The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Is Trump's Venezuela Mission A Wag The Dog?

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

Some key elements of the United States military are assembling in force off Venezuela. Is this a real operation or a distraction? A "wag the dog?" Dr. Janice Stein starts with that on her regular Monday conversation on The Bridge.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of the bridge. The Venezuela story. Is this a Wag the Dog story? Dr. Janice Stein is here. Coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to Monday.

Welcome to Dr. Janice Stein's changing world. That's what we're kind of naming this segment. this year. And changing world, it is. And we're going to start with something really different this week. The Venezuela story. If you haven't been following it, it is something to be following. Something is happening there and something big could happen. We want to talk about it. We want to talk about it from a number of angles, including, is this a kind of a wag the dog thing? We'll talk about that coming up. We'll also talk about China. And the changing, world order

is China now the big dominant player. That's all with Dr. Janice Stein in just a couple of minutes time. But first, some housekeeping. It's a difficult Monday for a lot of people today. After a weekend where we've been

talking a lot about Ken Dryden, that amazing goaltender for the Montreal Canadians in the 1970s, the Habs, Stanley Cups, the Canada, Russia, 72, series, but also his life as an author, gave us some great books, and his life as a lawyer and a politician. Ken Dryden was somebody who meant a lot to a lot of Canadians, not just Habs fans, and we saw

that outpouring of emotions over the weekend of the news of his passing. and for a lot of us who you know covered Ken Dryden both in sports I was at the Winnipeg game of the 72 series and of course I covered Ken Dryden in politics in Ottawa and interviewed him more than a few times and

and we became friends a bit and I'm proud of that fact all right the other thing to mention in our housekeeping section on Mondays of course is the question of the week and the question this week refers directly to the performance so far of the Carney government and the question is very specific it comes after we find out over the last couple of days that that Mark Carney is retreating somewhat on some of his invites

environmental stuff, including this latest one, which is the electric vehicles issue. So here's the question. Has Mark Carney retreated too much for you on policies that you were impressed with during the campaign in the spring of this year? So that's the question. Pretty straightforward. Has he retreated? Yes or no? And what in particular has convinced you that you're a yes or a no on that issue?

The normal rules apply. Your answer is to be 75 words or fewer, right? Now, I've been really impressed and talked about it the other day about how many of you followed that rule. Somebody wrote in and said, oh, wow, it's because they're using chat GPT. I don't believe that I don't believe Bridge listeners use ChatGPT

to formulate their questions or their answers to questions with the bridge don't let me believe that so that's one condition the other is you've got to have it in by 6 p.m. Wednesday evening 6 p.m. Eastern Time include your name and the location

you're writing from you have to remember those two things now lately i've been sending replies back saying you forgot the location i'm just going to stop doing that if you forget it you forget it and you're not in because we get a lot of answers right we have to weed through them so try to remember that those are your basic conditions and you write to the mansbridge podcast at gmail.com the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com looking forward to seeing your entry to this week's question we'll repeat it hopefully at the end of today's program but also tomorrow and Wednesday's encore will be an encore this week okay time for dr. Janice Stein and I don't think I need to say more than that why don't we get right

to it. You know, Janice, if somebody had said to me, you know, you're going to be talking to Janice Stein and you're going to start by talking about Venezuela. They told me that a few weeks ago. I said, no, I, you know, listen, there's always things that talk about in Venezuela, but I wouldn't have predicted we'd start that way.

But we're starting that way to this week. I'm trying to understand what's going on with U.S. forces, you know, positioned outside Venezuela on actually both coasts, right? They're in the Caribbean and on the Pacific side. It has a kind of a whiff of a wag the dog to me, but you tell me, what is your sense of

this? This is truly astonishing, Peter. Let's just start there. The firepower that the United States has put in the region. We're talking about eight warships. eight warships There are And who knows if they're more by this morning

But as of the weekend More than 7,500 Marines You don't meet 7,500 Marines One of Marines They are naval forces That land to fight That's what they're What that's what the, you know

The mission of Marines is you don't have that kind of force against drug cartels or one boat with 11 people on if that the United States' claim was a craft, you know, that was carrying members of a drug cartel on the boat, so-called drug terrorists. It's the firepower that is absolutely sending missiles, you know, advanced missiles. with air launch capability. And they're pulling warships out of the Pacific in the east to move to Venezuela. So something's up here. Let me put it that way. That goes way beyond drug interdiction.

