The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - 45 Out, 46 In - Smoke Mirrors and The Truth

Episode Date: January 20, 2021

Inauguration Day 2021.

ah bringing back the old music going back all the way back to 2020 back last summer when we started the podcast within a podcast focused on the U.S. presidency and the race for it and we used to play that music and say, who's going to hear that music on January 20th? Will it be Donald Trump still hearing it or will it

be Joe Biden? Well, today's January 20th and we got the answer. Hail to the chief, number 46, President of the united states joseph biden bruce joins us he's in ottawa smoke mirrors and the truth good morning sir good morning peter great to talk to you i've been looking forward to today for like literally four years and i can't believe it's here and i And I'm happy to be enjoying a little bit of it with you. Well, you know, it's funny.

I got up early, was expecting, you know, I got up around 5.30, 6 o'clock, wanted to see who'd made the pardon list. And that was kind of, you know, a lot of pardons, 143 of them. And, you know, I guess most of them, the overwhelming majority of people never heard of before but uh when you do the first glance through the through the list you obviously the name that pops out is steve bannon which

was a pardon from trump to his to the guy who may well have got him elected back in 2016, but they'd had a serious falling out and he was charged with on a fraud count and a number of things. Anyway, it just wasn't, you know, it wasn't the list that some people had been expecting. Like there was no self-pardon for Trump himself. There was no pardon for all his, you know, collection of sons and daughters. And so it didn't, it was kind of flat. And then you go through the morning of the kind of things that happen on the morning of the inauguration.

And I just felt, you know, after months of getting ready for this and all the debates surrounding this guy and what he'd done to the country and in the events of two weeks ago on the Capitol Hill riots. And then this day arrives where he's finally going out the door. Last time he walked out of the White House, last time he got on the helicopter, last time he gives a speech, last time he gets on air force one and it just like i don't know i just found the whole thing kind of flat and there maybe it was you know the sort of relief that it was finally happening i don't know but it was between it and watching the coverage which i'll admit the coverage I watched was on all the networks that are clearly no fans of Trump.

And it was a very much sort of, finally, he's gone. Let's get him out of here. Kind of a tone to the coverage. Well, yeah, I'll be the yang to your yin on this, Peter, because I got to tell you, I woke up and there was a spring in my step and I couldn't wait to see his pathetic crowd, to listen to his pathetic whining one more time and to watch this kind of loser slink off the stage after having to endure four years of constant nonsense, constant lying, constant blame placing and finger pointing and scapegoating and belligerence. And I love listening to those journalists beat him like a rented mule this morning. It was as though they'd all checked their journalism badges at the gate when they went into work this morning and said, we're just going to take today to say what we really think about this guy. And I don't know

if that's a good thing for journalism, but it was a good thing for me to listen to. It was exactly the content I came for today. And I'm looking forward to more of it as the day wears on, because this guy has put so much stress on the world, so much stress on his country. He's created divisions and risks and deaths. And it's, you know, I remember back to when Hillary Clinton said Donald Trump is about, he's the champion of a group of deplorables. And everybody said, and probably correctly from the standpoint of the political analysis, was that a mistake? Should she have said that? Did that cost her votes? Did that make people think that she was an elitist and a snob looking down her nose at all these people who are feeling disadvantaged by the economic times

that they were living in? And maybe it was a political error. Maybe there was a better way for her to kind of recognize what was happening and do something constructive about it. But if you wouldn't use the word deplorables to call those people who went up to Capitol Hill as insurgents a little over a week ago, what would you call them? If you listen to the people who still say Donald Trump was the best president the United States ever had, what is it that they're

really saying? Is it they're saying that they love the fact that he dumped on all these football players who were trying to send a message about racism in policing? Is it that they wanted that Muslim travel ban to exist forever? They wanted more wall against the Mexican rapists? It's been a bad patch in American history. And today it's over. And I couldn't be happier. So hopefully that'll balance out a little bit of your sense of, I didn't get the lift I was hoping for, but I got plenty. Yeah, I wouldn't want anyone to confuse this with thinking that I thought it wasn't somehow appropriate departure for a U.S. president. I mean, I would have preferred, as I'd suggested on November 4th, that he'll just slink out the door and disappear. But his kind of pathetic attempt today to make it some kind of a ceremony for a departing head of state.

