The Ben Mulroney Show - Witnessing Joe Biden's decline, despite being gaslit by the Democratic Party

Episode Date: May 14, 2025

Guests and Topics: -Witnessing Joe Biden's decline, despite being gaslit by the Democratic Party -Canadian youth struggle with making friends and bullying: UNICEF report with Guest: Dr. Oren Amitay, Psychologist -Craig Baird’s First history book, “Canada's Main Street” with Guest: Craig Baird, Host of Canadian History Ehx If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! https://globalnews.ca/national/program/the-ben-mulroney-show Follow Ben on Twitter/X at https://x.com/BenMulroney Enjoy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show and thank you so much for joining us on Hump Day. Here it's Wednesday and Donald Trump has been busy, busy, busy at work bringing his America First agenda to the Middle East. He has been touting $600 billion in a Saudi investment pledge, $142 billion arms package on while he's been on this Gulf tour. He has been really pushing forward this idea of investment in America, as well as partnerships between American companies and Middle Eastern companies in the world of AI. Huge, huge, huge possible potential investments. Some of them appear to be deals that are ready to go.

Others look like agreements to eventually have deals. And so it looks like he's busy, but a lot of times this stuff, to quote one of my guests from earlier this week or late last week, some of them are just vapor that will not necessarily materialize into actual investment. But let's also well, let's listen to Donald Trump. Very excited, very bullish, not just on America, but on another country, Saudi Arabia. We are rocking the United States is the hottest country with the exception of your country, I have to say, right? I won't, I'm not going to take that on. No, Mohammed, I'm not going to take that on. I wouldn't have be a terrible thing if I made that full statement? But I will not do it. You're hotter. At least as long as I'm up here, you're hotter.

Okay. All right. I like it. When he gets excited, he uses, he's just, sometimes the expressions he uses just don't necessarily match what people think he intends to say, I guess. But one of the most contentious aspects of Donald Trump's cozy relationship with countries in the Middle East is this gift by the Qatari government to the Defense Department of a Boeing 747

that is going to be used temporarily as the new Air Force One. And once Donald Trump is out of office, it will be gifted to the Trump presidential library. And I don't think there is a single rational person that I've heard endorsing this idea. The Ben Shapiros of the world, for example, who are natural allies of Donald Trump,

are lining up saying, this is a terrible idea. This looks inappropriate. And let's not forget, the Qatari government has relations and financial relations with all sorts of bad dudes, all sorts of terrorists, all sorts of groups that actively work to undermine the United States and they have for years.

So this doesn't work for a lot of people. The idea that this is a quid and people are waiting for the pro quo to what the other shoe to drop. Does anybody trust that this gift doesn't have to be taken down to the studs and make sure there are no listening bugs in it, that there aren't any security oversights that could happen by just accepting a gift

from a foreign government that is not fully in line with the values and the foreign policy of the United States. None of it makes any sense to anyone who thinks about it rationally for even two seconds, except for Donald Trump, who went on his truth social and said, the Boeing 747 is being given to the

United States Air Force slash Department of Defense not to me it is a gift from the nation Qatar that we have successfully defended for many years it was used by our government it will be used by our government as a temporary Air Force one until such a time as our new bowings which are very late on delivery arrive why should our military and therefore our taxpayers be forced to pay hundreds of millions of dollars when they can get it for free from a country that wants to reward us for a job well done? This big saving will be spent instead to make America great again. Only a fool would not accept this

gift on behalf of our country. Thank you for your attention to this matter." Pleading poverty and not being able to get a plane, that sounds like something the Canadian government would do. Like we make do with an old plane because we can't get our new planes. That's a very Canadian thing. That's not an American thing. And Boeing is an American company. And so are all the airlines, the United's of the world. Like Donald Trump is not afraid of throwing his weight around to get what he wants.

If he phoned up the CEO of United and said, hey, I know you're taking delivery of a whole bunch of Boeing 747s. I want one of them and I will make sure that we thank you appropriately later. He could get a Boeing tomorrow. He could tell the Boeing people, hey, you're gonna deliver all of your planes minus one

to whoever and I'm getting the next one off the line. Does anybody think Donald Trump would not use the bully pulpit of the presidency to get a plane? This makes no sense. It makes no sense, which means something else, It makes no sense, which means something else, it makes me believe something else could be going on. This is not the normal course of action for the American government. It just isn't. I've never seen it before.

