The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Putin Now In Trump's Bad Books.. and Why?

Episode Date: March 31, 2025

Retired Lt Col Alexander Vindman gives us his sense of developments between Trump & Putin. Then Janice Stein gives us her take.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Is Vladimir Putin now in Donald Trump's bad books? And if he is, why? That's coming right up. And hello there, welcome to Monday. Peter Mansbridge here. Mondays, as you know, are our opportunity to talk about the international scene, trying to get a sense of what's happening in some of the key spots of the world. And who do we talk to? We talk to Dr. Janice Stein from the Munk School at the University of Toronto. But today, Janice will be here, but so is a special guest, and I'll tell you about him. But first of all, Housekeeping Mondays, right? Well, I'll let you know that your turn this week

is still those letters which you sent in last week on the question of the election campaign here in Canada and what you see as a major issue aside from the Trump factor, what else is on your mind? Well, we've never had so many letters as we had last week. And you heard, you know, episode one of those letters last Thursday. We have enough for this week and next week as well. So you don't have to write. We got enough. We got lots.

You don't have to write anymore. We've, as I said, got enough for this week and next week. And it fits perfectly. We'll have three weeks of these letters, and then, you know, shortly after that, we'll hear the two main combatants and the other leaders as well in the election debates. One night in French, one night in English. But that's still to come. Starting with this Thursday's your turn, and the random renter, of course. He'll be but that's still to come, starting with this Thursday's your turn,

and the random renter, of course. He'll be by as well this Thursday. Okay, let's get to today's program. So who is our special guest? Janice, as I said, is standing by, and we're going to talk to her. After we hear from somebody else, does the name Alexander Vindman ring a bell with you? I'm sure it does, because you're all pretty bright people.

Alexander Vindman was a lieutenant colonel in the U.S. military and had a distinguished record in the military in combat in Iraq. He was a busy guy. But by the mid-2010s, he landed at the United States National Security Council where he was the director of European affairs. And it was while he was at the NSC that part of his role was monitoring conversations that the U.S. President had with various European leaders. Well, one of those conversations was with the person who was at that time the new president of Ukraine,

Volodymyr Zelensky. And what Vindman heard shocked him about what was going on in that conversation, what Trump was trying to make Zelensky do. Remember, this is during Trump's first term. It led to his first impeachment. And it also led to Zelensky being on the outs with the Trump people. You can bet that. And that still continues today.

In fact, it was just a couple of days ago, Friday night, that Colonel Vindman was told, you've lost your security clearance. It was pulled on the instructions of the President of the United States, Donald Trump. So there's lots to talk about with Dr. Vindman. He's got a new book, The Folly of Realism, How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. That's his book. That's what he thinks about what's going on right now

between the U.S. and Ukraine. And interestingly enough, he's also got advice for Canada in its struggle right now with the United States. I had the opportunity to talk to Alex Finman just the other night when he was in Canada talking to people about his new book. But then again, we talked over the weekend. And I want you to hear that conversation. And then, of course, we'll have our regular conversation with Dr.

Janice Stein. It all starts off with Colonel Alex Vindman, retired U S military. So Colonel, how surprised were you, if at all, that the Trump administration pulled your security clearance this weekend? I'm very surprised, mainly because I haven't had an active security clearance in five years. So it's kind of comical. I was very satirical in my response saying I revoked the revocation on my non-active security clearance.

So, I mean, it was meaningless. I think it's a Friday night theater for the Trump administration that's looking every way to get headlines. My dad got a kick out of the fact that it was me followed by President Biden in that order that had their clearances pulled. So, again, not serious.

A lot of not serious things going on in this administration. No big deal. Especially considering what had happened in just a couple of days before that in terms of security and what was sort of put out in the, potentially into the public arena by cabinet ministers and cabinet secretaries of the president himself. So it was kind of ironic in that sense. It is. And, you know, I. I can't take the pulling of my security clearance seriously or a lot of these actions, but I cannot overemphasize how serious a breach in security

was committed by the cabinet, these cabinet secretaries, because it's, it seems almost a little esoteric for, except if you're in the national security sphere and have spent your career there, it seems like, oh, what's, what's classified, what's not classified. Think about it in the basic terms of you're getting ready to attack and you want to maintain surprise and you're potentially letting slip the fact that you're getting ready to attack, how that impacts your ability to conduct successful military operations. It puts your troops' lives in danger.

