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Ian Explains: Gaming out the 2024 US election
A quarter of Americans believe that the FBI was behind January 6. But as the late New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan once said, “You’re entitled to your own opinions, but you’re not entitled to your own facts.” The fact is that President Trump incited the insurrection.
Shared trust amongst Americans is at an all-time low. Public trust in core institutions—such as Congress, the judiciary, and the media—is at historic lows; polarization and partisanship are at historic highs.
And what if the world’s most powerful country cannot hold a free and fair election on November 5? Unlikely but plausible. Efforts to subvert the election could come from cyberattacks, deep fakes and disinformation, physical attacks on the election process and oversight, and/or even terrorism to disrupt voting on the day. There’s no more geopolitically significant target than the upcoming ballot—with plenty of foreign adversaries that would love nothing more than to see more chaos from the Americans.
The United States is already the world’s most divided and dysfunctional advanced industrial democracy. The 2024 election will exacerbate this problem no matter who wins. With the outcome of the vote essentially a coin toss (at least for now), there's no certainty in predicting who comes out on top. But just how we make that choice will determine if democracy, itself, wins or loses.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
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The House select committee investigating the attack on the U.S. Capitol holds their final meeting to vote on criminal referrals against former President Donald Trump.
What We’re Watching: Trump’s tough week, SCOTUS issues Title 42 stay, UK-Rwanda migrant deal is on
Jan. 6 panel recommends criminal charges for Trump
Donald Trump’s week got off to a rocky start on Monday, when the House committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the US Capitol referred the former president to the Justice Department for criminal prosecution. The referral is based on four alleged crimes related to the insurrection, including inciting or assisting an insurrection, obstruction of an official congressional proceeding, conspiracy to defraud the U.S., and conspiracy to make a false statement. It remains unclear whether the Justice Department – which is conducting its own investigation into the events of Jan. 6 – will take up the committee’s referral, which holds no legal weight. The panel also notably referred four Republicans, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, who is vying to become the next House speaker, to the House Ethics Committee for having ignored subpoenas to testify. But this is likely to have little effect because the committee, which is split evenly along party lines, rules by majority vote. Today, meanwhile, the House Ways and Means Committee will discuss whether to release Trump’s tax returns, which it finally has in its possession following years of legal wrangling. With the clock ticking on the Democrat’s House majority, the committee is expected to release the returns before Republicans take control next month. Attorney General Merrick Garland must now decide whether to charge Trump based on the historic recommendation by Congress.
Supreme Court issues stay for pandemic-era Title 42 migration policy
The future of Title 42 — the pandemic-era immigration rule invoked in 2020 by the Trump administration that allows the US to expel migrants without processing their asylum applications on public health grounds — is in flux after the Supreme Court issued a temporary stay late Monday. The Biden administration has until 5 p.m. EST to respond to an appeal by Republican-led states that succeeded in their last-ditch effort to convince SCOTUS to keep Title 42 in place, at least temporarily. Meanwhile, the government is now bracing for an influx of migrants at the US southern border, with some estimating that as many as 14,000 migrants could cross daily. For example, New York City Mayor Eric Adams has called for federal and state aid as he braces for a surge of migrant arrivals in the Big Apple that he says will crush the city’s already-strained shelter system. Indeed, immigration has always been a lightning-rod issue in the US, but temperatures are particularly high as Republican governors in southern states continue to transport thousands of migrants to blue states on buses and planes. This comes as a record number of migrants – many from Haiti and Venezuela – have already arrived at the US-Mexico border this year in a bid to flee economic hardship and political crises.
UK High Court deems Rwanda immigration deal legal
The British government says it remains committed to its Rwanda asylum plan after the High Court on Monday deemed it lawful. Introduced by former PM Boris Johnson, it was part of a deal struck in April between London and Kigali, whereby migrants who arrive in the UK would be sent to Rwanda to have their asylum applications processed – and would ultimately be resettled in the East African country. Rwanda, for its part, received £140 million ($170m) for playing ball. But because the deal has faced a slew of legal challenges, no migrants have yet been transported. Indeed, European human rights groups say the proposal violates international law and that it’s especially egregious given Rwanda’s poor human rights record. The court's decision landed just days after new UK PM Rishi Sunak, who backs the Rwanda policy, outlined a new plan to stop migrants from traveling in rickety boats across the English Channel. Still, appeal applications are expected in response to Monday’s ruling, and the Rwanda plan must remain on ice until all legal avenues are exhausted.* Correction: This Watching has been updated since our morning Signal newsletter to reflect SCOTUS' temporary block on lifting Title 42.
