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So, here's a question nobody asks. What do you do when one of your oldest friends is Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia, the European Union nation? I'll tell you what you do. You call him. A lot.

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My name's Andy Valvur. I'm a comedian, American-born, now living in Europe, because, well, if you could, wouldn't you? I grew up in the US, hearing stories from my parents about a country that didn't exist, at least not on any map you could buy because the Soviets had wiped it out.

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I only had one buddy who understood. Toomas. His parents were also Estonian, also refugees, and Toomas and I grew up sharing the same traditions, same weird Estonian Saturday school, and same conviction that America and Europe were family. And for most of our lives, they were. The alliance held until it didn't.

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Right now, the relationship that defined the free world for 80 years is coming apart. And Europe is scrambling to figure out who it is and what comes next. Toomas and I talk about this stuff. And it seems selfish to keep these conversations to myself. So here it is. The Continental Rift. With former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves and me, Andy Valvur. Serious politics. Questionable hosts.

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Hey, Toomas, how are you? Great. After many days of solid rain up here in the north, it's occasionally sunny. Is that a green jacket or is that mold? I can't tell. I think, oh, yeah.

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No, well, it's a rain mold sun joke. No, no, no, you get it all wrong. It's Estonian professorial military camouflage. Well, it's the professor on summer vacation look. No, no, this is when we're on military maneuvers. And in Estonia, very formal military maneuvers. You have to at least wear a jacket.

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Well, if I'm going to be professorial to the troops, I need to blend in. Well, it's great to see you again. Today is July 9th, and wow, you know, it's Thursday, but a lot has happened this week. On this episode, we're going to take a look at the NATO summit in Ankara. We're going to look at the Le Pen Resurrection. Yeah.

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then we'll do a little thing about the farce that is Nigel Farage, and then we'll do a little last call on the World Cup. Let's get started. I was watching the Ankara Summit. I know you were. You get the feeling that it's kind of like the NATO Summit was like a family meeting, right? And it was kind of like, you know what, we're not going to put dad in a home, but he's

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We're going to take the car keys away from him. Well, it's actually kind of the opposite of a family meeting because all the yelling and screaming seemed to be done outside the meeting and inside. From what I read, it's everything was fairly rational and calm. Did NATO survive?

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Yes, this is the whole message is NATO still exists. The US still is a member of NATO. I mean, this was the big fear going into it as late as the day before. Is Donald Trump going to march out of NATO? Well, I mean, let's be honest. President Trump is consistently threatened to take the US out of NATO.

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And it has also been why everyone has been boosting their defense expenditure. And it went to the point of Secretary General Rutte doing all kinds of show and tell demonstrations, showing here, look how much the Europeans are doing. The Estonians and Lithuanians had a little PR move where they put little lapel pins on saying we're members of the 5% club.

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which is the only two members, which does not include the United States, that have gone up to 5% of GDP for defense expenditure, which has been the U.S. demand, which, of course, the U.S. is not doing either. But for a small country like Estonia, that's a big chunk. Well, it's a big chunk always, but I mean, what it means, you know, in terms of...

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life here is that lots of roads that don't get upgraded and all kinds of infrastructure stuff that we are not doing because, well, for obvious reasons. I should also say, Estonia and the other countries, at least the ones that are called frontline states, are not raising their defense expenditure just because Donald Trump says you have to do it.

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We're doing it because we have a completely unpredictable and rather brutal neighbor right on the other side of our border. And that's why Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, the countries that directly abut Russia have all dramatically increased their expenditures.

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So do health care or do social services take a hit in Estonia because of the amount of money that's going to defense? It's mainly other stuff, infrastructure. Cutting social expenditures is politically always too difficult. I mean, on the other hand, I mean, that's the argument made by

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countries that don't raise their defense expenses, saying, oh, no, we can't cut social welfare. Well, you don't have to cut social welfare. You have to cut other things. So, who gets credit for

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what would be, I guess, a successful NATO summit? I would say that everyone wants to claim the credit, certainly Donald Trump and certainly Mark Rutte. I would probably say that the big countries that didn't object to the kinds of statements that Donald Trump made outside.

