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Evan Solomon
Evan Solomon is the publisher of GZERO Media and a member of Eurasia Group’s Management Committee. He is excited to grow the GZERO brand with engaging new offerings and partnerships that help viewers around the globe better understand the rapidly changing world in which they live.
Evan has been one of Canada’s preeminent journalists for more than 25 years. Prior to joining GZERO, he was the host of CTV’s nightly political program "Power Play" and of Canada’s most-watched political TV show, the Sunday morning "Question Period." He also hosted "The Evan Solomon Show," a daily iHeartRadio/Bell Media radio program.
Evan has a long history of building brands and creating programs, starting as the co-founder of the pioneering Shift Magazine, an international digital culture magazine, and as the founder of the Sirius XM show and podcast "Everything is Political." He has also hosted the PBS series "Masters of Technology" and CBC shows such as "Power and Politics," "CBC News: Sunday," "The House," and "FutureWorld." Evan has reported on events from around the world, covering Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and he has interviewed key political figures, from prime ministers and presidents to the Dalai Lama. Evan’s best-selling books include "Fueling the Future: How the Battle Over Energy is Changing Everything" and "Feeding the Future: From Fat to Famine, How to Solve the World’s Food Crisis.” He has also been a columnist for Macleans and The Globe and Mail.
President Joe Biden addresses the nation about his decision to step back from the 2024 presidential race on July 24, 2024.
For a moment last night, America lived up to its best ideals. It often does in the dark hours.
President Joe Biden addressed the nation from the Oval Office to explain his reluctant decision to step away from the 2024 campaign — a campaign he was forced to accept, in a humiliating but necessary way, that he could not win — in a rare moment of sacrifice over ego, service over ambition.
Though age has severely diminished Biden’s capacities, it has not diminished his dignity or character.
Character is not something we talk about a lot in politics these days. But as Biden raspily and haltingly defended his presidential record, his vision for the future, and his 50 years of service, he showed genuine character.
Character is more than just toughness, grit, and fortitude amid a fight, though surely it can encompass those qualities. Character is more than just grace in loss, and Biden knows more about that than most, having lost his wife Neilia and his 1-year-old daughter Naomi to a car accident in 1972, and then his son Beau to brain cancer in 2015. Character is what happens after those moments. It’s what you do with the time left, how you reassemble the pieces and build something with purpose. It’s reflected in the ideas you hold and the people you serve, even if those ideas fail and people turn on you. Character is the story your life tells when you might no longer have the strength to tell it yourself.
“Nearly all men can withstand adversity,” President Abraham Lincoln once said, “but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” You don’t have to agree with what Biden fought for, you don’t have to like his record, and you don’t have to support his party, but last night, President Joseph R. Biden, who still has more power than anyone on earth, passed the character test. And he asked a riven country to try to do the same.
Now let’s turn to the campaign, which, as ever, is a testing ground of character.
Campaign rallies are not known for their subtle rhetoric, so when a local politician is trying to juggle the twin duties of whipping up a partisan crowd while simultaneously kissing their candidate’s butt, it’s usually not surprising they get a little sloppy.
But it’s worth paying attention to what Ohio Sen. George Lang said to a crowd as he introduced former President Donald Trump and JD Vance the other day. Arriving at the podium chanting Trump’s now-famous epizeuxis “fight, fight, fight,” Lang warned of an upcoming civil war if Democrats win the election. “I believe wholeheartedly Donald Trump and Butler County’s JD Vance are the last chance to save our country politically,” Lang said, sweating with enthusiasm in the summer sun. “I’m afraid if we lose this one, it’s going to take a civil war to save the country.” And then, he added a little boost for those prepping for battle. “If we come down to a civil war, I’m glad we got people like Bikers for Trump on our side.”
No one followed Lang on stage and pushed back or suggested it was horrendously dangerous rhetoric. It wasn’t until much later when the recklessness of the comments began to circulate more widely that Lang was forced to apologize.
“Remarks I made earlier today at a rally in Middletown do not accurately reflect my view,” Lang said, as if somehow his mouth had gone rogue from his brain. “I regret the divisive remarks I made in the excitement of the moment on stage. Especially in light of the assassination attempt on President Trump last week, we should all be mindful of what is said at political events, myself included."
Amen to that.
Still, fears of a second civil war permeate the campaign, and while I don’t normally hyperventilate over these hypothetical, partisan-stoked fears because the institutions in the US have mostly proven to be resilient, the horrific assassination attempt on Trump and the events of Jan. 6, 2021, have made the descent in political violence a genuine scenario that demands attention. Stable democracies, like bankruptcy, end in two ways: gradually, and then suddenly.
People in the US are getting used to this sort of rhetoric by now — though normalizing it is one of the most dangerous signs of decline — but people outside the US, especially in the country’s closest allies, are deeply apprehensive. Is the US really inching toward a civil war?
To find out, we partnered on a poll with David Coletto, CEO and chair of Abacus Data, and the results are unsettling. Thirty-nine percent of Canadians say it is likely that the United States will descend into civil war, while another 23% believe it is somewhat likely. 39%? Yes. The numbers are starker among young people, with 48% of people between the ages of 18 and 29 saying a civil war is likely.
“Canadians are watching the increasing polarization and political violence in the US, and many of them are not shutting the door to that division escalating into full-scale civil war,” Coletto says. “Younger Canadians, in particular, are inclined to think that the very worst outcome is at least a possibility.”
While the polling figures are accurate, let’s hope the sentiments are wrong.
Abacus also asked about mandatory retirement ages for politicians in the wake of Biden’s agonizing decision to step aside and, again, most Canadians heartily agree that he is too old to lead. Seventy-three percent believe there should be a maximum age for a president or prime minister. What age? 28% say 71-plus while 48% say somewhere between 61 and 70, which is surprising.
