The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Et Tu, Mitch? Smoke, Mirrors And The Truth.

Episode Date: January 13, 2021

Bruce is back with Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth, the podcast within a podcast, and the question, Is This The Dagger?

Oh, I love that music. That theme music is Wednesday's music, of course. Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. The worldwide studios of the Bridge Daily. From Stratford, Ontario and from Ottawa, where Bruce Anderson joins us, as he always does on Wednesdays. Peter, it's good to be here. It is good for you to be here, and it's good for us to have a good chat, because there's lots to talk about today. I'm going to start off by kind of setting the scene.

Here's the scene setter that I want you to consider. The name Kevin Harlan may be of interest to some people. They may know who that is. They should know who it is, especially if they follow basketball. Kevin Harlan is one of the play-by-play people in the States who has built up a great reputation and one of the big calls he made is one of the kind of top calls ever in basketball. And when did that happen? Well, it happened on May the 12th, 2019. And it happened in Toronto.

And I'm sure you know where I'm getting towards. It was a game between the Toronto Raptors and the Philadelphia 76ers. And the game was tied 90-90 with less than a second to go. All right? Everything was on the line here. It was a game seven. Whoever won this game would go on to the next round of the playoffs. So it was a huge deal.

And so with less than a second to go, we heard Kevin Harlan make the call. And this is what it sounded like. Okay, if you heard that, what you heard was Kevin Harlan saying, is this the dagger? And what he was talking about was a shot by Kawhi Leonard with less than a second to go from the deep corner on the baseline. Ball arched up high towards the net. Remember, everything on the line.

There'd never been a buzzer beater winner in a playoff game in the history of the NBA. This ball's heading for the net. Kawhi Leonard has crouched down on the ground watching it. You could hear almost a pin drop in the crowd because everybody was hoping it would go in, but it hits the rim. But instead of deflecting off, because everybody was hoping it would go in, but it hits the rim.

But instead of deflecting off, it hits the rim, bounces across on the other rim, bounces again, bounces a fourth time, and then drops in. The place goes crazy. Raptors win. So why am I telling you this story today? I was just about to ask. It's that quote.

Is this the dagger? All right. Is this the moment where the game's going to be decided? Well, you could ask the same thing today as a result of two things that happened yesterday, both of them potential daggers. Liz Cheney from the Republican Party in the House of Representatives saying she was going to vote for the impeachment of Donald Trump. And if that wasn't enough, the next dagger, an even bigger dagger, comes from Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader for the Republicans, who basically makes it clear through a series of leaks from his office that he would be happy to see the impeachment of Donald Trump. Those are two big signals to the Republican Party that their leaders, who have propped this guy up for four years are ready to abandon him

they're getting on the train they're heading out of town they've got the dagger so what more needs to be said after that wonderful analogy, right? You've got to admit, that's a good analogy. Is this the dagger? Maybe. Okay, where you go? Well, I don't know that I think it's the dagger because I don't know where republicanism in the United States is going. I think when we last talked, Peter, we talked about the fact that there was now three parties effectively in the U.S.

There was the Democrats, the Republicans, and the Trump Party. other time that the Republican leaders are abandoning Trump and intending to lead the party away. I'm not sure they're the leaders anymore. I'm not sure that there's a party that will follow them that's anywhere near the same size as the party that will follow Trump. And I think what they've come to realize is that the McConnells and the Cheneys of the world is that the biggest threat that they face isn't the Democrats. It's the anarchists. It's the people who support Trump regardless of the information that they don't have, the perceptions that they've developed that don't make any sense in the real world. And Trump has proven to them that he can turn the anarchists on them. He can send them hunting down Mike Pence and others who challenge the anarchist belief that they're right and everybody else is wrong. Almost doesn't matter

