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Biden and Trudeau face headwinds … from Gaza
Last Thursday, after Joe Biden promised during his State of the Union to build a pier to deliver aid to Gaza, Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet shook the president’s hand, congratulated him on the speech, and urged him to push Israel to do more on “humanitarian stuff.”
Biden, caught on a hot mic, nodded in agreement and said he was pressing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “I told him, Bibi, don’t repeat this, but we are going to have a come-to-Jesus meeting.”
The next day, in the multicultural Toronto suburb of Mississauga, Justin Trudeau's International Development Minister Ahmed Hussenannounced that Canada would resume funding the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees. Israel has alleged that 12 employees were involved in the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, leading most Western countries to withdraw aid.
Unhappy progressives
Both Biden and Trudeau are responding to pressure to shift their positions on the war in Gaza, which has rattled their electoral coalitions, posing serious challenges for them as they head toward elections in November in the United States and 2025 in Canada.
The White House is aware of the problem. Biden’s aides have had to take steps to avoid pro-Palestinian protests, booking him into smaller venues and holding back event details until the last minute to keep protesters from being able to disrupt him. That is making it hard for him to get his message about student loan relief out on university campuses.
The horrible death toll in Gaza, where thousands of civilians have been killed since October, has led to despair and anger among progressives, not just among people with roots in the Middle East, but among young people and people of color.
There has been a significant generational shift in public opinion. A December New York Times poll found 46% of 18-to-19-year-olds are more sympathetic to Palestinians, compared to 27% who are sympathetic to Israel.
“I tell people all the time, 50 years ago when we had a demonstration from the White House it would be 50 people, all of whom had an Arabic accent, and today it’s tens of thousands of people, and it's a group as diverse as America that's showing up,” says James J. Zogby, founder of the Arab American Institute.
Michigan in the balance
In February’s Democratic presidential primary in Michigan, 13% of voters chose “uncommitted,” sparking similar protest movements in other states, a way for progressives to signal their unhappiness with Biden’s support for Israel in the Gaza war. But unlike the other states, Michigan, home to about 500,000 Arab Americans, is vital if Biden hopes to stay in the White House.
“Michigan had a huge impact because it is difficult to come up with a map where Democrats win the White House without Michigan in the mix, and the percentage of Arab voters in Michigan is high enough to make the difference,” says Zogby.
While the fear isn’t that these voters would flip sides for Donald Trump, the threat is real, says Clayton Allen, US director for the Eurasia Group. “Michigan is a great example where if you see the decline in Arab-American support hold through the election, that would be enough votes — if they would not show up to vote … — that would be enough to erase what had been his margin of victory in 2020.”
Nobody on Trudeau’s side
The situation in Canada is similar. Progressives are so frustrated with the Trudeau government’s position on the war that urban areas once considered safe for the Liberals may now be out of reach for the party.
Trudeau’s fence-sitting on the Gaza war has not endeared him to pro-Israel voters either.
“The Liberal Party has lost, largely, both communities, because they’ve tried to have it both ways,” says pollster Quito Maggi, of Mainstreet Research.
“For electoral purposes, it’s not really great to have nobody on your side,” says one Liberal organizer.
The Liberals have been behind in the polls for so long that some would like to replace Trudeau before the election, but a leadership race while the war continues could be dominated by arguments over Gaza, potentially damaging the party.
The war is not causing similar problems for conservatives in either country, because their coalitions don’t include progressives who are angered by the bombing. They can sit back and watch as their progressive opponents struggle to keep their coalitions together.
Both Biden and Trudeau appear to be in no-win positions. They are angering their progressive bases but would anger other constituencies if they move too far the other way.
“Outside of that young progressive block, most US voters, in total, support US military backing of Israel,” says Allen. “So Biden does bear a risk if he skews too hard to the left. Everyone else can attack him for abandoning Israel. I think that's been one of the limiting factors. It's why we see Biden try to walk this tightrope.”
Both leaders would benefit from bringing the temperature down, which will only happen after the bombs stop falling on Gaza. Few outside Canada have much reason to be greatly concerned about Trudeau’s position, but the United States provides $3.8 billion in military aid to Israel every year, which gives Biden leverage over Netanyahu.
He may need to use it soon to give himself time to win back the progressives whose votes he needs to keep Trump out of the White House.
