The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and The Truth -- Trump, Cuomo and More

Episode Date: December 8, 2021

We haven't peeked south of the border to test the SMT waters for a while so why not now?  Bruce is here to bat around some Trump thoughts, and then CNN fires its top anchor for issues of SMT so it's a natural for some talk too.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, Bruce Anderson, Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth. That's next. And hello there, hump day, Wednesday. Bruce is in Ottawa. Bruce Anderson, that is. Smoke mirrors the truth. That's what's coming up. How are you today? You know, I'm having a bad hair day.

I'm just looking at myself on Zoom, Peter, and it looks ridiculous. Do you know what that's like? Oh, never mind. Okay. But I, no, it's not. Moving on. I'm okay. I'm okay.

Good. I'm okay. It's a little cold. You know what we haven't talked about in, it's not moving on. I'm okay. I'm okay. Good. I'm okay. It's a little cold. You know what we haven't talked about in, it seems, in months. And, you know, perhaps some people are glad we haven't talked about it. But it is, I think, important to check in once in a while because we can't ignore this story. It's still a dominant factor in the way our southern neighbor operates. And that, of course, is the Trump story.

So there are, in fact, two stories south of the border that I want to touch on. Because they both deal with smoke mirrors and the truth. On Trump himself, there have been lots of books. You know, dozens, literally dozens of books since uh he lost the presidency fair and square um a year ago he lost it fair and square he of course is arguing that he didn't lose it at all but that's aside from the point there are all these books most of them written by either critics or people who have an extra to grind of some kind. But not the one that came out, well, it came out just yesterday.

So it's making a few headlines this week. And it's by, you know, admittedly one of his biggest allies, one assumes, a real Trump loyalist. The former chief of staff in the White House, Mark Meadows, who was chief of staff to Donald Trump right up to the end. And his new book's called The Chief's Chief. And the thing that's got a lot of attention strikes to this whole heart of truth, right? We all remember when Trump went into hospital for covet well it turns out according to meadows that trump knew days before that he had covet in fact even before the debate with joe

biden that he breathed the virus on hundreds of people i think the last count was 500 now trump denies this says that he didn't he didn't he didn't test positive before the debate like meadows says in the book and so meadows meadows wrote the book right it actually says it right in the book but meadow says oh of course the former president's right i must have got that wrong but that's not all he talks about how disastrous the situation was for trump on the day they finally convinced him to go to the hospital they told him that if he didn't go to the hospital walking out on his own steam to the helicopter they'd have to carry him out on a gurney two days later so he agreed to go but he was in an incredibly weak position, even at that point.

According to Meadows, he couldn't even carry his briefcase, which, I don't know, according to rumor, doesn't have anything in it anyway. But he couldn't even carry it out. He was so weak. Now, Trump hasn't denied this yet. I'm sure there'll be a denial come out at some point, if it hasn't already. But it underlines this whole question of smoke mirrors and the truth. And I was wondering what your take on it, because this is different. book about the final days of Trump is a lot different than, you know, Bob Woodward's book or Bob Costas' book or all these different books that are out.

What do you think? Well, I do think that Mark Meadows' role in the review of what happened on January 6th is an important story for us to watch. From my standpoint, I think that the process of trying to figure out who was responsible for what when it came to the insurrection on January 6th has taken a long time. There's been relatively little fresh information that's been put out to the public. What there has been makes it pretty clear that it was a substantially organized event and that the former president knew a fair bit about what was going on and was certainly cheering on. I don't want to call them protesters, the rioters, the insurrectionists, that sort of thing.

And it does sound like Mark Meadows has agreed to cooperate with that inquiry, unlike some of the other participants in the Trump regime who've decided that they're going to make their living by looking like they're resistors to that or are otherwise trying to avoid any further discussion of the events of January 6th. So I'm very interested in Meadows because he was obviously close and the stories that I've read indicate that he was very familiar with the communications traffic leading up to January the 6th and so he has some facts that are important to tell. Now, those haven't come out yet because I guess to the degree that he's disclosed them, that it's been behind closed doors as part of this process or maybe that's yet to come. But I guess the larger question, Peter, is I'm still, you know,

whenever we started talking about Trump, when you started the podcast, it was and continues to be a mystery to me how America, with so many talented people, can find itself in a situation where we may be heading back to them re-electing donald trump you know in canada we have partisan feelings sometimes about uh our leaders you know liberals don't like some of the conservatives who've been prime minister conservatives don't like some of the liberals who've been prime minister and and non-partisan people can you know feel kind of angry at this leader or that leader but when when i look back at the history of people who've led our country there's none that occupy any zone even close to the level of incompetence and how you know i struggle to find the word um but but the idea of somebody willfully doing harm willfully not accepting facts and information, willfully ignoring briefings that he was getting, doing things that were so decided America. But here we are in a situation where they seem unable or unwilling to imagine that there could be a better person than him. That is to say,