what the subject is. It's that sense of, I'm not going to trust the establishment that Trump first found when he ran for the nomination way back when, that he cultivated by saying, you can't trust the media, you can't trust anybody but me, and that he's turned into a system and a market for rage that exists in social media and on the dark parts of the Internet. And it is really kind of probably doesn't care at all what Mitch McConnell and Liz Cheney have to say. waking up in the morning and diving into the news coming out of the United States and being a little bit kind of cheered by the fact that there are, by some accounts, as many as 10 Republican senators who might vote to impeach. There's a number in the House of Representatives that several of Trump's cabinet secretaries have resigned and thinking, OK, that's good. But what are they really doing? Are they really

affecting the future of Trump? Are they affecting the future of the Republican Party? I don't think we're going to know the answer to that. I did see a poll this morning that asked Republican and leaning Republican voters who would be their favorite candidate for the nomination four years from now. And Donald Trump was the pick of 40%. His son was the pick of 6%. So I don't know what the Republican Party is. I do think that there's a big chunk of it, of the people who voted Republican who don't care

what the so-called leadership have to say. They just want to kind of express their anger and their enthusiasm for Trump. And really it's about whether anarchy and the idea of anarchism is going to continue to take root. I think Trump will have trouble sustaining it, but I also think that the Republican leadership will have trouble sustaining it.

I think that's the crossroads they're at. And the last thing I'll say is that in my experience, nothing matters more in American politics than money. And that sounds like a harsh thing to say, and it's deliberately a harsh thing to say. When you see this many corporations saying, we will not put our money into the hands of politicians who support Trump, what they're really doing is saying we can't look like we're helping fund anarchy. We are not prepared to do that. So there's a lot of it that's about Trump. fundamentally, these businesses that support political parties are trying to affect an outcome, but within a range of outcomes that are acceptable to them or are acceptable in terms of a democracy that kind of needs to have the rule of law, needs to have some predictability in order

for businesses to succeed. And so now, if you are one of these businesses and you're giving money to Republican candidates and you're not sure if they're going to support the anarchists, you've both got a public reputation problem to be concerned about, and you've got to wonder whether you're helping feed a system that is going to become more and more out of control. So I think it's a really good question, is this the dagger? But I don't know who the dagger's aimed at. As usual, an extremely thoughtful, multivaried answer with lots of possibilities in it. And I don't disagree with anyone, any of them. I think your point, your last point about money is like extremely important. And it may well be the most damaging thing to Trump and Trump supporters.

If those corporations, because it is all about money, and not just on the Republican side, but on the Democratic side, and if they start pulling back their money, that's going to change the landscape a lot. I saw that poll this morning. I didn't make a lot of it because it's your classic, you know, poll right after an election. There is, you know, there is no competition to Trump at the moment.

There's nobody standing there. Like there's no other candidate as such. And that, you know, and so it doesn't surprise me that people who just voted for him, some of them anyway, are prepared to vote for him again. Well, except if I can, except for the fact that he did incite that riot. Yeah, he did. And, you know, some Republicans don't believe that still today and don't sit on that side of the argument. So anyway, all I'm saying is it didn't surprise me to see that number when there is no clear opposing leading candidate. There may never be.

And that number may hold up for four years. I still doubt it. I still think the sky is going to, there is going to be a certain degree of disappearance on the part of this guy over the next four years and probably over the next four months. But we'll see. I've been wrong on most of these things in the last year. And you've been certainly right on more than I've been right. Having said all that, I still think in the short term, the dagger is an important analogy because in the short term,

the short term is like today, for starters, with an impeachment vote, and he's going to lose that. He's going to lose that anyway, whether any Republicans vote against him or not. But some Republicans are going to vote against him. And when you consider it was less than a year ago, the last impeachment trial, and none voted against him, this is significant, especially when you see the quality of the people who were voting against him. Will that number go up in the House of Representatives?

Who knows? I don't know. But it's significant enough that Liz Cheney and four or five others have already announced that they will vote against him, and the number is expected to go up a bit. But there will still be hundreds who will vote for him on the Republican side.

