The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth -- One Of Our Best Pods Yet IMHO!

Episode Date: January 6, 2021

Bruce, me and former Harper Director of Communications Andrew MacDougall do a deep dive on the meaning of the Trump era.

and hello there peter mansbridge here latest episode of the bridge daily it's wednesday so that means the podcast within a podcast smoke mirrors and the truth we got a special one today bruce anderson of course is in ottawa we a special guest who we'll tell you about in a second, joining us from London, England. But let me start with this to kind of set the scene. If you've been watching Joe Biden in the last couple of months, there's a consistency to the end of his speeches. He usually, you know he's getting around to the wrap-up of the speech when he comes up with his line of,

in America, anything's possible. Now, all politicians have these kind of lines. They're kind of political cliches that have been used for years and years. You know, Trump likes to say that make America great again was his idea, was his phrase. He came up with it. It's been around forever. American presidents, other ones have used it. Canadian prime ministers have used the same.

I can remember Joe Clark in 1979, made Canada great again. So anyway, lots of people have used them and lots of people have used it in America, anything's possible. But hearing him say that two nights ago and then watching what's happened in the last 24 hours is quite something. Because here you have, in the state of Georgia, you have an African-American winning one of the Senate seats for the Democrats.

One of the two Senate seats in Georgia. Never happened before. The other is won by the son of a Jewish immigrant. Now, you take those two things together, and it's like 10 years ago, people would tell a joke, one imagines, about, hey, did you hear the one about the black and the Jew who ran for Senate in Georgia? Well, that's what happened last night. And at least one, the African-American, is the winner.

And in the second case, they're still counting, but it certainly looks like the son of a Jewish immigrant is going to win the other seat. So really, if you have that happen in Georgia, the deep south, deep red, then maybe, you know, anything is possible. It's quite the time that we're watching unfold in the U.S. All this at the same time as we're doing this podcast, there's this crazy Senate

hearing going on in Washington where a small group of loyal to Donald Trump Republican senators are basically trying to overthrow the results of the November election. It's not going to happen. It's not going to be successful, but it's happening in terms of an event going on today, and it'll be televised off and on throughout the day. So lots of things happening. And that's why we've asked, along with Bruce out of Ottawa, joining us from London, England, our friend Andrew McDougall, who is with the Trafalgar Strategy Group in London, but is familiar to a lot of Canadians or should be because he was the director of communications for Stephen Harper during the Harper years in power in the prime minister's office. So Andrew knows the Canada story well, he knows the England story well, he knows the international story well. So Andrew, welcome to Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth.

Good to have you with us. Oh, thank you so much for having me, Peter and Bruce. It's a pleasure to be here with you. I listen and it's good to be a participant to add my two pennies to this conversation. It's great to see you, Andrew. I'm glad you could join us this morning. Now let me get it started from this perspective, Andrew. And you know, we have obviously been watching this happen south of the border for the last whatever, six months. And it's been crazy to watch it. And it's still just as crazy today for us. But I'm wondering what it's like for you, you know, watching British politics. Obviously, it has its crazy moments every once in a while.

But have you ever seen anything like what we're witnessing in the States right now? And give us that perspective from the other side of the ocean? Well, the short answer, Peter, is no, you know, and the fascination in Britain with U.S. politics mirrors, I think, pretty closely the fascination that Canadians have with U.S. politics, but for different reasons. You know, the U.K. likes to see itself kind of sitting at the same table as the United States and a great friend of the United States, the special relationship, et cetera, et cetera. And if you look at the way the country has charted its own future here, leaving the European Union, its relations with America have to be kind of front and center if Britain wants to keep pulling its influence and using its influence in the world. And it's been trying to hitch yourself to a dragon or a roller coaster or a crazy man,

you know, for the last few years, whether that was Theresa May trying to do it or Boris Johnson trying to do it. So the fascination is very real. Newspaper headlines, Twitter feeds of British political journalists and politicians are chock full of what's happening in the States and what's happening in Georgia last night. And the overwhelming sense across both sides is kind of relief, I think, that not only is there a new president that can chart a new direction, albeit maybe not one that's great in the immediate interests of the United Kingdom, just to have that rational actor back again, and a rational actor that will be able now, it looks like, to move a bit of his legislative agenda, whether

you agree or disagree with it, you at least know that something is possible in Washington now. And I think that's good. And I think, you know, if you're Boris Johnson, you're probably going, you know, Joe Biden might not share some of my policy positions, although he does on things like the environment. But at least now I know I have a grown up in the room and that maybe I can have that conversation without having to talk to the madman. Go ahead, Bruce. Well, I think that's I think Andrew's absolutely right. I think the fascination in the UK is, you know, is as high as it has been in Canada, from what I can tell, has been very high in Canada.

