The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Is The Jan 6 Committee Making A Difference?

Episode Date: June 22, 2022

Bruce Anderson puts his lens on the committee hearings in Washington into the Jan 6, 2021 insurrection.  Is it having an impact and will it make a real difference?  Plus, inflation -- what impact does it have on the world of politics?

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 good morning, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa on this day. It's a hot one in central Canada, especially in southern Ontario. It'll be another day in the 30s, but, you know, who's complaining? I'll tell you who's not complaining. Those who were hoping the January 6th committee investigation in Washington into the January 6th event on Capitol Hill, the people who were hoping that it would actually deliver something and something new are not complaining because it has.

You may wonder how many people are actually watching. The ratings say that day one was 20 million and day two which was in the in the morning was 10 million there'd be now four days of these committee hearings and as much as one may have thought and i must say i thought that day one would be the big day that they had to get that one right to get some attention and they got attention, but that it would be hard to keep delivering on each day of the investigation, of the committee investigation. About four days in, and they seem to be hitting a home run each day. Yesterday, if you watched it, you'll know, was gripping.

No matter which side of the fence you sit on in terms of Trump. We even had Fox analysts, some, saying, ooh, that was a difficult day for Trump. That didn't look good on Trump. So there are not a lot of days left in this committee, but if one assumes they're going to keep going. Sadly, there are not a lot of days left in this committee, but if one assumes they're going to keep going. Sadly, they're not a lot of days. They can do another three seasons of this.

This is gold. You like it, eh? I mean, you see it as like a mini drama. It's the best produced political content that I can remember seeing. And you remember when we first talked about this, Peter, we talked about the urban hearings in the Watergate era and how that was kind of gripping. And I think maybe both of us were a little bit worried

that this wasn't going to meet that standard. And it's blown past that standard. And anybody that wants to kind of compare them, YouTube has some of that video on it. Just go back and look at it. And it was slow and it was a bit ponderous. And this is extraordinarily well produced. And I don't want to just focus on the, sorry, I interrupted you.

No, no, no. I was winding up. i was winding up i was winding up to the big intro and uh well you got it i i don't want to just focus on the on the production values because it makes it sound like that there's more style style than substance to this and and there isn't although there's there's no doubt that they spent a lot of time on style they hired the people to give it style to give it uh as a result attention on the part of the public they went about it that way because they watched that the fact that the uh the hearings in the past couple of years had not worked in terms of engaging the public.

This is different. Absolutely different. And it was worth them doing that because the point that they're trying to make is they want people to be engaged. They want people to kind of pay attention to the evidence. at some point that they needed to present it differently, because if it just looked like another partisan meandering, posturing, rehash of the same evidence, that it wasn't going to have any effect. And it's still, you know, to be determined how much of an effect it's going to have on that kind of highly rigid, polarized situation that exists in the United States. Having said that, I can't imagine that there were better ways for this committee to organize the presentation of their work product, including the fact that we don't even know exactly when

the next episode is going to be sometimes, but we know that we want there to be one. We want this to continue because the amount of detail that they're bringing that people didn't know about before, and the way in which it's presented, video clips, live testimony, scripted comments from the committee members. That's one of the things that I find interesting is a lot of times if politicians are sitting behind a dais like that, and they're kind of asking questions, or they're making interventions. You've seen this a million times before. They're not always very good at it. But I'm listening to what they're saying now, and I realize that they're reading off prompters, but they don't look like they're reading off prompters, and the script is well written. And so the comments as they're asking questions and the way in which Adam Schiff is asking

questions yesterday was really, really extraordinary. So on this substance, this is such a seamy exposition of such a miserable crew of liars and cheats, Trump and Giuliani at the center of it, that even if you already thought you couldn't be more dismayed or disgusted with how those two acted. You are. You probably can't consume this much evidence of their relentless skullduggery, their attempt to apply completely inappropriate pressures on the electoral system, to pressure individuals and put their lives and their safety at risk. There's a lot of shocking stuff in there. And I got to believe that it's reigniting within the Republican Party, a certain number of people saying, can we really imagine having this guy be part of our offer uh going forward to the american people um it's it's yesterday was kind of explosive kind of seamy um and uh and really quite quite quite compelling

and the most you've been in the tv business i love to hear what you you thought about what you saw the most compelling thing they're doing i mean their production techniques are are really modern day like right right down to the the part where the end of each day's hearings first of all condensed to sort of two two and a half hours max so you know not dragged out all day but the end of each one of these days has been, and coming up, you know, as they preview the next episode, they give you a clip of what's going to come up in the next hearing. But the most compelling part to me of the way they've done this is that they're using as witnesses almost entirely Republicans, Republicans who worked for Trump, is almost entirely Republicans.

