Welcome to the Euro Intelligence Podcast. I'm Wolfgang Munchau and with me as Zerunschank and Jack Smith.

Today we would like to talk about geopolitics, the possibility of Donald Trump getting elected in November and what impact that might have and is already having on the European Union.

Jack, what is your assessment at the moment of the

political situation, both in Congress where the Ukraine aid package is at least stalling and for

the upcoming presidential elections? The first thing in Congress, of course, is that the Ukraine

eight packets will now, as I understand

it, go over from the Senate to the House.

And that's where things start to get really difficult because, of course, the Republicans

have a, well, it's a slightly narrower majority after this week's special election result,

but still they do hold a narrow majority in the House.

Of course, the Speaker of the House is a Republican. So that also matters in terms of the legislative agenda in the House. Of course, I'm the Speaker of the House as a Republican,

so that also matters in terms of the legislative agenda and procedure. That's going to still

be quite difficult. I think as well, and my understanding is that it's become more difficult

because it's ended up getting tied into basically domestic political issues. So the gambit from the

Republicans was to tie this into basically tougher

measures at the southern border of the United States. As a result of that, it's kind of gone

back and forth where at times it's kind of seemed like the Republicans are undecided as to whether

they even want to do anything about the border before the election, because if there are issues at the southern border, it's a convenient issue for them to run on.

At the moment, I think that side of things is still pretty uncertain, which is obviously not

great for us in Europe. The issues with Ukraine this year, of course, are acute, but I think,

frankly speaking, for us in Europe, that's nothing compared to what is potentially to come.

Two things I think have become quite clear now. One of them is that Donald Trump has at least a plausible chance of becoming U.S. president next year. He's basically sweeping through the

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