And I think for different reasons, in some respects, as he points out, that makes perfect sense to me. But the overall kind of thought that chaos is going to be replaced by less chaos is definitely a thing that Canadians are going to take some cheer from, even those who don't like the pure democratic agenda that's likely to happen as a consequence of the left, the inside, the Democratic Party left pushing on Biden to be maybe a little bit more radical than his instincts might turn out to be. I'm struck by a couple of things coming out of last night, again, on the assumption that the predictions about the results turn out to be true, which is that the Democrats will end up having effective control of the Senate because of the tie-breaking vote of Vice President-elect Kamala Harris, and therefore they'll have control of the

Senate, the House, and the White House. So there's been a fair bit of conversation in the U.S. in the last little while about whether or not that's a good thing for markets or whether that's going to be trouble for Biden, because how will he manage those kind of internal pressures? And maybe it would be better for America if there was this continued friction, division, and paralysis, if you like, because there would be a Republican Senate. And I'm having trouble believing it would be better to have more friction for more months or years than there has been for the last few. And I understand the argument about markets not wanting too far left a set of economic policies and not loving the idea of a wealth tax, but I think a wealth tax is

coming. And I think there will be some far further left policies than markets like. But I also think markets haven't really completely enjoyed the ride, even though obviously stocks have done pretty well under Trump. There's been this level of uncertainty that's been perpetual and stressful. On the question of the partisan politics, and I know this is one of the things that we wanted to kind of get into, is this, what is the impact of populism on the UK, on the US? How is it manifesting itself in Canada? The thing I'm wondering about this morning is, has America gone from being a two-party democracy to being a three-party situation? Is it going to be the case that the Republicans are going to find a way to get the

gum off their shoe that is the Trump family and move forward in some fashion? Or is he going to continue to be able to exert that kind of influence on half of the 74 million who voted for him, such that other leaders in that party end up saying, well, we just need those Trump voters. We don't know about the others, and that's who we want to go after. So the Rubios, the Cruzes, and so on. I don't know how that's going to turn out, in part because of the role of the media. And I'd love to hear Andrew talk about the role of the media. And I'd love to hear Andrew talk about the role of the media in this whole question, too, because I think we're seeing now

a situation where Fox, you know, it looked like it was the Fox Republican Party before it became the Trump Republican Party. And now Fox might be replaced by other organizations that are even more Fox than Fox was. So I'm fascinated by a lot of this. Love to hear what Andrew and what you think about these developments, Peter, too. Well, you've packed a lot in there. There you go. And I'll throw it to Andrew in a second. All I would say in terms of the two-party, three-party thing,

I think the three-party thing had a better chance of being the potential for the future if, in fact, that Senate races in Georgia last night had split. They still might split, but the fact that at the moment it looks like they're both going to go to the Democrats is going to make it that much harder, I think, for the – I understand the power that Trump has and this loyalty that he seems to have from a certain element within that party. But listen, this is – the picture that's being painted now is a disaster, right?

He loses the presidency after only one term. He lost the House of Representatives after the, you know, in the first two years. Now he's lost the Senate. He's got, like, what the hell has he got? He's got basically nothing to show for his time in power, except he gave a lot of money away to rich people. And that's oversimplifying it.

But nevertheless, I think it makes, I think what happened last night makes it a lot harder for that split in the Republican Party to happen. It's going to look ugly for a while, but time tends to heal certain things and change certain perceptions of what may happen. Anyway, you left a lot there for Andrew to pick up. He can go in a direction he wants to go in from what you laid out there, Bruce. Andrew? Yeah, I mean, I think Bruce is putting his finger on the problem, and it is the media, and I don't mean the media per se are the problem. I mean, it's the consumption of information that's the problem. And, you know,