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the summit, for example. Which is where we were going to go next. Well, I mean, when he, okay, we can, let's slide the Islamic Republic of Japan. Oh, why? That's such a good one. Come on.

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I mean, I think the Pacific-- I'm sure this comes as some news to Japan. Since what the President of the United States says publicly or in private becomes policy, I can imagine that the U.S. Navy and the Pacific Command, hearing those words, said, Oh, no.

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We have to go bomb Japan again. Wasn't the last time bad enough. However, Trump returned to Greenland, which was actually the cause of the biggest sort of major rift. I can't believe that raised its head again. Denmark needs to basically put Greenland up on Airbnb and just say these dates are not available. Yeah.

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Well, I mean, the thing is, the U.S. has such as can do basically anything it wants there. It just doesn't own it. Because treaty wise, they're allowed to do that, right? Yes. Yes. And so but nonetheless, Trump went on and on about Russian and Chinese ships encircling Greenland, which as far as anyone knows, is not the case. Wait a second. That was I read that, too. I mean, he said, well, there's Russian and Chinese ships all around Greenland.

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Okay, right. It's Trump. Sorry. Okay, never mind. For a second there, I was actually listening to what he said. But there was a couple of other good comments. He referred to the president of Ukraine as? Mr. Putin. Mr. Putin. Is that a Freudian slip?

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I mean, for me, the highlight was actually Zelensky's response when Trump said, well, would you meet him? And he goes, well, I go to Moscow, but it's a little dangerous there because of the Ukrainian drones. What a comedian. I mean, he's very good. And of course, the other thing we heard outside the meetings that

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does seem to be turning into policy is Trump's continued anger at Spain came forth as saying, we have to end all exports to and imports to Spain. Does he not understand how the whole EU thing works?

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Well, by now, it should be clear he does not understand the concept of the European Union where, in fact, when it comes to trade, one thing, it is done completely as the EU. Well, right, of course. We've been through this before in earlier segments. So, I mean, he does not get that, but he did apparently from news reports actually direct Bessent, the Treasury Secretary, to figure out how to

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punish Spain. So what Trump says is policy? Is that how it works? Well, whatever U.S. president says becomes policy. I mean, at least in the past. Nonetheless, it worked. It worked. And we do have now a good communique, which will set policy until the next meeting. Let me ask you very quickly, the communique. Now, this is written by aides, right? This is written by the people backstage. I mean, they hammer out the statement.

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And then there are points of contention where and then those are then decided in the meetings with the heads of state and government. It worked out. I mean, we have a couple of good things for Kiev, at least.

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One thing that did come out of it is Trump did say to Ukraine, we're going to let you build your own Patriot missiles. So the U.S. has now become IKEA. They can come and pick up the boxes and then assemble them in Kiev. But apparently Trump didn't tell the people who make the Patriot missiles.

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First of all, I'm sure that the people who make the various components are quite happy because they will be paid for. So, I mean, more opportunities to make money. So that's not an issue. The question is really the bureaucracy of getting them the license. Patriot missiles take years to build.

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So, if they get the right to do this now, it may be two, three years before they actually see the first missile. On top of which, the question is, would they be made in Ukraine itself, which is under constant bombardment, or it will be some kind of deal where it would be made in, say, Germany or Poland? All of these things have to be worked out.

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We'll see. But that is a good step forward, especially because right now, as we've seen in the past week, is that Ukraine is getting hammered by missiles right now, and which the Russians are fighting.

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They are directing them towards civilian areas, apartment houses, and doing double taps, meaning that after they hit an apartment building with lots of people in it, shortly thereafter, another missile will attack.

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having given enough time for the emergency services. The first responders to arrive. Right. So that tactic has been used before, though, hasn't it? Yeah, well, it's a favorite of the Russians. It was used extensively also against rebels in Syria. There were cities that were in the hands of the rebels. They would bomb it, and then they would wait a few minutes, and then the first responders would come, and then they'd hit them.

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The problem with Ukraine has been that there are no more interceptors, no more patriots. They've used them up. The U.S. doesn't have any backup either anymore, apparently. So that's where we are with that. Another thing that came out of the NATO summit in Ankara was that Trump promised F-35 jets to Erdogan.

