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Trump's NYC hush-money trial: What to watch for
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: Trump's trials.
Former President Trump faces or faced six civil or criminal actions against him in 2024, an election year. Two of which, civil finds that he was already found liable for. He's had to pay significant sums of money. Two of which, a case in Georgia and one in Florida, are very unlikely to start in this year, and one of which could start later this summer, this federal trial against Trump for election interference in Washington, DC. The final trial is set to begin next week. A trial in Manhattan for business records frauds related to hush money payments he made to a woman he was having an affair with before the 2016 election.
The key witness in this trial is Michael Cohen, Trump's former attorney, who Trump's going to try to discredit the testimony of by saying, “He's a liar, he's out for publicity. But the evidence against Trump is pretty damning here. There's almost no, it sure looks like he committed this crime. However, the allegations will have to be proven in court. Trump could win this case and the jury could decide to throw out the corroborating evidence. There's a lot of ways this could still go in Trump's favor. And if it does, that will be a significant win for Trump, because a significant portion of the electorate is telling pollsters today that if Trump is found guilty of a crime before the election, they would be less likely to vote for him.
Trump support drops by about ten percentage points in a New York Times poll from earlier in the year, based on whether or not he's found guilty. And these are really high stakes, drama for Trump. One of the key political inoculates Trump has is that the trial could be over quickly. He also is going to make the case that this is a politically motivated witch hunt and that Alvin Bragg, the Manhattan DA, is out to get him and stop him and undermine him because he's a Democrat. That message is certainly resonating with Republicans. The key question for Trump's election campaign is, “Does that message resonate with independents, or do they continue to see the criminal charges against Trump as being disqualifying?”
The trial starts next week. We'll find out what happens.
How Trump's money problems could affect the 2024 election
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: It is Trump's money.
At the same time this week, his meme stock is going bananas with an IPO of Truth Social. The markets don't know what to do it. With valuation fluctuating wildly throughout its first two trading days. But no matter what, it seems likely to increase Trump's net worth by several billion dollars. Unfortunately, a lot of that money will be locked up in equities in uncertain valuation for some time, which will make it hard for Trump to use the money to shore up his struggling campaign funds.Trump has roughly a third of the cash on hand as President Biden, who's going to pad that total with a cool $25 million from a fundraiser in New York this week. Trump is, of course, the king of earned media and may not need a huge war chest to run his campaign. But if there's one thing we know about American politics is that money does not hurt.
One of the reasons Trump may be struggling to raise funds is because of the massive legal bills that he has to cover, which, according to The New York Times, have amounted to over $100 million since he left office. Some of that has been covered with campaign cash. Some of it has been covered with money from his businesses, which is going to get a lot harder for him going forward based on this decision in New York.
So money could end up being a huge story of the 2024 election. And if it is, it's because Biden has it and Trump doesn’t.
Hong Kong's new security law ends remaining political independence
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will the new security law affect all aspects of life in Hong Kong?
Takes away small remaining vestiges of political independence, none of which people expected were going to be maintained for long. The Chinese government really fast tracked this, which did, you know, antagonize a lot of people on the island. But at the same time, I mean, they're already basically shut down, you know, free Democratic media and made it impossible to engage in demonstrations that were seen as difficult or upsetting to the mainland. I mean, Hong Kong is no longer a bridge into mainland China. It is now a component of a greater Chinese economy. And to the extent that economy starts turning around and doing better, Hong Kong will do well. It's not right now, so it's not performing quite as effectively. And, you know, a lot of the expats have already gotten out of Dodge.
Is Haiti becoming a failed state?
Does look that way. I mean, we certainly don't yet have any significant policing on the ground, nor do we yet have any international peacekeepers. And even if we have them, the historical experience with them has been checkered at best. There's no effective leadership in the country. So interesting, you know, they share an island with a border right down the middle with the Dominican Republic, and the DR is one of the most effective economies in Latin America today. Just goes to show you that governance really, really matters. So painful to see this happening and so close to the United States. American willingness to put a little bit of money in, sure, but to do anything significant to try to create stability. Not at all.
Will Trump's difficulty paying his legal judgments hurt his campaign?
You would think it would, because, you know, historically, the United States has the most expensive and long electoral campaign in the world. And if you don't have money, you're not supposed to run it very effectively. But of course, Trump also is unique in his ability to get just dominate the media cycle for free. He makes headlines and he lives in everybody's head. And in that regard, it's not as important for him to have a huge amount of cash. He's also former president. And, you know, having a former president, a sitting president running against each other, it's not like he's a non incumbent that doesn't have brand recognition. That's also important for him. But at the margins, yeah, I don't think it's as important as, you know, how people feel about abortion or immigration or the economy or democracy. But is it on the top ten? Yeah, probably the top ten, may almost crack top five.
