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Pope Leo XIV's historic opportunity, with Father James Martin
Listen: Ian Bremmer sits down with Jesuit priest and bestselling author Father James Martin to talk about the historic ascendancy of Pope Leo XIV—the first-ever US Pope—and what his papacy means for the Catholic Church, American politics, and a world in search of moral clarity.
Known for his humility and prayerful presence, Marin says Pope Leo has would do well to make his top priority healing internal divisions within the Church. “There’s a lot of division and anger,” Martin says, “but Pope Leo has the opportunity to build bridges between progressives and traditionalists.” And his early comments on war and migration signal that he intends to take moral stances with global relevance—including the Church’s firm position on welcoming the stranger. “When Jesus says, ‘When you welcome the stranger, you welcome me,’ that’s pretty clear,” Martin says.
Martin also speaks about his own public advocacy for LGBTQ Catholics, especially trans people, who he says are “being treated like dirt.” The conversation also turns to the legacy of Pope Francis, whose pastoral outreach—from encyclicals on climate change to nightly calls with Gaza parishioners—inspired many, including his successor. “Francis showed us that the Church is a field hospital,” Martin says.
GZERO World with Ian Bremmer, the award-winning weekly global affairs series, airs nationwide on US public television stations (check local listings).
New digital episodes of GZERO World are released every Monday on YouTube. Don't miss an episode: subscribe to GZERO's YouTube channel and turn on notifications (🔔).GZERO World with Ian Bremmer airs on US public television weekly - check local listings.
Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen on why he went to El Salvador and what's next
Listen: In the latest episode of the GZERO World podcast, Ian Bremmer sits down with Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen to unpack what he calls a constitutional crisis unfolding under the Trump administration. At the center of the conversation is the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland father of three who was wrongfully deported to El Salvador and remains imprisoned in a maximum-security facility known for human rights abuses. Van Hollen recently traveled to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia and pressure local authorities, telling Bremmer, “I asked [them] whether or not El Salvador had any independent basis for holding him. His answer was, ‘No… the Trump administration is paying us money to do so.’”
The conversation also turns to broader concerns about America’s global posture. Van Hollen argues the administration has gutted the State Department and abandoned U.S. leadership abroad: “What we are witnessing is America in retreat. Our adversaries, like China, are all too happy to fill the vacuum.” He critiques Trump’s sweeping tariff policies as chaotic and harmful to small businesses, saying they’re driven more by political theater than economic strategy.
With due process under threat and American institutions under pressure, Van Hollen calls on Democrats to fight back not just with opposition, but with an alternative vision: “We should point out the betrayal, but also present a plan that helps working people—the people Trump claims to stand for.”
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're publishedInternational markets and global energy transitions
Listen: What does global energy transition look like in a time of major geopolitical change, including rebalancing of trade? In this special episode of "Energized: The Future of Energy,” host JJ Ramberg and Enbridge CEO Greg Ebel talk to Arjun Murti, partner at Veriten and founder of the energy transition newsletter Super-Spiked. They discuss the impact of President Trump’s new energy policies, the role of North America in the global energy transition, and the possible impact of tariffs and trade tension on the energy sector. "Energized" is a podcast series from GZERO Media's Blue Circle Studios in partnership with Enbridge.
Catch up on other episodes of Energized: The Future of Energy below — or listen on Apple, Spotify, Goodpods, or wherever you get your podcasts.
How Trump is remaking US public health, with NY Times reporter Apoorva Mandavilli
Listen: In President Trump’s short time in office, he’s already made sweeping changes to US public health policy—from RFK Jr.’s nomination to lead the health department to withdrawing the US from the World Health Organization. On the GZERO World Podcast, New York Times science and global health reporter Apoorva Mandavilli joins Ian Bremmer for an in-depth look at health policy in the Trump administration, and what it could mean, not just for the US, but for the rest of the world. President Trump has made it clear: he wants to slash government spending and remake institutions like the CDC, NIH, and FDA. But are those plans a much-needed correction to an overly bureaucratic system or prescription for the next pandemic? What do we need to know about bird flu and changes to USAID? Bremmer and Mandavilli discuss RFK Jr.’s influence in Trump’s second term and what the future of health and medical policy in America could look like.
