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Podcast: What You Still May Not Know About Joe: Insights From Biden Biographer Evan Osnos
Listen: Joe Biden has been a public figure for decades but he's far from an open book. For a man who has been in national politics since the age of 29 and has made multiple attempts at the presidency (third time's a charm) it's remarkable how much he has been willing to change. In conversation with Ian Bremmer, Biden biographer and New Yorker staff writer Evan Osnos provides a deep dive into the life, legacy and potential presidency of the next leader of the free world.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or your preferred podcast platform to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.What does the world expect from Joe Biden?
In the weeks leading up to the US presidential election, we spoke to journalists and commentators from around the world about how the result might affect their countries. Then, in the days after Joe Biden's victory became clear, we went back to some of them to see what they now expect from the next American administration. Here's what we heard from Brazil, China, Ethiopia, India, Iran, Israel, Japan, Mexico, and the Philippines.
BRAZIL: Bolsonaro is alone now
Guga Chacra, Globo News
[Brazilian President Jair] Bolsonaro isn't just a leader who wants to have good relations with Trump, like Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu. He wants to replicate Trump in Brazil. The American president is his idol, his model, his inspiration. Without Trump, Bolsonaro won't have his narrative that there is a right wing alliance between him and Trump against "the communists and globalists." That is why it will be so hard for him to accept Trump's defeat. Also, he sees Biden as a leftist. It will not be easy for him to develop good relations with him. Bolsonaro is ideological, not pragmatic.
CHINA: Conflict and cooperation, at once
Wang Xiangwei, South China Morning Post
There is a growing cautious optimism in China that a Biden presidency is more likely to put a floor under the current near free-fall in relations. Having said that, Chinese officials believe that Biden will continue a hardened China policy even though his approach will be different from Trump's erratic and unpredictable style.
I believe that US-China relations could head for a new normal, characterized by intensifying confrontation and competition on issues like technology, human rights and international norms but increased cooperation on global issues including climate change and future pandemics.
ETHIOPIA: Now we have a partner again
Samuel Getachew, The Reporter
The United States remains an important nation. Despite its shortcomings, its voice is still valued and needed in the world. From democracy to human rights and trade, most people in the world see its importance. It was disheartening when it started becoming more protectionist, less of a partner in the world in the last four years. I see the vote for a Biden presidency as an endorsement of that traditional role and a rejection of what Trump was and represented. Ethiopians do feel there is now a partner and a mediator to the many challenges of not just Ethiopia but of a troubled region.
INDIA: Hoping for "American friends first"
Pramit Pal Chaudhuri, The Hindustan Times
India expects Washington's tone to soften on trade and immigration, but the trajectory of US policies not to change. The hope is the US will be less "America First" and more "American and friends first" as it continues to retreat from the idea of a world without economic barriers.
India believes Biden will soft-pedal the military element of the response to China, preferring to focus on trade and technology. New Delhi believes this is an error but believes China's own actions will force Biden to change track eventually.
The most important policy difference with Biden will be climate. Prime Minister Narendra Modi sees climate change as an existential threat to India. The Biden team has already been reaching out to fast-track cooperation in this area.
IRAN: Time is running out ahead of June election
Negar Mortazevi, Washington DC-based journalist covering Iran and the Middle East
Many Iranians are optimistic about the end of the Trump era. They want better political and economic relations with the West and prefer to de-escalate tensions with the US so that crippling sanctions are lifted. Sanctions have had a tremendous impact on the lives of ordinary Iranians, middle and working classes.
Iranian officials are urging Joe Biden to return to the nuclear deal and it is important for him to ensure a clean and mutual return to the JCPOA [the 2015 Iran nuclear deal] before we hit Iran's presidential election in June, and a change of power in Tehran.
Iranian officials have also started talking about a form of guarantee from the US to ensure that if the Biden administration returns to the deal, the next admin will not be able to leave again. This is arguably how many countries view agreements with the US now.
ISRAEL: Did Netanyahu lose his Trump card?
Neri Zilber, Tel Aviv-based journalist/commentator
The Israeli public clearly favored Trump, but the immediate post-election reaction has been more confusion than shock — watching on, like the rest of the world, at the slow, dysfunctional pace of American democracy.
The Israeli government is expecting less support from a Biden administration relative to the unconditional favoritism of Trump the past four years. However, bilateral ties, including military, will remain strong — which would be in line with Biden's own decades-long support for Israel and traditionalist foreign policy.
