Global View of the U.S. and the 2016 Race; Behind Working Class Whites' Trump Fervor
FAREED ZAKARIA, CNN HOST: This is GPS, the GLOBAL PUBLIC SQUARE. Welcome to all of you in the United States and around the world. I'm Fareed Zakaria.</s>ZAKARIA: We'll start today's show by asking what the world thinks of America's frolicking presidential campaign.</s>DONALD TRUMP (R), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: He's the founder of ISIS. He's the founder of</s>ISIS. HILLARY CLINTON (D), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: Donald Trump is not qualified to be president and he is temperamentally unfit to be commander-in-chief.</s>ZAKARIA: I'll talk to guests from South Africa to Russia, Israel to Britain. Then, who are Donald Trump's voters? I'll talk to the author of a haunting memoir, Hillbilly Ellegy, who grew up in the coal mining region of Appalachian, among the white, mostly working class people who are at the heart of Trump's support. And one of the world's richest men is pouring his fortune, not into putting his name on buildings and hospitals and colleges, but into ideas. The ideas that will shape the 21st century. Nicholas Begruen will explain. Finally, and a novel use of drones that's taking off online, using them to safe lives instead of end them.</s>ZAKARIA: But first, here's my take. In recent days, I have had a dream. That America has a real Republican Party. A party offering a serious, right of center alternative to the Democrats. Such a contest of ideas would improve the public debate and offer Americans a real choice, not the cartoon campaign we have today. Donald Trump had the opportunity for a reset this week and managed to derail it with his talk of Second Amendment people, but forget the detour for a moment. Trump's much heralded speech laying out his economic policies was an incoherent mish-mash of populism, hypocrisy and pandering. When did the Republican Party's intellectual decay begin? According to the conservative writer David Frum in his book "Dead Right" it began in the Reagan years. Recall that Ronald Reagan had viciously attacked Jimmy Carter for racking up deficits and debt. In fact by the end of Reagan's two terms, the national debt had tripled. You see Republicans came to recognize that whatever it might say the American public in fact did not want cuts in government programs. Since then most Republican presidential candidates have promised the public huge tax cuts without any real spending restraint to pay for them. The result of course has been massive deficits. Republican economic plans nowadays are simply not serious. In the primaries, the three main candidates of the party of fiscal discipline, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and Donald Trump presented plans that added $8 trillion, $10 trillion or $11 trillion in tax cuts over the next decade according to the non-partisan tax policy center. Even the much respected Paul Ryan's plan, largely adopted by Trump now, has a $2.4 trillion hole in it. These vast gaps are papered over with magical assumption so higher growth and the usual vague calls to end waste, fraud and abuse in government. Trump's plans are a replay of these dishonest tactics. He say he will cut taxes big league, but of course never pays for them, assuming the usual bogus growth numbers to make them look better on paper. He promises vaguely to cut regulations, suggesting at a rally this week he could do so by as much as 75 percent, which is so absurd that I don't think even he believes it. Imagine instead of all this, a Republican Party that firmly believed in limited government, local control and social conservatism, and propose policies that were true to these beliefs. Imagine it presented a serious plan that rationalized America's unwieldy and corrupt tax code, simplified brackets, cut rates but paid for it by eliminating loopholes, deductions and credits. Imagine a Republican Party that focused less on tax cuts for the rich, but improved access to the market for the poor and middle class. For example, a party that not propose not to eliminate Obamacare, but to reform it using stronger market mechanisms, allowing greater competition and price transparency across the country. Imagine a party that presented specific plans to cut regulations that hamper the formation and growth of small businesses, and encouraged large companies to hire more and make new investments that encouraged states to get rid of the ever expanding licensing requirements that are put in place to keep out competition. Political systems need debate and choices. America would benefit greatly if the Republican Party were to become a substantive market oriented right of center party. For now, this remains a dream. For more go to CNN.com/fareed, and read my "Washington Post" column this week. And let's get started. People in the United States often ask me what the world thinks of this wild presidential election season. Well, I'm about to let you hear for yourself with four guests from around the world. Donald Trump has minced no words about this. He doesn't really care about the rest of the world or what it thinks of him. He wants to of course make America great again. Russia, though, is one of the few foreign countries whose people tell pollsters they like Mr. Trump and that's where I'll begin my introductions. Pavel Felgenhauer is in Moscow. He's the columnist for Russia's independent Novaya Gazeta newspaper. Chemi Shalev is the U.S. editor for Israel's Haaretz. He joins us from Tel Aviv. Ferial Haffajee is in Johannesburg. She's a leading South African journalist, and editor and Gideon Rahman is FT's chief foreign affairs columnist. He's with us from London. Ferial, let me start with you. What do people make of what's going on in South Africa?