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Election Watch
As the anniversary of the Oct 7th Hamas attacks approaches, tensions in the Middle East are reaching a boiling point. Israel has ramped up its military operations against Iran-backed forces, launching devastating airstrikes across Gaza, Lebanon, and Yemen. The assassination of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and Israel’s ground offensive into Lebanon has further escalated the conflict, as has Iran sending a wave of missiles towards Israel.
On GZERO World, Ian Bremmer sits down with Iran's new Vice President for Strategic Affairs Mohammad Javad Zarif just days before the Nasrallah assassination and Iran’s response. In their conversation, Zarif delves into the far-reaching ramifications of the ongoing conflict. He says, “So the myth of Israeli invincibility is gone. And I think that's a major loss for Israel.” Zarif also speaks about what he calls Iran’s unwavering stance on its right to self-defense and its determination to not fall into Israel’s “trap.”
And with an upcoming election, Zarif weighs in on the prospects of a Harris or Trump administration and addresses accusations of Iranian meddling. Zarif notes, “I don't have any preference. But some may prefer him in Iran. Some may believe that he is more in the national interest of Iran.”
Although Iran’s new president has promised to find common ground with the West, recent events have made it clear that the geopolitical tightrope remains perilously thin. As tensions continue to flare, the world waits and asks: What is Iran's next move?
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
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Are likable liars the secret weapon of campaign 2024?
After the Tuesday night vice presidential debate ended, there was widespread praise about the demeanor of the candidates, Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance. “Voters overwhelmingly characterized the debate as positive in tone,” wrote CBS News, which hosted the debate and then conducted a poll right immediately afterward. The BBC headline used the word “politeness” to characterize the debate. GZERO used “civility.” It’s true. A much-needed Midwestern decency prevailed throughout the VP debate, the expected personal attacks giving way to a wider policy discussion.
After watching the screed-filled mayhem about immigrants eating pets that characterized the Donald Trump-Kamala Harris debate, the VP face-off was like sipping a cold beer in the middle of a heat wave.
But something about this new political “decency” beer doesn’t taste right, and it’s causing a massive hangover. The common decency displayed by Vance and Walz cleverly masks constant deceptions, and yet that doesn’t seem to have any impact on the campaign. In fact, there’s more controversy about the candidates being fact-checked by journalists — that is their job! — than about candidates lying.
Vance won the debate because he had one job: Don’t look like the “weird” guy Democrats say you are, don’t insult women, don’t alienate voters by being the extreme Trump attack dog. He exceeded all expectations. He was prepared, likable, and polished, sawing off Trump’s rough edges with the candor and geniality that appeal to independent voters in swing states. On the surface, it was a master class and might well help secure Vance’s role as the Republican standard-bearer of the future. Below the surface, though, there was an indelible flaw: Vance kept lying.
For example, Vance claimed that Trump didn’t try to destroy the Affordable Care Act, known as Obamacare — but that he actually saved it! That was such a revisionist spin that it took me a while to even process it.
“WhenObamacare was crushing under the weight of its own regulatory burden and healthcare costs,” Vance declared smoothly, “Donald Trump could have destroyed the program. Instead, he worked in a bipartisan way to ensure that Americans had access to affordable care.”
It sounds so reasonable that you might forget that it has no connection to reality. Trump repeatedly claimed his goal was to “let Obamacare fail” and, in 2017, he brought in the “repeal and replace” vote to finally kill it. That vote failed when Trump’s nemesis, the late Sen. John McCain, famously gave it the 1 a.m. on-the-floor thumbs-down. Claiming Trump saved Obamacare is the equivalent of “We had to destroy the village to save the village,” the logical contradiction that became a parody of perfidy during the Vietnam War.