And I don't think anybody ever has. And accepting a gift from a country like Qatar for something as vital to the security of the American president as as Air Force One makes no sense when all he has to do is pick up the phone and either call an airline or Boeing itself and he could have a plane delivered tomorrow and for the nickel and diming over the 400 million again not an American thing to do I've never heard a president complain about the cost of,

oh, look at all the money we saved because they gave it to us. Yeah, but there's a cost associated with that. Nothing is for free. Nothing is for free. And he knows that. There are strings attached to everything ever, especially as it relates to the US government.

So that just, that does not sit well with a lot of people, but Donald Trump says he's gonna get it, so he's gonna get it. Meanwhile, the bombshell book by Jake Tapper of CNN about the gaslighting that occurred with the Democratic Party and the people around Joe Biden, lying to everybody about the state of his cognitive decline

is out now. And it's a bombshell. It's a bombshell. He was on CNN explaining that they spoke to, he and his co-writer spoke to hundreds of people about this. And no one went on the record till after the election. But one of the key moments in the book was when George Clooney, oh, do we have the audio of this part?

Yeah, let's play the audio that George Clooney is saying. Well, Alex Thompson and I were on the case as were lots of other reporters trying to figure out what was going on behind the scenes. But the bottom line is the White House was lying, not only to the press, not only to the public, but they were lying to members of their own cabinet, they were lying to White House staffers, they were lying to Democratic members of Congress, to donors about how bad things had gotten.

And in fact, Alex and I started writing this book after the election of 2024, and we spoke with more than 200 people, most of whom, almost all of whom were Democrats, and almost all of whom wouldn't be honest with us or wouldn't be candid with us until after the election. And then after the election, we found out all of these things that when you looked at what was going on with President Biden at the time, it probably doesn't surprise you the extent to which he was deteriorating. But now we have anecdotes and facts about what was really going on behind the scenes with details that Democrats wouldn't share with us until after election day.

All right, let's hear from a Republican voice on CNN, Scott Jennings, who had some very pointed criticisms. The idea that we did not know about this for the years leading up to the presidential campaign, we all saw it with our own eyes. Video after video, speech after speech, statement after statement, the Her report, the fact that we have people saying today, oh I didn't know, we had no idea, is outrageous. That's number one. Number two, the cover-up is outrageous.

And number three, people were arguing with a straight face that this man could serve four more years until, of course, it became untenable at the debate. Honestly, you know, Jake and Alex have done a great service here. This book needs to be written. These stories need to be told because we've lived through the greatest scandal in modern American political history, the cover-up of the decline of the president, the argument that he could serve four more years. If he were in office today, if he had somehow won and were in office today, you'd have the

same people on TV today saying, he's fine. Behind closed doors, he's fine and you know it. Yeah, this is a very, very big deal and I think the ramifications of this book will be felt for a very long time to come. Welcome back to the Ben Mulroney Show. Thank you so much for joining us and now it's time for us to have a very important conversation about Canadian youth and the struggles that they have with making friends and bullying. This is according to a UNICEF report that one in five youth in Canada face frequent bullying. One in five are lonely. One in four struggle to make friends. And that's despite

Canada being one of the 10 wealthiest countries that were studied. Canada ranked 19th out of 36 countries overall, landing toward the bottom of the end for adolescent suicide, child mortality, and social skills. These are not good indicators. As we know, we're trying to build resilient youth to take over, to pass the torch to. And so to speak about this, we're joined by Dr. Orrin Amate, psychologist. Doctor, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, this is scary stuff. This should be concerning to all of us. Well, it is concerning, But the numbers haven't changed that that much over the years. I mean, I've been doing these interviews for many years. And, you know, every few months, we see another survey with what would seem like alarming numbers. But you know, if you look back a few years prior, they haven't changed that that much. But that doesn't mean there

isn't a serious issue going on. Yeah, yeah. So what, what, what can we attribute it to? I mean, there's a disconnect between the wealth of the country, our ability to communicate the social services that we take great pride in, and this outcome that is really, really concerning. Well, there's a few things. One of them is that, and most important for anybody, students or adults, when they're answering these kinds of questions, it's a few things. One of them is that, and most important for anybody, students or adults, when they're answering these kinds of questions, it's very subjective. You're

talking about your well-being, your, you know, like how many friends you have and so on. I mean, it is subjective. And unfortunately, over the past number of years, you and I have seen it, many people have, which is that students are really being delivered some harmful messages. They're being told the world's against you or society is against you or you're a bad person because of the color of your skin or whatever messaging there is that, you know, when you hear this all the time, when you have teachers telling you the world's going to end, you know, climate, right, when you're here, you're being inundated with that, it's really hard to have a kind of a positive