The more prosaic analysis is that Biden will be too consumed by domestic troubles to care much about Israel and the Middle East. The more severe analysis is that, with Trump gone, Netanyahu has lost his closest foreign ally and most important domestic political card.
JAPAN: A welcome return of predictability
Junko Tanaka, former Washington DC bureau chief for NHK
Japan would welcome the predictability, and the respect for liberal international order and alliance mechanism under President-elect Biden. And with regards to China, we have yet to see if Japan would gain from Biden's more nuanced policy or not. Japan expects the US to check China's rise without destabilizing the region. However, we don't want the US to become too soft on China. Hopefully, the Biden administration will listen to allies in the region and pursue a balanced policy towards China.
PHILIPPINES: Deja vu for Filipinos!
Camille Elemia, Rappler
[Philippine President Rodrigo] Duterte has less than two years in power, and he's pretty preoccupied with a lot of things. I think he's still trying to weigh things now — especially on how Biden will deal with China and with Xi Jinping, who is an ally of Duterte's. But as long as Biden doesn't publicly attack Duterte and his human rights record, there's a chance they'll be off to a good or civil start.
The way Trump reacted to the election, by the way, is highly typical of a Filipino politician in fact Filipinos online were comparing Trump to Ferdinand Marcos Jr. They have the same strategy. It's like déjà vu for Filipinos. Here in the Philippines, nobody loses, everybody gets cheated.
MEXICO: A gradual process of normalization
Carlos Bravo Regidor, political analyst and professor in Mexico City
For Mexico, a Biden presidency could mean a gradual process of normalization, after the turbulences brought about by the Trump administration to the bilateral relationship. Yet, it will also mean a new set of challenges. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) and Biden have very different ideas and policies on issues such as energy, security, environment, labor, or investor rights. Biden might be a more orthodox American president, but AMLO will still be a rather unorthodox counterpart.
[On AMLO's refusal to recognize Biden's win]: The Mexican government's response to what is happening in the US isn't a defense of the vote, it's flirting with a coup attempt. This posture advances no foreign policy principle or notion of the national interest — Mexico has nothing to gain if Trump wrecks the orderly transfer of power. Quite the opposite.
The GOP siding with Trump is hardly a threat to democracy
Columnist Max Boot writes in The Washington Post that by humoring Trump, the GOP is enabling authoritarianism. Ian Bremmer and Eurasia Group's Jon Lieber take out The Red Pen to argue that, while disappointing, the kowtowing is unlikely to damage US democracy.
And today we're taking our Red Pen to an article by Washington Post columnist and author Max Boot. It has the frightening title, "By humoring Trump, the GOP is enabling authoritarianism."
Now, Max's premise is that by kowtowing to a sore loser, GOP leaders are doing irreparable harm to both their party and to our democracy writ large.
I do think there's a lot of disappointing behavior here from Republicans and certainly from President Trump, but I don't think the US democracy will crash and burn because of it. Let's get out the Red Pen.
First, Max writes that, "It was inevitable that if Trump lost the 2020 election that he would allege that he had been cheated of his rightful victory even without any evidence of any cheating." No argument from me there, that is exactly what is happening. But then he goes on with, "What was not inevitable was that the leaders of the Republican Party would support his claims."
Actually, not so much. All leaders of the GOP are not supporting the claims. In fact, a number of Republican Senators have already called Joe Biden to congratulate him on the winning the presidency. And Senate leader Mitch McConnell is supporting Trump's right to make the claim, which is very different from saying the claim is correct. I'm not justifying why they won't congratulate President-elect Biden. In my view, they all should. But that is very different than Max's argument.
Which brings us to the reason why so many Republicans are taking Trump's side in this losing battle. Max writes that they "keep the charade going because their leader is too much of a 'snowflake' to admit he was just repudiated by more than 76 million Americans."
It's not the Republican party's finest moment. I agree. But it's also true the President was himself was endorsed by more than 70 million Americans. He lost. But there are a lot of Trump voters out there. A hell of a lot more than the polls expected. And as long as Trump is around, the Republican Party needs to court those voters to keep their party strong. After all, the balance of the Senate is still up for grabs in Georgia, as they head to a runoff in early January. You think the Republican Party is going to start a war with the President before that election? There's not a chance.
Finally, Max writes, "Many countries have elections. But only in functioning democracies do losers recognize the result and transfer power to the winners."