Vance’s likable lies extended to the violence of Jan. 6, 2021, and Trump’s overt attempt to illegally stop the peaceful transition of power. “It’s really rich for Democratic leaders to say that Donald Trump is a unique threat to democracy when he peacefully gave over power on January 20,” Vance said, as if the mob, the deaths, and the arrests of Jan. 6 never happened. The guy Vance replaced, former VP Mike Pence, has starkly contradicted this nonsensical claim, telling Fox News back in 2021 that he refused to comply with Trump and “his gaggle of crackpot lawyers” who “didn’t just ask me to pause. They asked me to reject votes, return votes, essentially to overturn the election.”
Just a reminder: Trump was impeached in the House of Representatives in 2021 because of his actions supporting the insurrection, and he was the first president in 150 years to be a no-show at the inauguration of his predecessor. Of course, Trump still claims the results of the election were fake, and this week he is facing new allegations about his potentially criminal actions leading up to the events of Jan. 6 as revealed in the recently unsealed legal brief from special counsel Jack Smith.
Later in the debate, it got worse, as Vance would not admit that the last election results were fair, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Rebranding Jan. 6 as a peaceful transition of power where a bunch of curious patriots took a friendly tour of the Capitol building is swampland in Florida that no sucker needs to buy.
Finally, Vance claimed that he “never supported a national ban” on abortion. “I did, during [sic] when I was running for Senate in 2022, talk about setting some minimum national standard.” Again, this sounds reasonable, and maybe Vance’s position has changed, but in 2022 he said on stage, “I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.”
Walz also had his likable liar moments. He had two jobs in the debate: Don’t look like the radical the Republicans claim you are and do no harm. Walz simply had to keep up his straight-talk, friendly neighbor, America’s coach persona. Apart from being nervous off the top and ragged and jumpy in his points, Walz for the most part did no harm, even if he was roundly seen as losing the debate by a slight margin. But he also could not explain his past lies.
Back in 2014, Walz declared to a congressional hearing that “as the events were unfolding [in Tiananmen Square, China], several of us went in. I still remember the train station in Hong Kong." Except he didn’t. Walz was in Nebraska at the time. When asked about it in the debate, Walz was flummoxed and fumbled badly, first saying he gets “caught up in the rhetoric,” then admitting that he is “a knucklehead at times” and then, finally, “All I said on this was, I got there that summer and misspoke on this. That is what I have said.” He never admitted that he had lied but made the weird case that being a good guy makes this excusable.
Walz later claimed that Trump hasn’t paid taxes in over a decade and half, which is also not true. According to a report by the Committee on Ways and Means, Trump has paid taxes in some years, even if the rates were shockingly low. For example, he listed $641,931 in federal income tax in 2015 but only $750 in the next two years. Trump didn’t pay any taxes in 2020. Walz didn’t need to lie about Trump’s taxes as the evidence is already damning, but he did it anyway.
Revealing that politicians lie is about as shocking as saying the pope is Catholic. And to the credit of many organizations like CBS, CNN, and others, there were a lot of articles fact-checking the debate. Still, no matter how frequently it happens, you wonder why it doesn't cause an anaphylactic voter reaction? After all, someone who lies to voters in a campaign will, logically, lie to them in power, and who wants that? Would voters rather have likable over believable?
Four years ago, Newsweek published a survey with Redfield and Wilton Strategies that showed 54% of Americans agree that “lying has become more acceptable in American politics.” Voters don’t care about a lying candidate because the end justifies the means. A new study called “When Truth Trumps Facts: Studies on Partisan Moral Flexibility in American Politics” examined “explicit moral justification for politicians’ statements that flagrantly violate the norm of fact-grounding.” The study found that when lies help push the overall political aims of a candidate to victory, their supporters have no issue with it.
“A lot of people’s support for politicians who say things that aren’t true isn’t because they believe those statements per se, but they view that misinformation as supporting political goals that they believe in,” one of the authors of the study, assistant professor Ethan Poskanzer, told the University of Colorado.
The other factor at work here is sowing doubt in everything. The Steve Bannon “flood the zone with shit” strategy has tainted the political process, so partisan voters are urged to disbelieve anything that harms their candidate while believing everything their own leader says.
