The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Enough About The Trial, Tell Me About The Election

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

The media for the most part is fixated on all the salacious details of the Trump hush money trial and very little time is being spent covering the race for the. White House. So, Keith Boag joins us for one of his regular visits to give his thoughts about where we are in the Trump-Biden 2024 battle and how it's so different than anything else we've witnessed.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Enough about the Trump trial. Tell me what's actually happening in the election race. We will. That's coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to Tuesday, Peter Mansbridge here. And we're going to talk a little Trump-Biden stuff today, where we are in the election campaign. Now, I know that some of you, certainly not all of you, some of you are watching this trial that's going on in New York. You know, the one about hush money and all that. And if you're following it, it looks pretty devastating for Trump.

But then, who knows? Trump always seems to get away with whatever he tries to get away with. So we'll see what happens in the trial. But meanwhile, there's an actual election race going on in the United States for president and for some senators and for some House of Representatives and for some governors. That's all pretty important in terms of the future of that country and some might argue the future of a lot of other countries, including us as well.

So the election is until November. But it's in full swing right now. The campaign is in full swing. So we're going to get our latest update on that situation. And watching this year the U.S. election for us has been my friend and colleague, former colleague, Keith Bogue, who was a former Washington correspondent for the CBC, but he's been all over the world. He knows politics.

He knows foreign affairs. He knows Canadian politics. He was the chief political correspondent in Canada as well. So he's got the stuff, and he loves U.S. politics. He was the chief political correspondent in Canada as well. So he's got the stuff and he loves U.S. politics. He loves to study it and he likes to share the knowledge that he gains from that studying with us. And so he will do that and we'll start that in a couple of minutes. But first a reminder of where we're heading towards on Thursday on your question of the week.

Announced it yesterday. The question of the week is, what's on your mind? We're going away for just one week anyway from the kind of questions we've been throwing at you for all the first five months of this year. And they've been great, and your answers have been fantastic. But every once in a while, we throw in this, what's on your mind?

So you can literally talk about anything, and we'll consider it for the Thursday show. Some people have started writing already. Keep in mind the basic rules of this. Got to include your name, where you're writing from, the location you're writing from, and it can be anywhere in the world as we've already found out this week. And you got to keep it concise. All right. I'm not looking for an essay. I'm looking for,

I don't know, a paragraph about where your head's at on whatever issues they're confronting with you. It could be Ukraine. It could be Israel, Gaza. It could be the high cost of living in Canada. It could be forest fires. It could be any number of different things. They're all on people's minds at this time. So I want to hear what's on your mind.

Okay? Name, location, keep it tight. You write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And you get your answers in by 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow. Okay? After that, it's too late. So get them in before 6 p.m. Eastern Time tomorrow.

Okay. Let's get started with our conversation with my good friend Keith Bogue. All right, you ready? I'm ready. So let's get started. Here it is. Keith, give me the helicopter view of where we are in terms of the race for the White House at this point. Well, there are a couple of really interesting things about it

that are different from any other election we've covered in my lifetime anyway. One is that we have, first of all, very early, we know who the nominees are. And it's interesting that you look at polling, we're way ahead of the voting public who apparently, at least in some constructions of the narrative arc, are still not convinced that either Biden or Trump is going to run against each other. But I think we can say pretty safely that that will resolve itself over the next few weeks or during the course of the summer. The other thing is that's really interesting about it is that we have a race that is essentially,

for purposes of analysis, a race between two incumbents. Because for the first time in a very long time, a president who was defeated for reelection has captured his party's nomination again and is running again. And of course, Biden is running for reelection. But that really changes the dynamic from what we have become accustomed to in races where you have at least one candidate who hasn't run before. in the case of Hillary Clinton versus Trump, neither candidate had run for president on their party's ticket before. And the same was true in the previous election. There was no incumbent.

