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Louis Ferrante shares his book Borgada, Clash of Titans, Volume 2 of his history of the American Mafia from 1960 to 1985. | |
| In part two of this interview, he explores further details of what he says was the mafia's involvement in the assassination of President Kennedy and discusses Robert Kennedy's battle with mobster Carlos Marcelo, boss of the New Orleans Mafia from the late 1940s to the early 1980s. | ||
| You know, a major reason why Marcelo feels that he has an arch enemy that will stop at nothing. | ||
| And if you believe in Olmerta and you're a mafia don who has lived his life with the idea that I will stop at nothing to get where I need to go, and now I'm faced with someone else who stopped at nothing to destroy me, it's life and death. | ||
| And that's when I think Marcelo made the decision. | ||
| It's going to be me or the Kennedys. | ||
| Luis Ferrante with his book, Borgata, Clash of Titans, tonight at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to QA and all our podcasts on our free C-SPAN Now app. | ||
| On Monday, a look at President Trump's influence on the Russia-Ukraine war and a path to peace. | ||
| From the Brookings Institution, watch live at 10 a.m. Eastern on C-SPAN, C-SPAN Now, our free mobile app, or online at c-span.org. | ||
| Today in Germany, elections take place. | ||
| And to talk about not only the importance of those elections for the country itself, but what it means for geopolitics is Kate Brady of the Washington Post. | ||
| She's a Berlin reporter joining us via Zoom. | ||
| Ms. Brady, good morning. | ||
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unidentified
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Good morning or afternoon as it is here by this point. | |
| They talk about these elections and they refer to them as snap elections, but can you expand exactly what takes place today? | ||
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unidentified
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Yeah, it's a snap with a bit of a delay. | |
| So the Chancellor Olaf Schulz, his government, his centre-left government collapsed back in November. | ||
| And this election that's taking place today, some 59 million people eligible to vote, they're all heading to the polls across the country in this early election that should have actually been taking place in September. | ||
| And it was ultimately a budget issue, a spending issue for this coming for this year, 2025, that brought down that government. | ||
| And so the election, the polling stations have been open for several hours now since 8 a.m. this morning. | ||
| That's local time. | ||
| And we're expecting those early prognosis to already trickle in at around 6 p.m. this evening. | ||
| Of course, as you mentioned, huge global geopolitical issues have been raised in this election as well. | ||
| This election really does come at an extremely pivotal time for Germany, for Europe as well, and what Germany's future role might be in this shifting world order that we're seeing right now. | ||
| But of course, domestic issues have also played a huge, huge part, and certainly they've been the most prominent topic of discussion during election campaigning, starting off with economic issues. | ||
| And Germany's economy is still stagnating, hasn't really recovered since the pandemic. | ||
| But it's migration that really has become the topic and call for a clampdown on asylum and migration policy during this election campaign. | ||
| You briefly mentioned it, but who are the key contenders to watch today and what determines if they win or not? | ||
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unidentified
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So you have four main chancellor candidates, but it's worth pointing out maybe that voters today won't be voting for a chancellor per se, but for a party. | |
| It's a parliamentary system. | ||
| And it will be the new parliament that later appoints that chancellor. | ||
| But of course, each of the main parties, the strongest parties, do have a chancellor candidate. | ||
| And at the moment, it looks like the next Chancellor might well be a man called Friedrich Maertz. | ||
| He's the leader of the Conservative Christian Democratic Union Party or CDU. | ||
| They've been ahead in the polls for quite some months now, drifting between 28 and 30%. | ||
| But of course, with Germany system, it is usual to form a coalition. | ||
| So the question will be who with. | ||
| And what we're also watching out for tonight is what's probably going to be a historic result for the far-right alternative for Germany party or AFD. | ||
| They've been polling for about a year and a half now, if not longer, in second position. | ||
| But because of what we call the firewall here, Brandmauer against the far right in Germany, all of the parties, including Friedrich Maertz and his Conservatives, have ruled out forming a coalition with the AFD, which currently leaves a couple of other viable options if those opinion polls that we've been seeing in recent weeks are true. | ||
| So that would mean either a coalition with the Social Democrats, that's the party of the current Chancellor, although he said that he wouldn't want to be taking on a ministerial position himself in that combination, or we could see the Conservatives teaming up with the Greens as well. | ||
| But of course, it all ultimately comes down to the numbers. | ||