Why Mitch McConnell is stepping down
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
What are the implications of the retirement of Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell from his leadership post?
This week Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell announced his intention to step down as leader of the Republicans after serving longer in that post than anybody else in American history. There are really two implications that I can see.
The first is that McConnell was basically acknowledging the inevitable. It was very unlikely that he would be able to stay on as leader after this Congress anyway. If Donald Trump wins the presidential election, then he almost certainly is going to push McConnell out of the job. And if he didn't win the election, there's a whole generation of Republicans in the Senate who are looking for an opportunity to step up. McConnell, at 82 years old, did not represent that new generation. So the time had come to pass on the torch, and McConnell chose this February to announce it.
The second takeaway is that McConnell is really giving the speech the Democrats are hoping Joe Biden would give. McConnell's only eight months older than President Joe Biden, who's running for a second term right now. And lots of questions have come up recently about Biden's fitness for office because of his advanced age. This is going to be an increasing problem for Biden as more and more Democrats start talking about it. But in the absence of any challenger, it looks like Biden's going to be the nominee and his age will just be a liability they all have to learn to live with.
Trump continues to lead the GOP charge
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here and a Quick Take to kick off your week. Thought I'd talk about the US election. I try not to do that every week because it would get really boring.
It is, of course, the longest and most expensive and most dysfunctional of any major democracy. And would we have it any other way in the United States? Trump, of course, is getting closer and closer to the nomination on the Republican side. It is all over except for the fact that Nikki Haley does not want to drop out. She is still in it. Her arguments are that everybody should get a chance to vote and that she would be much more likely to win in the general election against Joe Biden.
All of those things are true. But as we all know, that's not the way the US electoral system works. She can't win a single state. She can't come close. South Carolina, her home state, where not just Republicans that are registered, but others can actually vote. So an open primary and she still lost by 20 points, could have lost by more. It was a respectable showing, considering just how popular Trump is. But she's got no shot. And she lost her funding just now from the Koch network, which is a big deal. When they stood up and said that they wanted to give a lot of money to Haley, they understand that they're not going to throw good money after bad.
And so that's done. And she's not likely to be able to stay in very long if she's going to lose significant funding, because she needs to be relevant in terms of the airwaves and get her message out there. She has said that she is not thinking about what's going to happen after Super Tuesday, which is almost certainly not true. But what else is she supposed to say for as long as she's in the race? I think when she loses the slate on Super Tuesday, she's going to be in a lot of trouble.
On the Biden side, no one is really running against Biden. Williamson dropped out, but most people didn't know she was in. Dean Phillips hasn't dropped out. Most people don't really know he's in. But very interestingly and coming up real soon in Michigan, where you have five and a half percent of the electorate, Arab American, and they are deeply, deeply unhappy with the fact that Biden has been so strongly supportive of Israel in the ongoing war in Gaza. And there is a significant campaign in Michigan not to support Biden, but to write in that they don't have anybody that they're in favor of. And if that proves significant, that is absolutely going to hurt the president. It's one of many things that are not going particularly well for him as we think about his effort to secure a second go at the presidency come November.
But the more relevant point in the near term is what happens in the GOP. How does Trump secure the nomination and is everyone behind him or does he lose a significant piece of Republicans? On that front, I think he gets everybody. I've seen so many people that privately have said that they were never Trump six months ago, even three months ago, people that were supporting Chris Christie, high level folks in the Republican Party that are now saying, “well, he's going to be the nominee, he's probably going to be president because they want a Republican to be president. And so we're going to get behind him.” I've seen that with John Thune just come out, the number two on the Republican side in the Senate. Tim Scott, of course, a serious adult, serious conservative who has decided he's going to be as full throated, as supportive Trump is humanly possible. A lot of the billionaires are in that camp. Koch, of course, is going to be there. But also we've seen that with Jamie Dimon coming out of Davos and so many of all of these people that have been privately saying we can't stand the guy, we want anyone but him. But since that isn't going to prove worthwhile or possible, we're going to get behind Trump.
