to to "amanpour & co." here's what's coming up. reliving 544 days in an iranian prison. the american journalist jason zion with his new book at his harrowing experience. plus, is president trump trying to break up the european union? rocky relations between united states and germany -- [ no audio ] on black women in today's society. ♪ uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co."

when bea tollman culinary career began, she didn't know the recipes from her cook book would make their way to her cruise line. these locally inspired cuisine is served while cruising from european, asia, and egypt. according to b ea, to travel is to eat. booking available through your travel adviser. for more information, visit uniworld.com. >> additional support has been provided by rosalind p. walter, bernard and irene schwartz, sue and edgar wachenheim iii, the cheryl and philip milstein family, seton melvin, judy and josh weston, the jpb foundation, and by contributions to your pbs station from viewers like you. thank you. welcome to the program, everyone. i'm christiane amanpour in london.

with a tale of prison, psychological torture, life or death, that all began the morning of july 22nd, 2014, for an american journalist in tehran. jason and his wife were swept up in a police raid and they had no idea why. he had been working as the city's bureau chief for "the washington post" when suddenly he found himself jailed on trumped up charges of espionage and he was locked away for 544 days, or 1 1/2 years, in the country's infamous prison. but perhaps he was lucky. as his freedom was in part linked for it extraordinary diplomatic efforts around the u.s./iran nuclear negotiations, and he was released in 2016. there are still americans held hostage in iran right now, but relations between the two countries are much, much worse. jason zion is now suing the iranian government and he is retelling his grim experience in

his new book "prisoner." and he's joining me from washington. jason rezblierngs welcome to the program >> thank you so much for having me on. >> so you know, your book has a dramatic title, "prisoner." how difficult was it to write? >> well, it went in spurts. i wrote the outcome of what happened to us and the first months of freedom, which is at the end of the book first because it was so hard for me to get myself back into that mind-set of being in prison, not that it wasn't accessible for me, but it was pretty painful and triggering and set off all sorts of nightmares. it was a hard process. it took me a while to do, but i would get myself into a frame of mind where i dipped myself back into those experiences for several weeks at a time and i would need a break. that's how i did it. >> let us sort of take our cue

from you, then, and start a bit at the beginning. the pina poignantsy -- [ no audio ] -- around parts unknown. and he interviewed you and your wife in that program. and at the time you sort of only just recently been there and and you were quite optimistic before your arrest, six weeks before you were arrested. here's a clip from that documentary. >> i love it and i hate it, you know? but it's home. it's become home >> are you optimistic about the future? >> yeah, especially if there's a deal they'll finally have him, yeah, very much, actually. >> i wonder how you feel seeing that, that's so long ago now and

so much water has gone under the bridge, including 544 days of yourself being in prison. can you remember that moment when you were optimistic about a future living in iran? >> i can. sadly, it was violently stripped from my wife and i very quickly several weeks after we taped that. but i had been living there in iran and working for several years. and i had seen the loads of 2009, the 2019 the effects of sanctions on the people of that country. and also that spring of hope that happened in 2013. and the feeling that a nuclear deal was with the rest of the world and a lift of american sanctions would lead to a better day for iranians. it was something ingrained in my mind and heart at the time. i could feel it was palpable. but as you say, it's very much

in the past now. >> actually, you do describe yourself a little bit as a pawn in the political game around the iran nuclear deal. but we'll get to that in a second. you describe the traumas of what you went through as a prisoner. you also say that you tried to hide that from your family. tell me how. what were you going through you didn't want them to know about. >> look, when you are thrust into such an isolated situation, your mind goes to very dark places. i was scared. i was depressed. i was very angry. but when my mother and my wife were given intermittent access to visit with me, i couldn't in good conscious make them feel worse than they already did. while i did push them to do whatever they could to raise the awareness around my plight, raise the awareness around my case, at the same time, i tried to infuse a bit of laughter and

gentle sensitivity into each one of those meetings because i was doing everything i could to hold on to my dignity and humanity and not bring my family any further down than everybody already was. >> can i just ask you, what kind of humor you were able to bring to this process, even on visiting hours? >> well,look, christiane, you spent of time in iran and you know they don't have the most developed sense of how the rest of the world works. it was a lot of absurdity in the questions that they asked me and the accusations they were making against me. [ no audio ] -- much grip as i could because laughing through a situation is sometimes the only way to survive it.

and i don't think it's weird. it's just how i've always operated >> i'm going to get some of those details in a moment. first you talked about your mom and your wife coming to visit you. your mother, mary, an american. and your father is iranian. you are iranian-american and you are an american citizen living in the united states. now, your mom came on this show and she pleaded for your release. she looked directly into the camera and spoke to the authorities in tehran about you. this is what she said. [ speaking foreign language ] >> i mean, it's actually quite emotional watching it back. >> it's making me emotional right now. i'm so proud of how my mom

handled that situation. my big brother, obviously, and my wife as well. each one of them went through so many struggles around trying to free me. and my mom not only did she come on your show and many others to express those concerns and demand my release, she came to tehran. she's married into an iranian family, she spent a lot of time in iran over the years. but in this very tumultuous and scary situation, she came and stuck her foot down and said i'm not leaving until my boy comes out. i'll be forever grateful for that. >> there was no messing with your mom, no messing with mary. she tried to get into the court. it was really painful for her because she was kept in the dark for a long time. of course they charge with you espionage but we know those are trumped up charges.

what was it like? describe you having to defend yourself under hours and hours of interrogation, trips to kangaroo court if i can say that, that you were subjected to. your intergators threatened to dismember you >> in the initial days and weeks they success in breaking you down in a way that you feel nothing more than as if you're a scared animal awaiting another beating. it's dehumanizing in every way. but as time dragged on and the case and awareness around my case kind of picked up momentum, i begin to feel a bit of strength and confidence not only in the fact that i knew i was innocent, but also that the assertions they were making

about me weren't ones the rest of the world were going to buy into. it made it very much easier for me to stand up for myself, especially when i was outside of the prison walls. you talk about that kangaroo court, it's the revolutionary court of the islamic republic of iran. it's got a very serious name, and the consequences are often very serious, but the process that take place in there can't be taken seriously. it's so farcical and ridiculous, there's no evidence, you're not able to defend yourself, you're being taped for the purpose probably of propaganda, state media propaganda purposes that i just thought to myself, here i am, i've been going through this for so long, the wind in some ways, although there are four big very towering walls around me, the wind is at my back because the world is with me. >> how did you know that because

they kept telling you the world had forgotten about you, didn't care about you, and you talk about the absurdity of the charges. i want you to tell me the so-called avocado story. >> in the opening weeks and months they were adamant about the fact that nobody cared and nobody was lifting a finger or making noise about me. in the confines of solitary confinement, you have no way of knowing whether or not that's true. it obviously was not true. one of the first accusations they made against me was a failed kickstarter project, the crowd funding website that i had put up in 2010 with that aspiration of bringing the avocado plant to iran, a country where you can grow almost anything, but oddly enough, didn't have the avocados to give people the right to guacamole. this was the biggest charge against me, definitive proof that i had a secret spy mission.

it was code for something and it was nefarious. it was something that didn't hold any water. as time dragged on and i was taken out of solitary, i had access to iranian state television for a large part of the final months of my detention. i could see the case that they were trying to make against me in the iranian public's eye, and i may be that was just a response to all of the support that i was getting outside in the rest of the world. we talked about anthony bourdain and my family. but there were other people too. muhammad ali, one of the last things that he did in life was put out a statement calling for my release. >> let me read it, jason because i must say, i was just amazed to see this. in 2015 he said, i'm sorry that i cannot be physically present to lend my support in person, but i pray that my words will

provide relief to the efforts to secure the release of jason resign. it is my great hope that the government and judiciary of iran will end the prolonged detention of journalist jason rezach lavine he is a famous muslim. >> many america we think of his as an american hero. in iran and other muslim countries, he's a muslim hero. you know, he matters and his words matter. i was treated differently, i was looked at differently by my guards, and the authorities in iran were very angry about that. they wrote articles in some of the, you know, the most hard-line newspapers that, you know, this great hero had been duped into supporting this spy. you know, they were losing a battle of public opinion at every turn. and how could i, with the little knowledge about what was going