Tracking anti-Navalny bot armies
In an exclusive investigation into online disinformation surrounding online reaction to Alexei Navalny's death, GZERO asks whether it is possible to track the birth of a bot army. Was Navalny's tragic death accompanied by a massive online propaganda campaign? We investigated, with the help of a company called Cyabra.
Alexei Navalny knew he was a dead man the moment he returned to Moscow in January 2021. Vladimir Putin had already tried to kill him with the nerve agent Novichok, and he was sent to Germany for treatment. The poison is one of Putin’s signatures, like pushing opponents out of windows or shooting them in the street. Navalny knew Putin would try again.
Still, he came home.
“If your beliefs are worth something,” Navalny wrote on Facebook, “you must be willing to stand up for them. And if necessary, make some sacrifices.”
He made the ultimate sacrifice on Feb. 16, when Russian authorities announced, with Arctic banality, that he had “died” at the IK-3 penal colony more than 1,200 miles north of Moscow. A frozen gulag. “Convict Navalny A.A. felt unwell after a walk, almost immediately losing consciousness,” they announced as if quoting a passage from Koestler’s “Darkness at Noon.” Later, deploying the pitch-black doublespeak of all dictators, they decided to call it, “sudden death syndrome.”
Worth noting: Navalny was filmed the day before, looking well. There is no body for his wife and two kids to see. No autopsy.
As we wrote this morning, Putin is winning on all fronts. Sensing NATO support for the war in Ukraine is wavering – over to you, US Congress – Putin is acting with confident impunity. His army is gaining ground in Ukraine. He scored a propaganda coup when he toyed with dictator-fanboy Tucker Carlson during his two-hour PR session thinly camouflaged as an “interview.” And just days after Navalny was declared dead, the Russian pilot Maksim Kuzminov, who defected to Ukraine with his helicopter last August, was gunned down in Spain.
And then, of course, there is the disinformation war, another Putin battleground. Navalny’s death got me wondering if there would be an orchestrated disinformation campaign around the event, and if so, whether there was any way to track it? Would there be, say, an online release of shock bot troops to combat Western condemnation of Navalny’s death and blunt the blowback?
It turns out there was.
To investigate, GZERO asked the “social threat information company” Cyabra, which specializes in tracking bots, to look for disinformation surrounding the online reactions to the news about Navalny. The Israeli company says its job is to uncover “threats” on social platforms. It has built AI-driven software to track “attacks such as impersonation, data leakage, and online executive perils as they occur.”
Cyabra’s team focused on the tweets President Joe Bidenand Prime Minister Justin Trudeau posted condemning Navalny’s death. Their software analyzed the number of bots that targeted these official accounts. And what they found was fascinating.
According to Cyabra, “29% of the Twitter profiles interacting with Biden’s post about Navalny on X were identified as inauthentic.” For Trudeau, the number was 25%.
Courtesy of Cyabra
So, according to Cyabra, more than a quarter of the reaction you saw on X related to Navalny’s death and these two leaders’ reactions came from bots, not humans. In other words, a bullshit campaign of misinformation.
This finding raises a lot of questions. What’s the baseline of corruption to get a good sense of comparison? For example, is 27% bot traffic on Biden’s tweet about Navalny’s death a lot, or is everything on social media flooded with the same amount of crap? How does Cyabra's team actually track bots, and how accurate is their data? Are they missing bots that are well-disguised, or, on the other side, are some humans being labeled as “inauthentic”? In short, what does this really tell us?
In the year of elections, with multiple wars festering and AI galloping ahead of regulation, the battle against disinformation and bots is more consequential than ever. The bot armies of the night are marching. We need to find a torch to see where they are and if there are any tools that can help us separate fact from fiction.
Tracking bot armies is a job that often happens in the shadows, and it comes with a lot of challenges. Can this be done without violating people’s privacy? How hard is this to combat? I spoke with the CEO of Cyabra, Dan Brahmy, to get his view.
Solomon: When Cyabra tracked the reactions to the tweets from President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau about the “death” of Navalny, you found more than 25% of the accounts were inauthentic. What does this tell us about social media and what people can actually trust is real?
Brahmy: From elections to sporting events to other significant international headline events, social media is often the destination for millions of people to follow the news and share their opinion. Consequently, it is also the venue of choice for malicious actors to manipulate the narrative.