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At NATO Summit, Polish FM Radek Sikorski weighs in on Ukraine war
Listen: Does Ukraine have the strength, stamina, and support to win the war against Russia? On the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer sat down with Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski on the sidelines of NATO’s 75th-anniversary summit in Washington, DC, for his perspective on the war, European unity, and whether NATO allies can remain united long enough to see Ukraine through to victory. Despite uncertainty about the 2024 US election, Ukraine’s struggle to recruit new troops, and rogue alliance member Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orbán meeting with Putin, Sikorski is confident Ukraine will ultimately prevail.
Poland is an important part of that defense strategy. The country, which has a 300-mile border with Ukraine, contributes a larger percentage of its GDP to defense spending than any other NATO member, including the US, and has taken in almost a million Ukrainian refugees. Sikorski says that NATO is “back to basics” in its original mission of repelling and defending against an aggressive Russia and that Putin severely misjudged the strength of European and NATO unity in the lead-up to the invasion. Two and a half years into a bloody, brutal war with no end in sight, making sure that unity remains rock solid for as long as Ukraine needs is an urgent priority.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
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Palestinian UN Ambassador Riyad Mansour says give peace a chance
On the season premiere of the GZERO World Podcast, Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations Riyad Mansour joins Ian Bremmer to talk about how the war in Gaza might end and what would come next for Palestinians and Israelis alike.
Nine months into the Israel-Hamas war, is peace a possibility? Around 40,000 Palestinians and over a thousand Israelis have died, according to the Israeli army and the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry (as always, exact numbers are impossible to verify given limited access to the Gaza strip). According to the UN, sixty percent of Gazan homes—and over eighty percent of commercial buildings and schools—have been destroyed or damaged. The UN also warns that over a million Gazans could face the highest levels of starvation by mid-July if the fighting doesn’t end.
Joining the podcast with the Palestinian perspective is Mansour, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations. He’s a Palestinian-American himself (the son of an Ohio steelworker) and says that this moment in the Middle East is the most significant period of transformation in his decades of representing the Palestinian people on the global stage. "There is something in the air. People want justice for the Palestinians. People want this war and this conflict to end. People want the occupation to end because it's good for Israel and it's good for the Palestinians."
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.How political unrest across the West will impact the world: A conversation with UN's Mark Carney
Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast, major Western democracies like France, the UK, Canada, and the US are on the verge of sweeping political change, but how will upcoming elections impact our collective ability to deal with the world’s biggest challenges like climate, AI, and cyber defense? Mark Carney, former Governor of the Banks of England and Canada and current UN Special Envoy on Climate Action & Finance, joins Ian Bremmer to take a hard look at three of America’s closest allies: France, Britain, and Canada.
Upcoming elections in France and the UK could mean big changes for the West, similar to the aftermath of Brexit. Carney says there are still many aspects of the UK-EU relationship that need to be recalibrated. He also stresses the strategic importance of the US-Canada relationship and Canada’s role as a reliable partner in everything from national security to critical minerals to fighting climate change.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? Insights from Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara
Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast, Ian Bremmer discusses the political and legal implications of Donald Trump’s felony conviction for the 2024 election and for democracy itself with the New Yorker’s Susan Glasser and former US Attorney Preet Bharara.
He’s the first US president to be convicted of a crime. Donald Trump’s 34 felony counts have upended the 2024 Presidential election (for now) and exposed the vulnerability of core democratic institutions like the justice system.
"The GOP's revisionist history on the trial has already begun," The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser tells Bremmer. Former US Attorney Preet Bharara also underscores the trial’s legitimacy, stating, "It was an open and fair proceeding. There was a judge who ruled often for the prosecution, but often as well for Donald Trump's side."
"The [Republican] party” Glasser adds, “has essentially mortgaged itself to the fate of one individual."
Both guests underscore the critical crossroads at which American democracy stands and the profound consequences of Trump's conviction for the upcoming election. Whether or not Trump wins in November is an open question. So, too, is the fate of our democratic institutions.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
TRANSCRIPT: Will Trump's criminal conviction ruin his campaign - or American democracy? Insights from Susan Glasser and Preet Bharara
Ian Bremmer:
Hello and welcome to the GZERO World Podcast. This is where you'll find extended versions of my interviews on public television. I'm Ian Bremmer and today, you've heard the news, you've seen the headlines, you probably already have an opinion, but we have to talk about it. Former President Donald Trump has been convicted of 34 felony counts in a New York criminal case about hush-money payments on the eve of the 2016 election.
