The Intelligence: Our meeting with Macron
The Intelligence from The Economist
The Economist
4.5 • 3.7K Ratings
🗓️ 3 May 2024
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
France’s president is known for pronouncements of grand scope with one eye toward history. But when our journalists visited him at his residence his assessment of the state of the world was bleak—a dark, prophetic call to arms. In this special episode, we ask whether his view is accurate, whether his proposed solutions would work and whether he is the person to enact them.
Read the full transcript of our interview here.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Economist. |
| 0:04.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from The Economist. |
| 0:07.0 | Hello and welcome to the Intelligence from the Economist. I'm your host |
| 0:14.0 | Jason Palmer. Every weekday we provide a fresh perspective on the events shaping |
| 0:19.1 | your world. Today's episode though is given over to the perspectives of one leader and his view of how the world is shaping up. In a swearing-in ceremony at the Ilisee Palace almost seven years ago, |
| 0:45.0 | Emmanuel Macron became France's youngest president at age 39. |
| 0:50.0 | Forgive the Hackneyed phrase here, but he really had swept to power. |
| 0:57.0 | He created a whole new party the year before, the Republic on the move. He got two-thirds of the presidential |
| 1:06.0 | vote. Later the party won an absolute majority in the National Assembly. |
| 1:18.0 | Striding towards the stage to the strains of Beethoven's owed to joy the European Union's anthem, |
| 1:21.0 | his optimism and the grand scope of his ambitions were on full display in his |
| 1:26.1 | victory speech. Europe and the world expect us to defend freedom everywhere he said. |
| 1:37.0 | They expect us to bring some new hope. |
| 1:45.0 | But his time in office has also been troubled with challenges at home from the Gillegone or yellow vests. |
| 1:57.0 | French citizens who rose up against fuel tax increases across the country. |
| 2:09.0 | I'll find a part of its responsibility. |
| 2:12.0 | He's the more marvel to you |
| 2:14.0 | deny the sentiment that it was not |
| 2:16.0 | not so much so if. |
| 2:17.0 | Try as he might to calm the situation, |
| 2:20.0 | the protests dragged on and on. |
| 2:22.0 | The international stage is provided its own challenges. |
... |
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