The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - How Is The American Media Doing Covering Trump and Biden?

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

What are the challenges of covering a presidential race like the one underway in the United States? And how is the US media dealing with those challenges?  Keith Boag is with us again to explore those questions in a way that helps us understand the stakes.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. How is the American media doing in covering the 2024 American election between Donald Trump and Joe Biden? That's coming right up. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here in Ottawa today. In Ottawa for a couple of reasons. Tonight, doing a kind of town hall format with some good people from Carleton University's journalism program? I'll be there along with Bruce Anderson and Chantelle Hebert. We're going to do a kind of good talk program, except on this one, it's the students and the alumni.

And whoever else happens to be there will be asking the questions of us. And looking forward to doing that. Got in here last night and was involved in a charity event, and it was good to see the good people of Ottawa out for that. So that's why the program's coming to you today from Ottawa. And the guest is from Ottawa, and that's my old program's coming to you today from Ottawa. And the guest is from Ottawa. And that's my old friend Keith Bogue. Keith was the Washington correspondent for the CBC and he was the chief political correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa.

Keith loves politics. He loves covering politics. And he loves the challenges that are inherent in trying to do that job. So we had him on the program about, I don't know, five or six weeks ago to talk about the U.S. election. And it went so well, and so many of you commented on it. You were so happy to hear Keith's views on various things that we decided to have him back.

Keith, like me, is retired from the daily action these days, but he spends a lot of time studying the situation in the States. He has a lot of friends in the States. He covers the U.S. election very closely, watches it. So the main thrust of what I wanted to talk about today was not the up and down, daily up and down of the campaign. We'll have lots of time to do that throughout this year because Keith's going to join us a few times. More than a few, I hope.

Now, what we wanted to discuss today was the media. We kind of touched on it last time around, but I thought there was a lot more room to discuss this. Because the media is facing the enormous challenges that the media landscape is doing right now. You've heard enough about it, print, television. But this is different. This is how they're covering a campaign. And whether it's the right way to cover a campaign and whether there even is a right way

given the two main candidates and especially one of them in Donald Trump. Lots of questions were raised the first time he ran, 2015, 2016, on how the media played into his hands. Not so much the last time in 2020, but they're being raised again now, which does raise the question, is there a right way to cover a candidate like Trump?

But Biden as well. Biden is an interesting figure, and one that comes not without some controversy as well. Biden is an interesting figure and one that comes not without some controversy as well in terms of the way the media has been covering him. So that's the plan for today's program. A quick reminder, the Thursday's Your Turn is the second half of the book, your choices on Canadian, your favorite Canadian book, your

favorite Canadian author. We had so many entries last week. We're carrying forward to this week. And we took entries, new entries over the weekend. But that's it. Entries are closed, so don't send any more. We've got more than enough. We're also planning to put forward a list of your choices about book and author on my website. We haven't quite figured out how we're doing that yet, but we'll get around to it. And I'll let you know when that's up. Okay. Let's get to the primary reason we're all together again today. And that's my interview with Keith Bogue. Here we go.

Well, Keith, it's always dangerous to talk of the media as a monolith because they're different. They have different organizations, have different rules and policies about how they handle things. always dangerous to talk of the media as a monolith because they're different they have different organizations have different uh rules and policies about how they handle things having said that um the media is once again being kind of challenged to explain themselves on how they're covering uh this presidential campaign how they're covering trump but also how they're covering Trump, but also how they're covering Biden. So before I get into some specifics on that, you've been there, you understand the challenges of doing something like this,

and especially when Trump's involved. Give us a sense of the kind of landscape on this question of how the media covers the candidates. Well, I've been thinking about it since I first started covering Trump, or shortly after I first started covering him, which was in 2015. And it's taken me a long time to get to this point, but I'm at the point where, to a large extent, the media is going to be damned if they do and damned if they don't.

