Originally published by Ian Bremmer on LinkedIn: #Winners and #Losers - Laptop Lemonade
The Week in Laptop Bans
Winner: Royal Jordanian Airlines—when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade. When the US hands you a laptop ban, you make advertising gold. #RoyalJordanianFTW
Loser: Commerce—Laptop ban continues US tradition of responding to terrorism by disrupting commerce. #ArePhonesNext
The Week in Turkish Election Tourism
Winner: Bulgarians nationalists—managed to block checkpoints at the Bulgarian-Turkish border this week to prevent Bulgarians living in Turkey from returning to vote in Bulgarian parliamentary elections.
Loser: Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan—Erdogan has been trying to dispatch government officials across Europe to drum up support among Turks living in Europe for the referendum granting him executive powers. European governments, citing security concerns, have balked. In anger, Erdogan threatened “if Europe continues this way, no European in any part of the world can walk safely on the streets.” Then London happened. #NiceTiming
The Week in Nepotism
Winner: Trump Children—Ivanka finally got that West Wing office, Donald Jr. got to pick a fight with London mayor Sadiq Khan, and Eric Trump plans to share business updates with his father ‘probably quarterly.’ #MovingAlongNicely
Loser: French Interior Minister Bruno Le Roux—resigns after prosecutors announce they were putting him under preliminary investigation for employing his teenage daughters as parliamentary assistants during school holidays. Meanwhile, Francois Fillon continues to run for the French presidency while dogged by similar scandals. #TheresALessonHere
The Week in Trump Hail Marys
Winner: Donald Trump—the FBI this week recovered the missing Super Bowl jersey of Patriots quarterback—and early Trump supporter—Tom Brady from a journalist in Mexico City. Brady wins. Journalists and Mexico lose. #TheTrumpTrifecta
Loser: GOP healthcare plans—Republicans have had seven years to come up with a repeal-and-replace plan. They couldn’t do it, and Trump’s intervention made no difference. #TheWorstOfBothWorlds
The Week in Knowing Your Audience
Winner: FBI Director James Comey—in addition to coming off as one of the few professionals still working in Washington at this week’s congressional hearings, Comey shot down a misleading tweet from the White House in real time. Pro Tip: Wait until testimony is over to release #FakeNews
Loser: Fox News senior judicial analyst Andrew Napolitano—the apparent source of Trump’s wire-tapping claim against Obama that also roped in British Intelligence, Fox pulled Napolitano off the air this week. Two kinds of fake news: useful and not useful. #IronyPolice
Ian Bremmer is president of Eurasia Group, foreign affairs columnist at TIME and Global Research Professor at New York University. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook.