The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Smoke Mirrors and the Truth -- Why Isn't Mike Pence Talking?

Episode Date: February 10, 2021

When January 6th happened, the rioters threatened to "hang Mike Pence".  Now that Donald Trump is on trial in the US Senate, Mike Pence's story of that decay is critical, but he isn't talking.  It's just one of the topics worth considering in this week's Smoke Mirrors and The Truth with Bruce Anderson joining as he always does each Wednesday from Ottawa.

Hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just a few moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Wednesday, you know what that means. It means Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth with Bruce Anderson. Ah yes, hump day. Hump day, Wednesday, smoke mirrors and the truth day. Bruce is joining us from Ottawa, as he always does. Good to talk to you, buddy. Wednesday hump day is one of my seven favorite days of the week. It's really right at that top, Bruce. I can't wait to talk to you today.

Oh, you're on your game for today. I can't wait to see where this goes. I'm up. I should let listeners know, first of all, that you called me yesterday. And look, listeners aren't stupid. They've been listening to you for the last six months or so on this show. They know you don't like Trump. They know you don't like Trump.

They know you've never liked Trump. And so this is what was so surprising about the call you made to me yesterday. You said, like, why don't we try something different? You know, I'll take the anti-Trump mask off for a moment and let me be the defense lawyer for Trump. I'll argue the case for Trump. Everybody else has had a shot at it. I could die.

That's right. Well, especially yesterday. I was thinking, you know, we decided not to do that. But I was thinking yesterday when I watched the opening kind of salvos from the lawyers on both sides. And the Trump lawyers who were just appointed last week, I mean, Trump apparently was going crazy watching this from Mar-a-Lago, was throwing things around the room, very upset. We just appointed last week. I mean, Trump apparently was going crazy watching this from our logo,

was throwing things around the room, very upset. And not surprisingly so, they were just brutal. And if he'd known, if he'd only known that Bruce Anderson was willing to make the case for him, he probably would have called you up and stiffed you on the bill like I'm sure he's going to stiff that first guy from yesterday. He shouldn't be trying lawyers anymore the lawyers aren't really helping you should try a lay person like you or me we should give it our best shot see how it goes well it was pretty remarkable to watch that

yesterday because his main lawyer bruce castor basically made all the arguments that the other side's making. One, Trump lost the election. Two, if the Department of Justice wants to, they should go in and charge Trump if they think that Trump did something wrong. And, you know, the list goes on. There were more than a few things there that looked, you know, pretty bad. But as bad as it was, he still held on to, what was it, 46 of the Republican votes in terms of, you know, making the case that this was against the Constitution

to even have the impeachment trial right now in the first place. And if that signals how the Republicans are likely to stay together for the next round, the conviction round, it means even bad lawyers can win a case. You know, Peter, I just so badly wanted to be in the breakfast room at Mar-a-Lago this morning with Trump at the table, the speakerphone open, the lawyers on the line, just to hear the vitriol that he must have been belting out at them. I mean, it was as though it's one of those shows where somebody gets charged with a crime and they've got no money and they get public defenders. And I feel bad for real public defenders because in the movie version, the public defender is always the lamest lawyers that you can get. They're really kind of sloppy and indolent and they don't know the file.

And they make dumb arguments and they can't wait to get out and have lunch. And I felt like Trump had that kind of defense yesterday. And it must have driven him crazy because he loves to get high priced help on the cheap, right? Or at least celebrity help on the cheap, but especially on the cheap. And well, what he got yesterday was super cheap. And I bet he's just ripping them apart over, you know, his mountain of eggs and bacon this morning at Mar-a-Lago before he goes out and plays some sweaty golf. So, yes, I forgot. I'm supposed to be the defender of Trump this morning. But you know what?

Old habits, Peter. They die hard. struck by yesterday watching the prosecution video, which hopefully if our listeners haven't watched it, they take a minute or five, whatever it was, and watch it today because it's devastating. And to realize what you said, which is that all of those Republican senators sat there and they watched that video too. It was like a big reminder that the entirety of the Trump time in office has been reminiscent of that Groucho Marx line where he said, who are you going to believe, me or your lying eyes? Because everybody was looking at this video and going, what about that is even debatable? Here's his speech. He inflamed people.

