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What Trump’s cabinet picks reveal so far
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
This is what we're watching in US politics this week: It's Trump's transition, of course. Lots of activity happening over the course of the week with some unexpected developments, including a lot of very unusual cabinet appointees. Sean Duffy at Department of Transportation, former "Real World" star and congressman, who has very little experience with transportation other than presumably driving a car, and of course, competing on the "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" is going to be in charge of the transportation department.
Other picks like Pete Hegseth have been a little more controversial. The former Army National Guard member and Fox News host has been accused of sexual assault. Not a great look for the incoming Secretary of Defense. But he's nowhere near as controversial as the recently withdrawn pick, Matt Gaetz, the firebrand Congressman from Florida who resigned his seat in order to become Trump's attorney general, and then found out that no Republican wanted him in that job.
Gaetz's withdrawal will allow some of the more controversial attention to be focused on people like RFK Jr. as the Secretary of Health and Human Services, somebody with a long career in the nonprofit management space, but no experience in public administration and who's been extremely critical of the US's Public Health Administration, including on toxins in foods, additives in foods, vaccines, and the approval process for them. And he's tapped into a strain of anger among Republicans at the public health apparatus that they say failed to protect the public during the COVID-19 epidemic, pointing to inconsistent and sometimes unnecessary masking guidelines. Things like social distancing, keeping the schools closed, and of course the vaccine recommendations that a lot of Republicans rejected during that pandemic. RFK's confirmation odds, however, look pretty good if you look at the relatively warm reception that he's been received with by most Republicans.
One area that's still totally in doubt for the most part is Trump's economic team. It's been two weeks since the election, there's no treasury of the secretary, there's no USTR. There is a commerce secretary pick, another Trump ally who has no experience in public administration, Howard Lutnick, a lot like Wilbur Ross in the first administration, but potentially leaving Trump's trade czar, Robert Lighthizer, without any clear role. So there's a lot more clarity on the national security side than there is on the economic side for now. That may change over the weekend. And of course, the one thing with President Trump is you could always expect the unexpected.
US election: GOP could win a Trump-led sweep
Jon Lieber, Eurasia Group's head of research and managing director for the firm's coverage of United States political and policy developments, shares his perspective on US politics from Washington, DC.
It's election night in America. And a slightly unexpected result tonight, with the election returns coming back very strong for President Donald Trump. He may actually end up winning the national popular vote, which was not, I think, on anyone's bingo card, really.
Big surprise for Trump has been a surge in rural support where the Trump coalition showed up to vote for him. Meanwhile, Harris has somewhat underperformed in urban areas, and while she did have a pretty good showing with women voters, it wasn't enough to keep her ahead of Trump, at least in the results as we know them tonight.
Harris has been underperforming down-ballot Democrats generally, which has kept the Democrats competitive in the House, which could lead to an unusual situation where all three of the main political bodies in the United States, the White House, the House, and the Senate, flip in the same election. The Senate is in the bag for Republicans. They're going to have somewhere between 52 and 55 seats, it looks like. And Trump is probably the favorite to win in the Electoral College.
The House outcome we may not know in the next 24 hours. Some of the House seats that really matter in determining the majority, which is very close, are slow to count. But right now, it does look like Democrats have some momentum with a couple of Republicans losing key seats.
So stay tuned for more of what we're watching this week in US politics.
United States Senator JD Vance (Republican of Ohio) at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland, U.S., on Friday, February 23, 2024.
The pluses and minuses of JD Vance
All running mates bring advantages and disadvantages to presidential candidates, but the choice of JD Vance is a striking sign of the political times. Vance strengthens Donald Trump’s “champion of the working man” message – a Republican rebranding away from its strongly pro-business past. We also saw that emphasis in the striking first-night convention speech from Sean O’Brien, president of the Teamsters, a labor union with 1.3 million members, who accused business and corporate lobbyists of “waging a war against American workers.” That’s not a speech you would have heard at any Republican National Convention of the past century. Vance’s reputation as defender of the globalization-battered working class can help Trump in the electorallycrucial Midwest industrial belt states of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan.