“The whole Joe Biden saga put into clear perspective the effect aging can have on leaders charged with the most important executive functions in the world,” Coletto says. “Most Canadians think political leaders have a best-before date, and the average age of a president or prime minister is around the usual age of retirement, which is 65.”
You can see the full poll results and Coletto’s comments about it here. GZERO will continue to work with Abacus Data, a well-respected Canadian polling firm, to explore how Canadians and Americans feel about their relationship, the US election, and more in the coming 100 days. Check out their work here.
Republican presidential nominee and former President Donald Trump raises his fist during Day 1 of the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 15, 2024.
Does the thrill of political momentum threaten to undermine the most important part of any campaign: the policies?
By any measure — polls, donor dollars, media attention — all the political momentum, or “mo,” in campaign 2024 has swung to Donald Trump. It started after Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance — it was like a coming-out party for the erosions of old age — but hit speed records in the wake of the tragic assassination attempt. The former president’s now-iconic moment of badassery, when, blood trickling down his face, he pumped his fist and yelled, “Fight, fight, fight,” has animated Republicans. He says he even changed his convention speech to reflect the reality of political violence and polarization — and that will be one of the big things to watch for tonight. Many, like Sen. Marco Rubio, argued that Trump’s survival was proof of divine intervention (Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene called it a “miracle” and claimed the flag aboveDonald Trump took the form of an angel right before the gunshot), infusing the campaign with a Christian nationalism and eschatology.
Tech oligarch Elon Musk just announced that he is donating $45 million a month to Trump, joining his billionaire tech bro Peter Thiel on the MAGA train that is surprisingly making lucrative stops in Silicon Valley, once a bastion of Democratic support. Adding to the Trump “mo” is the ascension of 39-year-old Marine veteran, financier, lawyer, and “Hillbilly Elegy” author JD Vance as the VP nominee. Vance’s biographically marbled speech at the RNC on Wednesday night highlighted his background in an Ohio devastated by globalization and the opioid crisis. It featured his mother, who has struggled with addiction, a personal story that tenderized the red meat served up earlier by Donald Trump Jr. and Peter Navarro. Navarro had just been released from a four-month sentence for defying a subpoena from the Jan. 6 congressional committee — and was cheered as a hero, which was as telling about the new RNC anti-institution, radical culture as anything that has happened so far.
Vance directly appealed to working-class voters in key swing states like Michigan and Pennsylvania. At times, it sounded like an old-school pro-union, pro-tariff Democrat speech from the 1990s, and it was a starkly different pitch than the massive corporate tax cuts Trump pitches, but it’s now on-brand for the neo-Republican coalition of angry working-class males and right-wing, anti-regulatory tech, energy, and mining elites.
MAGA now has an heir but more importantly a license to think generationally as opposed to just four-year election cycles. This is no longer about just an impulsive “dictator-for-a-day” vengeance win over the Biden administration and the “wokeys.” It’s about a fundamental hard-right-wing rewiring of American politics and international relations. The battle plan is the Heritage Foundation’s Platform 2025, and the foot soldiers are the once-fringe MAGA-ites like Marjorie Taylor Greene, Donald Trump Jr., and Matt Gaetz, who will play significant roles in a Trump administration.
This is what the Trump “mo” looks like numerically: A new YouGov poll has Trump ahead in key swing states like Arizona (+7 points), Georgia, (+4), Michigan (+2), North Carolina (+4), Wisconsin (+5), and Pennsylvania (+3). In other words, Trump and his MAGA-ites are out-polling, out-rolling, and out-trolling Democrats on all levels.
Meanwhile, it’s chaos in Bidenlandia, where the president is collecting bad news like a wool sock gathers burrs in the forest. On Wednesday, he revealed he has COVID as he was desperately trying to reset his campaign and get over his stilted, confused, mistake-riddled performances. He’s now picking up viruses faster than endorsements, and the odds that he will not make it to the convention as the nominee are rising.
A new poll from the AP-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research revealed that most Democrats want Biden to step down, a sentiment buttressed by a stunning call from high-ranking Democrat Rep. Adam Schiff, who is running for the Senate in California. “I believe it is time for him to pass the torch,” Schiff said. Late Wednesday, New York Sen. Chuck Schumer reportedly joined the calls for Biden to leave, but he did so privately. Et tu, Chuck?
The thing about political momentum is that it’s often generated by factors that have nothing to do with the core reason elections exist: policy. Who has the best ideas to govern the country? That is the core question, not who looks best in an ad. This is an election to run a country, not an audition for a modeling agency, but it’s hard to tell the difference anymore. How much does an assassination attempt or a bad debate performance have to do with who is best to deal with a rogue Russia, an aggressive China, or a war in the Middle East? Who can tackle inflation, productivity issues, and climate change? Who will handle AI regulation or protect the rights of minorities? Who will handle the border crisis? Who will actually create jobs? Do tariffs help the economy, or drive up costs? Who will stand for a peaceful transition of power or an independent judiciary? Who should pick the seats on the Supreme Court?
On all these matters, there are real, consequential policy debates – on some, Republicans are stronger, and on others, Democrats are stronger. This is the battlefield on which Biden would like to fight because he believes Trump — with his 34 felonies and his readiness to throw Ukraine to Russia, Taiwan to China, and most judicial and governing checks and balances out the window — is vulnerable. But he can’t. The political momentum is against Biden, and when that happens, you lose the most important aspect of campaigning: setting the agenda.