on, not have my shoulders lifted just a little bit higher knowing that muhammad ali and many other prominent people were publicly demanding that by set free? >> yes. i think that's an amazing moment. but how did your relationship with your interrogatetors change? first of all, did they physically abuse you? >> fortunately, christiane, i was able to avoid being physically harmed. i think that i talk about torture and psychological torture is a very real thing that i experienced and my wife experienced. it's a legacy that will live with us forever. but we were spared from being physically attacked. over time i took that to mean that i had some value and that they knew they would let me go

someday. but i didn't know that early on. i couldn't wrap my head around that. 544 days is a long time. when you are in such isolation with so few characters around me. i had one cell mate from that time and another, and there was a revolving cast of guards that make sure you are in your cell and you're fed when you're supposed to be fed and taken to interrogation when you're supposed to be taken. and then you have the intergators. the few number of people i came in contact with for a year and a half. so obviously you're going to build some relationships. i think if you've not been in that sort of situation, it would be hard to grasp the notion that you're getting to know somebody. these are not people that i would actively choose to get to know, but i was forced to. and in that process i could find out some of their weaknesses, some of their likes, ways that i could try and ingratiate myself

to them. and i hope when people read the book, they understand that i was in a weird situation that no one hopes to find themselves in, and i did my best to cope with it and use the people skills that i've been able to develop over a lifetime to my advantage. >> to the extent that you developed such a rapport with some of them that you ended up hugging them when you left. >> i hugged one of them because he was my main adversary. he was the guy breaking me down from day one. it's a tormented relationship. but at the end of the day, my feeling was, you know, we've gone through this incredible ordeal that in some ways is a very public occurrence, you know. it's a historical moment, a year and a half that was talked about in the world press, and we're the two people that were on the front lines of this behind these

closed doors. not that i feel any sort of loss or missing of him, but it was the end of a very intense chapter in my life. >> it's really interesting to hear what you say in this case because one always wonders how one would behave if one was in the same situation. but i want to ask you because you talk about the avocado tree. now, as crazy as it sounds, you know that they have people in prison in iran right now -- >> for less. >> and for environmental work and they accuse them of being spies. and there are a number of iranian-americans in prison in iran right now. you know, you happen to hit the sweet spot, if i might say that, that there were real negotiations going on with iran and the united states and you were able to be released at the end of that negotiation. what are your feelings for those iran americans who are in jail

right now at a time when president trump's administration is very hostile to iran to say the least. >> my heart breaks for them and their families on a daily basis. you know, you're right. i am the happy ending. and it took 544 days for me to be sprung from that situation. at this moment, we don't see anything happening between the u.s. and iran that would indicate that there are negotiations going on for the people that are currently being held. americans and also british and canadian nationals as well. and i think that whatever you think about engaging with iran and what the obama administration did in terms of negotiating with iran, without an open channel to discuss these cases, and i would call them all hostage cases. some people would say you don't know if these people are inspect

or not. well, based on anecdotal evidence i experienced myself, i'll say they're innocent until proven guilty, and not one of them has been proven guilty. until there's a process of negotiations set up to bring them home, i don't see a way they're that they're going to come home and they're all being held as leverage for a future concession. >> maybe just play -- >> just as i was. >> let me go back to when you were released. you came back to "the washington post" in washington. you were welcomed by members of your colleagues there. here's a little clip. >> probably a week or so after jason got back, he came to the po post. >> he walked into the building and it was a hero's welcome. >> i think everyone was just on the verge of tears the whole time. and jason stood up. >> my iranian intergators told me "the washington post" did not

exist, that no one knew of my plight. and the united states government would not lift a finger for my release. today i'm here in this room with the very people who helped prove the iranians wrong. >> well, it is, again, very emotional and very relevant to what we were just talking about. you saw secretary of state john kerry in that clip negotiating your release which did happen with conjunction at the conclusion of that iran nuclear deal. let me ask you how you feel now. you say you've been changed, that, you know, you indicated at the beginning that you still, you know, have nightmares. how have you changed? >> i think that physically i'm different. the shape of my body is not exactly what it was when i went in. i went through a rapid weight loss in a very harsh set of

