Italian Populist Leader ‘Very Optimistic’ About Trump Presidency

The leader of Italy’s populist Five Star Movement (M5S) said that he is “very optimistic” about the Trump presidency, which will reignite the American economy and stop playing world police enforcer.

In an interview Sunday with the French magazine Journal du Dimanche, M5S founder and chief Beppe Grillo expressed his fundamental agreement with Trump’s presidential platform, calling him a “moderate” whose image has been distorted.

“I read one of his books,” says Grillo, “in which he says some really sensible things on the need, for example, to bring economic activity back to the United States. He said what he had to say about Chinese protectionism as well.”

Regarding Trump’s economic policies, Grillo said that the new President would use fiscal policy to entice large companies to keep their business in America rather than taking it to Mexico as they have been doing, and that he would “relaunch small and medium enterprises.”

Trump will also “recall the U.S. Army stationed at the four corners of the world,” said Grillo. “I agree with all this.”

Although Trump is a moderate, Grillo said, the media “twisted his message,” and then Trump “simply adapted to what was being said about him.”

Consequently, Grillo said, “we have a deformed perception of him.”

Turning to topic of the European Union, the M5S leader said that it has been “a total failure,” that needs to be reimagined.

“It is an enormous apparatus, with two parliaments, in Brussels and Strasbourg, to please the French,” Grillo said. “Europe was born with Jean Monnet,” he said, but then was progressively “transformed.”

“I liked the word, ‘community,’ Grillo said, but “then it was called ‘union’ for the currency, which was to be common and not unique.”

“I am in favor of a different Europe, where each State can adopt its fiscal and monetary system. I want the Eurobond, a 20% devalued euro for Southern European countries, protecting our products against those arriving from abroad, and a revision of the 3% deficit budgetary rule.”

“I no longer feel the spirit of Europe,” he said.

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