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In divided America, anything goes in the name of “protecting democracy"
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: A Quick Take to kick off your Monday morning. Let's talk for a moment about the state of US politics, US democracy. It's the one thing that almost all Americans today can agree on, and that is that their political opponents at home are fundamentally opposed to democracy.
Now, that is actually something I think that unites Americans in kind of a weird way. If you are a Biden supporter, you believe that Trump and MAGA supporters are fundamentally opposed to democracy. If you are a MAGA supporter, you believe that Biden and the establishment Democrats are fundamentally opposed to American democracy. It is incredibly dysfunctional. It is no way to operate a government.
It is no way to build a nation. And that means, you know, when you believe that your political opponents are opposed to democracy, you take away their value as people, you think that their political views are wrong and they need to be erased. They don't need to be engaged with sensibly. You also believe that anything that you might do to ensure that your opponents don't take power is justified because you're fighting over something very essential. And so it's kind of Machiavellian. It's the ends justify the means. Any means are justified if your opponents are fundamentally opposed to your system. And I mean, I certainly have political views of who I think is and is not appropriate. And I've said that historically, and I will continue to with this election. But this piece is not about this.
This piece is about the need not to jump into “the ends justify the means” in American politics, not believing that every slight or perceived slight is an 11 on a ten point scale. I think that Trump has committed real crimes, in my view. I look at his unwillingness, for example, to respond to the FBI and efforts to obscure, actively obscure where his classified documents were and weren’t and get his people to move them and lie about it. It's never the crime itself. It's the cover up of the crime that really gets you in trouble. That does, I think, make a real difference in the way that the classified documents case plays out for Trump as it did for Biden, who should not have had documents in many places but was completely forthcoming in responding to government requests.
I also think that for Trump, the Georgia case, in attempting to overturn to find votes in an election, a state election that was administered by, run by members of his own Republican Party, that's a serious issue. I think it would be impeachable. But impeachment no longer functions as a check on the executive in the United States. That part of the US political system is broken, has become politicized. It should be tried in a court of law, is being tried in a court of law. But there will be no conviction, in my view, certainly not before the election is over. And it's been mishandled by the prosecutor for her own ethical lapses. Now, that case does not make me feel that all cases against Trump are legitimate or should be pursued.
Some of them, in my view, are ridiculous. The fact that a bond was set for almost half a billion dollars and then a New York court said, no, actually 175 million implies that the original setting of that bond was politicized against Trump. A felony charge in New York would have been misdemeanor for any other citizen, politicized by a district attorney that was looking to make a name for himself politically in a state that is overwhelmingly anti-Trump. Take Trump off the ballot in Colorado or other states too. Ridiculous. Not in accordance with rule of law. And thankfully, a divided Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that that should not proceed. Nonetheless, there were lots of intelligent people in several states, in the United States in positions of authority that believed that they should take Trump off the ballot.
Because if someone is trying to destroy democracy, anything you do against that person is acceptable. We see these kinds of things being promoted in the political hit jobs that are being done across the board by cable news and in social media. The headlines you would think you were in two different countries. The people you follow, you'd think that they reflect two different worlds, never mind world views.
This happened yet again. This Easter weekend. Here I was minding my own business, candlepin bowling with the family on Easter Sunday, and turns out that it is proclaimed by Biden that Easter is the Transgender Day of Visibility. Easter Sunday. Can you believe that? What he or she is risen? Is that what we've come to as America? I mean, you can just imagine that the anti-Biden folks were apoplectic that he could do that. And of course, it turns out a little bit of research. That's not what happened at all. Actually turns out that the Transgender Day of Visibility is not new. It's been going on for over a decade. It's always on March 31st, which is only Easter Sunday. Every seven years, give or take a leap year. And there are literally hundreds and hundreds of days all throughout the year that get proclaimed as various days. And nobody really cares or pays attention except that we're in stupid season right now in a country where the most important thing politically is that you are able to score a point and take a piece off of your political opponent.
