February 14, 2025 • 18 mins
Chris delivers a passionate call for European leaders to step up and reclaim their democratic mandates. Amid canceled elections, pervasive censorship, and deep state overreach, he warns that Europe's internal crisis stems from a retreat from fundamental values. Markowski challenges Europe to reject fear, honor free speech, and build a secure future by truly listening to its citizens. www.watchdogonwallstreet.com
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
So Jadie Vance took Europe out to the woodshed. I
have never I've never seen this before. It's high time. Actually,
you know what you know, Donald Trump called out Europe
and his first his first president regards to spending on NATO.
(00:38):
But this was this was extraordinary. I want to go
through some of this. We gathered this conference to discussed security,
and normally we mean threats to our external security. I'm
just going to go through parts of his speech. I
see many great military leaders gatter here today. But while
the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and
(01:00):
believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between
Russian and Ukraine, we also believe that it's important in
the coming years for Europe to step up in a
big way to provide for its own defense. The threat
that I worry the most about visa Europe is not Russia,
it's not China, it's not any other external factor. What
I worry about is a threat from within, the enemy within.
(01:24):
I think it was a Michael Savage book for crying
out loud the retreat of Europe from some of its
most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on
television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had
just unnulled an entire election. He warned that if things
(01:44):
don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen
in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to
American ears. For years, we've been told that everything we
fund and support is in the name of our shared
democratic values. Everything from our u Bran policy to digital
censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when
we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening
(02:10):
to cancel others, we ought to ask for ourselves whether
we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I
say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on
the same team. We must do more than talk about
democratic values. We must live them now within living memory
of many of you in this room. The Cold War
(02:32):
position defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on
the continent. And consider the side in that fight that
censor dissonance, the closed churches that cancel elections. Were they
the good guys? Certainly not? Again? Could watching this and
you can go on like and watch it all these
European diplomats squirming in their chairs and thank god they
(02:57):
lost the Cold War. They lost because they need the
value nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty,
the freedoms of surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build.
As it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity,
just as you can't force people what to think, what
to feel, what to believe. And we believe those things
are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today,
(03:19):
it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of
the Cold War's winners. I look to Brussels, where EU
commissioned co massars warren citizens that they intend to shut
down social media during times of civil unrest the moment
they spot what they've judged to be hateful content. Or
to this very country where police have carried out raids
(03:41):
against citizens suspected of posting anti feminist comments online as
part of combating misogyny on the internet. Look to Sweden.
Two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for
participating in a Quran burning that resulted in his friend's murder,
and as a judge in his case, chillingly noted, Sweden's
(04:03):
laws to supposedly protect free expression do not in fact
grant and I'm quoting a free pass to do or
say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our dear friends
to the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience
rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in
(04:25):
particular crosshairs. Two years ago, British government charged Adam Smith Connor,
a fifty one year old physiotherapist and an Army veteran,
with the heinous crime of standing fifty meters from an
abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone,
not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
(04:47):
After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know
what he was praying for, Adam replied simply it was
on behalf of his unborn son he and his former
girlfriend had aboarded years before. Now the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer
zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that
(05:10):
could influence a person's decision within two hundred meters of
an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of
pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. So I wish
it was a fluke, a one off, a crazy example
of badly written law being enacted against a single person.
But no, I few wants to go to. Scottish government
began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so
(05:33):
called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer,
private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking
the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any
fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and
across Europe, free speech, I fear is in retreat and
in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in
(05:55):
the interests of truth. I will admit that sometimes allowed
as voices for censorship have come from within Europe, but
within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and
bullied social media companies to censor so called misinformation. Misinformation,
for example, like the idea coronavirus had likely leap from
a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies
(06:18):
to silence people who dared to utter what turned out
to be an obvious truth. This is align, that's great,
this is It's like from forty eight hours with Eddie
Murphy at Torchi's Bar in Washington. There's a new sheriff
in town. And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree
(06:39):
with your views, but we will fight to defend your
right to offer in the public square, agree or disagree.