Biden is totally reactive now, and even as he pitches policies to get on his front foot — on Wednesday he was courting Latinos with the promise that undocumented spouses of US citizens could avoid getting deported — they evaporate like a puddle in Death Valley. When he gets to a stage to talk about policy, he can barely articulate the words without stumbling, faltering, and losing his train of thought. For post-debate Biden, the mistakes are the message. That’s what happens when you lose the political mo.
Things can change, of course. Events happen, like the horrible shooting or the debate, and suddenly the big mo shifts, but it’s getting late and harder to see that happening. For now, the biggest story of the campaign is not policy, it’s momentum, and while that makes for dramatic storylines, it tells voters less about potential Gulf wars and more about fabricated golf scores. Political mo matters and is essential to winning, but it can be used to introduce policy ideas or to avoid them and focus only on attacks and slogans.
There is another consequence: Political mo speeds everything up and floods the zone with stories about snap polls and hot takes on winners and losers. But the whole point of campaigns is to debate the opposition, to pause from the pace of governing, and slow things down for a considered reset. Campaigns are meant for people to ask questions. Check facts. Read the details. Holds folks accountable. And make a considered decision.
That’s not political mo — it’s policy mo. Political mo and policy mo should be intimately linked, but with the dramatic events these past months — felony convictions, age-related floundering, shootings — the coverage is over-indexing on the politics and under-indexing on policy. When each candidate has such a radically different view of America, a little policy mo is badly needed. Sadly, it’s turning out that examining ideas closely and factually is a political loser.
US President Joe Biden greets Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau as they attend NATO's 75th anniversary summit in Washington, July 10, 2024.
For President Joe Biden right now, his biggest challenge is stepping down.
Feverishly trying to quell the internal Democrat rebellion — which actor/democratic fundraiser George Clooney publicly joined yesterday — Biden is doing interviews and working backrooms to try to hold on to power. It’s not working. Despite many allies coming forward to defend him against the so-called nervous nellies, Biden cannot contain the daily calls to step down that are coming from inside the Democratic house. Instead of fighting Donald Trump on one front, as he should be right now, Biden is fighting a two-front war, one internally and one externally, and it looks increasingly like he will lose both. The center cannot hold.
Stepping up is often seen as an act of leadership and courage, leaning into a fight against all odds. Stepping down is viewed as weak, a retreat from the arena. So it’s natural that Biden insists on stepping up and continuing to fight. That’s a given for any political leader.
But after the disastrous debate revealed how diminished Biden has become, 10 House Democrats, one senator, and countless high-profile Democratic operators like James Carville are openly trying to rebrand Biden stepping down as an act of leadership, not surrender. They argue Biden has served well and his record is strong, but that the best way to protect his legacy is to step away and let someone else defend it. They are right.
Democrats are haunted by the ghost of Ruth Bader Ginsburg. Despite deep concerns about her age and her health, the legendary Supreme Court justice refused to step down to let President Barack Obama and the Democrat-controlled Senate appoint a new justice. Instead, she kept stepping up, clinging to her post for so long that when she finally passed away at 87, Donald Trump got to replace her. In the blink of an eye, RBG’s legacy was in tatters and Roe v. Wade was overturned. It was a generational error for Democrats, and many see it being repeated with Biden.
In 2008, when Hillary Clinton was running against Obama, she released the famous “3 a.m. phone call” ad. “It’s 3 a.m., your children are safe and asleep, who do you want answering the phone?,” the baritone phone asked, before cutting to a picture of Clinton on the phone dealing with a crisis. Does anyone believe Biden could take that call now? In four years? Biden recently announced — in a shocking own goal — that he won’t be doing events after 8 p.m. so he can get more sleep. So one thinks a guy Trump has dubbed “Sleepy Joe” needs more sleep. What happens at 3 a.m. when the phone rings? Biden might not even be able to hit the snooze button.
In parliamentary democracies, there are votes of no confidence, which can bring down a government and remove a leader. It is a key check and balance on power. In the US, this doesn’t exist. A motion to vacate can remove the Speaker of the House, as we saw recently with Kevin McCarthy, but outside of impeachment, removing a president is hard. Still, the growing calls for Biden to step down — especially from people who admire and have supported him — are a de facto vote of no confidence.
The next few days are crucial for Biden as he does public interviews and leads the NATO summit to try to show the world he is still in the game and ready to lead for four more years. It will not be enough. Biden can’t interview his way out of old age anymore than Trump can promise to stop lying. These are two immutable candidate qualities. The challenge for both parties is to either accept these profound flaws of their leaders — as Republicans clearly have — and damn the consequences or … to honestly assess the situation and do something about it.
For Biden in 2024, stepping down would be his way of stepping up.
For Justin Trudeau, who is also facing multiple calls to step down, this week is a reversal: He has to answer calls to step up on national defense, and he just has. Today, Trudeau announced that Canada will finally reach the target of 2% of GDP to be spent on the military by 2032, though he has not revealed many details on how this will happen. We cover this later in the newsletter, but Trudeau clearly realizes that on the 75th anniversary of NATO, with a war raging in Ukraine and Trump possibly winning the next election, NATO laggards are losers. Hitting the 2% target is now table stakes if Canada is to be taken seriously in NATO or at the G7 or G20. But is it realistic?
As important as it is to hit the NATO target, it will not be cheap. Tens of billions of dollars will be added to the national defense budget, something the Trudeau government, or a potential Conservative government led by Pierre Poilievre, would have to find. That means either higher deficits or deep program cuts. The reason Canada has not hit the 2% mark before is simple: choices. There are more votes in health care transfer payments and social programs than in defense. But Trudeau knows that he has to make this promise to be taken seriously and to have any purchase with a future Trump administration. It is an open question to see if future governments actually fulfill it and stick to the timeline.
