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00:00Here, we have a first-time U.S. election watcher, Tara Varma, is senior fellow at the Brookings
00:09Institution Think Tank, born in Paris of Indian origin.
00:15Thank you for being with us.
00:16Thanks for having me.
00:17Hi.
00:18This is your first U.S. presidential election.
00:20What do you think of the spectacle, even of Election Day?
00:23You know, in France, for instance, we're not allowed to talk about polls until all
00:31the votes have been counted until 8 p.m. on the Sunday evening when we hold our election.
00:36Here, you can hand out leaflets for your candidate up to 50 meters from a polling station.
00:42Your thoughts when you look at how Americans pick their president?
00:45I think it's fascinating.
00:46So, what I've been seeing is candidates can actually campaign for themselves.
00:50They're running mates as well.
00:53People can actually register until the day of the electoral vote, which I didn't know
00:58that...
00:59In some states.
01:00In some states, absolutely.
01:01But it also means that it provides the opportunity for people to mobilize as late as possible.
01:05And I think that is what is key here, what the turnout will be like.
01:09We know that last time around in 2020, it was the highest turnout in the history of
01:13the U.S. political... in U.S. political history.
01:18I think this time around, it may even be a bit larger than that.
01:21We know that we have millions of mail-in ballots which have already come in, and people
01:25are really anxiously waiting for the results, not just in the U.S., but in the rest of the
01:29world, too, as you know.
01:30All right.
01:31It's going to be whatever happens in election first.
01:33We're either going to see, for the first time in over a century, a U.S. president voted
01:37out of office and coming back to office.
01:40That would be if Donald Trump wins.
01:41In the case of Kamala Harris, first woman, first African-American woman, first woman
01:46of South Asian origin as well.
01:50How do Indians feel about this election?
01:53So I think there are 1.5 billion people in India, so I'm not going to presume to talk
01:58for all of them, but I think we're seeing people who really support her, people who
02:04really don't.
02:05A lot of Indian-Americans who support Donald Trump.
02:08I'm thinking about a lot of people in the Silicon Valley, but there are also a lot of
02:11people there supporting her.
02:13In his first stint as president, we saw he held at one point even a joint rally in Texas
02:19with Narendra Modi at the time.
02:22Modi, Hindu nationalist leader, are they similar bedfellows?
02:28I don't know that they are similar.
02:29I mean, I feel like, I mean, there is evidently some similarity, and we see them potentially
02:35as rising autocrats willing to curtail, really, freedom of the press.
02:40But one thing was clear in the election in India earlier this year is that actually Narendra
02:44Modi got much less votes than he expected, than most pollsters expected, and he accepted
02:50the result.
02:51I don't, I am hopeful that Donald Trump will accept the results, however way it goes, either
02:57in favor or disfavor of him, but we can, I think, harbor doubts on that.
03:01He has repeatedly said that he would only accept the results if the election was free
03:06and fair, and he doesn't really define free and fair more, he doesn't provide much more
03:12details for it.
03:14And we've seen a lot of magnates, tycoons, people who support him on social media, who've
03:21basically been spreading quite a bit of fake news on the campaign itself.
03:24So I'm hopeful that the results, the election will ultimately be free and fair here too.
03:29And the Indian diaspora, how is it split?
03:32Because Indians, of course, have such a prominent role, some are CEOs in the Silicon Valley.
03:39But as you said, 1.5 billion people in the diaspora is diverse as well.
03:43Absolutely.
03:44And we see it actually in the two main political parties here.
03:47Inside the Republican Party, you have Bobby Jindal in Louisiana, Vivek Ramaswamy with
03:51the GOP, Nikki Haley, of course, who was a contender to the presidential election here,
03:56and Kamala Harris, who's the vice president and democratic candidate to the election,
04:02black American woman of Indian origin.
04:04So we're seeing them, as you said, not only in the financial, economic and tech realm,
04:08but also taking more and more part in the political space in the U.S., which is, I think,
04:13a characteristic that not too many diasporas in the U.S. harbor.
04:16And I do think that's interesting.
04:18You see people being very engaged in the political life here.
04:23Let's see.
04:24I have no predictions.
04:26Quick final question for you.
04:29Using your fresh eyes, U.S. institutions, as you said, with Donald Trump saying, I'll
04:34accept the result if, they're going to be tested.
04:38Do you think American institutions are weak or strong?
04:40I think they're quite strong, especially with all the legal background that we're seeing
04:45now.
04:46A lot of legal preparations, potential contestations of elections, but really the sense that the
04:52checks and balances still work.
04:54Freedom of the press, I think, civil society, but also the legal realm.
04:58I think everyone is hopeful that the U.S. will pull through, however rate goes.
05:02Tara Farmouth, so many thanks for being with us.
05:04Thank you so much for having me.
05:06Have a great day.
05:07Back to you, Mark Owen, in the studio in Paris.