The Debate

He is charged with inciting a mob to try to overturn his defeat in 2020. So why is it that just three years later, Donald Trump may have already killed suspense in the race to the 2024 Republican nomination? We ask about the former president's record win in the Iowa caucuses, where he barely campaigned in person and stayed so far ahead of the rest of the field that he did not even bother with candidates' debates. 

They say there's no such thing as bad publicity. The limelight indeed seems to be serving Trump well in this election year, even if it's from the dock of his countless court cases. To his supporters, he is the victim of a system that's rigged. That narrative is amplified by the likes of Fox News. 

But to win a general election, Trump will have to convince enough independent voters that they too are hard done by in this rematch of the nativists versus the globalists. Keenly aware is his rival Joe Biden, who has courted trade unions, pushed subsidies for homegrown industry and incessantly pointed to his own working-class roots.

And yet, despite the January 6 Capitol siege, the race is very close. With populists from France to South America inspired by the Trump method, is this already a turning point for the liberal democracies the world over?

Produced by Juliette Laurain, Rebecca Gnignati and Imen Mellaz.

Beijing’s message to Taiwan’s voters just does not seem to be getting through.

William Lai’s win in Saturday’s first-past-the-post presidential race means an unprecedented third straight term for what the mainland has dubbed the “pro-separatist” Democratic Progressive Party. We’ll hear what the victor - who is also the outgoing vice-president - had to say against the long and steady ratcheting up of tensions in the Taiwan Strait and the carefully-staged response from Washington with the visit of a high-level bipartisan delegation.

How would Taiwan’s election impact US-China relations this year with one side set to hold presidential elections and the other witnessing slowing economic growth?

At the heart of it all is China’s influence in its own backyard: after calling time on Hong Kong’s special status, has it further turned the Taiwanese away or do the opposition’s gains in legislative elections tell a different story?

Produced by Yann Pusztai, Rebecca Gnignati and Imen Mellaz.

Three candidates, two superpowers and one island. Taiwan is picking a president and a parliament on Saturday amid steadily surging nationalism in mainland China and all the talk of decoupling and derisking by the United States. Who will succeed the outgoing pro-Western president, Tsai Ing-wen? How high are the stakes?

We ask how the candidates see the rising tensions in the Taiwan Strait, whether there is room for compromise with Beijing, how much they can count on Washington and how much the rest of the world counts on a nation of just 24 million people but that dominates the market for the semiconductors that power our digital age. 

Produced by Alessandro Xenos, Juliette Laurain and Imen Mellaz.