This was also the case when Cyabra looked into President Biden and Prime Minister Trudeau’s X post directly blaming Putin for Navalny’s death. These posts turned out to be the ideal playing ground for narrative-manipulating bots. Inauthentic accounts on a large scale attacked Biden and Trudeau and blamed them for their foreign and domestic policies while attempting to divert attention from Putin and the negative narrative surrounding him.
The high number of fake accounts detected by Cyabra, together with the speed at which those accounts engaged in the conversation to divert and distract following the announcement of Navalny’s death, shows the capabilities of malicious actors and their intentions to conduct sophisticated influence operations.
Solomon: Can you tell where these are from and who is doing it?
Brahmy: Cyabra monitors for publicly available information on social media and does not track IP addresses or any private information. The publicly shared location of the account is collected by Cyabra. When analyzing the Navalny conversation, Cyabra saw that the majority of the accounts claimed themselves as coming from the US.
Solomon: There is always the benchmark question: How much “bot” traffic or inauthentic traffic do you expect at any time, for any online event? Put the numbers we see here for Trudeau and Biden in perspective.
Brahmy: The average percentage of fake accounts participating in an everyday conversation online typically varies between 4 and 8%. Cyabra’s discovery of 25-29% fake accounts related to this conversation is alarming, significant, and should give us cause for concern.
Solomon: Ok, then there is the accuracy question. How do you actually identify a bot and how do you know, given the sophistication of AI and new bots, that you are not missing a lot of them? Is it easier to find “obvious bots”— i.e., something that tweets every two minutes 24 hours a day, then say, a series of bots that look and act very human?
Brahmy: Using advanced AI and machine learning, Cyabra analyzes a profile’s activity and interactions to determine if it demonstrates non-human behaviors. Cyabra’s proprietary algorithm consists of over 500 behavioral parameters. Some parameters are more intuitive, like the use of multiple languages, while others require in-depth expertise and advanced machine learning. Cyabra’s technology works at scale and in almost real-time.
Solomon: There is so much disinformation anyway – actual people who lie, mislead, falsify, scam – how much does this matter?
Brahmy: The creation and activities of fake accounts on social media (whether it be a bot, sock puppet, troll, or otherwise) should be treated with the utmost seriousness. Fake accounts are almost exclusively created for nefarious purposes. By identifying inauthentic profiles and then analyzing their behaviors and the false narratives they are spreading, we can understand the intentions of malicious actors and remedy them as a society.
While we all understand that the challenge of disinformation is pervasive and a threat to society, being able to conduct the equivalent of an online CT scan reveals the areas that most urgently need our attention.
Solomon: Why does it matter in a big election year?
Brahmy: More than 4 billion people globally are eligible to vote in 2024, with over 50 countries holding elections. That’s 40% of the world’s population. Particularly during an election year, tracking disinformation is important – from protecting the democratic process, ensuring informed decision-making, preventing foreign interference, and promoting transparency, to protecting national security. By tracking and educating the public on the prevalence of inauthentic accounts, we slowly move closer to creating a digital environment that fosters informed, constructive, and authentic discourse.
You can check out part of the Cybara report here.
- Understanding Navalny’s legacy inside Russia ›
- Navalny’s widow continues his fight for freedom ›
- “A film is a weapon on time delay” — an interview with “Navalny” director Daniel Roher ›
- Navalny's death is a huge loss for democracy - NATO's Mircea Geona ›
- Alexei Navalny's death: A deep tragedy for Russia ›
- Navalny's death is a message to the West ›
- Navalny’s death: Five things to know ›
Trudeau, Biden and the ‘joyless prosperity’ challenge
Justin Trudeau got some good news on Tuesday: Statistics Canada released the Consumer Price Index for January, showing it was lower than expected – at only 2.9%, down from 3.4% in December.
The surprise slowdown in inflation raises hope that the Bank of Canada may be able to cut interest rates before long, perhaps soon enough to prevent a devastating cash crunch for homeowners with variable rate mortgages (three million of them could otherwise be in trouble).
That news should give Trudeau a boost, or at least that is how things are supposed to work. For decades, the conventional wisdom has been that governments suffer in the polls when money is tight and benefit when times are good. But pollsters are no longer seeing the same clear link between economics and politics, which raises doubts about whether good economic news can rescue the struggling governments of Trudeau and Joe Biden.