Now we're at the point, of course, that the situation's
got so bad that this December, Romania straight up canceled
the results for presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions
of an intelligence agency and an enormous pressure from it
(07:00):
It's continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument
was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But
I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You
can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media
advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can
condemn it on the world stage even but if your
(07:21):
democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars
of digital advertising from a foreign country, it wasn't very
strong to begin with. Again, that was the same playbook
that they were using in Europe that the Democrats used
here in the United States as well, Russian misinformation. Anyway, Now,
(07:43):
the good news is that I happen to think your
democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear,
and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to
speak their mind will make them stronger still, which of
course brings us back to Munich, where the organizers' is
very conference have banned law representing populist parties on both
the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again,
(08:07):
we don't have to agree with everything or anything that
people say, but when political leaders represent an important constituency,
it is a cumbent upon us to at least participate
in a dialogue with them. The old entrenched interests deep
state in Europe is basically saying hiding behind ugly Soviet
era words like misinformation and disinformation. Who simply don't like
(08:30):
the idea that somebody with an alternative point viewpoint might
express a different opinion, or god forbid, vote a different way,
or even worse, win an election. And again he says,
this is a security conference, and I'm sure you all
came prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to
increase defense spending over the next few years in line
with some new target. And that's great because, as President
(08:52):
Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European
friends must play a bigger role in the future of
this continent. We don't think you hear this term burden sharing,
but we think it's an important part of being in
a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while
America focuses on areas of the world that are in
great danger. Damn straight, pay your fair, pay your bills, Europe.
(09:19):
But let me also ask you, how will you even
begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if
we don't know what it is that we are defending
in the first place. For a lot already, in my
conversations that I've had many great conversations with many people
gather here in the room. I've heard a lot about
what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course
that's important, but would have seemed a little bit less
clear to me, and certainly I think to many citizens
(09:42):
of Europe, is that what exactly is it that you're
defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates
this shared security compact that we all believe is so important.
I believe deeply there is no security if you are
afraid of voices, the opinions, and the conscience to guide
your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the
(10:04):
crisis is continent faces right now. The crisis I believe
we all face together is one of our own making.
If you're running in fear of your own voters, there
is nothing America can do for you, nor for what
that matter, there's nothing that you can do for the
American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You
need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the
(10:27):
coming years. So much to value can be, so much
value can be accomplished with this kind of democratic mandate,
and I think it will come to being more responsive
to the voices of your citizens. You're going to enjoy
competitive economies if you're going to enjoy affordable energy and
secure supply chains, and you need mandates to govern because
you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of
(10:50):
these things. And again he's basically really taken shots at
France and Germany right now, who basically unwilling to form
coalitions with and parties. Again, it's the old school deep
state in Europe. Anyway, of course, we know that very
well in America. You cannot win a democratic mandate by
censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that's
(11:12):
the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in
her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news.
Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate
on questions like who gets to be part of our
shared society. And here he gets into migration. Today, almost
one in five people living in this country Germany moved
(11:34):
here from abroad. That's an all time high. It's a
similar number, by the way, in the United States, also
an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered
the EU from non EU countries doubled between twenty twenty
one and twenty twenty two. Alone, and of course it's
gotten much higher since then. We know the situation. It
(11:55):
didn't materialize in a vacuum. It's the result of a
series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the
content and others across the world over the span of
a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions.
Yesterday in this very city, and if you're not familiar,
there was another terror attack in Munich, Germany, the person
(12:17):
ramming a car over some thirty some odd people. And
of course I can't again bring that up with thinking
about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day
in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them
and will remain with them. But why did this happen
in the first place. It's a terrible story, but it's
one we've heard too many times in Europe and unfortunately
(12:38):
too many times in the United States as well. An
asylum seeker, often a young man his mid twenties, already
known to police, ran the car into a crowd and
shatters a community unity. How many times must we suffer
these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our
shared civilization in a new direction. Voter on this continent
(13:01):
went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to
millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did
vote for. In England they voted for Brexit, and agree
or disagree, they voted for it, and more and more
all over Europe they are voting for political leaders or
promise to put an end of out of control migration. Now,
I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns,
but you don't have to agree with me. I just
(13:22):
think that people care about their homes, they care about
their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity
to provide for themselves and their children. And they're smart.
And this is one of the most important things I
learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what
you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos
another shot, the citizens of all our nations don't generally
(13:44):
think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs
of a global economy. And it's hardly surprising that they
don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessy ignored by
their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to
adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. Talked about
dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, shutting down the media, shutting
(14:06):
down elections, shutting down people out of the political process
protects nothing. In fact, it's the most surefireway to destroy democracy.
Speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when
people express views outside your own country, and even when
those people are very influential. And trust me, I say
(14:27):
this with all humor. If American democracy can survive ten
years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a
few months of Elon Musk woooo again, he's slammed, dunking
on them right now. They don't have anything but what
(14:47):
No democracy, American, German or European will survive as telling
millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, or aspirations
or please relief are invalid or unworthy of even being
considered democracy. Yes, on the sacred principle that the voice
of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You
either uphold the principle or you don't. Europeans that people
(15:09):
have a voice. European leaders have a choice and my
strong belief is that we do not need to be
afraid of the future. Embrace what your people tell you,
even when it's surprising, even when you don't agree, and
if you do so, you can face the future with
certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind
each of you. And that, to me is the great
(15:30):
magic of democracy. It's not these stone buildings or beautiful hotels.
It's not even in a great institutions that we've built
together as a shared society. To believe in democracy is
to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and
a voice, and we refuse to listen to that voice.
Even our most successful fights will secure very little. As
Pope John Paul the Second my view, one of the
(15:51):
most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other,
once said, do not be afraid. We shouldn't be afraid
of our people, even when they express views that disagree
with their leadership. Thank you all afterwards. And I'm a dork.
I watched this stuff, but you had several you know,
(16:13):
European German president coming up there. I disagree with this,
and I witness democracy every day and this is not again,
They've got nothing they've got terrorist attacks, you've got once
safe safe countries like Sweden completely over run. It's a mess.
(16:40):
And again what Europe did. What Europe did is they
empowered these people and Brussels, these unelected bureaucrats there in Brussels,
to dictate what's going on. They have to get their
act together, they have to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Again, this is.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Donald Trump lighing basically the law down. And if you
don't think, if you don't think that Donald Trump is
going to start trying to pick off what I mean
by pickoff certain economies in Europe that want to start, hey,
we'll do business with you. Would you do would you
rather do business with us, have a trade relation to us,
(17:25):
or would you rather have you know, deal with all
of this nonsense and Brussels And you're starting to see
it again I'm a dork. I watched some of this
stuff and uh, some of the speeches being given from
certain countries in Europe and European Parliament rip ripping the
shreds socialism and what they've done with energy policy right
on down the line, and the failure that it is.
(17:49):
This is this is a good step. It's a good step.
I'm you know again, it's going to be the media
over there in Europe, and it's the same thing. I mean,
they have their own Watchdog on Wall Street Access of
Evil over there too. We'll get a lot of it's
paid for by the government or paid for by US
AID as we have learned, are gonna you know, they're
(18:09):
gonna get up in arms about this. But I think
the European people can see this. I think that the
tide is starting to turn over there as well. That
whole concept Mega make Europe great again. Well, this is
how you start doing it. Watchdog on Wall Street dot
Com
The Watchdog on Wall Street podcast explaining the news coming
out of the complex worlds of finance, economics, and politics
and the impact it we'll have on everyday Americans. Author,
investment banker, consumer advocate, analyst, and trader Chris Markowski.
Speaker 2 (00:16):
So Jadie Vance took Europe out to the woodshed. I
have never I've never seen this before. It's high time. Actually,
you know what you know, Donald Trump called out Europe
and his first his first president regards to spending on NATO.
(00:38):
But this was this was extraordinary. I want to go
through some of this. We gathered this conference to discussed security,
and normally we mean threats to our external security. I'm
just going to go through parts of his speech. I
see many great military leaders gatter here today. But while
the Trump administration is very concerned with European security and
(01:00):
believes that we can come to a reasonable settlement between
Russian and Ukraine, we also believe that it's important in
the coming years for Europe to step up in a
big way to provide for its own defense. The threat
that I worry the most about visa Europe is not Russia,
it's not China, it's not any other external factor. What
I worry about is a threat from within, the enemy within.
(01:24):
I think it was a Michael Savage book for crying
out loud the retreat of Europe from some of its
most fundamental values, values shared with the United States of America.
