We’ll be right over here: Europe’s populists sour on Trump

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1:04The Economist.

1:11Hello and welcome to The Intelligence from The Economist. I'm Rosie Blore. And I'm Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping your world.

1:25When Western dating apps tried to woo India, they crashed and burned. Now a raft of homegrown matchmakers hope they can help romances blossom online. And if you're a hungry predator on the savannah, where do you look for dinner? Wherever there's water. But what if you're in the jungle, where it's water, water everywhere? Scientists now have a better answer about popular dining spots.

2:03First up, though.

2:14This European political leader is speaking of how astonished he is that those who claim to be the most vigilant against foreign interference are engaged in blatant interference with the affairs of a nation-state. The President Trump's intervention also opens the door to the economic interests of the American oil company. Trump renouveled with Monroe's doctrine, as far as he goes. He says President Trump will return to the Monroe Doctrine and act in the economic interests of an American oil company. Sophie Pedder is our Paris Bureau Chief. This is a statement formulée on the Danish territory of Groenland.

2:59On Greenland, he said Trump's recent claims constitute a real danger to the sovereignty of a European state. You might expect such strong words from a European liberal Democrat. But I was sitting in Paris listening to Jordan Bardella, head of France's populist right national rally. He's the leader of a party that has drawn inspiration from Trump's re-election and his potent blend of country-first anti-immigrant nationalism.

3:31Sophie, is it really so surprising that Bardella should be criticising Trump in this way and so explicitly? Yes, I think it is in several respects. One of them is that the party is inspired by Trump's re-election and also by the message that he managed to convey America in the United States. But the national rally in France's message effectively adds up to a France first programme. So it has a distinctly Trumpian echo. But it's more than that. It's also because MAGA networks have been forging links with the populist right in Europe and not just in France. If you take, for example, the new ambassador to France, Charles Kushner, he is a real estate associate of Trump's and father of Jared, his son-in-law.

4:15and one of the first meetings he hosted just a few months after arriving in Paris was with Marine Le Pen and her colleague Jordan Bardella, both of the National Rally. This relationship between MAGA and the populist right, it's not just France, is it? No, it's not just France. If you look at the national security strategy that America published last year, it made it very clear that the strength of what it called patriotic parties in Europe was a source of great optimism. And we saw J.D. Vance, who went to Munich last year, and he didn't meet the German Chancellor while he was there, but he did meet Alice Weidel, who is the AFD co-leader, and criticised the firewall that keeps her party isolated in German politics.

5:02And if you just look at the guest list for Trump's inauguration last year, it was almost a who's who of the populist right. There was Italy's Georgia Maloney, there was Britain's Nigel Farage, there were representatives of Germany's AFT and of various far-right parties in France. And yes, it sounds like that relationship's now under strain in France. What about elsewhere in Europe? Well, it's been interesting. If you take Germany, where the Trump administration has been most closely identified with building those links, Alice Vidal of the AFT actually declared that Trump had violated his fundamental campaign promise not to interfere in other countries.

5:42with his threats over Greenland. So what you're seeing in Germany is actually the worsening of divisions within the party. There are some who think that support from MAGA world is so valuable that it's self-defeating to publicly reprimand America for these sorts of threats. But others on the party's anti-American wing feel that this is reviving their old concerns about Germany becoming a vassal of America. It's not just about Greenland though, is it? It's not about Greenland per se, no, because if you take Jordan Bardella, he was critical of Donald Trump over Venezuela as well. The core of the issue for the populist right in France and elsewhere is the question of sovereignty.

6:27And if it's all about France first or America first, ultimately therefore cannot condone an attempt to interfere in or take over or annex another sovereign state. And that is where the clash between the MAGA movement and the populist right in Europe becomes so acute. But not all of the populist leaders of Europe have spoken out. So what's going on there? No, it's interesting. I mean, Britain's Nigel Farage has done. But if you take other transatlantic leaning countries like Poland, the nationalists there have been very quiet about it. And I think that the concern in those cases, if you take Poland, for example, is that they don't want to jeopardise their country's very strong transatlantic links.

7:10And they think that if they are outspoken, that will undermine those ties. You've seen that also in the Netherlands, for example. And are these populist parties worried about the electoral implications of these threats? Well, I think they are. If you look at what happened in Canada, for example, at the election last year, Trump's threats to annex Canada led to the defeat for Pierre Pogliere, who was the populist conservative candidate who was leading, had a huge poll lead ahead of Mark Carney. So the European populists are obviously concerned, and particularly those in France, who are looking ahead to presidential elections next year.

