The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Encore: The Oval Office Moments That Shocked The World - What Now?

Episode Date: March 5, 2025

Encore episode. It was brutal, unprecedented and shocking -- but what happens now?  The exchange between Trump and Zelensky with J D Vance playing a supporting role was one for the history books.  Dr Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto makes her regular appearance to give us her assessment.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge and it's Wednesday. That means it's our Encore program and it's an Encore from this week, just two days ago, when Dr. Janice Stein, Munk School, University of Toronto, was with us to discuss that incredible moment inside the Oval Office in the White House. So here we go, our encore for this week And hello there, welcome to Monday Welcome to March, welcome to another week Welcome to the final week for Justin Trudeau As leader of the Liberal Party. The Liberals will announce their new leader this coming Sunday.

Should be interesting. So where's Justin Trudeau today? Well, as we record the bridge for this day, he's been to a meeting with King Charles in Britain. The Prime Minister was in Britain yesterday for the summit meeting, dealing with the Ukraine situation. And he took time today to slip up to Sandringham, where King Charles resides, or at least was this weekend,

and met with him this morning. What did they talk about, you say? Well, as of this recording, they're not giving us any details, although the Prime Minister made it clear he had things to talk about in terms of Canada, sovereignty. So I'm assuming this Trump 51st state stuff came up, although I don't know that. I know the monarchists are saying, oh no, King Charles can't say anything about that. You know, excuse me, maybe that's what convention says.

But this country is bled for that family. Okay? And I consider myself a monarchist. All right? More than 100,000 Canadians have died for king and country over the last 100 or so years. And he can't say anything about some foreign leader trying to annex us.

Please, give me a break. Good luck coming here next time. He's had pretty small crowds the last few trips he's made over here anyway. But now they may add a few placards to the arriving crowds. But enough about that. That's not what I'm here to talk about today, although I wanted to vent a little bit because I know some of you feel strongly about this

and some of you have written to me saying, oh, Peter, he can't say anything. Well, maybe that's what convention says, he can't say anything. But I'm sorry. Say something. Okay. We're going to get, Janistein is ready and waiting and eager to talk about the craziness of last Friday. And what it all means and what could happen now.

But before we get there, we've got to get to question of the week time, right? Because Thursday is the question of the week on your turn. And if the last month or so is any indication, you have lots to say on various topics. I got a note over the weekend from Nola Marion, that's one of our listeners. And it's a great note. It's a long note. It's about the qualities we should expect, or do we expect from politicians. And all I'm going to do is read you the headline of the letter

because I don't want it to influence what your possible answers could be. So here's the headline. Exactly what are the qualifications to be a politician? Now, this is timely, right? We're about to go into a federal election campaign. Could be as soon as the next couple of weeks. It'll certainly be at some time over the next couple of months. So what you expect the qualifications to be for a politician is a good question.

Parties will be picking candidates. Some have already done so. You will be picking candidates when you check your box. So what do you look for in a politician? And I don't mean they should be a conservative, they should be a liberal, they should be NDP. That's not the qualification I'm talking about.

And you know what I mean. What are the qualifications you're looking for to be a politician who's going to represent you? So that's your question. The questions go to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. Back to our normal time, 6 p.m. Wednesday is the deadline. Anything after that, even a minute or two after that's out.

Okay? You know where to write. You know when to write. You have to include your name and the location you're writing from. Okay. And keep it short, paragraph or so. We've been so successful in the last month or so in getting so many different views in. And we hope to do the same with this one. The question again, exactly what are the qualifications

to be a politician? What do you consider those qualifications to be? Okay? All right, let's get to today's topic. Janice Stein, the director of the Munk School at the University of Toronto, is our regular Monday guest. And all you had to do was watch television on Friday, Saturday, Sunday.

You saw it over and over and over again. That incredible back and forth inside the Oval Office of the White House between Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, his sidekick, Vice President finally getting to strut his stuff and not be outshined by Elon Musk. And, of course, the President of the Ukraine, Vladimir Zelensky. All right, here she comes, Janice Stein. All right, Janice, let's start at the beginning.