I was struck that a former European commissioner went on
television recently and sounded delighted that the Romanian government had
just unnulled an entire election. He warned that if things
(01:44):
don't go to plan, the very same thing could happen
in Germany too. Now these cavalier statements are shocking to
American ears. For years, we've been told that everything we
fund and support is in the name of our shared
democratic values. Everything from our u Bran policy to digital
censorship is billed as a defense of democracy. But when
we see European courts canceling elections and senior officials threatening
(02:10):
to cancel others, we ought to ask for ourselves whether
we're holding ourselves to an appropriately high standard. And I
say ourselves, because I fundamentally believe that we are on
the same team. We must do more than talk about
democratic values. We must live them now within living memory
of many of you in this room. The Cold War
(02:32):
position defenders of democracy against much more tyrannical forces on
the continent. And consider the side in that fight that
censor dissonance, the closed churches that cancel elections. Were they
the good guys? Certainly not? Again? Could watching this and
you can go on like and watch it all these
European diplomats squirming in their chairs and thank god they
(02:57):
lost the Cold War. They lost because they need the
value nor respected all of the extraordinary blessings of liberty,
the freedoms of surprise, to make mistakes, invent, to build.
As it turns out, you can't mandate innovation or creativity,
just as you can't force people what to think, what
to feel, what to believe. And we believe those things
are certainly connected. And unfortunately, when I look at Europe today,
(03:19):
it's sometimes not so clear what happened to some of
the Cold War's winners. I look to Brussels, where EU
commissioned co massars warren citizens that they intend to shut
down social media during times of civil unrest the moment
they spot what they've judged to be hateful content. Or
to this very country where police have carried out raids
(03:41):
against citizens suspected of posting anti feminist comments online as
part of combating misogyny on the internet. Look to Sweden.
Two weeks ago, the government convicted a Christian activist for
participating in a Quran burning that resulted in his friend's murder,
and as a judge in his case, chillingly noted, Sweden's
(04:03):
laws to supposedly protect free expression do not in fact
grant and I'm quoting a free pass to do or
say anything without risking offending the group that holds that belief.
And perhaps most concerningly, I look to our dear friends
to the United Kingdom, where the backslide away from conscience
rights has placed the basic liberties of religious Britons in
(04:25):
particular crosshairs. Two years ago, British government charged Adam Smith Connor,
a fifty one year old physiotherapist and an Army veteran,
with the heinous crime of standing fifty meters from an
abortion clinic and silently praying for three minutes, not obstructing anyone,
not interacting with anyone, just silently praying on his own.
(04:47):
After British law enforcement spotted him and demanded to know
what he was praying for, Adam replied simply it was
on behalf of his unborn son he and his former
girlfriend had aboarded years before. Now the officers were not moved.
Adam was found guilty of breaking the government's new buffer
zones law, which criminalizes silent prayer and other actions that
(05:10):
could influence a person's decision within two hundred meters of
an abortion facility. He was sentenced to pay thousands of
pounds in legal costs to the prosecution. So I wish
it was a fluke, a one off, a crazy example
of badly written law being enacted against a single person.
But no, I few wants to go to. Scottish government
began distributing letters to citizens whose houses lay within so
(05:33):
called safe access zones, warning them that even private prayer,
private prayer within their own homes may amount to breaking
the law. Naturally, the government urged readers to report any
fellow citizens suspected guilty of thought crime. In Britain and
across Europe, free speech, I fear is in retreat and
in the interests of comedy, my friends, but also in
(05:55):
the interests of truth. I will admit that sometimes allowed
as voices for censorship have come from within Europe, but
within my own country, where the prior administration threatened and
bullied social media companies to censor so called misinformation. Misinformation,
for example, like the idea coronavirus had likely leap from
a laboratory in China. Our own government encouraged private companies
(06:18):
to silence people who dared to utter what turned out
to be an obvious truth. This is align, that's great,
this is It's like from forty eight hours with Eddie
Murphy at Torchi's Bar in Washington. There's a new sheriff
in town. And under Donald Trump's leadership, we may disagree
(06:39):
with your views, but we will fight to defend your
right to offer in the public square, agree or disagree.