And that is the simplest way to describe it. It was beyond incompetence to a certain extent. I think if it was anybody of a lower rank or in a different administration, they would be negligent and therefore potentially criminally liable for repercussions and consequences. That's how serious this was. And it belies what's likely a pattern of this kind of dismissive, um, uh, behavior towards, uh, extremely sensitive matters. It also bothers me as a, as a former diplomat that they were, uh, so cavalier and deprecating towards our closest allies that have another data point, uh, and, um, a clarity around whether the U.S. is

reliable. And that's even more kind of permanent because we bothered the actual military operation without consequence. But the political dimension of this is likely to be lasting. You know, you weren't just a former diplomat. You were also a former soldier. You were, you know, in the military. You were in combat positions. If you were still in that role today, how would you feel as a soldier for the United States, given what we learned last week? Yeah, there's a violent sense of injustice associated with the way this was conducted because subordinates are held to a higher standard. And the seniors, which should be, you know, as you graduate, the standards shouldn't decrease, they should get higher. So it's really unjust that somebody of a lower rank would have been held accountable. But from a very practical standpoint, if you think about the folks serving in the Air Force and there have been, you know, we military tends to be apolitical, doesn't like to get weight into this sphere, especially in this perilous moment. there are lots of former pilots commenting on how this was extremely dangerous to telegraph a,

an attack, a forthcoming attack that would have given our adversaries an opportunity to, to plan and really conduct an ambush. And it's not, we don't have to speculate here, right? It's not like, you know, this was released and nobody that shouldn't have been in the call was there. This was this was a call group, a signal, a messaging group that that was accidentally expanded to include a editor in chief of an opposition from the administration's perspective, an opposition, a publication, opposition magazine. So we don't necessarily fully know who else was in there, who else could have been masking their identities. This is one of the reasons that these calls, really fundamental calls for an inquiry, investigation,

and inspection general oversight is essential. We need to get to the bottom of whether this is a pattern, if this is a one-off, who else may have been involved in this that shouldn't have been involved. Fortunately, Jeff Goldberg is considered extremely competent and honorable gentleman, and he, I guess, stood on principles and ethic and pulled himself out of this group and reported on this from an oversight perspective. But we don't know that much else, actually. I want to ask you about Ukraine and about the relationship between Trump and Putin and Zelensky, the different relationships that exist there.

You've become a household name as a result of Ukraine and as a result of some of the things that have happened in the past few years. Over this weekend, NBC is reporting that Trump told them that he's angry at Putin, used the term pissed off at Putin, for his descriptions of Zelensky and his failure to make sure that this ceasefire arrangement takes place. Do you believe him when he says stuff like that? No, not really. I understand the longstanding pattern of affinity for Putin.

Trump, over the course of decades, wanting to engage Russia in various business dealings and then in his political career, making overtures even detrimental to Trump's own interests if you think back to my very first day in the white house it happened to be that hussein meeting where he sided with putin over the u.s intelligence committee saying that you know russia was interfering in u.s elections there's a long-standing precedent there uh he wants to normalize he wants to have a positive relationship with russia and on the other side of the scales is a deep animus towards ukraine uh ukraine as a potential source of pain um being implicated in the first impeachment that's the one that brought me into the public eye i was the one that reported this corrupt scheme that president trump had to um tarnish his political opponent and steal an election so those are the long-standing patterns. I think he may eventually break with Putin on a very, very practical and transactional basis.

Trump wants the Nobel Peace Prize. He wants a win. He wants the end of this war. And he's going about it by catering to all of Putin's wishes, being extremely accommodating, putting some massive pressure on Ukraine and at the same time normalizing and leaving the prior status of Russia and signaling that he's willing to lift sanctions and things of that nature. This is exactly the wrong way to go about it. My latest book talks about the subtitle is How the West Deceived Itself About Russia and Betrayed Ukraine. Trump is deceiving himself about Putin. He's thinking that this flattery approach is some way to get what he wants.

