Evan Solomon is the publisher of GZERO Media and a member of Eurasia Group’s Management Committee. He is excited to grow the GZERO brand with engaging new offerings and partnerships that help viewers around the globe better understand the rapidly changing world in which they live.
Evan has been one of Canada’s preeminent journalists for more than 25 years. Prior to joining GZERO, he was the host of CTV’s nightly political program "Power Play" and of Canada’s most-watched political TV show, the Sunday morning "Question Period." He also hosted "The Evan Solomon Show," a daily iHeartRadio/Bell Media radio program.
Evan has a long history of building brands and creating programs, starting as the co-founder of the pioneering Shift Magazine, an international digital culture magazine, and as the founder of the Sirius XM show and podcast "Everything is Political." He has also hosted the PBS series "Masters of Technology" and CBC shows such as "Power and Politics," "CBC News: Sunday," "The House," and "FutureWorld." Evan has reported on events from around the world, covering Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and he has interviewed key political figures, from prime ministers and presidents to the Dalai Lama. Evan’s best-selling books include "Fueling the Future: How the Battle Over Energy is Changing Everything" and "Feeding the Future: From Fat to Famine, How to Solve the World’s Food Crisis.” He has also been a columnist for Macleans and The Globe and Mail.
Having one indictment, Mr. Trump, may be regarded as a misfortune, but to have four looks like carelessness … or worse. If Oscar Wilde were writing today, his famed play might be called “The Importance of Being Indicted,” but just how damaging are the now 91 felony charges the former president faces? And how will the rest of the world, especially close US allies, react to them and the prospect of another Trump administration?
Reading through the racketeering charges against Trump and his 18 pals is as sobering as a bank foreclosing on your house. But to Trump, it’s as much a marketing opportunity as a legal fight. He’s turned his public fury on the judges, the prosecutors, and everyone involved, transforming himself from a defendant in an alleged “criminal enterprise” to a victim of a vast left-wing conspiracy.
It’s his favorite role: bully as victim.
There’s always been a kind of “l’etat, c’est moi” Louis XIV vibe to Trump, where he frames accusations against him as accusations against America. As antithetical as this is to the very mission of the American democratic experiment, Trump’s masterclass in political Tai Chi would make Jet Li jealous. He’s now in the power position for the Republican nomination and has a fair chance of becoming president again. The rest of the world is taking notice.
In April, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York and took a thinly veiled shot at Trump and his supporters. "You guys are the greatest democracy in the world,” he said, “right now, it's not just that it's being taken for granted by so many citizens, it's actually being devalued.”
Trudeau’s statement jibed with one of the Top Risks Eurasia Group identified back in January called the “Divided States of America.” It warned that “the growing partisan polarization of the American electorate is continuing to erode the legitimacy of core federal institutions: the three branches of government and the peaceful transfer of power through free and fair elections.” Disdain for political conventions can be an asset for a candidate, but disdain for the rule of law is an act of democratic arson. So what impact is this having abroad?
“Regardless of whether Trump is convicted, there is a clear recognition that the US political situation is volatile and unstable,” Eurasia Group’s Managing Director for Europe Mujtaba Rahman told me. “This will reinforce calls from the French and others for more European strategic autonomy – regardless of the outcome of the election or the pending legal cases against Trump.”
Trump’s America first, bully-isolationism during his presidency led him to abandon key international treaties, such as the Paris Climate Agreement, the World Health Organization, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (Iran nuclear deal), the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and the UN Global Compact on Migration, to name just a few.
With Trump trying to erode domestic institutions in his fight against felony charges – it’s easy to imagine that a President Trump 2.0 would once again see him extend this approach outward to international ones.
The timing of all this is just plain bad. As I write this, the northern Canadian city of Yellowknife is being evacuated because of yet another out-of-control fire. Meanwhile, crews are still sifting through the ashes in Maui as the body count rises to 111.
When both Hawaii and the Northwest Territories are burning, it’s hard to ignore the need for global, democratic, and nation-based cooperative action. Whether it is climate change, the war in Ukraine, China’s wolf-warrior stance, or the need to find global governance for AI, (which we talked about this week with Ian Bremmer and Mustafa Suleyman) democracies need a robust rule of law and institutions to solve real problems.
Trump’s legal fires and his gasoline approach to putting them out make confronting these challenges significantly harder.
