The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Lies In, Lies Out

Episode Date: January 18, 2021

Welcome to week #45 and goodbye to President #45. The "art of the lie" is over, or is it?

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge on this week 45 since our existence since our daily existence. Week 45. You know, I've been trying to decide of late whether we should keep on going with this week thing and having the numeric attached to what week we're in. I figure we'll at least keep it going to week 52 when we do the one-year anniversary of the bridge and this slot dealing with COVID and Trump and Biden and who knows what. We'll keep them all going.

So week 45, we begin. Welcome to week 45. Welcome to Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. Hope you had that opportunity to somehow get out. You know, I looked at my Instagram feed over the weekend and a lot of friends of mine who I follow did in fact get out and were walking in the snow

and going to places with their kids or with their pets, they gave them a break. Kept the social distancing rules, but got some fresh air at the same time. Well, good for you if you were able to achieve that, follow all the rules. The protocols, as they say.

All right. You know, a number of times in my career, you have probably heard me say on television, on radio, and on this podcast, quote an old saying, and that saying is this. I'll never lie to you, but don't assume that means I'm telling you the truth. So where's that old saying come from? I didn't come up with it, but it's a pretty good one,

actually, when you think about it. And as far as I can do in tracing it, and you know, I've tried all the normal ways you try to trace these old quotes. The way it was handed down to me was that it came out of the time of the Boer War, late 1800s, early 1900s. And it was a British general or major who was briefing the media, the press corps that was covering the war. And at one point, he used that phrase. He said, I will never lie to you, but don't assume that means I'm telling you the truth. So what was he really saying there?

He was saying, he was talking about, I guess, spin, right? I'm not going to lie to you, but be very careful about what I do tell you. Because it's obviously coming from the perspective and the context we want to place the events in that we're talking about. Now, that's a good saying to keep in mind, and I've always kept it in mind at times of conflict and in covering situations where troops have been involved

and various forces from different countries have been involved and we're watching different briefings, and those briefings could be, you the defense department in Ottawa they could be the defense department in the United Kingdom they could be at the Pentagon in Washington and you want to say I believe what they're telling me but maybe they're shading it a little bit so I should be careful not to assume that what they're shading it a little bit. So I should be careful not to assume that what they're telling me is the truth. Now, set aside the big lies like the Iraq War and weapons of mass destruction.

But in other conflicts, there are certain ways that the countries put forward their positions. But conflicts, wars, battles are one thing. The day-to-day business of government, of business, of whatever the profession, it's still not a bad thing to keep in mind. I'll never lie to you, but don't assume that means I'm telling you the truth. You know, my experience with press secretaries, communications directors, mainly within the political world,

but not just in the political world. It's always been that these people, these men and women who are in those roles, keep in mind, they're not there to serve you as journalists. They're there to serve their bosses. They're trying to put things in the best light possible. Sometimes that's easy. They're announcing a triumph or a victory of some kind in their field.

Other times, it's difficult because they're trying to defend their position. And obviously, they're going to try to put it in the best light possible. So it's up to journalists to look at some of these claims with a certain jaundiced eye and to ensure that while they accept they're not being lied to, they may not be being told the whole truth. I've had relationships with press secretaries and communications directors go really sour. Because in fact I was lied to. I can remember, and this goes back a long way, being lied to by a provincial premier, one of this particular premier's top aides, to try and get me to report things a certain way.

I was young, I was naive, and I believed. I reported it, and of course the next day had to change the story to reflect the truth. I never trusted that person again on anything ever but I've also had great relationships with people in those positions we had one on the program on the podcast just a couple of weeks ago Andrew McDougal who was Stephen Harper's director of communications for a while on the podcast just a couple of weeks ago. Andrew McDougall, who was Stephen Harper's Director of Communications for a while.

And while we often didn't agree on certain things, I never thought, never thought that he lied to me. The same with any number of press secretaries, directors of communication. I use the two words, they're different jobs, but they're in the same lane, really. And I had great relationships with some of those people who worked for various liberal prime ministers over the years,

dating right back to Pat Gossage, who worked for Pierre Trudeau, who was a former CBC radio producer and understood there was perhaps nobody better at putting out spin than Pat Gossage. But he didn't lie, at least didn't lie to me. Or at least if he did lie to me, then I never realized that he lied to me. So he was really good at it. Anyway, most of my relationships have been good ones on that front. Which just brings us to you know what.

And fitting the bill on the title of today's podcast, which is Lies In, Lies Out. We're talking about the soon-to-be completed term of Donald Trump and his administration on the White House. There's a pretty good piece in the bulwark in the last couple of days. It's called An Administration Bookended by Lies. Now, the bulwark doesn't make any secret about the fact it does not like Donald Trump. It's a lot of Republicans, former Republicans, conservatives, who have taken a very aggressive stand against Donald Trump.

Anyway, in this article, Administration Bookended by Lies, it's written by one of the members of the White House Press Corps. And if you ever watched any of the briefings over the last four years, you will see this chap every once in a while. His name is Brian Karam. Reporter, author, and not shy when he gets up and challenges whoever the press secretary at the time happens to be.