Lying can sometimes come off as crude, aggressive deception: “Immigrants are eating your pets!” And there are different kinds of lies: Some statements are blatant lies, others are exaggerations, and some are misleading, out-of-context statements used to make a point. So there are degrees, but let’s focus on the blatant lies because they are so obvious.
One other key factor to consider is frequency. Some candidates lie much more than others and so get called out for it more. In the presidential debate, Trump lied over 30 times while Harris told one lie and made a few misleading statements. Trump’s rate of lies might seem like a vulnerability, but he has cleverly turned it into an attack line, claiming that fact-checking proves that the fake news machine is biased against him. Repeat a lie, get called out for it, and claim you are the victim of a media conspiracy. It works. But it works even better when the candidate can do that and still be likable, and grab headlines for their decency, not their deception. That is what Vance and, to a lesser degree, Walz did.
In 2024, the likable liars may end up being the difference in a close election.
Democratic presidential nominee and US Vice President Kamala Harris helps out at a food distribution center during a visit to storm-damaged areas in the wake of Hurricane Helene, in Augusta, Ga., on Oct. 2, 2024.
With just over a month before Election Day, Hurricane Helene – which killed at least 125 people and left disaster zones in 66 counties across the Carolinas, Georgia, and Florida – could affect the vote.
The storm has halted mail service and disrupted absentee voting. Thousands of polling stations are flooded or inaccessible, with early voting already underway in North Carolina.
The portion of the Tar Heel State most affected by the storm contains almost 1 million voters. In 2020, Donald Trump defeated Joe Biden in North Carolina by fewer than 80,000 votes, his smallest margin of victory in any state. Asheville, one of the strongest hit areas, is a Democratic stronghold. But outside of that, the storm disproportionately affected rural counties where Trump has the advantage – and may have the most to lose.
It also gives the current administration a reason to shower these swing states with aid and attention. President Joe Biden visited North Carolina on Wednesday and has deployed 1,000 US soldiers to assist in recovery efforts. Meanwhile, Kamala Harris was in Georgia on Wednesday to discuss recovery and meet with people impacted by the storm. That being said, if their response is seen as insufficient, Harris could be punished at the polls.
Eurasia Group’s US analyst Noah Daponte-Smith says that he is watching out for two things: “whether there is a negative public reaction to the floods in a way that hurts the incumbent party, i.e. Harris, and whether we do see any signs this will depress turnout in rural areas.”
Were you impacted by the hurricane? Please share your story with us here.
Carl Bildt, former prime minister of Sweden and co-chair of the European Council on Foreign Relations, shares his perspective on European politics from the Security Forum in Warsaw, Poland.
What are the implications of the revisions to the nuclear doctrine that President Putin of Russia announced last week?
We don't really know, but I would rather see it as a sign of weakness. If President Putin had confidence in the ability of his conventional forces to achieve the aims that he has set for them in his aggression against Ukraine, he wouldn't need to do this. Does it mean that he's intending to use nuclear weapons? Not necessarily. But he wants to remind us of the fact that it's in his arsenal, and I think we know that already.
What are the implications of the victory of the far-right forces in the Austrian elections?
Well, it is quite worrying, I have to say. The far-right Freedom Party is really far-right and really pro-Russian. They got 29% of the vote, a record for them. And whether they will be able to form a government, I think the other parties will try to form a government against them. I think it's going to take a couple of months to see whether that succeeds or not. But the worrying thing is, of course, that there's a risk of the formation of a far-right, nationalist, more neutralistic, you could say, bloc in Central Europe. We already have the Hungarians under Viktor Orbán nearby. We have Bratislava with the government there. There's an election coming up in the Czech Republic next year. So I'm not entirely comfortable, to put it mildly, with what we have seen coming out of the Austrian election.
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will there be political fallout in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene?