It's not. Putin is going to be unyielding and pursuing his own interests, which is subduing Ukraine, pulling Ukraine back into the fold, this empire-building project. So at the end of this process, this hard learning process that Trump consistently seems to have to go to in order to get, you know, to figure something out, he may learn that he's not going to get what he wants for Putin. And then there could be a break. But we're, I think we're still, you know, early days, he has a lot more pain and suffering that we have to go through before Trump potentially makes this break. But the sooner the

better, because from a U.S. national security perspective, we should be siding with our friends and we should be putting pressure on our enemies. That's a logical approach, right? Normal and acceptable anywhere else except for Trump, where he thinks he could flatter his way to success. What is your sense of where we are in this war between Russia and Ukraine? Because, you know, analysts were kind of wrong out of the get-go on this conflict. But over time, and they gave a lot of credit to Ukraine, but over time, especially in these last couple of months, there's a sense that Russia has Ukraine on the ropes. Yeah. Do they have Ukraine on the ropes yeah do they have do they have ukraine on the ropes they don't i think this is the problem is that we like you know we like

a sensational kind of flashy uh outcomes and we haven't seen anything of that nature from the ukrainian side and the narrative shifts back to a buy-in to Russian exceptionalism, the fact that Russia is a bigger country, larger military, larger economic base for waging war. But that actually belies the much more challenging situation that Russia finds itself in. Three years into the war, they sustained hundreds of thousands of casualties, dead and wounded, taking massive casualties on a daily basis even if they're careless with their soldiers lives that is it's still a limited resource and more limited than even the human resource is the material resource it is they're

pouring enormous amounts of uh of uh financial resources to floating this war at the cost of the economy. And it's in certain ways looking like it's teetering. I think the second half this year is going to be exceptionally hard for Russia to meet its obligations for both the war and to its citizens. So I think it's unclear whether time is really on Russia's side. Some people will definitively say, you know, that's not the case. I think it's unclear whether time is really on Russia's side. Some people will definitively say, you know, that's not the case. I think it's much thinner. The margins, and this is the way I've been describing the war for years,

the margins are much thinner between success and failure, meaning it's unclear who has the staying power. My analysis suggests it's actually on Ukraine's side. Why? Because Ukraine has external support from thus far still from the US and from Europe. Even absent US support, the Europeans can float the Ukrainian war machine

and the war effort. Why? Because they have some base of, some defense industrial base, not nearly enough to plug the holes of US absence, but they have some to ease the maximum damage of the U.S. withdrawal. But they have financial resources, and those financial resources can be applied to buying weaponry from the United States. The U.S. is not going to prevent the Europeans from spending money on behalf of Ukrainians. It's different than what Trump has described as like giveaways.

And the other side of the equation is a Russia that's resorting to support from the North Koreans in order to, to have both manpower and ammunition the Iranians for some of their drone warfare capability. And like I said, the margins are much, much thinner. I don't think time is on Russia's side. I think they want to see what they could squeeze out this year.

They now see more opportunities with Trump, especially with this accommodation that Trump is leaning into. And in that kind of scenario, they want to surge and see if they can get in the diplomatic sphere through negotiations, what they couldn't achieve on the battlefield, something that leaves Ukraine weak, leaves Ukraine toothless. They want a Ukraine that is demilitarized.

That's still one of their demands outside of NATO. It's another demand that was given away by the Trump administration. They want to retain their territorial gains, but they're not doing that well on the battlefield there's an ebb and flow and the ukrainians are holding their own on the the edge of the battlefield right now um taking back small bits of territory uh the russians at times might make small gains but these are these are not in any way decisive so it's not clear that the russians have an advantage it's also not abundantly clear that the Ukrainians have the advantages either. It's too evenly split, but the Ukrainians likely have the same power that the Russians might not.

If you were able to give advice to Zelensky at this point about his relationship with Trump, what would you say to him? I mean, you've heard it all. You heard that disastrous conversation between Trump and Zelensky a few weeks ago. You obviously, as you referred to, were properly monitoring the conversation they had years ago that led to the first impeachment trial. What would you say to him now?

Because Trump makes it sound like he's suddenly Zelensky's best friend. I would say hold fast and when you need to and yield when you need to. So to be more precise about that, hold fast on what is essential to preserve Ukraine's sovereignty and territorial integrity. You did so in the Oval Office, President Zelensky, when you tried to disabuse the president of this narrative that the Russians weren't so bad and that somehow that Ukraine was the aggressor or that you could achieve peace without security guarantees. Those hold fast on.

And the president has now, he wants to get Zelensky to break, but he's not going to, President Trump. So hold fast on those. But other areas, be flexible and bend. And I would say maybe take something out of the Putin playbook. Dangle these economic deals. Let those, drag those negotiations out. You know, maybe there's a deal to be had.