It's a conundrum for which there is no clear answer to me. And I'll tell you why. In the 2016 campaign, Trump was a novelty and he attracted a lot of attention because he was such a, I don't know, what would we have called it in 2015? Flamboyant, loudmouthed. We call it different things now, much more serious things now. And people take it much more seriously. But at the time, you'll remember that Les Moonves of CBS said, you know, Trump may be bad for the country, but he's good for CBS. He was able to make headlines just by opening his mouth. He was allowed to phone in to morning shows and just prattle on and on about whatever he wanted to do. And the feeling was after the 2016 election and he'd won, that the

media really let him get away with whatever he wanted to get away with because it was good for their business model, because he made headlines, because he attracted eyeballs. He did all of the things that really drive media incentives. And so as we head into 2024 or even into 2020, but more so now, I would say, there's a feeling among the media that if we do the opposite of what we did in 2016, if we're more circumspect about when we let Trump on the air and what we report about what he says and how much more closely we fact check him, then we're going to get it right. But recently, it's becoming clear that because Trump isn't getting through in the way that he was before, people have kind of forgotten what he's like. And they don't see that he has actually, as bad as he might have been in many people's

minds, he's worse now. And they're not seeing that as much. And so the problem of whether you should cover him in every utterance that he makes, or whether you should ignore him, has a downside on both ends of that. And I think it's frustrating. And I think that whatever the media does, a large segment of the media critics and perhaps the public are going to say

they should have done the opposite. How do you win in a situation like that? There are things to be positive about because people, serious people, have thought seriously about how to treat Trump. One of the things that the media critic Jay Rosen, who teaches at Columbia in New York, wrote about six or seven months ago, was that he had seen signs that because, you know, Trump was back in the scene,

it was before the primaries, but it was clear that he was going to run, that the media was once again comparing him to other candidates and judging them as a horse in a horse race. And Rose said this is not going to help anybody at any time. This is the mistake that we made in 2016. And unlike so many other challenges, this is one we can fix. And what he said was that instead of covering the horse race, what journalism should be doing is telling people in great detail with evidence what the stakes in this election are. It's not the horse race that matters. It's the stakes. And what I hear, and I listen to a lot of media, and I read a lot of media about this, I'm kind of obsessed with it.

But people have borrowed that language, and they're doing it. I find it interesting because I can trace the language back to Jay Rosen, but people are actually, when they're doing it, like reporters are doing their hits on whatever it might be, CNN or MSNBC, not Fox, but they are saying, you know, I think what's important here are the stakes. We don't want to get caught up in the horse race and so on. So they're actually quoting directly from Jay Rosen without either admitting it or even knowing it. But his point has got through. And that's the important thing, because what his going to help people understand why it's important. Only journalists who put it in the proper context, who frame things properly in terms of the stakes and what's at risk here are really going to be doing a better job than what the media is thought to have done in 2016. Okay, I'll pick up on a couple of those points because

it seems to me that as long as both you and I have been in the business of covering politics, this whole issue about the horse race has always been there. How many times were we told, you know, you're focusing too much on the horse race. You're too busy reporting polls. You've got to get off that. You've got to talk about policies. You've got to talk about um you know things other than than the horse race um but the other point is on this issue of the stakes it becomes then who defines the stakes because is it the media defining the stakes is it the parties who are defining the stakes is it the

the university professors who you go to for analysis, et cetera, et cetera? Who defines the stakes? And is that any fairer when you're having, say, journalists defining the stakes? Well, if journalists are defining the stakes, first of all, Trump, to some extent, defines the stakes often when he talks about his court cases, when he talks about the justice system, when he talks about the institutions of democracy, whether they be the media itself, or whether they be the Department of Justice, and when he talks about what his plans might be in a second Trump term. Just by defining what he says about those issues, you are explaining to people what the stakes are without being

hysterical about it, without setting your hair on fire and saying, if he gets into office again, this whole thing is going to be a catastrophe. Simply explain that what he intends to do when he gets into office, if he gets into office, has consequences. And these are what the consequences are. And I think fair analysis would say, if it were appropriate, that with these consequences, there come significant threats to what we have come to know as our system of government, our form of democracy, and its ability to function. I think that is defining the stakes without taking it on yourself and offering an opinion to say, you know, I think he's a threat. I think that this that is defining the stakes without taking it on yourself and offering an opinion to say you know i think he's a threat i think that that this could be bad for the country

