Insights, analysis and must reads from CNN's Fareed Zakaria and the Global Public Square team, compiled by Global Briefing editor Chris Good Seeing this newsletter as a forward? Sign up here. June 25, 2024 | |
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What should we expect from Thursday's presidential debate, hosted by CNN? For one thing, it's a different arrangement, as The Economist details: Thursday's debate falls very early on the calendar and will be hosted by a news network rather than by the Commission on Presidential Debates. CNN "will mute microphones when the candidates are not entitled to speak," as The Economist writes. "There will be no studio audience, which will thwart [former President Donald] Trump's impulse to whip up sympathetic crowds."
In May, the candidates agreed to Thursday's debate and to another in September to be hosted by ABC. They approved details including mic-muting earlier this month. "Until recently, it wasn't clear that Trump and [President Joe] Biden would ever share a stage again," writes New Yorker staff writer and CNN contributor Evan Osnos. But CNN's debate on Thursday and ABC's this fall "have the potential for even greater stakes and strangeness than four years ago. Since they are meeting nearly three months earlier than usual in a Presidential election, there would, in theory, be enough time for either party to find a replacement, in the event of a catastrophic performance. More likely, however, the spectacle of Biden and Trump side by side, and effectively tied in the polls, could jolt the electorate, swaying some of the disaffected voters who have preferred to ignore the choice before them."
In a roundup of pre-debate analysis at CNN Opinion, conservative commentator Scott Jennings suggests Trump's goal should be a calm demeanor. Many remember his interruptions in the first debate in 2020, but in the second debate that year, a "measured Trump offered a spirited and coherent defense of his administration's record. And he rebutted and counterpunched Biden throughout the night without looking like a jerk." Trump would do well to repeat that performance, Jennings writes.
In the same CNN Opinion roundup, former Biden White House Communications Director Kate Bedingfield suggests the muted mics could help Trump and hurt Biden. In the first debate in 2020, "Trump's open mic meant the TV audience got the full brunt of his frantic, angry energy and Biden got the contrast he wanted. In the second debate, with muted mics, Trump was forced to be far more restrained, which meant Biden had to drive the conversation more clearly to his lines of attack—something we focused on heavily in debate prep. Team Biden should have every expectation that will be his task later this week when—given the muted mics and the lack of an in-house audience to feed off—the most disciplined version of Trump may well be on display." |
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In a London prison since his 2019 exit from the Ecuadorian embassy, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has reached a deal with the US Department of Justice that will see him plead guilty to a felony in connection with his publication of classified US documents. Assange left prison on Monday and will return to his native Australia; he will avoid extradition and imprisonment in the US.
The hotly debated question about Assange has always been whether he's a journalist whose actions should be protected. At The Conversation, Michelle Grattan of the University of Canberra writes that Assange's "critics have insisted" his publication of massive troves of documents, including those that revealed US surveillance tools, "was not just a breach of the law but irresponsible and potentially put lives at risk. For this school of thought, Assange was and remains a villain. Donald Trump's former vice president, Mike Pence, posted on social media after Assange's plea deal: 'Julian Assange endangered the lives of our troops in a time of war and should have been prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.'"
At CNN Opinion, former Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who worked with Assange to publish some of the leaks that made Assange famous, wrote last month as critical court hearings loomed: "It was often a bumpy ride—even Assange's greatest supporters agree he is not the easiest person to work with—but we did valuable journalism together. Sarah Ellison, writing in Vanity Fair, concluded: 'Whatever the differences, the results have been extraordinary. Given the range, depth, and accuracy of the leaks, the collaboration has produced by any standard one of the greatest journalistic scoops of the last 30 years.'"
In a New York Times guest opinion essay, James Kirchick, a senior fellow at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, writes that Assange's protracted prosecution under the Espionage Act will have a chilling effect on investigative journalism: "While the Espionage Act has been used rarely against those who leak classified information, never—until now—has the government cited it against someone who publishes that information. … I find Mr. Assange's ideology loathsome and his methods reckless. But the First Amendment wasn't written to protect only those whose ideas, and means of expressing them, we find agreeable." |
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What can Democrats learn from the UK election, where Labour is expected to secure massive gains? On Sunday's GPS, Fareed said the lesson is about avoiding hints of a "woke" agenda, tacking to the center, and refraining from alienating moderates. |
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The Return of Shipping Bottlenecks? |
The most significant cause of pandemic-era inflation has been disputed, but there's no question supply chains suffered badly from 2020 to 2022. A backup of container ships at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach peaked at 109 ships before falling to four in October 2022, as Paul Berger reported for The Wall Street Journal. In 2021, a stuck cargo ship caused a massive logjam in the Suez Canal.
With those crises in the rearview, shipping is getting more expensive again. The supply-chain advisory Drewry, which tracks container shipping prices, wrote last Thursday that its composite index "increased 7% to $5,117 per 40ft container this week and has increased 233% when compared with the same week last year."
At The New York Times, Peter S. Goodman reports that supply-chain problems are reemerging due to several factors: Houthi attacks on shipping in the Red Sea, which have sent some container ships around Africa the long way; low water levels in the Panama Canal, which have limited ship passages; and labor disputes involving dockworkers in the US and Germany and rail workers in Canada. Goodman writes: "The intensifying upheaval in shipping is prompting carriers to lift rates while raising the specter of waterborne gridlock that could again threaten retailers with product shortages during the make-or-break holiday shopping season. The disruption could also exacerbate inflation, a source of economic anxiety animating the American presidential election. If the supply chain disturbances of the pandemic proved anything, it was this: Trouble in any one place tends to ripple out widely." |
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