the news continues right now. this is "gps," the global public square. welcome to all you have in the united states and around the world. i'm fareed zakaria coming to you live from new york. >> on the show today -- >> we have reached this electio >> the 46th president of the united states will be joseph r. biden. >> tonight the whole world is watching america and i believe that our best america is a beacon for the globe. >> what does the world make of america's choice? three former top officials from around the globe will join me.

ex-prime minister kevin rudd of australia, former deputy prime minister of israel and former secretary of the united kingdom david miliband. also, why is america still so very polarized? ezra klein wrote the book on it. he will explain what the election has taught him. first, here's my take. joe biden's first speech as president-elect demonstrated to the world that he may be the man for this moment. decent, generous, and determined to reach out to his political opponents. but while many will celebrate this restoration of dignity and normalcy to american politics, let us bear in mind that the united states has gone through one of its most trying periods in history.

one that is not done yet. the country was on the verge of becoming an illiberal democracy. i wrote about it 23 years ago when i saw countries in which elections were being held, popular participation was real, but where those leaders who had won would then try to use their power it attack the rule of law. minority rights, freedom of the press, and other institutions, procedures and norms that made up the inner stuffing of constitutional government. i wrote about this growing danger because i was observing it in countries like belarus, russia, and the philippines. but president trump took america down that dark path and continues to push it in that direction even now. think about this election. over 140 million people voted. participation and engagement was sky high. but the president of the united

states used his platform and power to delegitimize the election, the free press, the idea of a loyal opposition, and the very country's integrity. >> i easily win. >> and it's not just donald trump. the top house republican kevin mccarthy endorsed trump's wild allegations and agreed that trump actually won the election. former house speaker newt gingrich, lindsey graham, and several other senior republicans claimed that america was witnessing a conspiracy to steal the election from president trump. they were aided in this effort by certain fox news anchors who whipped up their audiences to believe that trump had lost only through election fraud. it may not be necessary to make this point, but let me do it anyway. as ellen wine trobe of the federal election commission said, there really has been no evidence of fraud in this election.

and it's not just this election. justin leavitt, a professor at loyola law school, found out of a billion ballots cast between 2014, there were just 31 cases of voter impersonation. mail-in ballot fraud is equally rare. in oregon, with more than 100 million mail-in ballots sent out since 2000, there have been only a dozen cases of proven fraud. the conservative heritage foundation has tried some scam mongering alleging 1,300 proven instances of voter fraud in america without noting this is out of more than 1 billion ballots cast in the last 40 years. two brooking scholars revealed that the number of fraud cases heritage found in colorado, for example, were 14 out of almost 16 million ballots cast, or approximately 0.00009%.

in other words, virtually non-existent. trump's allegations, his lawsuits and rhetoric might have little factual substance, but they all will have lasting consequences. they undermine faith in the american system. trump and his republican allies blistering attacks are music to the ears of russian nationalists and chinese communists. they have been saying all along that american democracy is a sham. now the republican party seems to agree. but it is not true. in fact, the american system has worked. even during a pandemic, even under the tremendous pressure of a leader and his court of sycophants who have been willing to shred the norms and rules of the system for their momentary political gain. ultimately, it didn't work. donald trump entered politics alleging a conspiracy. the birtherism nonsense.

and he will leave the white house alleging another conspiracy. this time it will not work. he will have to leave. but his term in office should be a reminder to americans and really everyone around the world democracy is fragile. it needs to be protected. it can be eroded and undermined not just in belarus and venezuela, but in the birthplace of constitutional government, the united states of america. let's get started. ♪ >> world leaders have been weighing in on the election, mostly on trump's favorite medium, twitter. many have sod congratulations to biden and harris and some of trump's personal friends have done the same. u.k. prime minister boris johnson said he was looking forward to working with them.