So we've gone from the rare circumstance where you have no incumbent to the even rarer circumstance where you have two incumbents yeah that is odd um you know i i swore to myself on before we started this conversation that i would try to have it without talking about the trial but i guess that's that's basically impossible um so tell me what you know as as opposed to going through the latest details and who said what, about which, the impact of the trial, or at least the lesson of the trial that we should take about Donald Trump in terms of this election campaign. What's the lesson here that we're witnessing coming out of this trial? I think the big lesson is to go right back to when all of these events first happened, 2015, and realize, observe, that what we are seeing is the first attempt by Donald Trump to try and illegally influence the outcome of an election. In other words, to cheat. He got into the 2016 campaign in 2015 when he launched his campaign, and he's already meeting with the head of American media,

the people who published the National Enquirer, to make a deal with them whereby they will catch and kill stories that are negative about him, and they will promote stories and embellish stories that are negative about his opponent. So I think it's an important lesson that this recurring theme in Trump election attempts is to try to find ways to get around the rules while at the same time accusing his opponents of cheating or rigging the election. And this case really is about case zero, the very first attempt by Donald Trump to cheat in a presidential election. What puzzles me often about Trump is how either nobody cares that he's cheating

or that they just don't get the pattern, the continuing pattern, as you say. We've seen the same thing. It started in 2016 campaign, then in 2020, and we're witnessing the same thing going on now. And nobody seems to say, you know, come on, you can't take us for fools every time and yet it seems we can they can he can this was the lesson of pt barnum right who discovered very

early on that the public there's a certain element of the public that wants to be fooled they like they enjoy the game of it, whatever. I don't understand it. But the other part of it is clearly that people have a very, very strong drive to believe what they want to believe. And, you know, his supporters, the MAGA people really do believe the stories that he tells them. They believe all of the cheating is happening on the Democratic side. They believe all of their enemies, who are Trump's enemies and vice versa, are out to get him, that they are willing to lie, rig elections, do anything he says that they will do. And in the course of this trial, we have seen how he has tried to impugn the motives of the justice system from top to bottom. They believe all of that stuff because that's what they want to believe.

And the disturbing thing is that they seem completely disconnected from the evidence, which clearly shows otherwise. It's a worrisome thing. It's connected to fake news and all of that kind of stuff. And it is one of the biggest opponents that Joe Biden has to face in the coming campaign. The fact that the supporters of his opponents are very selective about the truths that they believe, the facts that they choose, and they basically allow Donald Trump to define for them what reality is. So is this the same guy that we saw step onto the political stage in 2015, leading to the 2016 election?

Is there anything different about Trump today than the Trump we witnessed back then? I mean, it's almost a decade now. How has he changed? How has the way he campaigns changed? I don't think he has changed in terms of his overall direction, but I do think he has changed a lot in terms of the intensity of his rhetoric. You know, Trump has always believed from probably his experience in television that you always have to top tomorrow what you did today and what you did today.

You have to top over what you did yesterday. So he gets more extreme in his rhetoric all the time. But the other big thing that's changed, and it's really difficult to overestimate how important this is to him, he's been indicted in four criminal cases and his salvation, the thing that may keep him out of prison is whether he can win the election in 2024. When those are the stakes, when those are the personal stakes, you have to fear that it leads to the kind of desperation where he might do anything to try to hang on to power. And we've already seen in the 2020 election what he's capable of. You know, I mean, I think there's very little question of how much he knew about the January

6th, call it what you want, the protest, the riot, the attack on the Capitol. But on top of that, that became, I think we understand now, just one element of a much more complex and involved plot to overturn the results of the 2020 election that involved, you know, false slates of electors, putting pressure on state secretaries general and governors even, using pressure tactics against them, using the courts, I mean, to no avail, but he did pursue aggressively, really kind of frivolous cases in the courts, I mean, to no avail, but he did pursue aggressively really kind of frivolous cases in the courts, try to slow things down. I think that there is a strong, legitimate opinion that that was just the beginning and we should be prepared for more, expect more and be prepared for

more in November, December, January of this year, which all of which is to say he might win, right? In which case that would become unnecessary. Whatever happens, he'll declare the election was rigged, but he somehow overcame all the rigging. You hear him saying that now, that the election is going to be rigged. You know that he's saying it to prepare his people for a loss. And you know that he's saying it to prepare his people for a loss. And you know that internally they are probably preparing to do battle legally, hiring lawyers, developing theories and so on, just as they did last time.

But I think we've got to assume they're taking everything up a notch this time, that they're trying to build on the experience of the failed attempt to take over the election last time. Is he, is he any more of a politician than he was when he first came on the scene when he, he campaigned unlike any politician we'd seen before and actually, you know, wanted to be seen that way that he wasn't another politician like the ones in the past. Is he any more a politician today than he was then? Well, I mean, that's a really good question. Obviously, in some ways he is. He's had four years experience as president. There were things he didn't know, even basic things he didn't know about being president before that one assumes he knows now. I sometimes, though, get the feeling that he's lost his political touch, his instincts. i'll give you one example we know the democrats are divided on what's happening in the middle east what's

happening in gaza and that's an opportunity for trump it seems to me the smart play for him is to analyze the situation and see that where where trump has trouble um in an electoral sense is in a state like Michigan, where there's a Muslim population that's really upset about the way the Biden administration is supporting Israel. And yet, what does Trump do? He tells a largely Jewish audience that if they vote Democrat, it's because they don't like Israel. Well, how does that play among the Muslims in Michigan? Like, that seems to me to be him missing the forest for the trees there. I mean, that's not, that doesn't make any sense to me.

He should, his smart move, which is very, very difficult for him, is to keep his mouth shut. Just stand back. When your opponent's having trouble, get out of the way and let it happen. But anyway, I was surprised by that. And to get back to your question, I thought, to me, that just seems like an elementary element of politics. So unnecessary for him to get involved in that, I think.

There are lots of ways for him to answer questions about that that turn it right back on Democrats without him getting involved in it. We also hear reports that he he just doesn't seem to get the fact that the 2024 election is about 2024 for him in so many ways it's still about 2020 and that doesn't see there doesn't seem any evidence at all that that's a winner for him outside of his core. And he doesn't need to worry about his core. They're going to come out and they're going to vote for him anyway. But there are a lot of people who he needs to vote for him. We're just sick to death of hearing him whine about 2020 over and over again. I want to hear him talk about more substantive things in their lives, such as inflation, the economy, and so on. So, you know,

it's hard for me to remember a time when I could actually say that, you know, on a normal political scale, he was very deft in terms of his rhetoric and his actions. But I think like most of us, as he gets older, he loses a step. And I think that there's a good chance we're going to see that much more clearly, you know know as we get closer and closer to the campaign to the election now some some of it's deliberate right i mean he doesn't have a policy book we don't know where the policy book in 2020 and i think you're right i think they're not going to have one this time either and you know so when the

questions you say that people are waiting for answers on, whether it's inflation or whatever about the economy, it's unlikely they're going to get it because he doesn't have a book. He doesn't have a platform, so to speak. How you get through a convention without a platform is, you know, another thing I don't quite understand. As you said, he didn't have one in the last time round. It was just a big party. So, I mean, this unconventional way of running.

Yeah. And the party doesn't impose one on him because I think they read the situation and they're afraid that if they came up with a policy platform, he would just ignore it and that he would be making it up on the fly day to day and that that would be just their worst nightmare. So rather than that, they're essentially running on Trump, right? That they're running on his demagoguery and his appeal as a populist, not on any substantive issue, which is not to say that I don't want to be confusing about this, although I said since I might be. He will talk about issues, but he may say something different on Tuesday than what he said on Monday and something that has no resemblance to what he will say on Wednesday.

That's the problem with Trump. He doesn't understand issues very well. He does change his position. Look what he's done just in the last couple of months in trying to come up with a coherent answer on abortion. I mean, he's essentially promised he'd do one thing, flirted with another thing, and then dropped them both altogether and said, look, I'm just going to leave it to the States. You know, he, he's not thinking any of this through and the Republican party has a, has to find a way to live with that. Um, but you know, I mean, they're, they're only choices to believe that, that he is magic,

that his populism is effective and that, that, that's, that's how we won in 2016 and how we will win in 2024. Well, either he doesn't have a clearly defined in his mind position on something like abortion, or he knows how to bend it for whatever audience or whatever moment he needs to bend it for. Yeah. I mean, that's what it seemed to me on abortion, because you're quite right.

I mean, he changed his position, or at least it sounded like he was changing his position, three or four times within a period of about 10 days. And then said he wasn't going to have a position. Exactly. But, you know, we can kind of laugh at it, and it is funny from everything we've ever done in our lives covering politics. And yet it seems to be, I know it's months away from the election, so I tread carefully with this, but it seems to be working.

I mean, when you look at the numbers that are out there by a number of different respected research firms, not only is he seemingly leading in the overall number, but more importantly, he's leading in most of the so-called swing states. Yeah. And when you look at that, you go, why would I change? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. If he were to ask me, why would I change? I would remind him of the 2022 midterms where the polls were right up until the first vote was cast, we're showing a red wave right across America and a huge win in both houses for Republicans. And as we know, it didn't turn out that way. One of the reasons it didn't turn out that way is because either the polls missed it or misunderstood how to ask about it. The data did not recognize how big an issue abortion was. And I remember at the time there was a lot of criticism of Joe Biden for the tactics that he chose or the strategy that he chose for the 2022

midterms, which was to talk about abortion and to talk about democracy and not to talk as much or to emphasize as much inflation and economic matters. And Democrats were going on the TV saying, we're going to suffer a huge loss here. And frankly, it's Joe Biden's fault. Well, Joe Biden turned out to be right. The polls turned out to be wrong. And I think he earned himself a lot of credibility in devising the tactics for presidential race in 2024. And he seems to understand quite clearly how important abortion is going to be in this campaign. He's not going to leave that alone. And Donald Trump does not understand, A, how important the issue is, and B, what the issue is. And he never has,

because he's never really thought about it. When you look at Biden at this point and you watch the way he's campaigning, whether it's on that issue or any other issue, and yet he's not doing well or doesn't appear to be doing well in the numbers. What is your sense there? Is there something that's got to happen inside that party and inside that White House to save what could be a loss in the fall? Well, I think that the issue of the election, the ballot question of the election has to be more clearly defined than it is now. And I'm not surprised that it isn't now. I think it will take some months yet. Typically when a president is running for reelection, the ballot question is broadly, should we fire the president? Generally speaking, Americans have traditionally thought that a president is entitled to two

terms and unless they screw up really badly, you don't fire them. But again, we get back to this question of what is it like when you have two, effectively two incumbents running against each other? Then the struggle becomes whether it's referendum on the president or whether it's a referendum on the last president. And it seems to me that Donald Trump is incapable of helping himself out of that. It's as though his desire to be the center of attention is so all-consuming that if nobody else will make it a referendum on him, damn it, he will. And I think we're going to see that in the fall. And I think that that's not a good strategy for him. I think it's hard for him to keep the focus, again,

partly because of his, partly because of his obsession with talking about the 2020 election or the justice system and so on. He reminds people of the chaos that characterized the four years that he was president. That's not a winner for him with anybody but his base. And his base is not enough to win the election. We haven't talked about the primaries yet. Do you mind if I throw that in? We had another primary recently where this so-called, or I'm calling him an incumbent, and I think that's fair, who should be getting over 90% in the primaries is getting 80% or sometimes a little less than 80% in the most recent primaries. People are still voting for Nikki Haley, for God's sakes. And she hasn't been on the ballot for a couple of months.

That's a problem. And they don't seem to be doing anything to address that problem now. And Trump, you know, it's really hard to see, to, to imagine, uh, from his behavior, how he takes any of this seriously. That leads me to thinking about RFK Jr. Right. RFK Jr., who Senator Bobby Kennedy's son and namesake, running for president represents a real threat, but nobody knows what that threat is as a spoiler on the campaign, right?

Does he take more votes from Biden or does he take more votes from Trump? There has been some polling that shows that he takes more votes from Trump lately. But what's most interesting is that Trump seems to believe that too. And I guess I bring this up now because here is him adjusting to a political reality with a message. And I started out by, I think, arguing that that was rare and now obviously argue the opposite. Because he's been taking on RFK Jr. really seriously,

which suggests that he thinks the threat is real. He's taken it on so seriously that he has even said that Bobby Kennedy Jr. would be a worse choice than Joe Biden. Really? I mean, yes, that is true. But to hear it coming from Trump's mouth makes you take seriously the fact that, or the possibility that Kennedy really does hurt Trump more than Biden. Boy, I can wander all over the place.

Yeah, no, no, no. I mean, I'm still, you know, I'm equally fascinated by the RFK Jr. stuff, although I want to wait and see actually how many state ballots he's actually on. Yeah. Because at the end of the day, that's going to make a big difference. I mean, he may be getting 10% of the vote right now in these various research analysis of the vote across the nation, but that actually could mean nothing if he's not on ballots.

So we'll wait and see. See how that, but I agree with you. Trump seems to be panicking around that issue. He's really gone after him a couple of times, which is a far cry from where it was a couple of months ago when he was toying with maybe he'd make a good vice presidential candidate for me, he was saying. He's left that for sure now.

There's two other areas I want to cover. One is the so-called down-ballot races. I mean, there's a lot more happens in November than just electing a president, as you well know. There's also filling out the roster in the Senate and the House of Representatives and the governor's races. Now, when I look at some of those, the early looks in those, the Democrats seem to be doing quite well as opposed to how they're doing in the presidential race.

Yeah. Why is that? What's happening there? Well, I'm not sure I know why in any other sense but that it underlines that the problem is by um you know when when he's running behind senate candidates um particularly when yeah i don't think this looks like it never looks like a great map for Democrats in the Senate. But I don't know how you can reach any other conclusion, really, than that the problem is not Democrats. The problem is not, you know, wild candidates like the Republicans have in some races, typically.

The problem is quite clearly Biden himself. And the Biden problem still seems to me to be the one that has existed now for years, which is his age. And it's unfixable. In a real sense, it's unfixable. I think there, you know, allow me to wander off on this. I think there was some hope nurtured by the State of the Union address in March that, yes, his age was a problem, but it wasn't going to hope they have because they can't change his age. And I'm pretty convinced that that is the problem. I mean, you can look at recent events and dissatisfaction with this handling of what's going on in the Middle East or the fact... I mean, there are a lot of voters who would compare Trump to Biden and say, well, when Trump was president, we weren't involved in any wars and now Biden's president and we have wars. I mean, they're not really involved. But, you know, the perception is that we have to worry about all of these global conflicts now in a way

that we didn't have to when Trump was president. Now, I mean, I think that's a very arguable point. But I think if people believe it, they're more likely to locate the source of the problem in the White House than they are in Congress. But I'm not, I wouldn't be confident in saying that that's what the problem is. I just think we've been living with this problem of Biden's age for so long now that we shouldn't be surprised to see that, A, that it has an effect on his numbers, that you don't see in the down-ballot races. And there is no B. You know, you mentioned the Middle East and the impact it's had on, you know, well, more on sort of the state of the country

and the feelings within the country and the feelings within the country and the demonstrations that have taken place, actually seemingly more than it has on the campaign at this point. However, if this continues, could this election swing on foreign policy? Rare that that happens in the U.S., but could it this time? Because of what you said earlier, where the presidency is not one coast to coast, it's one in the states and in the individual states.

And because one of the most important individual states is Michigan, and because in Michigan there is a Muslim vote that's important to the Democrats' success there, that they are seriously endangering, then I think the answer to that question has to be yes, because you do have to go with a fine-tooth comb through that kind of data to see where the vulnerabilities are. But I think that threat, yeah, I think that threat could be real. Michigan is going to be a big player in that issue. It's going to have an impact in Michigan in a way that it doesn't elsewhere. The assumption has always been, well, you know, this isn't going to last forever. We've seen

these situations in, you know, between Israel and Gaza, Israel and the West Bank, Israel and Hezbollah in Lebanon, there's kind of a time limit on how long these things last. This has already gone well beyond that expected time. But the assumption has been that at some point it's going to end. There's going to be a ceasefire and it's going to end. It doesn't look like it now, but that's possible. The question becomes, if that happens, does it resolve the situation as an issue in the U.S.

that impacts the election, or is there a hangover from something like this? Probably the answer is both, that there is a hangover among some, but the fact that it would, I assume that it would automatically and perhaps necessarily become less of a front page story or a headline story and it would become more obscure in the media and therefore less salient as a political issue. But again, the people who will remember it may be the people who matter most. So that it continues as a kind of, I don't know if the right term is sleeper issue, but I'll use that one. You know, an issue that doesn't seem to be very close to the surface when you're looking at it, but deep

down, it's not only there among an important segment of the voting public, but it, it remains decisive. You know, right. Yeah. You and I've covered a few US elections in our time to know the phrase, well, this doesn't really start until Labor Day. Right. Is that true this year as much? It's funny.

There's so much different about this one because, as you said, we've known basically for months who the two candidates were going to be. There's this whole trial issue going on. There's two incumbents. There's all of this. But does it really not start until Labor Day? I don't think it starts until Labor Day. I think that things that interest us and we think should interest other people simply don't.

I look at, for instance, to get a sense of how important the criminal trials are, I think it's interesting to look at how people gauge the seriousness of them. And a majority of Americans think they're serious, somewhere above 55% and below 60% think they're serious. But they think they're all pretty much the same seriousness too. And anybody who's following this closely knows they aren't. The one that we're going through now may be a serious case, but by comparison to the documents case or the January 6th case or the Georgia case, it's not. It's the least important.