Now we're at the point, of course, that the situation's
got so bad that this December, Romania straight up canceled
the results for presidential election based on the flimsy suspicions
of an intelligence agency and an enormous pressure from it
(07:00):
It's continental neighbors. Now, as I understand it, the argument
was that Russian disinformation had infected the Romanian elections. But
I'd ask my European friends to have some perspective. You
can believe it's wrong for Russia to buy social media
advertisements to influence your elections. We certainly do. You can
condemn it on the world stage even but if your
(07:21):
democracy can be destroyed with a few hundred thousand dollars
of digital advertising from a foreign country, it wasn't very
strong to begin with. Again, that was the same playbook
that they were using in Europe that the Democrats used
here in the United States as well, Russian misinformation. Anyway, Now,
(07:43):
the good news is that I happen to think your
democracies are substantially less brittle than many people apparently fear,
and I really do believe that allowing our citizens to
speak their mind will make them stronger still, which of
course brings us back to Munich, where the organizers' is
very conference have banned law representing populist parties on both
the left and the right from participating in these conversations. Now, again,
(08:07):
we don't have to agree with everything or anything that
people say, but when political leaders represent an important constituency,
it is a cumbent upon us to at least participate
in a dialogue with them. The old entrenched interests deep
state in Europe is basically saying hiding behind ugly Soviet
era words like misinformation and disinformation. Who simply don't like
(08:30):
the idea that somebody with an alternative point viewpoint might
express a different opinion, or god forbid, vote a different way,
or even worse, win an election. And again he says,
this is a security conference, and I'm sure you all
came prepared to talk about how exactly you intend to
increase defense spending over the next few years in line
with some new target. And that's great because, as President
(08:52):
Trump has made abundantly clear, he believes that our European
friends must play a bigger role in the future of
this continent. We don't think you hear this term burden sharing,
but we think it's an important part of being in
a shared alliance together that the Europeans step up while
America focuses on areas of the world that are in
great danger. Damn straight, pay your fair, pay your bills, Europe.
(09:19):
But let me also ask you, how will you even
begin to think through the kinds of budgeting questions if
we don't know what it is that we are defending
in the first place. For a lot already, in my
conversations that I've had many great conversations with many people
gather here in the room. I've heard a lot about
what you need to defend yourselves from, and of course
that's important, but would have seemed a little bit less
clear to me, and certainly I think to many citizens
(09:42):
of Europe, is that what exactly is it that you're
defending yourselves for. What is the positive vision that animates
this shared security compact that we all believe is so important.
I believe deeply there is no security if you are
afraid of voices, the opinions, and the conscience to guide
your very own people. Europe faces many challenges, but the
(10:04):
crisis is continent faces right now. The crisis I believe
we all face together is one of our own making.
If you're running in fear of your own voters, there
is nothing America can do for you, nor for what
that matter, there's nothing that you can do for the
American people who elected me and elected President Trump. You
need democratic mandates to accomplish anything of value in the
(10:27):
coming years. So much to value can be, so much
value can be accomplished with this kind of democratic mandate,
and I think it will come to being more responsive
to the voices of your citizens. You're going to enjoy
competitive economies if you're going to enjoy affordable energy and
secure supply chains, and you need mandates to govern because
you have to make difficult choices to enjoy all of
(10:50):
these things. And again he's basically really taken shots at
France and Germany right now, who basically unwilling to form
coalitions with and parties. Again, it's the old school deep
state in Europe. Anyway, of course, we know that very
well in America. You cannot win a democratic mandate by
censoring your opponents or putting them in jail, whether that's
(11:12):
the leader of the opposition, a humble Christian praying in
her own home, or a journalist trying to report the news.
Nor can you win one by disregarding your basic electorate
on questions like who gets to be part of our
shared society. And here he gets into migration. Today, almost
one in five people living in this country Germany moved
(11:34):
here from abroad. That's an all time high. It's a
similar number, by the way, in the United States, also
an all time high. The number of immigrants who entered
the EU from non EU countries doubled between twenty twenty
one and twenty twenty two. Alone, and of course it's
gotten much higher since then. We know the situation. It
(11:55):
didn't materialize in a vacuum. It's the result of a
series of conscious decisions made by politicians all over the
content and others across the world over the span of
a decade. We saw the horrors wrought by these decisions.