He said, let's go down to the Capitol. They went down to the Capitol with his paraphernalia on and started beating on cops. It was a pretty remarkable day. Pretty remarkable day. And it wasn't a good day for Trump, but it wasn't as bad a day as he deserved because those Republican senators basically said, who are you going to believe, us or your lion eyes? We're going to stick with him.

Yeah. Okay, there are a couple arguments from the other side a little bit. There's no doubt of what you say in terms of the impact of that video. The issue will come down to, you know, if it was a straight court of law and there were two sides that were really open-minded about the case, can you prove the case that that is exactly what he wanted to happen when he used the words he did use in the speech across from the White House on the Ellipse to his supporters before they marched down to the Capitol,

you know, just after he lied to them that he was going to go with them, which, of course, he didn't. But that, I suppose, will be part of their argument and whether or not he had the right to say whatever he did say in that speech, and that'll be the kind of freedom of speech argument. Now, that's an interesting debate, right? And if you pull out the stops on both sides that make that debate, it would be interesting to listen to,

because that's basically, if they're going to argue the case on its merits one way or the other, that's in many ways what it comes down to. The other issue that comes down to is this business of how open-minded are the senators. You know, there's so much talk about the Republicans, oh, they're all closed-minded, they're going to vote the party line, they're all afraid of Trump, this, that, and the other. Six did, you know, vote basically against Trump yesterday yesterday which is one more than the last vote it's still nowhere near enough uh to convict him they need two-thirds vote in the senate so that you need 16 republicans um or 17 republicans to to make this happen for them i don't think

most people figure they're nowhere near that unless it's a compelling case. But the argument is they're not open-minded. Well, they are open-minded to a degree or you wouldn't add six offside. Democrats, how open-minded are they? They're solid 50, 50 for 50. They're not moving. They're not budging at all. There's no one on the Democratic side who appears that there's any possibility that they're going to vote in Trump's favor. They're all against. So, I don't know. Look, I think that's an interesting, it's an interesting challenge to us all to say, let's, what if we were there? What if we were effectively the jury and we were really charged with being open-minded about this? And one of the reasons it's an interesting challenge

is because I kind of feel like, and most of my experience with court, no, let me restate that, all of my experience with court is the TV version. But in the TV version, this gets pled out. This never goes to a stand-up trial. Trump and his attorneys say, this is going to go badly if we have to stand up and make these arguments. The only arguments that are available to us are so horrible that you'll end up getting treated worse through the process of the trial. But that didn't happen. So they're going ahead and doing it. And I kind of feel like on the merits of the argument, you know, that this things that he said should be protected as free speech, legitimate kind of democratic kind of strong talk. I heard somebody offer a version of, well, let's stress test that a little bit.

And it was quite compelling for me to hear this. I don't know if you heard this point raised. I don't remember who raised it, Peter, but they said, well, what about if Trump was a Muslim imam? And what if the people who he was speaking to were people of the Islamic faith? And they went down the street to the Capitol, and they started beating on the cops and breaking in the windows and going in and talking about finding and killing Congress people. If we just stop and think about how America would react to that scenario, would it be different? Of course it would be different.

Sure, they never would have got to the windows. They never would have got past the fence. They never would have got past the fence, and nobody would be saying, well, that Muslim leader, he was just saying some things, and what those people did had nothing to do with what he was saying. That argument wouldn't last a second in the court of public opinion, and yet we've got dozens of U.S. Republican senators who are going,

you know, he just said these things, and they were a little bit inflammatory, but the Democrats say inflammatory things too. And Trump's own lawyer basically acknowledged that what he little bit inflammatory, but the Democrats say inflammatory things too. And Trump's own lawyer basically acknowledged that what he said was inflammatory, and the only difference between him and the Democrats is that the Democrats don't have like a little army of people who will go and break down the doors. So I don't think that that open-mindedness really is,

I don't think it holds up as a kind of an idea, but I think it's good that we should talk about it from time to time, because don't think it holds up as a kind of an idea, but I think it's good that we should talk about it from time to time, because I do think that if we lose sight of the idea that there can be a trial, something is lost here in terms of a process that's important going forward. Why are they so afraid of Trump? I mean, you know, I get it. He has big rallies. He has a following, but you know, quite frankly, that following is somewhere in the 35 to, you know, the solid hardcore 35 to 40% max, right. Um, uh, of, of the population, uh, of the Republican party itself, probably double that. Now, I understand the whole business about primarying people and getting rid of people off the ticket because it was Trump support

if you don't have shown a record of supporting Trump. But, you know, time moves on, right? There's four years until the next major election. I mean, there are the midterms coming up. Um, but they just seem so afraid of him. And it's not like he's got this fantastic record because he doesn't, you know, he hasn't delivered on all kinds of things. And in terms of electoral success, it's gone down with every election, you know?

