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Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis and fomrer US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley listen to a question as they participate in the Republican presidential debate hosted by CNN at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa.
Debate club vs. the rockstar in Iowa
To kick off the final debate before the first GOP primary, Chris Christie bowed out of the race – and he wasn’t exactly graceful. The former New Jersey governor was caught mocking his remaining Republican rivals, Ron DeSantis and Nikki Haley, who took to the CNN stage last night.
The debate kicked off with the only question that matters if either candidate is going to be seen as a viable candidate after the Iowa primary: Why should Iowa voters see either of them as a better alternative to the front-runner, Trump? In response, DeSantis threw punches at Haley, while Haley cited her credentials, directed viewers to a website that fact-checks DeSantis, and cast herself as more electable than the former president.
From there, like a relic from a bygone era, the two actually debated … policy. They discussed everything from fiscal conservatism to school choice. Haley blamed Trump for ballooning the deficit and reiterated her position that the GOP should avoid politicizing abortion. Meanwhile, DeSantis focused on intertwining illegal immigration with crime and cast Haley’s positions as left of center. They both called out Trump for avoiding the debate stage – with Haley specifically condemning his actions on Jan. 6.
On foreign policy, the two competed to see who could support Israel more. They diverged most on Ukraine, where only Haley expressed a willingness to continue US support.
But Haley, who had made promising advances in the polls in recent weeks, needed to convince Iowans that she was a viable candidate to defeat Trump. Instead, she focused on defaming DeSantis, which could hurt her vote count and presidential prospects when the primary season kicks off on Monday.
Meanwhile … across town at the Trump town hall, the former president was playing all his greatest hits to a crowd of adoring fans. Think Billy Joel at Madison Square Garden when the Long Island Association of Step-Dads is in town. When asked what new efforts he would pursue in a second term, he said he'd finish building the wall, reimplement the “remain in Mexico” migration policy, and expand US energy production (eagle-eyed Daily readers will note these are not new efforts).
Republican presidential candidate and former US President Donald Trump participates in a Fox News Channel town hall ahead of the caucus vote in Des Moines, Iowa, on Jan. 10, 2024. REUTERS/Scott Morgan
Trump called his ongoing legal imbroglio a “witch hunt” and election interference. He gave a couple of shout outs to pals like Chinese President Xi Jinping, Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban, and North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. He hammered Ron “DeSanctimonious” for his COVID policy and implied he wears shoe lifts. He gave a dubious anecdote about an unnamed Fox News employee who thanked him for saving 2 million lives by repealing Roe v. Wade (no tears this time).
It was classic Trump, in his environment, ripping out the hits.
The audience seemed to respond most strongly to Trump's comments on immigration, rapidly emerging as Biden’s most intractable vulnerability. He pointed to New York City Mayor Eric Adams' conflicts with the Biden administration over the influx of migrants in response to a question about ending sanctuary cities and claimed Democratic administrations in sanctuary cities would soon end the policies on their own because of the severity of the crisis.
The most challenging query came from a voter who asked Trump to endorse an extreme pro-life position and questioned why he blamed pro-life politicians for recent Republican losses in states where abortion was on the ballot. Trump had a straightforward answer: because they lost. If Republicans keep losing, he said, Democrats can reinstate the status quo under Roe v. Wade. He refused to endorse an absolute abortion ban, and said he aimed to please the most people he could to end the debate on a divisive issue.
Trump did try out at least one new number: After previously claiming he would only be a dictator for one day should he return to office, he said he now needs two – one to seal the border and one to unleash the oil pumps. How many days will he need by November?
Former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, businessman Vivek Ramaswamy and South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott speak during the FOX Business Republican presidential primary debate at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library and Museum.
Sound and fury, signifying nothing — the second GOP debate without Trump
“Every time I hear you, I think I get a little bit dumber.”
That was former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley’s big hit on Vivek Ramaswamy at last night’s GOP debate in the midst of just one of many chaotic verbal scrums. She was attacking Ramaswamy’s Ukraine-skeptic position, a subject that divided the stage sharply. But Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used his promise to tighten up the purse strings around Ukraine aid to pivot to a subject the candidates were much keener on: border security.
DeSantis said America was being invaded by migrants and promised he would militarize the border and defend national sovereignty. North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgum said he’d already put his money where his mouth was and deployed his state’s national guard to the border. Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC) said he would address the flow of fentanyl into the US by freezing the financial assets of drug cartels. Haley went a step further and said she would straight up conduct military special operations targeting cartels in Mexico. But Ramaswamy took by far the most radical position, saying he would end birthright citizenship in the United States, which is enshrined in the 14th amendment of the Constitution.