Lots of fallout for the lives and livelihoods of the people of the Carolinas and elsewhere, but the biggest damage is in both rural areas that largely vote "red" and urban areas that largely vote "blue." And frankly, that's a wash. Horrible morbid pun there, but the reality, I don't think it's going to be much impact come November.
What were the big takeaways from President Xi's speech celebrating the 75th anniversary of the People's Republic of China?
Well, first of all, very interesting. He didn't mention trade war, didn't mention the United States or other potential adversaries on the economic, technological military front by name. Did mention Taiwan, talked about the need to end the separatists and reunify, but nothing new there compared to other statements that he and other leaders have made. I would say the most important thing he talked about are the expectations of serious challenges going forward for the Chinese people. This is coming from a leader who is starting to move towards stimulus as opposed to just sort of incremental responses to economic challenges. A recognition that if they want to hit anywhere close to the 5% plus growth they want, they're going to need to do a lot from the fiscal side as the government. But he's messaging that this is going to be a hard time and it's structural. It's not a matter of a few months, it's a matter of years. And especially with the politics around the world and in the United States not working so well for China right now, that's a message that I think was more for domestic consumption than for international.
Finally, as Japan's new Prime Minister assembles his government, how will he set himself apart from former PM, Kishida?
Well, he's not a "pro-Abenomics" guy. This is someone that I think is going to be challenging from a market perspective. He's going to be fiscally very cautious. He's going to look to raise more revenue, and he's not really loved by the business community. It was the fifth time he tried to become Prime Minister, the former Minister of Defense. Fifth time's the charm apparently in the LDP. I'm not so concerned about potential changes on the international front. He's talked about an "Asian NATO" which is kind of a non-starter from the perspective of the United States. He does want joint control of bases in Okinawa,. That's changed the status quo. But ultimately, if the US pushes back, he'll accept that. The interesting thing about Japan is it's basically a single-party democracy. The Liberal Democratic Party really runs the show. They have an absolute majority in the Diet. They're likely to continue that after snap elections coming up real soon. And so it's really a question of which of the various factions inside that party who largely agree on worldview and on domestic policies ends up running the government. And this time around it is the former Minister of Defense.
- Hard Numbers: Helene hits hard, Zuckerberg enters the big leagues, US strikes Islamic State in Syria, Majority of Argentines live in poverty ›
- Biden and Kishida bromance is meant to make Xi sweat ›
- Viewpoint: How Abe still casts a shadow over Kishida in Japan ›
- Viewpoint: Kishida makes way for fresh face as his party's fortunes fade in Japan ›
Tim Walz and JD Vance are set to face off in their first vice presidential debate of the 2024 US election campaign on Tuesday, October 1. You know what that means: it’s time for another round of DEBATE BINGO!
Tuesday's 90-minute debate will be broadcast live on CBS at 9 PM ET and will be moderated by CBS News anchors Norah O'Donnell and Margaret Garrett. It will take place at the CBS Broadcast Center in New York. As the running mates of Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, Walz and Vance could inject fresh momentum into their respective campaigns, which have been in a lull following the Harris-Trump face-off on September 10. We'll soon see whose debate performance proves more effective in swaying voters.
Some tips on DEBATE BINGO: you can make it a competition with your fellow politics nerd pals by printing out GZERO Media's debate bingo cards. Or just screenshot them and share with your friends to compare online. There are four different cards so that each player can have a unique board. Every time one of the candidates says one of these words or terms, X it on your card. The first player to get five across wins. And if you really want to jazz it up, you can mark each of your words by taking a swig of your favorite beverage, doing five burpees, or donating to your favorite charity or political candidate.
Enjoy! Follow our coverage of the debate with us on social media too - we'll be on X @gzeromedia.
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 1
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 2
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 3
Walz Vance Debate Bingo Card 4
Remember, there's more going on in the world than just the US election, so subscribe to GZERO Daily, our newsletter on global politics, and watch our weekly show GZERO World with Ian Bremmer right here and on public television.