Is it enough to help Trudeau in the polls? No. It will make no difference. His dismal polling numbers are tied to inflation, the cost of housing, and nine years of governance, not national defense. But sometimes, even when facing calls to step down, you have to make the hard choice to step up.
Leadership is about knowing when to step down and when to step up.
Happy debate night as we all hunker down for the face-to-face rematch in Atlanta of the Age vs. Rage election, now just hours away.
More than anything else tonight at the presidential debate, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be hunting for the one viral video clip that will define their opponent and frame the campaign. For the first time in close to four years, they will share a stage, and millions of people across blue and red states will finally exit their bias-affirming bubbles and tune in collectively to a single program. Just that fact alone — that it’s a moment when tens of millions of people across the hyper-fractured country gather for a common, shared political reality — makes tonight critical.
The three big factors: Age, Rage, and what happens on Stage. Make no mistake, policies and issues are critical and should be the main course tonight. Immigration, inflation, taxes, foreign affairs, abortion stance, and those pesky 34 felonies … all those matter and will be the focus of the moderators' agenda, according to CNN. But since the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy faceoff through today’s hyper-accelerated, viral social media culture, the impact of presidential debates has moved from policy to personality, from ideas to image. It is all about “the clip.”
There are different kinds of clips.
The Stumble Clip: Biden is much more vulnerable here because the consensus narrative around him is that, at 81, he’s simply too old for the job. One verbal trip, a name mix-up, a fumble, or one inopportune freeze will have exponentially outsized impact. The worst stumble clip might well be when former Texas Gov. Rick Perry ran for the Republican nomination in 2011 and famously forgot which government agency he promised to cut. “It is three agencies of government that are gone when I get there," he thundered on live TV. “Commerce, education, and … umm … uh, the, uh … what’s the third one there … let’s see …” He started to fumble desperately and, pressed to name the agency by the moderator, he checked his notes for a lifeline. Only there was nothing there. Perry’s blank space went viral long before Taylor Swift’s, and he finally petered out, mumbling the politically radioactive word: “Oops.” It was over. Biden cannot have a Perry moment.
Even at his best, Biden speaks in a slow, raspy drawl, like the sludge-filled tributaries of the Lackawanna River, which cuts through his hometown of Scranton, Pennsylvania. Between awkward pauses, Biden often punctuates his words with sock-hop-era words like “malarkey,” which adds sepia tones to his already vintage vibe struggling to find a place in a hi-def world.
Trump will try to interrupt, even if they mute his mic, to throw Biden off, while attacking the president on the border, the Middle East, and inflation. So, more than anything else, Biden needs to look and sound alert, quick on his feet, on top of the details, and strong.
Though Trump also stumbles, makes multiple factual errors, and gets names wrong, that’s long been baked into his personality. What’s another 34 untruths or 34 stumbles next to his 34 felonies? None of it sticks. The age-related stumble is not Trump’s worry. He has to watch out for another trap: The Chaos Clip.
The Chaos Clip: Trump is the great conductor of political chaos, culminating in the Jan. 6 attack on the US Capitol. Even fellow Republicans thought that was the end of Trump. It wasn’t. Trump has not only recovered, he’s transformed the Jan. 6 mob into heroes and hostages, a stunning rebranding exercise and one that takes center stage at his rallies. Still, if Trump coughs up a clip about not respecting the election results, lashes out at the justice system to repudiate his 34 felony charges, says he will pull out of NATO, or threatens to drop a nuke on Iran or otherwise destabilize the world order, it could undermine his campaign.
Too much chaos fueled by his bottomless pool of rage and resentment would be deeply damaging. Biden will try to bait him here, and I wonder if he gets so bold as to call Trump a “felon” to his face. Still, Trump loves the stage, doesn’t rely on notes, and if he looks strong, overpowering, and avoids the chaos, it is all upside for him.
The Killer Clip: From Ronald Regan’s famed 1980 zinger, “There you go again” aimed at Jimmy Carter – which 44 years ago seemed nasty and today would barely register – to the 1988 uppercut Lloyd Bentsen landed in the vice presidential debate, telling Dan Quayle “Senator, You are no Jack Kennedy,” this is the sought-after, white whale of political debates. Biden came close in the last debate with his “Will you shut up man,” showing he could punch off the ropes. He will need that again – look for it on Trump’s convictions, abortion, and foreign policy. But no one delivers nastier or more quotable quips than Trump. If he senses Biden is stumbling, he could deliver a killer clip from which Biden might not recover.
So as they hunt for the clip of the night – and as their staff prep as much for the post-debate social media moments as the debate itself – Biden needs to overcome age, Trump needs to contain rage, and both need to avoid a big gaffe on stage.
Can’t wait for 9 p.m. EDT.
We have lots of coverage of the debate for you. Ian Bremmer will be watching, and we will get a video of his insights into a Quick Take video tonight right after the debate, so check our site and social platforms for that. On Friday at 7 a.m., look for GZERO Daily, which will be filled with analysis. At 10 a.m. EDT Friday, I’ll be hosting a live X space with our team and special guests to go over the hits, misses, and the impact of the debate. Join in and it will get spicy.
John Lieber will also have his take on what’s next in our US election video series on Friday. And, oh yes, please play along with our debate bingo, which is a great way to engage with things tonight.
He has the look of an aging but determined Rafael Nadal trying to make one last comeback. He heaves his body back and looks poised to crush a forehand, as he has a thousand times before. This time, however, it doesn’t go as expected. To his utter shock, the ball hits the net and limply falls to the ground. “Why?” his look implies. “Why are we losing here?” He resets to try for another point, but he nets it again.
Only this isn’t Nadal.