7:47They do not want that to happen. They currently have a very strong poll lead and they don't want to lose it. But more than that, they are hoping to build beyond their base on conservative right wing voters who are more Trump skeptic. So I would say that even though MAGA is clearly seeking to help these parties on the populist right, the more brazen that Trump's threats become, the greater a political liability he could be for them. Sophie, thank you very much for talking to me. It's always a pleasure, Rosie.

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10:14Compromise and be flexible, then your life will go smooth. During the pandemic, the work was treated to dating advice from Seema Aunty. Kira Huyu is our Asia correspondent. She was the politically incorrect star of Netflix's hit reality show, Indian Matchmaking. 60-70%, if you're feeling it's okay, you must proceed. She explained people won't get a 100 % match. It's not good to be too picky with expectations. Her frustration with compromise-averse clients was pretty evident. And so was a generational shift in how young Indians think about romance. Western dating apps came to India about a decade ago, intent on changing Indian culture.

10:57Understandably, this strategy failed. Now, Indian dating apps are trying to help singles navigate a new world of romance.

11:12When Western dating apps like Tinder, Bumble, Hinge first launched in India, the market looked absolutely incredible. You've got 1.4 billion people with a growing middle class. You've got a median age of 30. And you've got dirty mobile data. But instead of trying to understand the existing market, Western dating apps tried to shape the market that they wanted to serve. They essentially tried to make Indian dating culture into Western dating culture. Their business model was trying to get Indians to be more liberal around taboos like sex and divorce and sexual minorities. And the response, unsurprisingly, was not what they'd hoped for.

11:54And so as swiping fatigue set in globally, this really was no different in India. This has left many young Indians feeling more frustrated than ever.

12:08I recently spent a Saturday night at the five-star Oberoi Hotel in Delhi at the launch event for a new dating app in India. Men see a lot of dating apps as a place where they kind of meet women and, I mean, I wouldn't say objectify them, but they go on dating apps with a lens of objectification. One woman in her late 20s was frustrated about creepy daters on the apps. So I think that is a bit hard to really meet people who are there for truer connections as opposed to something more flimsy. Stalking is sometimes almost romanticized in Indian pop culture, which often makes being on apps and meeting people quite difficult, especially for women.

12:55India's male-to-female ratio on Western apps has at its worst skewed to 95 men to 5 women, according to some internal figures that I was shown. Part of this is that Western apps became inadvertent havens for hookup culture in a country that very much still considers casual sex taboo. I'm a sucker for exclusivity. I love that stuff. I love it when I'm like, oh, only I can be on it? That's great. Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, I'm a very vain person. MC Soupy has been on Raya, a very exclusive membership app, which he enjoyed being a part of. But he also explained how even for men, Western digital dating culture can feel unnatural and awkward.

13:38We didn't grow up with that kind of like that mindset of like a flirtatious culture or just like, you know, you know, just a chat. You know what I mean? So expecting them to then be like suave and smooth over a digital screen with a stranger is insane. Like this is not going to happen very easily.

13:59But where Western apps have flopped, a bunch of Indian dating apps are trying to meet the market where it is. Actually, the country now has the most matchmaking startups anywhere in the world. And they have fewer illusions about revolutionizing dating culture. Instead, they are trying to get Indians to make an awkward cultural transition. It does make sense to focus on a particular demographic and a certain class so that your chances of succeeding are piled because you're not trying to be everything to everyone. Siddharth Mangaram is co-founder with his wife Simran of the now defunct dating platform Flow.

14:36And he says, India is not one market. It really differs wherever you go, what social class and caste you come from. And so curation is key. You need to find people from similar demographics, cohorts, and this increases your chances of meeting someone and decreases your chances of developing swiping fatigue. And We Met, which is an online platform for urban professionals, asks applicants to declare their income bracket and university degrees and to write a small story on how you explain the concept of privilege. Flutter has seven languages, a profanity filter, and an AI tool that composes love poems on behalf of tongue-tied suitors.

15:19One thing that not even Indian-owned dating apps seem to have been able to crack yet is the political economy of dating. India has the highest number of matchmaking startups anywhere around the world, like I said, but the country has only won about$17 million in funding over the past decade for these kinds of startups. That's about 2 % of the money doled out to Chinese and American competitors. My guess is these funders know the mindset of the Indian single. Simran Mangaram, a dating coach, spoke to me about the penny-pinching Indian consumer. You know, our tolerance for pain is so high that we would suffer like a free act and then try to play when we really are like at the end of our together.