Let's start with the moment on Friday. You were watching this live. What was going through your mind as you're watching this? You know, Peter, I was watching it live in a room full of professionals and the stunned silence the shock none of us have ever seen anything like it and there are people who have been

watching this and doing this kind of thing for decades none of us have ever seen anything like this you've never seen um a vice president and a president explode like that at somebody that uh is sitting in the other chair in the oval office there's no precedent for this in public in public i'm sure it's happened a few times in private but certainly not in front of the cameras and and all the reporters standing there so that that leads me to the the next question from in that moment you know do you think it was a setup

i tend to think it was a setup because you know know, I followed this guy for 30 years, Trump I'm talking about, or longer, and everything is a setup. Right down to the way he used to, you know, pretend he was somebody else when he tried to get a reporter to cover him in the gossip pages. You know, I mean, this guy thinks through the things he's about to do, crazy as some of them may be. He kind of sets them up. And the first thing I thought of when I watched it was, this is a setup. And he got JD fans to play along with it. Yeah, you have every reason to think that, Peter.

As you say, there's a long history of doing this. In this particular case, here's a little context, which makes me think, wow, I'm not sure. Before the decision was made that Zelensky was going to the White House, Andre Yermak, who is his most senior advisor, you know, he's a principal secretary. He's the old Tim Coots for Canadians. He's up for Zelensky. Said he wanted Zelensky to go to the White House.

And Kellogg, who is a special envoy, said, no, no, this is not a good idea. Don't come. And you're McDoug in his heels and said, no, no, this is not a good idea. Don't come. And Yermak dug in his heels and said, no, we need to go to Washington. So the energy behind this trip, the push behind the trip came from the Ukrainian side, not the White House. Now, could they still have set him up? Once they agreed to it? For sure. But it is interesting that that push came and they ignored the advice they were getting from Kellogg. Don't come.

Not now. This is not the moment to come. Why would they say that? Why would that advice be given? So if you're in Kellogg's position and there have been a lot of background conversations already as you know both with the Russians on what is you know on an end to the war because this president is a man of peace and I know what comes of that later

but there have been a lot of conversations and it's very clear Trump is figuring out, oh, my God, this is hard. An end to this war is really hard. So he's reverted to let's get a ceasefire. That's what he wants now because that's easier to get. That's what he got in the Middle East, right? He got a ceasefire.

Well, let's get a ceasefire. And Zelensky has pushed back against that ceasefire. And you saw him do it again in the White House at that meeting. And so I'm sure that Kellogg knew there was frustration already there on Trump's part that he couldn't get Zelensky to buckle. And he probably gave him the advice, don't come now.

It's not a good time. Well, you know, he's not buckling now to a ceasefire because he wants security guarantees. Yes, that's right. Which is not an unheard of thing to be asking for. You're going to sign a ceasefire. No. And look, that's at the biggest strategical level of what this was about. And just to remind all of our listeners, Peter, when the Cold War ended, Ukraine had a lot of Russian Soviet nuclear weapons deployed on its own. And it gave them up at American urging.

And three countries signed a deal, a memorandum, recognizing the sanctity of Ukraine's borders. Russia, the successor states of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States. So Zelensky knows all about how much good a piece of paper can be. And that's where he's coming from. And he was trying to say that over and over, but shut it down. They broke their word in 2014. They broke it again in 2022. After the Minsk agreements, they break their word. And that's why he doesn't want to cease fire. But he is now standing between Donald Trump, the maker of peace, because, you know, is he the only one that's standing?

I'm not sure about that. I'm not sure that Putin would agree at this point to an unconditional ceasefire because his appetite has been so whetted, you know, by what Trump has done, frankly. You know, it's so hard to decide who to believe in these things. Like Putin is saying since Friday, he's saying, oh, yeah, you know, we and the Americans are in the same headspace. We're thinking exactly the same on this. They're not. No, they're not. They're absolutely not. And of course, there's a

huge trap here for Trump, which you could hear in that moment that we were watching when somebody asked him, a reporter asked him. And by the way, Peter, there were Russian media in that room. And there were questionable American media in that room, too. Right. So, I mean, who is in that room from the media side is probably worth topping over. But when a reporter asked him,

