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Fareed Zakaria GPS

Trump Injured in Assassination Attempt at Rally; How the Assassination Attempt on Trump Could Affect the Campaign; How Did Secret Service Fail to Prevent Trump Shooting? How Did Secret Service Fail To Prevent Trump Shooting? The Use Of Political Violence In American History; World Leaders Express Shock And Concern Over Shooting. Aired 10-11a

Aired July 14, 2024 - 10:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

[10:00:00]

TAPPER: -- determined by ballots and votes, not by bullets. And that this rhetoric of dehumanization stop. Police violence has no place in America. I wish that that were true.

We'll be right back at noon with live updates. Thanks for spending your Sunday morning with us. CNN's breaking news continues next.

FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN ANCHOR: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria coming to you live from New York.

Today's show, of course, is on the assassination attempt on former president Donald Trump. We will bring you the latest from the investigation, we'll talk about the political implications of the shooting, and we will dig into the sad history of political violence in America.

For now, let's get started with the key facts about what happened. Shortly after 6:00 p.m. last evening at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, Trump had been on the podium just a few moments when loud bangs were heard coming from his right. The former president ducked behind the lectern, was swarmed by Secret Service, and when he reappeared was bleeding from his ear.

The shooter was believed to have been stationed on a roof outside the rally security perimeter. He was shot dead by the Secret Service. The assailant was 20 years old. What we know of his politics are these facts. He was a registered Republican who had made a $15 donation to a Democratic political action committee.

There are many aspects about this that I want to talk about with today's panel. With me here at the set are Tim Naftali and Ian Bremmer. Tim is a CNN presidential historian and the former director of the Nixon Presidential Library. Ian is the president of the Eurasia Group, a political risk consultancy. Joining us from Sun Valley, Idaho, this morning is the "New Yorker's" Evan Osnos, who has written a book on Joe Biden.

Tim, let me ask you, when you first saw this, given all the history that you know, what was your thought?

TIM NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: Shock, sadness, anger, a sense that we were at an inflection point, and I didn't know which direction we'd go in, whether we would see more violence or a ratcheting down of the tensions.

This summer has been -- not just the summer, the entire, this entire presidential campaign has been filled with apocalyptic language. Adversaries or enemies. People who didn't share your views were vermin. The outcome of the election would be the end of democracy. These are apocalyptic terms and in a social media drenched environment there are so many tortured souls who are willing and prepared to act on this kind of language.

So my concern immediately was for the president, former president, but secondly, it was for the country. Where are we going next? Will it get worse? And I don't know the answer.

ZAKARIA: Ian, what were your thoughts?

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: I wasn't surprised. I wish I could say I was. There are so many things that are unprecedented in this political environment for the United States that we're normalizing and we shouldn't be. They don't happen in other democracies around the world right now, certainly not in their election cycles. You and I have talked about many elections this year. This one is unusual.

This set against everything that Tim just said. All of the political polarization, all of the violence in imagery and language that has been -- that has made, created more extremism. When you feel like your enemy is a domestic enemy who is trying to destroy your system and the values you have. We also have by far more guns in this country than in any other advanced industrial democracy.

We have an enormous mental illness problem. So you put those things together. I mean, if anything, you're surprised that you've had so little political violence actually in the United States thus far. But this is a really big deal. It would have been vastly worse. I mean, we were this close to the president being assassinated, and I shudder to think about the violence that we'd be seeing in the country if that would have occurred.

But this is not just a warning shot, Fareed. This is our country, our democracy in crisis. And we need to see what we're going to do about it.

ZAKARIA: Evan Osnos, let me bring you in here. What are your thoughts to begin with?

[10:05:00]

EVAN OSNOS, STAFF WRITER, THE NEW YORKER: You know, I see this as part of a very long and worrisome pattern in American life. There has always been this contest between reason and force. It's this seesawing battle that goes back through our history between the instinct to say, I will persuade my adversary and his followers, or to say, I will force them to take my point of view.