I think what the last four or five years has taught me is that if you don't have kind of agreed upon set of facts, it makes politics impossible to practice. And I think what, and then you add the new players in there that rely on technology and platforms that are predicated on the most extreme interpretation of any event and broadcasting them, which then makes everybody who participates in the process more extreme, whether we like it or not. And I even feel myself, you know, I try to be reasonable, I think, in what I'm looking at and saying and commenting on. But I feel the algorithm kind of ginning me up and getting me excited about stuff that I wouldn't. And I think, you know, to pick this back, if the Democrats are going to have success, even with kind of the unified government that was great at weaponizing, if not addressing, was that sense that something's missing now

from the states and something's missing from the promise of the United States. And that something missing unites the kind of lower socioeconomic support the Democrats enjoy and the kind of left behind support that the Republicans join. And so the more Joe Biden can craft an economic policy that fulfills some of the blown promises from the last 30 years of globalization, the better off he'll have of kind of betting in a position of growth for the party

instead of kind of returning to this pernicious, partisan, negative partisanship environment that we've seen where it doesn't matter what you stand for, only that you hate the other guy more. And that sentiment is easy to indulge. And to your point, Peter, it doesn't really get you a result, does it? But Trump doesn't care, right? He comes out of this with his profile higher than it's ever been. He operates without shame, so he doesn't care what the three of us say about him. He only cares that he has a chance to make money and further his own career. And the Republicans are late to figuring out that indulging his

madness, the bill only gets larger the longer you leave that confrontation behind. And they thought, well, we'll have to do business with him because he's the president. We'll put some adults around him. It will be fine. And he's just nuked everything. And it doesn't matter how much fealty or loyalty Hawley or Cruz show to him now.

He will chew them up and spit them out the second they are no longer convenient to him. And they are just suckers being played as suckers. And it would be funny if it weren't so tragic to the people these people purport to him. And they are just suckers being played as suckers. And it would be funny if it weren't so tragic to the people these people purport to represent, because people are struggling. People are feeling let down. And whether it's Trump in the States or Brexit here, we've had politicians kind of indulge that sense of something's wrong, time to break everything, with no guarantee that the way they've broken

things is going to reassemble into a better future for them. And all the while, we just get distracted by all the kind of celebrity and trivia around this and the kind of scandal of, oh, my God, I can't believe he did this, he did that. And we just missed the giant point, which is that these societies are cracking. And if we don't fix them soon, we won't have a politics, we won't have a media capable of solving them. And I don't want to kind of tip past that point, because there's a giant country called China that's waiting there to eat our lunch. And we need to get organized and stop kind of going for each other and realizing that we all have a shift to put in here to turn this around. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

It sounds a little dystopian and, you know, my biggest hope maybe for the coming year would be this pushback on populism, which isn't the same as pushing back on the anxieties that that cause people upon our democracies is that it is true, I think, absolutely, that people think something's gone wrong and they're not sure exactly what. And so a politician that comes along and says, somebody else has done you wrong, and I'm here to champion that idea, is going to make some headway, especially when they can find these platforms that allow them to communicate their anger and misinformation to support their thesis in a way that's unfiltered, with no guardrails, with no real fact-checking. succeeded at is that for all of the effort that all of the media organizations put into fact checking and saying he's lying, he's lying, he's lying, he's lying, he just built some other vehicles to get his lies across and to make those people send him money, get on planes and in cars and in buses and go to Washington, D.C. today to cause trouble, to pretend that there's a different set of facts

about how that election went. And so I'm worried, as Andrew is, but I'm hopeful that in light of the problems that this phenomena causes, where politicians try to cultivate hatred and anger for political profit, that there is at least a counterpoint that starts to develop in those movements politically where it has really taken root. And the Republican Party is the kind of the biggest showcase of that. But it's not the only one by any stretch of the imagination. And I think the conservative movement in Canada has a challenge that it has to address too. And a little while ago, only half joking, I was on Twitter encouraging Andrew to come back to Canada and run for the leadership of his party because, you know, I was a member of a version of that party at one point. And I remember when I was a liberal as a much younger

man, I had lunch and breakfast every day with conservatives who worked on the Hill when I did. I didn't hate them. I liked them. We got along. We disagreed. And then I became a progressive conservative and I didn't hate liberals. And I hung out with them and we disagreed and that worked out well. And I know that there are those who think that that is a version of politics that is too chummy, that doesn't stand for principle, that, you know, champions compromise over, you know get that pendulum back a little bit more towards that so that people are actually talking about how to solve problems for folks, whether it's how to get vaccinations into arms, how to think about the economy of the future, which is, I think, a big challenge in Alberta, for example, around what Biden's clean energy policy is going to be and how I want to see a conservative party that responds with an ambitious climate policy, but also an ambitious economic policy