It's the first time any US president, current or former, has been found guilty of a crime. And of course, everyone is asking how this will impact the presidential election in November, but the truth is, no one knows. Political forecasting after unprecedented news is a recipe for regret.
More important than what the verdict means for Republicans or capital D Democrats, is what it means for our already-fragile, lower case “d” democracy. As historic as Trump's conviction is, the political response, even more extraordinary. Republican leadership is uniformly calling it an illegitimate witch hunt and blatant political persecution. Democrats say justice has been served and the verdict a sign the system works.
Can the Constitution withstand this kind of stress test? Are our democratic institutions at risk of falling apart? I'm joined today by former US attorney for the Southern District of New York Preet Bharara and political columnist for The New Yorker, Susan Glasser. Let's get to it.
Joining me to discuss the Trump verdict and the implications for our election, Preet Bharara and Susan Glasser, delighted to see you both. Preet, let me start with you. So much of the backlash to this verdict from the GOP has been about the trial itself being illegitimate. Should this case have been brought in the way that it was by the district attorney, something you have a lot of experience with?
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. Look, the case was brought after a lot of deliberation on the part of the district attorney. The accusations that some folks on the Trump side are making about how this was a politicized witch hunt, it was preordained, all of that misses a very important historical fact. And that is when Alvin Bragg came into office, there had been a number of prosecutors, including his predecessor, Cyrus Vance, who were building a case with respect to financial fraud against Trump and his organization, the inflation of assets and the deflation of assets when it suited him.
Mark Pomerantz and another outside lawyer had developed the case. They ended up quitting with some fanfare when Alvin Bragg refused to pursue that case. So, if Alvin Bragg came in with an agenda to get Donald Trump, he had a packaged case that he could have brought that very seasoned prosecutors who'd served both as federal prosecutors and state prosecutors had wrapped up in a bow for him to do. But he thought, in exercise of his discretion using his judgment, that that was not appropriate. And this other case was one that after some period of time he decided to bring.
And by the way, it was an open and fair proceeding. There was a judge who ruled often for the prosecution, but often as well for Donald Trump's side, 12 jurors who were screened. And by the way, the defense got to participate in this election of that jury, found him guilty pretty definitively and pretty quickly, and there will now be an opportunity for an appeal. So, all the hallmarks of a free and open rule of law proceeding were met here.
Ian Bremmer:
Should the charges have been raised from a misdemeanor to a felony? How unusual is that? Is there any view in your sensibility that that decision itself was politicized?
Preet Bharara:
No, I don't think so. It is provided for by law. There's a misdemeanor statute and there's a felony mechanism in that statute as well. And that's done on a regular basis. Maybe these particular facts involving a further violation of law relating to an election or the promotion of someone's election by unlawful means. I'm not sure if that's a particular scenario has ever been brought before, but Donald Trump is a particularly interesting and unusual defendant and miscreant in this proceeding and in other proceedings.
And look, there's going to be an appeal. The people on the Trump side are saying it's a foregone conclusion that this conviction will be overturned. I don't think that's the case. The same way that I don't think it's the case that it's 100% guaranteed that the conviction will be affirmed, one of which you mentioned, and we'll see how a court of appeals thinks about that. And ultimately if there's a constitutional question, which I'm not sure there is, but if there's a constitutional question-
Ian Bremmer:
Then it would go to the Supreme Court.
Preet Bharara:
Go to the Supreme Court.
Ian Bremmer:
So, you think that the appeal process not only is serious and legitimate, but it could well be overturned on appeal. That's certainly a possibility in your mind.
Preet Bharara:
It's unusual, it's unlikely. We had a pretty good track record in the Southern District of New York. We did not win an affirmance of every single conviction. There were a couple of times, a few times if you're pursuing a case vigorously and you have a docket of cases that are aggressive appropriately, sometimes judges on the appeals court will find that there was an instruction that was flawed, or some evidence came in that shouldn't have come in and they send it back for a retrial or they overturn it permanently. So, it's never possible to say that there's no possibility of a reversal. But by the way, for people who are interested in the political clock here and the timetable, there's no way that any of that's going to happen anytime before the election.
Ian Bremmer:
Right. And one thing that is going to happen before the election of course is sentencing. Do you have any quick view on what the likely sentence is going to be? I assume you don't think there's going to be serious jail time.