- Debate Bingo: Welcome to the 2024 Biden-Trump showdown ›
- Debate Bingo: Kamala Harris v. Donald Trump ›
- Harris wins debate ›
- Harris chooses Walz, Canada makes things 'weird' ›
- What Tim Walz adds to Kamala Harris' campaign ›
- Bloc by bloc: Can Dems win back the working class? ›
- Elon Musk and the Political Power of Young Men ›
The White House in Washington, DC.
It has already been a dangerous week for the world. After months of trading aerial attacks, Israel’s northern border with Lebanon has shifted from a watchpoint to the brink of a ground invasion and wider regional conflict.
As Gov. Tim Walz and Sen. JD Vance take the debate stage tonight for the only vice presidential debate of this election season, everyone from global leaders to young people is asking: What will the next US president do with the world they are inheriting?
In his final remarks before last week’s United Nations General Assembly, President Joe Biden sought to remind the international audience of his 40-year political career. Biden’s speech framed the Afghanistan withdrawal as much-needed, the global coalition in support of Ukraine a resounding success, and new partnerships like the Quad as pillars for the US’s future.
Despite the personal highlight reel, Biden’s global legacy hangs in the balance. After dropping his reelection bid, it was widely reported that Biden viewed ending the war in Gaza as the top priority for the remainder of his term. Months of negotiations and tireless trips to the region by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, the Central Intelligence Agency’s Director Bill Burns, and others have translated into almost no tangible progress on a May 2024 US cease-fire proposal. Senior US officialsacknowledged earlier this month that a deal is neither imminent nor likely.
Instead, a second front along Israel’s north has gone from warm to blazing hot. This weekend’s assassination of longstanding Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah (reportedly without US awareness) followed by targeted Israeli strikes against Iran’s “axis of resistance” in both Syria and Yemen have sent shockwaves through the region.
When the next US president assumes office on Jan. 20, 2025, they will likely encounter a geopolitical landscape with wars in the Middle East, Ukraine, and Sudan, the threat of a nuclear Iran, US-China tech and space races flaring, and a host of other global challenges, from climate and inequities to radicalization. As we saw with last week’s UNGA, global engagement and interconnectivity may be at an all-time high. Yet, no one knows what the incoming US leadership will do about the tests ahead.
In speaking last week with leaders of the next generation across Europe and Africa as part of an election-related conversation forChatham House’s Common Futures Conversationsproject, the desire for clarity from the US is clear. There is anxiety that US voters will not reject former President Donald Trump’s America First brand of isolationism in November. Trump worried Europe earlier this year when he claimed he would encourage Russia to do whatever it wanted with any NATO member not paying their fair share of defense. Likewise, his plans to impose blanket tariffs of 20% on all imports, including those manufactured by US allies and partners, are ringing the alarm that American friendship may not be what it once was.
Alternatively, if American voters reject Trumpism, a status quo foreign policy strategy under Vice President Kamala Harris is also considered unsatisfactory. There is a sense that more unfulfilled rhetoric of democratic resilience and values will not move the needle for the next generation. There’s a nagging concern that even under a Harris administration the US may be turning inward,focusing on “American workers, innovation, and industry.” What will this mean for the future of development aid and foreign investment across Africa and elsewhere?
Instead, these young voices are hoping for new solutions – and innovation – in US foreign policy that acknowledge the attitude and norm shifts they are experiencing as well as the technological change and saturated information environment around them.
There are two camps about this moment in US geopolitical history. One side draws a trendline from Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris Agreement, the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and over-reliance on tariffs and sanctions to the Biden administration’s “small yard and high fence” as the start of the US retrenchment from global leadership.Another side says the US remains the most important actor in every room it enters and will continue to set the global agenda.
We may only know in hindsight if this decade turned out to be a turning point. For now, it seems clear that the world is still knocking on the door of the White House, asking for a glimpse of the blueprint ahead.
Lindsay Newman is a geopolitical risk expert and columnist for GZERO.