around decarbonization. I think those are kind of essential conversations for us to have. And I'd love to hear Andrew's take on the implications of the conversation we're having for the Canadian conservative movement? And where does it go from here? Yeah, I think, you know, I think there's, you know, to pick up on what you said there, Bruce, I think a key part of this, though, and I think the left is a bit blind to this, whether it's in the States, in Canada, or even here in Britain, is there is a sneering tone that too often comes from the left that looks down at the people of the right and dismisses those concerns. And I heard what you said about dismissing the kind of policy concern and life concern of this crowd. And I think the left has done an increasingly poor we are all of a certain socioeconomic and kind of worldview, even though I might have a C beside my name

now. But we come from very similar circumstances, life paths, life journeys. And I think our media and political environment loses sight of communities a bit too often now. And instead of trying to really understand their concerns and that it might not be oriented to the policy solutions we all take as given, that we bring them along instead of kind of chucking them behind or lumping them in. Or, you know, if you have a concern about immigration, you're automatically a racist.

That is not helpful. And I get the good politics of that for people on the left because it works, particularly in Canada. But it also provokes the overreaction from the right, which they shouldn't take. They shouldn't take that bait. You know, one of Stephen Harper's kind of successes that doesn't get talked about enough is that through the financial crisis in 07, 08, 09, the taps for immigration, say, did not shut up. They opened wider than ever. And that was to his credit, because he recognized that the long, medium to long-term challenge in Canada was bodies and getting smart people in to contribute to the economy. And I think all sides need to really kind of temper their language. But the left wins, can win in Canada, exacerbating those tensions, just as surely as the right can lose by playing to the same emotion. And Aaron O'Toole's challenge

is that he has to find a set of policy prescriptions that don't kind of bang on the culture angle. And I think that's why on China, he's onto one, because I think China is a problem. Does Mr. O'Toole have the right solution to that problem? I don't think any leader or country does absent the United States and a global coalition. But it's the right problem to be thinking about because it feeds into the economic anxiety that people in North America have. Those communities that lost their manufacturing jobs first to Mexico, then to China. That happened. Can that be fixed? It could be the green economy. It might not be, but that's a fight worth having. They are a bad actor on the international stage. Look at Hong Kong today, the arrest of democratic

legislators. These are issues that Canada needs to find its voice on. And I get that, that the Chinese Communist Party has a couple of Canadians held hostage there. But we need to be more like Australia. And I think, you know, can politicians on both sides in Canada find, is for each side to call out its own. And I've written about that before. And I, as still, I'm not a Conservative Party member anymore and haven't lived in Canada for seven years. side when I feel it's appropriate because they need to hear it from people like me. Because they'll never listen to people like you or people like Justin Trudeau. And the same has to happen on the left. You know, the current prime minister is not perfect, not by a long shot. And he could certainly benefit from more people getting in his face and telling him, look, boss, you're wrong. And here's why. And that's the hardest thing to do in politics, as everyone in this room knows. But we need more of that. We need more of the left calling itself out. We need more of the right calling itself out. And we have to make it a point of pride that we can have those breakfasts, Bruce, that you mentioned. Because I like liberals. I like NDP. You know, they're good people. And I think we do a disservice to people when we try to pretend that everybody's in it for the wrong reason.

When most people, whether they're politicians or staffers, are actually just trying to do the best they can. And they're not malicious. Sure, some of them are bent. Most of them, in my experience, aren't. and the less we can indulge that kind of cheap dopamine hit of you suck you liberal scum or you suck you racist conservative the better off we'll be but that will take a tremendous discipline that i don't think we're used to showing anymore and again i think that's a bit of a technology problem because we now have platforms that encourage us to be beasts yeah i was just going to say that but it's much harder to do it.

If I'm sitting across the table from you, Bruce, I'm not going to slander you. But if I'm an anonymous Twitter account, I will let fly with every bit of abuse I can. And it's just not civilized, you know? Let me back you up a little bit here, because I think you both made some outstanding points here. But part of this always ends up coming down to leadership.

