[Fareed Zakaria, Cnn:] Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria.
[Zakaria:] Today on the show, the president meets the Queen. Trump is about to embark on a state visit to Britain, a nation beset by Brexit bedlam. Then he'll travel to Europe, a divided and politically conflicted continent. We'll preview the trip and the hornet's nest he'll be walking into. Also, 30 years since this haunting photo. Thirty years since Chinese troops entered Tiananmen Square and opened fire. Thirty years later, how much has changed, how much has stayed the same. Nick Kristof and Jiayang Fan join me. And finally from the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE to the extraterrestrial one. Are UFOs a real phenomenon? The U.S. government may finally be seeing the light. But first, here's "My Take." Last week's election results for the European parliament were mixed which meant that every side could claim a victory of sorts. Right-wing populists did gain ground but so did some decidedly left-wing parties like the Greens. The only clear conclusion is that the traditional parties that have dominated the continent's politics since 1945 continued to see their appeal wither and their power wane. But elections are often lagging indicators of social change. By the time the public becomes aware and engaged on a certain issue, the problem might well have passed its peak. Consider the two issues fueling populism in the West fears about immigrants and a lack of economic opportunity. In both cases the crisis appears to be over, but the fury remains. The number of migrants coming into the European Union illegally is at the lowest it has been in five years. In 2018 about 115,000 people crossed the Mediterranean to seek entry into Europe, an 89 percent drop from 2015. This reflects European cooperation with countries in North Africa and the Middle East to strengthen their borders and stimulate economic development while at the same time getting much stricter on asylum applications. In the United States, the pattern is similar. Mexican immigration, the issue that Donald Trump raged about when he announced his candidacy, has actually been going in the opposite direction for years now. From 2007 to 2016, the number the undocumented Mexicans in the U.S. fell by 1.5 million. And while there has been a recent surge of migrants from Central America, the caravans that Trump rails against, they are generally throwing themselves at the mercy of U.S. authorities at the border and pleading for asylum status which is only granted to a small percentage. What about the other problem that has been fodder for populism? Joblessness and the stagnation of middle-class wages. When Trump was on the campaign trail he suggested the actual unemployment rate in America might be as high as 42 percent. He painted a bleak picture of life for the middle class, insecure part-time jobs, wages that never grew, benefits that were disappearing. A portrait still being presented by Bernie Sanders and some other left-wing populists. Well, last week "The Economist" pointed out that this picture so firmly embedded in our minds does not comport with the facts. Two- thirds of OECD countries have record high employment numbers for their working age population. The U.S. unemployment rate, 3.6 percent, is at its lowest point in half a century. "The Economist" writes, "As for precariousness in America, the gig economy accounts for only around 1 percent of jobs." Finally, tight labor markets and minimum wage laws are together moving wages up. Now none of this suggests that life is easy for people outside of the top tiers of these countries. It isn't. But whenever crises flare up in liberal democratic capitalist countries, there is a tendency to look admiringly at non-democratic or non-capitalist countries. This happened in the 1970s when the West was mired in stagflation and political dysfunction and many thought the Soviet Union was stable and on the march. In 1975 in fact the Trilateral Commission issued a famous report titled "The Crisis of Democracy." Well, a decade later, stagflation had been licked, the West was booming, and it was the Soviet Union that was beginning to collapse. Open societies often seen weak because their problems are aired publicly and debated loudly. But what gets lost in the din are the myriad responses to these problems bubbling up from markets, civil society, governments. Capitalism and democracy are open and responsive systems, and they are reacting and adjusting to the public's concerns. Even while populists continue to peddle little more than deception, despair, and demagoguery. For more, go to CNN.comfareed, and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started. Let's keep the conversation going on Europe's election results and what they mean. We will also talk about President Trump's state visit to Britain to see the Queen. His trip starts Monday. Joining me now from the other side of the pond are, in London, Anne Applebaum. She's a Pulitzer-Prize winning historian and a foreign affairs columnist for the "Washington Post." In Paris, author and philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy. He has been criss-crossing the continent in recent weeks performing a play and pressing for a centrist vision of Europe. And in Milan, Beppe Severgnini, who writes for Italy's Corriere della Sera as well as for the "New York Times." Anne, let me start with you. The poem goes, "The center cannot hold. Things fall apart. Anarchy is loosed on the world." Did the center hold?
[Anne Applebaum, Columnist, "washington Post":] What's interesting is the center is not holding, but that doesn't mean that the continent is swinging to the right as many expected. And what we saw in the European elections on Sunday was some move to the far right, but also a real resurgence of liberals and greens. Often new parties that have been formed under new conditions, sometimes in reaction to the far right. So we see really a return to big political competitions in Europe and at the European level. As people begin to take seriously the idea that continental problems like ecology and like immigration can only have continental solutions. These parties are all working together across national lines. They were sometimes campaigning across national lines. And so it's a lot more complicated than just to say the center is over.
[Zakaria:] Bernard, what does it mean for Emmanuel Macron, the great liberal hope of Europe? Does he now is he in a kind of paralyzed holding pattern or can he aggressively continue to try to implement the vision that he campaigned on for a renewed France?
[Bernard-henri Levy, Philosopher, Writer And Filmmaker:] I think that the result of this election is not so bad for Emmanuel Macron. And even it is good, it is good for two reasons. Number one because the far right did not get the success that they hoped. Of course, they are ahead. But much less than they were hoping, number one. Number two, it is clearer and more and more clear in France that they are not just
[Zakaria:] Beppe, how do we understand Italy? Because one of the things that attracted Steve Bannon to Italy was the idea that in Italy left-wing populists and right-wing populists have come together. In his fantasy, it is the Sanders vote and the Trump vote that has come together. Has that persisted in this European election?
[Beppe Severgnini, Editor-in-chief, Corriere Della Sera Sette:] Well, first of all, how do you understand Italy, it's hard to understand Italy. So first of all, good luck. And Steve Bannon certainly didn't understand Italy. He tried. But he tried to understand, but obviously he was ignoring Italy and most of Europe. What happened in Italy is simple. You have a right-wing of sovereignist movement, populist movement. Matteo Salvini and the League, and they went from 17 percent, the result in the general election last year, to 34 percent. And it's like in a play because it's perfect. The other, the left-wing populists, the Five Star Movement, they went the other way around. They went for 34 to 17. So they're not happy, and the government they are forming together is about to fall, I believe. Simply because they cannot afford to stay in a coalition where they lose half their support in a year. Of course, Matteo Salvini and the right-wingers are very happy to stay in the coalition where they double their support in one year. So Italy is watching, and everything is quieter than it's been for some time because we are in Europe. And most of most Italians know that we and France are an exception, but to be an exception is better than to have the similar result all over Europe. We cannot afford to be insulated for too long. We're going to see now with the new budget that Europe will tell us you cannot do what you want. And one way or another, Mr. Salvini will fall in line.
[Zakaria:] Fascinating conversation. I've got to add a point that Anne Applebaum made to me privately which is that the populists also have few ideas. The great idea of the Italian populist Salvini is he wants Italy to have bigger budget deficits. That doesn't strike as an argument that, you know, is going to reshape the world. Don't go away. Next on GPS, the president goes to the palace, Buckingham Palace that is. We will preview the state visit and the state of British politics, when we come back.