you know, the large majority of Republican voters. And not surprisingly, it's kind of horrifying all of the Democratic voters and probably, you know, a lot of people around the world who are going, how could America make that mistake again? If you have a do-over, how do you make that mistake again? You know, I was listening to Michael Cohen the other day. And, you know, Cohen was Trump's former lawyer and an incredible loyalist. We go to the wall for him, as he said more than a few times. But then it eventually turned against him when when trump sort of abandoned him never

gave him a pardon nothing he went to jail he's written books got a very successful podcast right now um cohen but cohen was asked the same question do you believe it is it is it real is he do you really think he'll run again and cohen is adamant says he's absolutely not going to run again this is all a uh a con job for money that what's happening here is trump is uh is grifting he's he's putting as much money as he can in his pocket from his supporters who are called every day and he's got hundreds of millions of dollars that he's put in a in a war chest for a potential campaign which legally he's allowed to do and i think it's something like 90 of it he can keep for himself if he wants he only has to use like 10 of it for a political

campaign so that he's the cohen believes he going to keep this going right to the end and then pull the plug at the end said, no, I can't do it, I'm not going to run again and walk away with whatever it is in terms of money. Cohen believes this is the classic Trump move. Well, I think that is plausible. And there's a part of me that I don't know if i want to believe that because that's not a terribly good outcome guy leaves office grifts hundreds of millions of dollars and then decides to kind of not do the thing that he was grifting the money you know supposedly to do that's not a great outcome but it is definitely better than Donald Trump running for

president again and better by leagues than Donald Trump being president again. I'm a little bit worried about Cohen's theory for two reasons. One is that I've followed his theories closely and with some hopefulness. He's been saying trump's going to jail and this is all going to come unraveled and the whole empire is going to come down and i'm kind of waiting for that and i'm wondering when he's going to be right about some of that and then maybe he's not uh so that's that's one thing but the other part of his theory is that trump really only cares about money. And I don't know if that's true. I mean, on some level, you know, Trump has never been very good about making money, about figuring out how to keep money, about not getting deep in debt, about not having businesses go bankrupt and he does look on many days to me

like a guy who craves the adoration more than he craves the money he craves the trappings of power and the feeling that the world has to bend to his will and that he can kind of order his generals around and move the chess pieces of uh of america around to uh around to meet his whims. It would be easy in my mind to say, well, he likes the idea of making money. It isn't the thing that maybe makes him most passionate about what he wants to do every day. Now he's getting older and maybe he's losing a step and maybe, you know, when he had COVID, he couldn't carry his briefcase. Um, but you remember, he has this kind of wacky theory about energy that you shouldn't, shouldn't do exercise because you're born with a certain amount of energy in your body. And every day, every way that you

expend some of that energy that's gone forever and you'll never get it back it's a completely kind of bonkers idea but uh i like that idea maybe right but maybe he's maybe you never ever have to exercise again right right and you end up i don't think he makes a connection between eating and adding energy to your body. Anyway, he's quite a piece of work. And I know that there are probably going to be some people listening to our podcast, you know, why is Bruce so harsh on Trump? But I'm sorry, I am.

And buckle up, because if he runs again, I'm going to stay harsh on him. Well, you know, one of the ways he's considering his future in terms of, because you're right, I don't think anybody would disagree that he loves being the center of attention. And he's been that way for decades. You know, long before he ever got into politics, he loved being the center of attention. You know, whether it was on the cover of magazines or owning a football team, a whole variety of things ever since the 80s. He's been that guy. Well, his latest idea on staying at the center of attention

because since he got kicked off Twitter, is creating his own social media venture. I think it's going to be called Truth Social or something like that. And apparently he's already got... Richard Devin Nunes to run it, right? Yeah. He's leaving Congress. This California congressman who was just, well,

he was a very strange figure, to be gentle. When he was on the Judicial Committee, one of those committees that was investigating various things during the Trump presidency, and was a total toady for Trump, was meeting in the White House with Trump about how to handle certain things in congress but yeah nunez is apparently going to be the ceo of this truth social um he's got hundreds of millions of dollars lined up already to support this thing and whether that changes the equation for him or not because he you know he's he because it's clear that he's suffered somewhat from being bounced off the more traditional social media channels like Twitter. And if he can create some new thing of his own, although other things that he's tried in this last year haven't turned out that well at all.