But voters apparently tend to view them as being equally important, which I think is an indication that they're not paying attention to that. And if they're not paying attention to that, it's a fairly sensational trial. That's getting attention in the media every single day. And the narrative is salacious. And if they're not paying attention to that, it's because they've got things on their mind that have nothing to do with politics at all.

That's my belief, right? I don't know if that's true, but that's my belief and that's the evidence I have to support it. So I still do believe that things will change come Labor Day when people focus on the election. That's when the ballot question will be defined. Is this a referendum on Biden or is this a referendum on Trump? And I think that's the battle that we're going to see in September, October, November. All right. Well, we will talk to you a number of times before then,

so we'll see how it all goes. Keith, it's great. Fabulous conversation. It got us thinking again, which is the power of your ability to talk about the story. So good for you. Just ramble on. Yeah, that's right. We both do enough of that. It's good to talk about the story. So good for you. Just ramble on. Yeah, that's right.

We both do enough of that. It's good to see you. Yeah. Thanks for this. We'll talk again soon. Great. Keith Bogue, his thoughts on where we are in terms of the U.S. election campaign, not just the craziness of the trial, but the overall campaign. So I hope you enjoyed that.

And, uh, and I'm glad we did it. Okay. I've got, uh, I got a, I got an end bit for you here, but, uh, we'll take our last break before we do that. And then we'll be, uh, we'll be right back. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. Right here on Sirius XM, channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform. Time for an end bit. A number of you have written in over the years. It's funny you get to say that now

because it's been three years we've been doing this podcast, which seems amazing, quite frankly, to me, that we've been going on that long. It's been good fun, and I'm glad I've been doing it. And I'm glad you've been enjoying it, at least some of you anyway. Anyway, what I was going to say is over those years, there have been a number of letters by people sometimes saying, you know, when this issue comes up, this man's crazy.

Does he talk too slow? Nobody ever accuses me of talking too fast. But does he talk too slow? Nobody ever accuses me of talking too fast. But does he talk too slow? Well, it's easy if he talks too slow. You can just speed up the dial on whatever download machine you're using, and it'll go a little faster, one and a quarter times normal speed, one and a half times normal speed. Other people write in and said, no, no, no, no, no.

Don't change this perfect. We like the speed in which you talk. And one of the side benefits is if we have trouble falling asleep at night, we turn you on and your voice sends us to sleep. Thank you for that. Now, I raised that because I found a great little story on the Daily Mail online. There it is. Do you go on YouTube a lot? There's all kinds of stuff on YouTube, right? Including this. A YouTube video dubbed the most boring

video of all time has racked up more than 3 million views from a legion of fans hailing it as the ultimate sleep aid. Randy Smith is a retiree from Ormond Beach. He was working for a Florida marketing international company

when he recorded the two-hour tutorial about an early version of Microsoft Word. He did this in 1989. So what's that? 35 years ago. The softly spoken salesman, boy, a little alliteration there. The softly spoken salesman was alerted to the unexpected afterlife

of his video explainer to the obsolete technology late last year when he received a text from a stranger thanking him for putting her to sleep. But he remains modest about the success of his most popular work and its impact on the sleeping habits of his audience. Why somebody who has no interest in Microsoft Word would be watching it, especially such an old version, I have no idea, he told the Wall Street Journal. So what do you make of that? There's more to the story, but I think you get the message. Randall Smith. He's a star at YouTube.

It's almost two hours long. It's almost to the point where two hours on how a Microsoft Word system works. I don't care how exciting you are. You're probably going to fall asleep in that one. But it's hilarious because when you see the video, you'll see the size of the computer he's using. It's like this giant computer at his desk compared with, you know, what we use now, what we use these days,

what we can get out of our phones for crying out loud. Anyway, now you know. You having trouble sleeping? And even I can't get you to sleep? Look up Randall Smith. Most boring video ever. It's right there on YouTube.

And you too can find a new way to fall asleep. Okay, tomorrow is our encore edition of the program. So it'll be one of the best episodes. And Thursday, it's your turn. And your turn, once again, you've got till 6.30 Eastern time tomorrow to get your answer to the question, which is, what's on your mind this week. What is it you're thinking about? What's the issue that's on your mind? Include your name,

the location you're writing from, and a brief description of what that issue is. Get it in before six o'clock Eastern time tomorrow night. The Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening today. Hope you enjoyed it. Talk to you again in our Encore Edition in 24 hours.