Andrew, you mentioned, and I'll definitely concede the point, about what Stephen Harper did during the post-financial crisis period in terms of immigration. Now, one of the ways he was able to do that was he had total command of his caucus to the point where he knew what was the right thing to do and what was the right thing to do also politically. And he laid down the law. And there are other examples from earlier in his leadership where he laid down the law to the point where certain members of his caucus who could have been expected to come out and, you know, taken positions that wouldn't have been helpful, never did that because he laid down

the law. There seems to be a sense that with, well, definitely with Andrew Scheer, that didn't happen. And in some instances, the same kind of thing seems to have happened with Aaron O'Toole, where he has let run wild certain elements within the caucus that you just know that Stephen Harper never would have allowed to happen. Yeah, and fair point, Peter. And I think this is one of the things where I wish again, and now that I hold a pen and wield it every once in a while, in column writing, that we all get a little bit too much excited when anybody shows any independent thought in any caucus, whether that's, you know, a liberal that criticizes Justin Trudeau or a conservative that strays on an issue that we think is settled. And I think, you know, we have to kind of find

that balance between criticizing anyone for, you know, that somebody thinks that abortion is wrong. I don't think should be beyond the pale to have that view represented. Is the debate over? I think it is in Canada. Could Canada use some sort of guardrails like most other countries have? Sure they could. Will it be a conservative that starts that conversation? Never. Would it be nice if Justin Trudeau would use his capital to kind of put, you know, some terms around that debate? Maybe that would take some of the sting out of it. I don't know. Again, people benefit from these debates being ongoing. And I think, you know, that the challenge is to realize what's possible and what's not possible. If because one or two conservative, 10 conservative MPs are talking about gay conversion therapy being okay, does that mean it's going to become the law of the land? Never. So let these kind of, you know, retrograde views peter out, you know, and it gets back to that, you know, my dad always used to say, convinced against my will, I'm of the same

opinion still, right? That was one of his sayings. And you have to let people come on their own way to things. And I think if you look at the debates around gay marriage or some of the more toxic debates we've had in Canada, people are now kind of on the cool side of that. And did we speed things up by making it a political hot button, or did we delay that reckoning? I don't know. But we have to find a bit more oxygen and freedom there. And I think, you know, and I think, look, the second I saw Justin Trudeau run on a kind of platform of listening and giving more power to MPs and whatever,

you just kind of laugh that out because having been in that crucible, it doesn't work. And it doesn't work in the media environment we have now where every little eruption, whether that's a tweet or whatever from any member of your caucus at any time can become a news story. Like that's for me when I was in the job, when I recognized the world was changing was when the reporter called me up for the first time to ask me for a comment about a tweet that when the MPs and men, I'm like, ah, do I have to deal with this now? You know, and these kinds of little comments or whatever would never make a paper. You know, you never get that past the editor. I'm going to do kind of 500 words on this dumb thing somebody tweeted. That wouldn't get in a paper.

Can I put up a quick web hit on that? Sure. The beast needs food. Feed it. And, you know, I think so. So I think that's to kind of put a point on this point I'm making is that party leaders feel they have to squeeze down with full control across everything because they know that if they don't and something bad happens, they'll get the blame for it and they'll have to deal with it. Just one quick follow-up to that because I know Bruce wants to get in on this. The other thing you mentioned was about the ability for staffers to be able to say to the leader, boss, you're wrong about that. And that's hard, right?

It sounds easy, but we know when there are lots of examples where people just haven't done that. But I'm assuming you wouldn't have said that as something that has to happen unless you had examples of doing exactly that or seeing somebody else do exactly that. Because it's tough to go up against a leader and say, gosh, you're wrong. Yeah.