And the more we do that, the less we can talk to our fellow citizens. And it's not the country that any of us actually want to live in. It is being driven by political entrepreneurs that use that violent political sensibility to stay in power, to achieve power, to make money. It's being driven by media organizations that are having a hard time raising money to continue to feed their shareholders.
And so as a consequence, they are much more willing to drive anything, any headline for clicks. And of course, it's being driven by algorithms and social media that only give you the things that you agree with or that are going to make you very angry and to drive more and more engagement. And every one is very easily shaped by that.
Even if you spend only a little bit of time on politics. But that time is always being pushed in favor of you and your political tribe and opposed to the tribe that you want to defeat, then there is no common ground. There's no sensibility. Anything they say is wrong and should be used against them. Anything you and your team say is correct. And if you believe that and if you're following people who only engage in support in one side of the partisan divide, then you are part of a propaganda bubble. You are being misled politically, you're being spun up, you're being taken advantage of, you're being used. And increasingly that is the dominant theme in this very long, very expensive US election.
And I am going to continue to do everything I can to refuse to play ball in that easier, since I'm not a member of a political party and I've never been in a political position. Harder in the sense that everyone's going to whack you one time or another if you irritate their sensibilities. But at the end of the day, I'd be unhappy with myself if I did anything else, and that kind of matters, right? So anyway, that's my view for this election. I'm sure I'll come back to this theme again and again. But it seems to have been a lot in the headlines of late, so I thought I would make mention of it.
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How Trump's money problems could affect the 2024 election
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: It is Trump's money.
At the same time this week, his meme stock is going bananas with an IPO of Truth Social. The markets don't know what to do it. With valuation fluctuating wildly throughout its first two trading days. But no matter what, it seems likely to increase Trump's net worth by several billion dollars. Unfortunately, a lot of that money will be locked up in equities in uncertain valuation for some time, which will make it hard for Trump to use the money to shore up his struggling campaign funds.Trump has roughly a third of the cash on hand as President Biden, who's going to pad that total with a cool $25 million from a fundraiser in New York this week. Trump is, of course, the king of earned media and may not need a huge war chest to run his campaign. But if there's one thing we know about American politics is that money does not hurt.
One of the reasons Trump may be struggling to raise funds is because of the massive legal bills that he has to cover, which, according to The New York Times, have amounted to over $100 million since he left office. Some of that has been covered with campaign cash. Some of it has been covered with money from his businesses, which is going to get a lot harder for him going forward based on this decision in New York.
So money could end up being a huge story of the 2024 election. And if it is, it's because Biden has it and Trump doesn’t.
US-Ukraine policy under Trump would be similar to Biden's
Harvard Kennedy School’s Stephen Walt suggests that there’s not as much daylight between Biden and Trump as people might think when it comes to US policy towards Ukraine.
As with Trump, Walt argues, “Biden would also be trying to end this war sooner rather than later.” But where Biden would be looking to support Ukraine in securing the best possible deal in a peace arrangement, Trump might abandon Ukraine, forcing them to rely more on European support for security.
"Trump is fundamentally a nationalist and unilateralist” Walt tells Bremmer in a wide-ranging interview, “…whereas Biden is very much a globalist or internationalist."
Watch full episode here: How the US election will change the world
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
How the US election will change the world
What role will foreign policy play in the upcoming US presidential election? “More than it usually does,” says Harvard Kennedy School’s Stephen Walt in an interview on GZERO World with Ian Bremmer. “Partly because the economy doesn't seem to be helping Biden as much as it should be, partly because it's hard to look at Biden's foreign policy and tout a lot of big success stories."
In a wide-ranging interview comparing US foreign policy under a second Biden or Trump term, Walt suggests that they may not be as different as people expect. “On a bunch of big issues, the daylight between him and Biden just isn't that great.” It may come as little surprise that Bremmer disagrees.
But Walt says this is especially true in areas like China policy, where Biden's approach has been refined and continued. "The Biden people refined the Trump approach in a number of ways—focused it very much on high-tech—but have if anything, doubled down on the policies that Trump adopted starting in 2017."
And while Walt certainly acknowledges an array of crucial differences between Trump and Biden, he argues that both second administrations may have similar outcomes in areas like the Middle East and Ukraine. That said, he makes clear that while Trump's second term may not drastically change US foreign policy, it could lead to a less supportive stance towards Europe and NATO. "Trump is fundamentally a nationalist, fundamentally a unilateralist, whereas Biden is very much a globalist or internationalist, and that's a key difference.”
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Biden vs Trump foreign policy: Political scientist Stephen Walt weighs in
Listen: On this episode of GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer and Harvard Kennedy School Professor Stephen Walt discuss foreign policy differences between a second term for Biden or Trump on issues like China, Ukraine, and the Middle East. Walt argues that American foreign policy under a second Trump term wouldn’t be so different from the last four years under Biden. “The daylight may not be as great as people think,” Walt tells Ian. For instance, Walt says, “It's hard to see a big change between the Trump administration's approach to the Middle East and what the Biden administration was doing up until October 7." On China, Ukraine and the Mideast, Walt doesn’t see a big difference between the last two US presidents.
That hasn’t been Ian Bremmer’s view, to say the least. Well, that sounds like the makings of a good discussion. So let’s have it.
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Ian Explains: Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election?
How much does foreign policy matter in a US presidential election? This year, more than usual.
When pollsters started asking Americans in 1948 what they viewed as the “most important problem” facing the country, foreign policy and international security dominated.
Looking ahead to the 2024 presidential election, Biden has managed to turn a Covid-ravaged economy around, with growth pegged at about three percent per quarter. Wages are going up, unemployment is at an all-time low and the stock market is coming on strongly. By every economic indicator, Biden should be surging. And yet, by every political indicator, he’s floundering.
Biden’s fate in November may hinge on whether he can convince a skeptical electorate that the economy is doing as well as it is...actually doing. But Americans’ views on the Ukraine war have shifted, with a plurality now saying the US is doing too much to help Ukraine. And half of US adults polled in February said that Israel has gone too far on its war with Gaza. Could Biden’s handling of these key foreign policy issues cost him the election in November?
It’s already clear that foreign policy will play an outsize role in this year’s election. So will immigration, which topped Gallup’s “most important problem” list in February and which is both a foreign policy issue and an economic one.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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Israel, Hamas and US in impasse over cease-fire deal
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. And I want to talk a little bit about the Middle East because the war is very much still going on.
There's been hope, a lot of hope that we would have had a breakthrough deal for an extended cease fire, not a permanent cease fire, the cease fire of some six weeks, and that in return, significant numbers, dozens of the hostages that are still held after many months by Hamas in Gaza would have been released to their families in Israel. That has not happened. And it's not happened in large part because Hamas has refused to continue to negotiate. They basically said we want a permanent cease fire or nothing. And they are essentially daring the Israelis to go ahead with ground strikes in Rafah, where we have about 1.5 million Palestinians that are sheltering. “I have nowhere to go.” And the Americans are very unhappy with the idea that the Israelis would engage in that battle without having a plan for evacuation and protecting those civilians. Hamas is saying “go for it if that's what you want to do.” They're putting, as they have all the way through, their civilians at maximum risk. They're not trying to defend them.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, is trying to stay in power. What that means is he is more than willing to say “no” very loudly, very publicly to the United States. President Biden has said that an attack into Rafah by the Israelis would be a red line, would constitute a red line. And the Netanyahu government has said, “This is not a red line. The red line is destroying Hamas.” And so we're going to do absolutely everything in our power to do that. That includes taking on the tunnels and the military leaders that we believe continue to exist in that territory. Expectation is that is indeed going to happen. There’s going to be a lot more civilians that are killed. Biden is going to be under a lot more pressure, notwithstanding the fact that there is an effort by the Americans and others to provide more humanitarian aid on the ground to the Palestinians. But that is not close to the trucks that could be coming through that the Israelis have been unwilling to allow through.