one congratulating biden and harris without mentioning what for. the other tweet thanking the oug president. radio silence from china's xi and russia's putin and next who said he is waiting until any legal challenges are over. europe's reaction with david miliband, former foreign secretary of the u.k. uks, israel's former prime minister zip by lib any and australia's former prime minister kevin rudd. david, what is the significance you think in a broader sense of donald trump being denied a second term, which, as you know, is rare? >> i think there are two elements to this result, fareed. the first is that a politician in the mold of donald trump, what you have called an illiberal democrat, has been defeated at the first round. and that is significant because,

as you have shown and others have documented, it's often in a second term that the greatest steps to undermine democracy take place. there is something very significant in the defeat of president trump. the second element is that we face an absolute crisis in the global commons at the moment in respect to the covid health crisis, the climate crisis, in respect of the management of the global common. we have seen a break down of the multilateral system. it's the last chance. now, the great sigh of relief that you are hearing from europe, a tweet of relief that you are hearing from foreign ministries and presidents and prime ministers across europe is that they think in this last chance solution, soon to be president biden will be a force for cooperation amongst liberal democratic countries in the world, management of the big global problems which, fortunately, are in the social space of health and climate rather than in the security space at the moment. and also that there is a chance to reinvent the multilateral

system in such a way that it can compete and cooperate with the countries like china who are providing an alternative model. >> kevin, what does it look like to you in asia? particularly for asia's democracies, for america's allies, how significant is this? >> well, i think there are two sets of responses across asia. one from obvious america's democratic allies in asia, and the second from china. on the democratic allies, i think as david miliband said, there is almost a collective sigh of relief, and the reason for that is that the trump presidentsy has been seen right across asia as being structurally unpredictable, that in the case of the management of individual allies like the republic of korea, it has been aggressive from time to time,

and that the strategy towards china has been very difficult to map for allies let alone to koord with. what i sense across the democratic allies is not just a satisfaction that the american democratic institutions have worked, but for those specific foreign policy reasons a sense of relief and anticipation, an ability to work with biden. on china, china has been divided internally in their aspirations for who would win the presidency in this election. the political military and intelligence establishment i believe were privately hoping for a trump re-elect because they saw trump as so divisive with america's allies around the world, and damaging to the democracy within america itself, and, therefore, damaging to the brand of democracy in china. but china's traditional diplomatic and international economic policy establishment, they welcome the opportunity of being able to re-engage with the

democrats in a new administration. >> let me ask you about that strange reaction from prime minister netanyahu first. if you can shed some light on it. he seems unable to bring himself to say the words president-elect. he doesn't congratulate biden for actually winning the presidency, and his second tweet congratulating or thanking president trump was longer and warmer than his first one. what is going on with bibi? >> i loved this enough to tweet solution. it took him some time to acknowledge that president-elect is joe biden, and in fact i think that he tried to find the solution in saying something, congratulating joe biden for the future, but don't do something

that would maybe will be taken by president trump as insulting or so. in a way it's not about bibi. it's about israel, and we have a split or so in this world because some of these appreciating for trump or appreciating trump contribution to the state of israel, normalizing relations with arab states, moving to jerusalem, wanted trump to be re-elected. but a lot like me were completely worried about the global situation, about the democratic values, and what happened in the united states doesn't stay in the united states. this is what happened in israel as well. in a way, every red line that president trump crossed in terms of attacking democracy was a green light to netanyahu to do so in israel.

so for part of the society in israel, in a way it's a split. it's the same relief as was described. also for me. and for others, they wanted trump to continue. >> let me ask you quickly. we have a minute. the abraham accords obviously a diplomatic victory for israel and for the united states, but is there some concern among some people in israel that it still does not address the palestinian issue, or is that issue see essentially dead from an israeli point of view? >> it depends who you ask. i believe that reaching an agreement with the palestinians, addressing the palestinian conflict is an israeli interest. therefore, being satisfied with normalization coming with the gulf states, arab states, i am worried and some of us are

worried that the elizabethisrae palestinian conflict was abandoned. i hope the biden administration pays attention. i am not talking about comprehensive peace treaty the next day, but abandoning the false idea of annexation and hopefully keep this road open for the future and the running issue is not only an israeli concern n aworks it's going to be quite a challenge to the new administration. but, yet it was clear that trump was also talking about renegotiating with iran and the new administration in biden should deal with it and in a way it's kind of a litmus test in our region the way the united states would deal with iran. >> all right. stay with us. we will have this terrific panel back to talk about china, climate change, and more.

