Trending Now
We have updated our Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for Eurasia Group and its affiliates, including GZERO Media, to clarify the types of data we collect, how we collect it, how we use data and with whom we share data. By using our website you consent to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, including the transfer of your personal data to the United States from your country of residence, and our use of cookies described in our Cookie Policy.
{{ subpage.title }}
Donald Trump and Melania Trump stand on stage at the conclusion of the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum on July 18, 2024 in Milwaukee, WI.
What’s inside Melania Trump’s little black book?
After being relatively absent this campaign cycle, Melania Trump has decided the pen will be her sword in Donald Trump’s fight for the White House. The former first lady dropped her memoir, “Melania,” on Tuesday, just 27 days before the election, in which she breaks from her husband on immigration and abortion but refuses to concede that Joe Biden won the 2020 election.
Inside the book’s simple black cover is 182 pages that are equal parts CV and political manifesto. It takes the reader through the greatest hits of her career, from her idyllic childhood in Slovenia to her successful modeling career and QVC jewelry business, to her “focus on cybersecurity and the well-being of children” as first lady. It also avoids any mention of Stormy Daniels or the many other women who have accused her husband of sexual misconduct.
Instead, it paints a picture of a perfect relationship that began at the Kit Kat Club, where Trump asked for her number while there with another woman. But then “in private, he revealed himself to be a perfect gentleman.” Perhaps the part of her personal life that felt most sincere was her love and protection of her son, Barron Trump.
But from the beginning, this was undeniably a political piece of writing.
Immigration got the most print space. The book begins with a 26-year-old Melania in the immigration line at JFK airport, anxious to begin her modeling career. “My personal experience dealing with the trials of the immigration process opened my eyes to the difficulties faced by all who wish to become US citizens,” she writes. She claims that she was not briefed on Trump’s immigration policy, which she described as an example of “an occasional political disagreement” between her and her husband.
“While I support strong borders, what was going on at the border was simply unacceptable and went against everything I believe in,” she writes, claiming that because of her urging, Trump signed an executive order ending family separation and child detention at the southern border.
She also declared herself unequivocally pro-choice, without acknowledging her husband’s role in overturning the right to abortion. “It is imperative to guarantee that women have autonomy in deciding their preference of having children, based on their own convictions, free from any intervention or pressure from the government,” the Republican nominee’s wife writes. “Restricting a woman’s right to choose whether to terminate an unwanted pregnancy is the same as denying her control over her own body. I have carried this belief with me throughout my entire adult life.”
Her declaration comes a week after the vice presidential debate, during which Trump’s running mate JD Vance also seemed to break with his party’s, Trump’s, and even his own previous stance on abortion by criticizing the uneven availability of abortion services.
During the debate, Vance presented himself as a potential voice of reason in the Trump campaign, effectively laundering his running mate’s most extreme views to make them more appealing to moderates. Melania may have been seeking to do the same for women – Trump is behind by 13 points with female voters – by breaking with her husband on immigration and abortion.
Even if this is just campaign rhetoric, critically, neither Melania nor Vance were willing to refute Trump’s belief that the 2020 election was fraudulently won by Biden. Melania’s book echoes Trump’s doubts that the time it took to decide the election was evidence that it was fraudulent. This could foreshadow that the Trump campaign may double down on election-undermining rhetoric if the election is close or takes days to decide, which many forecasts predict it will. “You can’t continue to count votes for days,” she writes. “Many Americans still have doubts about the election to this day. I am not the only person who questions the results.”
Graphic Truth: Burgernomics and how wage growth has outpaced inflation
So you’ve heard of Bidenomics, but what about burgernomics? Allow us to introduce you to the Big Mac Index, which uses the price of a McDonald's Big Mac to assess whether currencies are over- or undervalued relative to the US dollar.
The index shows purchasing (patty) power, or the gap between productivity and living standards, between countries. It compares the local price of a Big Mac in different countries, converted to US dollars. But it's also a good measure of inflation – a hot topic for the US election, with Kamala Harris and Donald Trump both arguing that they have been better stewards of the economy. Of course, both administrations were majorly affected by COVID, which also had an impact on Big Mac prices.
Before the pandemic, you could buy a Big Mac for $4.82 – or a crisp $5 bill with change to spare, but today, you pay $5.69. This might seem like a win for Trump, but in terms of wages, the story is more complicated. In 2020, an average worker could afford about five Big Macs with an hour’s pay, but now, one hour of work could buy you 5.4 Big Macs. This reflects how, since March 2023, wage growth has outpaced inflation, with the average American’s hourly pay increasing by 5.9%, while prices have jumped just 4.1%.
The Likable Lies of Campaign 2024
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.
Disaster and democracy: How Helene could sway the vote in battleground states
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.
The White House in Washington, DC.
The world is knocking on the door
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.