circumstances. i've got aches and pains that probably won't go away. respiratory issues that have persisted in the three years since i've been out. but more than that, it's difference in my brain functions. my sensitivity to light and sound, my anxiety in confined spaces, my confusion in crowds. these are all things that are very normal for somebody who has experienced a long sustained period of trauma, but not normal for me and inner working of my own brain that existed before all of this. you know, it's a constant process of regetting to know myself, but i think i'm doing pretty good at this point. >> by the looks of your book, you are doing pretty good. we send you all our support and thanks. you are a colleague and we're

pleased to see that you are free and you are writing and telling the world your story. thank you. >> thank you, christiane. thank you for your support of press freedom and me. >> it's important to remember never to take freedom for granted. we turn now to perhaps america's original sin, slavery, racism, and the inequality that it brought and that persists. a conversation that our next guest believes should no longer be swept under the carpet. tressy mcmillan cos ham is a renowned african-american feminist and sociology professor. her new book sick and other essays pin points the relationships african-american women form when beauty, health, politics, and money. dubbed miss personality in high school, the author told our alicia menendez that african-american women are shunned for taking up too much space in our society today. >> thank you so much for being here with us? >> thank you for having me.

>> the title of the book is thick. what does it mean to be thick? >> that's the quintessential question, right? thick was trying to reach back to what i understood black female political philosophy to have been throughout the history of black women, particularly in this country in the west. and so it was about me trying to take this pop culture reference and say. >> they're thick in the thighs. >> beyonce is thick, it's a popular culture reference that the kids are especially into. to say that physical embodiment of what a real black woman should look like actually has a deep historical tradition that is about as much as what we look like as how black women think, how we participate in the larger body politics, the knowledge as we have created for ourselves and our contribution to the greater world. we think in nuance and complications in large part

because i think black women have o often live in these complicated spaces where they're suspended between the easy answers, black and white answers. that's what marginality is about. it's not an easy to our most implicated questions and black women make those tradeoffs almost routinely throughout our daily lives. >> because childhood into adulthood. >> that's correct. >> there's a lot of passages, but there's one on page 7 that resonated with me. >> being too much of one thing and not enough of another was a recurring theme in my life. i was like many young women, expected to be small so that boys could expand and white girls could shine. when i would not or could not shrink, people made sure that i knew i had erred. i was like many black children too much for white teachers and white classrooms and white girl scout troops and so on. thick where i should have been

thin. more when i should have been less, a high school teacher nicknamed me miss personality and it did for the feel ike a superlative. >> what happens to any person who takes up more space than is socially acceptable? >> we have an entire political, economic, cultural system that is designed to make us fit. it is an act of violence onto people's agency and and their selves and their bodies. violence in a big sense of the world. we reduce the word into personal acts of violence, but there is something violent about a world that requires you to conform to a standard that, by definition, you can never meet. that's a structural violence we enact on people when we want people to hetero normative or a

certain type of masculinity, a certain type of femininity. we do it all the time. we do it most often, it is most compulse sorry for peopleostomy who have the least amount of resources. that's the story of being a marginalized minority. it's a structural violence we enact on people because the structure doesn't change for you. and fundamentally the lie that i think we tell, particularly in our western ideal of merit tocracies that there's something that people can do to themselves to fit in better. the ultimate truth that hopefully all my work especially that i was trying to sort of complicate and unpack in this book was, there really isn't, nothing you can do to fit. and much of our lives i think particularly black women, i think about figuring that out, trying to separate the fact from a fiction of our ability to fit into a social structure that by

