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The Monocle Daily
Donald Trump’s approval rating falls to an all-time low. Plus: the latest Gulf news
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- [00:02]
Financial Times Announcer
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Juliana Pigiotto
You'Re.
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Financial Times Announcer
Listening to the Monocle Daily, first broadcast on 12 December 2025 on Monocle Radio.
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Andrew Muller
US President Donald Trump insists that numbers going up are in fact going down. The accelerating exodus from the United Kingdom to the United Arab Emirates and where to stay when in Ithacare. I'm Andrew Muller. The Monocle Daily starts now.
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Chris Chermack
Foreign.
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Andrew Muller
Hello and welcome to the Monocle Daily. Coming to you from our studios here at Midori House in London. I'm Andrew Muller. It's Friday, so it's our weekly in house daily and our annual day after the Monocle Christmas party daily. And your last men standing are Chris Chermak and Inzamam Rashid. They all discuss the day's big stories and we'll also have our weekly wrap up of what we've learned. Stay tuned. All that and more coming up right here on the Monocle Daily. This is the Monocle Daily. I'm Andrew Muller and I'm joined first of all by Chris Chermack, Monocle's senior news editor. Chris, it's 1800 and you're still here.
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Chris Chermack
I don't know how that happened, Andrew, I really don't. After I had to laugh as I was listening to your introduction there. Yes, I am one of the last ones standing along with. We should give a shout out to our producer Monica Lillis and Elliot in the chair as well.
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Andrew Muller
We absolutely should.
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Chris Chermack
Big ups to them.
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Andrew Muller
Yeah. There are actual still signs of movement in the production.
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Chris Chermack
They are. The show is going out live to.
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Andrew Muller
Be clear to our listeners, not that they would have any way of knowing we are actually doing this live, none of this pre recording it at like lunchtime and then trying to pass it off as the real thing.
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Chris Chermack
Would we ever do that, Andrew? We never do that.
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Andrew Muller
We never do that.
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Tom Webb
Can you name something that's literally happening in the world right now so that.
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Andrew Muller
Nobody conquest is they'll take.
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Chris Chermack
Well, actually you were saying the Epstein photos just released. We're not really going to talk about that for this.
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Andrew Muller
No.
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Chris Chermack
Yes.
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Andrew Muller
But we are going to talk about President Trump and we are going to talk in particular about his handling of the economy and what increasingly does seem like the impatience of many American voters. With his handling of the economy. I was at the party as well. Latest numbers have, you know, his lowest numbers yet on handling of the economy, and they were never high, but they are now down to, to 31 approval. What is going wrong?
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Chris Chermack
Well, I mean, this is really interesting and because I think even if you say they were never that necessarily that high, they were actually higher often than Democrats were. This is part of what got Trump elected in the first place, that people were upset with Joe Biden. So now we are seeing this shift when it comes to Donald Trump in the US and his handling of the economy. And I wanted to step back and give you maybe some economic numbers, if I could, to explain why, what, what is happening? Why are people upset? And it's just, you know, there's lots of things that have come out. Annual inflation rate, it's up. Inflation is up 3% in September, year on year. That's the highest since January. It's the highest in Trump's first year. It is probably higher, but we don't have statistics for other months yet because there was a government shutdown which stopped the economic statisticians from giving us any of this stuff. Unemployment, 4.4% in September. That's the high since October 2021. The economy itself, bit more of a mixed bag. Strong numbers for the second quarter. There was a contraction in the first quarter here, too. We don't have the third quarter figures yet, so we don't know exactly what's going on. The one other thing I wanted to tell you is how are Americans feeling? Because that really gets at the crux of this. And you have these consumer sentiment indexes, right? So the University of Michigan, for example, puts a big one out. They've been continuing to do that because they were not affected by the government shutdown. That one was up a little bit in December, but it was at its low, second lowest level on record in November. The only time it was lower was in October 2022. And there are a lot of similarities, actually, to that year. That's when people were most upset with Joe Biden. That's a big reason why he lost that election, or rather Kamala Harris did. And that gives you some sense of why people are upset with Donald Trump right now.