I mean, Lincoln talked about unimpassioned reason as the core of his idea, and of course, as we know, that did not prevent either the assassination in his life or the civil war. And there has been ever since this seesawing fight. And it's been at times we talk about the paranoid style, what Richard Hofstadter talked about in American history. But there has always been a violent style.

And our struggle, our urgent demand at this point is to make sure that that does not prevail in this moment. But this is a massively uncertain time for any of us who think about politics and the history in this country.

ZAKARIA: Tim, when you think about, you know, historical parallels, the one, of course, one I'm struck by is 1968. Ironically, you know, it's happening, '68 was in Chicago that you had a Democratic convention as you have one here, and you had Martin Luther King assassinated, you had Robert Kennedy assassinated in '72, which I think of as the holdover of that '68 spirit. You had George Wallace, the attempted assassination.

What was it about that period that to you resembles or is different from this one?

NAFTALI: And in addition, the whole question about whether a president who is on track to run again will step aside also. I mean, from 1968, as Evan mentioned and as you alluded to, we've had cycles of political violence in our country. Political violence is bred in the bone. I'll leave it to sociologists to explain why.

Because we identify our hopes and dreams with individuals because of the importance of the presidency those who would want a dash our hopes, those who would want to change history, focus on a man, and they point that anger and hatred towards that man, and then they use guns to do the most undemocratic of things, which is to deny a choice to the people.

And we've seen this over and over again in our history. And it happens in those moments of political ferment when our world, whatever that world was, seems to be coming to an end. In the '60s it was because of Vietnam. It was because thankfully we had this civil rights revolution that was going to break apart the apartheid system in the south but for some that produce an apocalyptic vision.

It's these moments of great, huge social change by which Richard Hofstadter wrote, that we see some search for a way out and they opt for violence to take that way out.

ZAKARIA: Ian, I was struck by what you were saying about how this is something that is -- where America is quite unusual. You know, one is struck by the spectacle of the change of government in Britain, where you had a, you know, party radically different, you know, you had this conservative Tory government give way to a Labour government and they did so in the most civilized way possible.

Rishi Sunak got out and said Keir Starmer is a decent man who wants the best for his country. He is now our prime minister. You know, his successes will be our successes. Starmer complimented Rishi Sunak. You know, and you think about our last election and you think about this. We're in a very different place. And to you, this seems, you know, we always think of America as the best democracy in the world.

But this is an area where a lot of the rest of the world handles this better than we do, I think.

BREMMER: That's right. I don't think there's any major democracy that has a problem today holding a free and fair election that is seen as legitimate by the vast majority of its population. Except here in the United States. And I mean, if Trump comes out of this and he wins and certainly there's, you know, a lot of reasons to believe that after this assassination attempt in the way he responded, that he will be the next president.

He would then be our president. He'll be America's president. My president, your president. There are a lot of Americans that won't feel that way. That's very serious problem. There are a lot of Americans that don't think that Biden is their legitimate president today and that's been weaponized, by the way, by the former president, who just had an assassination attempt against him.

[10:10:00]

That is an unsustainable trajectory for our political system. The response here needs to be like 9/11. It needs to be something where everyone comes together and says, this does not stand. We are all Americans together. I fear it's going to be a lot more like January 6th, where there will be a large number of people that will weaponize what just happened and that we continue to tribalize as a country and people won't accept that the people on the other side of the aisle are Americans, just like they are.

ZAKARIA: Stay with us. The attempt on Donald Trump's life happened on live TV. How did the world see it, and what will be its political consequences here in the United States? We'll explore all that, next.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: Since the shooting at Donald Trump's campaign rally last night, world leaders have been issuing statements. Most of course condemned the violence and expressed their concern and offer condolences for the dead.

[10:15:00]

But Vladimir Putin's spokesman took a strange tack suggesting that the Biden administration had created an atmosphere around Trump's candidacy that have provoked this violence. He cited no evidence for that of course.

So how does the world see what's happening in America? Back with me is the "New Yorker's" Evan Osnos, Ian Bremmer, the president of the Eurasia Group, and Tim Naftali, CNN's presidential historian.

Ian, that tack that Dmitry Peskov, Putin's spokesman, took was very unusual. What did you make of it?

BREMMER: Well, especially in the context of Putin, who had said that he actually would prefer Biden to win the presidential election, and of course, it turns out that's propaganda. We see very clearly both in terms of Putin recently saying that he would welcome a Trump peace plan on Ukraine and now his spokesperson saying that Biden is the one responsible for this violence. The worst kind of disinformation meant to spread the fire in the United States.

We are seeing asymmetric warfare from Russia. While this is going on, you know, just last week, there was an assassination attempt that was stopped against the leader of the German, the biggest defense company in Germany. That's what Russia is doing right now. That's a war, and they see that the United States, their principal adversary and enemy is weak and divided, and they are pouring gasoline on it. It's exactly what Putin is doing right now.

ZAKARIA: Tim, you said you don't know which way, which direction this goes. What could change it?

NAFTALI: Donald Trump could change it. Donald Trump could emerge and say that enough is enough. He will set the tone at the Republican convention next week. If he says there are competitors, we disagree with them, we were all Americans, the country will move in a better direction. If on the other hand it's once again a discussion of good versus evil and if you're not on his side, you're evil, I fear more tension. I worry about more violence.

So I believe that in this moment, it's Donald Trump and I'm not saying he -- I'm not saying that he has to because he is a victim. He was hit. But he has a historic opportunity to set the country on a different course and to calm the waters. And I hope he takes it.

ZAKARIA: Evan, what do you think Joe Biden is thinking? What do you think that -- you know, how would you describe the dilemma he faces? What are your thoughts on Biden world?

OSNOS: It's notable, Fareed, that some of the very first comments that President Biden made about this were to say that he was reaching out to his opponent. I mean, he even referred to him by his first name in a gesture of kinship, of saying, look, we are humans first. We are not always mortal, political combatants here.

I think that in some ways as Tim rightly put it, the focus of what has been the last three weeks on Biden now shifts to Donald Trump, not only because of the events of last night, but also because of the convention and it really will be a moment of showcasing a conception of leadership, a conception of what it means to be a presidential candidate for all Americans. I think for Biden right now, this is a moment when he can put to the test, frankly, his capacity to talk to Americans in a language of decency, of civility, of calm.

It will shift the focus away for the moment from this question of age and acuity. And I think that he went into this presidential period in 2020 because of political violence, the threat that he saw showcased in Charlottesville, Virginia. And now this will be a moment for him to demonstrate that he's aware of the history and the potential future of that. And I think Americans will be watching closely.

ZAKARIA: And Evan, what do you think this does to the whole dynamic that was -- you know, all we were talking about before this shooting was, will Biden stay in the race? How do you think that dynamic plays itself out, given what's just happened?

OSNOS: Yes, in some ways, actually this creates an opportunity for a more considered conversation about that. Frankly, when this was the most dominant public issue that is actually the hardest time for somebody like Joe Biden. I say this thinking about his life and his psychology, it's the hardest time for him to make a decision that can weigh all of the equities, that can say, look, I understand that. I'm going to take this seriously and perhaps step aside.

[10:20:08]

What we saw for the last couple of weeks is a reflexive response. Joe Biden has always felt as if when he gets knocked down, he has to get back up. This is a fire break of a kind. This is a moment when he can think about what are the responsibilities that the president has now and what are the responsibilities that the candidate has now? Is it even possible to do both of these at the same time?

I think this is a moment that changes some of the momentum and the inertia of the last few days and honestly Fareed, none of us know exactly how it'll come out, but I do think we've learned that the pace and the turbulence of this campaign is so intense. This was the first attempted assassination in the age of the internet and the age of social media. And I guarantee you there will be more turbulence in the days ahead. And I think for the moment this is a chance for Biden to take stock and to pause.

