I'm John Batchel with my good colleagues. That is MacArthur of American greatness.

He's in Detroit joining me in conversation with my good colleague, Judy Dempsey, in Berlin.

It's a joy to welcome both at the same time, because while we're political actors,

we take advantage of a technology that joins us in comments in real time.

And we're commenting on, first, the EU.

But now we do specific to the engine heretofore of the EU, which is Germany.

Judy, my question has to do with AFD, of course.

This is alternative for Deutschland, a well-known representation of populism.

We're told, though there are important differences between what the U.S. means by populism

and what the European Union can mean by it.

But a column in the Financial Times caught my attention.

And a remark, when we last spoke, Judy,

I remembered you saying that Herr Mertz was attempting to, in some fashion, deal with the complaints

of the German people that turn on immigration, which is a driver for the recruiting by AFD.

What does that look like now several weeks into it?

Is Herr Merritt's making remarks suggesting that he has new positions on immigration?

Is he dealing with his coalition of the social Democrats who are certainly not sympathetic to, in any fashion, confronting immigration.

They're very generous people.

What adjustment is Herr Merritt's said to be making?

Well, clearly he wants to get the immigration figures down,

and they have decreased over the last year,

largely because border controls have been introduced on several of Germany's borders.

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