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Andrew Muller
Donald Trump is, of course, still furiously blaming Joe Biden for the state of the US Economy. And though one senses he would continue doing that if he was still 20 years from now, is that buying him any sympathy? At what point do even his base start saying, come on, mate, you've been President X long Start taking some responsibility.
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Chris Chermack
You know, I think what's interesting, Andrew, is it's almost an underappreciated strategy of Donald Trump that he kind of drags everything down to the lowest common denominator in politics. Right. So it's this line of like, if all politicians are crooks, well, then you might as well vote for me. If you're conservative minded and but Democrats are going to destroy the entire country, well, then you might, you know, hold your nose and vote for Donald Trump. But I think it's important to say it is much harder to talk his way out of something like prices. You can't really just as easily say, oh, things were worse with Biden. Well, no, the prices are still going up. They've been going up this year and calling affordability a hoax as he has been doing this week, even on tours. This is what's making Republicans nervous because prices, it's black and white. People go to the grocery store, they see that the prices are still rising. It's not going to help that he tries to talk himself out of it and well, things would have been worse otherwise.
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Andrew Muller
Is he doing or polling wise that is better on any other fronts?
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Chris Chermack
He's doing somewhat better. But I think what's interesting is when you look at the other things, you know, even in his first term, even at other points, even when it came to say the election going into this last election, Trump was often underwater on stuff, right. He didn't have high approval ratings, but the point was the other person had lower approval ratings. That's what I think. That's, I guess the point that I'm making. So that's what's interesting. Although, yes, you are seeing some shifts in other things as well. Immigration, there is some shift. You're seeing some shifts also in sort of approval ratings among minority groups. That was something that was there was a surprising support for him. Not a majority, but nonetheless higher support numbers among Latinos, black Americans in the election, the last election, that has shifted a little bit. But the economy is the most important one. He only has a 31% approval rating in latest polls on the economy. That's the one that I think Republicans are absolutely the most nervous about heading into the midterm elections.
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Andrew Muller
Except that those polls do of course and inevitably and unsurprisingly illustrate the polarization of the United States. 69% of Republicans approve of his handling of the economy, though that he's down from 78, only 7% of Democrats. Who to be honest, I'm actually quite intrigued by who are these People.
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Tom Webb
But, but that, that right there does.
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Andrew Muller
Rather suggest that people are still judging by the, judging the, by their opinion of the president rather than the other way around to a degree.
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Chris Chermack
But that's why I think it's important to look at something like consumer sentiment that I was mentioning earlier, because it's a similar thing that you see even in economics. It is fascinating to watch how things flip at an election right ahead of the election when Joe Biden is in charge, Democrats are confident on the economy, say it's going well, Republicans say, no, things are awful, then somebody else gets elected. It literally switches. You see it in the data of consumer indexes that it switches and suddenly Republicans are much more buoyant about economy. But nevertheless, when you take the average at this point, it is lower. It is at almost its second lowest level on record. And you're seeing that similar in those approval numbers. So, yes, Republicans are still a little more happier, even 69%, they're broadly happy. But even that, if you think about it, if you think about what kind of loyalty Donald Trump demands, and this is where also the politics of this are important. Republicans in Congress, they feel like they have to be loyal to Donald Trump. That is part of his brand. But even. And they might look at a number like that and say 69% of Republicans, that's actually not that much, when you think of it that way, with the kind of loyalty that he has demanded. So you're seeing some cracks among Republicans. And it's gonna be very interesting to watch whether senators, congressmen start to break away from Trump on this and say, no, actually, I see prices rising too. We should do something about it.
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Andrew Muller
I mean, we are seeing maybe the first of those fractures. I mean, do we think it is that perhaps somebody like shortly to be former Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, some first mover advantage, thinking, if I can be, if you will, the first rat off the sinking ship, that might benefit me in the long term.
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Chris Chermack
You know, I think it is possible, yes. Because what is interesting even about MAGA is there is a separation here that you can make some argument for that. Yes, there's always been the cult personality of Donald Trump, but then there's also been the agenda. And I think when it comes to someone like Marjorie Taylor Greene, she also has her own agenda if she feels like Donald Trump is not delivering on that agenda, and that's kind of what she was outspoken about. So it is possible that you can see other Republicans going along that vein and saying, he is not doing what we wanted him to, or as in this case, what's so interesting, he might be doing everything we wanted in other cases. But if prices are going up, that's the thing that costs you elections. That is the thing in the US at least more than anything else. Whenever it's on polling, you look at past elections, it's the economy. The economy's stupid. As they said back in Clinton's time, that still rings true. And I do find that amazing, given everything else we talk about in this sort of era of Donald Trump and the populism of Donald Trump and all the things we talk about on these shows. Nonetheless, if prices go up, he's gonna lose the next election and Republicans will, too.