Standing up for democracy and the truth: Former US national security official Fiona Hill
January 6 laid bare "the deep divisions, the partisan infighting, the polarization within our society," says Fiona Hill, the former US senior director of the National Security Council. In a GZERO World interview, she spoke with Ian Bremmer about her concerns about the state of democracy in the United States.
Hill famously testified against her impeached boss, Donald Trump, who stayed in power after being acquitted by the Senate of abuse of power and obstructing Congress. She also notes that divisions actually make America look weaker on the global stage — particularly to someone like Russia’s president Vladimir Putin.
Watch this episode of GZERO World: American strife: Will US democracy survive? Fiona Hill explains post-Jan 6 stakes
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Fiona Hill doesn’t regret her role in the Trump White House
Fiona Hill doesn't regret joining the Trump administration, despite her acrimonious exit from the government as a result of the former US president's first impeachment trial.
“I don't have any problem whatsoever with what I did, and the decision that I made in going into the White House or the administration and National Security Council back in 2017,” Hill told Ian Bremmer.
The former senior director of the National Security Council famously testified against her impeached boss, who stayed in power after being acquitted by the Senate of abuse of power and obstructing Congress.
“I never expected to be in that position," she said, "but I think it's very important for people to stand up there, be counted, and speak out.”
Watch her full interview on this episode of GZERO World: American strife: Will US democracy survive? Fiona Hill explains post-Jan 6 stakes
Quick Take: Hypocrisy, truth, & authenticity in today's environment
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi everybody, Ian Bremmer here. And happy Tuesday to you. I've got a Quick Take starting a little bit later because heck, we had a day off yesterday. It was President's Day. I hope you all enjoyed it. And even in Texas, I know it's tough down there right now, and not much fun. Here in New York, it's actually starting to thaw, which I appreciate, Moose does too.
Want to talk a little bit about hypocrisy, about truth, about authenticity, and what it means in today's environment. There is so much of the news that is driven by people not being trustworthy, by fake news.
And what I see the last few days, of course, with the failed impeachment, not a surprise, but so many people at the beginning thought that Senate minority leader, now, McConnell was actually going to vote against Trump, and he did not. And instead, he said that this is not the domain for the Senate. It should go to the justices, or should go to a criminal case, or a civil case, which is, of course, false. It's all about just maintaining power for the Republican party.
I see the CDC in the United States now going back on guidance around opening schools that they had offered with the best of their healthcare expertise that they have because teachers' unions in the United States have so much influence over the Democratic party. And so, as a consequence, it's going to be very difficult to go ahead with those school openings with a lot of damage to the students continuing as a consequence. I can go on and on and on.
But what I think is important to understand is that your business model is your values. It is what you actually spend all of your time trying to accomplish and to maximize. Your business model is your values. And so frequently we look at what people say, and we look at their communication strategy, and we forget what their business model is. And so, understanding the fundamental drivers of an organization, or people that are leading that organization so much more important. When you join an organization, understanding that is absolutely critical.
And when I think about culture, you can change culture. If you change the... because culture is about the people. Who are the people in an organization? Do you like them? What are they like? How ambitious are they? How oriented are they towards other people? Are they introspective? Are they experts? Are they super intellectuals? Are they deeply aggressive? You can change culture. And, indeed, you can change priorities because leadership and management is all about which priorities you put lots of resource in, you put the most effort in. If you change out that leadership, you'll change the priorities, you'll change the orientation. But you can't change the values without changing the business model. And business models tend to be very sticky.
