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Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.
First of all, I mean, let's be clear, the big news remains the Trump indictments and the Democratic efforts to drive them. It's all about the politics. It is not about rule of law. That's what it should be if it were a properly functioning representative democracy. That is not the state of US politics right now. But aside from that, it's "is anyone a potential challenger to Trump on the GOP side?" And, you know, the idea that Trump is not going to participate in the Republican primary debates, as we see this Wednesday, is his political interest in showing that "I'm going to get this nomination and all the rest are pretenders to the throne." Completely understandable that that's the way he's handling that, but it's interesting to me that to the extent that anyone else is getting oxygen, it is the candidates that are most like him. In other words, those that are willing to take on his message that are proactively being supportive and engaging.
It is DeSantis and Vivek and that shouldn't surprise anyone in terms of where the Republican party is and is going as the Democratic party has increasingly become a party identified with urban elites and the Republican party increasingly with rural working and middle classes. And that is a grievance-based and anger-based "let's beat up on the establishment." It is not the center. Trump did very well as an outsider, not because his policies made a lot of sense, but rather because they really animated the emotional anger channeled the sense of disenfranchisement and otherness of people that felt like the elites were part of this shadowy, globalist deep state. Vivek Ramaswamy, in my view, has been the most effective at engaging on the political stage in that. He's basically portraying himself as the young Trump, as the person that can carry the mantle that, you know, if Trump is one more Covid episode away from not being with us,
Vivek is 38 years old. He's an entrepreneur, young kid. You know, he's an outsider. He is never been a candidate. Heck, he's barely voted most of the presidential elections. He hasn't participated in, said he was jaded at the time. That is a feature, not a bug for someone who is, you know, wants to run on "I'm not a politico, I'm not a part of Washington. I have no political experience, and that makes me better." I mean, he proactively said like, "I want to run the government the way Elon runs Twitter/X, which I'm not clear that appeals to people that care about governance, but that's not the point. This is anger and people that want to hurt the folks that are benefiting from the fruits of governance over the course of the past, say, 40 to 50 years in the United States.
He's aligned with Trump. He's aligned with Tucker Carlson, that's the lane here. I definitely see in his policy statements that, you know, anti-woke but more effective in his rhetoric on that front than DeSantis has been. Talking about the global reset versus the great uprising. In other words, anti world economic forum, anti-woke, anti global control, anti deep state, anti all of this, you know, anything that feels like the forces that you don't understand that are in control of you, Vivek is opposed to them. It's very much like Trump's drain the swamp, which again, of all the things that Trump did, drain the swamp was, you know, the one he was least actually interested in. Fantastic on the rhetoric, and then appointed all the CEOs and billionaires to run cabinet to reduce taxation. I mean, the men north of Richmond did fantastically well under Trump and likely would under Vivek.
But that's not the point. The point is not appealing to an analytic reasoned policy debate. It is appealing to a sense of anger, and we want to burn it down. And in that regard, Vivek has been most effective in some of his policy statements that really antagonizing the mainstream media. I saw this in particular, with a CNN interview that he did in talking about Russia and Ukraine and in saying, "hey, I'm going to make the Ukrainians give up some of their territory and say there won't be any NATO for Ukraine because I want to pull Russia away from China." And I mean, you can just imagine this is absolutely intended to drive mainstream media crazy, and they do, and it's a massive amount of attention for this young outsider. And he's winning, not winning for the nomination, of course, that's not the point.
But he's winning in the performative sweep that allow him to do far better from personal career perspective on the back of deciding to run. Running this presidential campaign is an absolute no brainer for someone like Ramaswamy. He'll have bigger book deals, higher speaking fees, has a decent shot of being on a Trump cabinet if Trump were to potentially win. But he also is setting himself up to be one of the younger forces that can wear the populist MAGA mantle assuming the GOP stays intact beyond this presidential cycle. And so in that regard, I find him a very important cultural phenomenon and political phenomenon. We are going to see more of this as long as American political dysfunction continues to be a primary driving force, as long as the US is more polarized, riven with more disinformation, more mistrust, and more feeling of illegitimacy than any of the other G-7 advanced industrial democracies.
This is the lane to run on, at least on the right. I think we'll see more of it on the left as well. But again, the demographics of where the GOP is doing well, it aligns particularly with this form of nativism and populism. And I do feel like Vivek has been very effective there. We'll see on Wednesday night with the debate how he does on a stage with, you know, ten folks, many of whom are fully part of the GOP establishment. I suspect he'll do very well because this is really meant for small sound bites social media, and he's going to be an effective bomb thrower there. So will Chris Christie, by the way, who's a fantastic debater and is the one that is really taking Trump on individually, but of course, Trump is going to be talking to Tucker Carlson who has said in his private texts that he can't stand the guy, thinks he's a lunatic.
But that doesn't matter because they occupy the same lane. And as political entrepreneurs for themselves, this is exactly what they should be doing, which is teaming up to make the establishment debate that the party forces want to have less relevant. And it makes Tucker Carlson more relevant to his fans and to his revenues as bottom line, and it makes Trump more relevant too. So that's where we are this week, kind of depressing state of affairs in terms of US politics, but from an analysis perspective, got to get that right either way. Hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Is the GOP still a MAGA party? Or just Trump's party?
There's a lot of hand-wringing going on right now within Republican ranks after the GOP's worse than expected midterm results.
The big question is: Is the Republican party still the party of Trump? NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith tells Ian Bremmer that there may be no going back to what the party used to be.
"There's just a lot of people in the Republican party who don't see themselves going back to the nice, polite Mitch McConnell, Bob Dole Republican Party," Keith says in this week's episode of GZERO World.
Why? A lot of it has to do with how voters have become as polarized as the candidates they're electing.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US democracy after US midterms: polarized voters & Trump's GOP
Biden attacks 'MAGA Republicans' at the nation's peril
Biden attacks 'MAGA Republicans' at the nation's peril
Joe Biden
ran
for president in 2020 as the unifier of a broken nation.
After four years of partisan rancor and chaos under Donald Trump, Americans elected him to lower the temperature and heal rifts inside what has become the most politically divided and dysfunctional of all major economies. In his inaugural speech, President Biden vowed to put an end to “the uncivil war that pits red versus blue.”
Things have changed. Two weeks ago, Biden called out Trump and his supporters as “semi-fascists.” Then, last Thursday, the president spent the bulk of his prime-time address about democracy at Independence Hall in Philadelphia vigorously denouncing those he labeled ‘MAGA Republicans’ as a threat to the republic.
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“The Republican Party today is dominated, driven, and intimidated by Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans, and that is a threat to this country,” he
said
. “MAGA Republicans do not respect the Constitution. They do not believe in the rule of law. They do not recognize the will of the people.”
Why did Biden suddenly change his tune? After all, Trump is still the same man he was two years ago. The MAGA movement hasn’t changed, either. The threat is no different today than it was when Biden was inaugurated.
The clearest explanation is that he sees a short-term political opportunity.
Trump had been sinking a bit in the polls for the last few months. Most Republicans still liked him but weren’t as excited about him as before, and they were starting to consider other potential leaders like Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. The January 6 hearings got a lot of play with Democrats, but Fox News barely covered it and Trump supporters didn’t pay much attention to them. This was all bad news for Democrats, who need Trump to fire up their base and draw moderate voters away from the Republican Party.
Enter the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago. Trump was thrust back into the news cycle. His supporters rallied against the FBI and the Justice Department for what they saw as yet another witch hunt. Suddenly, Republican officials and candidates were forced to make a choice: either distance themselves from Trump or embrace him.
Biden’s strategy is to make hedging on this choice harder for them as the midterms near. Given that most Americans prefer moderate and centrist candidates, going full MAGA makes Republicans easier to beat in November. But if they take the Liz Cheney route instead, they risk losing their GOP primary bids to Trumpier candidates—who in turn would face longer odds of winning general elections. Either way, Democrats stand to benefit from sharpening the stakes.Indeed, this gambit may well be the Democrats’ best chance of holding the Senate and minimizing their loss in the House.
Yes, the Biden administration has notched meaningful policy wins like the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act , the CHIPS Act , and student debt forgiveness that they can run on. Gas prices have come down from their highs, and the job market remains strong. The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade has energized Democratic voters and turned more than a few independents and suburban women off the GOP. But inflation is still very high , the average American is deeply worried about where the economy is headed, and Biden’s approval ratings are quite low . These fundamentals would normally spell trouble for the incumbent’s party.
By beating the drums against MAGA Republicans from the bully pulpit and making the midterms a referendum not on Biden’s tenure but on Trump, Democrats are keeping themselves in the race.
The downside of this strategy is that it will probably lead to more election deniers in office and strengthen Trump’s hold over the Republican Party, setting up a Biden vs. Trump contest in 2024. While Trump is more likely to lose to Biden than any other conceivable Republican nominee, he could win fair and square. Given how unfit for office he proved to be the last time around, the prospect of a second Trump presidency is extremely dangerous for the country.
And that’s not the worst of it. Should Trump lose, his efforts to overturn the election would be much more likely to succeed if there were more election-denying governors, state senators, secretaries of state, and attorneys general to aid him. This is a graver threat to U.S. institutions than a Trump victory.
Biden’s gamble may be a winner for the Democrats but a loser for America.
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