“On paper, both economically and legislatively, Joe Biden has been a very successful president,” says pollster Nik Nanos, of Nanos Research. “But the thing is that the polarization, the exceptional polarization that we're seeing in the United States, there's nothing that he can do.”
Voters remain unconvinced
US inflation numbers in January were slightly higher than expected, but other economic measures are between good and great. Consumer confidence has reached its highest level since December 2021, and GDP and employment numbers are strong. Still, only 33% of voters approve of Biden’s handling of the economy, and his approval rating is negative.
Republicans can’t be convinced that Biden’s economic policies are working. Researchers at Stanford University have found that Republicans are two and half times more partisan in their view of the economy than Democrats, meaning they think times are good when a Republican is in the Whitehouse and bad when the president is a Democrat. But the researchers’ models show that even partisan bias doesn’t explain all of the current negativity.
The result is a kind of “joyless prosperity,” says Nanos. “It’s basically 50 years of correlations between economic performance and incumbency that are being undermined. People increasingly can't tell the difference between what the truth is and what is false.”
Believing things that are not true
What’s new is social media, which amplifies negative messages and convinces people of things that aren’t true. Voters are entitled to be grumpy about cost-of-living increases, but many think things are much worse than they are.
Pollster Frank Graves, of Ekos Research Associates, finds it disquieting. “The people who were most upset with Trudeau, which is a big group, they think inflation is continuing to go up,” says Graves. “They think Canada is last in the G7 in terms of GDP. They think they’re going to be doing worse next year. But all the indicators suggest those things are not just only untrue, they’re grievously untrue.”
There are signs that in the United States, the economic news will eventually get good enough that it will be tough for even partisan voters to ignore, but Biden faces another big problem — many voters think he is too old. Trudeau doesn’t have that problem, but he is much farther behind in the polls than Biden. Both men are facing such stiff headwinds that commentators are urging their parties to dump them.
Time to change leaders?
But would Democrats and Liberals be better off with different leaders? Biden polls better than Democratic alternatives, so it’s hard to see how his party would benefit from replacing him.
In Canada, the situation is less clear. Pollster David Coletto, of Abacus Data, thinks the Liberals might be better off getting rid of Trudeau because he’s so unpopular. “He’s got to make people who don't want him back feel that the alternative is far worse. And in order to do that, people need to listen to you. And I just don't think people are listening to Justin Trudeau anymore.”
Both Chrystia Freeland and Mark Carneypoll better than Trudeau — a sign that he may have worn out his welcome with voters — but he has the support of his party, perhaps because of uncertainty about the alternatives and his track record as a formidable campaigner. And even with a new leader, Liberals would still face an electorate that thinks Canada is broken.
Ironically, Biden and Trudeau’s opponents are less popular than rivals within their parties. Polls show Nikki Haleywould destroy Biden, and Jean Charestpolled better than Pierre Poilievre.
Whatever commentators think, neither Biden nor Trudeau are likely to be forced out before the tough elections ahead. And even if they were to go, whoever replaces them would still face voters who won’t believe that the economy is getting better, no matter what the numbers say.
Canada shows Kyiv the money
Defense officials say Ottawa will inject CA$30 million into a push to buy ammunition, working with Czechia, aka the Czech Republic, to get artillery shells into the hands of Ukrainian soldiers. Allies are being urged to step up since US funding lapsed – and in the wake of Ukraine’s withdrawal from Avdiivka amid heavy losses.
At the Munich Security Conference, as attendees absorbed news of the death of Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny, Denmark announced it would send all of its artillery to help the struggling Ukrainians and called on other countries to do more.
Republicans in the US Congress, under the influence of Donald Trump, meanwhile, have blocked aid, and rookie House Speaker Mike Johnsonhas failed to bring a Senate-passed $95-billion aid package for Ukraine and Israel up for a vote. Johnson is under threat from hardline Republicans who may try to oust him if he passes aid for Ukraine. But Democrats are considering taking steps to protect Johnson if he helps them get the package passed.
Unlike the US, Canada’s government has not wavered in its support for Ukraine, although the amounts of money are tiny in comparison. Defense Minister Bill Blair signed a memorandum of understanding with Czechia but has not yet revealed any details.
Canada is also facing intense pressure to boost its defense spending. NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenbergsaid Tuesday that Canada needs to set a date to increase defense spending to 2% of GDP, NATO’s guideline for members. Canada spent just 1.38% of GDP on defense in 2023. Meanwhile, only 11 of NATO’s 33 members met the 2% guideline last year, but several European countries have been increasing their spending sparked by fears of Russian aggression.