That's for sure. The only question is what? The United States did this in secrecy. There's no formal congressional authorization to use for. on a massive scale against Venezuela, which the president of the United States is supposed to have. So we are in this gray zone. I can only think that this is coercion to frighten Maduro to leave.

And if that's what it is, I think it will fail. Maduro is the president of Venezuela. Yes. And there's no love loss between these two men, Trump and Maduro. what's at the root of that you know there's no lump loss between trump and madero there was no love loss between Biden and the darrow this is a long-standing conflict you know Maduro is a left populist that is the easiest way to describe him

who has canceled all meaningful elections, sifled any opposition within Venezuela. You may remember, Peter, you do, that when Christian Freeland was foreign minister, Canada convened a conference, which met in Vancouver, of Latin American Caribbean nations and Canada, to talk about ways of opposing Majero. And that was done with the complete support of the present of the United States at that time.

He's clearly an authoritarian leftist. You know, we're looking for labels right now. That's who he is. But more than that, he's gotten under the skin of every U.S. president. It's like a burr under the saddle. What's changed with Donald Trump is that he describes Maduro himself personally as the head of a terrorist drug organization. He has deported Venezuelans in the United States allegedly because they are members of this drug, terror organization, Tren Aragua. And so he's characterizing Maduro as a drug lord who has captured a state.

That's where the language I think has changed. What's ironic here to me, Peter, and it's really hard to make sense of this. If you actually look at the forces that are deployed, they're massive, but they're not enough to amount a full-scale land invasion. against Venezuela and Maduro responded very quickly after the incident with the with which really a boat I would describe it it's a boat it's it you know it's this looks like a speedboat looks like a power boat I mean they've shown pictures of it and and still nobody is you know it's a claim that's right there's no you know real evidence yet of uh of who was on it and why it was needed to be blown up.

No, and no, no identification of everybody, uh, of anybody on that chip, no authorization to use force. A huge naval armada with insufficient land forces, if you really are going to go into Venezuela. And Maduro responded by saying he's deploying. Now, who knows, his numbers are no more reliable than the numbers, uh, that we're getting officially on. States, he's deploying a million for, anywhere from one million to four million militia

fighters all along the borders of Venezuela to resist any U.S. invasion that comes. That is, this is not somebody that's going to be intimidated, frankly. What do you make of the Wag the Dog theory? And for those few of our listeners who are not sure of what that means, it's basically a distraction and Trump loves distractions for when he's in trouble on other fronts he creates a distraction and that's what wag the dog theories are about I mean we saw it as grenada immediately after the Beirut bombing back in the early 1980s we saw it with panama we've seen it elsewhere um you know an easy war let's get in there blow everything up and uh have everybody waving the flag

do you buy that or is this more you know there's layers to this argument by the dog it's that's for sure a possibility because he's frustrated nothing is as easy as he thought it was going to be making peace between Russia and Ukraine as turned out as he admits

to be much harder than he thought there's no truth in the Middle East if anything, the situation is escalating in Gaza. So everything is hard. And he had a tough two weeks. Gigi Ping took over the international airways and nobody was paying attention to Trump. My only hesitation here, Peters, this started in July.

The forces started moving to the Caribbean in July. So this is not some spur of the moment. Let's create an incident. This has been building for two months, which makes me think it's more serious. The biggest concern is if he thinks this is an easy war, it's not that, if that's wrong, I'm going to just say flat out, that's wrong. This will not be an easy war. There are no easy wars, but this will not be one.

Of course, if you're willing to expend overwhelming force, the United States has the advantage. But that's not what Donald Trump is marketing himself as, and he's a marketer, right? He's in the final two months before the Nobel Peace nominations, which close for next year in January. He's the man who's expending all this effort trying to resolve conflicts around the world. It doesn't fit the script to start a war. I think it's just a misguided bet that Majero would buckle under the fear that there would be an invasion. Is the world saying anything about this? No.

The South American neighbors of Venezuela, are they saying anything? Well, Mediro is disliked and feared in the region. you know he there are venous when you think about the movements of people that came north Venezuelans were a large part of that as they fled the regime because there was domestic repression and there was those long caravans of people that moved north created a huge problem from Mexico as they pressed against the Mexican border and then against the US border By the way, those are gone. It's interesting that one thing we don't talk about is the fact that the pressure on the U.S. border from the south is massively diminished since Donald Trump took over.