ZAKARIA: When you look at previous assassination attempts, you know, the Reagan won, I think, I think it famously resulted in a 20 point jump in his popularity, but one that faded two months later. This seems a different dynamic.

NAFTALI: When you look at assassinations and assassination attempts, they usually lead to the country coming together and the convention I think, the Republican Convention will determine how this country processes this assassination attempt. I think we are so polarized. We have been told to hate each other for so long that what should be a reflexive responses after 9/11 isn't reflexive at the moment.

So I am waiting for the next few days to see the temperature in the country. The political temperature. I am hopeful but I'm not sure/ Historically, we should expect the country to come together but these are unusually difficult times.

BREMMER: I'm not hopeful. I mean, I have to be honest with you. We are in the middle of the weaponization of parts of the political system. I mean, think about how this campaign has gone so far. It's the former president Trump believing that he has political enemies that want to send him to jail unjustifiably so in his perspective, and he wants to fight against them in his initial reaction when he stood back and it an incredible powerful -- powerful imagery that we're going to see for months now, was fight, fight, fight.

That's his instinct. It's everything about, every sinew of this man is he is going to fight against his enemies. And yes, his enemy is the dead man, the 20-year-old, the tried to assassinate him. But I think that Trump believes that his enemy is Joe Biden, his enemy are the members of the press, some of whom have been calling him Hitler, his enemy are people on the other side of the political spectrum that want to destroy him.

And you're right, Tim, that there is an opportunity for former president Trump at this Republican convention. But I will eat my hat if he takes it.

ZAKARIA: Stay with us. Next on GPS, I'll get the latest on the investigation into the assassination attempt on former president Trump from the CNN's chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, John Miller, Ian Bremmer, and Tim Naftali well be back with me so stay for them as well.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:28:09]

ZAKARIA: Major questions remain about the shooter's motivations and how this assassination attempt was even possible under such tight security.

Joining me now to analyze what we know so far is CNN's chief law enforcement analyst, John Miller.

John, welcome. You have a long history with this stuff, so I want to get straight to some of the questions swirling around that people are asking on social media and such. So why was the roof that this guy was on not part of the security perimeter? It was about 400 feet away. Is that right? I assume there's some standard designation of how much is part of the security perimeter? Were you surprised that this was not part of the security perimeter?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: Well, I think it's a good question but I also think you have to look at this event in context, which is, you know, the sniper threat is usually greatest in an urban environment where you have your candidate out in the open surrounded by tall structures and hundreds of windows, you know, facing that target.

In this case, you had a low ground event, fenced in, magnetometer, meaning everybody was checked for weapons before they could get into that perimeter, and then you have this wide surrounding area around the fairgrounds with these low slung building. So there wasn't really any high ground and that is obviously something that they're going to have to rethink.

On the other hand, there were four countersniper teams working this event as far as I understand it from my sources. Two from the county sheriff's department, two from the Secret Service. That is an uncommon level of security for someone who is not currently the president, but I think the Secret Service assessment here has been that this is a high threat political environment and a high threat candidate.

ZAKARIA: So let's talk about those countersnipers because another one of the theories going around or is a big concern is you see the countersniper seemingly getting the guy in his sights. And I say, this is important, seemingly because we're judging it on the basis of photos and videos, but he seems to pause and not shoot right away.

There are accusations. Why did he -- if he had the guy in his sights why didn't he shoot right away? You've heard these charges. What do you make of that sequence?

MILLER: I have been in this position before where you're walking around and you have that earpiece in and you hear somebody has been sighted, some suspicious activity, and you hold your breath for that second while they assess and consider the rules of engagement. We don't know what was coming through this earpiece. We fill find that out later.

We don't know what he saw through that scope from the top of that red barn but what it appears happened is that this individual had been observed. This is Tom Crooks, the now deceased alleged shooter, had been observed acting suspiciously by the magnetometers outside the event by local law enforcement. And they had put that over the air to their partners and that information had been made its way onto the Secret Service frequencies and people had this description and were looking around for him.