Preet Bharara:
The violations don't call for serious jail time. There are factors on both sides. On the one hand, he's a 77-year-old man who may not be a recidivist for whom this is a first-time offense. On the other hand, it's serious misconduct, the way it was characterized by the prosecution. Some of the conduct happened while he was sitting in the Oval Office as Commander in Chief and President of the United States. He has shown no remorse. He has violated the gag order 10 times. So those are factors in favor of some time of incarceration.
What I think is pretty clearly the case though is even if the judge decides that some period of incarceration is appropriate, three months, six months, eight months, whatever, that he will hold that in abeyance and give him bail pending appeal. Right? Because I think he will find that there's a significant enough basis to allow Trump, and it also solves the problem of his getting criticized for putting a major party candidate in prison, and I think he wants to avoid that. And so, he can have his cake and eat it too by imposing a prison sentence but holding off on it until a court of appeals weighs in on it.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan, appreciate your patience. I want to turn to you on the politics now. You wrote in your column last week that the GOP's revisionist history on the trial has already begun. Last Sunday Republican chair Lara Trump, yes related, berated Republican candidate Larry Hogan for calling on citizens to respect the judicial process. We've already seen congressional candidates use the verdict in their political ads. What do you make of all of this?
Susan Glasser:
This is a marker of the escalation that we're seeing in 2024. And so it's not just attacking the legitimacy of this specific trial or these specific charges against Donald Trump, but the immediate leap, and I should say clearly orchestrated in advance leap to a broader systemic attack, and not only that but rather than simply focus Trump and his supporters' ire on the New York prosecutor who brought these cases, immediately elevating it into and distorting it as if it were a federal issue in a federal case.
And I think that is certainly an ominous sign as far as what Trump might do were he to be re-elected to office. But even more broadly, I think it's a sign of where the Republican Party is at, that they have essentially mortgaged the party so completely to the fate of one individual that they're willing to tear down what remains of faith in our already teetering faith in institutions.
So, it strikes me that it's sometimes hard in this kind of year nine of the Trump era to say when we have crossed another line, but to me, I think we crossed another line. And the response to Larry Hogan, the former Republican governor of the very blue state of Maryland was very instructive. Hogan didn't have some big statement celebrating Trump's conviction. All he said was what in the past would've been essentially comforting mush like, "Yay, the system works, support the right to a jury trial," and nothing very interesting about it except that even that is too controversial in today's GOP.
Preet Bharara:
I think Susan makes excellent points and you can bet a lot of money that if the case had gone the other way, Alvin Bragg, like I did when I was US attorney, even though there would've been disappointment, even though they thought they brought a righteous and meritorious case, would've said, "We respect the jury's verdict." And it's one thing to criticize the judge, criticize the parties, criticize the press and the coverage, it's quite a different thing to start criticizing ordinary Americans who are pressed into the civic duty of jury deliberation and service.
And the second point I want to make is the other accusation that is being leveled, which is kind of far-fetched and outlandish, which is par for the course, about why Alvin Bragg brought the case and why he shouldn't have, is that it was all orchestrated by the puppeteer President of the United States, Joe Biden, which as everyone here knows, we have a thing called federalism. Alvin Bragg was not appointed like I was by the President of the United States but was elected by the people of Manhattan. He doesn't report to the president. He doesn't talk to the president. He doesn't take direction from the president. And the other thing that makes it very peculiar and odd is that we are to believe that Joe Biden pulled the puppet strings on Alvin Bragg to get the rule of law to be shaped in the way he wanted it to take down his rival when as we speak, literally as we speak, his own flesh and blood son is on trial in federal court.
Ian Bremmer:
On trial, Hunter Biden, which I want to get to. Yeah, absolutely.
Preet Bharara:
Yeah. I mean, so the courts won. And Joe Biden has not fired the special prosecutor. He hasn't tried to pardon his son. He hasn't tried to interfere in that. And so, the idea that he's directing Alvin Bragg and doing nothing to save the skin of his own son doesn't square.
Ian Bremmer:
No, it's on its face ludicrous. Susan, I mean given all of that, the points that you make and that Preet just added to, I mean we're not just talking about a small number of fringe Trump loyalists. Susan Collins, Mitt Romney, the number of Republicans that have questioned the politicization of the process is astonishing. I mean, if you didn't have Preet's legal expertise and you were just tuning in to watch what was happening, you wouldn't know who to believe. You'd say, "Wow, clearly these are very sensible and respected people who were saying that the process has broken down." That does feel unprecedented, doesn't it, Susan?