16:03So that's a cultural thing. Maybe Seema Aunty was focusing on the wrong advice in Indian matchmaking. Instead of telling Indian youngsters to be less picky, perhaps she should have advised them to become less stingy instead.

16:35With all of modern life's seeking and climbing and attempts at self-actualization, it's easy to daydream about a simpler existence.

16:47Like in the animal kingdom, your needs could be so straightforward. Food, water, a mate, not too much else. Wherever those resources are plentiful, that's where you go. Find an oasis in an arid region, and you'll find other animals right there with you, lapping it up. But even that basic story comes with a few complexities.

17:12So researchers for years have been wondering where animals congregate in jungles. We know that in the savannas of Africa they congregate at watering holes, but in rainforests where water is everywhere, where do they go? Matt Kaplan is a science correspondent for The Economist. There's been anecdotal evidence for a while that they might be going to places that are rich in minerals, but no one's really been sure. When you say rich in minerals, what are we talking about? So the thing that your body really needs among the minerals we're talking about is salt. Your brain doesn't function without it.

17:50You depend upon it for blood pressure. I mean, if you don't have salt at all or if your salt levels are really low, your blood pressure plummets and you have fainting episodes. It's bad for you. In a lot of places like the savannas, you have plants that effectively collect salt because rainfall tends to be lower and they're drawing it out of the soil and it accumulates in their leaves. In the rainforest, you have such an immersion in water. There is so much of it that any minerals get diluted almost immediately. So animals living in places that have lots of water and not very much salt tend to go towards places in the soil where salt is found as a rock or a mineral, and they can lick it up, sometimes even eating the dirt itself.

18:34So the idea of these researchers was that they wanted to find out if the salt acted as the kind of oasis that we see in the savannah where water is the thing animals are looking for. That's exactly it. There were big questions about whether or not the desperate need for salt leads animals to congregate at places where salt is found in the ground. And so this group of researchers set up camera traps at areas called salt lakes. They're just mineral outcrops, usually mud or dirt that just happens to have a lot of salt in it. And the camera traps were all established so that they would take clicks of animals, video footage for a short period, anytime they detected movement.

19:12And so what did they find? Oh boy, did they find a lot of stuff. I mean, Jason, the footage is unreal. There are video shots of ocelots swatting parakeets as they come down from the air to consume the dirt. They've got video footage of tapirs coming up, and as the tapirs are paying attention to the salt, they don't notice the vampire bats that are hopping up on the ground to create little incisions on the tapirs' ankles and drink their blood. They've got tree boas which are snatching fruit bats out of the air In one video, there's an ocelot that attacks a howler monkey As a howler monkey is coming in to consume some of the salt And the ocelot pounces on the monkey And the monkey is just not having any of it It turns on the ocelot You can see in slow motion that the howler monkey smacks the ocelot across the head.

20:15The ocelot turns towards the camera with this look of panic and flees for it. That's not just enough for the howler monkey. The howler monkey turns, kind of roars, and chases after the ocelot into the shrubs. I mean, it's astounding. It's the Discovery Channel, but saltier. Yeah, it's the Discovery Channel, but saltier. But we're talking about minerals on a larger scale. And it's important to remember, it's not just salt. There's a mineral called kaolinite, which is actually pretty useful for a lot of these herbivores because they're consuming a lot of plants that have toxins in them. And kaolinite helps them to neutralize those toxins in their guts, which makes it easier for them to digest them.

20:57So while we're going to talk a lot about salt, there are other minerals in these places that these animals are picking up that are serving useful purposes. And we're only beginning to hit the tip of the iceberg on all of that as to what the value really is. Sufficient value that they may be risking their very lives. Matt, thanks very much for joining us. My pleasure, Jason.

21:31That's all for this episode of The Intelligence. We'll see you back here tomorrow. Thank you.

22:06reasoning with live API checks, it doesn't just help buyers find a car they love. It helps schedule a test drive, get pre-approved for financing, and estimate trade in value. Advanced, intuitive, and deployed. That's how they stack. That's technology at Capital One. There's one place for the newest drops in wellness and performance and the biggest sale of the year. It's the drop by GNC, curating the best of what's new, handpicked by the pros who know what works. And right now, get it all, buy one, get one 50 % off during the semi-annual LiveWell sale. From crushing workouts to leveling up your nutrition and everything in between, get the best deals on the latest innovations.

22:46All the newness is all on sale right now during the LiveWell sale. On the drop by GNC.