, if, if this was their plan and they actually believed this, and then they went to Trump and said, we're going to be able to overthrow the regime. And Trump believed it. You can see how he might have made the decision to follow up the Venezuela operation with Iran. And ever since, he may have realized that he's got to be careful when he's listening to Israeli intelligence.
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B
And I think you just called him the latest oxymoron. I'm outing you. Do you still Say it's the latest, we're going to be in big trouble. But seriously, as you say, as you say, if this was the raison d' etre for this war that has gone, it appears up until now, catastrophically wrong, according to the US And Israeli, you know, mission, then this is bad. Very, very bad.
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A
Well, it is. And, and I think it doesn't bode well for the future because Israel's relationship with the United States is now front and center in American politics. Israel clearly has the ability to gin up another military conflict with Lebanon, which could restart even at a higher level of the war in the Middle East. So these big, big questions about Israel, the United States, Iran, are not going away, and they're affecting the world economy and they're affecting our way of life. And we have to figure out a way to get past this and get the Strait of Hormuz open. I think President Trump wants to do that. And let's just hope there are enough sane people, unlike Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
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B
All right, in a moment, we're going to talk about somebody who, I don't know whether you knew him, Jamie. I met him. I interviewed him. Lindsey Graham, the senator for South Carolina who died suddenly over the weekend, apparently from what they call an aortic dissection and what it means for foreign policy. He was a hawk on Iran. He was most definitely, really behind the defense of Ukraine. We're going to talk about that in a bit. Okay. Jamie, it is sad. Lindsey Graham died very suddenly, fairly young, completely unexpected. There was apparently, as far as we know, no illness, but he, he had a rupture and of his aorta, I believe they said. And he was a very, very prominent senator, Republican, South Carolina, a hawk on many, many issues. And having not been pro Trump for a long time at the beginning, became very pro Trump and really encouraged Trump on a lot of the military, should I say adventures, I don't know, but the military interventions that Trump has been doing. So, first of all, reflections on Lindsey Graham.
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A
Well, look, I did know him a bit, worked with him a bit over the years. He was part of a group of senators were led by, on the Republican side, John McCain, who were practical at various times. They wanted to solve real issues, hard issues, the environment, the immigration price. So he was a guy who wanted to get things done. And interestingly, and I guess telling you about Washington, when he was pressed as to how he changed his mind about Trump, and after having criticized him brutally during campaigns and in the early days, he said, look, I, I want to be relevant and to be relevant, I need to talk to the President. And he developed very consciously and very carefully a friendship slash political friendship with the President. They played golf, et cetera. And he was relevant. He was also relevant during Biden. I'll just give one important story. I know this seems like a fantasy now, but at the time it wasn't. There was real prospect of having a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Palestinians that would open up the door to Saudi recognition of Israel, which was the big dream of the Israeli government's founders, and to have all the countries in the region recognize Israel. Lindsey Graham was offering to help broker that under President Biden because he knew that to get the agreement, you needed 2/3 of the Senate. And if President Biden were for it, you could get most of the Democrats. And if he supported it, even though it was a Biden initiative, they could get enough Republicans and that the number together would go over 2/3, which is a very difficult number for a thing like a defense agreement with Saudi Arabia, to defend Saudi Arabia. So he was part of real high level, high stakes diplomacy at that time and was playing a very constructive role. I think recently I would call him more of a mixed bag on Ukraine. He was helping the President to see that we can't allow Russia to go unchallenged in its war in Ukraine. On the other hand, he seemed to share the Israeli view that you could somehow bomb the Iranians into submission, which has been proven, it seems to me. Incorrect.
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B
Yeah. And actually I interviewed him just a few months ago. It was in February, just before the war was launched on Iran. And it was at the Munich Security Conference. It was in context of an interview I had in front of a, you know, an audience there with the Crown Prince of Iran, the new Shah, who's called Reza Pahlavi, who we talked about a lot in the early days of this war. And Lindsey Graham was there to. Not to support him in terms of going back to Iran. He refused to say I support him. He said, that's for the Iranian people. But he did support the idea and the ideals that Reza Pahlavi was standing for. And he was in a panel with me, and he was very, very out there. I was actually quite surprised. A US Senator was out there absolutely in public at this very important, you know, foreign policy and security policy conference calling for the regime change, regime change in Iran. So I thought that was, you know, quite extraordinary. And he had very harsh words for the Iranian regime. And he went out in the end and stood on the same stage as Reza Pahlavi, when he had one of those big rallies in Munich, of course, that's all kind of, you know, frittered away at the moment because the war is not going as they expected it would go. And he has not ridden back, you know, triumphantly, as he expected he would, helped by the US And Israel. Israel. But Lindsay was really out there, you know. Absolutely, absolutely waging that verbal war in, in terms of Iran. But can we just talk about Ukraine? Because there is something super interesting happening and Trump brought it up and it was very prominent at the NATO meeting last week in, in Anchorage. Amy, Trump actually, in Trumpes basically said to Zelensky, the president of Ukraine, who had come, you know, and they met on the sidelines, that actually he's doing really well. I think Zelensky's counterattack into Russia is actually now impressing Trump. And he said, you know, we're probably gonna give you, or we are going to give you the license to build patriots and we're gonna have a good relationship. And he was. It was actually really interesting, don't you think?