What you're doing is in that regard, you're buying time for Trump to realize that the bad actor here is Putin. And the bad actor here is the fact that the Russians are unwilling to really engage in any reasonable negotiations to bring this war to an end. So by, you know, offering this potential for economic cooperation, there is a way to keep the U.S. engaged on this very transactional bit and then hold what you need to. So that's the idea. Trump is, in certain regards, pretty easily manipulated, especially from strong states, strong positions. And I would try to see, you know, what I could, is this the way,

is this like fully honorable or fully ethical? No, but this is an existential war for Ukraine. And the longer they keep the U.S. on sides, the better. So that's the way I'd play it. But I wouldn't have wishful thinking about the fact that you could have a good, positive relationship with Trump. That's outside, and I've told this to

Zelensky and his team multiple times. There's no way to bring Trump over to be friendly to Ukraine and adversarial to Russia without Trump himself realizing that Russia is playing him.

Okay, here's your last question. It's got nothing to do with Ukraine or Zelensky or Putin, but it does have something to do with Trump. You just spent a few days in Canada and you know what we're going through in terms of our relationship with the United States and specifically our relationship with Donald Trump. What's your playbook for Canada? What's your advice here?

Yeah, I'd say, first of all, you know, your prime minister seems to have a bead on how to manage this relationship. And it's not through what we see some other world leaders do, which is flattery and kind of like, you know, um, catering to, to, uh, Trump it's through some resolve and some show of strength. I think that's absolutely essential. If you want Trump to respect you. Uh, I think the fact is that, um, the most extreme situation, I think remains in, in the realm of absurd this idea that somehow canada needs to pivot to a national defense from the south i think that is a is a scenario a far-fetched scenario why

um not just because the history of the past 100 years has been one of us uh the u.s and canadians getting closer together integrating integrating our defenses, integrating our economies. It's that there is no appetite from besides some rhetorical and some pockets of Trump extremism for anything that even remotely resembles a true, legitimate aggression towards Canada. Rhetorically, maybe in some pockets like an economic sphere with regards to tariffs. But this is not just about Canada. This is about Canada, Mexico, Europe and our adversaries, China. might want to calibrate our interactions based on this shared history and the fact that we are relying on the Canadians for security in the high north and things of that nature. So I would say that fundamentally this is a question of

how do you navigate the lesser degree of challenges in the economic sphere? The tone has changed with the new prime minister. It is no longer about the 51st state or the governor. The rhetoric is kind of adjusted. I think there's a way to navigate these difficult waters. And remember that on the back end of this, that the U.S. and Canada have an extremely mutually prosperous relationship. We just have to

navigate these next several years. The U.S. has to navigate it from a kind of preservation of democracy standpoint. That's the first thing. And then after we get through past 2028, I think we could start to take some of the relationships, understanding that maybe the U.S. will seem less reliable in the long run, but please don't forget about us and don't chuck us off as all mad men. We look forward

to the day where we can have extremely uniquely friendly relationships where we almost think of each other as brothers without any second thoughts. Well, I hope you're right about that. It's been great talking to you.

Wish you luck with the new book. And I'm sure we'll have the opportunity to talk again, too. Thanks, Colonel. Hope so. Thank you. Appreciate it. All right. Colonel, retired Colonel Alexander Alexander Vindman.

So what do you think of that? Think he was interesting? Well, he was definitely interesting. But I wonder what Janice Stein's take on Alexander Vindman's take is. We'll find out right after this. And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge on this Monday on Sirius XM channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Back to normal now as Janice Stein joins us, our regular Monday guest here on The Bridge. Janice, you met with Alex Vindman along with a lot of other people last week when he was in Canada. I want to ask you a couple of specific points about what he just said, but let me start by asking you what you think of him generally. What's your sense of Alex Vindman? Alex, I've known him before, Peter. Alex is a really principled person. As you know, what got him all the attention, which he justly deserves,

he saw something going on that he thought was truly unethical and stood up for it and paid a real price for that. He had to give up fundamentally his career, which he loved, lost his security card, so he's really, really principled. That's different from saying that um i think he's got a long-term strategic view of what has happened between russia and uk he's so involved that i think it's hard sometimes

uh for him to get above all the noise that all of us are hearing and look at the bigger picture. You know, as he said in that discussion, he still advises the Zelensky group, gives them his sense of where things stand and how to relate with the Trump administration. Yeah. He's got tremendous loyalty now to Zelensky and a lot of affection, as I think anybody would who worked with the Zelensky team all these years.