therefore you know you should you should listen to the to the only to the points that i want to make about his personality he supplies us with a lot of evidence of things that he intends in the way that he comments about daily news and so on in the way that he comments about daily news and so on, in the way that he talks about retribution. Retribution, I mean, you know, like that very word itself comes from his mouth, and I think it's worth exploring. What could that possibly mean? But in doing so, I'm playing devil's advocate here with you.

Sure, sure. Because I think I agree with you on these points. But let me take the opposite approach. If we do that, are we not just playing into his hands? Isn't that what he wants us to talk about? He's not afraid of being described as a guy who's in it for retribution or as a guy who's in it for change the system, basically overhaul it from democracy to autocracy. He doesn't seem to care about whether that's what we talk about.

In fact, he wants us to describe it that way. I think one of the things we have to get used to is that what you're describing is not something I disagree with, although you may be describing it as though it's strategic. I don't think it is strategic. I think part of the Trump phenomenon is that he really doesn't care all that much about how what he says kind of lands. What he cares about is that it keeps the red light in the camera on, that it keeps the attention focused on him. And I was having a conversation just earlier today with somebody about that, it does seem to me that Trump realizes that he has to keep raising stakes, that the things that would outrage people in 2015,

16, or even 2020 probably aren't going to do it anymore. But his television instincts tell him rather that he has to dial it up. But the important thing to him, I think has always been, and this is examined in detail in a wonderful book about Trump called Audience One by the TV critic of the New York Times. But it's important to understand how important it is to Trump just to keep the red light on the camera and the camera, meaning that it's on, and the camera pointed at himself. His whole background in television and outrage and so on was to be the loudest voice in the room, to be the most controversial person on the stage, and to always have him at the center of any discussion. And he really has shown on many

occasions that he doesn't really care. Great example, when he says, when Sean Hannity says, you're not going to be a dictator. So I'm going to be a dictator on day one. Now he's not a complete idiot. He knows how that's going to be interpreted in the media, but he loves it because he knows that his audience will see it as a joke and the mainstream media will gasp and report it and repeat the reporting of it. And he's got essentially what he wants, which is attention. Um, so I don't know, does that answer your question? I mean, I think that,

I think so. I keep coming back to something we talked about the last time you were on, which is that he's not as stupid as a lot of people think. You know, he is strategic in the way he goes about some things. I mean, you talked in your first answer today about how in 2015 and 16, you know, he dialed into the morning shows. He realized how he could get on easily and get free airtime. He's here two elections later, eight years later, he's doing the same thing. You know, just in the past couple of days, he dialed in to CNBC in the morning, early in the morning, and I guess caught them somewhat off guard because they put him right through and on air speaking to the –

and CNBC is NBC's business channel. And the guy there, you know, started interviewing him, and he was on for quite a while. And he was going on and on about various things and there was no real fact checking going on because they weren't ready for it. They didn't have the fact checkers. They had the early morning staff, but he got a day and a half's worth of headlines out of it by just doing the same old thing. I assume that's probably

where you should probably get used to that. I mean, it's one thing to phone in the right-wing networks, which he does, and he seems to be on one of them almost every night. But to get onto the mainstream as well, and through CNBC, he was able to do that because everybody picked it up, right? MSNBC picked it up. The main network, NBC, picked it up. So he got what he was looking for.

So I just, you know, I like to paint him as a liar, a con man, a fraud, all of those things because I believe he is. But then I say to myself, well, yeah, but you know, he's, he's not stupid. He has figured out a way to, as you say, get the red light on. Yeah. He understands the incentives of the media arguably better than the media themselves. Right.