Susan Glasser:
Yeah. I mean, I think that it is unfortunate that you have a situation—well, first of all, the vast majority of voices that you're hearing from are… We're not in year one of the Trump MAGA phenomenon. These are folks who have willingly abandoned the truth again and again and again in order to support Donald Trump, the vast majority of the Republican elected officials you're hearing from. So, I think that's an important note. It's not like that these are respected independent voices for the most part. They have mortgaged themselves, their political future and their party to Donald Trump.
What's interesting is that the small, small minority of remaining Trump skeptics in the Republican Party, many of them have also questioned the verdict, although if you look, their statements have not nearly been so robust in saying that it was the system itself. I have not seen Mitt Romney or Susan Collins or Mitch McConnell say that Joe Biden secretly orchestrated a conspiracy plot to do it.
Now, that's the problem of course with the enablers who have facilitated the ongoing hold of Donald Trump over the Republican Party is that they essentially kind of participate to a certain extent in the continuing delegitimization of institutions on Trump's behalf. And I noted in that respect, and Preet did not. I'm curious what he thinks about this. Trump is not just saying, "I'm going to keep fighting. I'm going to issue an appeal. I'm going to exhaust every legal remedy to stay out of jail."
He has already said, and his allies like House Speaker Mike Johnson are demanding that the Supreme Court intervene and talking openly about the bias of the Supreme Court. And I find that to be, again you want to talk about a norm shattered, I cannot conceive of any response in our political system before the Trump era in which that would've been possible. Mike Johnson specifically said the other day that he knows personally many of the Supreme Court justices and he thinks they should remedy this injustice to Donald Trump. Trump himself is using his social media platform to demand that the Supreme Court intervene.
One of the obvious reasons for his panic over this being in state court rather than federal court is that were he to be reelected, he can't pardon himself at the state level, but I don't know, Preet, why you think he's immediately demanding it be elevated to the Supreme Court and whether there's any legitimate basis for the Supreme Court to look at this.
Preet Bharara:
There is not. Look, Donald Trump and his allies to some extent take advantage of the fact that they can say anything, they can talk about any procedure they want with the understanding that even people who know better will go along because who wants to defy the sitting President of the United States? There is no mechanism that I'm aware of that anybody that I've heard who I respect can think of to take a state court conviction in New York or any other state directly to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. It's not done, doesn't happen. You got to go and exhaust your appeals process through the state court system, and then depending on if there's an issue of constitutional dimension or a split in some sense on a constitutional, then you take it to the Supreme Court.
Now, is that going to preclude Donald Trump from ordering his attorney to file some kind of extraordinary motion or writ to the Supreme Court? Probably not, but I don't think there's any That doesn't hold any water constitutionally or legally.
Ian Bremmer:
Now, Preet, I want to ask, you brought up the Hunter Biden trial. It is now just underway. Can you talk a little bit about the significance of that trial, the implications of it, both legal and political? Because I mean, on its basis, it doesn't seem to be, and we're talking about gun charges related to drug use, I mean, that's not really something that's super relevant to the presidency, and yet obviously these things are going to be conflated.
Preet Bharara:
Hunter Biden is a private citizen, has always been a private citizen. He's not the President of the United States. He's not running to be the President of the United States. He's getting all this attention because of his celebrity based on his connection by blood to the sitting President of the United States.
And it's extraordinary in the way that I described earlier that here you, I mean, in a million years, to be counterfactual for a moment, in a million years, can you imagine if Donald Trump got reelected and a Joe Biden appointed US attorney who was held over for some period of time, decided to indict and go to trial against Donald Trump Jr. that Donald Trump Sr. would stand idly by not comment on it, not pardon his son, not direct-
Ian Bremmer:
No. It's inconceivable. It's inconceivable.
Preet Bharara:
Inconceivable.
Ian Bremmer:
That's right, that's right.
Preet Bharara:
So when you ask what's the significance of it, that significance I think is being lost on people. The fact that Joe Biden is standing… The First Lady of the United States is in the courtroom with her son, with her and Joe Biden's son, to give moral support, not exercising any authority. He doesn't have any authority over Alvin Bragg, but he could absolutely give direction, as Donald Trump says, he would do and plans to do in terms of retribution against his political enemies if he were to go back into office.