Then the Senate has to make a decision, and that's where McConnell comes in. Because impeachment happens, it's done. It'll be done today. He will be impeached. He'll be only the first president in the history of the United States to have been impeached twice.

And in the same term. Like, it is pretty amazing. But once the impeachment is done, they send the articles of impeachment to the Senate. And the Senate has to decide whether or not to have a trial to convict him. And if he's convicted, he loses everything. He loses the opportunity of ever running again. He loses a whole slew of benefits.

I think he loses his salary, his pension, secret service, protection, the whole bit. But that hasn't been decided yet. And Mitch McConnell did not say, well, have a trial in the Senate and I'm going to vote to convict him. What he said apparently was, I'm in favor of impeachment. That'd be a good thing. It should happen.

Well, that's not the same as saying I'd convict him in the Senate. But if you believe what seems to be roaming around in the U.S. Capitol, that upwards of 10 U.S. senators, Republican senators, are willing to vote to convict, that would be pretty significant. So in terms of the dagger, what I was really getting at was the dagger this week. But I totally accept your argument that it's the anarchist element of Trump supporters. Yeah, I think that the dagger is, you know, I hear where you're coming from with that. And I actually think the dagger is aimed at Mitch McConnell.

Not in terms of all of these people by name, but his job has been to sustain the Republican Party through Trump. He's been an apologist more often than people wanted him to be. He thought it was going to be a thing where the party was going to be able to emerge from the dust after he left. And I think now he's looking at a situation saying, I might lose this fight. There might not be a Republican Party that can be led by people who believe in the things that I believe in. When you see those video clips of Mitt Romney, who to my eyes is arguably the only honorable Republican in the Senate in the last period of time for the things that he said, as bluntly as he said them, and he gets on a plane and he feels threatened, I'm sure.

People yelling, traitor, traitor, traitor, all the way through his flight back to Salt Lake City. And so I think McConnell is feeling that pressure from his Republican Senate colleagues who are saying, what are we going to do? Vote against a conviction when our turn comes to cast a vote somehow on whether he should be impeached. Are the anarchists going to support us? Or is that going to be durable? What are we going to say next? And I take your point on that poll that there isn't another name, except there were a few other names on that list,

including Nikki Haley and Mike Pence. And I kind of looked at those names. I don't like any of them, but I would have picked any of them before Donald Trump. And you would have too, I believe, because there is no scenario where you would say- I would have picked one name on that list that finished last, and that was Mitt Romney. I wouldn't have ever picked any of the enablers. They're just phonies and frauds, every one of them. If you had a ballot in front of you and Donald Trump was on it, is there any scenario where you would have put your ex beside that, is my question. No, I would have put it beside Romney, who was on that list too.

Right, you would have put it beside Romney. So would I. So I kind of feel like we're looking at it from a distance and sort of saying, well, you know, maybe over time another name will come forward. But I think McConnell's looking at it and going, I don't know who these people are, if they think that supporting Donald Trump again would ever make any sense. And so his language that he's allowing journalists to know about, just like the New York Times story this morning about the conversation between Pence and Trump, that story doesn't get written unless Mike Pence wants that story to be written, was my take.

So you've got these Republicans who are trying to put out more kind of foul and malodorous stories about Trump. And I think that's a good thing. But I don't think they're trying to hurt Trump. I think they're trying to save their souls and save their party. And I hope there are more of them. is the murmurings and sometimes more than murmurings about whether the police are infiltrated, whether the military are infiltrated by people who are supportive of the insurgents or the anarchists or who are kind of helping on the sidelines or otherwise. I think I read something where the military was saying that it was going to screen all of the National Guard people who were going to be sent to the Capitol to make sure that none of them were sympathetic to the kind of attitudes that animated that riot last week. And we've had similar conversations in Canada about whether or not there's a problem where hate and white supremacy has found its way into nooks and crannies of our military, our

police systems. And I think that that's a bigger problem in the United States. I don't know that it's not a problem here, but I don't think we've ever really had a situation where we've had to wonder as much about whether or not there are parts of the U.S. military that are, and the police, especially when you think about all of the things that Trump said over the four years about my generals, about the military, about police not being defunded, and maybe it being a better idea of police rough people up a little bit when they're making those arrests. Remember that video where he's kind of standing on the stage and he's saying, you know how you put your hand on their heads when you put them in the back of the car? Well, maybe don't do that. Maybe let them feel a little pain.