Yeah. So I, I gotta say, I i just i don't get it like i don't quite understand what they are so afraid of because if a group of them a significant margin maybe it started with those six you know maybe the six doubles to 12 maybe it triples to 18 um over time doesn't look like it's going to over the next week or so or the length of the trial. But when you start to move a major block, then people tend to watch and take note. Anyway, I just find it possible.

Yeah, well, look, I think there's a couple of things. One is that he has profited and been very clever about how to profit from the market for anger, which I think has kind of exploded in the age of social media. We've talked about this before, how the algorithms basically are set up to find out the things that stress and worry and anger us and give us more of them. And Trump kind of arrived in politics without much of an agenda, but with the ability to call people names and to kind of do that in a way that sort of said, if you're angry and you just want somebody else to blame, whether it's a Mexican or a Democrat or a woman or a person of color, I'm your guy. And he tapped into it and he found that it was working. He's clever in the sense that he understands what, when he pings out

a message and it comes back with extra volume, he's going to keep on doing it. And he's kept on doing it, and he's put these politicians in a situation where their courage is tested and they fail, all but the ones yesterday who did the right thing. All of the others basically said, Mitch McConnell, only a few weeks ago, what did he say? He said, Trump fed people lies and provoked them about the situation on the 6th. And what did he vote for yesterday? He said, there's nothing to look to see here. We should move on. I mean, Trump also said in a speech at his Bedminster golf course where the Police Benevolent Association was there. And he said to them, if sleepy Joe Biden wins, no cops will be safe.

And who knew that what he was basically describing was, OK, Joe Biden's going to win and my people are going to go and beat on cops with flags. Kill them. Kill them. Kill a cop so there's no real rationality to it because it's not born of a rational starting point it's just about anger mustering anger finding people who are angry harnessing their anger profiting from it fundraising off it lining your pockets with it. That's the Trump story. You know, earlier you talked about if this was a conventional trial,

and I often wondered, okay, if it was, what would be the charge? Would the charge be treason, which has a nice, simple ring to it? And many people believe what happened on January 6th was treason. And you can argue about who the guilty people are, but that the crime committed was treason. And I've always, I guess I've grown up thinking, and maybe it's from war movies or whatever, that the penalty for treason was death.

Pretty well everywhere. If there's treason, you're going to die. And I assume that meant that's where I was in the States. I actually looked it up this morning. That's not it. There's a minimum $10,000 fine for treason, maybe a couple of years in jail. That's it.

The last person to be executed in the United States, in fact, the only one on record to be executed for treason was in the 1860s, and it was during the Civil War. And ironically, you know what it was for? It was for tearing down the flag, the stars and stripes. One act by one person on the flag. Treason hung. Anyway, that's just an interesting side note. Here's my question for you, or at least I think one of the questions,

which I hope is going to be answered in this trial in the Senate. Because it's pretty clear that Trump incited the crowd. You can make the argument whether that was enough to have happen what eventually happened. That's a different argument. But incitement, he certainly got them to the boiling point. He had invited them to Washington for that day, for a wild time, I think was the term he used.

Yep. So those things, inviting, incitement. But you know what? I looked again very closely at those images. Those people were dressed for a rumble, right? I mean, it's not just the body armor. Look at their images. Those people were dressed for a rumble, right? I mean, it's not just the body armor. Look at their shoes. This was not a walk, a protest walking down Pennsylvania Avenue.

This was, they were there to hammer. And so my question is, and it's often the same question that journalists ask on, you know, covering scandals, you know, follow the money. Like who paid for all these people to get there? How did they get there? In terms of the organization of all this, sure, I'm sure many protesters who believe in the cause, you know, used their own money and flew to Washington. But there's got to be more to the money angle than this. Yeah, I think that.

And I think they've got to follow the money. I think that's right. And they've got to follow the online trail of information that was flowing. And we've heard stories about this, that there were communications networks established where people were swapping information about if you're coming that there were communications networks established where people were swapping information about if you're coming and you're trying to bring your weapons, you can't fly with the weapons, so here's a way that we'll transport the weapons for you.