So he writes this column. I'm going to read a couple of excerpts from it because it's really good in describing what's been going on for the last four years. I've told the story before about how on the very first weekend I was there in Washington for the inauguration of Donald Trump and my feelings about the whole situation that unfolded around the issue about how many people were at the inauguration. And I saw that as a harbinger of the future, that it was a lie and what that told, if they were going to lie about something like that, what wouldn't they lie about?

Anyway, Brian Karam starts off his piece. The essence of Donald Trump's term as president boils down to just two press briefings that bookend his administration. On the Trump administration's first full day in office, Press Secretary Sean Spicer entered the White House's Brady briefing room. It was named after Jim Brady, who was shot during the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan back in March of 1981. Brady was shot, took a bullet, was paralyzed, but lived, and they named the briefing room in the White House after Jim Brady.

Anyway, Spicer entered the Brady briefing room and eagerly debased himself. With accompanying photographs, Spicer told us, this is Brian Karam talking on behalf of the press gallery, press corps. Spicer told us to ignore what our eyes told us and believe that Trump had the largest inaugural crowd in history. He said it with a straight face. He took no questions. The whole thing took less than six minutes. I remember turning to another reporter and saying, well, we know where this is going.

And Brian Karam was right. He forecast exactly what was likely to happen in the days, weeks, months, years ahead under Donald Trump. As he says, since that time, it's been a steady stream of lies. I think the Washington Post has counted it out at an average of 50 false or misleading claims a day. Can you imagine?

I mean, it's mind-boggling. He says, Karam writes, I and others tried on numerous occasions to call Trump out on those lies. For almost three years, he never set foot in the briefing room to answer our questions. His favorite way of communicating with the press was on the South Lawn as he walked to the noisily whirring Marine One, that's the helicopter. These chopper talk

episodes were easy for Trump to control. He could ignore the questions he didn't like, looking angrily at whoever asked them, and pushes lies with relative impunity as reporters found it hard to follow up on their own questions, let alone anyone else's. Now, in fairness, Trump was not the first person to do that. Ronald Reagan was the first person to do that. I remember those days in the early 80s when Reagan would felt, his people felt that he was getting cornered in some of these press scrums each day. And so he should walk all the way out to the helicopter

with the rotors going, creating a lot of noise. And whenever he was, a question was shouted at him, usually by Sam Donaldson, who had the loudest voice of any reporter, ABC correspondent, and everybody could hear what he said, but Reagan would have that confused look on his face. He'd look back at the press corps guy, put his hand up to his ear as if, I can't hear you, I can't hear you, and then turn around and get on the helicopter.

Well, Trump finessed that a little bit and did as Brian Karam described. He took the questions he wanted and ignored the ones he didn't. So moving on in the press secretary career of Donald Trump, skip a few paragraphs from Brian Karam's great piece here. Spicer was notorious for his activity in the briefing room, but so was his successor, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Both lied repeatedly. Sanders even admitted to the FBI during the Mueller investigation that she lied to the press. Stephanie Grisham, Trump's third press secretary, was the only Trump appointee who never lied in the briefing room. That's because she never held a briefing. That's as

good as Trump's White House ever got. The worst, this is still Brian, the worst was his last press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany. In her first briefing, she promised never to lie to the American people. That was her first lie. And it was followed by a litany of QAnon conspiracy theories, as well as mendacious and corrosive missiles, missives, lacking in humor and humanity. Her standard bill of fare included a five-minute introductory statement in which she'd insulted Democrats, the press, or someone else the president was on about. Then she'd take five or six questions from mostly friendly media before making another

statement in which she worshipped Donald Trump. And then she'd leave. So that's a snapshot of what the press has dealt with for the last four years in the Trump White House. The article goes on much longer, and you should, if you're interested, you might want to grab it because it's pretty good. I'll read a little bit of the conclusion in a moment. But this obviously raises the question, what's the Biden White House going

to be like in terms of its dealing with the media? And how important is that daily exchange between the media and the White House? We don't really have anything like it in Canada. There have only been on a few rare occasions where the press secretary or the director of communications for the prime minister, whoever that prime minister has been, has had not only a regular briefing, but any briefing at all. I can remember during the Mulroney time, Bill Fox was put out there a couple of times to speak to the media and people for some reason didn't like that. They said, if you've got something to say, you should have the prime minister say it.

So that didn't work out too well. Through COVID, the prime minister, through his daily briefings at different times during the COVID story, has been accessible. The media argues not enough and not willing to take a wide array of questions that are asked. and there's always arguments about how the press secretary's office responds to the requests from journalists for information, that they're too slow, they get ignored, they're not told everything. The media loves to be fed. And the communications offices, whether it's for the government or a cabinet minister or the opposition leaders, knows that giving them the odd hamburger

is not a bad way to keep them happy. And so you spin that hamburger the way you want it. You cook it the way you want it. So there's always some tension there. In the States, it is definitely different. There's a tradition that goes back decades of where the press secretary is available to the media, sometimes on a daily basis. It used to be at like 1 o'clock or 1.30 in the afternoon,