He's been cultivating that. And I kind of feel like we're in a world where we don't really know whether or not that's had an effect until after the fact. And then we get to sort of investigate it. Well, here's how I see that. I think we've had more than conversations about this. There have been incidents in Canada, and we've seen it. Far right within whether it's the military or police,

and examples of them using that belief in some of their actions. And we sort of move on, hoping that it was a small percentage and that it has been dealt with. Because after all, you can probably go to any profession and find some small element of those who believe in things that the majority don't believe in, in terms of this kind of stuff. But the concern in the States is obviously very real after last week.

There were examples. There have been, I think, arrests. There are certainly certain officers in both the police forces and the military have been taken aside to be talked to. And as you point out on terms of the national guard. So that is obviously something that has to be examined, you know, very closely.

Here's the, here's the other thing that may well have disturbed me more than anything else I've heard in the last 24 hours. I mean, we've all been rocked by the videos that we've seen come out since last Wednesday. But I heard yesterday a couple of journalists who I respect reporting that they had talked to Republican members of the U.S. Congress,

whether in the House of Representatives or in the Senate, who said privately they believe that Trump should be impeached and convicted. Impeached in the House, convicted in the Senate. They believe that. But they're not going to vote that way. And they're not going to vote that way because they're scared. They're fearful for their own lives and the lives of their families. Now, when I heard that, oh, my God.

You know, this is a ticket to a very, very bad place. If that kind of stuff is true and their vote has been swayed, they have been convinced that last week, if it did anything to them, it ensured that they would never vote against Trump. Not because they believed in him, but because they were afraid to. Yeah. Yeah, I think I heard that they were being offered bulletproof vests or something like that as we approach the inauguration and that sort of thing.

And you hear those stories, and I presume that most of what I'm consuming is accurate, but it might not be in some instances because people are kind of shocked at the rumors. And so the rumors get trafficked quite a bit. But there was a news item this morning that said that, I guess, the Capitol security had installed new metal detectors and that some of the Republicans were refusing to go through the metal detectors because of some kind of principle about their rights and maybe they were carrying weapons. But the metal detectors were installed to prevent people from going into that building or that room in the building who might be carrying weapons. And the notion that it could be a partisan choice where you could have those Republicans saying,

we're not going to go through the metal detectors, it's an infringement on our rights. It's a reminder for me that violence and guns is such a different part of the American political culture compared to Canada. We have what is effectively a mini skirmish here about gun registries. I know that some people feel very strongly about the gun registry in Canada. But the bulk of opinion has been pretty stable about guns and the need to control them and limit access to them over the long term. Occasionally, we'll get some politics around it, but nothing like the Second Amendment conversation that happens in the United States. Nothing like that woman congressman from, I think it's called Rifle Colorado, who pushed out this ad last week showing that she's going to Washington with her Glock

and making a huge point about this is how you're supposed to be able to live as an American with that weapon with you all the time wherever you need it to defend your rights. And the amount of violence that we see, the amount of gun violence that we see, the inability of their congressional system or their political system to really kind of tamp that down, to deal with it over time, has been probably one of the biggest headaches for the last several presidents. When we think about those mass shootings that have happened and the dismay that everybody feels when we look on those, and yet really not much progress on it,

it is hard to look at that aspect of American society and the inability of their politics to solve it and to protect people from gun violence and not to again think that their system is broken and that we all need to be pulling for a Republican Party that gets some control over that aspect of the debate. Because when they play to that crowd, that crowd that says we should be able to go to the Capitol with our guns, we saw how that can go. And with all of the threats of 50 more demonstrations next week, there's a lot to be worried about.

There is. And we will be watching it carefully from the safety of our side of the border and hoping that whatever spills over, if anything, is positive and not negative. I mean, there were some positive things to see over these last few days about how certain people acted and reacted, but the overwhelming image is god-awful. Okay, I want to switch topics to capture a bit of the discussion that's happening on this side of the border, not on that subject, but on COVID. We've watched as the numbers have spiraled seemingly

out of control in terms of new cases and, sadly sadly deaths. At the same time, the vaccine is rolling out and there are concerns about how fast it's rolling out and how fair it is and et cetera, et cetera. But things are happening. Now, I know you with Abacus Data, your research firm, you and David Coletto have come out with new data this week or today that shows some at a time where the numbers we're looking at in cases and deaths, et cetera, and new restrictions and lockdowns are really difficult to look at.

You've come up with some data that's actually a little more positive in terms of the way to take it. So give us something to feel a little better about. Yeah, one of the things that I was concerned about in November was the prospect that we would be in a situation where this pandemic, having dragged on, have taken lives, have really harmed our economy, and that a vaccine or more vaccines would become available and there would be too many people who wouldn't want to take them. And so that the length, the duration, and the severity of the pandemic would be even worse because of that than it had already been. So we measured back then how many people were hesitant or were anxious to get the vaccine.

And we measured it again this week. And so we will put out numbers in the next couple of days from our and they'll be up on our website. But in the good news category, the number of people who say, I want to take it right away, as soon as it's available to me, that number has climbed to 47%. It's up 18 points since we measured it in November. And that is partly, I think, because people are saying, it's real, it's around. I know that there are people taking it. I'm not hearing stories about side effects. So I think it's safe. It's the presumption that it's safe along with the sense of fatigue with the pandemic. So whatever it will take for us to kind of put this behind us and to save lives, that's what I want to do. The number of people who say, I will never take it,

is down to 7%. It's down four points since we last measured it. So that 7%, they probably are never going to take it. But that might be a small enough number that it won't really matter in terms of the community immunity that vaccines are supposed to try to get to. So there's still a fair number of people who are kind of in the middle, who are saying, I want to take it, but I want to wait a little bit longer. And others who are saying, I'm probably not that inclined to take it, but I could be persuaded. There's still a bulk of people there, but the trend line is moving towards more acceptance. And I think that's encouraging from the standpoint of when those doses are available, will we have people ready to roll up their sleeves? What about in terms of the data you looked at still on this subject,

whether there was anything that you found disturbing or interesting? Yeah, what's disconcerting about it is, you know, fortunately I think for us as a country, we have most people describe themselves as center, center left, fortunately, I think for us as a country, we have most people describe themselves as center, center left, center right. We don't have that many people who say I'm left or I'm right, but we have cells of those people. People who describe themselves as on the right, two-thirds of them aren't convinced that the vaccine is safe. That number is more like 8% among people on the left. So there is a polarization effect around politics. It's probably a bit of a spillover from some of the debate in

the United States, but there has been a similar debate that's happened here in Canada. So if I look for challenging areas, and I was looking at the numbers in terms of the infection rates across the country and noticing this morning that the highest infection rates are in Saskatchewan and Alberta right now. people there are and how difficult it is to deal with this pandemic, maybe because people don't want to take the measures that they are willing to take in other parts of the country. And certainly we see it to some degree in evidence on vaccine resistance. And so that isn't really to give Premiers Kenney and Mo a pass. It is to remind them that their responsibility as conservative leaders, and I would say the same thing for Aaron O'Toole, is they've got to talk to their followers. They've got to talk to people who support their parties. They shouldn't do anything that sort of leaves them kind of silent on this question, bearing in mind that people who don't believe that the vaccine is safe,

they don't have any evidence that they're using to come to that opinion. It's not like they've read the studies and they've decided that, on balance, the evidence is persuasive that these aren't safe. It's the people they trust are the people who politically they tend to support. So I think the signal in the data is generally going in the right direction, but clearly there's some room to do some work with young people, and there's some room to do some work with conservatives who need to hear from conservatives in some instances

that this is the right thing to do when it's time for you to get the vaccine, to roll up your sleeve and take the jab. I don't want to preempt your results. I know you're still crunching numbers on a number of areas, but are you asking questions about the rollout and in terms of whether it's moving along fast enough and those kind of questions? Yeah, we are actually.