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
Secret Service probes Elon Musk over assassination 'joke'
The US Secret Service is probingElon Musk’s social media post from last Sunday questioning why no one has attempted to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk deleted the post after some resistance and issued another claiming it was a joke — but the Secret Service isn’t known for its sense of humor.
The agency told Bloomberg it was withholding records in response to a FOIA request because releasing them “could reasonably be expected to interfere with enforcement proceedings.” Don’t rush to conclusions, though: The Secret Service routinely investigates even jokes or artistic expression on the off chance it could be a threat. Rap star Marshall Mathers, aka Eminem, was interviewed in 2017 over song lyrics, for example, and “Last Week Tonight” senior writer Dan O’Brien was subpoenaed over a comedic article about how to kidnap the president’s daughter in 2009.
Musk has a history of making jokes many people don’t find very funny, and this isn’t even the first time it’s landed him in trouble with the feds. The Securities and Exchange Commission sued him in 2018 for claiming he had secured funding to make Tesla a private company at $420 a share, forcing him to claim this very obvious and immature weed joke was in fact a serious offer in federal court. We’re watching whether he learns to keep jokes to the group chat from here on out.
Putin’s puppetry: How Russian propaganda divides the West
Early this month, the US Department of Justice announced the indictment of two RT employees, charging that the Russian state broadcaster had broken the Foreign Agents Registration Act and engaged in a “conspiracy to commit money laundering” by covertly funding a right-wing media outlet to spread Russian disinformation abroad.
The Justice Department said RT employees were bound up in a “$10 million scheme to create and distribute content to US audiences with hidden Russian government messaging.” US Secretary of State Antony Blinkenwarned that Kremlin-backed media outlets like RT have effectively behaved as an arm of Russia’s intelligence apparatus, threatening not only the US but countries worldwide.
The Justice Department didn’t name the outlet suspected of being a conservative front for Russian propaganda, but details in the indictment suggest it was Tenet Media. The Tennessee-based company was founded by a Canadian, Lauren Chen, and her husband, and they hired another right-wing Canadian influencer, Lauren Southern. In other words, the unsealed indictment suggested that Canadian media personalities may have unwittingly been part of alleged Russian influence operations.
So the US and Canada have two foreign interference problems. The first is that foreign states, particularly Russia, are interested in sowing discord and shaping political discourse and election outcomes abroad to further their own strategic goals. The second is that both Washington and Ottawa seem intent on playing right into their hands.
Peddling propaganda at a price?
Tinatin Japaridze, an expert in Eurasian politics and security for Eurasia Group, says one of Russia’s “key goals” is to disrupt political discourse and undermine democratic practices in any states it views as a strategic threat.
“They will use any opportunities they can through hybrid means, including clever manipulation of public opinion by spreading disinformation and propaganda and exploiting existing and new vulnerabilities, to try to show discord and distrust of institutions,” she says.
While Tenet produced videos that predominantly addressed US political and cultural topics, it also made more than 50 videos on Canadian politics. Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlancsays the Canadian government is taking the matter seriously and is partnered with Washington to address Russian propaganda operations.
The FBI is still investigating in the US; if convicted, the suspects named in the US indictment face up to five years in prison for violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act and up to 20 years for conspiracy to commit money laundering.
RT has been banned in both the US and Canada under sanctions imposed in the aftermath of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Since the Justice Department’s indictment was unsealed, YouTube removed Tenet Media from its platform. On Monday, Meta banned RT from Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Threads.
Heads Russia wins, tails the US and Canada lose
If Russia wanted to sow discord in American and Canadian politics, they may be getting unwitting assistance from partisans who are ready to capitalize on the latest revelations of foreign interference in their domestic politics.
On Sunday, Liberal Member of Parliament Ken Hardieposted on X about the Conservative Party leader, writing that “the Russians favour [sic] Pierre Poilievre … and Mr. P votes against help for Ukraine. What to make of this, eh?”
Two days later, Hardie followed up with a similar attack, saying, “As you know, Mr. Poilievre has refused to get the security clearance he needs to see sensitive info on foreign interference. Might he find the chapters on Russia and India too personally upsetting? Time for the enquiry [sic] to open those pages.”
A week earlier, Liberal MP Mark Gerretsenboosted a report about the 50+ Russia-linked videos while taunting the Conservative Party and its leader Pierre Poilievre about a 2023 vote in the House of Commons. “But, please, tell us more about the opposition to Ukraine being premised on the preamble of the free trade agreement.”
Last, Canada’s Conservatives voted against a Ukraine free trade deal. At the time, Poilievre said the party supported free trade with the country but nonsensically alleged the bill would impose a carbon tax on it. The move was almost certainly more about Poilievre attacking the carbon tax for domestic political reasons than to appease Russia.