perspective on the kinds of questions that are being asked. So that's one factor. Is there a breakdown by gender or race as well? Because in keeping with what you're saying, you know, you and I have talked about, you know, the messages that are being put forth in schools to young impressionable kids. And I gotta think, you know, we know that adult men in Canada are more prone to suicide, for example, than anyone else. And I've got to wonder whether, you know, if young white boys are being told, you know, you're the problem that needs to be overcome in society,

that the patriarchy is a thing, and you're part of that problem, then I've got to wonder whether that affects their mental health. Dr. John B. Reilly, Ph.D. It certainly has and it is more than ever before. And I'm seeing this anecdotally, I'm seeing some of the studies. And I'll tell you, interestingly, for a number of years, when you look at the research in the States and Canada, where they look at, you know, when you break down by gender and let's say race, and oftentimes you actually found that,

let's say, black children who are supposedly the ones who are put upon the most, they had some of the highest self-esteem in these studies, okay? And girls seem to be doing more poorly than boys at certain stages, but some researchers have attributed to something that I think makes sense, which is girls develop faster. They're more mature. They get a better view on the world than boys do. So a lot of the studies that show that, you know, that girls are doing worse, they were just being more realistic about what was going on around them where the boys are still kind of living in fantasy. Yeah, this is so, so how can we address this in a way that supports these kids, all while recognizing that there's certain factors in the world we can't change. We can't change social media, we can't change,

I mean, there's a lot of things we can't change. So what can we do to adapt? Okay, so what we have to do is something that's not happening, which is we have to instill in the children a sense that they are agents of change, not slacktiv change, not slack divists, not I'm going to change my Twitter handle or something like that. It's more about what can you do about the circumstances around you, immediately around

you, not in some other country, but you. That's number one. Number two, it's related to this, which is really self-ethicacy. Once again, that you can do something about it. But the other thing is that the adults in charge, this is so important, they have to take more of a leading role, whether it's teachers, principals, or whoever, because when we talk about the bullying that you brought up at the beginning, that is real. That is increasing.

That's getting worse and worse. Cyberbullying is terrible. Kids can't escape it. And the problem is, and I've spoken with so many people about this, when they go to the school and they say, this is what's happening, the teachers or the principals or the superintendents, the trustees, they are incompetent. They are impotent and they are not showing the kids that, Hey, you know what, when there's a problem, you do your part, we'll do our part and we're going to address it. So many kids are not getting that sense. That's what's so important.

Yeah, but that requires a rethink on the language that we use and where we talk to kids, where we go find them as well. I mean, I like to say on this show that we go find our listeners wherever they are. So if they wanna listen to us as a podcast, we put up a podcast. And kids are not in the same places as they used to be.

It's not just as simple as putting a public service announcement on TV anymore. We've got to be far more creative with how we engage with them, and more importantly, where we engage with them. Well, it's the how and the where, and the problem is the people who are directly engaging with them, like I said, they are

failing. So many, again, the educators, the police, the justice system, so many of them are afraid to tackle the issue head on. They're not going to the parents of the children who are doing the bullying, you know, or worse. They're not going to be holding them to account, whether they're afraid of being called racist or something else. They are just not taking the necessary steps. And once again, I've got to say this, I've had so many patients, when you are a child or an adolescent, and you feel that the system cannot help you, that you are powerless, not just you, but the people above you will not

do anything to stop what's going on, it gives you this sense of hopelessness. And that's the opposite of resilience. That doesn't fuel a sense of hardiness and resilience. It makes you feel, why bother? And that's what we're seeing in a lot of these kids. Robert Leonard Yeah. We're looking at this UNICEF study, this UNICEF report, and they're looking at wealthy countries that were studied and well, all sorts of countries, but we were amongst the wealthiest. Are there any countries that are doing something that we should be doing in order to address this problem?

It's tricky, because when I looked at some of the countries that were doing better than us, they have some of the same problem that we have. So there's some factor going on here, that it's hard, it's a bit intangible. I'm not quite sure. I think the, the most important goal, and I can't name the countries specifically, but the goal is to redevelop a sense of community, a sense of, you know, feeling responsible to the people around you so that if you do something wrong, you shame your family, you shame the neighborhood,

the community, and they will hold you to account. Countries that sort of have that ethos, they are the ones who typically do better. So taking a hard, it's almost like taking taking a more traditional approach to, to child rearing almost being like a tough love sort of situation. Is that what you're saying? Well, it's tough love, but it's a sense of accountability. It's a sense of personal accountability, a sense of if I

do something wrong, A, I'm gonna be held to account, and B, that's not the kind of person I want to be. But that's not what children are seeing. Children, whether it's on social media or directly in front of them, they're seeing people get rewarded for doing bad behavior. Yeah.

Again, I don't know how we can counter the negative effect and negative impact of social media if this is the end result, like, I don't know. It seems like that is the biggest stumbling block, but why is it so much more prevalent in a place like Canada than in other places? Well, it really comes down to, I gotta say it, it goes back to the people in charge,

or quote unquote in charge, and they are the ones who are promulgating the type of messaging that is very harmful, which is if you belong to a certain background or something like that, use something wrong, it's not your fault. Okay. It's other people's fault. And I'm telling you, it really boils down to a sense of control over yourself, over your environment and accountability.

And I'm telling you, Canada, you've seen it. You've seen our quote unquote leaders, you've seen our quote unquote educators. They are basically abdicating that responsibility. They are not instilling that sense of personal accountability in the people that they're supposedly trying to raise. Dr. Orin Amite, we're going to leave it there, but it's a really important conversation.

We have to be honest with ourselves if we want the outcomes to be better and if we want the kids that we're raising today to become the leaders of tomorrow. I thank you very much for your time and I always thank you for your candor and your honesty. Thank you so much Ben I always appreciate the opportunity. Welcome back to the Ben Mulrooney show and it's time for our weekly history lesson by with the great Craig Baird of Canadian history ex Craig welcome to the show. It's the first time I get to see you on camera. Yeah it's really nice thanks for having me. Absolutely and normally we talk about aspects of your show and stories that

that you want to share but in this case you're here talking about a pretty seminal moment your very first history book Canada's's Main Street. Tell me about that. Yeah, it's, it's about the story of the building of the Trans Canada Highway. Yeah, you know, something that I get think it's overlooked quite a bit in our history, we tend to focus on the CPR and the building of the railroad across Canada. But the building of the Trans Canada Highway was, you know, a very

big project that involved all the provinces working together, all of these things going on. And it was a really cool story to research and write. And yeah, my book came out yesterday. Congratulations. No, the see, I don't know much about the history of highways in Canada, but I do know about the sort of the Interstate Highway Program in the United States and how it was a massive sort of infrastructure program to modernize the United States, get people moving, get people moving more quickly, get goods from place to place far quicker. And there was elements of the military

had a big hand in it as well. They want to make sure that they had these straightaways in various places to ensure that if they needed to, they could use them to land planes in emergencies. Was it that sort of national ambition that governed the growth of the Trans-Canada Highway? What so much? The first person to actually drive across Canada

completely within Canada on a road didn't really happen until just after the Second World War. So we were very much behind the United States in that. And with the Trans-Canada Highway, it was kind of the federal government saying to the provinces, we will pay for 50% of the cost, you pay the other half, but you all have to decide the route. We're not going to choose the route. So all the provinces had to kind of figure out exactly where this route was going. So it wasn't this jagged line going across the country because every major city wanted the Trans-Canada Highway. Edmonton fought hard to get it, but obviously Calgary eventually got it.

So it was a lot of that. And then eventually the federal government kind of started paying more and more because the provinces just couldn't meet the deadlines and couldn't pay for the entire thing. So it was very much something that I don't know if it would actually happen today, because everybody has to agree on everything. And it took a while to get it done back then for sure. Were there any parts of it that in retrospect, if it had to be done again, were put in the wrong place or could have been put in a better place? I think that where they had it is pretty good. I mean, it runs pretty close to the American

border. And I think that was a big part of bringing tourism up. I mean, it goes through Banff and that kind of changed Banff and made Banff this massive world-class attraction. But various other areas, I think it kind of just went exactly where it needed to go. There wasn't really, even though Edmonton fought hard for it, there was very little chance that Edmonton was going to have the Trans Canada Highway because for that to happen, it would have to go from Winnipeg up to Saskatoon or from Regina up to Saskatoon, then to Edmonton, then back down because obviously it ends at Vancouver and then Victoria. But yeah, I think where it went, it kind of just more or less follows where the CPR went.

What about when it gets to a city? And again, the only model I have in my head is the United States where for a lot of cities, it gets to a city and then there's this ring of highway around the city. And that and it rejoins at another point before it gets to another almost like a node. What was what was the design like when the highway would come up against a city? Usually it went straight through the city, the ring roads and such didn't really happen until well after the fact. I mean, in Calgary, 16th Avenue is the Trans-Canada Highway and it goes straight through the middle of the city. Same thing, you know, in Montreal, it goes through

the middle of the city and Winnipeg it did. And these ring roads started to pop up afterwards because people got tired of taking the Trans-Canada Highway and driving through the downtown core and dealing with rush hour and things like that on a vacation. So that when it was built, they weren't really doing environmental assessments and they weren't really worried about the migration patterns of animals and things like that. It was just they needed to do it and they did it. Pretty much. Yeah, there was very little of that. There was no real figuring out exactly what's going to happen with the animals or building through wetlands. It was kind of cut down trees and build this highway straight through these areas. And we'll put up things like the Wawa Goose to get people to

to come into our community as they drive along the highway. All right. Well, that I'm looking forward to reading that book. It's called Canada's Main Street. It's available now. Craig, let's talk about a historical figure that again I had no idea about until he popped up on my screen. Thanks to you. Tell me about Anthony Henday. Well, if you live where I do outside of Edmonton, you know Anthony Henday because the ring road around Edmonton is called Anthony Henday Drive. But a lot of people even in Edmonton have have no idea who he is. He actually worked for the Hudson's Bay Company. From 1754 to 1755, he journeyed 2,900 kilometres by foot and canoe into modern day Alberta and met the Blackfoot to encourage them to trade at the Hudson's Bay

Company. During this time, he actually became the first known European to actually see the Canadian Rockies. He stayed with the Hudson's Bay Company for about 12 years from 1750 to 1762 and then kind of just disappears from history. So we don't know too much about him before or after the Hudson's Bay Company. But then because there's this belief that he may have actually been in the Edmonton area, we don't even know that for sure. We named one of the most important roads around Edmonton in his honour. I mean it's absolutely fascinating. Let's listen to a snippet of Anthony Henday. On October 14th, Henday counted 322 tipis on the top of a hill near modern-day Pine Lake in Innisfail, Alberta. It was a massive Blackfoot encampment and one tipi was large enough to hold

50 people and was the chief's home. Now, Hende was invited inside by the chief and met with 20 Blackfoot elders. And while Hende spoke, his translator translated what he said into Blackfoot. Hende invited them to York Factory to trade with the company and while the chief actually did appreciate the offer, he refused to leave his territory, because traveling to York Factory meant going through Cree land and there was a real risk of an attack. Plus, the Blackfoot already had a trading partner they liked, the French.

Hende wrote, We have no hopes of getting them to the fort, as what cloth they had were French and by their behavior I perceived they were strongly attached to the French interest Now despite their refusal the Blackfoot treated Henday as an honored guest He was offered boiled bison meat and 12 bison tongues a delicacy reserved only for the honored guests Wow, just think what's he the only person as part of this trek when you say he was the first person to see the Canadian Rockies, first European to see the Canadian Rockies? Was he alone on that trek? Well, he was the only European on that trek. He was joined by a Cree interpreter. And then as he journeyed from York Factory all the way into modern day Alberta, more and more Cree families started to join up with them going through the territory. Because obviously there was strength in numbers because the Cree and the Blackfoot were very much at war during that era. Absolutely amazing. Hey, before I let you go, I want to get your take

on a historical story that's playing out in real time, which is sort of the canceling of the history of Henry Dundas, especially in the city of Toronto. There's now talk that the Toronto Metropolitan University is going to get the naming rights for Dundas Station, which is part of the TTC. And Henry Dundas was an abolitionist in his time, but people today felt that he wasn't working fast enough. And for that reason, he wasn't a real abolitionist. And I want to, as somebody who knows his Canadian history,

what are your thoughts on Henry Dundas? Well, I think, like you said, he was quite slow with the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade, but obviously still kind of ahead of his time with that. There were still a lot of people, even in Canada, other people like James Simcoe, who was a Lieutenant Governor of Upper Canada, was very much against the slave trade as well. But we did have a lot of slave traders and slaveholders in our government at the time. But I think with him, the fact that he was advocating against the slave trade is a big plus, no matter how slow it might have been, because it was very much against the idea of the time. He was decades ahead of his time in advocating for that. Yeah. And for the life of me, I do not understand why we have to hold him to the standard of 2025,

when he most certainly did not live in 2025. And I often ask myself, how would we acquit ourselves were we to live in that time? Would we live up to the standard that he was setting? Most of us would probably fall short. I would say probably, very different times would probably fall short. I would say probably. Very different times, very different people. And you're growing up in this society

of what you feel is right. And hundreds of years later, what you feel is right might not be what actually was right. Craig Baird, always great talking to you. Congratulations on the book, and congratulations on the podcast. And we'll talk to you next week. Sounds good. Thank you, Harvey. of Days of Our Lives, you and a guest could win a three-night stay in Los Angeles, a VIP Days of Our Lives set tour, a helicopter ride over LA, and so much more.

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