Now, on the question of the seriousness of the charge, lots of people have commented that we have a series of gun laws in place. I prosecuted a number of them of illegal possession of a handgun. Most commonly that's brought if you're a prior convicted felon. By the way, incidental to this and the intersection of the Trump case and the Hunter Biden cases, Donald Trump now convicted cannot possess a firearm. So put that to the side for a moment. But most of the time those cases are brought if someone who's been convicted of a felony, state or federal, is in possession of a firearm. There's some other provisions as well, very, very seldom used across the country. If you are addicted to a substance or if you lie about your addiction or use of a substance, there's a provision of a statute that says that that's a violation of law.
What's also super interesting here that I haven't heard a lot talked about is you have a strange collection of bedfellows here. Ordinarily, right, the average progressive would say you have to enforce the gun laws very strictly. And of course, if someone's addicted to a substance and is dangerous and doesn't exercise judgment well, they should be prosecuted. That's standard operating procedure for the ideological side of the progressives.
By contrast, the average conservative who believes strongly in the Second Amendment would say, and there are challenges to other provisions of the statute right now wending their way through the Supreme Court, would say that is an overreach and just because you've been convicted of a crime, in the example I gave before, doesn't mean you should forever forfeit your constitutional right in the same way that a lot of people say just because you've been convicted of a crime, you shouldn't forfeit your right to vote forever and ever and ever. So the other significance of it is you can sort of tell where people are tribally as opposed to where they would be if this was an anonymous unknown garden variety defendant.
Susan Glasser:
It's very important to make the distinction between—these are the ultimate sort of asymmetrical cases. Donald Trump was accused of essentially distorting the 2016 election by paying this hush money to a former porn star. Hunter Biden is accused, private citizen is accused of owning a gun for 11 days and possibly lying on a form about it.
Now, I think you're right about the tribalism, absolutely, and it does strike me that Joe Biden has had terrible, terrible luck with his son. The timing of it is just, you couldn't even make this up, that literally while the Democrats finally get a couple days where they're focusing the lens squarely in this election for once not on Biden's age or what his record is in the country, but on Donald Trump and his fitness for office, and do they want a convicted felon in the White House, and then boom, two days later, Hunter Biden is on trial. The timing just is a reminder that Biden can't seem to catch a break.
It also goes to the fact that Hunter Biden, basically, they've had years of investigations and there was a bungled plea bargain in which he agreed to it and then withdrew when the federal prosecutors could not guarantee him that he would be safe from future other prosecutions. This is perhaps an example where the legal advice that Hunter Biden was given, and again, I-
Ian Bremmer:
... was not great, yeah.
Susan Glasser:
... can't speak to the validity of it, but it was in conflict certainly with his father's political necessity to not have a son on trial for federal gun charges when Donald Trump's criminality should be the big issue in the 2024 campaign from the point of view of Biden.
And so I just want to say though that we're talking a lot about the case itself in New York or the case itself now in Delaware, a lot of the incredibly overheated rhetoric that we are hearing from Republicans, which I think is very dangerous and is a harbinger of where a second Trump administration would go. But I also think it's important to pull back and to say, why is this happening?
No matter how much they spin me, I do not believe, and I don't think anyone should believe that Republicans or Donald Trump are happy about him being a convicted felon or that they think it's such a great thing for his campaign. If they thought it was such a great thing for his campaign, I think they would approach it very differently.
Ian Bremmer:
It's hard to say it's a great thing for his campaign, certainly in a very close race. Lots of people have consistently said that they are uncomfortable voting for a convict, for a convicted felon. And a lot of independents certainly say that, but we have also seen an extraordinary amount of money that's been raised by Trump on the back of this effort. This very coordinated campaign by Republicans to say, "This is a political hit job. It's a witch hunt. It's orchestrated by the president."
And then secondly, I mean, reveal preferences, Americans just don't seem to say that this case matters as much to them in how they vote and what they care about than issues that are closer to them on a day-to-day basis, like for example, inflation, like abortion, like the border. We're all sitting here talking about these unprecedented threats to the democratic system in the United States, which are clearly getting worse. The boundaries are eroding to prevent them from truly damaging permanently the American system. And yet either elites, the media and the citizenry don't seem to be taking it enormously seriously.