well, what if the Russians break their word? He said, what if a bomb falls and hits you, right? Utterly dismiss that issue of the future security and security guarantees. And a deal with somebody that has twice broken their word and invaded Ukraine. Obviously, I want to get to what happens now. But before I get there, I just want to deconstruct a little more in terms of that moment and what was said in the harshest moments. There were like four or five, six minutes of of them really quite something in the back and

forth um were either of them telling the truth in the things they said to each other were either of them factually correct so we certainly know where donald was trump was factually incorrect he started and that's you know let's just go back over this as a script writer for a second. I don't know how many thousands of scripts you've seen, Peter, over the years. If you actually play the start of this back,

it was Shady Vance who got this going. That's what I think it was a set of. Yeah, I don't think he needs any encouragement to do this. And who knows whether it was scripted or not, but it was certainly he who got this going. He launched into the attack. Trump was actually, or Trump fairly restrained until that moment. You know, we'll never know, I guess, whether that was scripted or not.

And once J.D. Vance went on the attack, Zelensky attacked back, right? And he said to him, well, have you been in Ukraine? No, by the way, J.D. Vance has never been in Ukraine. And, you know, unlike most European leaders and our foreign minister, who's made the, and our minister, we've made the trip multiple times. J.D. Vance has never been in Ukraine. So you got the start of a personal dynamic there that in any altercation I've ever watched, and I've watched a lot, that's how they go. They spiral up.

And from there on in, it was absolutely predictable what was going to happen. Trump then chimes in with a $350 billion worth of aid. Well, that's not true. We know that's factually incorrect, frankly. We know that Zelensky is factually correct when he says Russia's broken its word several times. So on the facts, I think there's no question. It's unambiguous. Zelensky was truthful, accurate, and both Vance and Trump were not. There's a meta level.

You go up one more level. Donald Trump says to him, you don't have any cards. Well, there is a huge asymmetry of power here. Huge. Ukraine needs the United

States and we'll get to the repercussions, and the Europeans are already on Sunday talking about what they're going to do now. But let me just give you one example. Starlink. Without Starlink, it is impossible for the units in the Ukrainian army, frankly, to communicate. Starlink is Elon Musk's, paid for by the Pentagon. There's no European power that can provide that. There's no European power that can provide that.

When they started going at each other back and forth, provoked by J.D. jd pants no question about that but did um did zielinski lose his cool yes yes and so i was in a room of professionals and i don't know if you saw the photograph of the ukrainian ambassador putting her head in. Anybody who has experienced diplomacy, and I know this is hard for people to hear, because frankly, let's call it Spade to Spade. He's the person of courage and integrity. The other guys are not. But he took the bait, Peter, and he lost his cool,

and he argued back, and he argued back and he argued over Trump he all those things as tough as it is for Canadians to say this and to hear this because we're the object of some of that anger as well you cannot do you cannot do. Again, you know, when I'm in an argument with somebody and they're yelling at me, when I yell back, they just go up the escalator. It spirals out of control. You have to keep your cool. You have to sit there stone-faced as galling as it

is. You have to, you're in discipline. You have to wait for them to finish. it is you have to you're in discipline you have to wait for them to finish and then you have to find a way around that isn't a head-on attack against them because it'll only start it over and it wasn't in zolensky's interest to have this outcome you see i i'm on the other side of that. I know. It's partly because we've watched this guy, Trump, ever since he got into the political arena, be a total bully with everybody. It didn't matter who it was, whether it was journalists, whether it was political leaders from other countries.

Remember the way he pushed that guy aside in a NATO meeting and kind of shoved him across the room so he could get to the front of the line? And then in the things he says, the way he's bullied or tried to bully Canada in this last while. You sit there and you go, when is somebody going to take this guy on and just tell him to shove it? And finally, we saw that on Friday and you go you know good for him and if it cost him the meeting and he got thrown out of the White House well in the moment it was worth it yeah so you know look um a lot of my male colleagues have said this to me by the way a lot of them oh now, now you're going to play

the gender card. Well, you know, it's really interesting because what do you do with a bully? You take the bully on. When there's a bully in kindergarten, you take the bully on. Right? But you do that when you've got a bunch of guys around you watching you.