But it is true that there were issues inside the Zelensky team. It is true that Zelensky's team, both on the military and the clinical side, didn't always get it right, even with the Biden team, much less the Trump team. And I think that's where sometimes Alex is so involved that it's hard for him to see that. What did you make of his sense that this is not over yet, that even on the battlefield, Ukraine still has a chance? Well, I thought he got that really right. And there's one phrase that Alex used that I thought,

gee, that really telegraphs to all of us. He said the margins are very thin. And you and I have talked about this in the past. The Ukrainians are under tremendous pressure, especially given the fact that intelligence was cut off for that brief period by the Trump administration. The blockbuster piece in the New York Times that came out Sunday, which showed us how important day in and day out that battlefield intelligence was that Ukraine was getting from the United States.

So they, in a sense, had their backs to the wall and they know it. But he's right that the Russians also are in a tough spot. Their economy is paying a tremendous price. You know, Putin is bribing guys to join

and is that a signal? When you can't get young men to join, even though there's conscription and you're buying them, that shows you that that's a government that's really unable to mobilize its own people. The war's lost legitimacy for Russians, and that's a big one.

So Alex is right. One big breakthrough, which is the fantasy of every general I've ever met. Give me one more chance. One big breakthrough on the battlefield. We'll turn this around. Sometimes I find it hard to come to grips with the kind of lack of emotion on certain elements of Eastern European governments in their relationship with their people and those who are doing the fighting. I mean, Russia has a history of sending thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions into the battle, knowing full well that they're not coming back. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, again, to put this in a slightly larger context, Peter, you think about World War II, right? And the impact of that on the way Russians think about World War II, right? And the impact of that on the way Russians think about the battlefield. They faced that German army

with their Panzer divisions and those tanks alone on the eastern front. And they were, the German army, far technologically superior to the Russians, just far better. And what did the Russians do?

They threw wave after wave after wave of Russian soldiers. And they did it by endurance. The only way they defeated the Germans, they just threw human waves and dressed up cars and jeeps, frankly, in the worst days of that war. Not enough food, not enough ammunition. So a myth in a sense, a national narrative. It's not a myth because it was actually accurate, but there's a narrative in Russia that it's Russia's depth and that it's the capacity to rely on Russian soldiers to endure unbelievable punishment on Russian families.

It's the mothers, as we say. Mothers play a big political role in many societies when their sons are dying. The Russians have this capacity to withstand punishment and pain. And that's what you see here, even in this war. You know, I guess in a way it's not just Russia or Eastern European governments. It's any government that makes the decision that fighting, that conflict is the way to resolve

whatever the issue happens to be, that there has to be a kind of removal of the emotion from that decision-making. I can remember once sitting across from Margaret Thatcher and trying to get her to give me a sense of what was going on in her mind at night as that fleet was heading to the Falkland Islands back in 1982, knowing what could happen and how did she deal with that in her own mind? She would have had none of it and none of that discussion. She was the Iron Lady. She wasn't going to go there at all. And she kept getting mad at me for even asking the question.

But I do find it, you know, as somebody who grew up in a generation where there has been no war in the sense that we used to look at wars, I still have like a really hard time trying to understand how those at the center of government, and you know, Churchill was the same. Churchill knew what was happening with his troops and his RAF members and those in the Royal Navy. They kind of remove emotion from the decision. Yeah.

Well, you have to, to some degree, because you have to, to some degree, because, you know, these, and they're young people, you know, in, not in this war, which is really interesting, not in the Russia-Ukraine war, which is, in some sense, you know, the average age of a conscript in Ukraine now, in their 40s, which tells you how bad, you know, the situation is for Ukrainian generals. But even when it's younger men, you know that you're going to lose, that they're going to die. So I'm with you, actually. I can't imagine what the burden of responsibility is when you know that you're taking young people who barely started their life and you're sending them to war and you know they're going to die.

