The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Good Talk -- Stick A Fork in Him, He's Done - Or Is He?

Episode Date: April 10, 2026

This has to be the worst of times for Donald Trump - nothing is going right, and the US President looks increasingly unhinged on a daily basis. Even some of his base are abandoning him. With Chantal away, former Washington correspondent Keith Boag joins Bruce for some serious Trump talk. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Are you ready for good talk? And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here, along with Bruce Anderson and Keith Bog. Keith is with us today because he's sitting in for Chantel, who's off on holidays this week. She'll be back with us next week. Keith is here, as regular listeners to the bridge will know, because for the last couple of years, he's been giving us the assessment of the president of the United States, the current president, Donald Trump. Keith covered Trump in the 2016.

election campaign, traveled the country, tried to understand what was going on with the whole Trump thing, and he still monitors that very closely. His former chief political correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa, former Washington Bureau Chief in Washington for the CBC. Now, enjoying his retirement days, as is your host for the bridge. Bruce is still working, and he's working today in Vancouver. Okay, we're going to talk about Trump, but I want to start by talking about the liberals. They're in convention this weekend in Montreal, celebrating their march, slow, methodical march towards a majority. With their latest pickup this week, another conservative, but this is not just any conservative. This is a well-known social conservative, and it raises the question,

just how wide can the liberal tent get? Is this a tent too far? with this latest crossing, floor crossing. So Bruce, we're going to let you start this off. And I'm anxious to hear what you're going to have to say about this latest addition to the Liberal Caucus. Are you? Well, I'm anxious to hear what Keith has to say,

but I will give you my opinion. It's great to see you, Keith, and I really look forward to hearing your thoughts about Canadian politics and U.S. politics. But Pete, look I don't know Marilyn Gladwell I don't think I've ever met her so I know her from her comments and some of the things that she said in the past that you know those are not views that I agree with at all so what does it what does it mean that she's decided to join the liberal

the liberal government I guess it means that like in our polls anyway 50% or more of people who voted conservative last year have a good feeling about the direction that Mark Carney is providing for the country. So on some level, it's not that surprising that there continue to be people in the conservative caucus who say, I don't feel good about where I'm at. I support the general direction of the government, and I think I want to be part of it. I suppose if I thought for a minute that with her joining the liberal caucus, that they would all eventually become anti-vaxxers. I would be concerned about that, but I don't think that there's a chance in hell that that would happen. I think that the questions that were raised about what would her position be

on human rights, on a women's right to choose, those were properly raised, and I thought dealt with pretty crisply both by the prime minister and others yesterday, which is to say that he made it clear that there was no understanding on his part that his caucus and government were going to have to somehow get closer to some of those views that she's expressed, that it was going to be the other way, that she was going to vote with the government at every opportunity where there was going to be some some sort of a vote that touched on those issues. So, you know, it does make, it does make some people uncomfortable, this, this whole idea of how big a tent is, is too big. But for me, and I go back even farther in covering politics or watching politics than

either you do in the Liberal Party anyway. And it's always been a big tent. It's always been in a tent that accommodated a pretty broad range of use. And my last point, I guess, would be the conservative party used to be a bigger tent, a party, and it became a smaller tent party. And it is suffering a little bit from that right now. This notion of a purity test is something that people say Pierre Paulyev applies to the conservative side of the aisle. And I think it's part of the reason.

It's not just that people like the direction of the Kearney government, but it is part of the reason why some conservatives, and there are plenty of rumors that there will be more, are saying that it's not a comfortable place in the conservative caucus. And I think there's an important lesson there. This isn't just a question of that Pierre Pauliev lose another person. Is he providing the kind of leadership that a party that wants to compete on the center of the spectrum? from should. All right. You know, nobody's ever being able to accuse Bruce of not being able to skate. And I thought he just saw, you know, a real Olympic performance there on the wreck. Thank you very much. Yes, it was very good. We'll give you a nine point something on that. I thought it was. The night for coal coffee last night. Yes, it was. But he managed to take that question and turn it into it,

you know, a critique on what's happening inside the conservative party. But I saw Keith was nodding at that point and I felt okay. I thought it was nodding off. Excuse me. No, I was nodding at every point because I agree with every point. I mean, your question at the beginning was, does it raise the question of how big liberal tent is? I would say, no, it answers the question.