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There was a long-term policy of the US to not allow Turkey to buy F-35s after they went and had gone and bought a Russian S-400 anti-missile system. So the US was so annoyed and angry that a NATO member would buy Russian missiles that they said, well, forget the F-35s.

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Now, Turkey has a win-win. They got to get the Russian anti-missile system and they get the U.S. F-35s. Rudy announced tens of billions of dollars in deals. I mean, if you're running a booth at the NATO summit, you know, your order book is doing well. Yes, but even there, I mean, there's this ongoing problem that we will undoubtedly address again, but

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See, as a result of the U.S. demanding that the Europeans spend more, which they are doing, they rightly say, well, we'll spend more, but it doesn't mean that we're just necessarily going to buy American kit. Well, for example, on AWACS-type equipment,

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airplanes that do electronic surveillance. Saab, a Swedish company, got a great contract out of that. And so we're in this catch-22 where the US get very annoyed when the Europeans go and say, well, I mean, if we're going to spend all this money, why don't we spend it on our own companies? Are Europeans capable of getting together and building this complex stuff, these complex arms systems?

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Yes, they are. Not everything. They can't do F-35s. They can't do Patriot missiles. But on the other hand, in the case of the surveillance planes, they're just as good from Sweden and they're more up to date. But we do have a major upswing in, of course, defense contracts right now on both sides of the Atlantic.

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But in general, I would say that there is this this tension which has been going on for for decades and decades where the Americans say spend more money on the assumption that the Europeans will spend that money only on American stuff. Right. But what we're not obligated to. Right. And we can buy from wherever we want. Right.

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We're not obligated, though there is a safe loan program does have a European only clause to it so that if you're going to use this money, you would have to actually give preference to European companies, which has made the US semi-ballistic.

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because they say, no, you can't do that. But at the same time, the United States does not allow its own military to buy non-American

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weapons. So there's a little bit of... So you can't actually go out and buy yourself a Beretta if you're a Marine. They would say 'no', or a Walter PPK. No, but you can go to Turkey and you can be given a pistol. Okay, let's, We need- I'm glad you brought that up. And just to wrap up the whole Ankara thing, apparently at the end of the conference, President

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Erdogan of Turkey presented all of the participants with an engraved pistol with bullets. And apparently, Prime Minister Keir Starmer, despite this being his last ever NATO summit, had to leave his behind because it would be illegal for him to import a pistol. You know, nothing says defensive alliance like, hey, here's your pistol.

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So moving on, the big other story is, of course, the resurrection of Marine Le Pen, who a court has now, they upheld the conviction on embezzlement of EU funds. But they're not sending her to prison, but they are making her wear an ankle bracelet. So she'll be the first presidential candidate.

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candidate to actually campaign with an ankle bracelet. Also, just for accuracy, she has appealed, so she doesn't have to actually wear it right now. But I think it is safe to say that next year's Paris Fashion Week, the ankle bracelet will be a de rigeur accessory.

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Well, you can think of it as an award. I mean, ankle is cheville, if I correct my pronunciation. So having an ankle bracelet would make her a Chevilleier of the Légion d'honneur. Question is, will she wear it on her left or right ankle?

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Well, she's, of course, right wing, so probably the right. But then it depends which way you look at it. My question is, is it Chanel, Dior, or who's going to do the styling? Who's going to do the design? I'm going to go with Gaultier, only because he's a little on the kinkier side. He did all those really weird bodices for Madonna, if you think.

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Well, maybe we'll see. Let's go in a little bit into the whole Marine Le Pen, because, you know, it seems now sort of correct for right wing conservative candidates that they need at least a conviction to campaign and run for office. So, you know, Donald Trump has a conviction on sexual assault. Marine has one for embezzling. So a little badge of honor. I've got a record. I got a rap sheet.

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Well, it's certainly being used by the various populist parties to show that, well, see, we're being persecuted. This is lawfare, which, of course, hasn't stopped in the case of the U.S. from going after the opponents of Donald Trump with all kinds of not very strong cases. We can't say the term witch hunt. Right.

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But in the case of France, the reason why all of this is such big news is that we are going into a presidential election next year where basically the middle doesn't exist anymore.

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The leading candidate on the right is Marine Le Pen. It seems like Le Pen will run for president and she will make Bartela the prime minister. On the left, we have a communist, Mélenchon, who was also very popular.