I think, Peter, when you're attacked, it's a little easier. If the other side went first, it's a little easier. And that's why I went back to that Russian experience in World War II when they were attacked. There's almost a sense of no choice. We have no choice. Otherwise, we lose our society, we lose everything. So I think that makes it easier, but to go first,

wow, knowing that you're going to lose soldiers. And young men, young men, these 21-year-olds, 18-year-olds, haven't started to live yet, frankly. I would find it impossible, frankly. Back to Vindman for a couple of moments. His advice to Zelensky on how to deal with Trump. Yeah. What did you make of that? Well, I think he's right. You know,

I've been saying in our own country, non-stop don't bait and don't let yourself be baited. And it's, you know, you can imagine, Peter, when I say that, people don't want to hear that. Because again, the emotion is running high. Zelensky let himself be baited in that meeting, whether it was set up or not. But he has had not a smooth history with the Biden people. That becomes very, very clear in the long, long article. Look back at all the critical American help

that he got over this period. And that's probably because Zelensky, you know, somebody said a very interesting thing to me about Zelensky, and I think it's so important. He said, the man who stood up in Kiev and said, I don't want to ride. I need weapons. That man is not going to be the man who's going to have the

self-discipline to not let himself be baited. What's made Zelensky so successful is his capacity to connect emotionally, to mobilize his own country, and those characteristics, those attributes are not the same that you need when you're in these kinds of high stakes negotiation

where everything is on the table and you have to stay cool. The old maxim, you know, the person who got you there is not going to keep you there. You need different skills. Some of that is true. What do you make of Trump's comments over the weekend that he's mad and he's angry? He's pissed off.

Do you think that was real? You know, with Donald Trump, he gets on your first one and he says, I love Canada. Do you think that's real? It's all going to work out. He did the same thing this week. Who knows? But certainly, whether it's real or not, he's sending a signal to Vladimir Putin, right? I want this deal. I really want this deal.

This ceasefire really, really matters to me. You're getting in the way of it. And so regardless of whether it's real or not, the message still gets through. Now, whether Vladimir Putin cares or not, and whether Donald Trump is important enough to him, because look at the one-sided deal, frankly, Peter, that those two are putting together.

You know, there's going to be some relief on sanctions. You know, Putin wants the agricultural bank, the Russian agricultural bank, to be reconnected to SWIFT, which is the big international message

connection center where funds move through. And you can't really be part of the global financial system if you're disconnected from SWIFT. But once you let one bank in, any other Russian bank just sends stuff to the agricultural bank and effectively you've reconnected Russia.

In exchange for what? Right? For an agreement not to attack each other's energy, which actually Ukraine was doing, was beginning to inflict damage on Russian energy. And then on the Baltics, on the Black Sea, Zelensky did that himself with American help. He did that himself. So you ask yourself, if Vladimir Putin can't accept that

and then goes ahead and talks yet again about denazification of the Ukrainian leadership, that's when Trump finally said it doesn't look like there's a deal here. Well, he wants it. He wants that deal because he wants the Nobel Peace Prize. Did we just say that, or do you really think that's what's behind all this?

I really think that's a big part of it. Barack Obama got it. What do you mean Barack Obama got it? I'm as deserving as Barack Obama got it. What do you mean Barack Obama got it? I'm as deserving as Barack Obama. Why should Barack Obama have something that I don't have? But to come to office as a peacemaker, I'm going to make peace, I'm going to end wars. That's not something that's part of Donald Trump's DNA. He's going to get two CSIRs and he's going to get the Nobel Peace Prize this year.

Well, first one's broken down, and he hasn't been able to get the second one. Last point, Vindman's advice for Canada. Well, not dissimilar, right, from what we've been saying. With one difference, I think, that Vindman has a justifiable, all right, loathing for Donald Trump, loathing for him. He sees what he sees, which is this is an unethical act of crime. There's no limits to this guy's corruption.

He will do anything. So he gave tactical advice on the phone there in the interview. I think there's deeper advice, which I suspect he would give, which is diversify away from the United States. I will say that's easier said than done because we, unlike everybody else in the world except

Mexico, live next door to the United States. So our challenge is bigger with Donald Trump than any other country in the world. And it's not like we haven't tried this before. Yes. And failed. And failed.

Yes. Okay. We're going to leave it at that for this week, Janice. It was great to have you as always. And great to have you at the same time we had Alex Finman on as well. Interesting. Lots to talk about there. Absolutely.

Okay, we'll talk again in seven days. Have a good week. And that wraps it up for this week, this Monday edition of The Bridge, and it's great to have Janice with us as well as Alex Finman. Tomorrow, it is Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Fred Delorey, Bruce Anderson will be here. There's lots to talk about on that front with those two spinners.

Wednesday, Encore. Thursday is your turn, and we've got all the questions answered that we need, so you don't need to send any more in. And Friday, of course, good talk with Rob Russo and Chantelle Hebert. Thanks for listening today. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours.