The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Losing Trust For Some Sun? Is it Really Worth It?

Episode Date: January 4, 2021

And why I think Trump is really trying to overturn the election results.

and hello there peter mansbridge here the latest episode of the bridge daily hey it's 2021 we made it we're here in the new year of 2021. And this, in fact, is the first episode of the Bridge Daily recorded in 2021. That's one way of looking at it. Another way of looking at it is it's Monday of week 43. 43, if you're new to us, is the number of weeks we've been doing the Bridge Daily through the COVID crisis. Started in, I guess, around mid-March of 2020. And here we are, still rocking. And still trying to tell you stories that make a difference, that matter. Give you some perspective and context into the weeks and the days developments.

Also, we have been watching, of course, the story that continues to unfold south of the border. We've got features and we will continue on with them throughout this year. Wednesdays is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Joins us every week, almost always from Ottawa, where he's based with Abacus Data. Fridays, and we'll get back at it this week after having the last couple of Fridays off. Fridays is your day, really. It's the day for your letters and thoughts

and comments and questions. So don't be shy. Send them in. And I know most of you aren't, and it's wonderful when we get letters from people who haven't written before. That doesn't prevent people who have written before from writing, but we are always looking for new contributors to our Friday program, which is kind of a mailbag of sorts. So whatever's on your mind, don't be shy about sending it along.

And the address is themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com. All right. Let's get into our first topic for a new year as we fade out that music. Okay. You know, there are two words that are really key to the success of both a politician's life and a journalist's life. You've got to have these two words working for you,

or it's really hard to be successful in your work. And here are the two words. They both start with T, and they both have five letters in them. So two five-letter T words. The first one is truth. And the second one, which actually leads from truth, is trust. Okay, so whether you're a politician or a journalist, you want to have those two working for you, truth and trust. Now, truth has been a word that's been battered around

for the last four or five years. And you know why. Because there's been a president of the United States who actually doesn't really care about the truth. He's developed, remember his book, The Art of the Deal? Well, he has a new kind of a book, The Art of the Lie. And boy, nobody tells lies like he does. He tells them all the time, up and down to the point where I don't think he even thinks twice about them. He just tells them.

And he believes in the art of the lie because he believes the art of the lie is going to get you places. That if you tell lies enough, people will believe the lie is the truth. Which, of course, it isn't. So I could sit here, and you could sit there, or stand there, walk there, ride your bike there, wherever you happen to be today,

and we could go on for hours talking about various lies that he has told over the last four or five years. And every time one happens, you go, man, he's not going to get away with this one. And of course, he gets away with it anyway. Because a lot of people believe him. Obviously, more than 70 million believed him and enough to vote for him in the November 3rd election. Trouble was, a lot more voted for Joe Biden, a lot more.

It was a blowout. However, the battle continues, with the art of the lie author using whatever he can to try and push his belief that the election was rigged that it was fixed

that he got cheated and the last example of this has just been over the last couple of days I'm sure you've heard many excerpts already from this tape. Of this conversation that Donald Trump it happened on Saturday, two days ago,

had with state officials in Georgia, one of the states he's trying to flip, where Trump, the President of the United States, begged, bluffed, bullied, you name it, did them all to Georgia state officials to try and get them to basically cheat. Change the numbers. Just change the numbers. Give me some more votes. Just give them to me.

And we'll turn Georgia around. Not that that would change the results of the overall election, but it would change one state, and who knows, then they'd move on to the next one. Anyway, the Georgia state officials, who are Republican, may I add, deserve the Presidential Medal of Freedom, as opposed to the two clowns who are going to get it this week, because they stood up to Donald Trump and they said,

no, Mr. President, you're wrong. Your facts are wrong. And they refused to change. Anyway, I'm going to talk a little more later in this podcast today about why I see the reasons for Trump doing what Trump's doing. Because I think it's got more to do with his deep belief that he was cheated. But I'll talk about that later because this podcast is not about that. This podcast actually is about Canada and what's been going on here for the last week. Because it relates to those same two five-letter T words, truth and trust.