He left the magnetometer area and then at some point people start to point out, there's a guy who is climbing down that roof and he has a rifle. And police are putting that over the radio. Our timeline is uncertain there, but that countersniper appears to be looking through his scope as if he's scanning for something.

He comes back from the scope to look up as if he's like looking at what did I just see? And then when the shots are fired takes out the shooter from his position almost immediately. So, we have to fill in those gaps.

What happened during those seconds? What were the communications? What did he see through the scope? And did he act at his first opportunity?

And we'll learn that later. But the main job of the countersniper team is to scan for that threat. And if the threat emerges or -- especially if shots are fired to eliminate that threat as quickly as possible. That part worked. The thing that they're really going to have to look out, Fareed, is the question you asked, which is what about the front end? Could this have been stopped with faster or more clear communications or a more intense search for the suspicious individual?

ZAKARIA: And it's all happening within seconds. So, it's kind of -- it's easy to look backwards and say, you know, this should have been done, but this is all happening in such short bursts of time.

One final thought, quickly, John, what about the danger of retaliation? How real do you think it is? How can you prepare against it in a country that is awash with guns? I mean, you know, we have hundreds and hundreds of millions of guns in this country.

MILLER: Well, Fareed, that's a fascinating question because it's an unusual question, right? I mean, think of our generation and the assassinations and attempted assassinations we've grown up with. Retaliation has never been a question before, but we are in probably one of the most brutal and taut political environments in our country's history. And through social media, there's an online undercurrent that is almost a constant drumbeat that has the rhetoric of violence built-in.

Department of Homeland security, Secret Service, FBI have all put out a bulletin saying that campaign events will be high threat conventions, will be high threat. So, is there a scenario where the what comes next question has to be examined? If this individual is determined to be part of some group or part of some movement is there some other group that then has to retaliate against individuals or other political events? And that's a question that will take us right into the security assessments for their conventions.

ZAKARIA: John Miller, thank you. Next on GPS, America's long, sad history of political violence.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[10:38:43]

ZAKARIA: Andrew Jackson in 1835. Abraham Lincoln in 1865. JFK in 1963. RFK in 1968. George Wallace in 1972. Gerald Ford in 1975. Ronald Reagan in 1981. This week's assassination attempt on Republican nominee Donald Trump harkens back to dark chapters of political violence in American history. Where does this come from? And where does it take us?

Joanne Freeman is one of the world's top experts on this subject. She is a professor of American history at Yale, and she joins me now.

Welcome. So, people often say America has this unique history of political violence. How true do you think that is? And why does it seem to burst forward at some, you know, period -- Tim Naftali was saying period of great social change or what I've described as revolutionary moments. Tell us what your sense of the history is.

JOANNE FREEMAN, PROFESSOR OF HISTORY, YALE UNIVERSITY: Well, we do have a long history of political violence in all kinds of ways. Obviously, assassination is one way that goes all the way back. You know, it's one of the glories of democracy is the -- our freedom as people to express our thoughts, to have free thoughts, to have free protest.

[10:40:06]

And with that kind of freedom and that kind of -- with those kinds of rights, there are also vulnerabilities and there are also dangers, and that's particularly true at moments when people feel that the political infrastructure is shaky or national institutions maybe don't feel as though they're up to the job. And there are moments in American history and some of them were mentioned in earlier commentary. And one of them is the period leading up to the Civil War. And one of them is the fight for civil rights. In the 1960s, when the people who are in power, or associated say to the status quo, feel as though that power is being threatened in some way, and the system itself doesn't seem to be solving it in a way that it's to their satisfaction, they feel threatened, and often those are moments when someone steps forward and basically pushes aside the normal democratic process for, you know, arguing and coming together and coming up with some kind of a solution and they just turn to violence.