When I think about climate change, and the science on climate change is not perfect, but it has been overwhelmingly in one direction for decades now. And virtually all of the effort to push back against that science was about business models, which were fundamentally going to be undermined by moving towards the science. And that's not just true in terms of coal and fossil fuel companies, and infrastructure that relies on them, and also bureaucracies that are paid by those people, and other organizations and studies that are aligned to them. But we have seen this go on now for decades. And the arguments will change as is required by the business model.
So, for decades, we have people saying that climate is not changing, that the science is unproven. And that worked for a long time, and then it didn't. And so, then the fallback position was it's changing, but people aren't doing it. It's actually just natural cycles. And so, we shouldn't respond to it. And that worked for about a decade more or less in slowing things down. And then it's, well okay, no it is changing, and it is manmade. And the science has indeed proven we can't stop that anymore. But it certainly is way too expensive to respond to it, to resolve it.
And then, we see that in a surprisingly short amount of time, the cost of solar and of wind and other renewables can be brought down significantly, exponentially. And then, it's well no, but you can't rely on those energy sources. And that too, I mean, just this week with what we're seeing in Texas, and I'm getting all of this inbound today of people telling me about all of the wind that has been taken offline because of the freezing, which is true, but much more gas has been taken offline with the freezing both absolute amounts as well as percentage of total. But that, of course, is not a problem to vested interest. The business model matters.
Now, if you change the business model, if you start investing in a broader portfolio of different types of energy precisely because you understand that these things are changing over time and you take a longer-term perspective that will change your values. But many organizations didn't. And for those that didn't, their values are increasingly directly in opposition to science.
And it's not just that, I think about social media today. I think about Facebook today. I think about how much of what Facebook's comm strategy has been about how good it will be for all of us as individuals to be able to connect and put the best part of ourselves out publicly. And yet, of course, it causes massive amounts of emotional damage. And we know that the executives of these companies do not allow their own kids to have access to the platforms because they understand the addictiveness programmed into the algorithms. But the business model determines the values.
We know that Twitter would be so much less destructive as a place, if it did not have fake bots, people that aren't people that are doing nothing but promoting extreme views that are not differentiated by a lot of folks on Twitter as being real or fake. But those things are aligned with the business model because you make a lot more advertising revenue when you have a lot more people that are spending a lot more time, even if they're not real people, on the platform. Suddenly remove 50% of your users because they're not real, and suddenly your business model is much more problematic. So, it is about the business model.
Whatever your company sells, those are its core values. And if you want to unpack their actions and what they actually do, where they spend their money, what they lobby for, those are your values. If you're working for that organization, those become your values because that's what you are spending your time doing. And it particularly matters if you want to understand the United States, because in the US, the core, the dominant actors in determining the political agenda and strategy are the private sector actors, who capture the regulatory process. They're dominant in China. It's not, in China, it's the state. And so, you'd want to understand what's the business model fundamentally for the state, which is political stability, and not economic maximization. And when those two things come into contact, come into conflict the Chinese government overwhelmingly chooses political stability in ways that a lot of Americans, in the foreign policy establishment, frequently get wrong, because they assume that the Chinese also want to grow, grow, grow. Well, yes, except not if it's a threat to the communist party or the state.
And then, in Europe, you have the bureaucracy, the technocrats in Brussels who have most of the power. And individual states have less sovereignty, and private sector actors have less sovereignty. So, you want to understand the business model of a whole bunch of people that spend their entire careers in Brussels, reasonably well-paid, and aligned to the perpetuation of those institutions.
So, if you want to change your values, you need to change what you actually do. If you want to change a company's values, you need to change their business model. And that's much stickier and it's much harder to do. And in an environment where we are saying that increasingly capitalism does not work as presently constructed for a lot of average citizens, you can see why the United States is actually in a more difficult position to respond, because it's not the state that's going to have the influence. It's not the bureaucracy that's going to have the influence. It's the private sector actors themselves.
And so, one has to look into those private sector actors and see which of them have business models that are themselves most aligned with making the changes. Climate is now happening to a greater degree in the United States because with coronavirus you had this sudden mass acceleration of power towards a whole bunch of companies whose business models aren't aligned with undermining science on climate. And those that are, are vastly weaker than they used to be. But, on most other issues, that is a big challenge in the United States. Something we are going to spend a lot more time on going forward.