Once again, as I said, politicians and journalists need both those words working for them. You've got to deliver the truth to have the trust. And when you falter on the truth, you're going to lose the trust. So, how does that example play out here? Well, it plays out here by what seems like a never-ending drumbeat of examples of politicians in this country

who are losing the trust of the people, or have lost the trust of the people, or have lost the trust of the people. Now, a couple of things to keep in mind here, before I get into this. And I was reminded of this by reading a tweet on the weekend, on Saturday I think it was, by Gerald Butts. I remember Gerald Butts, who was the former Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau. Now, Jerry Butts is somebody who has

a former guest on this podcast, actually, a couple of months ago. He's got a deep background in politics. He worked in the Ontario government and was one of the chief advisors to the former premier, Dalton McGinty. Eventually went federal and helped Justin Trudeau not only win the leadership, but win the election, two elections actually. He's now out of the prime minister's office and is working privately. But Gerald Butts has a deep background in politics and certainly understands this theory about truth

and trust, and he understands what a scandal is, because he's seen them up close. He's been involved in trying to negotiate ways out of scandals, trying to defend positions. And he resigned in the middle of one, as you may recall just a couple of years ago. Now, here's what he had to say in his tweet on the weekend when these stories started tumbling out about politicians of different political stripes who were caught acting in ways that they weren't publicly advocating

in terms of the lockdown on the coronavirus, on COVID-19. Don't travel, stay at home. Well, these politicians were doing the opposite. They were saying that, but they personally were doing things differently. So on Saturday, Jerry Butts tweets, Some perspective. About 1,100 people are elected to represent their communities in Ottawa and provincial capitals and territorial capitals.

Eight of them are being justifiably pilloried for putting their own interests above the public interest this Christmas. That means 99% did the right thing. Now, he wrote that on Saturday. Well, since he wrote that, the numbers have increased. I think more than doubled, and I won't give a number because it seems to be going up every hour or two, where somebody admits, well, actually, you know, I went to Arizona,

or I went to Greece, or I went to Hawaii, or I went wherever I went. I went against the wishes of my government, against the things I had asked my constituents not to do. I was a culprit. But still, the point that Jerry's making is true, right? The overwhelming majority of politicians did the right thing. They did what they were saying they would do.

But an increasing number clearly did not. So it is context and it is perspective that one should keep in mind. I like to say, you know, and I've said it for years, that in my five decades of journalism, I've met and covered a lot of politicians, and the overwhelming majority are good, decent people. You may not agree with them on what their policies are, but you do admire them for the fact that they believe in public service, and they're willing to fight for what they believe in. So I've always made that argument as well. However, there is no question that over these past few days,

in an issue so red button, hot button, as the issues surrounding the lockdowns and restrictions placed on Canadians because of the coronavirus, that people are upset about what they're witnessing on the part of some of their elected politicians. And let's keep in mind, we're talking about all parties here, and there have been examples from conservatives, high-profile resignation, firing, if you wish, because that's actually what it sounds like, although it's portrayed as a resignation. Rod Phillips, the former Minister of Finance in Ontario on Thursday or Friday,

and Doug Ford basically asked him to leave the cabinet, and he did. So high-profile conservatives. There have been others in Alberta. There's been an NDP federal member, Nikki Ashton from Manitoba, who's had her caucus responsibilities taken away from her because she traveled at the same time that she and her party were saying don't travel. So there have been conservatives, NDP, and liberals. And as I said earlier, it seems like every hour more names come forward as people say, well, you know, I better confess. Now, here's what I don't understand about a lot of these situations.

They're all wrong because they conflict with what they were saying publicly and asking others like us to do. The rules didn't apply to them, apparently. Here's what I don't get. In some cases, clearly, these politicians sitting in their offices with their staff, their advisors sitting around them went, okay, so how are we going to handle this? Because, you know, I am going to go to Arizona over the holidays. And I know I'm not supposed to, but I'm going to because it's important to me and my family needs the break. How are we going to deal with this? And somebody says, hey, why don't you arrange to have tweets sent out every couple of days and you can set these up so they go off like an alarm clock. You can, you know, set them up so they're released at a certain time.