| And what we're seeing right now is although the AFD don't look likely to have an election win right now, their strength in numbers is already starting and could potentially, depending on tonight's results, have an impact on coalition building. | ||
| And we're seeing this increasingly fragmented political spectrum here in Germany, which is making a coalition building certainly more difficult. | ||
| You described AFD as far right. | ||
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unidentified
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What makes them so? | |
| So the AFD began its life as a Eurosceptic party, but really jumped on the issue of migration, the backlash against Germany's open border policy and the migration crisis of 2015 and have really just gone on to break taboo after taboo. | ||
| They are now under surveillance nationwide. | ||
| The party at national level is classified as a suspected extremist case and parts of the party are also designated by domestic intelligence as being an extremist group. | ||
| And that comes down to they have been accused of kind of harbouring nativist, anti-migrant, far-right tendencies and also some sharing those views that we hear as well from far-right extremist groups. | ||
| Maybe just worth noting, you know, there are some extremely polemic figures within the party as well. | ||
| One of the arguments that the party always says is perhaps, you know, it's been out today speaking to some AFD voters myself where they said, you know, yeah, we're not all extremists. | ||
| There's some people among the party and that's something you hear quite a lot from the AFD party base. | ||
| But there have been concerns of those borders between the far-right AFD and known extremist groups overlapping. | ||
| One of the most high-profile politicians in the party, a man called Bjorn Hoeke, he himself is classified as an extremist and has twice been convicted and fined for using a banned Nazi slogan. | ||
| We also talk about when it comes to the AFD, the support it has received, not only from Elon Musk, but the vice president, JD Vance. | ||
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unidentified
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Exactly. | |
| So we saw this originally back in December, Elon Musk first sending out a post on X saying that the AFD was what he said was German, it was the only hope for Germany. | ||
| And he has reiterated that several times, holding a live X speech with Alice Weidel, the co-party leader of the AFD and also the Chancellor candidate. | ||
| He appeared live via video and AFD rally as well. | ||
| And even just within the past few hours, he has been posting some more support for them. | ||
| We heard as well from the vice president JD Vance at the Munich Security Conference, leaving the political establishment here in the established parties in Germany in complete shock when he said that there is no firewall and encouraged political parties here to work with the far-right AFD, which is an absolute taboo here in Germany. | ||
| And that is all part of, of course, Germany's history, part of its processing and atonement for the atrocities of the Holocaust and the crimes committed by the Nazi dictatorship. | ||
| What is turnout expected to be like for today? | ||
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unidentified
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It's usually quite high. | |
| We can expect it to be in the 70% range. | ||
| But what's interesting is, you know, a lot of voters have said that they're, I think it was about 20% even, up until the final days of the election campaign said that they were still undecided. | ||
| And it seems that there has perhaps been a boost of voters among the youth as well, who have been a particularly difficult group to motivate in recent years. | ||
| The question is, of course, who will they vote for? | ||
| We've been also seeing a surge in the polls for the far-lefty linker, the left party. | ||
| A lot of people want to vote for them, get them into, get them to stay in parliament. | ||
| There is a threshold that you have to cross over to get into German parliament. | ||
| That's 5% of the votes. | ||
| And there's a hope among a lot of their voters that they will then be able to ensure that there is a voice in the German parliament that is more left than the current centre-left parties, which are the Social Democrats and the Greens. | ||
| But then it's also interesting as well that the AFD, the far-right AFD, also has a strong youth base, especially on TikTok. | ||
| That's something that the AFD has really managed to tap into and gain a lot of younger voters through social media before a lot of the other older parties, the more centrist parties managed to really get to grips with social media. | ||
| Kate Brady, reports from Berlin for the Washington Post. | ||
| You can find her work at WashingtonPost.com. | ||
| You can follow her on X at Brady in Berlin. | ||
| Kate Brady, thanks for your time. | ||
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unidentified
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Thank you. | |
| C-SPAN's Washington Journal, our live forum inviting you to discuss the latest issues in government, politics, and public policy from Washington to across the country. | ||
| Coming up Monday morning, we'll talk with Notices Daniela Diaz about the week ahead in Congress and Republicans' work with the Trump administration on advancing its legislative agenda. | ||
| And we'll continue the conversation on White House News of the Day with Washington Post White House reporter Kat Sikreski. |