And, you know, for me, Peter, most of it was trying to trick the prime minister into doing media interviews with people like yourselves because it was actually in our interest, right? So my battles were of a different grade than say a policy advisor who would have to say, you know, this is the wrong route to pursue on policy or any, you know, you know, some of you'll both know well, Dimitri Soudas was great at that role. And he would just, he didn't give a F-U-C-K and he would just challenge. And that was his nature, just to be kind of a bit more

pugnacious on that front. And it was great. Because half the time you kind of have that little battle, it blows up, people go back to their corners, cool down a bit, and then you kind of go, okay, let's pick this back up. And I think you were right. But to get that initial objection in there, like, trust me, the first kind of couple of years I was in that office, you just kind of sit with your back to the wall, kind of marveling at the fact that you're witnessing all of this in the first place. And then somebody expects me to have an opinion. Holy crap. Okay. You know, the temptation is always easier just to go. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. But at some point, you know, and you have these battles and, and I'll admit,

I wasn't the kind of most, you know, I wasn't the pugilist in the office, but there were enough pugilists in the office. But the first time you kind of go in there and kind of go against the grain, you feel very lonely. And, you know, but, but then when you get things turned around your way, you feel good. And look, I have more examples, don't get me wrong, of where I'd buy something and the opposite was done. And then we ended up in the soup and nobody wants to hear your I told you so after that. Particularly from the press guy, I can assure you. Because I was kind of Satan's representative in the office.

But I mean, that's a whole other podcast, I'm afraid. Yeah, I would like to have that conversation about the role of journalism and maybe separately the the columnizing these days. I don't know if it was ever as much better than it is today, which is what I think. But I find that the amount of work that goes into developing an opinion piece about a complex public policy seems like it's less than it used to be. And I think it kind of cheapens the craft. And I think it has less effect on the political conversation, and it has less effect on the decision makers. But as Andrew said, maybe that's a conversation for another day. know start by just saying look i i think the admonition that the left stop dropping bombs at every available opportunity on social media and probably including progressive people like myself i think that's a very fair and inappropriate admonition i think it applies obviously to the

folks on the right too i think the technology has been a thing that by and large has exacerbated these damaging trends in terms of the political discourse. And I think I also generally agree with the idea that leaders shouldn't have to be in the business of constantly suppressing any kind of divergent thought within their party ranks, within their caucus, even if they happen'm thinking on a personal level of why I have trouble being, thinking of voting or supporting the Conservative Party today, it's really only ever been about two issues in the last, I'm going to say, decade. One is racial tolerance and diversity and who we are as a country and the questions about values tests, for example, which goes back to Stephen Harper's last campaign. And the other is climate change. And for both of those issues, I can't qualify in my mind a party that is ambivalent at best on those rights. And I look at the election in the States yesterday, and my one big kind of takeaway is black votes matter.

That happened yesterday. It happened that Georgia basically decided or had a very large impact on the outcome of the presidential election. And Georgia and black voters in particular decided the outcome of the Senate, it looks like at this point. And I love that, that that's a rebuke to the evident escalation of racial tension that we've seen in the United States. But against that, the fact that it was essentially 50-50 and that we've had cheerleading for racism as a part of a presidential campaign, presidential term in office for four years, has been really quite dispiriting. And so I'm very hopeful that if we can dismantle our kind of nuclear, you know, our instinct to go for the nuclear and the jugular all the time, left and right, that we can get to a better discourse. But I do think for me anyway, and I'd love to know what you think about this, those two issues are really kind of qualifying issues where leadership has to say, we can't be ambivalent on these anymore. The planet's in crisis and we need to deal with it.

And we are a country that embraces diversity and we're not going to pussyfoot with movements that have a different point of view about the value of white people versus other people. Well, yeah, I mean, I think I couldn't quarrel at all on the climate change and I kind of stuck my neck. I endorse Michael Chong for leader. So because I think he was one of the few that kind of had that grown up conversation about, you know, what we're doing is not working. We need a different approach. as an agent of change while realizing that there are gaps in that approach, particularly some people in urban conurbations have more options for transport, say, than somebody who lives in a more rural zone. And we have to have public policy that can kind of get to that. I get that. On the racial thing, I think, again, you know, if you look at the kind of early years of Harper until the majority, kind of one of the keys to success of that was recognizing that not all new Canadian communities had uniform views, no matter their race or

religion. There is a diversity of political opinion and thought there as well, and trying to reach out to those communities and doing a good job. And these are the days where Jason Kenny would run around and do 40 events a weekend in Toronto doing the legwork of saying like, hard work, family, religion, these are things that are important to you, they're important to us. Come join our movement. And I think, look, I think Andrew Scheer drew a line with Maxime Bernier and said, we want no part of that. You know, even to the point of actively working to discredit him in the last election, which is Yeoman's work for me, that's just something that has to be done because Maxine was willing to indulge