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global reactions to the biden/harris victory with former top political leaders from around the world. david miliband, tzipi livni, and kevin rudd. kevin, you are a long-time china watcher, fluent in mandarin. give us a sense of how china as a country, not the government, is reacting. is there a lot of interest in china in this election? >> well, if you look at the social media data emerging out of china, fareed, there is something like seven or eight billion social media engagements on the u.s. election in china just in recent days. so this based on my own chinese friends and contacts suggests a

high level of personal interest and engagement. not all chinese believe what is presented to them by the people's daily each day. many have deep connections in america. to answer your question directly, it's been at the top as far as the chinese public is concerned. >> david, what do you make of the future of kind of trump's politics of cultural nationalism, right-wing populism, call it what you will. you come out of a tradition of kind of liberal internationalism, if i can put it that way. do you feel that this was enough of a repudiation? are we still in this bat?le? >> i think the path goes on. those who believe in the authoritarianism will see the 48% vote as an endorsement, albeit one that didn't, in the end, carry the day in the presidential election. those who are fearful that this is a curse for right of center

politics will obviously have to figure out how to replace it. my own sense is that although the, it's tempting in the american system to point all the ways in which president biden will be tied down, i think it's important to recognize how significant the agenda-setting power of the u.s. president is, not just formally through executive orders and the like, through the foreign policy domain, but also through the bully pulpit. and i think, therefore, there is a chance for those of us who see an alternative to a, if you like, a future that's dominated by world fortresses, those of us who want to build an alternative see a america that's ready to engagement and the pressing issues that we face are actually some quick wins for the biden administration. i am thinking first of all in respect to the world health organization and the covid-19

crisis, a new international momentum around ka candlelight, t cli climb ent to net zero carbon emissions by 250, those are sni significant commitments that america can add its voice and resources to. in that sense i think there is a chance, this is a moment of possibility as president-elect biden said last night, and i think we shouldn't be obsessed with the idea government will be tied down by the liliputians. i think there is a chance for something different. >> tzipi livni, how much do personalities matter? you have known joe biden personally for 20 years or more maybe. describe how you would think, you know, what kind of a person is he from your perspective as an international player? >> i believe that the free world needs now a man as the leader of the free world, and i believe

that the message coming out of these elections and the result of the elections is that character matters and i take what president-elect biden said yesterday about healing america, healing the united states. my advice or maybe this is time now for the leader of the free world to heal the world. and i believe that joe biden, his personality is exactly what the free world needs now because the message coming until this election from the u.p.s. was quite -- the united states was problematic in terms of the values that we believe biden represents the values of liberal and liberalism and democracy as the free world needs. >> kevin, i want to ask you about the health of democracy and what role the media can play to bolster it and to destroy it.

the reason i ask this, i notice you are trying to take some measures in australia to, i think, in your words, make sure that rupert murdoch cannot do to australia's political culture what his media organizations have done to america's political culture. explain what you mean. >> well, fareed, in your introductory remarks to the program today you spoke quite specifically about how the evolution of the american democracy is seen in moscow and beijing, and, frankly, if the democracy fails or falters in the united states, it is of fundamental importance to the rest of the world in terms of the long-term health of the liberal democratic -- in australia, unlike in the united states, murdoch and 70% of the print media in australia, in my own home state of queensland, 100% of the print media.

and so when i look at fox as, in the united states, i do see that that is the long-term trajectory in terms of what he wants to do in my own democracy in australia. we have seen evidence of that in the united kingdom. i doubt very much there would have been brexit in the absence of murdoch's campaigning through his campaigning newspapers there. the bottom line is the lifeblood of our democracies depends on a fair, balanced, independent, free media which separates out two things. the reporting of facts and the expression of opinion. and with the murdoch media empire we have seen the con flakes of these two things for so long. that's why we've seen so many people, hundreds of thousands of people sign petitions in australia demanding a royal commission into the future of the murdoch monopoly in this country. what america does on that, it's a america for america. what the u.k. does, it's a matter for the u.k. when i look at fox and its central role in this

presidential election campaign, effectively as an arm of the republican party, i don't think it's been good for the overall democratic project. >> we have to leave it there. we will get back with all of you. fascinating conversation. thank you so much. next on "gps," america is deeply divided. why? what will bring it back together? ezra klein and david french join me in a moment. slice from fidely now you can trade stocks and etfs... for any amount you choose... instead of buying by the share. and fidelity allows you to trade fractional shares of stocks and etf's for as little as one dollar. that's more choice and more flexibility than you'll find at schwab all with no commissions, no account fees and no minimums. stocks by the slice from fidelity. get your slice today.