Republicans who worked for Trump. Republicans who are MAGA. You know, they voted for Trump. They may even still vote for Trump. But they're also public servants. You see yesterday, you know, the big, one of the big witnesses was the speaker of the House of Representatives in Arizona in the State House.

And he was amazing. Now, this guy is a dyed-in-the-wool Republican, conservative Republican. Reagan conservative. Yeah, and a Trump conservative, a MAGA guy, and still is. But he was not going to get conned by a con artist, a fraudster, on this issue of the fake electors list. And to me, that is the most compelling part of this, these hearings, as the people who've been up front are those who actually worked for trump or believed in trump and in some cases still believe in trump but they tell

the truth which is something we thought was in a you know short supply on a lot of uh politicians not just republicans but certainly Republicans on this issue. So that to me has been quite, I keep expecting, I keep expecting there to be a dull day. There hasn't been. There hasn't been a dull day. And of course, a couple of other things really stood out for me. One is the role of Rudy Giuliani in Trump's political life. It's kind of almost a

perfect expression of how amoral and shambolic Trump is to have this guy acting on his behalf in so many situations, making phone calls, writing messages, saying things like, well, we have a lot of theories. We just don't have any facts. And then having that line repeated by this kind of upright, upstanding, staunch Republican from Arizona in a way that was so damning to Rudy Giuliani. Not that there's a shred of credibility left in Rudy Giuliani's reputation, but for those of us who are kind of wondering if this is really the way America works today, that Trump and Giuliani are going to get away with everything that they tried to do, they may still from an indictment standpoint. But I don't think they will from a blame standpoint, from a sense of dismay at what it now appears was clearly an effort by the then still sitting president

to not just kind of poke around the edges of the democratic system, not just to kind of plead with a few friendly Republicans, but a systemic, relentless effort to overturn the legitimate election results. And you can't have consumed this evidence so far and not come to the conclusion that it wasn't an accident that all these people showed up violent and angry in Washington. It wasn't disconnected with the effort that Trump and Giuliani were making. It was clearly connected to those things. And I believe we're going to, you know, based on what they've been telling us, they're going to show us in upcoming, I use the word episodes, that there's more evidence. And they haven't misrepresented the evidence that they have so far. If anything, they've kind of over-delivered. So, you know, I think it's encouraging that so many people already spoke to this committee, so many Republicans did, about their experience of the Trump campaign to overturn the Democratic result of the election. And I heard carefully in what they were saying yesterday, what they carefully said, which is that more people are watching this and coming out of the woodwork with stories to tell.

And I don't know if you you you must remember Keith Morrison. The only thing missing from a production value standpoint is his narration like that show. I guess it's Dateline or something like that. Keith's great. You know, good Canadian boy. When I was the Nationals reporter, the correspondent in Saskatchewan in the mid-1970s, Keith was the CTV correspondent, national correspondent. And, you know, we became good friends and we, you know, both ended up going to Ottawa shortly after that as parliamentary correspondents. And then Keith's life took a different turn as he went down to the, eventually went down to the States.

But a great writer and a great presenter. And certainly on those kind of programs, nobody gets close to him. Nobody better. Let me just say this about Giuliani. Because I've never been an admirer of juliani's ever i mean two things made him one he was the uh the lead prosecutor in in trials against some of the mafia in new york at a period where they were cleaning up new york kind of late 80s early 90s and then he became mayor and he was you know he was not a good mayor and he was about to get turfed when 9-11 happened

and there's no doubt in those days immediately uh surrounding 9-11 he was almost a Churchillian figure in rallying morale etc and you know I love New York stuff and and and he was very good at that but that's it you know he was not a good mayor he was not a good administrator he was rejected by republican administrations including trump's as a cabinet figure because he was untrustworthy and yet he becomes this trusted sidekick to Trump in his big hour of need. This was, I can remember in the early 2000s, I had a speech in London. It was London, Ontario, and it was a two-barrel speech. They were flying in Rudy Giuliani to give the lead speech. And everybody was really excited, and, you know,

he had a private jet and all this stuff. I drove myself down to London. But anyway, they fly him in. The old pickup truck with dirt on the tires. It was a pickup truck, as a matter of fact. All right. Anyway, he comes in, and he was flat. It was a dull speech.