It’s Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans and current co-chair of Joe Biden’s reelection campaign. Landrieu, like so many progressives looking for another Obama moment, cannot understand why so many people are choosing Trump over Biden. It’s like there is an invisible, Don DeLillo-esque cloud hanging overhead with the words, “How are we losing to him?”
Make no mistake, Landrieu is very good at his job and not only deeply understands Biden’s policies — after all, he helped oversee the trillion-plus-dollar infrastructure bill — he’s also a Biden believer. That means he can’t stand Donald Trump. Or, more precisely, he cannot understand why so many people like the former president.
So here he was, playing the anti-Trump hits on stage in Toronto at our US-Canada Summit to a room that just kept shrugging: 34 felony convictions; sexual assault charge; Jan. 6 insurrection; can’t keep staff; Trump’s own attorney general, Bill Barr, called his claims of a stolen election "bogus.” Periodically, Landrieu would look at the crowd, seemingly exasperated by the lack of emotion, and ask, “Why are we normalizing Donald Trump?” But he never asked the more painful question: “Why are our policies so unpopular?” He was like the aging athlete, baffled as to why he is still not winning.
The Dems’ case against Trump has been made countless times, but it simply is not working. At Eurasia Group, we have the odds of Trump winning at 60%. David Axelrod, the former Obama campaign guru and current CNN political commentator, was with us watching Landrieu. As I wrote last week, I asked Axelrod whether Democrats need to spend more time reflecting on why their policies are not connecting with voters and less time trying to convince people that Trump is a big baddy.
“Absolutely,” he responded, going on to describe how Democrats have lost touch with large swaths of the American public, content with lecturing them in condescending tones about how to be better citizens and “more like us” — meaning the folks who run around Washington telling people what to say and what not to say. Democrats are like the kid in the front of the class with his hand up all the time. He may have the right answers, but no one likes him.
“Strong and wrong beats weak and right,” Axelrod said, repeating a Bill Clinton line. And Biden looks weak. Not only that, Axelrod made the point that Democrats focus too heavily on what they have done in the past, not what they will do in the future.
What’s next beats what was, and progressives are losing on that score. Anew poll from the American Survey Center found that “Nearly six in 10 (58 percent) say America’s best days are behind it. Forty percent say America’s best days are yet to come.” This marks a huge change since 2020 when most Americans were optimistic about the future.
As Daniel Cox writes, while most candidates run on optimism, Trump runs on pessimism because it’s connecting with his large constituency — primarily white male voters. “Forty-three percent of Americans who believe people are not to be trusted have a favorable view of Trump compared to 28 percent of those who say people are generally trustworthy,” he writes. It’s not morning again in America, like under Ronald Reagan; this is Trump’s American carnage, reflecting how many people actually think.
Incumbents around the world are facing “Thelma & Louise” moments right now: If they keep doing what they are doing, they will drive off a cliff. So it’s not just progressives. In the UK, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is already airborne and plummeting toward the ground. Narendra Modi got punished in India. Emmanuel Macron is floundering in France, and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is in even worse political shape.
A new Ipsos poll done for Global News found that 68% of Canadians want Trudeau to step down. Snowstorms poll higher than that in Canada. “This is as bad as we’ve seen it for Trudeau,”Ipsos CEO Darrell Brickertold Global. “It’s close to rock bottom.”
On June 24, Trudeau will face a major test with a byelection in what has long been one of the safest Liberal ridings in the country, St. Paul’s, in downtown Toronto. The Liberals should win easily, but it’s going to be close, and if they somehow lose, Trudeau will feel more heat than from today’s weather bomb to step down. (Conservatives don’t want him to go, preferring to run against a weakened Trudeau in the next election.)
Still, the point remains: Progressive ideas are not connecting. If the policies were actually working — a case both Biden and Trudeau are trying to make — poll results would look rosier. But they don’t.
Trudeau’s signature tax on carbon to deal with climate change is now a shield — not a sword — issue. His attempt to change the narrative by igniting a class war with his new capital gains tax on the rich has done little to reframe the narrative, but the poorly explained policy has alienated lots of centrist voters. In politics, the old saw “Explaining is losing” has always seemed trite to me — policy often takes time to be understood — but if the explanation is bad, then, yeah, you are losing.
Biden is trying to boost his image by offering undocumented spouses a pathway to permanent US residency and his student loan forgiveness. Both may be popular, but neither has really improved his polling. Why?
Trudeau is facing a change wave, and Biden an age wave, but the issues are deeper than that. The fundamental premise that progressives pitch — that their social and economic policies work to improve people’s quality of life — is losing its plausibility, weakened by inflation, a world in crisis, and a long-term, low-growth environment. Trump may not have solid answers — his self-absorbed victimization narrative lacks facts, optimism, and generosity — but his dark view of the world reflects a mood, and people mistake that for truth. Trump reflects how many people feel; Biden is promising things many no longer believe are possible.
Populism always has an angry protest strain to it, but the response to it is usually clear: Show growth. Build things that work: roads, hospitals, opportunities. Don’t go broke. And finally, get stuff done, and be seen to be getting it done. People have to feel better about their lives. And they are not.
Progressives keep looking in the mirror, and they only see opponents they believe are unfit for office. They have to start seeing themselves and figure out why their promises and policies are not connecting more widely. Self-reflection is hard, but tearing down the other guy only works for so long, especially for an incumbent. They need to reinvent themselves as credible leaders promising something better in the future, not just recycled defenders of their past glory days. They must prove their big new promises are doable in short periods of time. Otherwise, they risk looking like those aging athletes who criticize the skills of the new generation of competitors but keep losing. In politics, the past ain't prologue. It just doesn’t work that way. Just ask Rafa Nadal.