But he's really disliked in Latin America. And there was support, there's always support for peaceful removal of a thought. authoritarian pains in the neck, which is what Maduro really is to his neighbors. But that's often not possible, unfortunately. It doesn't work that way. And I think there would be no support in Latin America for a U.S. invasion. Well, you know, as you said, the invasion forces are building.

And, you know, it's not just ships. There's a, you know, attacks up rain, supposedly in there and they're 10 or 12. What are you going to do with an attack submarine there? I don't know. I haven't figured that out yet. But it sounds good. It sounds like a movie. Yeah. You know, attack summaries are good to

attack other submarines. Yeah. Well, they're not really very useful to attack speedboats with alleged drug traders on them. Right? Well, 10 or 12, F-35 fighter jets as well and you know the Venezuelans have fighter jets they you know yes they do they buzzed one of the American warships the other day apparently so that's

when you start playing with fire yeah yeah um all this comes on the well not on the heels because as you said this has been building for the last six eight weeks um but it comes over a weekend where Trump has began the process of renaming the Department of Defense to the old Second World War term of Department of War, which made sense in the Second World War. Does it make sense or does it make any difference? Does anybody care about it happening now? Well, I care.

Okay. I do. And I'll tell you what I do. And people who pay attention to this, you know, the won't keep crowd. cares. And why do we care? There was a reason to switch from war to defense. And it came actually, it's a very interesting moment in history. It came after the United States used a nuclear weapon in Hiroshima. And the people who worked on these kinds of problems woke up and said, oh my God, this is a weapon that we can never use again. We're in the nuclear age.

And so they changed the name from the Department of War to the Department of Defense. And out of that, you know, at the whole time, people start working on deterrence and mutual assured destruction, recognizing that it would be catastrophic for the world if nuclear powers ever fought a war and through all the arguments and they're really arcane and many of them are silly frankly and the expenditure of billions of dollars on next generation nuclear weapons there was a sense we can't fight a nuclear war um it would be a last resort pete hexeth the secretary of defense I think many people would say whose background before he became Secretary of Defense is among the thinnest that we've seen in a secretary, is along with Donald Trump leading the charge. And there's a message here.

We're on offense as well as defense. That's why we want to change this. And again, it's so dissonant the two sides of Donald Trump. I'm a man of peace and I want the Nobel Prize and they owe it to me and I should have it. But oh, I want people in the world to understand the United States is ready to go to war. And that's why I want the name of this department changed. I mean, you can make the argument that, you know, a strong offense is based on a strong defense. Yes.

vice versa and that you know if you're looking for peace you've got to be able to stand up for war if you have to so if you accept that does it make it any more sense yeah i don't want to make it sound like i'm arguing for this department of war thing because to me it sounds like a kind of ronald regan second world war movie thing you know um but he never did it no in the most difficult of times through the 80s of the Cold War he never did anything like this he did not and look you can also make the argument that if you've got a strong

defense right you're prepared that's the best preparation for war you have a strong defense they're changing that argument they're saying we are going to go on the offense that that's

and Pete Hacks said that openly this week we want the world to understand that we're prepared to go to war. It's not that we are so strong in our defense that don't start up with us because we've got the best army in the world. No, no, no. They want to change the movie here.

And they want people to get the message that they're ready to go to war. So it's real, Peter. It's not just real in their heads. It's not just rhetoric. They're not just playing with words. what's your fear about what's happening with all this kind of stuff now whether it's Venezuela whether it's you know Department of War what's your fear here because you do seem you do you seem

scared not to worry worried yeah you seem worried about the way things are moving right now yes because you look around the world in the United States, for example, there's an open discussion now of war. You were in Europe this summer, Peter, and you heard in the United Kingdom, you know, a labor prime minister say, down the scale, not we're going to war, but we need to prepare for war. You know, Norway just made the largest purchase ever, and Norway's a naval country, the largest purchase ever of frigates from the United Kingdom and in explaining the decision their

minister said look we know who our adversary is our adversary is Russia and we have to be prepared to go to war now that the United States is pulling back so in Britain in the United States in Europe, in Norway, in Poland. There was open discussion now about the possibility of war. And what does that really mean? And that's why I am worried. War is thinkable again. It wasn't thinkable in Europe for 70 years.