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A
Absolutely. It's a complete 180 degree shift from that famous meeting where Trump humiliated Zelensky, said, you don't have the cards, you have to give up. And so I think the NATO summit turned out to be actually kind of a good thing for Ukraine and for NATO, because the Europeans handled the situation with President Trump pretty well. And they are committed to supporting Ukraine, they're committed to spending money on their own defense. They're committed to spending money on American weapons for Ukraine. And President Trump clearly realizes that the problem in the war is not just Zelensky, but that Vladimir Putin's stubbornness and refusal to accept that he can't defeat Ukraine is the source of the problem. So I guess we came out of that summit a lot better off. If you want to stop Russia from overthrowing Ukraine, as I do, well, I
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B
think many people do. And Ukraine is of course, putting up a massive defense. And I was actually really fascinated by a report actually on BBC radio from Russia describing how inside even Moscow there are massive lines for. For fuel, for cars that apparently Putin has. I don't know what the right terminology is, but he's revived an old law that allows old type of fuel to be sold. It's the kind of gasoline that's full of sulfur and all sorts of things that would probably ruin, in fact, would ruin and jam up the mechanics of new and modern cars. But the old vehicles, whoever still has them, can apparently run on them. So imagine Russia, which has Made a huge deal about the rising oil prices and the filling of its war chest. And all this you know, complete sort of hubris and chest beating is now in a. Not even rationing, but bringing up a disgusting, apparently kind of fuel to enable people to actually buy it and put it in their cars. And what of whatever else they need to power. So they are. They are really hurting. And on top of that, as you know, they're barely making any progress on the front line. They just aren't. But, Jamie, Putin still shows no indication whatsoever that he's given up his. Even his maximalist dreams. None whatsoever. Even though Crimea is under massive attack, which is their main logistical hub. So. So with that in mind, can we just talk about the Patriots? Because it's one thing to say we'll let you license them and build them, but it's really difficult, isn't it?
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A
Absolutely. Very difficult and lengthy. And it's not going to be anytime soon. It's going to be years before that offer yields a real result. But it will change the dynamic, because the dynamic changes when President Trump makes clear that he wants Ukraine to get more Patriots. He offers them the plans. Then other countries may give them some that they have built earlier. The German line, I guess, may come up earlier, and maybe a German production line, and they may be able to give them some. But the point here is that the other thing coming out of Russia is you're starting to see real indications that the elite, the people in Russia, realize the extent to which this war is ruining their country, and they have ways of talking about it. There have been some great journalism coming out of Russia where they show how the Russian people, Russian artists, Russian theater, Russian intelligentsia, are figuring out how to not talk about the war, but talk about the war. And I think there will come a moment when suddenly the, you know, whatever it is, the correlation of forces, the tipping point that comes to Putin and finally says, you know, that's it. We just can't continue forever trying to defeat an enemy that we can. We can't beat and ruin ourselves in the process. That moment, I feel, is a little bit closer now than I would have said a year ago because of what the Ukrainians have been able to do and the fact that the Russians are not able to make a breakthrough and that President Trump has not switched sides completely and given in to Putin's desire for America to be on Russia's side. So the correlation of forces has shifted. But unfortunately for the people of Ukraine, this is not gonna happen overnight.
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B
Exactly. But given that this is happening. And given that Trump basically told. He basically spent the first day insulting his allies and then the second day calling it a love fest. And it was great, and there was unity and all the rest of it. And Trump has had to sort of, I think, knock down some of Pete Hegseth's more adventurous plans to remove troops from Europe. But it's always difficult to know what's going on between those two. But what isn't difficult to understand is the two competing strategies. So there's Mark Rutter, who's the NATO secretary General, former prime Minister of the Netherlands, so knows how to, you know, make politics work, whose policy is to keep Trump close, to keep America close, lavish praise, you know, avoid the confrontation, the whole love bombing thing. And then, of course, Macron, his allies openly calling the US Untrustworthy and therefore a security risk to them. And therefore, they need to be make their own independent security dynamic for themselves, refusing to be bullied, as they put it. Which one is working? Which one carries the most success or risk?
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A
Well, I think, frankly, they're working well together. You know, Mark Ruta is doing what I think is a good job. And remember, he's subservient. NATO secretary general works for the leaders, so it's appropriate for him to be subservient and not critical and, you know, to hold his tongue when he disagrees with the president. And he's found ways to speak truth to President Trump about the effect of President Trump's rallying for Europeans to spend more on defense because they're spending more on defense. Now, you can argue as a Democrat that that was going to happen anyway because of the Ukraine war and all that. And I don't really care to know the final answer to that, because I don't think it's provable. But it is true that the Europeans are stepping up and spending a lot more money on defense. And by pointing that out to President Trump, if that keeps him in the NATO bandwagon. On the NATO bandwagon, great. Meanwhile, the Europeans are doing what you would expect them to do. They are trying to figure out ways to live in a world where they cannot rely as much on the United States as they used to. We always wanted them to. We wanted them to do that in a friendly way. Unfortunately, the way they're doing it now, I would say is not in a friendly way because it was generated mostly by the threat to invade Greenland. And so there's an anger in Europe towards the United States that I've never seen before that may have terrible consequences for us down the road, we don't know whether they'll be able to try to what they call de risk from the United States the way they were de risking from China by changing the technologies they use, changing the presumptions they have, changing the assumptions they have, changing the willingness to work with the United States. We saw one of the consequences of that when we were alone on this Iran war. And that I think is directly related to the way President Trump has chosen to approach Europeans in NATO.