Ian Bremmer addresses the audience at the 2024 US-Canada Summit in Toronto.
Is there a deep, secret yearning from American and Canadian voters for a radically open border? Do people really want Canada and the US to be more like the EU? OR, is border politics all about isolationism, security fears, and building walls? The results of an exclusive new poll from GZERO and Data Science will surprise you – and ought to be shaping the election campaigns in both countries.
We revealed part of the poll at the US-Canada Summit that I had the pleasure of co-hosting in Toronto, put on by the teams at Eurasia Group and BMO. Led off by our own Ian Bremmer and BMO’s CEO Darryl White, it included a remarkable collection of over 500 people, including political leaders from across the spectrum in both countries who debated, speechified, conversed, and argued.
Why are so many people so keen to discuss the US-Canada relationship? As Bremmer said, this is a hinge moment in history, with three wars raging — one in Ukraine, one in the Middle East, and one in the United States — a remark that caused gasps and nods. On top of that, 60+ elections are reshaping the world this year (Modi humbled in India, Macron in a showdown with the far right in France, Sunak shambolically slinking off in the UK). Meanwhile, China is threatening Taiwan, and AI is grinding its way through our economies and imaginations.
Gary Cohn, former director of the National Economic Council under Trump and the vice chairman of IBM, admitted that what worries him most is the collision between geopolitics and the economy. They are inextricably linked and making things worse. With the political bombs falling so close, people are desperately looking for a safe shelter, and that shelter is the US-Canada relationship. As Delaware Sen. Chris Coons said, squabbles between the two countries over tariffs or softwood lumber don’t add up to a pile of shell casing next to say China and Taiwan, which may be why the relationship is so often taken for granted or outright ignored. It is and remains one of the biggest bilateral trading relationships in the world.
Globalization is giving way to new forms of regionalism, or “friend-shoring with a vengeance.” But should the region have internal walls or not?
The mandate of the conference is to bring together people tired of partisan bickering, slogan swamping, and dizzying disinformationalizing – in other words, the bubble-blowing BS of everyday politics. They are urged to be authentic, honest, and, despite their political differences, get on with figuring out how to build something better and more secure than we have now. And they did.
Who joined in?
This is a partial list (pause for a long breath): Delaware Sen. Chris Coons, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, Canadian Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly, Industry Minister Francois Phillippe Champagne, Treasury Board President Anita Anand, who settled a major border strike during the conference, Ontario and Saskatchewan Premiers Doug Ford and Scott Moe, Alaska Gov. MikeDunleavy, political wizards like David Axelrod from the Obama campaign and Christopher Liddell, the former White House Deputy Chief of Staff to Donald Trump.
Speaking of the Trump folks, there was Gary Cohn, mentioned above, giving Canada a shot and saying it can “tag along” on US economic progress. Former Bank of Canada and England Governor Mark Carney spoke about building together based on common values, and there was Mitch Landrieu, the Biden/Harris 2024 National Campaign Co-Chair, who was in full fight mode over Trump. They were joined by more than 150 CEOs, dozens of policy wonks, and experts on everything from AI, security, economic policy, and more.
There were tray loads of interesting insights and ideas:
- On Trade: The 2026 review of the USMCA is widely seen as the most important framework for the economic future of North America, and there are genuine fears that if Trump wins (Turns out, Ivermectin may actually be a political vaccine against felony convictions) and senses that trade imbalances with the US have not changed, he will rip it up and send the economies reeling with nasty and counterproductive tariffs.
- On the Inflation Reduction Act: Candid admissions from US politicians that protectionism and US industrial policy can sideswipe Canada, simply because Canada gets forgotten.
- On Biden vs. Trump: A quote attributed to Bill Clinton was repeated as to why Biden’s good economic record is not reflected in his polling: “Strong and wrong beats weak and right.”
- On why Democrats are losing working-class voters: I asked David Axelrod why Democrats and progressives spend so much time convincing themselves that people like Trump are not fit for office but so little time reflecting on why their own policies are failing to connect with so many people. He told me — and later told the audience — that Democrats treat working-class Americans with such condescension it’s like anthropologist Margaret Mead studying what were then called “primitive societies” and telling them, “You need to be more like us, and we can teach you.” A devastating critique.
- Here is another Axe moment: Why are some independent and conservative voters tuning out Trump?” “Having Trump as president is like living next to someone who runs a leaf blower 24/7.”
- Personnel is policy: Gary Cohn spoke about why you need to know the people in power. “Any president gets to make 2,800 appointments — they make them all — but ‘personnel is policy,’ so if you want to know what Trump will do, see who he is appointing.” By the way, expect the USMCA trade negotiator Robert Leitheiser, the very guy who insisted on the six-year trade review, to be a senior member of the Trump team,
- Christopher Liddell of Trump White House 1.0, admitted that Trump didn’t know what he was doing in the first six months of his first term, but that it’s different this time, and that the planning and policies are already well underway. We should expect the first six months of a Trump 2.o to be rapid, decisive, and consequential, as he only has one term. His first target will be China and … his political enemies.
- On defense spending: Mark Carney said Canada has no more excuses and must reach 2% spending on NATO – just weeks before the NATO summit in Washington.
But there was one issue that lurked beneath the surface of cross-border politics and wasn’t raised: Should the demand by many US politicians to close down their southern border be counterbalanced by a much quieter, almost secret demand from people to … open the Canadian border, EU style?
It is not as crazy as it sounds.
GZERO commissioned an exclusive poll from our partners at Data Sciences and asked: Would you support an EU-like arrangement between the US and Canada?
The results are fascinating.
Overall, 53% said they would support such an arrangement – 50% in Canada and 55% in the US, while 33% are neutral. And, get this, only 14% are against the idea. Not surprisingly, it breaks down on party lines: 71% of Biden supporters are far more supportive the idea, while 45% of Trump supporters want it. In Canada, it’s almost an even split: 50% LPC/NDP lime it while on the right, 54% of CPC/PPC support the idea.
The point? The longest undefended border in the world is still very defended, and millions of people would like to cross more easily, work more freely, and trade more efficiently. In 2022, US trade with Mexico was $855 billion, and with China it was $758 billion. With Canada? $908 billion.
So making US-Canada trade more efficient with an EU-style arrangement seems like a no-brainer. Last week, we all celebrated D-Day and the beginning of the fight for peace. So many people died in that bloody sacrifice, yet today, the French and the Germans, who fought two world wars that left millions on both sides slaughtered, can move, trade, and work freely across each other's borders in a way Americans and Canada can only dream about. It is baffling.
If anything is a warning about why closing borders and setting up tariffs is disastrous, look at the UK and Brexit, which has essentially tanked the UK economy. The Brexit-loving Conservatives under Rishi Sunak are now facing a potential political extinction event on par with the Canadian Conservative party of 1993, when Brian Mulroney went from winning the biggest majority in Canadian history to stepping down months before an election his party lost so badly they were left with two lonely seats.
We are heading into a US election and a possible Canadian election where low growth, high inflation, and fear of an unstable world might kill prosperity. Why aren’t the two best friends in the world campaigning on an idea that has proven to be one of Europe’s great drivers of growth? An open border.
We all get it. The politics of the southern border is driving politics at the northern border, but if voters can distinguish between the two, why can’t politicians?
They likely never will. And this may be the most 2024 political moment of all: Ignore the quiet ideas people want, and focus on the noisy fights no one can stand.
Illustration of the graves at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial after the US ceremony marking the 80th anniversary of the World War II D-Day Allied landings in Normandy, in Colleville-sur-Mer, France, on June 6, 2024.
At 5:52 a.m. on June 6, 1944, Private First Class Gene Sellers, a high-school football star who had just received a scholarship to play at the University of Arkansas, leaped from a plane to parachute behind Nazi lines in Normandy, France. As part of the Pathfinder unit, Sellers’ job was to set up a covert radio and communications base to help guide the rest of the American troops who would follow hours later as part of Operation Overlord. Tragically, Sellers drifted too far behind enemy lines and was spotted and killed, becoming the first American casualty of D-Day.
Later that morning, on a nearby strip of coastline, Jim Parks,of the Royal Winnipeg Rifles, joined 21,000 other Canadians attempting to land at Juno Beach. They immediately came under heavy German fire, and Parks had to jump into the ocean.
“I was a mortar carrier,” Parks says in a remarkable video you can watch at the Juno Beach Centre. Weighed down by all his equipment, Parks thought he would drown, but somehow he managed to swim to shore. Once there, however, he had to go back into the heaving ocean and drag out the bodies of men who’d been shot in the first minutes of the operation. There were 359 Canadians among the 4,000 Allied troops who made the ultimate sacrifice on that day.
The 80th anniversary of D-Day is being marked today by world leaders, including President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, both of whom are in France alongside the very few remaining veterans who witnessed the carnage.
This anniversary is particularly resonant as the West questions whether the alliances that have supported the world for 80 years are coming to an end. Will Election Day in the US lead to a Trump administration that backs out of NATO and moves toward realigning the global order around a new American isolationism?
On the one hand, NATO has never been stronger. With the additions of Sweden and Finland, the alliance that started with just 12 countries is now 32 members strong. The Russian invasion of Ukraine two years ago has reanimated the purpose of NATO and the need to protect and defend democracies. By that measure, alliances are stronger and more relevant than ever.
On the other hand, populist forces in the US are engaged in what might well be called “Operation Undermine”: an effort to defund NATO altogether. This week, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) got the support of 46 Republican members for her “Defund NATO” amendment to the Military Construction and Veteran Affairs appropriations bill. She sought to remove over $433 million of funding earmarked for NATO bases where US soldiers are stationed and to focus on what she calls the invasion of America on the southern border. Her amendment failed, but the effort to retreat into a radical form of US isolationism is real, robust, and ongoing.
Greene called out Canada, France, Germany, and others for failing to meet NATO’s 2% GDP defense target spending, which is a valid point. If you want insurance, you gotta pay for it.
As of this year, only 18 of the 32 countries in NATO will hit that target. Canada remains a laggard on this metric – an issue that will most certainly come up at next month’s crucial NATO summit in Washington.
This summit will mark the 75th anniversary of the alliance, and countries – including Canada – will be expected to make bigger commitments (though not enough to reach 2% in the near term) as the threats get bigger. But support will not be unanimous, and it will be interesting to see which Republicans show up and speak loudly about the importance of NATO given the fact that Donald Trump will secure the Republican nomination only days later.
Alliances, however, depend on trade as much as security. Since 1945, the small “l” liberal world order has been stitched together by global trade agreements; treaties on nuclear arms, space, AI, and climate; and myriad other issues. It has worked to achieve a period of peace and prosperity. But those structures are under threat by demagogues and isolationists who ignore their rules altogether.
The efficacy of the EU was deeply challenged by Brexit, while in North America, the next big challenge will be the 2026 renegotiation of the United States–Mexico–Canada Agreement on trade. If Trump is elected in November, he could rip it up, shredding a key alliance, hurting economic growth with tariffs, and sowing more distrust. Tariffs are always challenging to the global economy as they protect local industries but generally make goods more expensive and hurt local productivity. They also undermine global trade treaties.