I'm sure it inspired some people, but not many. I had a lot of people come up to me afterwards. They were very disappointed. He sort of winged it, came in, picked up his whatever sizable check for his speech, and then he was out. Didn't even wait for my speech, can you imagine? Anyway, that was it that was my and it didn't

surprise me because i had a such a low estimate of juliani and boy nothing has changed since then in terms of uh what my feelings are towards him um anyway you touched on the point here is kind of like what happens now? What can happen now? You know, you saw over the weekend some polling data that about 60% of Americans want Trump to be charged, indicted with a crime for his role on January 6th, of that figure on the Republican side when you break it down, one in five Republicans say that, which sounds pretty bad, but it's still one in five. It could make a difference in an overall vote, right?

Yeah. But I'm still, I hesitate when asked that question, will he get indicted? Because I don't see it yet on the part of the U.S. Attorney General that he's heading in that direction. He seems to be, in fact, you know, him and his department seem to be quite a bit behind in the process. The very fact that they've had to ask for all the testimony given by the witnesses to the january 6th committee seems to suggest doesn't necessarily mean this but it seems to suggest they don't even have that stuff yet like i mean their own investigation their own interviews um you know unless they're trying to compare one to the other and where these guys lying and blah blah blah but it just seems to me that they're hesitating at the gate.

And you hear a lot of lawyers say, I don't know, you know, unless you've got a headshot, unless you can take the king out. You know, you can't go there. You can't charge the president of the United States unless you're 100% certain that you've got him. Yeah. Well, look, I think that is a really interesting question. I saw the testimony of one of the witnesses yesterday. I think it was the former Secretary of State for Georgia, maybe, Raffensperger.

Yeah, he's still Secretary of State. He just won re-election, which is a story in itself, you know, because they really came after him so in part of his testimony he talked about how he'd sat down with somebody and he went through the well they thought this and i showed them why that wasn't true and they thought this and i showed them that wasn't true and i you know i went through five different points that the other person had believed as part of their defense of Trump. And I proved to them in each case that there was no evidentiary basis for that allegation of cheating.

And he said at the end of the process of that conversation, the other person said, yeah, I get all of that. But I still in my gut think this was stolen. And I think that's a, you know, it's a reminder that even if the Justice Department doesn't get to a place where it files charges against Trump, this is a really important thing for American democracy to go through. And if it fails to yield charges, hopefully at least it yields a sense of caution going forward about how vulnerable their electoral system is to these internal political pressures by powerful people trying to trade on favors. I mean, there was even a moment where yesterday, apparently Trump's former chief of staff, Mark Meadows,

was talking about sending MAGA hats and buttons to people who were adjudicating this stuff. And, you know, somebody said, that's just a terrible idea. Let's not do it. But it seems like that was the only terrible idea that they stopped in its tracks. So I would like to see charges if charges are warranted. I can't imagine that they're not on the basis of what we've seen, but I don't really know the specifics of the law. I do think separate and apart from whether there are charges, this is hopefully productive and therapeutic for Americans to see what happened, to see what Trump did,

even if only to resist the temptation, whatever it is that makes them tempted to elect him, to resist that temptation again. I'm going to ask you a question here that I'm going to use your, you know, your phrase. I'd really like to know what you think bruce about this and here's here's the uh here's the question um i'm a baby boomer i know you were born considerably after i was so a long time after yeah you were the next generation after baby boomers i think i read about your generation though and good for you people did good things here's the here's the question when when i was growing up it was almost a crime to call anybody a fascist because if you did that the next step was you were going to call them a hitlerite or what have you but it started there and, you know, as young people, we grow up and the word would sort of

half come out of your mouth in discussing, you know, some particular person. And then you'd back off because you'd say, no, no, no, I can't say that because it's, you know, that's just going too far. Nobody seems to be hesitating anymore in the use of that F word, the fascist. You hear it a lot on television in terms of commentary from responsible commentators. That was fascism because what fascism is is the use of intimidation and violence and so on. And that is what they were doing.

Their actions were fascist. I don't know how you feel about that and whether you agree with it, but more so, what does that say about the time we're in, that in fact that word is being used by responsible people to describe what was occurring uh in the u.s and elsewhere um at that time and perhaps still at this time yeah you look i remember that fascism and communism were two words that kind of defined uh the political discussion almost as the extreme epithets that you could hurl at somebody and say that they were one or the other, or both

those things. And I think that that's not, you know, it's not so much the case now. And part of what's happening now that concerns me, to be honest, is what we've been releasing in our research about how many people believe conspiracy theories and how many people believe conspiracy theories in part because they don't believe what governments or media organizations provide them with as accounts of events. And so I think we've actually got a smaller audience, even though there's more people, we've got a smaller audience that's paying attention to kind of official records of what's going on, whether it's the hearing or the coverage of the hearing in this case. And within the audience that's paying attention, there's a smaller segment still whose opinions are open to change. And, you know, I always kind of find when we talk about this kind of thing with Chantal, she's always careful to warn me not to imagine that there was a golden age at some point in the past.