definition has made it so that we cannot fit. >> you situate the book in your experience of black womanhood and you take us through the entire range of experience beginning with black girlhood. right now there's a documentary from lifetime, surviving r. kelly, which looks at allegations of various sexual crimes that he is allegedly to have committed against young women. there has been such a response to this documentary. in watching it, part of it is about r. kelly, but it's about the systems and power structures around r. kelly. >> right. i want to be clear that r. kelly is a problem and he is also emblematic of a larger problem in that it appears that he praise on young women, particularly women of color and black women, black women of questionable economic security, right? he goes after the young girls we think of the most vulnerable. that a specific kind of problem that i hope we start to address and it's taken a long time to

address. i've been listening to r. kelly rumors and stories quite literally almost my entire life. these have been the stories of my young girlhood, my middle teenage years, my young adult years. it is both amazing and disheartening to find that i am almost, you know, starting to look at the beginning of middle age and we're still dealing with the r. kelly specific problem. but he's part of this larger problem of who we allowed to prey on whom. all girls are vulnerable in our system to powerful men. this is part of this moment of reckoning with that. black girls are vulnerable in a very specific way because we are not seen as being -- we're not vulnerable. we're not allowed to be. we have empirical evidence that shows that people do not receive black girls as being girls. we age them up mentally, right? so that looks like assuming an eight-year-old has the decision

making capacity of a 14-year-old. and a 14-year-old has it of a 21-year-old. what this culturally does is erases the possibility we extend to children. children are a subet of the populous who have special rights because they're so vulnerable. there are things you can do to an adult that you can't do to a child. they can't enter an account or make decisions. when we say black girls are older than they appear, we're saying they never get the benefit of that extension of vulnerability and protection because that's what we extend to children and additional protection. that makes black girls particularly vulnerable to the larger scale problems of sexism and predecessor. r. kelly would not be a 30-year

conversation had be been preying on young girls who are allowed to be girls. and we are just not >> i saw three lines from the way that society treats young black girls through your experience of childbirth and the way you were treated by the medical establishment which is not unique to you. the same way that young black girls aren't given the same sense of youth or vulnerability. >> young black girls are presumed to always be responsible for their desires people project onto them. the man wants you. you become responsible for his wanting. once you are a black woman and you have to negotiate for access to health care, education, work, that's what these big organizations negotiate for us. what we then make black women responsible for is for never being competent enough to access

all of the resources that they should, that they deserve or need. what that looked like in the health care example which i try to use, there's no such thing as us being educated enough, economically secure enough, we can't be rich enough. we can't be successful enough. we can't be a celebrity enough. a celebrity in our culture is the great exception. >> if it can happen to serena williams, it can happen to anyone. >> beyonce talks about getting a medical establishment to treat you seriously as a competent subject so so that a when you say you are in pain, that they believe you. when they say that -- when you say you are in labor, that they believe you, right? the health care system is much like our education system and our other at large bureaucracies has to assume an ideal customer for it to work properly. you have to assume you speak english so the forms will be in

english. we make sufrmgsz about who the system is for. and health care is a particularly egregious example of us assuming that this resource is ultimately not for black women. precisely because we are not set up to hear or make black women's pain and experience of health care legible. my experience of that was like constantly asking for medical care that i couldn't get and then being held responsible for them not giving it to me >> you were pregnant. >> yeah. >> you had symptoms that you were going into labor. you felt deeply unfortunately. you continued to identify them to your doctor and medical professionals. you were largely ignored. >> yes. i mean, this is a -- anybody who's been in labor, you're in labor for 3 1/2 days. it was you should have been. i was effectively in labor for a long time before i could get a medical professional, one, to believe me and then give me

care. i was given urgent care rather than the long-term well-being care for someone who may have a difficult pregnancy. my pregnancy was deemed difficult until i almost died. the last thing the nurses said to me on the way out was you should have told us. and i had. i had been telling them for 3 1/2 days. as devastating as that is for me, it is so routine. here's one of the things where i think slicing apart what i mean about understanding black women reveals something important for all of us. the health care system is not hospitable to many of us. this is one of those places where people go, i've had that experience and i'm not a black woman. doctors aren't nice to me either. and i don't mean that they aren't nice to you, which is certainly part of it. i mean every point of the interaction of calling the nurse's station, asking to be admitted to the hospital, talking to the anesthesiologist, talking to the specialist, every