And this is the biggest issue for democracy, he has huge amounts of support in the Republican Party, he has the money that will be behind him. But he also refuses to accept the outcome of a free and fair democratic election. That is fundamental. There's nothing that's more essential to the functioning of a democracy than being able to hold an election that people believe in and transferring power to an opponent if you lose. That fundamental assumption of democracy is something that Trump as strongly disagrees with as anything in his body and showed that off in 2020 and will show that off again in 2024 if it goes against him or if it threatens to go against him.
And the fact that is not close to the issue that exercises all of these people that privately say they can't stand this guy but will get with him, shows that they are not particularly worried about the nature of eroding US democracy. And that reality should be a top concern of American allies around the world. It should be a top hope of American adversaries looking to take advantage of American weakness around the world. It creates and injects a huge amount of chaos into the global system. The most powerful country in the world today is also the one that is least confident about the intrinsic value of its political system, doesn't really know what it stands for, and is going to continue to erode its institutions legitimacy and the strength of its institutions without particular guardrails, at least as far as this electoral cycle goes.
And that is true, frankly, no matter whether Trump or Biden wins. And again, I feel that Trump is clearly unfit for the job and it's not a matter of anything other than what I just said. And I felt that way when he was a Democrat. This has nothing to do with his political party. It certainly has nothing to do with his ideology because Trump isn't fundamentally ideological except in support of his narcissism. But the fact that even under four years of Biden, that the political institutions in the US has have continued to erode, that you continue to have stronger and stronger distance between what is seen as basic facts and belief among Democrats and Republicans. The fact that the United States is becoming more politically tribal and dysfunctional says that Trump is a symptom, a deep symptom, and a strong symptom of something that is profoundly broken in the US system. Something I've talked about for a while.
I'll talk about more going forward, but it does make us very concerned about where 2024 is going. It's why the US versus itself was our number one risk back at the beginning of this year and by a long margin, given the impact of what that means for the rest of the world, while we continue to focus on it all the way through.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Trump's Jan. 6 trial could now hurt his re-election bid
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
Will the US-proposed cease-fire plan for Israel and Hamas come to fruition amidst reports of hostage deaths?
It's not done until it's done. There are a lot of ways that it can blow up. And, you know, Netanyahu probably wants to take it to the Knesset and get, you know, support for it. And nonetheless, Hamas can always say no. But I would bet on it. I think we are going to see more hostages released. There's a lot of pressure on Israel to give away more to get that done in terms of a cease-fire. And there's a lot of pressure on Hamas to accept a longer cease-fire and see if they can keep it going. So I think we'll get at least four weeks in return for a significant number of hostages that are released. That doesn't mean that we get a peace plan. It doesn't mean we see a two-state solution. It certainly doesn't mean that the cease-fire is going to hold for longer than that period of time or even the entire period of time submitted to. There are plenty of actors that still want to see war continue on the ground.
How will upcoming elections in Pakistan affect its broader geopolitical standing in the world?
I'd say badly, but in reality not very much. I mean, the big deal is that the most popular person to run in Pakistan is not allowed to run. That's Imran Khan, the very charismatic cricketer whose party has basically been dismantled and who is himself said to be a criminal for charges that at the very least look politicized and at the worst look pretty much made up. That's not great for a democracy, even one where the military still holds an enormous amount of power. And ultimately, you're going to see a lot of instability in Pakistan, probably a lot of violence in the midst of an economy that's doing very, very badly.
Finally, the US appeals court ruled that Trump can face trial for election interference. Does this lower the odds on his possible return to the White House?
Well, I mean, it does. If you thought that the appeals court was going to rule any other way. I mean, certainly the fact that these cases are going on and that Trump might be indicted before the election, most likely in the Washington DC case, that would reduce Trump's support base among independents and make it less likely for them to turn out for him, maybe less likely some of them will vote at all than otherwise. And so of all of the wild cards out there that could really hurt Trump, a conviction is a big one, especially a conviction for a felony crime. And the fact that impunity doesn't hold in the way it's been argued by the Trump lawyers does make a difference. Still, if you were having the election right now, Trump wins. And there's a lot of time out there, but it's still a challenging road, perhaps a more challenging road for Biden today than it is for Trump. And that is something that everyone should keep a very close eye on.
US election: The GOP falls in line behind Trump
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi everybody. Ian Bremmer here and back in New York City for a Quick Take to kick off your week. Plenty happening around the world, but it is the United States election narrative that seems most important to me this week. Why?