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Andrew Muller
Just finally on that thought, then, do you anticipate, I mean, it's always a terrible question to ask about Donald Trump, because who knows what he's going to do next, that he's going to stick with this affordability is all a hoax thing and just insisting that prices are going down even though they are actually clearly going up. Because the problem that now faces him, if that is the problem, if that is going to be the thing that decides the midterms, you know, it's less than a year. That is not a lot of time in which to turn around an economy the size of the United States.
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Chris Chermack
It isn't. And this is what I think is going to be most interesting in the next year, because there are two ways, sort of Trumpian ways he could go about this. One is to admit that affordability is a problem. And I think what was interesting, hearing some of his supporters even before he came into office, saying about tariffs, for example, that actually they were willing to accept a certain amount, amount of pain. It was worth a bit of pain to make America great again, to sort of shift the economy the way that he has to. He isn't leaning into that argument right now. Right. He's not saying it's worth pain. He wants to say this economy is the greatest ever and ignore any possible negatives. So that's one way. Maybe he does lean into that and say, some pain is good, some pain is necessary. He's done a little bit of that saying, like, how many dolls do you really need? He's done that on occasion in his own bizarre way. The other way would be to actually tack to the center. And you do never know with Donald Trump. Maybe he does suddenly shift and start to do things that actually tackle affordability and move away from the right, maybe work with Democrats. There was a little sign of that this week on health care. He suddenly came out and was saying, well, I think Congress, Republicans and Democrats can work together to do something on health care. You've had two dueling plans to lower health care costs fail this week. He suddenly came out and said, we can make a deal. So there might also be that side of the deal maker side is like, ooh, I'm actually going to make a deal on lower prices. I'm going to fix it all.
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Andrew Muller
Chris Chermack, thank you for joining us. You're listening to the Daily. This is the Daily on Monocle Radio. One of the advantages of Christmas party week is that many of Monocle's usually further flung correspondence are in London and can therefore be corralled for the following evenings. Daily for a brisk review of what has been happening on their patch. Though, just for fun, we don't usually tell them that they're going to have to be on the show until sometime after dessert. I'm joined now in the studio by Inzamam Rashid, Monocle's Gulf correspondent. It's now 12 minutes past 6 o'. Clock. We are doing this live. How are you faring?
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Inzamam Rashid
I'm very, I'm all right, actually. Yeah, I had a Lucozade this morning which did the job. And also I wasn't told just after dessert. It was a long time after dessert.
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Andrew Muller
We do our best. Let's start with the uae, which is very much your patch. What with one thing and another, over the last four years, a lot of countries have been less enthusiastic about doing business with Russia than they previously had been. No such qualms appear to bother the uae. According to this report, we are looking at trade between the UAE and Russia could double in the next five years. Is it that the UAE just don't see Ukraine as their concern or their problem?
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Inzamam Rashid
I think the UAE is very much of the notion of open arms and kind of let anyone in. We're open to absolutely anyone. And so yes, this report suggesting that the UAE and Russia will increase their bilateral trade and double it by 2030 as the kind of two countries enter what officials are describing as the next phase of economic cooperation. I think trade has already surged significantly, Andrew, over the last few years, particularly since the war in Ukraine began because Russians fled Russia and moved to the likes of the UAE where they could go, go about their, their lives without any interruption. Obviously, sanctions reshaped kind of Russia's global links and redirected capital talent commerce towards more neutral markets. And Dubai is really the chief amongst all of them. So I think current figures are around $10 billion annually of trade between the two countries. But in the first half of 2025, bilateral trade was already around US$7 billion and that's almost twice what it was the year earlier. And I think this is really interesting because already we have seen a huge influx of people as a result. We've seen, I've kind of walking around the marina or going to Dubai Hills, I'm seeing a new Russian restaurant or cafe pop up everywhere. Every apartment block has got a flashy Russian with a very nice Mercedes G wagon parked up in the car park. And just clearly there is a huge influx of people. And as a result, the knock on diplomatic effects and bilateral trade is increasing.