routine interaction, despite how i present it as someone with health insurance, the ability to pay, i'm married, highly educate, all the things we tell people to become so the world will be easier for you, none of that mattered in that moment and they would have mattered for someone who was not a black woman. a black woman could not have presented in my situation in any way that would have made that a different outcome. we don't get to protector factor. >> what is most surprising is even once you have an advanced degree, even once you have a blue check mark next to your twitter name, that this continues. >> right. it is this moment when you realize with everything i knew about thousand system would work, i was almost most angry with myself for holding out hope that i had somehow worked hard enough to have earned a pass out of the typical black woman experience. i dare i still have hope?

i was probably in the end most angry with myself. how could i have not expected it for it to go exactly this way. because when you are doing in august of achieving, doing all this striving, part of your ability to strive is that you have to have some faith in the system, even if you hold out some pragmatism about its reality. it's in the moments when you are most vulnerable, when you realize how affordable your faith probably had been that it had crept in when you weren't expecting it. somehow it had set you up for precisely this, to be surprised by something that you should not have been surprised by >> i do have a tremendous amount of faith in people believe it or not. even understanding human nature to be as potentially horrible, i also know anything good that has

ever happened has happened because of the will of human beings. now, i think that those wonderful moments of social progress and human connection generally happen when human beings may not even intend for it to happen, but there is something in the capacity of human nature that allows for a progress that is larger than any individual. and i do still believe in that, you know? my academic training we call this collective effervescent. others may appeal to religion. i think that's fundamentally all the christianity means when they talk about the holy spirit. it is just something larger than individual will and individual human failings. and i actually do still have working faith in that is what i might call it. not an exuberant faith, but a pragmatic faith, which is i think the entire black woman political philosophy >> look at the body of your work, your first book deals with

for-profit colleges, you in the process of writing it had to grapple with the fact that so many people, particularly so many women, particularly so many women of color, thought they were doing the right thing. and that manifests in this book that we have a clear sense as a society of the steps needed to be taken, education is a big one, to even become a moral person. the morality is baked into that. is that a big lie we've all been fed? >> i think i might call ate myth. a lie sometimes suggests that -- it was standpoint historically deliberate. but for a lie to have its ultimate power, the power to shape our reality and shape the trajectory of our lives, it has to actually become something larger than a lie. it has to become an unassailable myth. that's where i think we are. even if you personally don't

believe in it, you adhere to it. that's how compelling a myth is. it's like going home when you yourself no longer believe in your family's religion, but you still go to the special church services, right? that's what the culture myth of mobility and inclusion and doing the right thing is about. yes, we have people of color who would go, i know something about this seems off. i know something about requiring me to look a certain way for inclusion feels wrong, but i'm still going to do it. something about taking out $100,000 for a degree seems a little wonky. there's something about, yeah i should probably have a better health care choice than this one, but i'm still going to pay for this one. i'm still going to do it. there is something about that that says that we don't have an

option at the individual level to opt out of these things that and is about exposing the myth of not just of u.s. culture. i think this is a myth of capitalism, that our rights are embedded in our ability to consume and to buy. depending on who you are, there's no such thing. there are no civil rights that black people can buy in this country. that's what this rash of, you know, you can't a coffee at starbucks, you can't sit in the lobby of the hotel without the police being called. this whole rash of things is about exactly that, that there is a level of skufrmgs, no level of economic achievement, no level of status to which you can adhere that's going to opt you out of what our structure needs us to be, which is marginalized and vulnerable >> thank you so much. >> thank you. >> an important conversation there on race, gender, and space in america. but now we turn to one woman who most certainly has made her own

profound space in society, and that is german chancellor angela merkel. she hates the title but everyone sees he of the de facto leader in the trump age but germany finds itself locked in a strange struggle in the united states right now as the american administration sees its allies as competitors and transactional partners at best. personal relations between president trump and chancellor merkel are prickly to say the least. pulling out of the iran nuclear deal, a threat to pull out of nato and a constant undermining of the european union itself. chancellor merkel's sobering conclusion, germany can no longer rely on its historic ally. [ speaking foreign language ]