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far, just over 50% of americans voted for joe biden for president and about 48% of the country voted for donald trump.

this is a divided nation. ezra klein and david french are here to help decide what unites and divides us. cline is the founder and editor at large of vox, the author of why we're polarized. french is a senior editor at the dispatch and a columnist for time, the author of divided we fall. ezra, looking at this election, if somebody were to ask you the question, an american would ask you simply, why are we so polarized, what is the answer? >> we are polarized because we disagree. let me put this in a slightly different way in terms of parties. what has happened in american politics that has made us polarized in the way that it functions in our common conversation suspect that we have become more deeply in disagreement with each other. it's that disagreement has become better sorted between the parties. if you go back 30 or 40 or 50 years, you have liberal

republicans like george romney, conservative democrats. and that creates an incentive in a capacity for cross-party governance that we don't have right now. i am not really concerned about american disagreement. there are kinds that are toxic and some that are constructive. i am worried about the inability to govern because the parties don't have a strong incentive and the republican party does not show a strong desire to cooperate. if you have a joe biden presidency and a mitch mcconnell senate, really i am quite worried on key things we need to make progress on, nothing is going to get done. >> david, there are a lot of people who say it's not an equal phenomenon. some have studied it and said what happened is the democratic party has moved slightly left, the republican party has moved way right, more importantly, has become post-newt gingrich deeply uncompromising and antagonistic

towards the opposition party. do you share that or do you have a different way of looking at it? >> if you listen to folks on the right they would say exactly the opposite, that the left has moved very far to the left, that ideas like defund the police, that were not even really on anyone's radar screen even recently, became part of the mainstream conversation. so what you have really here is you have competing narratives of grievance that say, okay, well, our side has a problem, but your side has the real problem. so to build on what ezra just said, what we have is disagreement, which our system is built to handle, supposedly, but it's disagreement enhanced by an enormous sense of grievance that is then especially on the right nursed and cultivated by a right-wing entertainment media complex and this grievance builds deep an h

partisanship where i'm not, let's say if i'm a republican, i am not a republican because i love the republican party so much as i really dislike the democrats. and so the main virtue, a republican candidate has, is that he is not the other guy. and i think that what we saw with trump is that that was really ramped up and put on steroids. as far as relative fault, i think any time one side has the most powerful man in the world on its side, the most powerful man is dedicated to cruelty as a tactic, that's going to adjust the balance of equities for a time. but it remains to be seen sort of what the republican party looks like post-trump. >> well, we will get to that. i want to keep on this polarization point and ask you, ezra, you make a compelling case, you just did and in your book, that it used to be that there were polarizations within parties. northern liberals and southern segregationists were both in the democratic party and had to find a way to work together. and now it's sort of divided and

weaponized. but isn't there also a kind of deep cultural and class division that has developed? i mean, if you look at the coalitions, you know, the democratic party is college educated whites, you know, and the multicultural coalition. the republican coalition is less educated, rural whites. those cultural class polarizations, it feels layers upon layers. so you almost have one country, but two nations. >> yes. how long do we have? so the trick of this is that as the parties polarized ideologically, that created a signal inside the rest of the system about what kind of people fit in which party. so the beginning of the story is the civil rights act, the parties polarized about race. if you look at mid-century american politics, order to measure ideology, race spits in two parties internally.