That is why next week, Eurasia Group, GZERO’s parent company, and the Bank of Montreal are co-hosting a nonpartisan summit in Toronto, where they will take a deep dive into the US-Canada alliance on everything from trade and security resources to climate. This is the biggest trading relationship in the world, and ensuring that it is not disrupted is crucial for the prosperity of citizens in both countries. We will have a full report on the substance of next week’s US-Canada summit, including what guests from across the political spectrum had to say, in this newsletter.
D-Day is a reminder that alliances like ours are hard-won, obtained through the blood of people like Gene Sellers and seared in the memory of veterans like Jim Parks. Alliances like NATO allowed us all to secure our freedoms, turn former enemies into allies, and create an unprecedented period of prosperity and peace. They inspire generations of people to make sacrifices for the greater good and for the values we cherish in democracies. Those are all under threat, and today of all days, we might want to think twice before throwing away the rewards of D-Day for the politics of E-Day.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak delivers a stump speech to party members at the MK Gallery in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, while on the General Election campaign trail.
The golden rule of desperate politicians? Find a target, pick a fight.
In Britain, they are frantically rewriting dictionaries to ensure the word “desperate” is spelled “Sunak” after the poll-parched British PM Rishi Sunk – I mean Sunak – launched his campaign for the July 4th election.
Because Ian wrote about Sunak’s quizzical election call yesterday in his GZERO newsletter, I won’t warm over the fandango of foozles that have left Sunak a gaping 27 points behind Labour – from the now infamous rain-soaked “Drowning Street” launch to his follow-up visit to the Titanic shipyard. But desperate times call for desperate policies, so as sure as Pimm’s at Wimbledon, Sunak has predictably picked a target: young people.
“There’s no doubt that our democratic values are under threat,” Sunak said as he sprung a new promise to bring back a compulsory service for young people in Britain decades after the last one was disbanded in 1960. “That is why we will introduce a bold new model of national service for 18-year-olds.” For once, a Sunak policy announcement made more headlines than his campaign clangers.
The plan would require that all 18-year-old Brits give a year of service in the military (up to 30,000 people could do this) or, for the rest of the 700,000 members of that demographic, some other form of community service for one weekend a month, working with organizations like the police, NHS, and fire service.
The plan would cost about 2.5 billion pounds a year and its goal is to unite diverse Britons in a shared mission of values, selflessness, and service.
How popular is the idea? According to a new YouGov poll, 47% of Brits support the idea, while 45% oppose it. Even better for Conservatives looking for a wedge: 63% of folks over age 65 – voters who go to the polls and who often vote Conservative! – support the idea, and 53% between the ages of 50-64 support it. That adds up to a winning issue for Sunak.
Who’s against it? The vast majority of young people, with 65% of those aged 18 to 24 and 47% between the ages of 25 and 49 opposed to it.
This is what you call an intergenerational political war. For a policy meant to unite the country, the first thing it has done is divide it.
Still, to Sunak’s credit, the idea has got folks talking and it has merit. He has finally seized back some control of the agenda with a provocative idea instead of a pratfall. He has pointed out that a similar program has been successful in Sweden and that he is building on David Cameron’s 2010 volunteer program, the National Citizens Service, which is still in place.
There are also similar programs in the US and Canada. Every year over 200,000 young Americans participate in AmeriCorps, getting them to volunteer in community programs across the country, while generations have gone overseas to work in the Peace Corps, the famed international development program set up by President John F. Kennedy in 1961.
In Canada, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau started a youth volunteer program called Katimavik in the late 1970s. It’s now funded under the larger Canada Service Corps, which gets young people experience in community-based programs.
All these programs are seeds of the Kennedy “ask not what your country can do for you” generation. In principle,it’s a very good thing for leaders to push for public service and to engage with youth, giving them guidance, skills, opportunity, and structure.
However, the difference between AmeriCorps or Katimavik and Sunak’s idea is that the former two are voluntary programs, not mandatory ones. If a government wants to impose mandatory service on a generation, it would be wise to spend a long time socializing the idea, getting support, and, in general, building a consensus. Springing it on the public and using it as a major campaign platform signals to young people that they are the problem Britain needs to fix.
Really? The problem is young people? It’s not the self-inflicted wound of Brexit, which Sunak supported, that tanked the economy? It’s not the struggling NHS health care system? It’s not years of inflation, high housing prices, climate issues, security issues, immigration challenges, or the scandals that have riven the government for 14 years? Nope, forget all that. The problem is the 18-year-olds who inherited this screwed-up world. Now they are being told they must fix it.
No wonder they don’t like the idea. The young people who will be forced to start this program were only three and four years old when the Conservatives took power and steered the country to this desperate point. These same young people already had one mandated behavior policy forced on them during COVID, when they were told they must stay inside their homes for the good of the country. Now, the same folks who made them lose precious years of socializing while they held secret COVID parties at Downing Street and drinking merrily are telling youths they must “get out of the house for the good of the country.” Stay in. Get out. Make up your mind, old people.
Drafting young people into service to clean up a mess they did not make is as old as politics – every wartime draft faces this issue – but it can also point to a deep lack of accountability by governments, especially those that rely on older voters for success.
Encouraging public service is a good thing, but politicians might first want to do their jobs and create a high-growth economy before forcing young people to work (or “volunteer”) to fix the very system the politicians got paid to break.
Here is an idea. Maybe Sunak & Co. should offer to work as volunteers for one full year as politicians – do their job for free for 12 months – as an example of public service to young people.
Is that a fight worth picking? Politicians forced to work for free in service of the country they are leading? Outrageous. No way. Would never fly.
Especially when they can get young people to do the job for them.