Here's a secret: Concessions are nice. They are appropriate. But they are not necessary. Stacy Abrams lost the Georgia Governorship by 55,000 votes to Brian Kemp, who is now Governor. Stacey never conceded. It didn't matter.
Joe Biden will become president on January 20, you can bank on it. And he's going to even if Trump doesn't wish him well or go gently into the goodnight.
Max does make a big point near the end of the article that we all agree with: a quick concession from Trump is better for national security. He cites the 9/11 Commission report saying the delayed transition after the contentious and drawn out 2000 election made the nation more vulnerable to the terrorist attack that followed.
This is one of many reasons why President Trump should quickly concede and release the funds and resources necessary for the peaceful transition of power to President-elect Biden.
But, no, the fate of our very democracy doesn't hinge on a congratulatory tweet from very soon to be ex-President Donald Trump.
Trump's choices depend on money & leverage; COVID vaccine news is a big deal
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
Number one, Trump will not concede the election. What happens now?
Well, it's very different from impeachment. When impeachment happened, all the Republicans opposed it. Mitt Romney get one conviction, but otherwise, it was party line. And the social media, Fox news, OANN, all these guys, everyone said "innocent." This is a different story. Here's one where Trump isn't conceding, but actually, the Republicans are all over the map. We've got several Republican senators already that have called to congratulate Biden on his win. I know four have done so as of this morning.
We see that a lot of Trump's supporters are saying, "We definitely should go through all of every legal means to contest, but ultimately, if they fail, and by the way, they're going to fail, then that means that Biden will be the victor." And I've even seen Lindsey Graham say that. Ted Cruz almost said that. And then, you have some hardcore GOP and Trump supporters that are saying, "No, this was stolen." And so far, Trump has been saying that publicly. I saw Secretary of State Pompeo just came out with a statement, and it was, "There will be a smooth transition to a second Trump administration."
Now, what's Pompeo doing? Is this a coup? No, no. Pompeo understands that Trump is still going to be powerful. And you've got other people that want to run for president in 2024 that are being much more cautious, aren't supporting Trump as much like Nikki Haley, for example. And then, you've got Pompeo who's Secretary of State, and he's saying, "I'm right there with you, Mr. Trump." And so, when Mr. Trump becomes a king-maker for the party in 2024, who do you think he's going to be closer to? It's a very cynical move, but if you're Mike Pompeo, it's the move you've got. That's what you're doing. That does not mean that you actually have a whole phalanx of the Republican party that's planning to burn it all in flames.
Now, the real question is, what's Trump going to do? Will Trump ultimately offer a week late concession and won't show up at the inauguration of Biden, but nonetheless will do it? Or does he try to just burn as much down as he can personally? I don't know the answer to that. Some of this is about the money. Like, how much money does he owe? And doesn't he need to try to raise as much money possible to actually get out of that financial jeopardy? Some of it is how much leverage he does or does not think he can have with those that could push for a pardon both before the transition, as well as, potentially, after with Biden for the good of the country. Right? There are a lot of reasons why Trump would or would not want to offer some kind of concession. I understand that from a personal and narcissistic perspective, you'd say, "Well, he'd never admit that he lost anything," but he's made admissions before.
NATO, he said it was obsolete. Then, he said, "I was wrong." And he moved on. His ego allows him to be right about everything even when he admits he's wrong about something. That's one of the helpful things from the Trump mental and emotional perspective. Even on Obama birtherism, he gave that big press conference at the Trump International Hotel. The big reveal was an infomercial, but he gave one sentence saying, "Oh, and by the way, Obama was really born in the US." He didn't say he was wrong, just, "Well, the facts came out." He could do that with the presidency if he wants to. He'll still drive the libs nuts, right? That's not an issue for Trump. They all still hate him. He's still going to have that fight. It's not like he's going to give up on anything. So, I think that would be interesting if that's the way it goes.
With Pfizer and BioNTech announcing a 90% effective COVID vaccine, what happens next?
Well, look, first of all, it's a press release. I'd be more comfortable if we had the data as well. So, let's be clear that we've had other press releases too, still a lot to understand. But certainly, at this stage in the game, 90% effectiveness is vastly better than any epidemiologist I've been talking to at this... Looking at the vaccines going forward. So, if that's what we have, and by spring, summer, we end up with a significant piece of the American population taking this, and by the way, 90% effectiveness, a lot more people are going to be comfortable taking it than at 40% or 50%. I think that's a seriously big deal.