Well, first, Tim Scott endorsed Donald Trump. Ron DeSantis dropped out, endorsed Donald Trump. It is absolutely looking like the GOP is once again Donald Trump's party. The primary season, of course, is not over. Nikki Haley from South Carolina is still in it, but it is hard for me to see how she takes a state. I look at the polls, I don't see what's available to her. She's making a lot of money and certainly there are lots of people that would like to see someone other than Trump, especially because Trump's track record over the last three elections have been so poor and the coattails are challenging, the primaries. You can beat centrists from the GOP, but then when you're actually up in a campaign itself, they've underperformed. So for all of those reasons, there are plenty of people that don't want to see Trump in the presidential race against Biden that Nikki Haley, or just about anybody else would probably beat Biden much more easily.
But Trump is dominant in the GOP, and I think it is all over but for a couple more sort of day cycles. It's hard for me to see how Nikki has a path to the nomination. I guess it is conceivable that she would stay out there and become a never-Trump voice. I personally doubt it. I expect that she will end up endorsing Trump just as almost everyone, except Chris Christie, has that's been going against him. I see across the board the GOP getting in line and becoming loyal to their nominee. And that's important because it looks very likely, increasingly likely, that Trump will indeed be convicted, at least in Washington, DC, in all of these indictments that you see before he is facing the election on November 5th. But if he's convicted after he's already gotten the nomination, the overwhelming majority of those in the GOP are going to say either “it doesn't really count for much. We still support him”, or even “it's politicized. It's not a real case. We think it's a witch hunt, as Trump has been saying. We think we need to go against and investigate the Bidens and those that have supported them.”
So the impeachment schedule for all sorts of characters around the Biden administration grows in a Republican-led House. I'd say dominated, but it's not. They only have a two-seat majority right now. But otherwise, the speaker goes if they don't do their bidding. And also that this doesn't really undermine Trump's ability to be competitive in the election overall. If you made me bet right now, I'd say Trump is 60:40 likely to win the presidency, but I have very low conviction around that.
First of all, these are both very old candidates. Anything could happen to them in ten months leading up to the election. Secondly, there's been all sorts of new unexpected news in a very volatile geopolitical environment. A year ago, no one was talking about war in the Middle East, people saying how stable it was. Now it's dominating the news every day. You really think we get through ten more months without another out of the blue significant geopolitical conflict? Frankly, I doubt it. North Korea would be the most likely to see a true wild card, but massive expansion of the Middle East also certainly plausible. Plenty of other places too. Cyber attacks, challenges with AI disinformation in the US election. This is going to be an electoral cycle that is going to have all sorts of out of the blue risks. And so to come out early and say, I feel confident that Trump is going to win or Biden is going to win, strikes me as pretty foolish at this point.
There was a consensus in Davos that Trump is going to do much better than people think, that Biden should really step down. The Davos consensus is frequently wrong. Does that mean you bet against it? No, it just means it's not a very interesting data points. I don't talk very much about it, frankly, but I do think it's important that all of the people attending, both on the corporate side, the financial side, and especially on the government side, finally do understand that Trump is for real again, that he's getting the nomination and he can easily be the next president. So if that consensus means that European leaders in particular and others are going to start preparing for how they would engage with a Trump presidency 2.0, for how they will respond to a Trump presidency 2.0, how they prepare themselves for the policy implications and the uncertainties of their most important ally being so much more volatile over the course of four years.
I think that is a very positive thing indeed. So that's a little bit of where I see the race right now and what we're going to be expecting real soon. The willingness to jump on board and support Trump no matter what he has said about you before, no matter how he is acted, just like DeSantis is pulling a Ted Cruz. Watch everyone get ready to do that in the coming weeks.
That's where we are. Hope everyone's doing well and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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El Salvador's Bukele: The posterboy for popular authoritarianism
Here's one country where democracy is on the backslide, and the increasingly authoritarian leader could not be more popular. El Salvador's Nayib Bukele won the presidency at 37, as Latin America's youngest elected head of state, as an outspoken candidate on social media with an affinity for cryptocurrency.
In a wide-ranging interview on the state of global democracy in 2024, Stanford's Francis Fukuyama explains Bukele's crime-fighting appeal: "El Salvador legitimately elected Nayib Bukele as president, but he embarked on this massive effort to simply round up people that he thought were gang members and put them in prison, no trial, no, judicial process to find out whether they're actually guilty or not. And as a result, around 10% of the young men in the country are now sitting in prison. Uh, and it's been quite successful in reducing the level of gang violence in El Salvador by like 90%."
And Bukele's approval rating today stands at about 90%. It's just one example of a democratically elected leader pushing the boundaries of what his constitutional mandate allows.