the very base kind of instincts there. And no party ever wants to be in the position where I think every party gets that some people would, with kind of horrendous views, support them. And, and it's kind of you know you don't ever want to pander to them you might want to bank their vote but you never want to make that explicit appeal to them and i think this is where the views in urban canada have moved at a much different pace than rural canada and generations tend to move faster on issues. And this is, I think, the thing where time will be a solve. And if you're a conservative looking at the electoral map in Canada, you have to find your way back into those conversations again, because if you don't,

and sadly, I think in this last election, the conservative thought climate was that, albeit from kind of a pocketbook issue of saying this is going to be too expensive for you. And that didn't quite kind of hit the moment. And I don't think, you know, the Conservative offer was nearly aggressive enough on climate. So I think these things are interrelated, but I don't think there's kind of a teeming horde of racists just kind of waiting to kind of come out and take over the Conservative Party of Canada. I think there are elements in it, as there have always been. And go back as far as you like, you can probably find them, whether it was like hating Catholics, hating Protestants, you know,

if you look at like Irish hating Italians, it's always been a feature of immigrant societies and good public policy has to find a way to kind of smooth that out. But, but, you know, I don you know, I don't think it's as big a problem as people are making out, which is not the same thing as saying it doesn't need minding. It definitely does. And this is where leadership, to your point, matters. And this is one where I think even if you resent having to do it as a political leader, you have to come out and say when things like Christchurch happen, like that's just not on. And anybody who thinks that on, you have no home here.

You have no place here. It shouldn't need saying, but a lot of people, including the media, want it said, particularly by conservative politicians. So you do it. And this is one where you could kind of flip that maybe if you were a leader and really drive the tech companies a bit harder than they're being driven to kind of take action on this stuff. Because, because that's, I mean, you know, the power to connect people is a very real power, but it also connects a lot of unsavory people. And we have, we've done a terrible job of figuring out how to drain that swamp and take the temperature down because there's a whole universe that you and Peter don't see, don't know about.

And you watch the kind of reporters who's beat, you know, Ben Collins, Jane Vanenko at Vice, who kind of live in these sewers. And it is a disgustingly angry place. And even my better half, who Bruce, by the way, quickly shut down your suggestion that I should ever come back for leader. I noticed that. Yeah. Because I would be divorced and lose access to my two wonderful children. You know, he's now working on a story on Q and on and, and the kind of conspiracy thing and how that kind of pulls families apart.

And it is heartbreaking to see this, this environment that we're in now where people just go down these rabbit holes and that kind of back up to our broader conversation about politics and how you fix it. We have to fix the information environment because absent that, the temptation to play to those kind of pockets of support, that the allure, the temptation, it's there on both sides. And politicians need to get out of that bubble any way they can and figure out that that is not real life and bed back into real life. And, you know, I'd like to be an optimist about things,

but unless technology gets a major kick up the backside, including kind of a hard look in the States at trust busting and kind of breaking some of these data monopolies up, we're going to be in a bad place. Because the simple fact is Facebook knows you better than your best friend after you click 20 likes on things. I mean, that's terrifying. And that's not conducive to kind of a very trusting public environment that we need. You know, weakness is now agreeing with the other side and kind of, you know, conceding that they have a point to make. And until we fix the information economy, I'm not sure how we fix the political economy. And then I'm not sure how we have, you know, a healthy back and forth.

And I just hope that minds on all sides return to that question. This has been a fascinating conversation, which unfortunately I'm going to have to draw to a close here. But, you know, this was not the way I thought the conversation was going to go when we started going over what happened last night in Georgia. But it's opened so many doors into so many discussions. I think it's been fascinating. We're obviously gonna have to do it again. Let me close on the kind of tie the knot on where we started,

because in many ways this may, you know, the Trump will be gone. One assumes in two weeks, two weeks today, actually, is the inauguration of Joe Biden. So we come to the end of at least the latest chapter of the Trump book, which has been going on for, you know, 40 years. But this is a, the question will be, is this the final chapter? But here's my question to you. John McCain, who was a complicated and controversial

politician in his own right, had a saying that he used to use, which was, character is destiny. So the question to close out on here for me on this, I'd like both your answers on that, on this, is, you know, did the Trump character meet its appropriate destiny in these last couple of months? I don't know, Andrew, why don't you go first?