In fact, the border and accompanying issues of drugs and migration seemed to be what the candidates turned to most readily when asked about one of those pesky subjects they’d rather not touch. You know, like healthcare, gun violence, or how any of them think they have a snowball’s chance in hell of beating Donald Trump.
Not a single question was asked about the former president being found liable for fraud this week, or about any of his many legal imbroglios for that matter. Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie took the strongest shots at Trump, looking into the camera to address him directly at one point and later mocking him for “ducking” the debate. (I won’t subject you to his Donald Duck quip).
Trump, for his part, spent the evening addressing autoworkers at a factory in Michigan, after President Joe Biden joined a United Auto Workers picket line there on Tuesday. Trump swore not to allow “the American auto industry to die” and promised if the workers could “get your union leaders to endorse me, I’ll take care of the rest.”
There was just one problem: The workers he was speaking to don’t have union leaders, because they don’t work in a union shop. At the height of the largest auto industry labor action in recent memory, Trump was talking to at-will workers. It’s the kind of Veep-esque gaffe that might negatively impact any other candidate’s primary campaign, but with Trump polling a cool 40 percentage points ahead of his closest rival … he has little reason to worry.
Refugees from Nagorno-Karabakh region ride in a truck upon their arrival at the border village of Kornidzor, Armenia, September 27, 2023.
Hard Numbers: Armenians flee Nagorno-Karabakh, GOP debate falls flat, Evergrande stock drops, tragedy strikes Iraqi wedding, Commander strikes again
50,000: A torrent of at least 50,000 ethnic Armenians have fled Nagorno-Karabakh after Azerbaijani forces occupied the hotly contested enclave last week. The refugees constitute approximately one-third of the pre-war Armenian population. Among those fleeing was Russian-Armenian billionaire Ruben Vardanyan, who Azerbaijan’s border guard service said Wednesday it had arrested.
200,000: A 30-second spot at last night’s Republican debate ran advertisers around $200,000 – not cheap, but less than half the $495,000 the same time slot cost during the first debate. The network clearly expected fewer viewers to tune in for the second round, probably because polls show the lion’s share of GOP voters know they will back Donald Trump.
19: Massive Chinese property developer Evergrande saw its stock price fall 19% on reports that its chairman has been placed under police surveillance. The company has lost an astonishing 99.9% of its value since a 2017 peak and is in the midst of a government-supervised restructuring, fueling fears of liquidation.
100: Over 100 people died and scores more were injured late Tuesday when a fire swept through a wedding party in Qaraqosh, a small town in Iraq's Nineveh region. It is just the latest tragedy to strike the tight-knit community of Assyrian Christians — one of the most ancient ethnic groups in Iraq — which was forced to flee between 2014 and 2017 by the Islamic State.
11: President Joe Biden’s dog Commander has bitten yet another Secret Service agent in the 11th known incident in which the canine has harmed people at the White House. Biden’s other dog, Major, was sent to live with friends in Delaware after displaying similar aggression, but he's not the only president to have had a misbehaving pet: America’s most animal-crazy president, Teddy Roosevelt, notoriously had a badger named Josiah who bit legs constantly – “but never faces,” according to the president’s son Archie.Perp walks, plane crashes, and debating the future
On any other day, we might start our GZERO North newsletter with the housing crisis afflicting the US and Canada and what, if anything, the federal governments should do about it (they have to act, and mewling an excuse about this not being federal jurisdiction is the political equivalent of “the dog ate my homework!”).
Or maybe you’re thinking, hey GZERO, what about this ugly dispute between Canada and the big tech giants like Meta, which has already led to the banning of Canadian news on Facebook and will likely lead to a digital services tax of 3% by January. Won’t the Biden folks, in an election year, pump out some retaliatory tariffs to send a signal to other countries that says: “Don’t follow those northern syrup-suckers and Thelma-and-Louise it off the digital trade cliff! Read our lips: No Digital Tax!” So, is this the start of a nasty little US-Canada trade war?
Probably, but it’s hard to focus on all those … After all, as I write this, we’re awaiting an unbelievable sight: a presidential perp walk. Yes, former President Donald Trump is in Georgia to slouch his way toward Fulton County Jail, this time alongside 18 others. (Trump and the 18 would be a good name for a band, with a remixed single called “91 Problems”). But even that is barely the headline. What about last night?