We now know, right? It's as big as it needs to be. You know, there's been a lot of talk that I followed. the media over the last 24 hours about floor crossing in general. And you know how old that argument is? I mean, both sides of it. And I think all of us here can can really competently and impressively argue both sides of it, depending on the circumstances.

The circumstances here to me are a little bit difficult to understand because I have never been one who thought that the minority parliament that supporting this government was as precarious as others do. But that being said, you know, it's happened. So now there's a discussion about whether some of her views on social issues are too conservative for mainstream liberals. But I think those views are already held by members of the Liberal Party within that caucus because they always have it. And the question usually reduces to me to whether any individual, whether it's an MP or whether it's the leader of the party, can understand the difference between their personal views and what's in the public interest.

And we went through this with a couple of leaders of the Canadian Alliance and the Reform Party. And Stockhold Day did not have a particularly good answer to that. And I think people found that disturbing. Preston Manning did have a good answer to that. And I think people found it reassuring. It should be possible. And maybe this is something that goes against the crane of Carney's leadership. I know it certainly when it gets the grain of Joe's leadership.

It should be possible for people to have disagreements within a caucus. That doesn't mean that they're not going to play on the team. They need to understand how to manage their own personal views. And, you know, I don't want to, maybe I shouldn't go into how this mirrors something that happens in journalism. But journalists, journalists, don't please do. Well, good journalists don't go around saying they don't have points of view. They go around figuring out what they need to do to manage their points of view, how that fits into their responsibilities as a journalist, right? And so, you know, I think every MP has to understand whether they're reflecting the will of their constituents, even when they don't agree with it.

Right. So I think one of the good things about, or one of the possibly good things about an event like this is that it gives air to those kinds of things and allows people to discuss them at a higher level than, than maybe, you know, just the finger pointing and look, you're all so reactionary social conservatives over there. And instead have an intelligent conversation about where mainstream Canadians are. Because not all of them are at either poll of any of these sensitive debates. A great number of them are in the middle. And they don't, and they wouldn't feel that they couldn't be a liberal and be like Ms. Gladu at the same time. Okay.

You've raised some really good points. I know Bruce wants to jump in on one of them. Go ahead. Yeah, you know, the point that Keith was making about a lot of Canadians are looking for a reduction or an end to polarization, I think that's absolutely right. And I've seen it really gather some momentum in the last year. I gave a talk to a room of hundreds of people yesterday, and I really was trying to stress for them, the fact that what's really changed in the mood of the public as it relates to government is people want, They want leadership that is serious. They don't. They've stopped having even the slightest interest or patience with performance politics, that idea that the other party has to be

full of people that I could never agree with. The public isn't there. And I think increasingly in politics, we see that. And I think I saw some of that, Peter in your interview with Pierre Pauliev a little while ago, that there is a little bit of a, a share. shift in that culture away from the only competent politician is the one that constantly slags everybody that is on the other side of an issue. I see it in terms of the relationship between the premiers and the prime minister and between the prime minister and the leaders of the other parties. I think it's a good thing. And I think it does enable things like floor crossing, which makes some people frustrated or anxious or worry about, whether it's a functioning democracy.

And I have no problem with people having those concerns that makes sense to me that people would worry about that a little bit. But I tend to see it a little bit more like Keith does, which is there's a dynamic underway here. And if it's less polarization and more competition around the center of the spectrum, that's probably a good thing. You know, I got a letter from a viewer overnight. I was just reading this morning before we did this. So I haven't been able to fact check it. But I have no reason to believe it's not true because I can't. think of a single piece of evidence that would suggest it is untrue.

But the writer was saying there is no history in the Westminster system, whether it's in Canada or the UK or anywhere else in the world that follows that system, where a party that was elected as a minority through floor crossings or what have you becomes a majority. that if this happens here and it appears, like if it hasn't already happened, it's going to happen in the next couple of days, that this would be a first.

Now, I don't know whether that makes it a bad thing or a good thing or what it means at all, but I thought it was interesting that if true, it's kind of a first. I can't point to any other one. I don't see either of you, although Keith's got that sort of smart-ass look on his face right now. I thought it looks like he's going to knock that down.