Yesterday in this very city, and if you're not familiar,
there was another terror attack in Munich, Germany, the person
(12:17):
ramming a car over some thirty some odd people. And
of course I can't again bring that up with thinking
about the terrible victims who had a beautiful winter day
in Munich ruined. Our thoughts and prayers are with them
and will remain with them. But why did this happen
in the first place. It's a terrible story, but it's
one we've heard too many times in Europe and unfortunately
(12:38):
too many times in the United States as well. An
asylum seeker, often a young man his mid twenties, already
known to police, ran the car into a crowd and
shatters a community unity. How many times must we suffer
these appalling setbacks before we change course and take our
shared civilization in a new direction. Voter on this continent
(13:01):
went to the ballot box to open the floodgates to
millions of unvetted immigrants. But you know what they did
vote for. In England they voted for Brexit, and agree
or disagree, they voted for it, and more and more
all over Europe they are voting for political leaders or
promise to put an end of out of control migration. Now,
I happen to agree with a lot of these concerns,
but you don't have to agree with me. I just
(13:22):
think that people care about their homes, they care about
their dreams, they care about their safety and their capacity
to provide for themselves and their children. And they're smart.
And this is one of the most important things I
learned in my brief time in politics. Contrary to what
you might hear a couple of mountains over in Davos
another shot, the citizens of all our nations don't generally
(13:44):
think of themselves as educated animals or as interchangeable cogs
of a global economy. And it's hardly surprising that they
don't want to be shuffled about or relentlessy ignored by
their leaders. And it is the business of democracy to
adjudicate these big questions at the ballot box. Talked about
dismissing people, dismissing their concerns, shutting down the media, shutting
(14:06):
down elections, shutting down people out of the political process
protects nothing. In fact, it's the most surefireway to destroy democracy.
Speaking up and expressing opinions isn't election interference, even when
people express views outside your own country, and even when
those people are very influential. And trust me, I say
(14:27):
this with all humor. If American democracy can survive ten
years of Greta Thunberg scolding, you guys can survive a
few months of Elon Musk woooo again, he's slammed, dunking
on them right now. They don't have anything but what
(14:47):
No democracy, American, German or European will survive as telling
millions of voters that their thoughts and concerns, or aspirations
or please relief are invalid or unworthy of even being
considered democracy. Yes, on the sacred principle that the voice
of the people matters. There's no room for firewalls. You
either uphold the principle or you don't. Europeans that people
(15:09):
have a voice. European leaders have a choice and my
strong belief is that we do not need to be
afraid of the future. Embrace what your people tell you,
even when it's surprising, even when you don't agree, and
if you do so, you can face the future with
certainty and with confidence, knowing that the nation stands behind
each of you. And that, to me is the great
(15:30):
magic of democracy. It's not these stone buildings or beautiful hotels.
It's not even in a great institutions that we've built
together as a shared society. To believe in democracy is
to understand that each of our citizens has wisdom and
a voice, and we refuse to listen to that voice.
Even our most successful fights will secure very little. As
Pope John Paul the Second my view, one of the
(15:51):
most extraordinary champions of democracy on this continent or any other,
once said, do not be afraid. We shouldn't be afraid
of our people, even when they express views that disagree
with their leadership. Thank you all afterwards. And I'm a dork.
I watched this stuff, but you had several you know,
(16:13):
European German president coming up there. I disagree with this,
and I witness democracy every day and this is not again,
They've got nothing they've got terrorist attacks, you've got once
safe safe countries like Sweden completely over run. It's a mess.
(16:40):
And again what Europe did. What Europe did is they
empowered these people and Brussels, these unelected bureaucrats there in Brussels,
to dictate what's going on. They have to get their
act together, they have to.
Speaker 1 (17:02):
Again, this is.
Speaker 2 (17:03):
Donald Trump lighing basically the law down. And if you
don't think, if you don't think that Donald Trump is
going to start trying to pick off what I mean
by pickoff certain economies in Europe that want to start, hey,
we'll do business with you. Would you do would you
rather do business with us, have a trade relation to us,
(17:25):
or would you rather have you know, deal with all
of this nonsense and Brussels And you're starting to see
it again I'm a dork. I watched some of this
stuff and uh, some of the speeches being given from
certain countries in Europe and European Parliament rip ripping the
shreds socialism and what they've done with energy policy right
on down the line, and the failure that it is.
(17:49):
This is this is a good step. It's a good step.
I'm you know again, it's going to be the media
over there in Europe, and it's the same thing. I mean,
they have their own Watchdog on Wall Street Access of
Evil over there too. We'll get a lot of it's
paid for by the government or paid for by US
AID as we have learned, are gonna you know, they're
(18:09):
gonna get up in arms about this. But I think
the European people can see this. I think that the
tide is starting to turn over there as well. That
whole concept Mega make Europe great again. Well, this is
how you start doing it. Watchdog on Wall Street dot
Com
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