Susan Glasser:
I got to push back on that. I think that is the kind of cynical perspective, this idea that we're going to get into the media and elites bashing, Americans are perfectly... In the end, there's a long history that suggests that while issue polls are interesting and relevant, and certainly the economy you can argue has been a major driver of American elections, in the end, the history of modern presidential elections is that they are very much decided on the basis of perceptions around the personality of the candidates, number one.
Number two, it is not a media construction. It is not an elite construction to say... I find that to be really cynical actually. The idea that a regular American who is not a member of the media elite should not care that the possible President of the United States is going to be a convicted felon, I don't buy that. I think that's what Republicans want us to say. I think that they've spent a year coming up with a strategy where they would goose the numbers so that they had, "Oh, we had a big fundraising hall." In the end, I don't think that fundraising numbers in June are going to have any effect on the ultimate outcome of this presidential election.
I think that we're looking at a very close race because we have a very evenly divided country, and the question is really not what Americans in the aggregate think about this development of having a president who's a convicted felon. The very specific question is whether in the six or seven battleground states that are going to decide this election, there are sufficient number of concerned Republicans and/or Independents who simply cannot vote for Trump because he is a convicted felon.
Ian Bremmer:
So Susan, I mean, I understand. The media is the one group that I mentioned that you and I and Preet have some affiliation with, though I mean, I was also talking about voters. I was also talking about leaders, political leaders, corporate leaders. I mean again, reveal preferences as I see them at this stage in the election compared to other countries around the world is that threats to democracy don't seem to be the thing that's driving this election. It seems to me that other things are.
Susan Glasser:
No, no, I'm agreeing with you. I'm fascinated by that. And maybe, I mean what is your answer to why when you talk to corporate leaders, they're not more concerned?
Ian Bremmer:
Yeah. Yeah, I know. I mean, short-term-ism obviously is a piece of it. But a piece of it seems to be that nobody's all that worried. Maybe it's like the boy that cried wolf. I mean, Trump was already a president once for four years and democracy didn't fall apart and a lot of people had egg on face. And so a lot of people said January 6th was a coup. I don't believe it was actually attempted coup. I don't think that that was the right way to think about it. I don't think the US system was actually in danger the way it increasingly is this time around.
But I'm discussing this in part because here we are in the middle only five months away now from the election, soon people are going to start voting absentee, and most of them, it seems to me, aren't going to be voting on the issue that we're talking about right now, that we seem to think is very important. Preet, do you want to weigh in on this?
Preet Bharara:
There are people on the progressive side, on the Biden side who think the democracy's in danger. I'm one of those people. I care about institutions. I think people care less about institutions and less about process and less about principles than they care about outcome. I think we've become very, not just tribal, but the part of the tribalism that I think is showing a lot of force is the person on your side, whether it's abortion or trade or whatever else, and on the progressive side, the issues that they care about and the way in which some of this conversation is a little bit elite.
But I don't think that's a bad thing because I think our founding fathers were elite and lots of people on the right always invoke the founding fathers, which is a very elitist concept, right? The idea of democracy and institutions and separation of powers and political philosophy and political theory. That's elite subject matter. It's the backbone and foundation of the country. And I worry that some of that is being lost because nobody seems to care that much anymore. The processes are being subverted or being prejudiced in some way, or the peaceful transition to power was thwarted.
However, briefly, I disagree with your more sanguine view of that, Ian. That's a big deal. That's a gigantic deal, and I worry that people are less... I think it's worrisome the thing that you're pointing out that people seem less concerned about that because it's foundational. All the other things that you want, whether it's the freedom to bear arms or to have reproductive rights or anything else, all relies on a well-functioning, pluralistic democracy. And if you start talking about these as being only elitist thoughts, I think we're in big trouble.
There are people, whether you think they're right about this or not, who think the same of Joe Biden, who use the rhetoric of fascism and autocracy and authoritarian, which doesn't ring true to my ears, but there are people on the other side who say those exact same things about Joe Biden. So maybe it's a wash, maybe it's not. And I would like to hear someone intelligent explain that to me as well.
Susan Glasser:
You can see we've hit the kind of sensitive nerve of this 2024 election. And just, again, on the point about whether this is an elite preoccupation or not, I think it's actually at the core of the matter because it strikes me that what Trump tried to do and what this conviction is about, what he tried to do in 2020 as well as 2016 was to nullify the votes of an election, and therefore, of the people, the masses votes, not the individuals. Remember that millions and millions more Americans voted for Joe Biden in 2020, and by the way, millions more voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016. And that is not an elite thing, but in fact, it is an attempt-
Ian Bremmer:
No, that's just the electoral system, yeah.