And, and he has since the beginning understood that um the media likes the wildness of him the exaggeration of him the bombasticity of him all of those things satisfy what have long been the incentives of the media like to have something on page one or at the top of the newscaster on live television that people are interested in and haven't seen before. He gets that. He also understands, and I think we've talked about this before, how the media will address a lot of its concerns with a kind of phony balance, that as long as they hear from someone on the other side, then allowing him to say whatever he wants to say is just journalism. And one of the lessons,

I think, of 2016 is that when one side has a fire hose to deliver to an audience things that are patently false and untrue, answering with just one response on the other side who says, well, wait a sec, maybe that's not, that's not adequate. That's not adequate. And I think that there was an important moment last summer. I think it was that CNN had a town hall with Donald Trump and they had their host, Caitlin Collins on to ask him questions. And they had an audience of Republicans that was largely Republican. Sorry, they were Republican, but largely Trump supporters. And they, you know, with their presence in the studio, in the studio audience, they were able to bully the interviewer and to, you know, to applaud him

and scream joyously whenever he said something that pleased him. But the other lesson in all of that was that you can't fact-check Trump in real time. You can't do it live, because if he says something untrue and you challenge him, in his response, he'll say two or three things that are untrue, and now you're behind three to one, right? And the next question, you'll be behind six to two. And it just goes on and on. And this is why people say he lies exponentially. You know, it's not just being glib. He really does do that. And you see fact checkers try to do it live or interviewers try to do it live, try to keep up with what he's doing. But the man will

say anything, the most outrageous things. And, you know, you're fact checking a lie he said about whether the election was stolen. And you point out there's no evidence of that. And he says something outrageous about Joe Biden and something outrageous about, you know, an election worker here. And suddenly, like, you've lost control. And I think that is the real danger of, like, this is the problem. If you're going to cover the election, you have to cover Trump. Do you have to give him a live platform? I don't know. I don't know if you do. He's a new guy. Maybe nobody gets a live platform anymore until he's gone. You can't ignore him. You have to interview him. You have to hear what he has to say about the issues. Do you have to give him a live platform in front of a friendly

audience? I think that doesn't work. I think that's a lesson we've learned. In a way, I think you were just making my point with that great example of how he beats up the accusation of a lie by popping in two or three more. So you keep losing. You can't catch up. My suggestion is he does that because he's not stupid. He knows what he's doing. He's doing it deliberately, right? I take your point there.

It's a kind of reverse form of bridging, which all politicians do. They get a question they don't like. They give one sentence to that question and bridge to something else that they want to talk about. The Trump wrinkle is that he tells a lie, gets fact-checked on it, says, no, you're wrong, I'm right, here's three more lies. And then, you know, suddenly he is bound to get away with lying and not being challenged. You know, this is the kind of thing that will happen early in an interview, will always happen. And, you know, five minutes into it, you realize,

you fact-check him on two of his 10 lies. What can you do? I remember watching that Caitlin Collins interview. I mean, she just got this big show and this big promotion. And I thought all things considered, she did a pretty good job. She challenged a number of things. But as you say, that fire hose of lies keeps coming. You can't stay with it.

You can't catch up. One more point about that at Town Hall. In the days after it, CNN got a lot of criticism. And to my great disappointment, Anderson Cooper went on, someone for whom I have a lot of respect, and said, if you have a problem with that, it's really your fault. It's because you're isolated in your silo and you can't. And his message was, you should be listening to the other side. And if you can't take it, maybe that's your problem and not ours.