So, I mean, you're at an impasse and you're an impasse basically until the Israelis feel like the war has been fought to their satisfaction and Netanyahu who is correct about one thing. This isn't just him that's calling the shots. It is the entire Israeli war cabinet, is the Israeli population. Whether or not they like Netanyahu and most of them don't. They want a war that destroys Hamas. They want a war that gets rid of the military capabilities on the ground and under the ground that finds the leaders and kills them. Hamas is very aware of that.
And that's part of the reason why you still have large numbers of hostages that continue to be held. It's quite plausible that the Israelis know where the Hamas leaders are, that they’re surrounded with a whole bunch of innocent civilians, Israeli civilians, and that's why they're still there. If you let them all go then what happens to them? Well, that's the end of them.
So there are many reasons to believe that the war is going to persist for a long time. And I'm not just talking about a month or two. I'm talking about like still happening when US elections are in place in November. That's a real problem for Biden, did a good job with the State of the Union last week, better than most expected. The Middle East is one of the areas that he is most vulnerable right now. He kind of squished it towards the end of the speech, didn't talk about it very much, and is trying to distance himself from the Israeli prime minister. There's only so much he can do given that he's going to continue to provide military support no matter what. He's going to continue to support Iron Dome, no matter what. Israel is going to continue to be America's top ally in the Middle East, no matter what. So on the one hand, he has large numbers of Americans in his own party that are increasingly sympathetic with the Palestinian position, in particularly with the civilian position on the ground. And yet he has very little leverage over his top ally.
That's a serious, serious challenge for him going forward. As long as that persists, you're going to continue to have attacks on ships in the Red Sea. We just saw the first casualties as a consequence of that, price is going to continue to be inefficient and up on the back of that, and you're going to see concerns about broader instability, radicalization particularly from the Palestinian population, but also the broader Arab street, the Muslim population in the Middle East, in Europe, even in the United States.
That's a reality and that's a very big downside for Biden himself. The good news, very good news. He has a little bit of good news, which is that America's efforts against the Houthis, which has degraded their military capabilities by between 30 and 50% of what they are known to have, that's not what they're not known to have, has meant that we have not seen attacks by Iranian proxies against American forces or British forces on the ground. That's a big deal. That is a win and it’s not a huge win, but in the context of so many other things in the Middle East that are going badly, you'll take it.
So anyway, that's where we are right now, and I hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Biden's vigorous SOTU speech aims to prove doubters wrong
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What's going on with the Biden State of the Union?
So big week in US presidential politics. Super Tuesday basically effectively ended both primaries for the Republicans and the Democrats. We now have two all but official candidates. Joe Biden gave his fourth State of the Union address this week. Big question around Joe Biden, is he up to the task? 75% of Americans say that he is too old to run for a second term, but he is a attempting to prove them wrong like he did last night in Washington with a vigorous speech where he spoke for an hour, which officially kicked off his campaign.
Biden spoke about themes of income inequality, he spoke in favor of aid to Ukraine, and he rolled out a couple of tax increases that Republicans don't like. There's a lot of risk in every public appearance that Biden gives these days because of the fact that Democrats are very concerned that he's going to make a verbal flub or that he's going to look physically frail. That did not happen last night, and I think that's a good sign for Biden for now.
But every time he goes on stage for the rest of the year, there's going to be concern about how old he looks. So the campaign can now begin in earnest. Biden didn't mention Donald Trump by name in the speech, but he did indirectly attack him, talking about how Republicans are the party of the rich and how the threats to democracy represented by this election. At least that's how Joe Biden wants to frame it.