Susan Glasser:
But it's not just the electoral system. You're dismissing January 6th as sort of, I'm not sure what, but this was a direct effort to seek to stop the certification of the people's votes, both the millions of Americans who voted more for Biden than Trump, and also in the states, Biden's victory.
And what we came away from interviewing more than 300 officials, most of them Republican political appointees of Donald Trump in Trump's White House, was a very strong conclusion, more than I expected by the way when we started the book, Ian, that it wasn't about the solidity of the institutions or the idea that democracy held. It's that they were much more vulnerable and fragile, and that after the 2020 election, we were much closer than we thought we would be because it wasn't the institutions, it was one individual. We were one attorney general, one acting attorney general, one vice president, one chairman of the joint chiefs away from what would have been a coup on the constitutional order.
I don't know why it is that people find it too hard to remember that occurred only not even four years ago, but that is literally like an unthinkable thing. And having crossed that Rubicon, I think that the idea that we're just treating this as a normal election between two warring tribes with different ideologies is really, that's what history is going to remember about this moment, unfortunately.
Ian Bremmer:
I guess my broader point as someone who spends more time thinking about issues around the world than inside the United States is that this does feel like it is an election that in a properly functioning democracy, the issue that you've both just brought up should be the most important one. I mean, if the country itself, if its institutions, if the ability to hold a free and fair election and a transfer of power that is respected by the population is in question, that should be the most important thing. That happened in Brazil, for example, and the perpetrators are not allowed to run again as opposed to the United States.
I mean, Brazil, a middle-income economy that the Americans don't think about very much, turns out in some ways to have more resilient political institutions in response to this kind of threat than our own United States does. Perhaps that's the issue that I'm trying to get at and trying to understand how worried you think we should be about that.
Preet Bharara:
We've grown accustomed to the luxury of repeated, peaceful transfers of power. Things always work out for the United States of America. We're the greatest country in the world and have been for a very long time. The greatest country ever for a lot of reasons, notwithstanding the crises we find ourselves plunged into now.
And so there's a tendency on the part of some people, I think, when other people ring the bell and worry that you're overreacting. And my concern is that the rest of the folks are underreacting, and it's impossible. There is nothing that guarantees in the rule of law and the world order or by God's grace, if you believe in that, that just because the United States has been a great democracy, it will persist in being democratic. And just because we haven't before elected someone like Donald Trump, a deceitful populist who likes to pit people against each other, he's a different order of person, and I think that people are underestimating the pain and damage that will be caused to the country if he's re-elected.
And a part of that is because of perpetual American optimism I think that things always work out. We get into a recession, we get into a depression, we work our way out of it. The world is plunged into war. America comes to the rescue. America always is resilient and resolves to fix itself. And I just don't know that that faith is as well-placed as it used to be.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan, last word to you.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah. I mean, this is a powerful conversation, Ian, and I think your point about Brazil is a very important one. We may have a history that marks us as different than all the other countries in the world, but at the same time, I think the events of the last eight years have shown pretty clearly that we might not be as exceptional as we think we are. It's not an accident that there have been these kind of rise of far-right populism in so many countries around the world over the last few years.
There's a pretty clear playbook that shows that Trump is running down the checklist of a would-be authoritarian. And that's the context in which I think we should view things like the attack on the jury's verdict in the trial. And by the way, I don't think we know the answer yet. I don't think we know the outcome yet.
And I remember the words of the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, when he was asked, "What's the election going to be about?" And he said, "It's going to be two things. It's going to be democracy and Dobbs." That's the Supreme Court ruling throwing out Roe versus Wade. There's a strong chance that he's correct about that.
Ian Bremmer:
Well, that's what he wants it to be about certainly. There's no question.
Susan Glasser:
Yeah, we'll see. We'll see.
Ian Bremmer:
Susan Glasser, Preet Bharara, thanks so much for joining to me. Thanks for having us.
Susan Glasser:
Thanks. That was great.
Ian Bremmer:
That's it for today's edition of the GZERO World Podcast. Do you like what you heard? Of course you do. Why not make it official? Why don't you rate and review GZERO World five stars, only five stars. Otherwise, don't do it. On Apple, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. Tell your friends.
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