Now, again, it's two shots. So, it is, you got a booster. So, that means double the amount of time to produce, double the amount of time distribution. It's challenging. You need infrastructure around that, and I'm not sure that Trump's going to do a lot to help before inauguration of Biden on January 20th, but this is a big deal. This is going to improve GDP. It's going to improve the ability of people to get back to work, prove the ability people to socialize, stop the quarantines, all of that.
And that, plus the fact that mortality rates are going down means that the balance between listening to the scientist and listening to the economist is shifting towards the economist, and that's important. Like, I wouldn't feel pretty bad if Biden only listens to the scientists and the COVID task force and doesn't recognize that mortality is coming down. We've got better treatment. We're going to continue to have that. And we also have vaccines coming. You still want to wear masks, but you definitely want to be opening the economy more. I don't think this reflects needing to lock down economies. And that's a really, really good thing.
Will the peace deal between Armenia and Azerbaijan last?
Yeah. Yeah, I think it will because the Armenians have gotten pasted. They have really very little support internationally. Militarily, the Azeris supported by the Turks are a lot stronger, and the Armenians lost some territory in this contested mountain, this Nagorno-Karabakh. They were, potentially, going to lose the capital, so they gave up the territory that the Azeris occupied. They gave up the territory around Nagorno-Karabakh that had been occupied by the Armenians as a buffer zone. This makes the democratic elected government in Armenia a lot weaker. It's potential that they could be overthrown. There's going to be a lot of anger when you lose a war. There's a lot of anger, but in terms of, is there going to be a ceasefire or not? Yeah.
When one side wins, there's not much that the Armenians can do right now. And this is what happens in a GZERO world where you've got a political vacuum, you've got a military vacuum, the aggressor gets to do a lot. And the Turks and the Azeris decided that the status quo, which had worked very well for decades for an Armenia that had a lot of political friends, but not many military advantages, they don't like that status quo. So, holding onto the status quo was not a viable strategy. And again, they just got pasted.
Joe Biden wins: here's what it means
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take:
Joe Biden, he's number 46, the next President. That's right, he's won. Not expecting a concession from President Donald Trump. Am expecting a serious contested election, and indeed that a large number of Americans will believe that the election has been stolen from them, has been rigged, de-legitimizing the process. This is not fun. It's not fun for the United States to have its political institutions erode. It's not new, but it's getting worse. Another thing that's not fun is a President Biden winning by four million votes plus. That number likely to come up as states like California continue to send in absentee ballots and do more counting but having no capacity to engage in political reform in January and the rest. I mean, imagine there's no other democracy in the world where a President can win by four million votes and not be able to have a reform agenda.
But the fact that the Senate is likely to stay Republican means, and that the country is as incredibly divided as it is, means that you can get executive orders, right? I mean, Trump came in and he redid all of the Obama Executive orders, and now Biden will come in and he'll redo all the Trump executive orders. And that is no way to govern, but that is the only way available to govern. So, I mean, again, the erosion of the legislature as well. There are such things internationally, the equivalent of executive orders, that can be done on the foreign policy front. The United States has now formally withdrawn from the Paris Climate Accord. The only country that has. Every other country in the world agrees with joining it. It's hard to unify the world on an issue. We have managed that now on the United States, but 77 days after the US pulls out, President Biden will put the United States back in. The Intermediate Nuclear Forces Agreement with the Russians, Biden can bring the United States back in.
The World Health Organization, the US won't leave. Co-vacs, the ability to cooperate and coordinate with the WHO, the United Nations, Bill Gates, the Europeans on creating and distributing more equitably vaccines for the world as a whole, particularly the under-developed pieces of the world. Yes, Biden can do that too. So, it's not as if there's nothing that will happen right under a Biden Presidency, but to be clear, we are in the middle of a pandemic. It is the most important story today. It was the most important story before the election. And that means you need more governance. That means you need more stimulus. You need more relief. You need trillions of dollars for people that otherwise will be evicted from their homes, will default on credit card debt, do not have jobs to go to. Yes, the US economy is rebounding, but not as fast as it needs to for a lot of Americans that feel disenfranchised.
And they're going to feel more disenfranchise on the back of a 2021 that economically feels really challenging for them. At least in Europe, they've treated coronavirus as something that affects all Europeans, and so they've put a lot of money in play that's going from the wealthy states to the poorest states. And it's not only helping a lot of Europeans dig out from this crisis, but it's also reducing Euro skepticism among people like the Greeks and the Italians Spaniards that have said, "What are these European institutions good for? These Germans, these French, these Dutch, they don't care about us." Well, now they feel like they care a little bit more. Well, how are the Americans going to feel next year when Washington isn't getting it done for them? Well, it's going to be a lot more challenging.
