Behind Trump’s public theater: real attacks on US standing

October 26, 2022

Behind Trump’s Public Theater: Real Attacks on US Standing | GZERO World

Right before Donald Trump was elected US president in 2016, Peter Baker and Susan Glasser were about to get overseas correspondent gigs at The New York Times and The New Yorker, respectively. Both turned it down, deciding to stay in America to cover the Trump presidency.

But what ensued was so crazy that "we got to be foreign correspondents in our hometown," Glasser tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, for the first time in front of a live studio audience.

Trump was something no one had ever seen before in US politics. He was "from another planet in terms of Washington," says Baker. And he didn't change his style right to the very end: the Jan 6. Capitol insurrection he spurred.

For Baker, Jan. 6 was "not an outlier" but rather the result of Trump's four-year war on American political institutions.

Watch the GZERO World episode: US votes as democracy is under attack

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