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The problem is in between. The kids love him. Yeah, for some reason. And Le Pen wants to lower the retirement age to 62, which if you look at it from a sort of fiscal point of view, I mean, France cannot sustain. We can't afford it. And I think Mélenchon is more or less on the same line. But the problem is there's very little in between.

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or at least the center has collapsed, both the center right and the center left. And so we're going into an election where you could easily end up, given the French system, with a runoff between a far right candidate and a far left candidate.

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Which leads me to my next question. Macron's been in power for 10 years. Why hasn't he built a system, a party? Well, he built a party and the party has collapsed, basically, because while he's been very active on the international stage and we, of course, know him almost exclusively from his role in

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trying to do all kinds of things internationally. Trump whisperer. Well, now, just this high-flown rhetoric, which French presidents have been known for, everything begins with l'Europe, l'Europe. Anyway, but he's not that popular. In fact, he's not quite unpopular at

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at home and his party has done absolutely miserably in the parliamentary elections. I know. I know. I live here. Believe me, I watch this stuff on a regular basis. I mean, I remember I was having lunch with the prime minister's assistant and I said, you guys need to get on Twitter more. You guys need to really work the social media because I don't see as much of you doing a little bit more. Because that's certainly where all the kids live these days is

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Look, on a bigger picture, I think Europe is basically doing okay right now. I mean, I think all the heads of state are sort of on the same page. Europe is popular among people. People like the concept of Europe. People think Europe is doing well. But we talked earlier about how there's a lot of little stuff, little nasty stuff going on on the local level with all the little right-wing parties that

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could screw up this sort of cohesiveness. Do you want to expound on that? Well, the hope has been that, which we saw in the case of Meloni, that a far-right party coming to power softens its positions and becomes much more pro-European. I think we talked about this last week, where suddenly Georgia Meloni, who was

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considered a sort of fierce anti-European union has come out, talking about the need to make Europe stronger. Bardella in France also seemed to have been softening things a bit. But now, well, that's all up in the air because Marine Le Pen is a little more extreme.

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wants to pull France out of NATO. And then we have, of course, AfD in Germany, which is going through its own problems where it turns out one of their leading party members turns out to be a Chechen who,

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he changed his name so he would sound German. It doesn't look really good for the party. And as we saw, I guess, a week ago, the German defense minister wants to prevent members of AfD in the German parliament from looking at

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confidential materials because he thinks that they are spies. Lovely. So, all right. So, Will, let's move on from that to another right-wing candidate, the Farage farce. One of the leading campaigners for Brexit was Nigel Farage, and he is now being accused of accepting 5 million.

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pounds or dollars, and he has stepped down and is going to stand again, I guess, in a by-election. Another example of the right wing getting caught with their hand in the cookie jar. The British system are actually, the same is true in the U.S., where you have a first press, the post-election.

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electoral system, no party list. That means that if you quit your position, there then has to be a new election to elect someone to the parliament to take that seat. What Farage has done is, in a fit of something, I don't know, claiming this is the people versus the establishment. The Marine Le Pen argument.

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Having been accused of not declared certain things he's gotten from a convicted fraudster, he has quit. And then he will run again to quote, I'm quoting him, stick two fingers up to the entire establishment. That was a nice quote. Now, the response of the other parties, Labour,

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Tories, Greens, Liberals have all said, we're not going to put up a candidate. Why? Well, to show that this is really a farce. But to make it really a farce, there was a candidate in the last elections in the UK named Count Binface.

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Count Binface, we don't know who he is, or probably do somewhere. But anyway, he's a guy who wears a garbage can, to use the American term, or a bin on his head. And he's going to run for the seat as well. I love the Brits. It's like Monty Python in politics.

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It will be Nigel Farage with the sole candidate against him being Count Binface. Now, the thing is that if the Tories and the Labour and the Greens and the Lib Dems all vote for Count Binface, Farage will lose.

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And the British Parliament will have a person wearing a garbage can on his head. All right. So there are some stories that we did before in previous episodes, and they are evolving, and we just wanted to update folks on them. One is that the European Parliament's alumina ban vote. Do you want to touch on that?