to explain what the president had been up to that day, what the president was going to be up to, answer questions on various issues and policies that the government of the day is dealing with. Now, that's totally fallen apart through the Trump years. So it's an interesting question, a legitimate question to ask. What will it be like under Biden? So here's how Brian concludes before I give you my thoughts on how I think the Biden operation will work. Trump leaves office a small and insignificant man with a bunch of angry and delusional followers

he has easily and thoroughly manipulated. He claims he's lost his ability to communicate since many social media platforms have shown him the door. Twitter, after all, was his go-to crutch. He could preach on Twitter with little or no accountability. We couldn't ask him in real time to clarify, expand, or explain his tweets. Millions of people clicked the Like heart button, supplying the instant gratification that he craved. But in losing Twitter, Trump has hardly lost his voice. And despite his claims, he certainly hasn't had his First Amendment rights compromised.

As the head of our government, Trump has an ability to communicate far greater than anyone else on the planet. He can walk into the East Room, Rose Garden, Oval Office, or Diplomatic Room and hold a formal press conference anytime he wants. He also can and does produce videos, which can be released on the White House website and be seen by anyone in the world. Those options might take a little preparation in order for Trump to speak, but he also has a bully bullpen that's even easier to climb into.

All he has to do is walk into the Brady briefing room, as he has at times before. In less than a week, we will no longer have to listen to Trump rattle. Until then, we need to hear him, even if we don't want to do so. But as the first press briefing with Spicer showed us, and as the last briefing with McEnany showed us, don't expect much. Don't expect facts. Expect corrosive toxins and nothing else. All right. So I've read a number of excerpts from Brian Karam's piece. It's in the bulwark. Brian's a senior White House correspondent for, wait for it, Playboy magazine.

He successfully sued Trump to keep his press pass after Trump tried to suspend it. He's also gone to jail to defend a reporter's right to keep confidential sources. So what will Biden do? I think Biden will try to erase the past in terms of the relationship between the press and the administration of the White House, and try to make things, I was going to say congenial, but I don't mean that, more informative for the public. The public wants to understand what's going on. The press are there to try and find out what's going on and move that message forward. And the administration at least claims in its opening days that it wants to be

transparent and show what it's doing, how it's doing it. So let's see how long that lasts. There's always a natural tension between the media and the government, and that's okay. And we'll see that play out as well over these next days and weeks. But it's an important part of any democratic institution. The ability for the media to question those in power about what they're doing and how they're doing it.

And it's just as important that the media then reflects in an accurate, unbiased way what they discover. All of us can only hope that that's what happens now in the days ahead in Washington and what we've witnessed in the last four years will be put behind us. But as I said at the top of this podcast, keep in mind that old saying because it's a good one to have pinned on the wall.

I will never lie to you, but don't assume that means I'm telling you the truth. All right. There's your day one of week 45 coming up tomorrow, which is the day before the inauguration. What do we do? Well, I can tell you one of the things we're going to do and tell you the story, the history of the Bible and how it's, not the history of the Bible,

but the history of how the Bible is used on inauguration days in the United States. Some presidents have their hand on a Bible. Some do not. not? Well, we'll tell you what Biden's going to do, but we'll also track it through the history of this because it's an interesting history. So we'll do that and obviously whatever else is going on that is of interest tomorrow. Wednesday, special program on truth mirrors, smoke mirrors and the truth. You know, can't you see I'm always trying to get truth up to there to the front, get it to the front of the line.

Smoke mirrors and the truth, Bruce Anderson will join us from Ottawa, but so will Ian Bremmer will join us from New York. Ian's the president of the Eurasia Group and has his focus on the relationship between the United States and the rest of the world. Because you know that as much as Americans will be sitting there listening to the inauguration speech on Wednesday. So will those, obviously in Canada, but also around the world. And there's a lot at stake here that we're all going to be impacted by. So what is Joe Biden inheriting as he takes over this country, the United States, as president?

And what does the rest of the world, what are they looking at? What do they see as his challenges, his strengths and his weaknesses, in trying to deal with what he inherits? So that's an important story. And Ian Bremmer is one of the best people in the world to talk about it in terms of how that's going to play out. So he's going to join us on Wednesday to talk about that. And I'm really looking forward to that conversation. Friday, the end of the week, will be

the weekend special. And the weekend special, it's success, which has always been determined by your reaction, your questions and thoughts and comments. So don't be shy.

Anytime this week you've got things on your mind, drop me a line at themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. I haven't thought of anything in particular in terms of a focus. I like to think, you know, if you watch the inauguration speech, why don't you look for the line? What will be the line?

Remember Kennedy? Even if I was alive at the time, many of you were not. But you've read about it. Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. That and many other lines in the Kennedy speech. So will there be a line that will be remembered over time from this speech? Well, listen to it.

Watch it. Read it. And tell me if there's a phrase that you think will stand the test of time. Just like Kennedy's words have done. All right. So that's a glimpse of the week ahead. Looking forward to it. as I always do. And at some point this week, we'll give you the details on what's happening with the bridge.

And what impact, if any, that will have on you and how you receive the bridge each day. In the meantime, I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening, as always. And as always, we'll be back in 24 hours. Thank you.