As you will, no, I can't not have that look. But you also have no reason to disbelieve that in this moment. No, I have no reason to disbelieve that. But the reason I'm like smirking, really? I mean, what it does, it triggers me. That's what it does. And it makes me go back to what I consider a, which is that, you know, the Canadian people didn't vote for a majority liberal government,

or they didn't, like, they voted for a minority. Oh, they didn't. Right. I don't know any Canadians who go to the polls and say, I want my party to win, but only this much, right? I mean, occasionally they feel okay, I can vote for a third party because I have less of investment in the outcome this time. Either I'm fed up with the status quo or if it were only a minority, I'd be okay with that. But surely that was not the case this past election where people gathered around the two main parties, the only parties that have ever governed this country in a way that we have not seen in, well, you know, Bruce can tell me when.

I just can't remember the last time we saw something that dramatic at the outcome with both parties hovering around the 40% mark. So anyway, all of that, like the idea that floor crossing leads to a majority government kind of, I mean, it's not entirely a so what question to me, but it's kind of like that. I don't see a moral principle that's being offended by that. But I do understand that it has an expedience to it that that will be welcomed by the governing party for sure. Okay. Yeah, can I just add one more thing? Yeah, sure. There is an effect of it, obviously, which is that a majority then allows the government to plan out an agenda for the next three years. It allows committees to function the way that they generally function when governments have the ability to put their legislation forward, opposition parties, critique, propose amendments, but ultimately it passes. Now, to Keith's point about.

but what did voters really want when they voted last time, to believe that people would really be recoiling in horror at the notion that a majority would be achieved this way or this way, including the by-elections, you'd have to believe that what they really want is this kind of dynamic where the government is always on the brink of being forced into an election or that committees become places

where legislation goes to slow down. And I don't think that that's what Canadians want. And it doesn't really matter in the sense that it is what it is. The system is going to work the way that it does. But if we're asking ourselves in a way that question of, does this somehow offend the outcomes that people were looking for in the last election? I think the overwhelming evidence is that even if you look at the views of conservative voters and NDP voters and BQ voters, you've got people saying get on with the work and let's not have an election.

And by that, they also, I think, imply that the more stability that there is in the way that government functions over the next three years, the better. Still skating really well. He's still up there on his second go around the rank. He's still in the night. It was very well done. Okay. Let me just conclude it this way. The scene that's described in one of the articles I read this morning about the liberal convention last night,

Was a party that splits the wrong word, but there was a different look to different segments of the party. Some were sitting on their seat when they were talking about the new MP, Gladou, while others were up and cheering. Is that surprising? Does it mark something, is it a guardrail that the prime minister needs to be aware of? What does it mean? Does it mean anything?

Sure. It's just human nature. You've got a bunch of people who will be there going, this is great because it's going to give us a clear path to govern for the next several years. And there will be other people going, well, I have a more fixed ideological spot for this party that I want it to occupy. And so I'm a bit uncomfortable with that. But I think Keith has really eloquently described that is the state of the Liberal Party. It has generally been for all the time that I've known it. Okay. Did you want to just add a quick thought on that, Keith?

Tiny little thought you said, is it something that Prime Minister Carney should pay attention to? Yeah, you should, because you always should pay attention to those people in your caucus who are unhappy and find out why. And whether it's something you should be more concerned about, whether it's something you can do something about, should you do something about it? Yeah. Okay. All right. We're going to take our first break right now and then get back to the main topic. for today. And that is Donald Trump, and we'll do that right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Friday episode, which is Good Talk, of course. Chantel is away this week. Keith Bogue is sitting in for Chantel, and you're going to see, well, you've already seen why.

He's got a great journalistic mind on politics, whether they're in Canada or in the U.S. We've dealt with the Canadian story of this weekend, and we're moving on now to, to the Donald Trump story. Bruce Anderson here, of course, in his regular spot. I'm Peter Mansbridge. You're listening on Sirius XM, Channel 167 Canada Talks,

or on your favorite podcast platform, or you're watching us on our YouTube channel. Glad to have you with us. Okay. Donald Trump, I titled this show, Stick a fork in him, he's done,

Or is he? And I threw in the Or Is He? Because, man, the number of times we've been wrong about Trump over the years. Well, it seems like whenever we've said something in particular about Trump, and I mean the collective we, we end up having to change our minds as a result of the earlier prediction. But he's had an awful week. This has not been a good one for him.