And so, in the 1850s and 60s the slavery issue. And you had people who did not want slavery to be eliminated, who came forward and assassinated Abraham Lincoln. In the 1960s with multiple incidents, again, you had people who were fighting for rights, for civil rights, and you've got others who did not want to lose what they consider to be their rights who stepped forward and used violence.

ZAKARIA: And how would you characterize this period? What is the struggle?

FREEMAN: Well, in some ways, the struggle is a struggle about democracy, right? The struggle that we're in the middle of right now has to do with the fundamentals of what democracy is, how democracy works, are we a democratic republic? We are. What does that mean? And we've seen --

ZAKARIA: And who is it working for in a sense? Both sides seem to be --

FREEMAN: Who is it working for and how many people? Who gets included within it or who gets excluded from it? Those are huge questions and those are questions that are society-wide. They affect everyone. And they're the kinds of questions that get people riled up because they feel that, you know, in some cases some things being taken away from them and it's that kind of emotion that inspires sometimes --

(CROSSTALK)

ZAKARIA: And it feels like when the conflicts are over these highly emotive issues, you know, these are not economic issues anymore. These are issues of culture, of identity where compromise seems very difficult to make, right? How do --

FREEMAN: Particularly when some of the rhetoric is declaring that the other are inhuman. You know, I mean, again, look even in other countries, you know, when people start to use the language of, you know, they're vermin, they're othering people to such an extreme degree, how can there be a coming together when you're not only othering people who is disagreeing with you but you're othering them as being from a different species? That's extreme rhetoric.

ZAKARIA: You started by talking about how we have this strong tradition of First Amendment rights have speech. We also have a strong tradition of Second Amendment and a huge gun culture and it goes back to dueling and -- so, part of this here is a history of, you know, of armed violence in a way that I think other countries don't have.

FREEMAN: That's true. I mean, that goes all the way back as well. I mean, it's -- it's -- I suppose interesting, maybe noteworthy that even way back in the 18th century when the rest of the world, when they will have fighting duels between elite people and, you know, sometimes killing people, but they were using swords. It was an elite practice.

In the United States really -- people weren't really into swords in that time period. It was guns. Dueling in America was about guns while it was still about swords in other countries.

Guns are very small D, democratic weapon. And so, all the way back, the United States kind of started out in a different place socially and in some ways culturally. Although, obviously, they came forward from Europe, from England, but you know, every country has a distinctive culture. And America has always had that kind of a stand- up ground level kind of a culture.

ZAKARIA: Final brief thought. Where does this go in your view?

FREEMAN: Well, you know, going all the way back to Andrew Jackson, there was an assassination attempted, nothing happened. The gun has misfired. Two things happened, either people immediately pointed fingers at his enemies and said, you did that. Or they said it was staged and made-up because it was some way for him to get sympathy.

I think if right now people begin to use this as a finger-pointing moment that's -- those are -- I will call them bad actors. Those are people who should not be using this moment to stoke further animosity. So, one way out of this is to step back for a moment. And also, for the American people to see that at this moment it's not a moment to jump in the bandwagon and forge ahead, wanting more violence.

[10:45:10]

It matters what we think about this moment too.

ZAKARIA: Step back rather than step forward. That's a good way to think of it. Thank you, Joanne.

Just in, by the way, a statement from Melania Trump, the former president's wife. She offers her thanks to law enforcement and her sympathies for the victims. And she calls on the country to ascend above the hate, the vitriol, and the simple-minded ideas that ignite violence.

Next up, closing thoughts on this dark chapter in American history.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

ZAKARIA: We are back talking about the attempt on Donald Trump's life at a rally in Pennsylvania last night. I want to bring back our CNN presidential historian Tim Naftali and Eurasia group president Ian Bremmer for some closing thoughts.

[10:50:02]

Ian, Republican convention, the next big thing coming up. What do you think happens there and who does Trump pick as his vice president? Does this change anything?

IAN BREMMER, PRESIDENT, EURASIA GROUP: It changes a lot in the sense that Donald Trump is going to appear in Milwaukee like Lazarus, right? I mean, this has already been a cult of Trump. Individually, he has such strong charisma with the MAGA faithful that is going to get far stronger on the back of this. And if he is changing his mind or rethinking it all, and Lord knows I don't have any intelligence on that, I would say he's more likely to pick someone who is really aligned with that message. The single person I've seen that has most strongly resonated with that since the assassination attempt would be J.D. Vance.

ZAKARIA: And what does it mean for Biden and that talk about him stepping down?

TIMOTHY NAFTALI, CNN PRESIDENTIAL HISTORIAN: I think that -- I think the Democrats are going to rally around the president. I think, we're going to hear much less about him stepping down.

I think Democrats are going to see this as a moment when more discord is unpleasant and unnecessary. And I also think they understand that the political challenge they face is enormous and they need to face it as a united party. They want the White House and they want the House.

ZAKARIA: But as I said, when we look historically -- you know there are few clues here but Trump probably benefits from this.

NAFTALI: Well, I'm quite certain Trump -- I mean, he didn't benefit as a human being but as a political figure he is a juggernaut now. I think there will be a lot of people who will see in his reaction to yesterday's assassination attempt, a strength, a strength that they admire and they want to rally to.

ZAKARIA: When you talked about this, when we started about the world, how do you think the world is looking at all this? Because I'm always struck by -- you know, when I talk to people around the world, they always say, the U.S. economy is doing amazingly. Your technology companies rule the world. The dollar is the supreme currency. But your political system seems so screwed up and you seem so paralyzed and polarized.

BREMMER: Small point and big point. Small point is that this election had been Biden's to lose, and he looked likely to. It is now Trump's to win. And I think that countries around the world now recognize the Trump is the likely next president.

Most American allies are deeply discomforted about that, and they are preparing for it. Most American adversaries see great opportunity in that but there's a bigger point. And the bigger point is that the United States no longer has a political system that any country around the world admires. They admire the dollar. They admire the U.S. economy. They admire U.S. innovation and entrepreneurship. No one admirers America's political system.

That is a deep concern. A generational concern for leaders around the world that rely on the United States. Where the global order requires a strong and stable U.S. Even the Chinese don't want the Americans falling apart. They need the political system to be stable in the Middle East and Russia, Ukraine, and all of that. This is a very, very worrying time for all the leaders that you and I talk to.

ZAKARIA: And in that way, this is I think very different and much worse than the 70s because I was in India growing up. People outside of America actually took the opposite message that many in America want to talk, which is they looked at what happened with Watergate as the system working. That a president of the United States who broke the law was forced by the courts and by his own party to resign. That was seen as the marvel of American democracy. Now, we see something very different.

NAFTALI: We lost -- we have lost -- in the generational shifts since the 70s we've lost a sense of bipartisanship on big issues. There is a sense in this country that our leaders can't agree on basic principles anymore.

In the 1970s, the world looked to us. They recognize we've been through a lot. We've been through a failed war. We had been through political assassinations. We've been through a corrupt presidency, but the country held together and its institutions held because its leaders were speaking the same language and that isn't the situation today.

ZAKARIA: Yes, it does. Again, to come back to the strange thing as you think about what triggered all those -- that turmoil lost war, stagflation, quadrupling of oil prices. You know, the United States was doing badly in the 1970s. The paradox here is, as you put it, you know, economically, technologically, the United States is doing well politically. We are so deeply driven.

BREMMER: Yes. I mean, it's -- it is the singular challenge right now.

[10:55:01]

I don't underestimate just how much that algorithms and the fact that human beings and especially Americans are getting their information from algorithms as opposed to from people, as opposed to from communities, as opposed to from their families. And that isn't just a matter of disinformation. It's also a matter of us versus them.

There are three major wars in the world right now. There's Russia versus Ukraine. There's Israel versus Palestine. And there's Americans versus themselves. It's not a good place to be.

ZAKARIA: Thank you, guys. That was good perspective.

And thanks to all of you for being part of my program this week. I will see you next week.

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