So, I hope that was worthwhile and interesting. Look forward to keeping in touch over the course of the week and going forward. Be good, stay safe, and avoid people.
Mitt Romney isn't the future of the GOP. He's the past.
In this edition of The Red Pen, we take a look at an editorial by the FT's Janan Ganesh, who argues that Mitt Romney represents a future for US conservatism post-Trump and is in a unique position to turn around the Republican Party. Ian Bremmer and Eurasia Group's Jon Lieber point out that the GOP is actually moving in a very different direction.
Today we're taking our red pen to an op-ed published in the Financial Times, the Pinks, written by Janan Ganesh, the newspaper's chief US political commentator.
And it's titled, "Mitt Romney is the model for a new Republican party," and argues that the Utah Senator and former presidential candidate is an example of how the GOP should approach the post-Trump political world.
Now, Ganesh is a sharp observer of US politics, but we think this one misses the mark. Let me explain.
The op-ed is framed in the context of Trump's second impeachment trial, and whether Republican Senators should stand for their collective good or vote to acquit for political protection. Of course, the last few days have all focused on Trump's actions and behavior after the November election and his role in inciting the insurrection we witnessed at the Capitol on January 6th. But it also has implications for the 2024 election, 2022 midterms, and what happens to the GOP in the interim.
So let's get out the Red Pen and dive into Ganesh's arguments.
First, he writes that "if there is a future for US conservatism beyond hot-tempered quackery, Romney points the way." He adds that while Romney himself is nearing the end of his career, he can "serve as the model for whoever does one day redeem the party."
Romney is not the future of the GOP. He (and his ideas) are the embodiment of the past of a party that's actually getting Trumpier and Trumpier. And it's important to note that while he has taken stands against President Trump, one of few Republicans in Congress to loudly do so, he also represents a state, Utah, where Trump underperformed in both 2016 and 2020 relative to other red states, and relative to other Republicans over the years. But in the totality of the GOP, Romney is an outlier, he's increasingly becoming his own island. And in general, we question how many Never Trumpers or Lincoln Project folks will even be Republicans in five years.
Next, Ganesh writes that Romney is an "agent for change" and that, if it wasn't for his age, he would be the perfect person to turn around the party.
Here's the thing, the GOP doesn't think it needs a turnaround. Trump almost won re-election in the midst of a global pandemic (that he seriously, even epically, mismanaged). Republicans may take back the House next year, and maybe even the Senate. GOP donors, voters, and the base support the way the party is going. Ganesh is offering a potential cure for patients who don't believe they're sick and didn't come seeking a diagnosis.
Ganesh also writes that Romney "questions the small-government bias of a party that has let its economic views become articles of faith," and cites his "break with Republican convention."
Are we talking about the same Mitt Romney? Romney supports tax cuts, he opposes the ACA, and is the lead sponsor of the only budget amendment that is meant to deal with debts and deficits and reforming entitlements. There is one exception, and it's important, Romney's plan for generous reforms to family tax credits. And to be sure, it's admirable that Senator Romney is proposing it, but these ideas have been kicked around for years, including by George W. Bush. It's not the future of the GOP, it's a flashback to "compassionate conservatism."
Finally, to return to impeachment, Ganesh argues "it is in the collective interest of sensible Republicans in that chamber to convict the former president over last month's Capitol siege."
Really? How is it in the collective interest of the party to break from and condemn its most popular member? Even if they bar him from running again, Trump is not going to simply fade away. He lost the 2020 election by plenty. But he also won 74 million votes across this nation. That's enough political mojo to be a big voice in the Republican party or to bring millions of people into a new one.
Look, I'd love to be able to say that it's in the political interest of Republicans to convict Trump. I do think it's in the interests of the country. But the political interest of the party? Sorry, Ganesh. And that's part of why we're in the fix we're in right now.