He's had a bad war, and he's managed to alienate most of his allies, certainly his NATO allies. And you wonder where this is all going. At home, he's facing, whether it's the Epstein files or the fordibility question, you name it. The list goes on. Nothing seems to be working in his favor in this moment. So, Keith, you start us off. Should we stick a fork in him? He's done. What does that mean to stick a fork in him? He's not going to run again, we don't think. I think we have to set aside these arguments that he will find a way to run again in 2028. He's not going to run again in 2028. And I don't think he cares as much about the midterms as people are saying that he does for a couple of reasons. One is that he's not going to run in

2028. And those kinds of electoral back and forths among the voting public don't matter as much to him as they used to. But also, the last time he lost a midterm in 2018, he went through hell after that. And as you point out, he survived all of it. The lesson that he takes from this is that he's bulletproof when it comes to the normal mechanisms of the checks and balances that have provided in the Constitution to restrain him.

He just doesn't care. At the same time, I don't think we've seen anything like what the war with Iran is doing to his reputation. But I don't think that it is harming him in the base as much as probably it should. But what it is doing is because some people's target is not 2026 midterms, it's the 2028 presidential. You see people protecting their positions with MAGA on issues that Trump traditionally supported. So you see Tucker Carlson coming out hard against the war, Megan Kelly, Alex Jones. All of these people have the ear of the MAGA base, and they are signaling very, very kind of frantically that Trump has gone off the rails here.

And they mean that in different ways, but simultaneously. They mean that he's gone off the rails in terms of what they thought his core beliefs were. And to some extent, they believe he's gone off the rails in terms of his ability to manage, day-to-day life, right? That he's flipped or flipped out, whatever. I think these are really, really serious problems, and I think it's very difficult to try to predict where they're going to leave him in the end.

But you can tell by the way he's reacting, I mean, you know, for him to accept the proposal made through the Pakistanis from Iran about what it will take to bring this to a close, that was a ridiculous proposal. Every single element of that was a concession to Iran. And yet it was good enough for him to say, like, this is a good starting point. Can we now talk about an exit strategy? That's not something that makes any sense to anybody around him. And he's going to have to figure out a way through that.

Whether that means that he's done, again, I come back to what, I just don't know what being done is like. But I do think he has a lot of bad days ahead for sure. the exit strategy thing is always you know you're supposed to have an exit strategy before you start the war he's trying to find one after he's been unable to win the war and your exit strategy is supposed to be connected quite clearly to what the objectives and goals were sure of which we still don't know what they were okay bruce you're at the line uh Trump has had 99 lives, figuratively speaking, and he might have 99 more. But this is the worst situation that he has found himself in.

I completely agree with both of you, I think, on that. What happens to him and what happens next? I've stopped betting on America coming to grips with the crisis of leadership and governance that they have. I don't necessarily want to bet on it continuing to break down, but that would have been the better bet at every opportunity over the last number of years. And by that, I include the fact that I'm not as sanguine as Keith is about whether or not Trump is going to try to remain in office. I don't think that means he runs again.

I think it means he tries to avoid having elections. As atrocious and ridiculous as that sounds, and I'm almost embarrassed to kind of utter it, I do think that he is capable of trying anything he possibly could do, including declaring martial law, national emergency, in order to stay in office. And there are people around him who are fellow travelers on that path. Steve Bannon has talked a lot about the fact that Trump will remain president

and they have a plan. They have five different options or something like that. The Save America Act that they're working on, essentially I think the goal of it is to disenfranchise about 20% of American voters, principally people of color, some degree women as well. That should be the cause of outrage. And it should be something that could never happen in a country that fashions itself as the beacon of democratic principles and the rule of law. But it's happening. So I'm reluctant to think that this is the moment where things got so bad that Trump finally got rained in. But I do have moments of optimism about that this week.

It's been terrible for the people who live in the region that's been affected. Lots of lives have been lost for no good purpose, for no outcome that anybody could have decided was really worth the cost that was paid. he has continued to try to bully and humiliate America's allies. I put out a poll yesterday. I don't know if you guys saw it to the point being that most Canadians, if the choice is, should we just take his bullying and do what he says in order to keep America in NATO? 75% say, no, we should move on. That's too high a price to pay.