I'm sure you invested in defense, but there was war was something that Europe had put behind no longer. And when you make war thinkable and people start planning for it, there's a much greater risk, a much greater risk, that something goes over the edge here because people make mistakes. What's thinkable? Is it like conventional war that's thinkable at this time? Or is it the worst possible?

It's conventional war. That's why the Norwegians are buying frigates, but it's taking place and that's another larger issue it's taking place Peter where

Vladimir Putin for the first time really in 2022 when his forces were being pushed back in that famous counter-offensive where the Ukrainians succeeded the only counter-offensive

where they succeeded and he was really concerned, the generals were really concerned, that Ukrainian forces would break through south and would threaten Crimea. Russian generals actively threatened to use a tactical nuclear

weapon, and not only did they threaten to do that, and the story is just now coming out, they took some of their tactical nuclear missiles out of storage and began and to move them, to send a very clear message to the United States that this was real.

It provoked very intense conversations between the United States and Russia, and you could argue that was a bluff. That's possible, but nevertheless, that's when the estimate that the Russians could use nuclear weapons, the CIA estimate went up from about 10% to 50%, which alarmed the whole national security team in the Biden administration. And the United States went out of its way to have those conversations and to reassure the Russians that there were limits on how far Ukrainian forces would be able to go, which is not what you would expect of a major ally at that time. So they took it seriously enough.

Let me just share one other words. We're actually seeing conventional attacks against nuclear countries. We haven't seen that before. India, Pakistan are doing that to each other. Nuclear weapons were supposed to stop attacks against home. homeland, right? You could fight a proxy war somewhere else, but it was going to safeguard your homeland against attack. One of the big mist stories of the Middle East, Iran attacked Israel with over 500 ballistic missiles and wasn't deterred at all by the fact that Israel has nuclear weapons. You can feel countries going up the ladder. okay well now you have us all word um as as i guess we should be um so i worry it means time for a break so we're going to do that we can i come back on but on the other side

we're going to talk about the other part of this equation which is what's happening in china we'll do that we'll do that right after this And welcome back. You're listening to The Bridge, our Monday episode with Dr. Janice Stein. The first segment was, well, it was enough to make you think about what's going on in our world today and our changing nature of our world, which is Chanis' focus every week, really. The picture that struck me the most this week was one of the ones coming out of China. as President Xi was inspecting his forces,

which if you haven't watched it, you should watch it on YouTube. It is incredible. The way he drives past this endless array of troops of all kinds that the Chinese are sporting and how precision they are on the parade ground. I'm not so sure how precision they are on a battlefield because we don't really know that,

but they certainly are on the parade ground. But the pictures of Xi and the other ones that came within hours of that of him reviewing things with Putin on one side of him and Kim Jong-un on the other side of him, that big smile on Xi's face. And that picture said to me, with all the discussion about the changing world order, that there's been a change on that side too,

because Putin looked like the puppet. He didn't look like the big guy. Yeah. In these pictures, it was clearly China's leader. Now, I guess you could argue, well, it was there a parade. But still, he looked totally in control. What's happening there? I think your read is absolutely right, Peter.

Let's talk about the precision of these armed forces for just a minute. it was riveting and you know the first time we saw that china in that kind of detail and you were there was at the opening of the Beijing Olympics right where you saw this incredible discipline don't underestimate the importance of discipline because you do not get a performance like that without people who are willing to practice practice practice and rehearse and rehearse there is a work Catholic and a discipline in China, which is astonishing, frankly. So I was struck by it too. The picture of Shiji Pank clearly at the apex with Vladimir Putin on one side,

an open now discussion of how strong those ties are. Chinese leaders have now said informally in the meetings that they have in Europe and other parts of the world. We cannot afford for Vladimir Putin to lose this war. It doesn't need to win it, but China will not stand by and let him lose the war. That's a very different China than the China that we might have known even 10 years ago.

Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-un, you know, long-time problem for China. Think back again, even to the Obama presidency, when they were willing to work with Obama in an effort to get North Korea to denuclearize, no discussion now. That's off the table. No, in no meetings, is there any requests anymore from China to Kim Jong-un, give up your nuclear forces? That's over. North Korea is now an accepted nuclear power by Russia, whom Kim Jong-un has helped, and by China. So you saw Xi Jinping not on a stride, confident, with leaders of Central Asia.