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B
And one last thing before we go off to our recommendations. The prominence of the far right and the populist parties in Europe, whether it's AfD in Germany, the National Radical Rally, formerly National Front in France, Reform UK here in Britain, polling strongly, all of them, and often very, very skeptical and perhaps even a little more sympathetic towards Russia and skeptical about the idea of NATO and collective defense. Do you worry that that's another potential, you know, arrow in the side of NATO, not just Trump, but all these other parties that are potentially, potentially, I don't know whether they will, but if they do get into power, they'll have a set.
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A
Well, absolutely. I do worry about that right now. If the current European sensibility were to stay in place for the next 10, 20 years, I would feel perfectly comfortable, namely, leaders who believe in NATO, believe in Western values, believe in confronting Russia over the war in Ukraine, and believe in spending a lot more on defense and taking a big, big, big share of their own defense responsibilities. That would be fine with me. And then someday another American president can work more smoothly and maybe take advantage of that. And there'll be a silver lining to the Trump bashing of the Europeans. But if the Europeans change their stripes, if they become nationalistic, as some of their leaders would suggest they would, and they don't pursue the current policies they're now pursuing and suddenly open themselves up to finding it, like President Trump does, convenient to work closely with Russia or China, I would be worried about that world. I'd be worried about a world where Europeans suddenly had reasons to be against each other's throats. Remember, this is a continent where they fought wars for hundreds of years. So there is a risk that the rise of the far right could cause inter European conflict and then God knows what would happen.
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B
Okay. And on that very, very happy and pregnant note, we are going to talk about our recommendations in a moment. Right. Our recommendations. I know what I'm going to recommend this week, just in time for the episode dropping with 24 hours to go watch England, Argentina. It's The Falklands War, 2.0 in the world Cup, England is doing unbelievable. I predict the battle of Lionel Messi and versus Harry Kane and Jude Bellingham. It's going to be be very, very, very exciting to watch England in a World cup semi final. That's from my perspective. All my neighbors, all the city, all the country, all the fans in the United States are rallying around and it's really quite amazing. I think I said it last week, I can't remember, but even Trump said, you know, Harry Kane, great soccer player for England. I don't know whether he said soccer or football, but nonetheless, he praised Harry Kane.
- [36:44]
A
You, Jamie, look, I think that would be a great watch. I just want to, you know, this week I don't have a great TV recommendation, but I just want to reflect on the newspapers this weekend. Three different pieces of news. First, you have two people coming back from China and telling the United States that it's time to figure out what we're going to do about artificial intelligence, because the Chinese are moving. We've got to figure this out. They wrote an op ed in the New York Times, Selena Zhu along with former Google executive Eric Schmidt. And I think what struck me about it was that it's obvious that we have to figure this out. It's obvious that this is complicated. And then the next article I read is a thing I hadn't thought about, which is the United States population decline. So there is very strong evidence that the United States is going to have a population decline because our fertility rate is whatever it is, 1.4, 1.6, and we're not having new immigrants the way we were over the last hundreds of years. And so for the first time, the United States is not looking like a country that's going to have a demographic growth. And that has been our strength. So you put that together with AI and you wonder, oh, God, are the machines going to take over the people? And then my final favorite story, which is the one wife who holds the husband's legs when his head goes out the window in a Ryanair plane. For those of you who haven't read it, it's an amazing story about a window that breaks on a flight from Greece to Germany, I believe. And the man's head goes out the window and his wife is holding. It's right out of a movie, for five minutes, holding him. Unbelievable. Until the whole passenger's go gather together and pull him back in. The plane turns around and lands and everybody's safe. But just imagine that scene, a wife holding her husband's legs while his head is out the window during a flight.
- [38:49]
B
And do you know everybody's going to want to know whether I would do that if your head was out the window of a Ryanair. Right.
- [38:54]
A
I know.
- [38:55]
B
Would I? I would. I would. All right. I love that story. Story. Thank you for listening.
- [39:05]
A
An ex wife would, too.
- [39:09]
B
Thanks for listening. And remember, you can always listen for free on Global Player. Jamie and I'll be back on Thursday with our regular Q and A session. Don't forget to subscribe if you want to see us or watch us. In fact, you can subscribe to our YouTube channel. You can search Christiana Monpour presents the X Files. So goodbye.
- [39:29]
A
Bye.
- [39:30]
B
Bye.
- [39:37]
A
This has been a global production.