In the land of “Laverne and Shirley,” Republicans adopted lines from the long-running sitcom’s theme tune: “Read us any rule – we'll break it” to do it their way (well, their new way, at least). Sans Trump, eight political benchwarmers got to star in the Milwaukee political exhibition game known as a primary debate. Outside of picking the winners and losers (we did that in our morning newsletter, check it out), the real message was: The Republican center cannot hold.
For every moment that former VP Mike Pence tried to defend the classic Republican stance on, say, support for Ukraine, or that former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley looked for consensus on abortion, or former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie suggested that Trump’s conduct was unbecoming of the presidency, the responses reflected a party being pulled right by the gravitational force of Donald Trump. Oops, I forgot to mention Ron DeSantis. He was stolid in that wooden-puppet-comes-to-life-kinda way but was a bit … forgettable, which is his biggest challenge. (Meanwhile, as the debate aired, Trump was over on X, formerly known as Twitter, with Tucker Carlson, rehashing conspiracy theories on how convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein was killed and no doubt pinching ratings).
Almost all of the candidates said they would support Trump if he becomes the nominee, even if convicted, but none more so than the human Trump pom-pom, Vivek Ramaswamy.
The super-smart, accomplished, splashy, 38-year-old is approachable, compelling, and extremely far to the right of the others. Dismantle the department of education and the FBI? Yup. Pull support from Ukraine? Yup. Climate change is a hoax? Duh. Still, the political neophyte is making the fringe fashionable, and he kinda won the night. Vivek’s debate prep, which included his inexplicably bizarre topless tennis training video, must have also included a four-course meal of Energizer bunnies because he hyperactively hopped from topic to topic, lobbing electric zingers that made him the major candidate in a minor group.
Foreign governments like Canada, which have already admitted spending a fair bit of time prepping for another Trump administration (more on that below), must now recalibrate. Trump is no longer an outlier surrounded by some corrective forces; he is the insider surrounded by sycophantic forces. Any new Republican administration would mean all bets are off for alliances, trade deals, and an American-led multilateral world.
And even that’s not the headline. I haven’t even mentioned Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s long-expected demise two months after he mounted his mini-insurrection. Putin has not admitted he downed Prigozhin’s private plane, but give the man his bloody due: Putin is the Air Jordan of assassination, and if his logo was not on the killing, his brand was all over it.
All of this means what to the US-Canada relationship? It means the world outside the neighborhood is getting more chaotic, and so is the world inside of it. Lest you think the problem is only on the Republican right, it ain’t. Both Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are facing angry electorates, struggling economies, and are both about as popular as a free plane ride with Prigozhin. Meanwhile, silver-spoon spoiler Robert Kennedy Jr. is sawing off the radical left flank with his antisemitic medical memes and doing weird topless training videos of his own. Progressives are doddering to find their own way forward, and their efforts don’t look too hot either.
In other words, the summer silly season of politics has come to an early end, and we need to make sense of things now more than ever.
No-show Trump wins first GOP debate
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC shares his perspective on US politics.
Who were the big winners and the big losers from this week's Republican debate?
Three clear winners were probably Vivek Ramaswamy, who's done pretty well in making a name for himself as a first time politician, and came across as likable and energetic, full of some fresh ideas that are probably going to appeal to a lot of Republican voters who were otherwise thinking about supporting President Trump. Two is Nikki Haley, the former UN ambassador and governor of South Carolina, who had herself a pretty good night scoring some points against Ramaswamy on foreign policy, and coming across as competent and credible. And of course, the third winner is Donald Trump, who didn't show up but kind of dominated the proceedings anyway and continues to be the front-runner even after the debate.
On the loser side, you had a couple of people who just didn't have great nights. Chris Christie got resoundingly booed for his strategy of attacking Trump and presenting himself as the alternative, or trying to create space for somebody else to get in that lane. Mike Pence really did nothing to distinguish himself. In fact, I kind of forgot he was up there at times, as I've forgotten that he's even running for president right now. Same with Tim Scott, who I think has a very great story and is a very likable guy, but just isn't resonating with a lot of Republicans.
And the biggest loser was probably Ron DeSantis, who's presented himself as the most credible alternative to Trump so far but has really been tailing off in the polling, has shown himself to be vulnerable to people like Ramaswamy, and last night didn't really do much to change that narrative. He kind of has his line of attack against the cultural left, which resonates with a lot of Republican voters. But there's no real reason to prefer him over President Trump at this point, and there probably aren't enough Republican voters who will do so, that will help propel him to the next level.