>> add to these woes, a slowdown in the german economy, europe's economic powerhouse. so it's no wonder that many are wondering what happens next when merkel stands down after 16 years at the helm? i asked one of her most senior cabinet be minister when he joined me from davos. >> welcome to our program. >> good day to london. >> you know what? i'm so struck that chancellor merkel zid she would take the time to to go to davos whereas so many of her global partners have stayed at home because of their own government issues, whether it's theresa may and brexit, president trump and the government shutdown. she did take to the stage and

addressed head on the financial crisis around the world that is sort of zapped the confidence of people. how does she plan to fix that both financially and sort of psychologically? >> what we do need is corporation, that is what the chancellor was talking about as well. you need to talk to people, you need to meet people at a place like this where many, many different countries, institutions are present. but for this as well, you need the support of your national electorate, that is what is missing and too many countries that really have to explain why well, this. why do we meet in davos? to have a better future for our own countries >> you're addressing the backlash about globalization and the global elite meeting in davos. i understand that, but what i really want to know is, does she

have a plan to get, as she said, citizens to be more confident in the world economic order? >> well, it's an important time this year to regain confidence into the european union. the european order if you want to say so. we have elections ahead. we had the migration crisis, the euro zone crisis, and the brexit ahead. so we really need to make clear what is the benefit of the future. these words of the past, the pa thet tick words, they are important, but not enough. when we explain what is the benefit, it's the defense union, that we are stronger together. it's about secure our border. for example, what we need to set up is the european for artificial intelligence to be competitor with the u.s. and china of we need to make it concrete. what are our projects to keep this european order alive and what is the concrete benefit of

our people back home? and i think this second part, i say it again, what is the benefit of it that needs to be explained much, much better that is at least one lesson learned, definitely learned from brexit. >> yes. definitely learned from brexit. let me just pivot to germany's relationship with the trump administration. she has been very clear about it need for a strong europe and not to let any of these prevailing winds and the head winds break up europe. she's had to say that because of potentially some things that the trump administration have been saying, that perhaps germany, other european countries, will have to rely more on themselves and their own community rather than on the united states. so i guess how do you react to the united states looking like it favors a breakup of the european union?

>> well, first of all, the relationship and partnership remains very important to us no matter, actually, what is the concrete situation. but it shows, yes, we in europe, we have to become stronger. if there's a crisis around us in our own neighborhood like in north africa, like the middle east, the former yugoslavia 20 years ago, today we would not be capable, really, to engage on our own, to have the capacities, the resources. and for that, us, by the way, u.s. administration always wanted us in the past, european union. for that we need to combine forces and explain to our people if we want to become more independent and to stand on our own feet, we need to invest more on our security. >> do you mean like a european army? >> yes, but, of course, european army is one of these buzzwords. now we need to make it concrete,

what does it mean? it does not mean all national armies are just obsolete, but that we bring together special forces, quick-response forces if there's a crisis, for example, a european engagement like it is in mally, that there are european forces engaging there, and not french, italian forces. you combine parts of your army, but there's still a national army because there's an idea of a national army is frightening people. you have to have certain resources on a european level and you have to coordinate them >> to go back to the unprecedented pressure you're facing from the united states. you just said the transatlantic relationship is important to you. but i wonder how important it is to the trump administration. as you know there's been more worries that president trump might announce some kind of pull out of nato. the house of representatives

this week passed a measure to prevent that, to commit to keeping nato, keeping the united states in nato. but is also what the secretary of state pompeo said about the threats to european union, and particularly involve brexit. listen to him. >> brexit if nothing else was a political wake up call. is the eu insuring -- these are valid questions. >> so how do you respond to the u.s. secretary of state questioning the eu? >> well, one thing, he is right. there are more and more people that are obviously doubting and voting for pop list right wing or left wing, for the benefit of the european union. if there is a country leaving the european union, it is obviously because of the reason that they don't see, at least the majority of the people, any