But, you know, we also saw the head of NATO continuing to do this. sucking up routine about how Trump is the daddy who kind of made all the kids behave better within NATO, just shocking, shocking, shocking stuff. But if there are elections, Trump is running out of the opportunity to be as influential with the Republican movement as he has been, because they will want to raise money. They will want to contest better tight situations. And the numbers aren't very good for those Republicans down the ticket heading into the midterms. It does look more and more like not only would the House flip, but the Senate would probably flip as well.

And my last point is I noted what Keith did, which is yesterday Trump went on a tirade against Alex Jones, Candice Owens, Marjorie Taylor Green, Tucker, Carlson, Megan Kelly. These were the people with large audiences that reach the MAGA base. And he was saying, I can't stand these people. They're all low IQ people. They're my enemies now. Well, those people aren't going to just take that like Lindsay Graham does. They're not just going to go, I guess we need to suck up to him now because we made him mad. They're turning against him. And he has not experienced that before. And it remains to be seen how that's. going to turn that. But are they? You know, I guess that's, if on a week like this, there isn't some obviously credible person on that side of the aisle, stepping forward and saying,

enough is enough. This can't go on like this. This is, you know, ruining our party. It's ruining our country. We can't do this. We have to say, thank you very much, but your time's done. You know, somebody said yes, then. I can't remember who it was that I heard. Marjorie Taylor Green calls Donald Trump insane. Think about that for a moment. Think about who's saying what here and what it means. But, you know, Keith, you followed this party.

You watch this guy come out of nowhere and build the momentum within the party and create basically a new party, you know, the MAGA group. Does it shock you that nobody of substance is stepping forward from that side of the aisle to say, you know, there were a few right after January 6th, but that lasted like 48 hours. And then they were back in the tent. Yeah. But they see what, I mean, there have been those, you know, whether you're talking about Ms. Cheney or some who stepped off the Trump train early in the first term. And what happens is that they become the examples of why others are afraid to do the same thing. They disappear.

They find they have no leadership ability in terms of bringing people, more people with them. And they find that they have really hard lives. One of the things that I thought was interesting in sort of the recent history of this was when Marjorie Taylor Green went on the Bill Marshow, which in itself was. was a kind of a signal, right? But there she said some things that really kind of stunned me that I learned from. The most important of which was that the reason that she decided to leave politics was because in criticizing Trump, she'd attracted threats to herself and to her family

and that she genuinely did not believe that her side behaved that way. It was a revelation to her that anybody from MAGA would call for her death or threatened her family. And yet everybody else in the world knows how they operate that she should have expected that. So it was just perhaps the most stunning example to me of the bubble in which they live, where they think that what we can all see happening isn't really happening. But when it gets to be a personal level, this is what has driven Marjorie Taylor-Ga. agreeing to the extremes that she now finds herself at in terms of where she used to be. Bruce?

You know, Peter, I think your question is really interesting, and I took heart when Keith mentioned that it has happened. I remain really stunned at the degree to which many, many, many voices in America and many Americans, I think, just want to look the other way because it's too painful to watch or they feel there's no point in publicly objecting to what's going on. That's been disappointing to me, but I'm also worried about what's happened to the media ecosystem and especially the ownership of media and the degree to which you know, what I always observed, especially in the time when you both were working at the CBC Parliamentary Bureau, this is to flatter you, although you deserve the flattery.

This was an institution, and it was a role of an institution in journalism to be able to gather information, report that information, but also to have that distance between the people that you were gathering information from and what you were saying about them because you knew they ultimately did have some responsibility to the public to help people understand what was going on in their government and their political system.

When I look at what's happened to CBS, when I worry about what's going to happen with CNN, when you see the degree to which politicians on the right especially feel that they can just lamb-based the media, and then you watch these panels fill up where I see CNN platforming the views of, people who are saying things that aren't true routinely, who are representing ideas in ways that don't make any sense.

But they're platforming all of these views because they want to satisfy an owner or because they convince themselves that there's no difference between satisfying the owner and performing a function of both sides'ism on politics. That normalization within the media of things that should be called out. at every opportunity in my estimation. Not everybody's going to agree with that. I'm as worried about that as I am worried about the breakdown of the integrity in the Republican Party. You know what?

If I could just pick up on that because this keeps popping into my head every time I listen to a podcast on the New York Times website and they ask for subscribers. And then they say, and we don't even mean us, we want you to subscribe to legacy media, credible media, trustworthy media. It doesn't have to be us, but somebody. I've never heard anything like that in my life from a competitive media association, say, you know, pay attention to the media, even if it's not us. Pick one and listen.

Because they understand this is a national emergency of the United States. The things that aren't getting enough attention in terms of the public consciousness, but are, I think, getting enough attention in terms of responsible media are, first of all, Bruce mentions, which is the attack on honest journalism and media. And second, the attack on the justice system. Those two are primary pillars of liberal democracy. And the assault on them is head on. They are trying to destroy them. And it's happening in full view. And when they are, when they talk about it, they don't even deny it. When you listen to this guy who's running the FCC, talk about a great theory it is to see this anchor and this anchor and this anchor out of a job.

And he looks forward to the day when they take over of CNN is complete. That should just, that should shed shivers up and down your spine. That's Orwell right there happening in front of our eyes. 1984 in 2006. But the way you two guys make the argument in calling it a national emergency, and explaining how the pillars of democracy are being, you know, are crumbling in front of our very eyes. It does go to Bruce's point about whether it's, you know,

whether it's frontline Republicans or whether it's Americans in general, not standing up and saying, this is, this can't go on. This has to change. You know, we don't see it. I mean, we see it from certain regular guests on various political panels on talk shows, but we don't seem to see it beyond that in some way that. Can I ask you both a question, just on that very point?

Sure. We see these No Kings rallies, right? The last one estimates are 8 million people in the streets. Is that enough? Well, you know, I was in Washington, and I think you were too, Keith, the day after. Donald Trump was inaugurated in 2017, January 2017. And there was a huge rally that day. It was women.

Yeah. But it was a huge rally. And you go, okay, there were millions on streets across America. What difference did it make? Look what's happened to women since then. In the decisions by courts, government. Can I tell you what I think the difference was? Yeah.

They told those women they weren't alone. Not only were they not alone, but they had millions of people in support of them. And then I continued to cover that kind of a story for the next couple of years. And I remember going to Iowa. And I was there to cover, I think it was a nomination meeting for the coming primaries. And I was looking for people who had never been engaged in politics before. And men, I mean, like they were just all. over the place. And I talked to the vice president and the local party, and she had joined the

party within a few months, just a few months earlier. I think it is happening out there. But I think the question that nags me is, I don't know how much of it is enough. When I hear 8 million people in the street for an O' King's rally, I'm kind of disappointed. I think it should be more than that. I think it should be 350 million. But I don't know how much it's is enough because, because, you know, it has to be effective and it has to produce results. And the structure of American politics is in the way of that in a certain, in a certain sense, right? And I'm disheartened by how convincingly Trump won in 2024 as well. I mean, he had no business being on the ballot.

Yeah, it's a, it's not enough. And I agree. I think it's not enough in part. I mean, I look at the polls and the fact that his, he's got record disapproval levels, but it's not 100% disapproval. It's more like 57% or something like that. And you go, there are still 65 million or so Americans who kind of go,

yeah, this guy's all right. So that fight, you know, I'd like to see millions of people in front of the White House and surrounding downtown Washington all the time, basically saying, you're breaking our system and we're not going to put up with it. I think this moment of crisis for this country with three years of him still stretching out in front of us is so momentous. And the shambolic Iran adventure might be that wake up call for all of those people whose economic lives were disrupted and are going to continue to be disrupted by this thing

because sometimes I think that it's only the economy and the money that really penetrates some of that rigidity in American politics. Maybe this would be the moment where more people say, well, you know, all of the horrible things that he says and the way that he says them and the way that he bullies people, I've been able to kind of look the other way or shrug it off, but now he's coming after my livelihood. And so that's going to be the breakpoint. Maybe.

But so far, we still see millions and millions. millions of people as represented by the polling data saying, this is more or less okay by me because the other guy, whoever or the other person, whoever that might be, would be a Democrat and I couldn't possibly conceive of that being a reasonable place for America to land. That's crazy as far as I'm concerned. And so I love the fact that there are millions of people going to these No Kings rallies, but it isn't enough. And whether it's more rallies or bigger rallies or people just looking across the road at their neighbor and saying, we need to talk about this. I need to change your mind. You need to think about this differently. Please listen to me. Please understand what it is that I see

happening to this country and why we can't let partisanship become the tool to destroy what was good about our democracy. Strikes to the heart of we the people, right? Let me ask you, let me ask you this. What is it done to us? What is it done to? I mean, we know all the stuff about 51st state and all that whole part of the discussion in terms of Canada, the U.S.,

but what is what we're witnessing and seemingly concerned about that's going on in the states. How much of that has affected us the way we do our thing, the way we govern, the way we oppose, the way we look for solutions. Has that, what impact has what we're watching south of the 49th, having north of the 49th? You take the obvious, I think, the expression of the public in the last federal election here.

And the continuing fact that the number one issue on the minds of Canadian voters is still Trump, I think that there's no way of mistaking how to interpret that. But I think also in a larger sense, people, this may sound too much like a view from the balcony or ivory tower, but, you know, people who have a sense of history understand that this is an historic moment, probably the likes of which haven't been seen in the lifetime of people my age. because it is a fundamental reorganization of the world where the United States looks as though it might not be the leader of the free world anymore.

And this is happening in conjunction with other things that are vastly different from what we have ever experienced before, in particular China. I mean, I think we're familiar enough with what it means to talk about the China shock and what... what has changed in terms of this historic, unprecedented change in the socioeconomic reality of China. And I'm not trying to get too far off topic here.

I just want to point out that this is happening at the same time that the U.S. is ceding leadership in the world. And what are the implications of that? I think they're profound. And I think people who understand what the central message of Carney's speech in Davos was are beginning to understand that that's the context in which Carney is speaking. It's not in a bilateral sense between Canada and the United States. It's in a much bigger sense than that. He is talking about a reorganization happening in real time of the world as we know it.

And I think that's that Trump is the catalyst for that. Trump is a driver of a lot of it. He's not the driver of all of it. And this is something that I think Americans have to realize as well. those even who are optimistic about life after Trump have to understand that the world of the life after Trump is not going to be the one that they left behind in 2015 at all. And they're going to have to face for the first time in their history,

the possibility that the model for how to drive an economy is not a liberal democracy. I find that scary. But when you look at the sectors that China is taking control of, batteries, green energy, some in transportation, AI. And all of these are a threat to US dominance in those areas. It's like launching a bunch of Sputniks was in the 1950s. It really is going to shake people's idea of whether the government they have in the United States can be effective enough to deal with the challenges that they're facing.

And the answer to the short answer to that is right now, it's not. It's not. And one example that really crystallized this for me, if I could just take a little other moment. Everybody looking at this now, China's 50,000 kilometers of high-speed rail that they built beginning, I think, in 2008, and now carries passengers over 50,000 kilometers of rail at a speed of 200 miles an hour. And in California, they can't even build 500 miles of that. And this was the subject of something on 60 minutes, I think this week or the week before. And they never got really dug in on the question of whether the failure of the United States be able to do these things is a failure of its system of government.

And I'm not saying that it has to be that way. But if they don't take a look at that, other people are going to start saying, hmm, maybe this doesn't work as well as it used to. Labor laws, a little different in China than they are here. Absolutely. Your point is well made. Guy, we got to take our final break. I know Bruce wants to theorize on this point as well. But let me take the break.

I'll say the one thing about China is at least they know how to have a plan. They have five-year plans, 10-year plans, 15-year plans. They wouldn't go into war with Iran with no plan. No idea why, no exit strategy. you know, no ability to foresee that was, hey, you know, there might be a problem in the straight of her moves.

And to battle it out on Twitter, as though that's the right way to conduct yourself. Exactly. Anyway, let me take the final break, then we'll come back with Bruce right after this. And welcome back. Final segment of the bridge for this week. Keith Bogh sitting in for Chantel,

who's off on holidays, Bruce Anderson, Peter Mansbridge, both with you, glad to have you with us. Okay, Bruce, you want to pick up on those last points that Keith was making? Yeah, your question of how to, how has it changed us? And I really liked a lot of what Keith said. It was very interesting to me, and I agreed with him on all those points. For me, the biggest change is that Canadians looked at the world in the after Trump era,

after his first and now his second term launched, and they've decided it's fundamentally changed. And so we have to change as well. I watched public opinion for 40 years, and there has never been a time when more people were more convinced that we can't just keep on doing the things that made us relatively wealthy as a country for all so many years, that when we would hear about, are we competitive enough, are we productive enough, that people would often just say, probably not, but shrug it off, not take it as a matter of grave concern that we try to figure out, well, what does that really mean? What do we really need to do in order to be more resilient, more competitive, be able to kind of thrive even if something major is disrupted in our economic storyline, like the breakdown of the relationship with the United States? And that sense that we need to change has caused or been part of a change of how people look at politics. not everybody, but a growing number of people now say, I don't want politics to be like a show,

and I don't want politicians to be like actors in a show. And for the longest time, we'd sort of slid towards that situation where politics was mostly about the performance of politics, and people in politics were coached, trained, encouraged to play their role as characters in that show. If you ask me what more than anything else, I don't know more than anything else, but what is one of the biggest challenges that Pierre Polyev has connecting with people?

He still looks like somebody who wants to be an actor in the show called politics. And people don't want another season of that show, and let alone do they want that person being that actor in the show. Mark Carney arrived in politics not really knowing about the show, not necessarily wanting to be part of the show, not wanting to play a character that was different from who he is. And that resonates with people. And that's not to say that, you know,

I'm not making that point really about Carney. I'm making it about how voters are feeling. They want people to do the work. And they haven't really demanded that much in the past. But they're saying that's what they want now. And I think it's trickling down, not trickling down. It's spreading across the country into, how provincial politics is playing out in some areas,

watching this Quebec election where, you know, the PQ leader was so far ahead and he felt he had to promise that there would be a referendum. And all of a sudden now the Liberal Party, which is of Quebec, which was really far behind, is now tied in the polls because people are saying, why would we have a referendum? We don't want a referendum. We won't vote to separate. but we've got this party that thinks that its role in the show called politics in Quebec

is to constantly come back to this question of separation, even in a time when Quebecers are saying, well, even if I like the idea of Quebec sovereignty, I would not pursue it now, given all of the disruption that's happening around the world and the obvious need to try to keep some stability where we can and how things operate. So I think the change has been profound. Last point on Keith China note, I did read a quote, I think, from the CEO of the Toyota company in Japan who'd just come back from visiting China and looking at their automaking capacity.

And I think he said, we can never compete with this. And that's Toyota. And what he was saying was that the scale and the ambition and the execution of China is posing an existential threat to the Japanese auto industry. I thought that was interesting. Who knows what they'll do with it? But that threat is magnified to the American auto industry and the administration in Washington is hurting, not helping,

not trying to figure out a solution to that. It's trying to bury the North American auto industry because of its rhetoric about green is bad and EVs are stupid. Okay. Keith, from your active time in broadcast journalism, you remember what a minute is, right? So you have a minute to close it out for us. Well as I ever did. You have a minute to close it out for us. And the question to you is, you knew we were going to talk about Trump today. What was one thing you wanted to say today that you haven't had a chance to say yet? One minute clock starts now. Well, I think at least one of the things is that I don't know what Melania's up to, but I do think it's something of real consequence. I can't, for the life of me, figure out why she did what she did yesterday, because the two biggest vulnerabilities that we've seen that Trump has in the eyes of MAGA, not anybody else, just MAGA, are the Iran War and the Epstein files. And while he's busy trying to juggle the Iran War, and it seems to continually come back and bite him, she steps out, apparently of her own accord and brings the Epstein.

question back onto the table again. Those things, those things are the kryptonite for, for Trump, if anything is. And I'm not, I'm not sure this is the most important thing, but do not, don't, don't ignore what happened yesterday with her. Have no idea what it means, but it's going to mean something. I agree. You don't put Epstein back on the table and give it back to everybody to dump all over. unless she's aware of a major story that's coming

and she's trying to get ahead of it. So who knows? I don't know. Listen, it keeps me great having you with us once again. We'll do it again for sure. Thank you to Bruce out on the West Coast today. Both of you have great weekends.

And thank you, the audience, for listening. We'll be back in a couple of days on Monday with Dr. Janice Stein. I'm Peter Man. conversation have a good weekend. Cheers. Thanks to be here. Thanks for Brits.