How's the left of the Democratic Party going to feel when after this big popular vote win by Biden, none of them are part of the Biden cabinet? They're going to be pretty antagonized. How is the right going to feel, the Trump supporters going to feel when they have lost an election that they believe that they've won. Again, wrongly, but nonetheless, that is the disinformation that is being actively promoted by the still President of the United States, Donald Trump. Now, I made very clear that the speech that we saw, some of us saw, I saw, that declared that the vote was illegal, that he had actually won, and that was parroted by a surprising, maybe not so surprising, number of Trump loyalists in the Senate and in the House. Not all, but still certainly a majority compared to those saying, "No, you've got to just count the votes." That does mean that so many more people in the United States will feel like this has been done to them, forced upon them, and it will mean more of a division.
Indeed, in 2021, President Biden will take office with the most politically divided country of any advanced industrial nation on the planet. Also happens to be the most powerful country on the planet. That is a problem. It's a problem for the United States. It's a problem globally. I will say the United States and its ability to have influence on the global stage is not going away. The dollar is still the global reserve currency. Nothing else is close. The American universities overall are absolutely tops of the charts, and if you're a parent from another country, you'd like to send your kids there. There's still going to be a great desire for American tourism and the Muslim ban that Trump put in place, so called, that's an executive order that gets unwound real fast under Biden too. So the ability to get visas to come in, the ability to study in the United States, the US still has that polling power.
You want to buy a house in the US, wouldn't you rather have real estate there than in Hong Kong right now or in London right now? The answer is, of course, you would. But is the United States a political system that you would like to emulate? Are you fricking kidding me? I have to say I was a bit bemused, maybe that's the right term, to see the Secretary of State come out and criticize elections in the Cote d'Ivoire and Tanzania in the past days for irregularities. Not to say that he was wrong, just to say that I don't think anybody wants to hear that from the United States right now, because you have a President in the US, a sitting President who is saying without a scintilla of evidence that the American election has been stolen and rigged. So I really think that the Americans might take a break from criticizing other elections for a while.
Maybe let the Canadians handle it for us. I'm sure they'd be willing to. It's just a problem that today the US political system is no longer a standard for other countries. There are countries democratically that are standards. I mean, I look at New Zealand today. I look at Canada. Heck, I look at Germany. I look at the Nordics. I look at Japan. There are a lot of democracies that have their act reasonably well together, and you don't see the anti-establishment sentiment, the view that the institutions are illegitimate, that there's no social contract that works for people. And indeed, in some of those countries, it's getting better, not worse, that they're using the coronavirus as an opportunity to try to improve and address some of these structural issues. We are not doing that in the United States. The institutions are eroding. So the power is there, but the soft power, American exceptionalism, probably time to put that to bed right now.
And as an American and as someone who certainly sees myself as patriotic, that hurts. But patriotism in the United States is also about criticizing your country when they're not getting their act together and aspiring to be something greater. And you can't tell others what to do if you're not getting it right yourself. I mean, perhaps more importantly, it's not about telling other countries what to do, it's rather about them seeing themselves, that they actually aspire to have a system that looks more like yours. Well, right now, I think a lot of Americans aspire to have a system that functions a little bit better for us. And I hope that that's something we can work on, but I am not super confident about that in the near term. This election is going to be tough. The transition's going to be tough, and Biden's going to come into office with one of the most constrained hands of any President. Certainly, since Jimmy Carter. We know how that went.
See you guys soon. Be safe and avoid people.
All eyes on US election; Vienna terrorist attack & Islamic extremism
Ian Bremmer shares his perspective on global politics on this week's World In (More Than) 60 Seconds:
Number one, all eyes are on the United States today. What countries are watching most closely?
Well everyone's watching pretty closely, because the US election is two years long and costs billions of dollars and feels like a subversion of democracy. But watching the most closely are the countries that feel like they have the most at stake. So, for example, Iran, if Biden comes in, they're going to have a government that's more interested in trying to reopen the Iranian nuclear deal. Their economy is in free fall right now. They really care about the outcome.
Turkey, facing a much more intense US sanctions regime. The United States under Trump has been kind of friendly towards Erdoğan. They'd be much less so. And again, Turkey's in a lot of trouble right now. Their lira has dropped to record lows. There's massive capital flight. I think the first and foremost countries that are paying the most attention are the ones that are under the most significant pressure, and they know that this election has the potential to make that even worse.