They basically failed. How this one will do, what impact it could have because he thrives on that kind of attention that he can gain with millions of followers and there's no question he has that and if he creates his own channel that that may be worthwhile for him well i think it has the prospect to be a game changer for him but i also feel like if he if he trump um starts to look more and more like somebody who is preparing a run then the media coverage that he craves the traditional media the mainstream media covers that he both derides but is addicted to, that's going to pick up again. It will naturally because the media organizations, I think, will feel,

well, we have to cover this guy. He's running for president, or he might run for president, and we need to be kind of presenting the views of the likely Republican nominee based on all of the evidence in the poll so far. So I think his profile is going to go up. I think that his this social media venture will probably work. I think the you know, one of the things that's going on that we should probably bring into this conversation is the challenges that Democrats are feeling right now are fairly intense. You know, you could look at America and say, well, how could the Democrats be in trouble so soon after Trump? Because wouldn't America just be breathing this prolonged sigh of relief at being rid of this guy and all of his shenanigans and just craving

something that feels more stable. But that's not really what we see in some of the political skirmishes right now. The governor's race in Virginia being a case in point. I think you and I both read a piece in the New York Times that kind of documented what was wrong. Why did Terry McAuliffe lose that race, even though it was a state that was carried by Biden by, I think, about 10 points in the presidential? And embedded in that story was an interesting piece of analysis by a pollster who had kind of worked on that campaign. And he described, among other problems for the Democratic Party, a situation where the Democrats, to a fair number of voters, look so preoccupied with equality and equity issues that it's hard for some of those voters to feel like,

well, the Democrats are really focused on me. And I'm not saying that in any way, shape or form as an argument against the focus on equity issues. I'm saying it can create and may have been creating a knock on negative effect among Democratic voters who say, well, the Democratic Party is the party of equity now, and it's not the party of helping all the little guy, if you like. And I think that is a vulnerability that Trump was able to exploit before, and he'll be looking to exploit again. And it's a thing that I think Democrats are wrestling with because they're as a party, they're definitely not going to abandon the pursuit of that equity platform. But at the same time, they can't afford to be much more vulnerable to Trump or to a populist because, you know, I think America does look like it can rally to some of those themes pretty easily. Certainly they have in electing Trump the first time with the Muslim ban and all that kind of stuff.

And there's no evidence that America came away from the Trump experience, at least Republican America, came away from the trump experience saying wasn't that a terrible thing that we did um a lot of them seem to be thinking you know either the election was taken from us uh or uh we should try that again you know both i um i was reading a piece the other day i can't remember where it was but it was trying to isolate what was the turning point for Biden because the first few months of his presidency looked pretty good. His popularity numbers were good. And this piece concluded, based on looking at the numbers, that the turning point, the moment where things started to go sour,

was Afghanistan. And the whole way that withdrawal was handled and the disastrous coverage that that resulted in, disastrous for Biden and obviously for a lot of people in Afghanistan. The irony, of course, is what Biden was doing, poorly as it turned out, Biden was following a deal that was orchestrated by, negotiated by, signed by, sealed by, arranged by Donald Trump. The exit of American troops in total from Afghanistan. But as I said, the whole way it was handled was a disaster, and the American public wasn't ready for it.

I don't think they ever understood it at the time the deal was negotiated with the Taliban under Trump, but they sure understood it when they were watching it on their television sets. And it started a whole series of problems for Biden, which he is situated in the middle of right now with a popularity figure around 40%, when it had been around, you know, high 50s just a couple of months before. Now, doesn't mean it's going to stay there. Ronald Reagan, as I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, was in a mess in 1982. But by the time the

84 election was held, he had totally recovered and won a landslide victory. So things can change in politics everywhere. They can, although I do wonder if the age of Biden is starting to have an effect on how he's perceived in the role. And with the lead time that U.S. presidential elections normally kind of demand, the conversation about who's going to succeed biden is is kind of happening imminently it feels to me and whether it's kamala harris or somebody else i think for

biden 2022 is going to start to feel more like that timetable is closing in on him and unless his performance in the pool in the poll starts to strengthen um you know which probably has a lot to do with the pandemic um because the economy is functioning pretty well um then then i think you're going to hear more democrats kind of saying one way or another that either harris or somebody else needs to be the nominee the next time out if they're going to be Trump. That succession discussion is a real mess too because of Kamala Harris who everybody assumed was going to be in great shape is not in great shape and there apparently is a lot of tension between the White House and the Vice President

on a number of fronts and with the party. So who knows how that's all going to turn out. Okay, there is another American story. I want to discuss it. Take a quick break here and be right back. And we're back with Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa. You're listening on Sirius XM Canada, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

And welcome to you wherever you're listening from. 1992, if you can put your mind back to that time i can i was in albany new york which is the state capital of new york state and i was interviewing the governor mario cuomo and we were talking about the presidential election that year. So this would have been the fall of 92. And Cuomo was a major figure in the Democratic Party. Big time. And a lot of people wished he'd run for president. He toyed with the idea.

And there was all kinds of rumors as to why he never did run. Questions, dark secrets about his past or his present, but whatever, he didn't run. But he was still this major figure in the party. He was a great speaker. He could have a convention hall on the edge of its seats and then up on its feet with major

applause on his big lines but we talked about as i said the presidential election that year and what was needed in terms of leadership and you know he didn't exactly have a great relationship with bill clinton who was a democratic nominee that year but uh he put on a brave face in that interview about clinton and uh because he was running against an incumbent president in 92 in george bush senior and eventually won anyway i've been thinking a lot about mario cuomo because he was this kind of giant figure within that party. And, you know, he's passed away a number of years ago, but he always had great hopes for his sons.

One who would become Andrew, the governor of the state of New York, just like he had been. And his younger son, Chris, who was a lawyer and eventually a kind of media figure. Well, both the Cuomo boys have either resigned or been fired from their positions for any number of different reasons, but clearly none of them that would have made their father proud. The Chris Cuomo thing underlines the current kind of state of the media

because it boils around the big T word, trust. Who do you trust? Why do you trust them? How truthful are they? And it's clear that Chris Cuomo was not only not truthful with his audience, but he wasn't truthful with his employer about the role he was playing in trying to defend his brother, who was caught in the middle of a, I don't know, sex scandal,

I guess is the easiest way to put it. So what's your take on this story? What does it all say about, I don't know, state of the media? Because, you know, he was at CNN, Chris Cuomo, and that whole cable news operation in the States is in some turmoil. There are big holes now in the various primetime schedules. That's where all the money's made. Cuomo was the major player.

The 9 p.m. hour for CNN was the highest rated show. 9 p.m. on MSNBC is Rachel Maddow. She's moving on. the highest rated show, 9 p.m. on MSNBC is Rachel Maddow. She's moving on. And so is Brian Williams, who was at 11 o'clock. An old friend, great journalist, had had his problems on the trust factor a few years ago, but seemed to have rebuilt his reputation, and who knows where he's going. But there's a lot of things happening and with all of that there's also a declining audience for cable news so what do you make of all this well look i i hate the um the andrew Cuomo story on so many levels. But most importantly,

I hate it because I can't stand to see these examples of men in positions of power who seem to believe that accusations come at them and they can just deny the accusations, even if there's some truth to them and that more accusations come and they keep on, um, uh, kind of taking this position of we're just going to deny everything. I'm just going to pretend that none of this ever happened at all. These people are making these stories up about me and,

you know, he's not the first person to kind of take that approach. And I guess he still maintains that nothing untoward happened. But with the really large number of those accusations that came forward, I kind of look at it and go you know i think that at some point denying that anything uh was inappropriate is not a it's not an honorable thing it's not a just a you're entitled to your own defense thing it's it's adding insult to to injury and so i you know it's very, very disappointing to see those things. And then when I think about Chris Cuomo,

I sort of ask myself, well, if somebody really close to me was involved in a story like that, a brother or a really close friend, would my obligation be just as a human being to try to help them in their denial, to try to find out who might be the next accuser and participate in some sort of effort to minimize the effect of the accusation, regardless of whether or not there was some truth to it. And I'm saying this not knowing all of the details, obviously, about what went on behind the scenes. But it did have the look of Chris Cuomo deciding that he was going to help manage the, you know, the flow of these explosive allegations and try to help his brother figure out how to deny and tamp down the effects of that. And, you know, maybe he had a conversation with him and said, did you do any of this? And maybe the brother said, no, I didn't. But,

you know, I don't think that you can look at that role and say, well, it's honorable to have tried to defend his brother because he was his brother um and that's separate and apart from the role and this is the last point i wanted to make i guess peter is separate in a pull from apart from the role of chris cuomo as a journalist and i i kind of hesitate to use the word journalist and i'd like to know what you think about this, because to me, some of these cable news hosts have become more personalities, media personalities than journalists. And maybe that's what they have to do in order to get the audiences that the networks require in order to support their business model. But certainly, what Chris Cuomo was doing in aid of his brother was not consistent with the values of journalism, either as CNN

proposes them or as they're generally accepted in society. And so he definitely, there was a breach there, but I also feel like he had this unique aspect of how he approached his on air personality, which to me was kind of like a bro, machismo kind of style. And it never appealed to me, but it certainly seems like, you know, it's probably one of those things where people looked at his conduct once they found out about it in support of his brother and said, well, that all kind of fits together and none of it really belongs on in a journalistic frame. And obviously for CNN, they took a look at it and said, it doesn't belong on our airwaves. And I think they made the right decision.