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Well, I mean, we talked already two times about alumina being produced in Ireland and sent to Russia to make aluminum, and this has caused an uproar. Now, there was a vote in the European Parliament on a resolution, which is not legally binding, but nonetheless, it gives you a sense of the Parliament,

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460 to 136, the European Parliament demanded a ban on alumina exports to Russia. Right now, aluminum exports are banned, but the precursor to aluminum, which is alumina, or I say the precursor to aluminium

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to use the British, Irish, generally European pronunciation, it shows that people are fairly annoyed with what is going on. The last item on the list would be that Hungary's state broadcaster went dark the other day when they pulled the plug on it. There was a blank picture, and they just had a quote on there. This quote was, ''Public service media cannot lie."

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"We apologize for doing this for many years nonetheless." And that is what being broadcast. Well, I have to first of all bring in a kind of a distinction. I think it's kind of muddied by the statement. What Hungary had was a state television. A public television is one in which there is no state control. It can be supported by public,

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by money from the state. So what they shut down was not public broadcasting. They shut down the state broadcaster. But the background to that is that throughout the years, but especially leading up to the election, the state broadcasting company in Hungary was basically mass-producing propaganda, slander, lies about the...

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Tisza Party and Magyar and so forth. I'm surprised it took him this long to shut it down. I mean, you know, President Trump went into office and shut down Radio Free Europe and Voice of America and Radio Liberty like the first week. Well, he ordered it. It's still ongoing. But in the case of Hungary, you also do not have an executive president who could just say, do that. It's a parliamentary democracy.

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Things take time to change. It's all within is 100 days, first 100 days in power. So you just got around to it. I think there were more pressing matters. Okay. And finally, the continental rift has reached the football pitch. For anybody that's not a big World Cup fan, what happened was that a U.S. player

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was given a red card, which means that he doesn't get to play in the next game. President Trump, who... You get it for doing something especially egregious. Yeah, absolutely. You did something wrong. And President Trump, who says, well, you know, I'm a really good judge of this, and I'm a really good character, and I know what I'm talking about, called the head of FIFA and asked him to

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review the scene, the situation, and FIFA reinstated the player, which allowed him to play in the match of U.S. versus Belgium. And, of course, Belgium trounced the U.S. 4-1. Wait, jumping ahead. I mean, this caused a big brouhaha. Yeah.

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First, the Belgians protested because it really takes a lot to override, especially egregious foul. President Donald Trump has not been known to be an avid football-slash-soccer fan, but he decided that this was not at all a real foul. Infantino, the head of FIFA, who had previously given...

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President Trump, the FIFA Peace Prize, took a day, obliged and reinstated the player. Now, the thinking was Belgium. I mean, come on, a little country, the U.S., big. But as it turned out, the Belgians, as you said, beat the Americans 4-1, and as a result,

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The U.S. is knocked out of the World Cup competition. I mean, a lot of soccer fans cried foul at this, but UEFA also cried foul, said this is absolute nonsense. That is the European Football Association. We had this new rift.

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Between the Europeans and, well, FIFA, which is worldwide, but and the United States. It's Swiss, basically. It's headquartered in Switzerland. Yeah, okay. But I mean, the point is, this was done at the bidding of the United States. But yeah, exactly. But it turned out not to make any difference anyway. Exactly. Proving once again that anything that President Trump touches turns to...

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Fill in your own adjective. That's about it for this week, I think. Always a pleasure. I want to thank my co-host, Toomas Hendrik Ilves, the former president of Estonia. And I want to thank our listeners for tuning in and listening to us. We know that your time is valuable.

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So we appreciate you giving us some of your time. And let me just say that please consider subscribing or liking the Continental Rift. Subscribe to us on YouTube if you would. I like that. We're on Spotify, Apple, the usual things. You can support us at Buy Me a Coffee or you can email us if you have comments, which we would love to hear from you.

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at rift [at] freshlens.film The Continental Rift is hosted by Toomas Hendrik Ilves and me, Andy Valvur. Our executive producer is Fred Casella. It's edited by Conan Roberts with music by the Estonian folk fusion group Pabbel and animation and brand design by Roland Seer. The Continental Rift is a Fresh Lens production. All rights are reserved. We'll see you again next week.