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Andrew Muller
Well, sticking with the subject of influxes to the uae, David Cameron, former Prime Minister, former Foreign Secretary, has been expressing his concern about the number of younger British people in particular fleeing to the UAE in search of economic betterment. It's possibly, for obvious reasons, a bit rich to have to listen to this coming from David Cameron, who does bear, I think, some responsibility for the reason that people may be seeking more, well, greener economic pastures.
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Inzamam Rashid
It is very rich coming from him and it's most likely a bit of a pop. The current Chancellor, Rachel Reeves, and that was his whole point, really, speaking at a summit in Abu Dhabi where he'd basically said it's no surprise to him that people are fleeing Britain and coming to the UAE and those high earners as well. I think what he said he's warned of kind of a British brain drain with some of those high earners and skilled professionals and allegedly leaving the uk. There's no actual real data that is suggesting that that high net worth and ultra high net worths are fleeing Britain.
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Andrew Muller
Are you not noticing any parallel phenomenon to the Russian thing? You're not noticing Rolls Royces parked outside fancy apartment blocks or anything?
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Inzamam Rashid
We are, but I don't think they're being owned by British millionaires. That's the difference. I think what we are seeing is a huge influx of Brits in general coming to the uae. But I was having a really interesting conversation with the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi and some diplomats there telling me is concern is, yes, there's a lot, there's a lot of Brits coming over here, but they're coming out here with actual jobs secured, with actual kind of stability lined up. And Dubai and the UAE is not a place where you can do that. You come there, you can spend all your money instantly. You wasted all your money on rent and going out. And if you've not got a job lined up, then you're pretty stuffed and a lot of them end up coming back. Yes, there are a lot of millionaires moving out of Britain and we know that. But I don't think it actually is this mass exodus which is occurring. And like we say, you know, rich words from David Cameron, who's probably having a pop at the Chancellor.
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Andrew Muller
Well, listeners who were tuning into last Friday's Daily will have heard a very well informed preview of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the climactic race of the Formula One season with Ted Kravitz, Sky Sports pit lane reporter and former host of this very program.
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Inzamam Rashid
I didn't know that he did.
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Andrew Muller
He was a co host in the.
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Tom Webb
Early days of the Daily.
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Inzamam Rashid
Oh, I love it.
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Andrew Muller
Was Ted Kravitz. But further good news I guess for the UAE on that front in that Mohammed Ben Sulayem has been re elected as the President of the fia.
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Tom Webb
He has, at least, if you look.
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Andrew Muller
At the balance sheet, been fairly successful in that role.
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Inzamam Rashid
Yeah, and the vote was pretty strong as well. There's strong internal confidence after what has been, I think, Andrew, fair to say, a pretty transformational year for Formula One. So Mr. Sulayem's tenure kind of coincides with Formula One's continued evolution from sport to a luxury entertainment platform. And that's the kind of element that he's brought in over the last few years. Under his watch, the FIA and F1 have leaned fully into kind of spectacle, prestige, global branding. They had a landmark 10 year sponsorship deal with LVMH as one of the most powerful names in luxury as we know. And so I think his tenure over the last four years has been incredibly successful. And so that's why there's huge confidence in him right now. I was actually at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, the finale of a pretty interesting showdown. And just the sheer number of people that that event pulled into Abu Dhabi was incredible. I think they had the highest turnout ever of a Grand Prix there. A lot of money spent, a lot of people on their yachts. And Mr. Sulayem is incredibly pop, not just within the UAE but around the world in Formula One.
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Andrew Muller
And just finally, while we have you here, because we don't have you here very long, you are back off to the airport tomorrow morning and going to Riyadh, which we will doubtless be able to read all about in due course. But give us a preview. What are you going to be doing there?
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Inzamam Rashid
Riyadh's a fascinating place and more so the diplomatic quarter in Riyadh. I don't know if you've Managed to get over there?
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Andrew Muller
I have not.