Will Trudeau bring back visas for Mexican visitors?
Justin Trudeausaid last week that Canada is in talks with Mexico to try to find ways to cut down on the number of asylum-seekers flying into Canada with the help of organized criminal groups.
Trudeau is under pressure from the Conservatives, and the Americans to reinstate a visa requirement on Mexican travelers, which his government lifted in 2016. The government said last month it is considering doing so.
The Biden administration would also like the visas to return because the number of migrants crossing the northern border has spiked in the past year — 2,200 interceptions in 2023, up 240% from 2022. Most of the crossings are made in the lightly patrolled areas of upstate New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont.
The route via Canada to the US is appealing to Mexicans and other Latin Americans who face detention and deportation at the more heavily patrolled southern border. A network of human smugglers has sprung up to facilitate the crossings, but would-be migrants face danger in the cold northern woods.
The Liberal government seems to be signaling that it’s working with Mexico rather than moving immediately to require Mexican visitors to apply for visas, which would be a setback for the trade and diplomatic relationship.
Legal limbo: Canada, US behind on judicial appointments
There are currently 75 vacancies. Justice Minister Arif Virani took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to defend his government’s appointment record, arguing the Liberals have made judicial appointments “at the fastest pace in history” – a feat, he noted, the Conservatives have never managed to achieve.
The US has its own judicial vacancy issues, with 51 positions waiting to be filled for US district courts – with 18 nominees pending. Those vacancies account for all but four empty seats on federal courts throughout the country. The US Court of Appeals is light three, and the Court of Federal Claims is short one.
Ahead of the 2024 presidential election, Joe Biden is rushing to fill seats – and to shape the judiciary to the extent that Donald Trump did. The process has been slowed by the late Sen. Dianne Feinstein’s illness, which hampered the work of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Republican efforts to slow appointments.
Meanwhile, state-level court appointments, or a lack thereof, are slowing down proceedings throughout the country, contributing to a crisis in the justice system.Jobs are up, but Biden and Trudeau still risk losing theirs
January was an encouraging month for job growth in the US and Canada. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 353,000 new jobs stateside with unemployment holding steady at 3.7%. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada says jobs were up by 37,000 during the same period and unemployment was down to 5.7% – a modest drop of 0.1%. Both countries exceeded expectations.
You might think better-than-expected economic news would herald brighter fortunes for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but you would almost certainly be wrong. Both men’s polling numbers are nowhere near where they’d like them to be.
Biden’s favorables are flat with roughly 40% of Americans approving of his job performance compared to 55% who disapprove. Meanwhile, 86% of the country thinks he’s too old to run again. North of the border, Trudeau continues to trail Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by double digits, and his party is stuck in the mud.
There’s a chance numbers will improve for the incumbents, but the December jobs report in the US also exceeded expectations and didn’t boost Biden’s ratings. The Canadian numbers were softer in December, so Liberals have some hope the latest good news will give Trudeau a boost this time.
But so far, and perhaps counterintuitively, their political fortunes do not seem directly tied to economic performance.
NATO dues and don’ts: Can Canada get off Trump’s naughty list?
Members of the Western bloc are on edge after Donald Trump said last weekend that he’d encourage Russia to “do whatever the hell they want” to allied states that don’t pay their dues. Canada pays well below the 2%-of-GDP NATO guideline and would be high on Trump’s “delinquent” list, but that doesn’t mean Ottawa is ready to pay up.
Trump’s comments drew the ire of … just about everyone. President Joe Biden, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs, NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and even fellow Republicans blasted Trump for his comments. The most common refrain was that the former US president was undermining the collective security alliance and emboldening Russia.
But Canadian leaders, who are preparing for a possible Trump 2.0, were more cautious with their response. Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly admitted Canada must “do more” and steered clear of criticizing Trump. Defense Minister Bill Blairalso declined to take a run at the former president.
As Europe spends more on defense, the US has complained for years about Canada’s military spending, which is heading for 1.43% of GDP in 2025 – the highest it’s been in over 12 years. Ottawa’s defense spending is unlikely to rise further anytime soon as the governing Liberals keep an eye on the deficit and debt-to-GDP ratio while struggling to manage the budget ahead of a planned 2025 election.