But Vance is also an absolutist on restricting abortion, the Republican’s biggest current weakness, according to polls. He has adopted Trump’s line that abortion rules should be left to the states, but his voting record is striking. He favors banning abortions, even if the mother is avictim of rape or incest, as well as laws that allowpolice to track women who have crossed state lines for an abortion. He has opposed legislation that would protect in vitro fertilization. A poll earlier this month showed that61% of US adults want their state to allow abortion for any reason, and 62% support protections for access to IVF.
Speaker of the House Mike Johnson, R-LA., returns to his office in the US Capitol on Monday, Nov. 13, 2023.
Mike Johnson has a plan to avert the shutdown – will it work?
Is it better to kick two cans down the road rather than one? House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) is about to find out in the first big test of his speakership. With another government shutdown deadline looming on Friday, the House plans to vote today on Johnson’s plan to keep the US government from plunging over the fiscal cliff – again.
The background: We’ve been here before, recently. Former Speaker Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) avoided a shutdown in September only by relying on Democratic support for a bill that kept government spending flat. But he paid for it with his job: Far-right members led by Matt Gaetz (R-FL) had demanded deep spending cuts, and when they didn’t get their way, they ousted the speaker for the first time in US history.
The new approach: Johnson, who comes from the right wing of the GOP himself, isn’t trying McCarthy’s approach. Instead of asking members to vote on a single bill to keep the government running, Johnson has proposed what is known as a “laddered” approach that will fund government spending on military construction, Veterans Affairs, transportation, housing, and the Energy Department — where there is broad consensus on funding levels — through Jan. 19, 2024, while delaying a decision on the rest of the government’s funding until Feb. 2, 2024.
Johnson got the House Rules Committee to approve his unorthodox approach on Monday, but that was the easy bit. He’s now got to shepherd through a proposal that can pass the Democratic-controlled Senate (which will reject spending cuts) without angering the same far-right caucus that unseated his predecessor (which wants deep spending cuts).
“Johnson has more runway than McCarthy, but more runway is not a license to do anything you want,” said Eurasia Group’s US Director Clayton Allen. “Johnson is trying to find a way forward that does not blow up his position with the GOP conference.”
That path may require suspending the normal rules of the House to move the bill through. If he can cobble together a two-thirds majority of Republicans who are ok with no spending cuts right now and Democrats who want to keep the government funded even if they don’t love the two-step structure, far-right GOP members can still vote “no” but can’t offer amendments or otherwise delay the passage of the bill, thereby avoiding a shutdown.
And by separating the few easy spending items from the rest for early next year, Johnson is offering those same members another chance to get their desired cuts a little later, perhaps with some additional leverage to negotiate with the Senate. Will it be enough of a concession to save his bacon? That’s what we’re about to find out.
Polling numbers of GOP candidates
The Graphic Truth: Who's leading the Republican primary?
If you know anything about the state of the Republican presidential race right now, you know that former President Donald Trump is leaps and bounds ahead of the pack. But the race is just getting started.
A lot can change in the first few primary states and debates, so we decided to track the polls in three early primary states to see if Trump holds onto his formidable lead or if another candidate emerges to give him a run for his money. These are where the numbers stood before the first debate. We will report back if the tides begin to turn.
Former President and Republican candidate Donald Trump greets the crowd during a campaign rally in Windham, New Hampshire, on Aug. 8, 2023.
On stage or not, Trump will dominate the debate
When Republican presidential candidates take to the stage in Milwaukee on Aug. 23 for the first debate of the 2024 campaign, one issue will loom above all others – and you know exactly what his name is.
Whether Donald Trump appears on stage or chooses instead to offer live commentary via social media, the central question facing participants will be whether the frontrunning, hyper-charismatic, twice-impeached, thrice-indicted former president is the right candidate to carry the Republican standard into political combat next year against President Joe Biden.
How could it be otherwise? Poll aggregator FiveThirtyEight.com estimates that Trump leads Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, his nearest Republican challenger, by nearly 40 percentage points (53.7% to 14.3%) in current polling. No other candidate reaches 8%.
The 78 felony counts Trump now faces in three separate indictments – a fourth indictment, this one in Georgia, may land soon – have failed to dent his popularity with Republican voters. And they’ve kept Trump in the headlines, depriving rivals of chances to earn the attention they need to grow their campaigns.
That’s why the other candidates on the debate stage must think carefully about what to say about Trump. In hopes of staying on the good side of millions of voters devoted to Trump, or even of becoming Trump’s vice-presidential running mate, some will dodge questions that invite criticism of the former president and train their fire on Biden, other Democrats, and the media.
But anyone who hopes to beat Trump must find chances to persuade voters that Trump can’t beat Biden. And they won’t have many high-profile opportunities to draw voter attention with Trump’s various trials dominating political news for the foreseeable future.
Who can be on the stage? To qualify for the debate, each candidate needs to be polling at at least 1% in three quality national polls or in a mix of national and state polls, and they must have at least 40,000 donors. So far, eight candidates have met the requirements including Trump, DeSantis, Tim Scott, former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, Vivek Ramaswamy, former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, Doug Burgum, and former VP Mike Pence.
The other great unanswered debate question: Will Trump show?
The arguments against him appearing are obvious. Trump is winning. Big. There’s no upside to appearing alongside minor-league rivals who desperately need to break through with the huge audience that only a Trump-dominated event can deliver.
But will Trump agree to sit at home when he could be center stage? He might not want to allow accusations from other candidates to go unanswered. Particularly since he knows that many Republican voters, who get most of their news from media outlets that avoid critical coverage of Trump, might be hearing strident criticism of him directly from fellow Republicans for the first time.
That includes criticism from rival candidates like Pence, Haley, and Christie, who have worked for or supported Trump in the past.
The bottom line: The polls say Trump is the prohibitive favorite for the Republican nomination. The Aug. 23 debate will give his Republican rivals an important early opportunity to rewrite this story. Donald Trump’s decision on whether and how to respond will set the tone for the rest of the primary campaign.
DeSantis is more disciplined than Trump, says NPR journalist
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is a rising Republican star. And his resounding victory in the US midterms is all but confirmation of a likely run for the president in 2024.
But he'll go up against former President Donald Trump.
For NPR White House correspondent Tamara Keith, they're not the same. DeSantis, she tells Ian Bremmer on GZERO World, is younger and far more disciplined than Trump.
And Florida's governor is more focused on policy — which may improve his potential for success.
Watch the GZERO World episode: US democracy after US midterms: polarized voters & Trump's GOP
RNC 2020 takeaways; Russian poisoning; South Korea's schools; Kim Jong-un rumors
Watch Ian Bremmer discuss the World In more than 60 Seconds:
What are your takeaways from night one of the RNC?
That the country is incredibly divided. That if you are pro-Trump and you were watching that RNC, you thought it was very powerful. You thought it was a strong message. It reflected interest that you have in the country. And if you can't stand Trump, then you thought it was a dumpster fire and it solidified your preexisting beliefs.
I accept that the RNC is more of a cult of personality around Trump, who occupies all the oxygen in the room, but also just has a far greater reach and following in media than we've seen from other leaders of Republican or Democratic parties in recent history. But I also recognize that there are a lot of people out there, Senator Scott, certainly Nikki Haley, Steve Scalise, others. It's you know, I wouldn't say it's a broad demographic tent, but I do think it is a broad political tent in terms of the ideological orientations of the people that are represented there, as well as the fact that if Trump wasn't president, you would say that there would be a lot of infighting among that group. But there isn't in this environment.
There were a couple of disastrous speeches, certainly, and everyone's making fun of Kimberly Guilfoyle, who really shouldn't be public speaking about issues that matter. But, you know, she's with Donald Trump Jr. and the family is, you know, a very big piece of this.
I will say I'm a little surprised Jared Kushner has not been announced as giving a speech yet. Maybe he will show up over the course of the week, given that every member of the Trump family that likes the president is speaking. But, you know, that's where you have it. The amusing thing, I suppose, is that they're doing so much more of it live and so while the production quality isn't as high, the potential for there to be something of interest, gaffes, something that's more sort of newsworthy and watchable, does go up a bit. But again, completely divided and it's not like there a lot of people that are watching both. Okay, that's it.
Alexei Navalny was poisoned. What is going on?
Well, you know, if you're a Russian opposition member, that has to be one of the most physically dangerous occupations in the world. And the fact that he was poisoned but was not killed and looks like he was poisoned with the same kind of agent that other Russian, you know, double agents and others have been, the Skirpal poisoning, for example, a few years ago in the UK, the same kind of thing. The Russians, of course, denied it. The Russian government said that there was no such poisoning. The doctors in Omsk that were spoken to by the Kremlin said, "no, he definitely wasn't poisoned." Of course, they get him to Germany and the truth actually comes out.
What's extraordinary is that there's almost complete impunity. President Putin in Russia feels like there is nothing that can be done against him, irrespective of what he does to Russian citizens. There is no rule of law. There are no constraints on his power. And it's deeply disturbing that one of the most important countries in the world has a leader that feels like he can act that way. Of course, in China, Xi Jinping. The way that the Uighurs are treated, the way that they've acted in Hong Kong recently, same kind of thing. In the case of Navalny, the German government, both the chancellor and the foreign minister, Merkel and Heiko Moss, had a very strong statement saying that they would not tolerate this. That they demanded a full investigation, that the people responsible must be held to account. But not supported by the EU as a whole. And President Trump is saying no such thing.
So, I mean, the Germans are kind of talking themselves, almost voices in the wilderness, and it increases the sense of impunity that President Putin actually has. It's depressing from a global and human perspective. But boy, it sends a message. I mean, Navalny on this plane and crying out in pain and then in a coma and probably isn't going to die, but, you know, certainly dangers for the rest of his life in terms of, you know, the ongoing health that he has. It's hard to imagine he's going to want to go back to Russia any time soon. It's going to give you second, third, fourth thoughts if you're a member of the opposition in Russia or you're a journalist that wants to write about truth. There is no challenging President Putin at this point or any time in the foreseeable future. And for those that see what's happening in Belarus and say, the Russians, you're next. Even with the demonstrations we've seen in Siberia and the Far East, I just don't see it.
What's happening in South Korea with the closure of schools?
Well, we have a few hundred cases a day now, which in South Korea is a lot. The South Koreans have had, you know, sort of zero tolerance in terms of trying to ensure that they can control the virus and therefore, lots of contact tracing, extensive testing, and quarantine - shutting things down. Even though they have, you know, almost complete compliance in mask wearing and social distancing in their schools, now that they've seen a few hundred cases coming out of these schools, they're shutting the schools down. Not everything, not higher ed kids that are about to take their big exams. I mean, high schoolers to get into college. But younger kids, they are all going to be virtual for the coming month. And on the one hand, that has improved the popularity of President Moon, who is seen as handling this very effectively by the South Korean people. So, for those of you watching South Korea as a country, that's significant. In the United States, it certainly tells you that as we try to get kids to go back to schools in areas where you have hot zones, where you have lots of cases, likely you're going to have a lot of schools closing down again. I think it's hard to imagine that schools are going to be able to open, you know, feasibly and across the board, at least until next year. That's my view right now. And for all of you parents out there that are like, "please, God, get my kids out of the house, I can't take this. I'm also working. So is my husband. So is my wife." I'm sorry, but I think that's where we're going. It's going to be challenging.
Finally, what do you make of Kim Jong-un rumors of incapacitation?
I've only seen them come out of one news source so far. I don't find them very credible. It's not the first time. Last time around, a couple of months ago, reported widely by the AP and CNN and turned out it was no such thing. We have very little information on what's happening inside North Korea. And, you know, you don't have intelligence that's coming out. You don't have journalists on the ground that have sources that are off the record. So you basically have to deal with accounts that come from people that have left North Korea, who certainly have political agendas and can't really be trusted about what they do and don't know. And whatever you can find, the tea leaves you can read from watching North Korean state television, state media, satellite imagery. That gives you a lot of information when they're preparing, say, a nuclear or ballistic missile tests, gives you very little information when you're talking about whether Kim Jong-un is alive or dead.
The fact that they thought he was in a coma a couple months ago and now they're saying it again, I don't have any particular reason to believe it, nor do I have any reason to believe that North Korea is going to cause much trouble, especially in the run up to US elections. I think they at the very least want to see what's going to happen out of the US before they decide how much they want to orient towards a more friendly engagement, see if they can shake some cash loose or a tougher line policy to see if they can shake some cash loose. Either way, the outcome they're looking for is shaking some cash loose.