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Inzamam Rashid
But it's a stunning place. It's actually an oasis with it in a pretty bleak city, which I think Riyadh is. But the DQ is obviously filled with some incredible diplomats. We'll be going to speak to the Finnish ambassador and the Japanese ambassador and they very kindly let us into their homes to photograph what the residences of these embassies are like. We'll also be kind of speaking to some people in and around the diplomatic quarter, what life is like in the DQ in Rio. And maybe we'll try and get into the boarded up shop where you can buy alcohol in Zaman.
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Andrew Muller
Rashid, Monocle's golf correspondent, thanks for joining us. Do try to stay out of jail. We head now to Brazil. Monocle Radio senior correspondent Fernando Augusto Pacheco spoke with the Brazilian hotelier Juliana Pigiotto, CEO and co founder of the Barracuda Hotel group. The hotels located in the beautiful seaside town of Itacare in the northeast of Brazil, mix Baha' I hospitality and Scandinavian elegance. Let's hear it from Juliane on how the hotel started with a love story.
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Juliana Pigiotto
Kind of love story. Because I was a designer in Sao Paulo, so I worked as a designer for a few years, but I, at that time I was very young and I really wanted to. To. To have other experiences in life. So I was kind of open to see where I should go and what I should do to find real, like my real purpose in life. So to Takarev actually for vacation, you know, to stay one week in 2004, October 2004. I know sounds crazy, but I met my husband the day after, you know, so he's a local guy. His name is Daniel. He's a local guy. So he born here, you know. So he has been living his whole life here in Itakarem. Right away, you know, we were together, we were just covering so many nice things together and I started learning about another way of life, you know. So for me, it was very tough to leave after one week because I just want to discover more, you know. So at that time, since I was a designer, I was thinking about maybe going to Europe or doing, you know, something else outside Brazil. But at that time I said, why not stay in Brazil and learning more inside my country, you know, because the philosophy, you know, the way of life, you know, in Itacares is so different from Sao Paulo that is so respectful for the nature, for the people. And I just love to live this journey.
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Interviewer
It's a very special city indeed, I have to say. I've only been once and I was like, wow, you know, the beaches, the nature, you know, so. But also it's very nice that you have a space like Barracuda, which is, you know, now a very respected hotel, but also very connected to the environment. I know. For example, I was reading a statistic. Is this true that 80% of your stuff is made from locals? Right?
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Juliana Pigiotto
Yes. Because, you know, after a while I was living the roots of Itacare. I have a local family and the only way to go was to co create to collaborate with the community. So actually the sustainability we see in Barracuda, it was not an afterthought, you know, was our. Actually our. The pillar and the decision making. Yes. Know fact that I was bringing with me all the way until now. So the only way for me to develop a hospitality project was to collaborate with local people to be able to offer the best of Itakare because they are the real host and the real protagonist of this story. And at the same time I was sure that I was going to give back to the community. The community that was so nice with. With me.
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Interviewer
Man, I welcomed you to the city of Z. Remind us, Juliana, when did Barracuda actually opened as a hotel? I know, I want to talk also about the expansion. Or you have another one called Barracuda Boutique, but tell us about the first one, when did it open?
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Juliana Pigiotto
This one, the Barracuda Hotel and villas opened in 2020. However, Barracuda Hotel and Villas is the way it is because of Barracuda, but Boutique, you know. So everything started when in 2005, me and Daniel, we met a Swedish group of friends and they were passing in Itakare because of surfing nature. They really wanted to. To find this like, you know, retreat, you know, to be here two, three times per year. So they fall in love with Itakare and they start dreaming about having a house for themselves, you know, to be here a few times of the year. So we together, we understood that we could do something, you know, very special together. But actually nothing started to be a business, you know. So I think this is also part of our DNA where we. We started from a dream and in a very organic way. We end up by doing a hospitality project because was the only way to make this happen and also also sustain this for the future. So took many years for us to develop this project. So Bakuda hotan villas took 15 years to be built. Not the construction itself, but for us to mature our project. We found that plot in the Fisherman Bay and we said, let's Build a small house, a small guest house for ourselves, to be able to leave Itacare while we mature and build our dream on the hill. So we opened Barracuda boutique in 2013 and for many years until 2020 when we opened Barracuda Hotel and Villas, we were experiencing Itacare in this small guest house which we call Barracuda Boutique right now. So the, so the idea there was really to understand, you know, what we want to do and how we want to do so. It was like a lab. We were very focused in sharing the best hospitality to our group and to our guests, but at the same time do this in co creation with the local community. So after a few years we look at the original project for the villas, for the houses, and then we were sure that we should include the Barracuda Boutique hotel in the middle of the houses to be the house heart and the soul and to sustain this for the future. And then we understood that what we were doing was actually a very unique and independent hospitality project.