Quick Take: Trump will be acquitted, impeachment is now broken
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and I've got your Quick Take for the week. The second impeachment trial in the Senate of President Trump, now former President Trump, begins. And Lindsey Graham, Republican senator, has said that we all know what's going to happen. He's right. It's going to be close to a party line vote. A couple senators, maybe a handful, will vote to convict, but the large majority will vote to acquit, which says quite something.
The numbers have moved against Trump to be clear. Back in January, 47% of Americans were saying that the Senate should vote to remove Trump from office. In the last couple of days, those numbers, same poll, both ABC are behind it, 56% of Americans now support the Senate removing Trump. But still, close to a party line vote.
Remember, Trump never quite hit 50% in terms of approval ratings, but that didn't stop him from becoming president, didn't stop him from having an incredible hold on the Republican Party, and that is still true. Most Republicans support Trump. Most support Republicans support Trumpism, and most senators believe they will pay a price, a significant price if they vote against Trump in this impeachment hearing, which is a serious problem. It's all about what you're willing to do publicly for power as opposed to what you believe privately. And there's an enormous gap between the two. We saw that play out over the past several days. Some 11 Republicans prepared to vote in the House to ban Marjorie Taylor Green, the QAnon supporting, legitimately crazy, member of the House, newly elected member of the House from Georgia. 145 Republicans in the House, a strong majority, voted secret ballot in favor of keeping Liz Cheney in her leadership role, despite the fact that she had voted to impeach Trump. And in fact, Liz Cheney this weekend on Fox News, a Fox News interview, actually said about her views of that impeachment vote, what we already know constitutes the gravest violation of his oath of office by any president in the history of the country and this is not something we can simply look past or pretend didn't happen or try to move on. We've got to make sure this never happens again.
Well, certainly if the conviction vote was by secret ballot, maybe that would mean something, but it's not. And so to be very clear, Trump is going to be acquitted. He will be able to run again. And perhaps most importantly, the consequences for sedition, the consequences for actively calling for an insurrection and taking every step possible to overturn the legitimate results of a free and fair election do not include impeachment. Impeachment, I mean, if it doesn't apply for that, then it no longer works. And that's what the American political system is putting on display in the coming weeks, is that impeachment is broken as a political mechanism, which undermines the separation of and the balance of powers in the United States, the world's most powerful representative democracy.
I thought it was interesting, the Economist Intelligence Unit came out last week with the fact that the United States is considered in its model to be a flawed democracy. My only question was what took them so long? This isn't new. It's been coming for decades and the erosion has happened slowly but still very real. And the ability of the United States to make the argument that we're back internationally only makes sense if, and we'll gain alignment from all the allies, if they really believe that this can't happen in the US again. There's no reason to believe that. In fact, there's every reason to believe that it can and will happen again, because it's not about Trump. It's about anti-establishment sentiment in the United States growing much greater as the political institutions are seen to be rigged. And that is both true of the electoral process and now it's true of the impeachment process. It's not everything, it's not the military, it's not the judiciary, but very big pieces of the American political franchise increasingly do not work.
You know, some countries are hybrid economies in the sense that they're sort of between free market and state controlled. Increasingly, the United States is kind of a hybrid democracy. Some of it functions and some of it doesn't. And the fact that the US, because it's so incredibly wealthy and therefore stable, can continue to power through this and not deal with those challenges is itself a problem because it means that you don't address them. And as much as Biden as president himself is oriented to trying to address these challenges, it's very hard to imagine he's going to have a lot of success and the reason will be on full display in the Senate over the next couple of weeks.
So, that's it for me. I hope everyone's being safe, and avoiding people, and be good. Talk to you soon.
Congress after the attempt to overthrow democracy: Democratic Senator Chris Murphy
Two-term Democratic Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut joins Ian Bremmer to talk about his harrowing experience during the Capitol riots of January 6, why he thinks an impeachment trial is still valuable even if Republican support for a conviction looks increasingly unlikely, if he believes President Biden's $1.9 trillion stimulus package will pass both chambers, and how he thinks US-China foreign policy should change under the new administration.
Watch this extended interview from the recent episode of GZERO World: After the insurrection: will Congress find common ground?