benefit out of it. it's true, we need to make clear where is the benefit of being stronger together. >> can i just ask you again about the sort of personal relationship between president trump and angela merkel? everybody notices it. it's not a very friendly relationship. president trump is not very friendly towards her. what has been the result of that? has it empowered the nationalists, the pop you lists in german, or has it bonded together people who believe in the post-war liberal world order, the democratic world order? what's the effect been in germany? >> from my point of view, angela merkel and donald trump, they are taking each other very, very serious. they don't need to fall in love, but they need to solve problems,

to talk seriously about the issues that are on the table, and that is what they do. and that is my impression. what's going on in germany? well, you have to see that right wing and left wing pop you lists do have one thing in common, they are both anti-american and pro-russian autocrats, and that is very important to understand. by the way, something some pop you lists in the u.s. don't understand when they think they are counterparts, they're partners, friends in europe, no, they are anti-american movements that are trying to get the best out of the struggles we have now within the transatlantic relationship. but in the broader community and the broader society, there's still a big support for our transatlantic partnership and it will remain, i'm quite sure >> you say that they both have a business-like relationship. they don't have to fall in love. but, again, i'm going to play you a bit of what president trump said not so long ago about germany and chancellor merkel.

seems that there's a particular personal animosity there from president trump. let's just listen to this. >> if you look at it, germany is a captive of russia because they got rid of their coal plants and nuclear. they're getting so much of the oil and gas from russia. i think it's something that nato has to look at. i think it's very inappropriate. you and i agreed that it's inappropriate. i don't know what you can do about it now, but it certainly doesn't seem to make sense that they paid billions of dollars to russia and now we have to defend them against russia. >> that's the whole nato debate again. and it was made during the nato summit in the summer. how do you explain that kind of language? >> well, i would say after all these months, years, in office, we know how he says things and how the language is.

what's important to me is action. action on the ground, if you take that, the situation is quite different. for example, there are more troops of the u.s. in europe now than there were before. so there are strengthening the nato cooperation and partnership. when it comes to russia, we are working very close together. it's europe and it's especially chancellor angela merkel who's in favor of sanctions against russia and it's always chancellor merkel that is really fighting for these sanctions to remain if there is anyone doubting it in the european union. but what is important in the end is what's happening on the ground. as you just said, there's still congress and the decisions of congress. i know there are many, many people in the administration and in congress that really want to engage with europe, that we remain close partners. and that is what we work on. this partnership, this

transatlantic township, nato, all the pillars are much more important, much more than one chancellor trip or one president trip. >> okay. let me finish with brexit then. again, prime minister theresa may is not there. interestingly, in the last few days we saw an unprecedented letter delivered by major german leaders appealing for the u.k. to stay in the eu. none other than the head of the cdu, akk as she is known, penned and signed her name to that letter. that's a pretty dramatic step. this is the person who succeeded the chancellor as head of the party. >> i mean, the brexit is a tragedy, but it's a tragedy that is really taking place. so we have to sort this out. i would prefer an audit to brexit. everything else brings

uncertainty for business, citizens, for all of us. of course we want the britons and the u.k. as close to europe as possible. they are very, very strong allies, in culture, politically, economically, we have so much in common, so what is important for us as a german government that we find good terms of trade, actually, and terms for everything actually, with the u.k. for the future. and that is, i think, what this public letter made very clear, that the german people, many, many germans and the german government, we want the u.k. as close as possible as an ally and as a partner >> so do you think ahead of the new votes that are going to take place inspect british parliament and the europeans will in any way offer any kind of different deals to make it pass through parliament?

or do you think a second referendum is more likely? >> well, the ball is now laying in the british court. i don't think that it's the time for us to speculate. now it's up to london and the british parliament to decide how they want to proceed. and then we will react, but we will react for sure in a friendly way. we want to remain friends. >> okay. yen span. thank you very much for talking to us. >> thank you very much. president trump was one of the big no-shows at davos this year because of his own government shutdown woes. but davos has now ended and so have we. that's it for our program tonight. thank you for watching "amanpour & co." on pbs and join us again next time. uniworld is a proud sponsor of "amanpour & co." when bee tollman's 60-year culinary career began, she

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