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Interviewer
And Juliana, I want to ask as well, you mentioned the Swedish investors. So in terms of design and perhaps even culturally, do you see Barracudas kind of when Bahia meets Sweden as well? And what does that mean to you?
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Juliana Pigiotto
Yes, for sure. I think I, I, I found myself being a bridge between Sweden and Bayern. So what I try to do is really to, you know, to consider the fusion of both cultures in everything we do, you know, so in terms of architecture and design, we use Brazilian materials, Brazilian designers, Brazilian artisans, but in a more, more minimalistic, elegant way, you know, so in, in, so for sure the Swedish lifestyle and, and, and also design. It's, it's a very, it's a signature in everything we, we offer to our guests.
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Andrew Muller
That was Fernando Augusto Pacheco speaking to Giuliana Pigiotto, CEO and co founder of the Barracuda Hotel group. You can listen to the full interview on the monocle on monocle.com finally, on today's Daily, our weekly attempt to tot up what the last seven days have taught us.
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Tom Webb
We learned this week. Or really, if we're honest, just too late last week for last week's what we learned. But by golly, we weren't about to miss out on this. That the peacemakers are, after all, blessed. Just like it says in Matthew 5:9, We learned that though those pencil necked desk jockeys on the Norwegian Nobel committee had been bewilderingly unmoved by the labors of the greatest peacemaker this side of Abraham himself, perhaps, who knows, he had just been too modest and self effacing and tactful for his own good.
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Donald Trump
Prime Minister Abe of Japan gave me the most beautiful copy of a lot letter that he sent to the people who give out a thing called the Nobel Prize. He said, I have nominated you or respectfully, on behalf of Japan, I am asking them to give you the Nobel Peace Prize. I said, thank you. Many other people feel that way too. I'll probably never get it, but that's okay. They gave it to Obama. He didn't even know what he got it for. If it were somebody else, they would have gotten five Nobel Prizes. I never even got them. I think I'm going to get a Nobel prize for a lot of things if they gave it out fairly, which they don't.
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Tom Webb
We learned that there was one organization sufficiently robustly principled, so famously virtuous, so proverbially incorruptible, and so rigorously committed to fair play that they could see what those chunky jumpered moose botherers in Oslo would not. We learned that the Federation Internazionali de Associacion de Football, better known, universally respected and really very rarely condemned as a wretched sack of shifty crooks as FIFA, had completely coincidentally chosen this of all moments to inaugurate the FIFA Peace Prize on award night itself. We learned, of course, that due to the meticulous process by which the doubtless many deserving nominees that FIFA solemnly considered were whittled diligently down to one suspense shrouded until the very last minute minute, the identity of the first winner of this extremely prestigious trophy, which FIFA will definitely ever bother to award again.
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Donald Trump
I don't know that I'm getting it. I haven't been officially noticed. I've been hearing about a Peace Prize.
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Tom Webb
We learned, however, that on this occasion the bookmakers had called it.
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FIFA Peace Prize Presenter
Please welcome the very first winner of the FIFA Peace Prize.
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Tom Webb
Come on, let's give him a drop.
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Andrew Muller
Drumroll.
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FIFA Peace Prize Presenter
The 45th and 47th President of the United States of America, Mr. Donald J. Trump.
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Chris Chermack
Please.
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Andrew Muller
Well, blow me down.
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Tom Webb
We learned that not only did this immensely eminent accolade come with a trophy, albeit one depicting hands holding a globe and therefore resembling, somewhat ironically, in this context, 4 Diego Maradonas cheating England out of a World cup semi final at once.
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FIFA Peace Prize Presenter
Mr. President, this is your price, this is your Peace Prize.
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Andrew Muller
But a medal.