I mean, come on. He was the president for four years. We know what he's like. It's not like we live in a silo. It's not like we don't get any other form of media about coverage about Donald Trump. We were talking about that one specific episode. And if Anderson's excuse is kind of a reflection of the corporate mentality, then they don't see what they've done wrong, and they aren't going to improve it. You know, aside from Caitlin Collins and Anderson Cooper, very few people who were in a management role at CNN at that time

still have a job. They all eventually got canned and moved out. And they're desperately now trying to reconfigure that network, which is in big troubles in terms of audience, not just because of that, but because of the whole television landscape issues, which is a whole other thing we'll get into some other time. Okay, let's just move it from,

because the media has been challenged about its coverage of Biden as well. So let's leave Trump aside, as fun as that target is, and deal with the Biden thing. I mean, the main criticism was they spent, you know, the first few months of this year, the media in general, talking more about his age than anything else. And then things happen like the State of the Union happened where he didn't look like an old guy, didn't know which way he was up. What's your sense on the challenge for the media in covering Biden? Well, I think that the question of his age is something that they can justify reporting on because there is so much public opinion research evidence that it is a concern among voters. Now, there's a chicken and egg argument

about that. But I kind of think that, you know, in the past, we've seen that the age of a president can be an issue. I don't think it's illegitimate of them to pay attention to that. What I do think got out of hand, though, is that some in the media thought that it made sense if Biden stepped down and someone replaced him. And I, and, you know, that was an okay thing to consider like a year ago, certainly two years ago, but they did it in the last two or three months. And it seemed to me that that was not very well thought through at all. And I think that because they did that, it's not that they created an expectation that it would happen, although they did allow people to entertain that it might happen. But I think it became self-distracting, right?

That they thought this is something that could really develop into a dramatic political story where you have an old-fashioned kind of brokered convention in July in Chicago that chooses a leader different from Joe Biden. That really was never going to happen. But an awful lot of serious people in the media took that seriously, allowed themselves to be distracted by it, and maybe created an expectation that it really was going to happen. And I think it's pretty clear now that was never going to happen. You know, the Joe Biden we saw at the State of the Union may have been a surprise to most Americans. I don't know. I doubt very much it

was a surprise to anyone who knows him. I doubt very much that it was a surprise to his wife, his chief of staff, members of the cabinet who see him all the time and who understand how much veracity there is to these claims that he's just not up to the job. And I don't think they buy it at all. And I don't think they buy it largely because they see routinely the kind of thing we see only sporadically and that we saw during the State of the Union address. But I think that it was really destructive to create an expectation that there could be a change of leadership at the top of the Democratic Party, at the top of the ticket for the Democrats in the election. And I wouldn't be surprised, although I don't know how you would ever prove

that one of the reasons Biden's polling is not doing good is that people felt that by saying no, they didn't approve his presidency. They're hoping to grease the skids for him to leave. And the converse of that, just as an aside, is that once they get used to the idea that he is the choice, he and Trump are the choice, I think that might have an effect on his polling. And I realize I've gone a long, I've strayed a long way from your question here. I apologize for that. And I've kind of forgotten where I was supposed to be going. No, listen.

You know why? Because I'm getting old. Yeah, aren't we all? Much has been made of the Strait of the Union. I mean, I watched it. You watched it. It was, you know, as these things go, I've always found them too long, because they have to touch so many different bases when they give them.

But it was a pretty powerful hour for him, and I'm sure it did surprise a lot of people. It's like the old thing that, you know, when they, what was it the conservative said about Justin Trudeau in 2015 for the debate? If he came up with a, came out with his pants on properly, he'd win because the expectations were so low. And that was the kind of the way it was for Biden that night. People expected him, you know,

to fall down the stairs or pass out in the middle of the speech or whatever and none of those things happened and in fact he looked he looked pretty good but having said all that i haven't seen any polls yet that show some big resurgence no for biden and you probably won't see polls giving biden a bounce because of the State of the Union. You know, before coming on, I did some googling around and some research, and I did find quite a few pieces about how in the past there's never really been a bounce for any president out of the State of the Union. And also some interesting stuff about the audience is usually consists of a majority of people who support the president, regardless of who the president is, right? So more Republicans would have watched Trump State of the Union than Democrats, and more Democrats watched Biden last week than Republicans.