so the civil rights act resorts where the southern conservative and racial bloc and often racist bloc moves into the party. they ha they have a terrible record on race in the period, the party of racial liblism. then everything begins to polize. a big one and that is driving a lot of the politics is density. do you not have a density in this country, a dense county in this country that votes republican, rural areas are overwhelmingly republican. because our political system is built to amplify the power of sparsely populated areas, that gives the republican party a decided advantage been our electoral system. the democratic party has to overcome. there is much more religious polarization now, which david can talk about more eloquently than i can. it tused to be the case the parties were similar on

religions. republicans overwhelmingly christian. as the parties become different types people are tuned to understand demographic difference, cultural difference, they see that clear will i than ideological differences. but when it becomes this party is for people like me and this other party isn't for people like me, we can feel the stakes on an intuitive visceral level, a level of respect and dignity and fear. that's when politics gets really hot. that's what donald trump was good at working with or good to some extent at working with. somebody joe biden does not want to work with. if you want to hear my optimistic case, it's not on governance but a little bit on temperature. i don't think biden wants to inflame those passions. i think it will matter that he tries not to. >> stay with us. when we come back, we are going to talk a bit about the republican party. i want to ask david french about the future of his party or the party that was once his.

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klein and david french. david, what is the future of the republican party now? and i want you to answer this specific question, which i see lots of kind of interesting projects, some people like paul ryan want to return it to a more economic libertarian roots. others want it to be more kind of compassionate conservatism that george w. bush talked about. these are think tankers in washington. down there where people actually vote, they seem to love trump and they love what trump stands for. how are you going to solve that problem? >> yeah, i live in the middle of a deep red precinct and a deep red state that voted trump. but i am going to say this, having talked to friends and neighbors and family members about trump for years now. it's up for grabs. i mean, it really is up for grabs. first, because trumpism wasn't a coherent political ideology. it was all over the place. the biggest legislative

accomplishment was a paul ryan tax cut, biggest executive accomplishment was pushing through a bunch of supreme court and lower ski resort u court justices who are not like pam bondi, but buttoned down classical liberals. you had a populous trade war with china that didn't go so well. he didn't get america out of any foreign wars. there was no coherent trumpism ideology. it was a coherent trumpism ethic and trumpism temperament. that temperament drove a lot of republican enthusiasm, but it also drove more democratic opposition. so, yeah, 71 million people went out to vote for him, but when it's all said and done, probably more than 75, more than 76 million will have voted against him. so you don't have the temperament argument solidly in his favor. we don't know what his ideology is. historically, the republican party has not put both arms around people who lose races. so a lot of it will depend not

so much or party officials, but this vast conservative media entertainment complex which really touches people if their homes every night. watch what they do. are they going to continue to wrap both arms around trump? if they do, then the battle against trumpism from within the, you know, conservative world is going to be tough. if they start to distance from trump, then all bets are off. this thing could go very differently in the republican party at the very least at a temperamental ethical, from a temperamental ethical standpoint could turn back to historical norms. standing where i am today i can't tell you how this is going to end up. >> ezra? >> we kind of talk about the elections and issues in terms of polarization. one thing is embedded there is demmockization, too. polarized parties, they do respond to incentives. and i think the fundamental or at least a thriving problem for

the republican party right now in this country is it's become -- to the majority of the vote to win power. it will hold a senate, but didn't win the majority of senate votes. if they hold the senate and win both georgia runoffs, republicans represent 20 million fewer people than the democratic minority. the electoral college, a couple of hundred thousand votes could have tipped to making the case the republicans would have won three of six presidential elections with the minority of the vote and that is getting bigger and worse. you will have republican control from redistricting and that will make the electoral college popular vote divergence even bigger. one of the things that worries me about the system the republican party if it had to win majorities it would and it would reform because republicans don't want to lose. so long as they can be on the path where they win or come very, very close to winning, by winning minorities of the vote, a sort of version of minority rule, you get into some real trouble because you don't have the disciplining incentives of

democracy. democrats didn't love joe biden but they thought it he would appeal to people who weren't like the democratic base. republicans haven't been forced to make at loft same decisions and i think that has to be understood as a corinne sen it i have in the system now. those folks david is talking about will vote for other people if the other people are the ones who can win but so long as they are protected from some of those that disciplining mechanism of democracy they don't have to make the difficult reforms. >> david, how would you respond to is that? it is true seven of the last eight elections, the democrat has won a majority of the vote. and i think it's fair to say any other advanced democracy that would be the end of the story. you won 50 plus 1, you won. >> i think a lot of republicans would listen to what ezra just said and say actually the system is working the way it was intended and this is -- the system was not designed for majorities to swamp minorities and they dismiss it and i think

they dismiss it wrongly because it's inherently destabilizing when over a long period of time, i am not talking about one election out of ten or one election out of 20, but when it becomes a consistent pattern of not just minorities' ability to check majority power, which is really the intent here, but the minority rule over the majority. i think that that is destabilizing over time. and i think it's also just unsustainable over time if the republican minority continues to shrink as it obviously did in this election. but we kind of have an irresistant force meets an immovable object problem. if the minority sees these institutions such as the senate and the electoral college as the only way to ensure their access to power, they are going to cling more tightly to them. the ability to reform them is going to be -- is going to diminish as they grow in importance to the minority's ability to have a voice.

so you are going have a real problem reforming that. the path of least resistance is for the democrats to run candidates who are more likely to win, say, georgia in the senate where they just, it looks like, pending recounts, have won georgia for the presidency. they have done very well in running candidates who can win, for example, the traditionally red state of arizona. the problem with that, i think, from a democratic perspective, and ezra can correct me if i'm wrong, when you run the kyrsten sinema, joe manchin in west virginia style candidates, you often can't get the kinds of reforms that the progressive majority would want to get through. but i don't see a practical way around that. there is going to have to be an effort to work within the system because the minority that clings to it is going to cling to is so tenaciously that i don't see that it will reform and this tension will continue to exist and continue to be destabilizing. >> ezra, you have 30 seconds. is there some positive note you

can end us on, which is how do we get over this polarization? >> i am not going to say we can get over it. i will say if i'm trying to paint the positive picture assuming a version of divided governance, i think there is an outside chance, five or six senate republicans do not want politics to feel like this anymore, and that they would want to work enough with joe biden to prove the system can work differently than it has been. i would not bet a lot of money on this. i am not a believably optimistic about it, but i don't think mitt romney, susan collins, maybe a couple of others folks would like to have different politics than the one we have seen and joe biden is the right partner for them if they decide do that and he is a person most likely to get that part of them to the forefront. >> ezra klein -- >> not my prediction, but my hope. >> ezra klein, david french, a real pleasure. and we will be back.

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joe biden's narrow victory has left democrats wondering whether he would have won at all if not for a virus that tanked the economy and killed more than 230,000 americans in an election year. but a bloomberg analysis found in the counties hit hardest by covid-19 trump improved on his 2016 performance. now, this was a partial and preliminary analysis, but it's clear that at the very least the pandemic did not hurt trump as much as expected. why might that be? well, first, and annie lowry points out in the atlantic, it seems many saw the pandemic as a fluke rather than trump's fault. second, joe biden demonstrated greater empathy towards those americans with a newly empty chair at the kitchen table, but, frankly, that is a tiny fraction

of the country. as james palmer of foreign policy noted, when trump railed against labor unioockdowns and r reopening the economy, that was a message with potential appeal to just about everyone. ironically, whereas biden and obama were the hope candidates in 2008, trump became the hope candidate in this election in a sense. biden warped of a dark winter ahead with 200,000 more covid deaths. trump projected a sunny confidence about the country rounding the corner and the economy roaring back. that may have been particularly appealing in hard-hit counties. unfortunately for trump, it wasn't enough to push him over the edge and, unfortunately for the country, his optimism was unfounded. coronavirus cases are surging to record highs as the country enters a dark winter indeed. the pandemic is real as are its impacts. for more an that, i want to remind you about my new book,

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so you don't wait for life. you live it. welcome to "reliable sources." beginning with breaking news this morning. we know how president-elect biden is spending his morning after declaring victory. minutes ago he arrived at his family church in wilmington, delaware. you can see him walking inside with family members. he has been to church most sundays. recently, of course the press has been following him everywhere. he is arriving at church. we also