And those guys are coming over to your side after you take the guy on. Here's the problem for Zelensky. He really needs this bully. And I'm going to say it right out right as a Canadian, as a patriotic Canadian, we need that guy too. And if you know that, if you know you've got to deal with that bully tomorrow morning because he has assets

that you badly need and only he has, you've got to forego that moment of great satisfaction when you shove it to the bully. Okay, so tell me how that's different than Munich in 1938. It sounds like appeasing. Yeah, so tell me how that's different than Munich in 1938. It sounds like appeasing. Yeah, so here's, I think when I was watching this thing, I did what the Ukrainian ambassador did. I put my head in my hands, okay?

At the mega level, Trump and Vance made the largest strategic mistake that you can make, right? If you're talking about somebody who messed up, those two guys did. And just listen to the rhetoric that Donald Trump used, and you can see how this would play in the United States. I'm a man of peace. I'm a man of peace. I don't want to see any more killing. Well, who's not going to sign on to that one?

Except there's a larger issue here. Is there a chance that Putin would really make peace? And as I was sitting there listening to that, I thought, wow, somebody who tried this on Winston Churchill in 1940 would have been that with the same response, right? You can't make peace unless you're confident that there are two parties at the table who are finally tired of fighting and are willing to stop.

And Jane adds Donald Trump, no attention to that. And that to me was the real setup in the conversation. That's why Zelensky found himself in the spot that he did. And that's why I think they're wrong. They are deeply wrong and they are putting all of us at risk, frankly. Ukraine, mostly at risk, but

every one of us at risk when you give a guy like Putin, when you let a guy like Putin win and get the fruits of what he did through illegal invasion and occupation. In the moment, tactically, Zelensky had to figure out, I need this guy tomorrow morning. He needed to swallow it. He needed to let Trump explode and say, Mr. President, we appreciate your leadership

on moving this forward. We need detailed discussions about how we do this because they threw him out of the White House, Peter. He wanted to stay and keep the conversation going. They threw him out.

That's a big cost for a country that needs the United States. And I'm saying this with some conviction because I'm really talking to Canadians as much as I am to Ukrainians. We are, you know, we live next door to the United States. We share geography. Geography is not going away. We're having a conversation in this country

about diversifying. I'm glad we're having a you know a conversation this country about diversifying i'm glad we're having it but how far do you think we're going to get we're we sell 78 percent of our exports the united states i'll be thrilled if we get to 70 percent yeah i think you know when you look at that picture of the um the various uh europe and Trudeau's in that group as well. And you go, yeah, I mean, the Europeans have their case, but they don't live next door to this guy. Right. There's an ocean between them and us. And the Europeans know the price of these kind of situations better than the Americans do.

There's no doubt about that, given the history. And not trusting the other side of an agreement. And they learned that lesson in Munich and elsewhere. But the question becomes, you know, you mentioned Churchill a moment ago. If Churchill had been sitting there across from Trump, what would have happened? I mean, you know, he had a meeting with the FDR

in the beginning of the war in 1940, whereby the way he wore a military uniform. Yes, he did. You know, not a dress uniform yes he did you know not a dress uniform but a kind of like a battle dress uniform so he wasn't any different than zelensky was in the white house but what would churchill have done you know he found we know from his memoirs he found fdr incredibly frustrating he you know it got it was a nightmare for him. He felt that FDR was doing what he could but it wasn't very much until

the Japanese took the decision out of his hands. In fact, they had to lend lease which really mattered. Lend lease was when the United States lent the United Kingdom the money to buy American weapons that they desperately needed. So Churchill

didn't let his frustration with FDR show. He came home at night, drank scotch, smoked cigars and wrote memoirs but he didn't let it show in the meetings in the White House because he knew he needed FDR that badly.