And you know what? I'm really struck by a couple of things here, Peter. One is that people are noticing that it could be faster and they're hopeful that it will be faster. But in most cases, that isn't turning into frustration or anger with governments. It is a little bit in Alberta. There's no question that there is a lot of unhappiness in Alberta with the provincial government there. And what I'm seeing in the data, at least my interpretation of it is this, that if people believe that the responsible individuals in government at the federal level

or at their provincial government are trying to do the right thing, even if it isn't going perfectly every day, they're basically supporting them. Ford's numbers remain pretty strong, even though there are frustrations. We see them in the media all the time. We see them today about this, the amount of detail that seems missing from the lockdown announcement. But most Ontario voters are still saying, I think Ford is trying to do the right thing. I don't think he's getting it right every day, but I think he's trying to do the right thing. They say the same thing about Trudeau and the federal politicians. And it seems only where they think that there's a premier in the case of Kenny,

where they think, well, maybe he's not really trying to do the right thing. Maybe he's got a political agenda because he always seems to have a political agenda. And it's when you sort of fall on that side of the public perception that you're more likely to be paying a price in terms of people saying, I'm mad as hell. I'm not happy with the way this is going because I don't think they're trying hard enough to do the right thing. So I do feel like in the media commentary and punditocracy, of which I suppose I'm part, maybe you are too, there's a lot of kind of frustration that we see on social media about where are the doses? Why is the rollout so slow? The public opinion continues to be fairly patient, fairly patient. Now, you know, with another big lockdown coming here in Ontario, we'll see how that patience holds.

Lockdown in the middle of the dead of winter and the second one is going to feel bad. And it's going to be a challenge for politicians to talk with people in ways that don't make that relationship come into more friction. But it's still the case that most people are trying to do the right thing and most people think their politicians are trying to do the right thing. Okay, we're going to leave it there. Thanks for that insight into all that. As you say, it'll be coming up on the website in the next couple of days? In the next couple of days, yeah. And that's abacusdata.ca?

That's it. You got it. All right, Bruce is in Ottawa. Just before we leave, a couple of quick notes. One, what are these quick notes that I wanted to say? Well, I wanted to say that tomorrow I haven't decided what we're going to talk about, but I'll think of something. Friday there will be the normal weekend special.

So get your thoughts or questions or comments in. No particular subject this week. You can go for whatever you want. It's been great in the last few weeks because we've heard from lots of new people. And so there's lots of stuff on the board for this week from the hockey show last night with Biz Nasty, which I see did terrific numbers, which is great to see. But obviously the Washington story, the COVID Canada story, there's lots of things you could be talking about.

So don't be shy. Send it to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com, themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. And the other thing is a quick correction. I don't know what planet I was on the other day, but in telling a story about flags being lowered, I mentioned the controversy surrounding the Queen taking her time to lower a flag on Buckingham Palace at the time that Diana died back in the late 90s.

And I said, for some reason, which is odd because I was there covering the story from the car crash and the inquest in, uh, Paris to the funeral in London. And, uh, it was a very, um, you know, big week or 10 days of, uh, of stories that I worked on over there. Um, but for some unknown reason, the other day I said she died in a car crash. Sorry, a plane crash, not a car crash. So I had one of those lapses for some unknown reason. And so I correct that and I thank those who pointed that out.

All right, that's it for this day on the Bridge Daily. I'm Peter Mansbridge with Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. Thanks so much for listening, and we will talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.