Now, he is a departing head of state, but he's a departing head of state disgraced, twice impeached, and quite possibly is about to be convicted and never allowed to ever run again and everything else. But there were so many things about this day that were truly pathetic. And it started with the crowd at the airport. And there were not many people there. this guy loves a crowd we know that and in his defense he's he's had some big crowds over the years not lately and certainly not today and they were desperate for a crowd i mean they sent out invites to everybody they had an email for i think because they the some of them went to people who probably were shocked to get one. Scaramucci got one.

John Kelly got one. What's his name? The former national security advisor got one. Not Flynn. What's his name? He wrote the book. Oh, I'm drawing a blank. But yeah, lots of people.

Lots of people got them. And they were asked to bring five guests so like he was trying to stack the crowd right and so he i'm sure what must have happened because there was there was this time like he was supposed to leave the white house at eight o'clock the helicopter got there at 10 to 8 it was sitting there ready for him you could see the marines at the door ready to open the door for him no trump no trumpet 801 no trumpet 805 no trumpet 810 um and i'm i'm sitting there thinking i know what he's doing he's on the phone to andrew's air force base saying where the hell's the crowd you promised me a crowd there's nobody there you gotta get more people out there yeah and either that or they were stuffing a bag full of the monogram towels no way to take with them down to mar-a-lago that's right yeah or pushing out some new email

fundraising thing but he's um no the circus left town and I watched that little ceremony out at Joint Forces Base Andrews and I thought, you know what? He ended kind of the way that he started. He started just badgering the media for not saying that he had the largest inauguration crowd ever, even though it was obvious that he didn't.

And on his way out, he chose not to participate in any of the normal activities that an outgoing president would and should do. But I think he did that because he thought he was going to have a big turnout. He was going to have all these people, the MAGA people, come and cheer him on and bemoan his departure. And instead, it was a trickle of people. It was a pathetic excuse for an event. He had now weeks, months really, to plan what he was going to say when he got up on that stage. And after the 21-gun salute, which really looked like, what does a dictator ask to have happen

before he is kind of taken away to jail somewhere? Anyway, the 21-gun salute. But let me jump in on the 21-gun salute because heads of state get a 21-gun salute. So, I mean, he didn't have to have it there. He obviously asked for it to happen, and he's allowed to have one. But I've seen a lot of 21-gun salutes over the years, you know, for the Queen, for, you know, visiting presidents of the United States to Canada,

you know, and places all over the world. I've never heard a 21-gun salute go that fast. Fire, bang, fire, bang, fire, bang. Like, I've never seen one go that fast fire bang fire bang fire bang like i i'd never seen one go that fast there's usually a you know pause in between each one because it kind of drags out forever but it it almost seemed i mean maybe that's the way they they do it at andrews but it almost seemed like the the the the artillery group that were firing these things were saying, get this over with fast. It was pathetic, just like all the other things about that. Yeah.

Of course, he had, you know, I don't know what speech we're going to hear this afternoon from Joe Biden, but I'm pretty sure it's going to have some great writing, some poetic language, some really inspiring phrases. And as you recall from the inauguration speech that Trump did four years ago, I think it was former President Bush who turned around after the speech and said to whoever was sitting beside him, that was some weird shit. And it really was. It was a colossally weird inauguration speech. And here we are four years later. And for all of those, including me, who at some point thought, you can't be in that job for that long, surrounded by that many smart people, all of that information, and not get a little bit better.

He proved that that's not true, that you can actually be even worse at the end of it. So he jumps up on this stage. Well, I shouldn't say that. He walked gingerly up the steps, the four or five steps to the stage. And the first things that he talked about, the first thing he talked about in his accomplishments was we created a space force. I'm just shaking my head like that's the one with the emblem. That's a ripoff from Star Trek or something? Star Trek, yeah.

It's not really a thing. And he went on from there to do his usual kind of scapegoating and claiming credit for everything that was going well and ignoring everything that was going badly. And then the plane took off to the strains of my Way, written by a Canadian, as you know. Paul Anka. Yeah, Paul Anka. From your town, from Ottawa. That's right. Last night there was Hallelujah.

There was Hallelujah last night. That was a beautiful night. Very moving night. Canadian content both days. The whole thing left me with this. I was reminded of growing up in Valleyfield, a little town not too far from Montreal. And Valleyfield had a hockey arena that seated about 3,000 people,

mostly for junior B hockey games, which were mostly fights with a little bit of hockey in between. But every year, once a year at least, the wrestling show would come to town. And the whole town would jam into that arena. Every seat would be full. People would pay the five or ten dollars or whatever it was back then. Because watching Killer Kowalski and Mad Dog Vachon pretend beat each other over the head with chairs and throw each other out of the ring and everything else, that was a circus that people loved. And they knew it was kind of harmless.

They knew nobody was really getting injured and that this wasn't really athleticism, except, you know, stunt athleticism. And people enjoyed it. And a lot of people came out for it. And I think the difference with Trump is a lot of people came out for it. And some people enjoyed it, but everybody else looked on in horror for four years. And now at least they have a chance to try to repair their broken democracy. And if there's any reason for optimism on my part,

it is that there is this apparent schism in the Republican Party. Trump is talking about maybe there'll be a patriot party and I will run it. Mitch McConnell is saying we might need to vote to convict this guy, which is really a declaration of the Republicans are willing to take a hit if some people want to be part of another party, which is a very difficult thing to decide to do, but it's probably time for them, for that conservative party in the United States to say, there are certain influences that we don't want to have as part of our, in our tent. Well, you know, there's obviously a lesson from this side of the border on when you start splitting the party up. And, you know, it can last for a generation or almost a generation,

as we witnessed when the Progressive Conservative Party split into, you know, what was it, the first Canadian alliance? The Reform Party. And the Reform Party. And it was just, it kept them out of power for, well, for all the Craytchen years. Kraytchen's, you know, three majority governments in a row. Were built on a split right.

Were built on a split right. And, you know, you can see the Democrats, you know, looking their chops if the Republicans go this way in terms of splitting their party. But as you say, you know, that's what it may take to shed itself of the, of the Trump era and the Trump image. What did you think of the pardon list? I mean, deep down, were you kind of hoping that he would have done his whole family because it would have been such a great talking point?

Well, you know, I, yeah, I think I probably was. But I also think there's no shortage of things to criticize him for or ridicule his choices of. And I think that the reason he didn't do that wasn't because he thought he would feel shame in doing it. It was probably something to do with what they want their future electoral opportunities to look like or whether or not that was somehow pardoning them would would put them in a situation where they would have to testify against him in some future court action. I don't know, but I don't think he avoided that for virtuous reasons. He didn't find virtue last night and say, you know, that's a bridge too far. I can't do that to the kids. I can't do that to my country. And also in the midst of that, he did something else, which I don't think has gotten that much notice yet, which is that he changed a rule that he had put in place, which was to

prevent people who work for him from going into the lobbying business. And, you know, you remember he one of the many, many, many things that he lied about when he was campaigning for office, he's going to clean up the swamp. And he turned out to be the swampiest swamp dweller ever. And on the last day, he basically looked at all of his staff and friends that he had worked with them and said, I'm going to give you a license to go and make money based on your knowledge of me and what I believe in and my people and who they are and what they care about, including in Congress. And, you know, we don't have a system like that here in Canada, thank God. We actually have pretty stringent rules about that kind of thing here and very stringent rules, relatively speaking, about fundraising. But I don't think I can remember a swampier thing being done than a president on his last day going, hey, everybody, go out and make

money, lobbying people in office after I've left, forget about the laws that have existed to protect the public interest against that kind of thing. I'd love to know what Bannon has on him. For Bannon to get the pardon meant Trump had to forget a lot of things that have happened in the last couple of years, including Bannon supplying the information for more than a few books. In fact, one of the first ones that came out

was that Michael Wolff book, which really crapped all over Jared Kushner. And all the stuff came from Bannon. Bannon admitted it. Wolff admitted it. Yeah. I think some of them were even direct quotes. And he,

you know, and he dumped on Trump. I mean, he was, he was there in the summer of 2016 and was responsible in many ways for the turnaround in the Trump campaign that led to the victory, along with Kellyanne Conway. And I can't wait to see what happens with her. But something happened somewhere in the last little while. I mean, Bannon got himself in a lot of trouble.

He was charged with fraud in terms of money that was being raised for political contributions. And something happened there somewhere that he suddenly got convinced that he should pardon him. Look, I think that Trump doesn't really believe that he has a future political career, but I do think he knows that he has financial problems. And I think that he takes a look at Bannon, and in Bannon he sees somebody who ran Breitbart and may know how to set up the kind of media enterprise that Trump is maybe going to want to do to make money, to help finance his debts. And Bannon also ran this, I mean, he was convicted basically of running a scam, a fundraising scam, that he was collecting money to build Trump's wall. So who knows what conversation they would have had. But it probably wasn't a deeply human, personal rapprochement. You know, Steve, I'm sorry you said those things about me, but I love you. You were with me in the darkest days and I really care about you. To me, he's not built like that.

He forgets a lot of things. He forgot four years of Mike Pence having to voice things that Pence surely didn't really want to say. And all of a sudden Trump decides, I forgot all of that and I want to be mad at Mike Pence now because he's not standing in the well in Congress overturning the election in my favor. So I figure with Bannon, it was probably, you know, economic like everything else. I think what we're going to find out is that there was some skullduggery around this pardon list. There were stories that have been running around about people selling pardons. And I heard some pundits on that Hacks on Tap podcast just yesterday talking about, are we going to find out that Trump got a percentage of the dollars that were transacted in exchange for those pardons?

I don't know whether that's true or not, but none of that would shock me, given who Trump is and given what his scenario probably is right now. If he got any of the money, that would be illegal. My understanding of the American law is that you're a lawyer in Washington, and I'm a guy who's in jail or has a, uh, has a sentence that I served. And I want a pardon for that. I go to you and I say, you got to get me, you got to get me a pardon. You've got friends in the white house. I'll pay you $10,000. If you can get that for me, that's not a, apparently that's not illegal. Uh, you as the lawyer, or you don't have to be a lawyer, but you've got friends in the White House, if you then go to the White House, make the argument for the pardon and say, oh, by the way, I'll give you

five grand if you can arrange this. That would be illegal, especially if you're dealing with the president. But the initial payment isn't. Who was it? It was the guy, the governor of Luganovich or whatever his name was. Luganovich. Luganovich. Luganovich, yeah.

Because he took a payment, a direct payment for something. Was it a pardon or was it an appointment or something? It was something like that, yeah. And that's what- Didn't Trump pardon him, by the way? I think Trump did pardon him. Yeah way? I think Trump did pardon him. He did pardon him. I mean, you look at that list of not just the one today,

but the stuff of late. The thing about Trump on this kind of thing is that this is a man who never released his income taxes for recent years, right? Broke with tradition. Everybody sort of speculated at how good he was at moving money around, hiding money, money laundering even. And there really hasn't been evidence to convict him of that, but he has not made much of a case that he's not good at that. There are a lot of people who wonder where he got the money to buy some of the properties that he bought in recent years. And so it wouldn't, you know, it wouldn't shock me if he had some sort

of an understanding of how he could benefit from the issuing of these pardons, but that the, you know, some sort of a financial trail or a paper trail wouldn't be easily accessible or available or might never even be found out. Let's turn the page. You've got me over my feeling blah about. Feeling good now, right? Feeling better now.

Feeling better now about that he's gone. And there were a number of things today that happened. So I feel a little better. But let's turn the page to the new president. Where all the hopes and dreams of a lot of Americans, and a lot of people around the world for that matter, who have missed an American leader assuming the role of leader of the free world in a way that kind of fitted with, with the aspirations of their own countries and governments.

Um, so Joe Biden becomes president and right out of the gate, he makes, he does a number of things and we can mention them. And I'd also like to talk a little bit about what the future holds for Joe Biden. But the page has turned. There is a new president of the United States and everything kind of changes right away because there's a stack on his desk of problems that confront his

country and the world in which he's going to have to start making moves on almost right away. So you were looking, you were flipping through those executive orders that he's going to implement immediately, like today. And what do those tell us? Well, I think they tell us a couple of things. One is that he's putting an end to the Muslim ban, which was essentially, I think, designed as a race baiting attack on Muslims to rally people who weren't Muslims in Trump's direction. He said he's going to stop building the border wall, which, again, I think was a kind of a Trump style way to address the immigration question

by describing Mexicans and these poor folks who were coming up towards America from Central, from Latin America, as threats, as kind of, you know, with terrorists kind of embedded in their ranks, as almost vermin that we're going to infect America. So it's a very, very divisive thing. And I think that what Biden is doing with those two moves is saying, we're going to roll back the clock on some of these things that were essentially designed to drive divisions between people about faith and

about race. And I think this is all to the good. I think he's got an important job to do there, and I think he should do it every way that he can, especially signaling that he is the anti-Trump when it comes to these kinds of things. But the other thing that really strikes me about Biden's approach in the last several days, Peter,

is that we've become so used to Trump's presidency being the presidency about him. Every day it was about me, me, me. I did this. I'm the best ever. I've accomplished more than anybody else. Nobody else in his cabinet ever really got that kind of elevation of their reputation because he didn't like it. He wanted to make sure that everybody understood that anybody who wasn't him but who was in his team were lesser individuals, were vulnerable. If they started to look like they were getting popular, they had to be diminished and maybe fired, and a lot of them were fired. And in contrast with the I, I, I, me, me, me presidency of Trump, Biden, you almost never hear him talk like that. I don't think I can remember him saying

anything that sound like a personal kind of brag since he was elected, or even before that, for that matter. He talks about we, he talks about healing, he talks about bringing parts of the country together. He describes the people that he's appointed or is about to appoint as really accomplished individuals who want to make a public, you know, want to contribute to public service. So I find that change is maybe the most important and welcome change, is a move away from the personal strongman, I, I, I, me, me, me, to somebody who really isn't

built to talk like that every day. Even though, and this may seem ironic or strange to talk about somebody who's been in politics for decades, not to sound egotistical, but he is that politician right now who doesn't sound hyper-egotistical, even though he's been around politics for a very, very long period of time. Here's my take on Joe Biden. As somebody I've watched and covered for, well, since the mid-'80s at least. His first run for presidency was for that 88 campaign, I think, and it was a disaster. There was charges of plagiarism and stuff on things, past speeches or things he'd written.

But it was always a guy who, you know liked they spoke nicely about joe biden he was never the perfect candidate for anything really even chairmanship of the judiciary committee during the anita hill stuff it was not a good time um so anyway he's never the perfect candidate, but ironically, he may end up being. He has the opportunity to be the perfect president, and I'll explain that. Here he comes into, you know, he was kind of the leading candidate in the earliest stages of the Democratic race for the presidential nomination, and then he kind of faltered and then he got dismissed and people were saying

he's going to drop out. He'll drop out next week. And then there was a turnaround thanks to one of the South Carolina. And then, you know, he rode the winning horse right through to the nomination and then obviously through to the presidency. So he gets there and now he is the president. And on his plate, as he walks into the Oval Office, if he's kept the resolute desk, the one with the Canadian history from the Northwest Passage, which if you've never heard, I'll tell you about someday, but I won't get into it now.

Sitting on his desk are some of the biggest issues that have ever confronted an incoming U.S. president. I don't think, certainly in our lifetimes, anyone's had the issues that he's facing. A pandemic, more than 400,000 people dead. Vaccine delivery system in question gonna have this pandemic i mean it's gonna end another year or two at the most it will end but right now we're in the midst of it so he's got that but as it ends the economy will bounce back. There are already some small indications of that happening, but it will happen.

End of pandemic will be beginning of a new economy. Different economy than we've seen before, quite likely, but it will be better. Other big-ticket items, you know, climate change, what have you, moving away from carbon. A lot of things happening that could end up, if they go his way, could end up making him one of the most successful presidents in the history of the country.

I mean, when you consider what he's got coming in and where it could lead if he's successful, he's got a ticket to the good side of the history books. Yeah, I think that's right. I think that's right. I think that they, you know, it would be easy to say he'll get marked on a Trump curve and it'll be easy for him to get a really good mark because Trump was so bad at so many things. But I think that's to diminish what skill set and aptitude and orientation he brings to the job. I think, and this is not just a couple of older guys

talking to each other about this, but I think that one of the benefits for him coming into this job, one of the benefits for America, maybe the world, is that he is older. He doesn't have a next act in mind. There's no job after this that he cares about. He doesn't seem like the kind of person

who's trying to amass a great personal fortune. And so he's probably pretty committed to, in one term, doing things that will put the country on a better path, solve some of the big challenges that he sees domestically and participate in solving some of the big challenges that we all see around the globe. And I think he, in that sense, is that kind of steadying, not personally ambitious, thoughtful about public policy, relationship-oriented politician that even if people thought they didn't need him in February, it turns out he probably is exactly what America needs right now. And even when I think about some of the tensions with Canada

and the current debate about the Keystone Pipeline, it does kind of feel to me that this is a guy who isn't going to get combative with us about this. He's going to listen to what we have to say. He's going to make the decision he's going to make. He's going to explain his decision. He's going to try not to do it in a way that diminishes the interests of Albertans or of Premier Kennedy or of Justin Trudeau. He's going to try to do what kind of classic politicians used to do, which was if you need to win one, don't make the other guy have to lose in an obvious way if you don't need to do that. And so I think that's really quite

welcome. I think that's kind of an essential skill set right now. And I agree that he's got a lot on his plate. But I also feel like, you know, if we whether we think about China or some of the other big risks, what we don't need is a hot-headed response. What we don't need is something that is designed to kind of shock people on Twitter and create breaking news every hour. We need somebody who's going to figure out how do we take down the tension. This is a giant economic relationship that China how do we take down the tension. This is a giant economic relationship that China has with the rest of the world. And there are huge military risks associated with that relationship too. So we need a kind of a calming influence who's going to listen to expert advice, who's going to really try to be thoughtful about those things. And we also need that on climate change. And we didn't have that with Trump on

either of those big issues. And I'm quite hopeful that that is who Joe Biden will turn out to be. And I think it'll be good for Canada and good for the world if he does. The one other issue that is very much on that desk for him, which is not going to be easy to deal with because past presidents long before Trump have been unable to deal with it either. And that's the racial issue. That whole, that's not going away. Certain assumptions were made about progress last summer, and if real progress isn't seen by this summer,

it could be very much in the forefront of the issues that Joe Biden has to deal with. He's not stupid. He's well aware of that, and I'm assuming that he's going to be working on that to try and have something to be able to put forward to the American people before the summer arrives, or it could be another long, hot one. Okay. I should mention at this point, Bruce, because we're both very disappointed about this. I'd mentioned on Monday and I think again yesterday that Ian Bremmer was going to join us for today. well-known internationally group based in New York that gives advice and strategy in terms of various international issues and risk assessment. And in fact, we did hook up with Ian this morning

and talked to him for 25 minutes, and it was a fascinating conversation. There was only one problem. I hadn't pushed the record button. It wasn't a great line to start off with in terms of the technical quality of it. But it was a lot better if I pushed the record button. And Ian, he was gone before I discovered that, but he was at a, it was chock-a-block today, not surprisingly on inauguration day. So we're going to have to get him back. The discussion is still one that's very important to have, which is kind of the state of the world right now

as a new president arrives on the scene. So I will, I will beg for his understanding on these things and we'll try and get him back again, but we're sorry to have let you down on that. But nevertheless, we still, as it turns out,

had lots to talk about in terms of this day and the, the history of it and the expectations surrounding it. So Bruce, thank you as, as always for the podcast within a podcast, Smoke Mirrors and the Truth on this day. Thank you. Peter, what a great day to get together and talk about the race next door

and the loser and the winner and where we go from here. Thanks for doing this. No problem. And where we go from this, obviously, is March on to Thursday and then Friday, which is the weekend special. Once again, I'm looking for your lines from this week. This is a week of history, and it may well phrase that may stand the test of time. If it doesn't come out of Joe Biden, maybe it came out of Bruce. Maybe it came out of me. Who knows? Look for something that you've heard about this week.

Didn't have to have been on the podcast. But if there's something you heard that is worth cataloging as a great line, I'd love to hear it from you for this week and the letters that I end up reading on Friday. That's it for now. We're going to close out on, this is probably the last time you're going to hear this theme music used,

but it was a great staple for us through last summer and all leading up to this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks for listening to The Bridge. We'll be back in 24 hours.