There were 26 leaders in that parade. Including Modi. Yes, Modi did not go to the parade. He went, I think, to the Shanghai Cooperation Council three days before, but embraced, Embraced, which was stunning. But you had 26 leaders beyond the usual. You had some, for instance, you had leaders from Egypt from Malaysia, from Vietnam. This is a strong. And what unifies all of these?

What unifies all of these, there's one common thread in the discussion. The world has changed. The period of U.S. hegemony, I'm using their language now for a moment, not mine, is over. And we have earned and deserve a strong voice in global affairs. This is no longer a world run by the United States. And who's helping push that agenda? It's Donald Trump, who has antagonized the president of Brazil, who has antagonized Prime Minister Modi with 50% tariffs.

What Donald Trump is doing, but the fights he's picking, he's pushing people. into the coalition that says it's time to stop the United States and to reduce its preeminence in the world. That's the tragedy of all this. Yeah. You know, we've loosely titled your segment this year, our changing world.

And I think it's pretty accurate, really, when you consider it. If you just look at the, you know, the world order of things and if you divide it into kind of two sides, on both sides, the order is changed. I mean, there's no doubt the Americans are still, well, I guess there could be some doubt, but they're clearly the most powerful military force in the world. There's no doubt about that, Peter. They are the most powerful military in the world. But in terms of that side of things, they kind of stand alone, not quite in partnership with the European countries and Canada that they used to. Yeah. And we're still altogether supposedly in NATO, even in spite of the problems that exist there.

But Europe and Canada seem to try, trying to shuffle that deck of the world order on their side of things. you know to paint a stark a picture and these things evolve and who knows how the United States will react if it's ever challenged and it needs its partners

frankly because that we haven't but to paint a stark picture the coalition who think that the United States and its allies have too large a voice in the world is growing while the coalition

that the United States has led all these years is fracturing again because of the kinds of tough economic strategies and economic pain that Donald Trump is imposing on them the vectors of change are pretty clear after eight months of Donald Trump what's left after four years if it's only four years One thing on China, before I asked the big question, the thing on China, what I refer to when I first started talking about those images that I'd seen earlier in the week, the precision of that Chinese force, I understand what you're saying, how hard that is to achieve and how impressive it is and all that. But does it translate, is there any evidence that it could translate onto the battlefield? No.

It's really interesting. The evidence goes the other way, right? Funnily enough, because our battlefields is changing. Along with the precision of the armed force, I paid attention to two small things in that parade, which a lot of people, frankly, might have missed. What is they displayed new undersea drones, right? Why do I care? about undersea drones.

I care because because we are on the verge of buying submarines, big, big, expensive kit, whereas the Chinese are already developing cheap, you know, autonomous weapons that can spot identify. And I don't think we're far off. target these bigger submarines that move underwater even if they're quiet and even if they're selling the Chinese are doing this they have crewless combat aircraft Peter a few of those

were in that parade to just think about that right so one of the things the Chinese are investing in at a massive scale is next generation autonomous weapon And that's the yin and the yank of what we saw in Beijing. These highly disciplined troops are not the best fighters. And why aren't they? Because they're used to taking orders. They follow the rules. And a lot of warfare is now devolved down to platoons in which battlefields are increasingly complex.

They're shaped by drones. The drones and the autonomous weapons are going in first. And behind them, you need very sophisticated operators who will seize an opportunity. And if they wait for the order, the opportunity is gone. That's not the kind of soldier that the parade we saw is likely to produce, frankly. You know, one of the reasons the Ukrainians are as good as they are under the awful conditions that they are, they're real disciplined. right and they're creative and they take the initiative and they do it and they check back later that's the opposite of what of the parade we saw ambition okay mass matters yeah mass matters and

that's what the ukrainians are discovering i mean they have no choice in all of this peter they were attacked but mass matters and nobody has mass like the chinese and nobody masses like the Chinese. Okay, here's my final question. You and I grew up in the post-second World War era where it was pretty, it quickly developed into a pretty straightforward situation. You had the Soviets and their allies against the Americans and their allies. And that was it. That stayed that way pretty well until the 90s. Right. And now, generation, later, you know, our kids and our grandkids and eventually our great grandkids are growing up in a much different era. The situation looks much different. At least I think it does.