And everybody who's coming to the big brouhaha, we can all kind of stay at these hotels. This wasn't just a bunch of people who independently saw a Trump tweet and said, you know what, in January, I think I'll go to Washington and listen to one more speech from this guy because Washington's a nice place, but it's not that nice in January. Why would you go there in the middle of a week to listen to a speech that you've heard a million times, where you probably believe it's not going to change the outcome unless you're there with a specific agenda? And so I feel like

you, that if this was nighttime and Trump got up and he gave this stem winder of a speech and you could tell that people were drinking and kind of losing their self-control and then that turned into a riot, it wouldn't make it anywhere near okay. But it would at least make it feel a little bit more like a thing that got out of control as opposed to what you're saying, which is a thing that for many people who were there was a planned out effort to carry out an assault on the Capitol. Now, I know some people say we should be a little bit tolerant of these folks because they've been fed so much information that made them think that they were the patriots, that they were the ones defending the Constitution, and everybody on the other side was trying to steal an election. And I really try hard, Peter, to be charitable to that point of

view. But I fail every time I try, to be honest. I just, it's not an excuse to me. It's not even close to an excuse. And I don't really believe that that many of those people really believed that in their hearts that this election was stolen, and that the only thing that they could do as patriotic Americans was to go to Washington on January the 6th, storm the Capitol, and somehow turn around that election, you have to believe that these people were really playing with fewer cards in order to believe that that's all true or that that's really the majority of the people who were there.

Don't you think? I think you have a point, as you often do. Just ahead, whatever happened to Mike Pence? When will we hear his story? Okay, I find Mike Pence a real puzzle in this story, and I think he may be able to answer a lot of questions that we all have about January 6th, if he's willing to talk.

So let me talk a little bit about Mike Pence and get your thoughts, Bruce, on him, because obviously we know who he is as vice president. And he was a toady for four years for Trump. He did whatever he was asked to do, and he did it with a smile on his face, and he basically used whatever phrase you want. But he definitely looked after Trump's desires on a daily basis. Things clearly were getting a little testy after the election

because Mike Pence, who was a former senator, I believe, former member of the House of Representatives, he's been around the track, he knows what happens in elections, and some people win, some people lose, and he knew who won and who lost in the election for January 6th. So as it got closer to January 6th, and it got, which the main reason for January 6th, don't forget, was the vote in the Senate to basically certify the election result.

And he was getting increased public pressure from Trump to use his vote, which could be a deciding vote in the Senate, to vote against the Democratic win. So Trump started to go public with that, started to tweet things. And in that January 6th rally, he even mentioned Pence and said, if Pence has the courage, he'll vote the right way. And he better vote the right way. It was almost seemed like a threat. Well, certainly some in the crowd took that as a threat because when

they were marching down there to the Capitol, they were yelling things like, hang Mike Pence. And Mike Pence was on Capitol Hill as part of his duties that day with his family, with his wife, with his kids, and things got ugly, and they had to take him out of the chair in the Senate where he was presiding and basically hide him. And the word now seems to be in the investigative reports that have been done since that he was like 60 seconds away from being taken by the protesters. And who knows what might have happened if they had, whether they would have followed through on their threat. Now, we haven't heard from Mike Pence since that day in any way talking about what

happened. What happened to him, what happened to his family, what happened with the protesters, how close he was to them, how scared he was, if he was scared. But most importantly, what we haven't heard is, did he ever talk to Trump on that day, on that afternoon? Because Trump did nothing for him that day. We're told that he never made any attempt to phone Pence. And if Pence was trying to phone him, he didn't take the calls. So Pence has lots to say, one would assume, about that day. And if he says it in public over these next few days,

it could have an enormous impact, depending on what it is, on this trial. I mean, you know, the Senate trial managers tried to call Trump as a witness. Trump said he wasn't interested in coming. I wonder if they've asked Pence. Should they ask Pence? What is Pence hiding? Why is he not talking? Okay, that's my, that's my story.

I'd love it if they would, but I don't think they will. I mean, I think that Pence has had almost every day of Trump's time in office, a reason to be angry or disappointed or embarrassed. And he's never said anything. I think it's probably good for him, relatively speaking, that he hasn't said anything since the events of that day. He was threatened. He was threatened with his life. Yeah. He was with his wife and his kids. With the fact that he's been odorless and colorless he's kind of like been a Trump tofu that Trump can make him look and sound like whatever Trump wants him to look or sound like and then wants him to look or sound like. And then he's completely disposable for Trump on a whim, basically. I don't think it made much of a difference to Trump to say,

and I'm mad at Mike Pence, like he said about so many other people in his administration. All of those people probably thought, I'm going to go in and i'm going to help trump i'm going to be loyal to trump meaning i'm going to endure the embarrassing things that he does that my friends and family and acquaintances all confront me with and say how can you work for trump with what he just did but if you're mike pence you said give me another helping of that for four years because he was doing some math in his head that Trump at some point was going to go, you know, there's one guy, just one guy who's been so loyal to me that I'm going to reward him by placing the mantle on him after I leave. He's not going to do that.

I have no sympathy for Mike Pence. He'll be pushing Ivanka before he pushes Mike Pence for a nomination. You had to be a dummy if you're Mike Pence to believe that you were going to get anything out of that transaction. Right. Nobody ever did before. All of the other people who ever spoke about their experience with Trump, including people like

Michael Cohen went to jail I mean there's so many stories of people go this doesn't work both ways it will not work both ways for you Mike Pence and now Mike Pence is kind of like this this vichy politician where the the hard right mob doesn't want anything to do with him except maybe to beat on him. And everybody else looks at him and said, man, how could you have done that for that long and never said anything? And still you don't have anything to say. Yeah, but why not?

Why wouldn't he say something now? I mean, if he was still thinking he could get something out of it, he'd say something in defense of Trump right now. He'd make it up, as I'm sure he did for the last four years. Well, you know me, Peter. I love a lot of politicians. It doesn't matter what stripe. There's a lot of good ones out there.

But I have seen a certain number, a minority, a minority of politicians for whom the lack of courage is the most defining characteristic. The ability to kind of look at a fork in the road, say there's a courageous thing to do and a chicken thing to do. And they kind of look hard at the courageous thing to do. And they go, oh, you know what? I kind of feel like maybe I'll do the courageous thing next year, but I should just take the chicken way out and stay out of the line of fire. There are some of those in every party and mike pence is like a a cartoon-sized version of a chicken-hearted politician i still think they should call him let him say oh god i'm

not gonna i'm not gonna go but uh i want to make this podcast i want to ask him some hard questions well maybe we should ask him if he won't go to the trial as a witness, maybe he'll come on the podcast. Maybe he'll come on the bridge. Maybe he'll come on Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth because he would look at that title and he'd say, well, I've got options. I could blow smoke.

I could do the mirrors thing. Or, you know, I could tell the truth. Honestly, the only rational thing for him, he's got no political career as far as I can imagine, and he should just figure out what's his book deal, and he should do a tell-all and cash in on that because he's not getting anything else out of it, that's for sure. You're good at titles. What would Mike Pence call his book?

What a fool I was or something like that. What fool am I? He has to sort of acknowledge that he debased himself in support of a horrible human being, a terrible leader for America and the world, and that he's learned something from it. And the thing that he learned from it, more than anything else, should be his own mistake, his lack of virtues, lack of courage, because he'll have some entertaining stories to tell

if he wants to about Trump, no doubt. But, yeah, I'm sure he's not on the speakerphone call to the Mar-a-Lago breakfast nook this morning to talk about how the trial's going. So I guess we should be thinking about wrapping this up but where do you think this is heading do you how do you hold out any prospect that there could be more republicans flipping because don't forget yesterday's vote was was basically a procedural vote right it did give us hints certainly It's certainly where six people sit.

But it's kind of left open where some others, if they truly are thinking hard about this, looking at the evidence. We don't know what the rest of the evidence is going to be. We don't know what witnesses, if any, the Democrats are going to call. We don't know what approached, if any, the Democrats are going to call. We don't know what approached the – Mutt and Jeff, the two lawyers for Trump, who must be reading the reviews today.