So what I think its impact is, it will reassure those who are going to vote for him anyway. And I think that's important. I think it gives them stuff to tell their neighbors when they talk politics. I think it gives them some comfort in saying that they're proud to vote for Biden. And I think for Republicans, the fact that it didn't prove their thesis that he's mentally unfit for the job is like water off a duck's back. A big complaint among Republicans to me seemed to be that the speech was too partisan, you know, as though there'd never been a partisan State of the Union speech before. As though Donald Trump hadn't awarded Rush Limbaugh the Congressional Medal of Honor or the President's Medal at a State of the Union.

I mean, there's always an element of partisanship to it. What Biden did this time, I think, was take it up a notch or two or three because he believes, and I think he genuinely believes, that the stakes in the coming election are higher than they have been for the country in his own words since the Civil War. Well, he's certainly got to make that argument. Sure, yeah. I mean, true or not, he's got to make that argument. Sure. Yeah. Because everything else isn't, a lot of other things aren't working that should be working. It's management of the economy, et cetera, et cetera, where some things are definitely improved. But it doesn't seem to be working.

And I think we discussed this last time you invited me on. There are still, you keep seeing among some pundits, and they say they are reflecting the thinking of some around him directly who are advising him, that a democracy is not a winning issue because people don't care about it. And that he should do more to reinforce to people that the economy is better than they think it is. But we heard that going into the 2010-2012 mid midterms and Biden went very strongly on, on things that he felt were important. Abortion was one, but also democracy was another and he was right and they were wrong.

And so when that, that debate comes around again, he will shrug it off. Why wouldn't he? Those people haven't been right. I have been right. I've never lost an election. Onward. You know, where he gets his confidence from is no one else's concern but himself. But he clearly has confidence in it. We're going to take a quick break. Come back with some final thoughts with Keith Bogue right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, the Tuesday episode. Keith Bogue is our guest today. Keith, of course, the former Washington correspondent for the CBC and the former chief political correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa. Now, as so many great people are, he's retired. But he's still all over the story. And here we are. Yeah, and here we are.

And he loves Washington politics and American politics because he covered them so closely. So here's the last area I want to do for this time anyway, because we're going to count on you through this election year. How would you describe where we are at the moment? I mean, it's always this thing about American politics that when you're in a presidential year, nothing really counts until after Labor Day. And then it's this crush of two months of hard campaigning and ups and downs and October surprises and what have you. So how, given that, how would you describe

where we are at the moment? We're not there, right? And I want to just reflect back on something that we talked about earlier, and you made the point that we always get complaints in the media about covering the horse race and how people don't like that and so on, blah, blah. And I think that's right. But I would also point out that, and we know this, we've covered enough elections together, you and I, there is a point where it is a horse race at the very end, right? It really does matter to voters how the candidates are doing. And you really do need to know how the horse races is going to understand the behavior of the candidate on the stop, the strategic choices they make and where they spend their money, et., etc.

We're not there yet. We're not going to be there in the summer. We're going to come out of the summer and we're going to be there. Between now and then, there could be significant events that reshape, reframe how we see the election and they will have to do not all of them. They're unexpected stuff. This is like the, there are the known unknowns and the unknown unknowns among the known unknowns is what's going to happen in court with Donald Trump in his criminal cases.

He's had a good couple of weeks where his strategy, his apparent strategy of delay, delay, delay appears to have been working. But I think that we are going to get at least one of those trials underway within the next couple of months. And that would be the New York case on election interference in 2016, which is badly described, I think, but shorthanded as the hush money case, right? That's a serious case. And you know who says it's a serious case? The judge says it's a serious case.

We had a ruling in February on pretrial motions that didn't get very much attention at all, but it should have among those who have argued all along that this is either a frivolous case or an important case, because the judge took on all of those questions in the motions to dismiss the case that were made by Trump's defense. And he ruled, and this is done now for the sake of that trial, that it's not a frivolous case, that the idea that it has been described as a novel case that, you know, it hasn't been tried before is nonsense. There are plenty of examples of it. And not only that, there have

been people who have been convicted of these kinds of things that are charged in the document, that it's important because it happened during the president's presidency, not before. I mean, the behavior happened before, but the breaking of the law happened in 2017 when he was president, sitting in the White House, agreeing to the creation of shell companies to disguise the fact that he'd made illegal payments during the election to affect the outcome of that election. The judge wrote that he regarded these as extremely serious allegations. Every attempt by the Trump defense, except for one, and I won't even mention it, it's so unimportant, the judge supported.

So essentially, you're now heading into a case where the judge has said, if the prosecutor makes his case to the jury as he's outlined it, that's fine. He's going to get a conviction from a reasonable jury. There is no room left for the defense to argue that the charges are frivolous, that it's a selective prosecution, that the indictment itself overcharges him. These are all things that have been adjudicated and got very little attention, but are hugely important. And it seems now, because of what's happened in the three other criminal cases, more likely than not, I would say that that is the only case that goes to trial and has a chance of having a verdict before the election.

So if that happens, as I think it might, how that affects the election campaign, I think is an open question. But it could be a very significant factor if he's found guilty of these felony charges. He will be a convicted criminal. And I will wonder whether that'll make any difference at all. Well, I mean, that's the question. But we have polling indicating that among independent voters especially, they change their mind about Trump if he's convicted of a felony. So we'll see. But what if it doesn't? What does that say, really? are problems in Canada with the justice system and how long it takes for certain cases for people to come to trial and just how well set up the courts are on that front. But when I watch the way these various trials are being handled in the States, you just shake your head and go, this is so unfair. You know, I mean, really, let's face it,

if you're black and poor and charged with something, you're not going to get any of the breaks this guy's getting because he's got the money to hire a huge legal staff. Some of them are good. Some of them are terrible. But nevertheless, he's got them all. And they delay. They delay, delay, delay.

So I'll be fascinated to see whether your feelings about the New York trial, that things could go ahead now as opposed to waiting until after the election. That'll be fascinating to watch, and we should know that, I guess, in the next month or two. Anyway, just as a last quickie, you've covered a lot of U.S. elections. Do you think this one's going to be unlike anything we've seen before? Yeah, and not in a good way. I think there's going to be violence no matter what happens this time. And I was on a panel in 2018 with some reporters from the Washington Post, and someone asked whether Trump, after winning in 2024,

being reelected to office, would seek a third term. And my answer was, that's so far down the road, and there are more important things to worry about. And I didn't mean it condescendingly, but the thing to worry about right now is if he loses in 2020, will he leave? And there was a little bit of a gasp in the audience. And I don't want to sound like I'm chuffed about this and proud,

but boy, was I right. It haunts us still what happened when Trump lost an election. Just imagine what will happen if he loses another election and the consequence of that personal consequence of that won't be just slipping into retirement but it might be slipping into prison yep yeah it it reads like a movie right uh one that you'd watch in the cinema and go, well, it's a good thing that could never happen here.

And here we're watching it all happen. Or just as likely, it reads like a movie script that if you took it to a producer or a film studio, they'd just laugh at you, go home. Nobody's going to believe this. All right, sir. As always, great to talk to you. And if you're willing, we'll do it again in another six weeks or so.

Who knows what will have happened by then. Well, you can tell by the way I prattle on that I enjoy being here and I appreciate the invitation. So I look forward to another opportunity. Thanks, Keith. Thank you. Keith Bogue, former CBC chief political correspondent and former CBC Washington correspondent,

still someone who is very plugged in on the American political scene, is called upon for his advice and expertise by media organizations. As you saw, he was doing a panel with the Washington Post reporters a little while ago. And it's great for us to have the opportunity to have him on the program. And we will get Keith back again a number of times before the summer and then, of course, after Labor Day when the real action starts. Okay, so that's it for today.

Tomorrow, Wednesday, it's Encore Wednesdays, so look for one of our The Bridge Best from the past. Thursday, it's your turn. We'll have the final book entries for you on that. And Friday, of course, a good talk with Chantelle Hebert and Bruce Anderson. A reminder that also on Thursday

is the random ranter. Don't want to forget him. That's it for today. Thanks for joining us. Talk to you again in 24 hours.