You tell me, and if you agree, what is it that they're looking at now? I do agree with you that it was much different. I always say anybody who grew up, from 1962 to 2000, grew up in the best period that we've known because of what the chance of war, great power war, was reduced. Once we survived the Cuban Missile Crisis and they learned the rules of the road, yeah, there were some performative stuff, but really there was almost no prospect, short of an accident of a great power war. Great power wars are awful, Peter. You know, I know you've been all over the battlefields of Europe and you've seen the carnage and that would be nothing compared to what we would experience

were there ever to be the catastrophe of a great power war again. We're now seeing two things that I think have changed and make me worry about my grandchildren and what kind of world they're going to inherit from all of us. One is the fracturing. It's easier to manage a conflict between two powers than it is. When there are multiple powers, the lines of communication get clogged. There's more room for misunderstanding.

You actually need much better diplomats in the more complicated world. And we have fewer of those and we're disinvesting. in there's just so much more noise. It's a more complicated traffic problem to manage, right? If you have a two-lane highway, that's different from managing a roundabout of the kind that you have in the United Kingdom where multiple lanes are feeding in and out.

And we're in that second world now. And the second one was the issue we talked about earlier. The memories of Great Power War are fading. You know, if I could do one thing in my remaining years at U of T, I would make it compulsory for everybody to learn the history of World War I and World War II because the U.S. 60 million people died in 30 years. And generations of young men wiped out in France, in Britain, in Germany, in Russia. and Russia and China paid a very high price too. China had 20 million dead, and that was part of the story of this parade

that we haven't talked about. But those are forgotten. By and large, and especially concerning to me, they're not forgotten in Russia. And in China, the Chinese spent the whole year making movies about World War II

and the costs that that, imposed on China and the heroic role of China and resisting the Japanese. Where's the equivalent in the United States, in Canada, in Britain, in France? Germany, of course, can't do it. Italy can't do it. And when the memories fade of how awful war is, that's when you get a department renamed, the Department of Defense, the Department of War. All right.

And of all those millions, you know, who we lost in the two great wars, one and two, over 100,000 were Canadian. Yeah. We have stories to tell and can't tell enough in terms of reminding those of our history, especially those who aren't really too much aware of it at this point. And, you know, there's often resistance to telling war. more stories of the past. And, you know, I faced that, CBC, when we were trying to do certain things.

We won eventually, and we were able to tell the stories we wanted to tell. But they shouldn't stop. You know, we're going to keep telling those stories. All right. You know, as you're saying that, well, last comment, Peter, we were saying earlier that defense is the breast preparation for offense. I would say telling war stories to each generation is the best way to avoid more. It's part of that defense in a way.

Yeah. All right. We're going to leave it at that. Another fascinating conversation. Thank you for this, Janice. And thank you, Peter. We'll look towards next week. Cheers.

Dr. Janice Stein, our regular Monday guest here on the bridge. and it was great to hear so many of you write in last week saying how wonderful it was for you to hear Dr. Stein again after a summer off for all of us. Mondays are Dr. Janice Stein territory and we're lucky to have her with us one more time this year and she'll be with us again next week as I said. All right, we have, well, we're almost at a time

so I want to quickly give you a reminder. The question of the week is, this. Canadians, including many of you, decided to vote for Mark Carney in the April election. And as a result, he won. It was a minority government, a strong minority government, but a minority government nonetheless. In the months since then, as he pushes forward on a lot of the promises he made, he's also retreated a bit on some of the promises that he's made over time. many of those are on the environmental front so the question of the week is

has Mark Carney retreated too much for you that doesn't mean you have to have voted for him to make an answer to that question no matter which way you voted you probably can tackle that question which once again is did Mark Carney has Mark Carney and the Carney government retreated

too much for you beyond what you thought you were going to get on the election. I want your answers before 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday. 75 words or fewer. Include your name and your location that you're writing from. And you write to The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. Thanks so much for listening today.

We'll be back tomorrow with the first of our Alternate Tuesday panels with Rob Russo and Althea Raj. Look forward to that coming up tomorrow. Once again, thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansfield. We'll talk to you again in less than 24 hours.