There won't be any votes cast in this election until Iowa, which is next year. And in the meantime, there's going to be another debate, probably also without Trump, in California, in late September. So, stay tuned for an entertaining Republican primary, but one that kind of feels like they're play-acting a little bit without the dominant force, former President Trump, up on stage.
Trump skips debate
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
Is it really a Republican debate without President Trump?
Eight candidates are going to show up in Milwaukee this week in order to debate on stage for the right to be the Republican nominee for President, and all of them are going to be living in the shadow of the one candidate who won't show up: Donald J. Trump, former President of the United States, who's been indicted four times for various criminal charges across multiple jurisdictions in Georgia, New York, Washington, and Florida.
Trump is dominating the Republican field right now, and even though he's not showing up for the debate, he's going to be the main topic, because every single one of these candidates who is going to be there, who met the RNC's strict qualifications to show up on stage, is going to be trying to distinguish themselves and take down his massive polling leads. So this contest this week isn't going to be about these candidates trying to get out ahead of one another. They're trying to break through so they can knock away at Trump's polling lead.
We're still months out from the first vote being cast in this election, and Trump right now looks unstoppable. Ron DeSantis is the only credible candidate who's in double digits on the polling, but his campaign has largely flailed out over the last several months, with his approval ratings dropping and his meager polling advantage over the rest of the field starting to droop. So, this is Trump's race to lose. He's not likely to show up for any of the debates because he's so far in front of the field. This is a great front-runner strategy of just ignoring everybody else and not even acknowledging that it's a real contest, and right now it looks like it isn't one.
So, the debate may be pretty entertaining, but it's going to be a lot less entertaining without Trump there. The debates in 2016 is where he really distinguished himself from the field and established himself as the greatest show on Earth in American politics. He'll try to dominate media through his post on Truth Social, and of course, the rest of the campaign is going to be him dominating because of his criminal trials.
So, tune in for the debate. Should be entertaining, could be a lot better, and we'll see if he shows up for the second one.
Trump's new rival, Vivek Ramaswamy
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here, and a happy Monday to you. Want to turn to US domestic politics for this week's Quick Take in part because there's been a surge in the GOP among the candidates. We've had Trump way out in front, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis as the major challenger pretty much for the last several months until this last week, with an outsider Vivek Ramaswamy in a couple of polls showing up as number two. Certainly enjoying a surge. So thought it was worth taking a little bit of a look at him.
First of all, I mean, let's be clear, the big news remains the Trump indictments and the Democratic efforts to drive them. It's all about the politics. It is not about rule of law. That's what it should be if it were a properly functioning representative democracy. That is not the state of US politics right now. But aside from that, it's "is anyone a potential challenger to Trump on the GOP side?" And, you know, the idea that Trump is not going to participate in the Republican primary debates, as we see this Wednesday, is his political interest in showing that "I'm going to get this nomination and all the rest are pretenders to the throne." Completely understandable that that's the way he's handling that, but it's interesting to me that to the extent that anyone else is getting oxygen, it is the candidates that are most like him. In other words, those that are willing to take on his message that are proactively being supportive and engaging.
It is DeSantis and Vivek and that shouldn't surprise anyone in terms of where the Republican party is and is going as the Democratic party has increasingly become a party identified with urban elites and the Republican party increasingly with rural working and middle classes. And that is a grievance-based and anger-based "let's beat up on the establishment." It is not the center. Trump did very well as an outsider, not because his policies made a lot of sense, but rather because they really animated the emotional anger channeled the sense of disenfranchisement and otherness of people that felt like the elites were part of this shadowy, globalist deep state. Vivek Ramaswamy, in my view, has been the most effective at engaging on the political stage in that. He's basically portraying himself as the young Trump, as the person that can carry the mantle that, you know, if Trump is one more Covid episode away from not being with us,
Vivek is 38 years old. He's an entrepreneur, young kid. You know, he's an outsider. He is never been a candidate. Heck, he's barely voted most of the presidential elections. He hasn't participated in, said he was jaded at the time. That is a feature, not a bug for someone who is, you know, wants to run on "I'm not a politico, I'm not a part of Washington. I have no political experience, and that makes me better." I mean, he proactively said like, "I want to run the government the way Elon runs Twitter/X, which I'm not clear that appeals to people that care about governance, but that's not the point. This is anger and people that want to hurt the folks that are benefiting from the fruits of governance over the course of the past, say, 40 to 50 years in the United States.