</s>FERIAL HAFFAJEE, 2014 WINNER, INTERNATIONAL PRESS FREEDOM AWARD: So, Fareed, do you know the South African term? It's sort of a national term of empathy or sympathy, and I think that's what I hear most often about the American election. For me it seems like South Africans are slightly incredulous that it might be possible that you could go from a figure like Barack Obama, who's very, very well-loved here, to somebody like Donald Trump. Equally incredulous, we've watched statements about the war for Mexicans, the ban on Muslims coming to the U.S. and then today statements about IS. And that's the key theme I see running through it. So Donald Trump hugs our headlines, Hillary Clinton not putting in a great showing across our media and social media.</s>ZAKARIA: Chemi, when one looks at Israel, there was a kind of aborted love affair that seemed to be -- to take place between Trump and either the country or its prime minister. He tried to support it very -- you know, he's talked about how strongly he supports it. Tried to come Israel and then cancelled when the prime minister -- when Bibi Netanyahu seen indicated perhaps he wouldn't meet with him. What's going on there?</s>CHEMI SHALEV, U.S. EDITOR AND CORRESPONDENT, ISRAEL'S HAARETZ: Well, first of all, I think the default position, not only for the prime minister, but probably of a majority of Israeli public opinion would be to support the Republican candidate no matter who it was. And if it was anyone I think perhaps most of the 16 candidates who were running against Donald Trump, you'd probably have a 70/30 majority. Mainly because Barack Obama is not very well-loved in Israel. But Trump has thrown his banner into the works. And the polls indicate even a slight majority for Hillary Clinton. He's been all over the map on issues concerning Israel. I think people are starting to catch the drift of, you know, the reservations in America from him. I did hear one interesting comment and that is that somebody said that there's very -- something very comforting in Trump for Israelis because we had always assumed that among Western democracies we have the most insane system and the most insane politicians. But now it turns out that it's a worldwide phenomenon, including what's going on in Europe in the recent Brexit vote.</s>ZAKARIA: Gideon, when you -- when Brits look at Trump, do they see it as a version of Brexit, in other words the people who supported Brexit were also in a sense nationalists, in a sense, seemed hostile to foreigners?</s>GIDEON RACHMAN, CHIEF FOREIGN AFFAIRS COLUMNIST, FINANCIAL TIMES: Well, I think there are definitely some parallels. The constituency that Trump is putting together in the United States, the disaffected white working class, people that are worried about immigration, capitalizing on anti-elite sentiment, I think those were things that drove this rather unexpected vote for Brexit in the UK. That's I think the tone of Trump is much wilder even than the Brexit campaign in the UK. So it was quite interesting when Nigel Farage is one of the more right-wing politicians here in Britain and was the leader of the Brexit campaign, when he went to the Republican convention, he said it was for the first time in his life he felt left-wing watching the kind of antics of the Trump-led troops at the Republican convention.</s>PAVEL FELGENHAUER, COLUMNIST, RUSSIA'S NOVAYA GAZETA: Well, I would say primarily that Trump is popular here in Russia because Barack Obama is deeply unpopular. So I mean, anyone who's attacking Obama would be seen nicely by the Russian population. Obama is seen as a person who organized the sanctions after Russia took over Crimea -- and these sanctions together with the growing price of war cause very badly for Russian population. We have a shrinking economy, household incomes, and everyone believes, I mean, not only the Kremlin but actually the masses of the people believe that this is all Obama's fault. And Hillary Clinton is seen as a kind of surrogate, a continuation of Obama. And Trump is saying the right words about he's ready to maybe recognize Russian annexation of Crimea, maybe will give Russia -- or the rest of you Ukraine as the kind of dependency, as part of Russian recognized influence. So he's believed to be maybe the good guy.</s>ZAKARIA: Thank you all. We'll come back. What I'm going to ask you next is what does the world think of America today and its current president.