The Bottom Line

Can the US promote democracy worldwide?

With democratic norms under attack at home, what are the prospects for Biden’s ‘Summit for Democracy’?

The White House is hosting leaders from more than 100 countries in a virtual conference to discuss human dignity, accountability, fair elections and the political leadership of women.

But around the world, the governments supported by the United States’s national security establishment are some of the worst human rights abusers and kleptocracies.

And domestically, US democracy continues to suffer from the outsized influence of money in politics, runaway polarisation among Americans, and even the violent contestation of elections without evidence of fraud.

Host Steve Clemons asks Senator Sheldon Whitehouse about the prospects and contradictions in US efforts to fight corruption.