So, countries like China, for example, economically doing pretty well right now, and they're going to have a tough time whether it's Biden or Trump. A country like India, that's going to do pretty well whether it's Biden or Trump. They obviously are paying attention, but I wouldn't say they care quite as much. The United Kingdom, definitely, because the ability to get a trade deal done just with the US if it's Biden is going to be a little more challenging. I think they worry about that. Where you've got countries like Germany and France, where the relationship with Trump has been so toxic, personally, at a personal level, they would just like to have Biden and there'll be a honeymoon. How long that lasts and what it really gets you, perhaps not as much. Oh, that's kind of a, just a smattering of a few countries around the world, but truly everyone paying attention to this, the most important election in the United States in modern history, in part because this crisis is so big and the change in trajectory of US politics under these two leaders would be more substantial than we would normally expect.
What happened in Vienna?
Well, a big terrorist attack. We see four people that have actually been killed, going on all night. Initially, we thought that, the Vienna authorities said there might've been six people involved. It now looks like at least two ISIS supporters that were engaged in these attacks against random Austrian civilians.
We do need to remember that terrorist attacks, the Europeans continue to be much more vulnerable overall, and specifically Islamic extremist terror attacks. A lot more Muslim refugees coming over from countries like Iraq, like Syria, into Turkey, into Europe. They've not integrated well; they've not been integrated well. A lot of them aren't all that welcome and there's been extremism. And some of that extremism has led to serious violence.
In the United States, the threat from terrorism is a lot lower, and to the extent that we see violent terrorism in the US, it is overwhelmingly from white nationalist extremists, not from Islamic violence. You wouldn't necessarily know that from watching the media, and depends on who you're watching, and all of this has become so politicized, but that's the reality in terms of the numbers, and certainly hope that we're able to see a quick response, and anyone else involved is able to be apprehended quickly.
Okay. Finally, is Boris Johnson against the ropes because of his COVID response?
Well, the guy is enjoying an 80-seat majority in Parliament right now. That's a pretty big deal. So even though the British economy is in big trouble, I would not argue that he is facing imminent political crisis, but he has very badly mishandled this. Certainly, the UK is in as bad shape, if not worse, from a healthcare perspective, as the United States. Right now, the per capita cases and hospitalizations in the UK are worse than they are in the United States, they're worse than they are in the EU as a whole, and they've locked down. They said there were not going to be locked downs nationwide. They've now come, and he's had to do a complete about face on that. He's going to say, because the virus got epidemiologically a lot worse than they expected. That may well be the case, but they're in charge. They're responsible for this stuff. So, they haven't handled it well.
And indeed the Labor Opposition Party has been well ahead of Boris Johnson in arguing for these policies. Let's keep in mind also that labor is not being run by Jeremy Corbyn, who was really God awful in terms of leadership. Instead you've had Keir Starmer who's much better. So long-term, a much more competitive landscape politically in the UK, but for now Boris Johnson going nowhere. Unless it turns out that his health is in much worse shape, and there have been some rumors that I've heard that Johnson is indeed suffering from the quote unquote long COVID.
And let's keep in mind that some five, 10% of people that get coronavirus are experiencing much longer serious symptoms, even beyond when they're supposedly better, and whether or not Boris Johnson faces that, it was touch and go as to whether he'd even survive his bout with coronavirus. Much, much worse than what we saw for Trump or from Bolsonaro in Brazil. That's a real question.
An election for these interesting times
Ian Bremmer talks about how the "interesting times" of this election match up to those of the late 1960s and it has become harder for many Americans to vote in recent decades.
Watch the episode: What could go wrong in the US election? Rick Hasen on nightmare scenarios & challenges
The threat of foreign interference to the US election
There's no doubt that foreign actors like Russia, China and Iran have already tried to interfere in the US election and may go even further than they did in 2016. But at the same time, there have been indications that some foreign leaders, like Vladimir Putin, may already be hedging their bets for a Biden victory. Election law expert Rick Hasen, however, believes that the threat of dirty tricks by foreign actors is still very real – an attack on the US power grid on Election Day, he says, is not outside of the realm of possibility. His conversation with Ian Bremmer is part of the latest episode of GZERO World.
Watch the episode: What could go wrong in the US election? Rick Hasen on nightmare scenarios & challenges