A Russia-backed site did indeed feature videos that attacked Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and supported Poilievre and his party, but there is no evidence linking the Conservatives or Poilievre to the production of the content or to Russia. In February, Poilievre said he and his party would stand with Ukraine and criticized Vladimir Putin for his “tyranny.”
Stateside, foreign interference by Russia and Iran has become a political weapon for Democrats and Republicans alike. For example, the Trump campaign used the alleged Iran hack of its materials to point out that its nominee was a target because he is such a strong anti-Iran leader.
Trump’s routine praise for Putin and the Kremlin’s apparent preference for him in recent elections — and in the 2024 race, for that matter — has helped fuel perceptions that he’s in cahoots with the Kremlin – and Democrats haven’t been shy about suggesting as much. But there’s no direct evidence of this. His campaign might’ve welcomed Russian interference in 2016, but that is not the same as coordinating or colluding with Moscow.
In other words, partisans are capitalizing on Russian propaganda efforts for their own political gain – the implications be damned. Stephen Miller, a top aide to former President Trump, for instance, dismissed the Russia news altogether, using it as an opportunity to attack the Justice Department itself and Vice President Kamala Harris. He suggested it was all a Democratic ploy to “interfere in and suppress the Election in favor of the Democrats.”
What can we do about foreign interference?
For nearly a decade, there have been warnings about Russia’s attempts to disrupt Western politics by using existing political cleavages and opening up new ones to divide, distract, and undermine the health – or what’s left of it – of democratic institutions in the US and elsewhere.
The strategy seems to be working. Toxic partisan polarization is thriving in the US, and it’s moving north. Distrust in political institutions – and elections – is acute in the US, and it’s gradually creeping into Canada.
Japaridze says Russia’s strategy is effective, and its efforts are unlikely to abate, while some of the Western discourse may play a role in fueling the problem, which is already difficult to tackle since it can be difficult to identify the origins of disinformation.
Moreover, the growing tendency for some to label information they don’t like as Russian disinformation isn’t helping, Japaridze argues. “But, of course, the fact that the Kremlin has deeply penetrated Western politics and society over the years is undeniable.”
“If something looks suspicious, we immediately call it Russian,” she says. “And that has numbed the public, even when Moscow is undoubtedly behind the malicious act.”
She advocates for a broader strategy that deals with the content of political discourse and not just its origins while also addressing institutional problems and eroding institutional trust in Western democracies.
“The entity behind the campaign is important to identify for the purposes of naming and shaming,” says Japaridze, “but the end result – the ultimate damage – remains the same, and our resilience to disinformation continues to be weak.”
Addressing that content means shoring up the strength of democratic institutions, many of which are currently in bad shape.
Russia doesn’t even have to create vulnerabilities. “They're able to identify them and deepen them so that they’re indirectly influencing the conversations without always needing to be directly involved in the mechanisms behind them,” Japaridze says.
The work now falls to US and Canadian political, media, and civil society leaders to counter foreign interference without playing into the hands of adversaries – a task which has proven, to date, far more difficult and elusive than perhaps ever before, which is surely a delight to Russia.
Former President Donald Trump seen golfing in Doral, Florida, on Oct. 27, 2022.
Trump says rhetoric from Democrats ‘is causing me to be shot at’
President Donald Trump is already blaming Democrats for the apparent assassination attempt on him at his West Palm Beach golf course on Sunday. The incident came roughly two months after a gunman attempted to kill Trump at a rally in Pennsylvania.
“Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” Trump said Monday. The Secret Service on Monday said the suspect did not fire any shots and never had the former president in his line of sight. But they admitted that they did not search the perimeter of the golf course before Trump began his game and that the almost-assassin may have been hiding at the course for nearly 12 hours waiting for his target.
Trump — who has routinely employed violent rhetoric — has also pointed the finger at Dems over the attempt on his life in July.
Meanwhile, Trump supporter Elon Musk on Sunday questioned in a since-deleted post why “no one is even trying to assassinate” President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Russia also didn’t wait long to chime in, with the Kremlin on Monday effectively blaming the incident on US support for Ukraine. The suspect has reportedly exhibited a strong sense of solidarity with Ukraine amid its war with Russia. Trump has expressed opposition to continued US aid to Kyiv, and investigators are reportedly looking into whether this motivated the suspect.
July’s shooting, which was caught on video and witnessed firsthand by a large group of people, temporarily boosted Trump’s poll numbers. And much like after the first attempt, Trump’s campaign is already referencing Sunday’s incident in fundraising emails. But this attempt doesn’t seem to be getting as much online traction as the previous one, says Noah Daponte-Smith, a US analyst for Eurasia Group.
“Given that the previous attempt, which came within millimeters of succeeding, had a negligible impact on the polls, I'd expect the impact of this attempt to be similarly minimal,” adds Daponte-Smith. The biggest impact could be a result of Trump's own rhetoric, Daponte-Smith says, as the former president continues to lean into the notion that Democrats are putting him in danger.