He's aligned with Trump. He's aligned with Tucker Carlson, that's the lane here. I definitely see in his policy statements that, you know, anti-woke but more effective in his rhetoric on that front than DeSantis has been. Talking about the global reset versus the great uprising. In other words, anti world economic forum, anti-woke, anti global control, anti deep state, anti all of this, you know, anything that feels like the forces that you don't understand that are in control of you, Vivek is opposed to them. It's very much like Trump's drain the swamp, which again, of all the things that Trump did, drain the swamp was, you know, the one he was least actually interested in. Fantastic on the rhetoric, and then appointed all the CEOs and billionaires to run cabinet to reduce taxation. I mean, the men north of Richmond did fantastically well under Trump and likely would under Vivek.
But that's not the point. The point is not appealing to an analytic reasoned policy debate. It is appealing to a sense of anger, and we want to burn it down. And in that regard, Vivek has been most effective in some of his policy statements that really antagonizing the mainstream media. I saw this in particular, with a CNN interview that he did in talking about Russia and Ukraine and in saying, "hey, I'm going to make the Ukrainians give up some of their territory and say there won't be any NATO for Ukraine because I want to pull Russia away from China." And I mean, you can just imagine this is absolutely intended to drive mainstream media crazy, and they do, and it's a massive amount of attention for this young outsider. And he's winning, not winning for the nomination, of course, that's not the point.
But he's winning in the performative sweep that allow him to do far better from personal career perspective on the back of deciding to run. Running this presidential campaign is an absolute no brainer for someone like Ramaswamy. He'll have bigger book deals, higher speaking fees, has a decent shot of being on a Trump cabinet if Trump were to potentially win. But he also is setting himself up to be one of the younger forces that can wear the populist MAGA mantle assuming the GOP stays intact beyond this presidential cycle. And so in that regard, I find him a very important cultural phenomenon and political phenomenon. We are going to see more of this as long as American political dysfunction continues to be a primary driving force, as long as the US is more polarized, riven with more disinformation, more mistrust, and more feeling of illegitimacy than any of the other G-7 advanced industrial democracies.
This is the lane to run on, at least on the right. I think we'll see more of it on the left as well. But again, the demographics of where the GOP is doing well, it aligns particularly with this form of nativism and populism. And I do feel like Vivek has been very effective there. We'll see on Wednesday night with the debate how he does on a stage with, you know, ten folks, many of whom are fully part of the GOP establishment. I suspect he'll do very well because this is really meant for small sound bites social media, and he's going to be an effective bomb thrower there. So will Chris Christie, by the way, who's a fantastic debater and is the one that is really taking Trump on individually, but of course, Trump is going to be talking to Tucker Carlson who has said in his private texts that he can't stand the guy, thinks he's a lunatic.
But that doesn't matter because they occupy the same lane. And as political entrepreneurs for themselves, this is exactly what they should be doing, which is teaming up to make the establishment debate that the party forces want to have less relevant. And it makes Tucker Carlson more relevant to his fans and to his revenues as bottom line, and it makes Trump more relevant too. So that's where we are this week, kind of depressing state of affairs in terms of US politics, but from an analysis perspective, got to get that right either way. Hope everyone's well, and I'll talk to you all real soon.
Former U.S. President and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump speaks during a campaign rally in Windham, NH.
Hard Numbers: Trump’s bond, Saudis target Ethiopian migrants, missing in Maui, Ecuadorians’ pro-Amazon vote
200,000: Former President Donald Trump's bond in Georgia has been set at $200,000 ahead of a Friday deadline to turn himself in. As part of his release conditions, Trump, who is reportedly set to surrender for processing on Thursday, is banned from using social media to intimidate witnesses.
750,000: Saudi border guards have reportedly opened fire and launched explosives at Ethiopian migrants fleeing their country’s civil war in recent years, killing hundreds as they tried crossing into Saudi Arabia from Yemen, according to a new Human Rights Watch report. Some 750,000 Ethiopians now live in Saudi Arabia, the majority of them unauthorized.
850: That’s the number of missing people in Maui, Hawaii, following last week’s devastating wildfires. While 850 is far lower than the earlier estimates, which were closer to 2,000, officials are asking locals to give DNA samples to help with the sluggish victim recovery effort.
59: Ecuadorian voters failed to deliver a decisive win to any of the country’s presidential candidates on Sunday, paving the way for a runoff vote in October. But there was a clear win for the Amazon with 59% voting in favor of a referendum to reject all oil exploration in Yasuni National Park.