They must be just horrified about things. In their defense, they were only hired last week. They didn't even know exactly what they were dealing with. And it showed. mean the what the line i love the best is where he said oh yeah trump won there sorry trump lost the election definitely he lost the election trump must have been with sydney powell you know if i can just interrupt sydney powell and rudy giuliani we were like well this is a clown show it's expected to be a clown show it's going to be a bad clown

show but then when they got dumped in favor of these two suits you know the expectation was okay they're going to be they're going to look the part they're going to kind of carry off the part a little bit and all we really got was they're like the worst actors as lawyers that you could ever imagine they just did not come off as being professionals at all, it seemed to me. Yeah, somebody said yesterday they couldn't do that. So I don't think this is going, I think this is done. I think if all of those Republicans could look at that video yesterday, all of these people who say, we're here to protect the blue,

to stand up for the cops, to fight against the Democrats who would defund the blue, to stand up for the cops, to fight against the Democrats who would defund the police, and yet watch this video of all these Republicans, these fierce Trumpists, at Trump's instigation, beating on cops, killing one, and go, well, yeah, but, you know, maybe, you know, isn't there something else we should talk about? I mean, maybe the rest of the evidence will be more persuasive to them, but they still will have that vote that they took to let's move on. So I don't think it's going to go anywhere. And I think the big drama still is, obviously, the pandemic

and what happens is the overarching issue for most people. But then after that, is there one party of the right in America, or will there be more than one? I don't think that's settled at all. I think that the reaction to Liz Cheney's comments and position has been really instructive up in places like Wyoming. It looks like there wants to be a party that is not the party of establishment Republicans. Yeah, I've come around to your thinking on that. I do believe that at this point, the only way to fix the Republicans is to break them

and see them rebuild. And you hear more and more traditional Republicans talking that way and Republicans talking that way and publicly talking that way and saying, you know, this could take 10 years, but we're going to need to go through this to fix it. Now, there's obviously a gamble in taking that route because the dominant party may not be,

the dominant winner out of that fight may not be the one that you're on the side of. And it can get, you know, not only can it get ugly, but it can really change the whole face of American politics. But that story is still to come. This one is still playing out you know i up until up until yesterday i basically felt like you did that the odds are this you know this we know how this is going to end um and it's going to be perceived for trump at least as a victory for him

and the odds are it's probably still that way. But I think we've got a couple of interesting times ahead in the next few days. I think they've got to be, you know, a good prosecution team has surprises, or they should have. Yeah. And, you know, in a way yesterday,

the video was a bit of a surprise, although we've seen so much of that so many times. But the way they put it together was really quite brilliant. But let's see what else they got, because it sure appears the other side doesn't have anything, or at least if they do, they sure weren't showing it yesterday. No, they showed up with nothing yesterday. And I think you're right.

There is obviously a lot of evidence about how this event came together and, you know, the role of the Trump children in it, the role of Rudy Giuliani in it. And, you know, if it doesn't change the minds of those Republican senators, Peter, I guess the other way to look at it is, will it help establish whether the Republican Party is going to break up in order to mend itself, or it won't? Because all of those other Republicans out there who aren't in the Senate, who are looking on and who are legitimately horrified by what they're learning, that could add a lot of propulsion to this idea of we better break it because we don't want to be captive of this kind of scenario where somebody can come out

of nowhere and command a whole bunch of angry people to do ridiculous things. And that's the defining aspect of our party for the future. Maybe that will be the best thing that can come out of it for the Republicans. Okay. We're going to leave it at that for this week's Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Thanks for all of this, Bruce. It was a pleasure to talk to you, even about a deeply unpleasant subject. And it made Wednesday one of the seven best days of the week for me again this week, Peter. Thank you.

I'm glad we're able to keep that track record going for you on that. All right. Bruce Anderson in Ottawa. And Bruce, of course, is also the chairman of Abacus Data, the research firm that's based in Ottawa. Coming up tomorrow, at this point, looks like a potpourri day tomorrow. I've got a whole stack of interesting little tidbits I want to run through, so we'll probably do that tomorrow. And on Friday, it is the weekend special,

and we love to hear from you because that broadcast is really your broadcast, and we get to hear what's on your mind, your thoughts and questions and comments, and they can be on anything. It can be anything you heard today or earlier this week. Don't be shy. Send along your thoughts.

We always are looking for new listeners to write in, and we've got a fair number of new listeners as a result of the fact the podcast is now also on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks. And we'd love to hear from you. So you can write to TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com. TheMansbridgePodcast at gmail.com. That's it for this week. I'm Peter Mansbridge.

Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in, well, 24 hours. Thank you.