That talks about, you know, have a great Christmas, have a great holiday. It's hard for all of us given the circumstances, blah, blah, blah. And it will leave the impression that you're here. And if you want to go one step further, why don't you do a video? Before you leave, and we'll release it on Christmas Eve. Really? Really? Really.

That is what some did. So it was deception at its highest level. These are the people who are trying for our trust because we're assuming they're telling us the truth. But that is not what happened. Not in these cases. Now, Jerry Butts is right. May only be in double figures compared with the quadruple figures of the number of elected officials there are in the country at federal, provincial, territorial level.

But, I'm sorry, it just doesn't look good on anybody. You know the old saying about how a rotten apple can contaminate the whole barrel. There's some truth in that. And this will take some time for people to get over it, if they ever get over it. You know what? It kind of goes beyond that. It goes beyond just the reputation of individual political figures. It goes to the fight we're in, the battle against COVID.

There's a piece in The Guardian in the last i think it was over this weekend by daisy fan court it's an opinion piece and daisy's argument is basically people started breaking covet rules when they saw those with privilege ignore them. Okay, so she's talking about the situation in Britain, but my gosh, it's so familiar. I want to read a couple of parts of this opinion piece because it's good. Compliance has been one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented concepts of this pandemic. During the first wave of the virus back in the spring of last year, there was concern that a lengthy lockdown would lead to a behavioral fatigue and diminishing

compliance with social restrictions. In fact, behavioral fatigue was not a scientific concept, but a political one, neither supported by research from previous epidemics, nor by data that subsequently emerged from our lockdown. Over 97%, this is British figures, showed good compliance with the rules, with no meaningful decrease from March to May. During emergencies, humans are actually primed to act in the collective interest, as we saw from the sacrifices made by people in the spring of 2020 across the UK.

And we saw that a lot across Canada as well. It was only as lockdown was eased that compliance began to decrease. Partly, people felt the situation was safer, but other factors contributed too. For many, the new rules were simply too complex to understand. While during lockdown, 90% of adults in the UK reported feeling they understood the rules, by August, this figure was just 45% in England. Conflicting rules across UK nations, frequent changes to the rules, and confusion about dates of announcement as opposed to dates of implementation

exacerbated the situation. We saw much the same here because of the differences in different provinces, which still exist today. Now, here's a direct comparison. But the message from the government about adherence also changed after the revelations about the actions of Dominic Cummings, which were followed by a decrease in compliance. Now I'm sure many of you know who Dominic Cummings is, but for those of you who don't, Dominic Cummings was kind of like Boris Johnson's Gerald Butts. He was the Prime Minister of his cabinet and Dominic Cummings were appealing for people to stay at home, don't travel.

Dominic Cummings went off on a big travel trip of his own in his car with his family across Britain, across the parts of England anyway. Now, returning to that single event, says the Guardian, might seem like bearing a grudge, but it was pivotal for many reasons. During lockdown, the message on compliance was clear. Social restrictions were vital to stop the spread of the virus, so everyone had to play their part.

No excuses, no exemptions. But Cummings changed the tone. If he could find a loophole in the rules, which he argued he had, the opposition didn't agree with this, by the way, it somehow became acceptable and defensible to break the rules. The enemy changed from being the virus itself

to being the measures designed to curb the virus. the Dominic Cummings moment, changed the way many Brits looked at lockdown restrictions. So, maybe it can just be one person out of hundreds, if not thousands, who in a very public way breaks the rules and have an impact on everything and directly have an impact on the trust people place in their public officials. So let me just read the conclusion of this Guardian piece. Finally, compliance needs to be modeled as the norm. Currently, nine in ten people, this is British numbers once again, think they are complying more than the average.

News headlines that tens of millions follow the rules are understandably less exciting than stories of police raids on raves and other infringements. But we need to beware, implying that the actions of a minority represent the behaviors of the entire population. Modeling good compliance is the responsibility of us all. So as we start to practice our New Year's resolutions, let's let this be the top of all of our lists and let this be the resolution that we work hardest to keep. And that resolution is compliance. So I think that's an interesting way of looking at the story that we're watching unfolding here in Canada over this last, well, mostly the last week.

And we don't know whether we're at the end of it. We don't know whether there are going to be more examples of this. We don't know whether there will be more examples of high profile people who while saying one thing did in fact do something very different. Impacting the people's trust in them based on their belief that they didn't tell the truth.

Truth and trust. Two five-letter T words that can make such a difference in politics and, as I said, in journalism. I didn't touch on journalism on this little rant here, but I think it's easy enough for you to make the conclusions. I've talked about them before. If we in my business don't have the trust of those who listen or watch or read us

because they don't believe we're telling them the truth, then we're not accomplishing very much, are we? All right. I did mention that I wanted to say something about my belief in what Donald Trump's up to because I don't think even he's as stupid as to think that he can overturn this election. Even those who are siding with him this week for various political reasons will say privately to journalists, and they do, that there's no chance that the election result is going

to be overturned, that on January 20th, Joe Biden will be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States. So why is Trump doing this? Well, Trump is desperate. He's desperate to try to find any possible angle that could either delay, prevent, reorder elections in certain states that could make a difference overall. And why is he desperate? He's desperate because he is wide open to charges on a number of fronts at 12.01 in the afternoon on January 20th. He loses presidential immunity to federal charges at that time and on that date.

Now, he could pardon himself, but as we all know, pardons, which is debatable whether he can pardon himself, but let's assume he can. If he can, they're only good for federal charges. They're not good for state charges. And it is the state, especially the state of New York, that is investigating him deeply on his financial situation. And from everything you hear from those in one of the other most overused phrases of the time, the Trump orbit, is that he's very much afraid

of what could happen on those charges. He could be charged, apparently, if you listen to the lawyers today, on this whole conversation he had with the state officials in Georgia, that it's an abuse of power, he's trying to interfere with the election results

by ordering or asking or begging, choose your verb state officials in Georgia to change the numbers you know, just get in there with an eraser and rub out what you've got and put in some new numbers that'll let me win. It's mind-blowing.

But to me, that's what he's after. It's a one-last-ditch effort to avoid the possibility of going to jail. So we'll see. Who knows Alright There you go We've started 2021 With a little lesson about truth and trust And some of my theories

Of course I'm the guy who told you On November 4th Don't listen to all this malarkey about Trump trying to prevent the inauguration from happening. He's going to roll over and it'll all happen. If it hasn't rolled over yet, but I still believe it will happen. Okay, that's it for episode but I still believe it will happen. Okay. That's it for episode one of 2021.

The Monday of week 43, as we open up 2021 on the bridge daily, the week ahead, as I said at the top of the podcast today, we'll include the normals. Bruce will be with us on Wednesday for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. And on Friday, it's your day. So start thinking. Looking forward, you can write about anything.

It's better if you keep them shorter and to the point. And we'd love to hear from new people. We always do. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. The Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You can still pick up your copy of the book, Extraordinary Canadians, and it had a wonderful run in the weeks leading up to the holiday season.

And, you know, it was number one. It was only on the charts for six weeks. It was only on the bookshelves for six weeks. And it was number one for them, number two, the other two. And it's still there now, although I'm told a couple of places are sold out, which doesn't surprise me. It did extremely well. But you can still get your copies. And I did send out a

whole bunch more book plates over the holidays. I'm just about out of them. So keep that in mind because when they're gone this time, they're gone. But, you know, I'll be around the country out and about as soon as this pandemic is over. And if I'm speaking somewhere and you come by, I'll absolutely sign it then. All right, that's it for this day one of 2021. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks awfully much for listening. It's been a treat to be able to talk to you again.

And we'll do it all over again in 24 hours.