And I don't think that we'll know whether they could have or should have made that decision earlier. What they did know or didn't know, maybe some of that will come out. But hopefully other media organizations will stress test their policies in these areas and whether or not everybody is kind of living up to the expectations that they set for their organizations. And obviously, these are also expectations that they hold the rest of the world to account for. If Chris Cuomo had this story, but it was about another journalist in another network and their sibling who was in politics, one could only imagine how fierce that coverage could have been or might have been. Yeah, I agree with that. I don't know Chris Cuomoomo i've never uh never met him um i do know a number of people who worked with him when he was a reporter at abc before he started

anchoring i think he did some weekend anchoring but um but as a reporter he was a justice department um a reporter given his law background for abc and they all talked about they were very high on on him as a as a reporter but sometimes things happen when you you know you be you become an anchor especially in that hothouse of uh cable news in the states in prime time and he was given that big hour and he did take on that kind of a persona that you described um and i i was never attracted to it i i i found it too much of an act although there's no question he was a smart guy like he yeah a real command of of the facts on on various issues which makes all this even that much harder to uh i'm sure for cnn to uh to accept but it's clear there was a lot of debate within that organization throughout these past couple of months and some

some other anchors distance themselves from the Cuomo story and from Cuomo himself, I imagine. They saw what was coming. Just before we shut this one down for today, what do you think about, I mean, I guess there's, you know, a couple of years ago when we were swept up with the Me Too stories, one assumed exactly the way you're talking about this one, that it was going to change things in a substantial way,

especially in that industry. But here we are still with some of these things, way, especially in that industry. But here we are still with some of the same, certainly some of those same questions about Andrew Cuomo and part of the Chris Cuomo story is also, seems to be about a Me Too angle as well. Has it significantly changed things? Not just in the media, but generally. Well, I feel like I have two answers. One is that I'm not qualified to answer the question because the real damage and the pain that's suffered by so many women over so many years and probably in so many situations today they're

they're in the position to know whether or not things are changing or have changed and and so i i will qualify the second part of my answer, which is that I do believe that the organizations that I observe and have contact with do, on the whole, have materially different cultures when it comes to, and operating procedures when it comes to situations like this that i started to watch for some reason i started to watch the tv series madman which has been out for a long time and i remember starting to watch it years ago and then i stopped and i started again and i stopped again and the reason i again, was it was so dark. It was so misogynistic. It was so upsetting to see the kind of behavior that happened in the workplace and in society towards women that I couldn't enjoy the entertainment value of it.

I was so put off by it. I was so offended by it. And part of the reason why I was offended by it is that it was set in a time before I hit the workforce, but not that far before I hit the workforce. And some of the behaviors characterized in that show were things that I felt had happened in workplaces that I worked in, some of the attitudes. And so I do feel like change was really needed and really slow. And I hesitate to say that the pace of change is picking up. I think that it is. boy we were coming from a bad place and uh and so i'll be the last guy to say hey guys let's all high five each other because we're uh we're way more aware of the subtle or not so subtle misogyny that happens in society and in the workplace did you watch that series peter did you have the same reaction yeah i you know it's been a long time since that series first came out but it did speak to another era an era which had changed to a degree it was near you know

it was never quite as open as it was then in terms of the misogyny, but it still existed, and that's what I fear still happens today. I agree with you. We're not in a position to answer this question, but the women who I've talked to in the workplace say they still feel it. It's just not as evident. It's not as obvious as it was even just a few years ago. But they still sense it,

and they're not sure whether they're being overly sensitive. But that's what they believe. There's been an improvement, but we're not there yet. Okay, it does feel, you're right, it does feel awkward. Two old guys talking about this, trying to put it in some kind of context. So we'll shut her down for now. And you'll be back, obviously, on Friday with Chantel for Good Talk. And we'll switch focus.

We'll bring it back across the border and do our examination of a number of things that have been happening this week in Canadian politics. And so we look forward to that. So thanks, Bruce, as always, for Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. You bet, Peter. Talk soon. All right. That's it for this week on Smoke Mirrors and the Truth. We'll be back tomorrow with The Bridge in 24 hours. Thanks for listening. I'm Peter Mansbridge.