Yeah, I think the easy answer to that, Peter, is yes, but I don't think it was yes for the right reasons. I think he, to pick up Bruce's earlier point, only narrowly lost, whether that's the presidential election, you know on to become president and then did nothing to solve loom larger now than ever and and i think he he going out as a loser um is a fitting end but i think it's one he'll look as a success because the world talked about him for for four or five solid years and that's all he's ever wanted out of this um and and so i think that's the kind of metric you have to judge him on and the ruin to the world's greatest democracy collateral damage in the pursuit of ego and and that's his mo and has always been his mo and and and i think we see that now hopefully clearer than ever before um not that the republicans i, want to hear that. Yeah. Well, I agree with a lot of that, but my opening

would be no, he didn't get the full crushing that he deserved. I thought that the so I guess I'm agreeing, except, you know, I would probably rather see him go to jail than, you know, go to Mar-a-Lago with hundreds of millions of dollars that he raised by pretending that he was going to be able to turn around the election result. I saw one Republican talking on the news this morning saying during the runoffs, he was getting three emails a day fundraising by Trump. And that money wasn't going to go to support those candidates. It was going to go to Trump's political action committee to pay for his plane, to take him to wherever he wanted to go to do whatever he wanted to do. Turnberry. He's going to Turnberry, isn't he? Andrew, isn't that the hot rumor? Apparently, Nick Lister says he's not. And I'm happy to hear that.

Maybe one day we'll be able to go back there, Peter, when they take his name off that damn place. But look, so I don't think he got what he deserved, and I'm left feeling that the character of America is more cloudy and difficult to look at than it was before he arrived. We had this kind of tentative, I was somewhat gingerly in how I approached it, conversation with David Axelrod a little while ago, but what does American exceptionalism really mean today? And I'm kind of looking at it and going, it means something different to Americans than it does to people outside of the United States in the wake of Trump. It looks like a democracy that has lost its ability to function. For a lot of the reasons that Andrew has pointed out, it's arguably the biggest screen version of a problem that we're

seeing in a lot of parts of the world. And they have the wherewithal, politically, financially, from a brainpower standpoint, to figure out the solutions to information platforms, that kind of thing, to challenge with trust-busting laws, the kinds of problems that Andrew was alluding to. But I don't know that I've ever had less confidence in the character of America to drive through the current situation, arrive at a set of problems. I'm hopeful that the thing that I heard this morning, which is that this, whatever they're calling it, this problem-solving caucus, this group, this small group of legislators who are seen as really idiosyncratic because their idea is they're going to work together to solve problems that affect people. It's strange that

that should be the case, but that is who people are counting on, this small group of people in this sea of elected legislators who will say, I'll work across the aisle with these other folks to try to figure things out. I'm hopeful, but I'm worried. And I think Trump has done enormous damage to America, and I don't think he's been properly punished for what he's done. I think that's the lesson, though, Bruce, just to pick quickly. That's the lesson, I think, is that if you look at the result of the presidential election and why it didn't translate down ballot, I think it's because a lot of the policy prescriptions that the left were throwing around didn't sound right to most people's ears. So the harder work that Biden does at alleviating the kind of economic and

socioeconomic concerns of the Trump base, that the venom will come out of that conversation. And I think people will be more charitable if they feel that they are not being passed by in service of others. And so that's the challenge for me to Joe Biden and his team is how do you actually fix what ails a large swath of America? And I think a lot of the kind of information overload hopefully disappears

if they can make real progress on that. All right, we're going to leave it at that. As I said earlier, fascinating conversation. I'm so glad we did it. And I know you're a busy guy, Andrew, but the fact that you took some time out for us is greatly appreciated. And I'm sure we're going to be able to do it again. Please say hello to Danielle Forrest. I mean, obviously she has to put up with so much, not just at CTV, but at home.

A great journalist. The one that got away. All right, you guys. Thanks, Andrew. And thank you to Bruce. Thank you, Andrew. Great to talk to you again. Cheers. Thanks so much. Okay. That's going to wrap it up for this edition of Smoke Mirrors and the truth, uh, podcast within a podcast here on the bridge daily. Our guest today was, uh, Andrew McDougall

from London, former director of communications for Stephen Harper. And of course, Bruce, as he always is on Wednesday, joining us from his, uh, offices at, um, Abacus Data in Ottawa. That's it for today. We'll be back again in, well, in 24 hours.