And FDR is nothing like Donald Trump. He wasn't a bully. You can't. You can't when you're the leader of a country. I can't when you're the diplomat. You can't. And you know what? I think part of this happened, by the way,

because Zelensky's tired. You know, the pace that Zelensky has set over these last two weeks, starting from Munich, the frustration he's feeling, Peter, he, you know, he's watched that speech that JD Vance gave in Munich. These have been an absolutely dreadful two weeks. And I think he just lost it, frankly. Now they've got to find a way back into the White House. And they do. They have no choice. They've got to find a way back into the white house and they do they have no choice they've got to find a way back into the white house and you know mcconnell and starmer are

stepping up to put a plan to bring a plan to the table for trump and vance to look at where zolensky has a voice. Thank goodness they're doing that. Let me take our break, and then we'll come back and we'll deal with this, the what happens now question. Okay. Right after this. And welcome back. It's our regular Monday conversation with Dr. Janice Stein, the Munk School, University of Toronto.

And obviously, lots to talk about again this week. You're listening on Sirius XM channel 167. Canada Talks are on your favorite podcast platform. Glad to have you with us. Okay. So, like, what happens now? We heard the uh various leaders starmer and macron and trudeau had to say yesterday and i think they all agree you got to find a way back into the white house yes but what does trump really want out of this i mean sure he wants nobel peace prize

and he thought he was on his way to getting it, and maybe he still will. Who knows? But he's also alienated a lot of people, some of whom for the first time in his own backyard. I mean, you saw Vance get hustled out of Vermont yesterday out of some ski resort because people were lined up outside against him. People around the world have sided with Zelensky, perhaps not the leaders, perhaps not the politicians, some of whom would see it the way you see it,

as we've got to figure out a way to deal with this. It's not all just protest. But what does Trump really want? Does he want a peace deal? Does he want a realignment of world order along with where the Americans are aligned more with the Russians than anybody else? are aligned more with the uh russians than anybody else i mean what does he want there's two views here right yeah optimistic view is he really wants

two peace deals he wants one between russia and ukraine and he wants one in the middle east and he's going to use his political capital as a push he wants a Nobel Prize for this. This is the big one, right? And somebody's already nominated him as, you know, Peter. But a nomination means nothing. Frankly, they get hundreds every year. So how do you get that? These are tough deals. These are long-term adversaries. And, you know, there was part of what Trump said. You have to say, he says, well, you know, and he's screaming.

And he says, well, you know, Putin hates you as much as you hate him. That's true. There he spoke the truth, right? He asked me for one factual thing he said. That's one factual thing he said. So he's now focused on ceasefires in both places. He's focused on ceasefires. So I think the United Kingdom, Canada, France, and Germany

have to figure out how can we structure a ceasefire because we're not going to get that security guarantee from the United States. It's just not coming. So how do we structure a ceasefire because we're not going to get that security guarantee from the United States. It's just not coming. So how do we structure a ceasefire where we put as much muscle on the ground as we can so that Putin thinks twice before starting up again? Because as you and I have said before, Putin has some reasons to want a ceasefire now too. The big if to me, did Donald. The biggest to me,

did Donald Trump, by that performance, give Putin enough to encourage him to go for broke when he saw Trump turn on Zelensky like that? There's a big cost to what Trump did there. So the United Kingdom and France are willing to put troops on the ground. Are they enough to stop the Russian army? No. But you know, we've had 40,000 American troops on the border of North Korea and South Korea. 40,000, that's not enough to stop any

army, frankly, but they're what we call a tripwire. Nobody wants to go through those troops. And so he hasn't done it since 1953, frankly. There was a ceasefire in Korea, 1951, and it took two years to get to the deal. But there was a ceasefire. And it's still just a ceasefire. And it's still just a ceasefire reinforced by U.S. troops. But it's how many years have there been?

What are we now? Right. You do the math, 70 plus. But there's no peace deal. No peace deal. It's a ceasefire reinforced by troops on the ground. My sense is that's where Starmer and Macron hopefully the Germans, who knows, hopefully the Germans under Meretz will go and

that will buy everybody some time. Ukraine to reorganize because it is true that Ukraine is struggling to get men to the front lines. That is accurate. So is Putin. Right. They both are. And that's where I think we're going.

But Zelensky himself is now going to need those partners to take his case to the White House because it's going to be difficult for him now after what happened. Where's Poland on this? Poland is 100% with Zelensky. Poland is so worried. You know, Rado Sikorski, the foreign minister of Poland, he's so up frightened, so alarmed by the encouragement that Donald Trump is giving to Russia.

And Europeans, it's really stunning. There's a European conversation, Peter, and one of them, a Belgian said, I'm not even sure, we're not sure in Europe anymore that Article 5 applies under this. Article 5 of NATO, which is a collective defense treaty, which if somebody invokes it, everybody is supposed to go to the defense of the other. It's been invoked once by the United States

after the attack on 9-11, and everybody came to the assistance of the United States. Europeans are not even sure. They've lost confidence. They've lost trust in the United States as a reliable ally on security issues, and the conversation is so different in Europe than it is in Canada, as you rightly said.

Get up in the helicopter and try to look at this thing from not in the moment. Let's assume that this somehow passes. Yeah, it will. It will sometime at some point. Yeah. But how is the world changing here? So when I look at this,

I think there is a profound change in the relationship between the United States and Europe. Profound. I can't imagine after this that the Europeans will ever have the confidence and trust that they had in the United States before all this.

You know, Donald Trump is not an accident. He's not a blip. He will have been in power eight out of 12 years. How do you tell anybody that J.D. Vance is not on the horizon or somebody else, even though it was a 51% vote, you know, for Donald Trump and not even when they did the recount. So what will that look like, Peter? There's a very alarming conversation starting in Europe already,

which is flying beneath the radar, but it's really a very alarming conversation starting in Europe already, which is flying beneath the radar, but it's really a scary conversation. They are talking about whether they can rely on the British and French nuclear deterrent in the event

that Russia moves west. You know, every president since JFK, and that is a long time, has made it one of their paramount goals to prevent proliferation of nuclear weapons. And they've resisted every power. Some have succeeded,

but they've resisted every power that's done that. Donald Trump has put himself and the United States in the position now where the incentive for the United Kingdom and France to modernize their forces. The United Kingdom has what we call a second strike capability.

It's the, you know, nuclear weapons are at sea, if they're ever hit. Those weapons survive. France does not. But there is going to be an accelerated conversation in Europe about building out some sort of European nuclear deterrent. I have no doubt about that, Peter.

Something that every president of the United States for the last 70 years has tried to prevent. So what is it that Trump sees? And let's be clear, it's not just Trump. I mean, he's got people around him, some of whom aren't, they're not stupid. I mean, they have a lifetime in international affairs and trying to understand diplomacy

and various aspects of which way the world is moving and they must be watching all this and advising on all this and saying this is the right direction to be going right like what's the end game for them where like there are some like that yeah you're right there are some like us. Yeah, you're right. There are some like that. So what argument are they making to Trump? Okay. I'm going to put the best gloss on this that I can, you know, that I can. They are saying you need to separate yourself from Europe. Europe has to take care of itself because it is the Indo-Pacific and China

that is going to shape the rest of this century, not Europe. We need to be able to move our assets, including our troops, out of Europe to deploy them in the Indo-Pacific. And, you know, Biden bought some of that. And so did Barack Obama, who was the first one who talked about a pivot to Asia. So this is not Trump craziness only, but that is the so-called pacing challenge for the rest of this century. So Europe has to look after itself

and we're going to force that. For the Europeans, that's terrifying. And that's what you're hearing. But that is the strategic argument they're making. What that argument misses, Peter, if you do it this way, and if you do it, let's be blunt, in that brutal way,

that was a brutal, that was a really ugly, ugly, ugly conversation. If you do it that way and you turn your back on your allies and you attack your neighbors economically, which is what he's doing to Canada and Mexico, you encourage Russia and you encourage China to take him on and challenge him because you don't see any loyalty to anything. Let me ask you, let me ask you this. If we assume that over time there have been brutal conversations like that in private between major leaders. And there have yeah well if there have been why is it better that they be held in private and not in public like we witnessed oh there's no question in my mind it's better if

they're private it is better if they're private and the reason let me tell you one really bad one that you know well about it was lbj with lester pearson it was private lester pearson went down and told lbj it's time to stop the war in vietnam and lbj's a giant of a guy he literally picked up lester pearson by the lapels and screamed at him right now why is that better happening in private because you need the next, which is where we are now as we're talking the next morning. You have to talk to these people again. It's never over. You can't leave Zelensky out of these conversations.

Donald Trump and Zelensky are going to find themselves in the same room sooner or later if there's going to be a ceasefire here. If you bought in public, it's much, much harder to do so. Okay, final question. Is Zelensky on his home turf in a stronger position today than he was on Friday. Yes. And I think that's part of it, too. You know, there have been a lot of discussion about elections in Ukraine. And that's one of the things that Donald Trump has been pushing.

And there's an agenda there, too. Let's face it. There is a personally very, very bad relationship between Zelensky and Donald Trump that starts over that insane issue of Russian interference. And by the way, that came out when Donald Trump lost it because it wasn't only Zelensky. Donald Trump lost it.

I mean, the only person who didn't was J.D. Matz, frankly. He knew what he was doing. There's a bad relationship there. And so Donald Trump had been pushing for elections, hoping, frankly, that Zelensky would lose. When you bully a leader like this, you get a rally behind the flag result in the public opinion. Look at the transformation of Canada since this tariff

discussion. We're not the same country that we were before Donald Trump said he was going to slap a 25% tariff on us. We're just not the same country. You and I thought thought might never start. I mean, interprovincial tariffs, what horrier discussion is there in this country than interprovincial tariffs? We spent decades and we haven't moved.

We're having a different conversation now and there's a different East-West conversation. You know, Poliev and Trudeau make similar statements. That's exactly what happened in Ukraine over the last two days. And somebody, one Ukrainian that I know quite well, who's actually got a responsible job in the administration, defense procurement, you know, we texted back and forth. And she said what you just said to me.

She said, I'm glad Zelensky stood up and fought back. I'm glad he finally did it. Even if it costs us, Zelensky can face himself in the mirror and he's given dignity to Ukrainians. And I understand. I understand. But it's Monday now. That's why we have professionals, Peter.

Often people say, what do diplomats do? Right? Why do we need to pay for them? They live in nice embassies and have drivers and the whole nice dinners yes that's all true but what do they do they have iron self-discipline and they all if it's monday today they are thinking about what's going to happen on Tuesday and Wednesday. That's what they do. Okay. Another fascinating conversation.

And they just keep on coming. And who knows where we'll be this time next week. But I do know that we'll be sitting here with you trying to figure it out. So Janice, thanks so much. Thank you, Peter. And do you think we can hope for a quiet week? Every time I hope for a quiet week, by the middle of the week, I go, geez, something's got to happen here.

Gone. Okay, take care. See you next week. Another, as I said, another great conversation with Dr. Janice Stein at the Munk School, University of Toronto. And as I hear every week from you, you love these conversations. You don't always agree with Janice. There's no question about that.

And I get letters saying, no, no, no, she's wrong about this or that or the other thing, and that's fine. That's what it's all about. It's having a good, in-depth, lengthy conversation that provokes us to, you know, think of alternatives or to agree, what have you. I love the story about LBJ and Lester Pearson, the picking up by the lapels. I was thinking of it while I was listening to Janice

because there's a picture today, and Associated Press says it's a today picture, of Justin Trudeau with Prince Charles, where they had their meeting today that we still don't really have any details of, but maybe we never will. But it looks like Justin Trudeau has just told some kind of joke or he's told a funny story of some kind. Maybe he said something about Trump because he's not shy about doing that.

Anyway, Prince Charles is like doubled over with laughter. I mean, he is really laughing. So whatever it was in that moment. But I also, what happened in the other moments? Did the Prime Minister say to the King, Sir, you've got to understand the depth of concern upon Canadians about this whole issue of the 51st state. It's real. It's tough.

Did he pick him up by the lapels and say, listen, King? No, of course he didn't. Okay, I'm not going to go there. Anyway, it's an interesting picture. So I'm sure you'll see it if you haven't already. And that was our encore edition of The Bridge for this week. Just a couple of days ago,

Janice Stein joined us for her regular weekly commentary. Hope you enjoyed the replay. We'll be back tomorrow with your turn and your answers to this week's question. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening.