Welcome to Sharp Talk, the regular podcast from Esharp Magazine. Go to eSharp.

e.sharp.E.U for free access to all the podcasts to date. This is Paul Adamson and I'm in conversation with David Rennie.

David Rennie is the Washington Bureau Chief of The Economist, and for many

years wrote the Lexington column, and before that the Badget, UK column, the Economist, based

in London, and before that, the Charlemagne column, all about Europe, based in Brussels.

David, we're going to make this podcast all about trying to understand Donald Trump,

especially from a European perspective,

because Europeans, even after a year of Mr. Trump in the White House, don't really understand

Donald Trump. They think they do, but they don't. You've been following him a lot in the past

year or so. So what is the secret to knowing, understanding Donald Trump?

I think actually Europeans have an advantage over Americans in some ways,

because one of the big things you find here is Americans are a bit puzzled as to whether he's

on the right or the left, because when it comes to law and order and policing and building a wall

and things, he's definitely of the hard right. But they're then puzzled by the fact that he's not

that fuss about shrinking

the state. He's quite into generous pensions for Americans, his voters, his older voters. He's quite

into subsidised healthcare for old people. So they're puzzled, and I'll go on kind of radio or TV

shows here and people will say, well, maybe he's a bit of a Democrat. He's not. I think if you're a

European, actually, he's a pretty familiar policy Democrat. He's not. I think if you're a European,

actually, he's a pretty familiar policy mix. If you look at his policy mix, which is hostility to free trade, suspicion of globalization, hostility to immigration, anti-Muslim

paranoia, law and order authoritarianism, but generous benefits for our people, the kind of

the Jean de Souch, you know, the blood and soil kind of people, it's basically pretty close to the

...