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FIFA Peace Prize Presenter
There is also a beautiful medal for you that you can wear everywhere you want to go.
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Donald Trump
Right now.
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FIFA Peace Prize Presenter
Okay, let me hold. Ah, fantastic. Excellent.
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Tom Webb
A medal which, to be clear, absolutely does have a any more gravitas than a plastic sheriff's badge which fell out of a box of Fruit Loops. An assessment with which, all right, thinking people will concur. We learned anyway that there remains nothing.
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Andrew Muller
Quite like the promise of some title.
- [32:33]
Tom Webb
And or bauble, however obviously contrived and or ridiculous, to get a celebrity to turn up at your wingding and to.
- [32:40]
Andrew Muller
Retain their favour thereafter.
- [32:43]
Tom Webb
We swiftly learned indeed that the ruse is sufficiently potent as to get the President of the United to turn on one of his own country's national games in favor of a foreign sport invented by cheese eating Europeans.
- [32:57]
Donald Trump
When you look at what has happened to football in the United States, again, soccer in the United States, we seem to never call it that because we have a little bit of a conflict with another thing that's called football. But when you think about it, shouldn't it really be called? I mean, this is football. There's no question about. We have to come up with another name for this. Yeah, it really doesn't make sense when.
- [33:20]
Andrew Muller
You think we have not as yet.
- [33:22]
Tom Webb
Learned whether the NFL has heeded what seems a fairly heavy hint that the sport over which it presides should be renamed Trump Ball and or that every team in it should be renamed in the President's honour. Perhaps in time for a Super bowl between the Green Bay Donalds and the Buffalo Donalds. And why stop there? There's plenty of first family to go round. And given the way the Browns got belted last week by Tennessee, who on this season's form would frankly struggle to beat Monocle, we suggest the Cleveland Erichs. And sticking with the theme of Europeans and indeed of heads of state convicted of crimes in courts of law. Actually always a delight though it is to hear from the Bobby full of four. Probably some rueful accordion is going to go better here. No, a bit more rueful. There it is. We learned that just in time for Christmas, former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, recently dispatched to the slammer for trousering bungs from loopy Libyan despot Muammar Gaddafi, had published his non awaited contribution to the canon of jailhouse literature in the shape of Diary of a Prisoner, a brutal, unsparing recollection of his 20 days behind bars.
- [34:49]
Chris Chermack
Wow.
- [34:50]
Tom Webb
Which to be honest, sounds more of an anecdote than a book. But let's give it a chance. We learned that Nicholas Sarkozy's Diary of a Prisoner was already being compared to Alexander Solzhenitsyn's the Gulag Archipelago.
- [35:03]
Interviewer
Compared to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the Gulag Archipelago. Nicolas Sarkozy's diary of a prisoner absolutely blows.
- [35:12]
Tom Webb
And we learned that it has much to tell us about the privations of French prisons life. We learned, for example, that the food is unlikely to be starred by Michelin machine.
- [35:25]
Andrew Muller
These are all genuine quotes, incidentally, voiced by Monocle's dissatisfied customers, desk chief Tom Webb.
- [35:32]
Tom Webb
We learned that the beds were uncomfortable.
- [35:35]
Nicolas Sarkozy
I had never felt a hardier mattress. The pillows were made of strange material, perhaps blessed. And le Blanquettes were blanquettes in name only.
- [35:47]
Tom Webb
And that the showers were ill equipped for Sarkozy's luxuriant bouffant.
- [35:52]
Nicolas Sarkozy
This thin stream of water stopped very quickly, like a tamar. You constantly had to finely bottom et presit.
- [36:01]
Andrew Muller
All right, Papillon, we get the idea. And that is all for this edition of the Monocle Daily. Thanks to our panelists today, Chris Chermak and Inzamam Rashid, as well as Fernando Augusto Pacheco. The show was produced by Monica Lillis and searched by Joanna Moser. Our sound engineer was Elliot Greenfield, with editing assistance by Mariella Bevan. I'm Andrew Muller here in London. The Daily is back at the same time on Monday. Don't forget Monacle's London Christmas market this weekend, Saturday and Sunday. I may well see you there. Thanks for listening.
- [36:40]
Chris Chermack
It.