But she's not on this program. And I think there was a better golden age in the past. And she can have at me on Friday if she wants to. But whether or not we were better people then i think is not really the point there were fewer channels for people to be distracted by that contributed alternative versions of events and um whatever flaws there were in journalism and politics then operated within certain guardrails, certain parameters of, you know, more or less the same story being told, maybe with different flavorings. And now,

you know, I think we're putting out some stuff today on how many Canadians believe that the election was stolen from Donald Trump. And it's kind of a surprising number. It's in the millions of people, essentially. And I find that it's the connection points between I don't trust media. I don't trust government. I won't take a COVID shot. Secret societies control the world. And Trump's election was stolen and the Royals murdered Diana. And 9-11 was an inside job and climate change is a hoax. It's this stringing together of a whole bunch of alternative versions of reality that mean that those of us who kind of remember a time where it almost seems simple, you could say, well, you're a Democrat or you're a fascist or you're a communist or you're a capitalist, that that seemed like a simpler kind of conversation to have and a field of play in politics that you could kind of see at a glance.

And now we don't really see at a glance all of what's going on in the political conversation, in the nooks and crannies of the various channels that people are using to share opinion. And that's the bigger issue for our time. And it's the thing that allowed Trump to succeed, despite all the evidence that he was wholly unworthy of the office that he ended up holding. Yeah, we're going to take a quick break here in a minute, but before I get there, this is not directly related, but it's sort of related. I talked for a bit on this yesterday on the bridge, which was the announcement by Marco Mendocino, the public safety minister, that they were going to issue panic buttons to all parliamentarians that would work from no matter where they were around parliament hill or around the country that would signal to the proper authorities that they were concerned about the situation they were finding themselves in whether they were being

you know verbally or physically abused by those who were protesting against them or what have you. And I thought, wow, this is what we've come to, that we've got to give parliamentarians a panic button to, you know, wear around their neck or keep in their pocket or what have you. And I thought that was pretty telling about where we are right now and how politicians are viewed on the part of clearly a significant, at least minority of people. What's your take on that? Yeah, look, it is sad that we've been heading in that direction for a while.

I can remember some of the things that happened to the former environment and climate change minister, Catherine McKenna, the amount of kind of abusive comment and other forms of threat that she and others have faced in politics has definitely been on the rise. We don't like to think of ourselves as requiring more police protection for people in public life, but we do need to be serious about that. And I know enough politicians who've experienced that sense of anxiety about themselves or their families, loved ones, that it's real. It's not something that's being exaggerated for effect or sympathy or anything like that.

There are ways now where people who have strong political views find that those views get really ginned up to the point where, you know, what we see playing out in the United States does happen here. People think that it's somehow legitimate because they're so enraged by what they see a politician doing because other people tell them to be enraged about it and the the sense of uh frustration and um i've got to do something about this becomes uh such a driving force and i don't think that we've um certainly america didn't take it seriously enough and it's a much more security conscious uh political climate than ours um but i i think that you know i hate to think that the only answer is to increase the amount of security i think that that does need to happen and probably these panic buttons are a good idea but it would be better if if we could just turn down the temperature quite a bit

yeah good luck on that in this uh in this day and age it doesn't seem to be around the corner uh what is around the corner is our second segment but we're going to take a break first we'll be back right after this And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa in the nation's capital. You're listening to Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth on the bridge on Sirius XM Canada, channel 167, or on your favorite podcast platform. And this is the last episode before we take a bit of a summer hiatus. We'll be back if something huge happens,

but the plan is to, and I hope it is for you as well, if you're able, to enjoy the summer a bit. We've waited a long time for a summer where we could hopefully enjoy it. And that, for us, starts next week.

Okay, topic change. To one that I'm assuming a lot more people are concerned about, which is inflation. And we see it in so many ways. I don't need to list them. You see it every time you walk out your door, go out your driveway, go to a grocery store, go anywhere. You see inflation looking at you hard in the face. So what I want to try and gauge is the impact of inflation on politics generally

what's your what's your take on that well it's it's really interesting because i think the the the way in which the inflation issue gets covered in political coverage tends to assume that there's a kind of almost instantaneous public anger towards government when inflation goes up and a belief that we need to change governments because inflation is going up and government must somehow be to blame or can actually solve it. And neither of those things are really borne out in the work that I've done on this issue over many years now. And so the first thing that I think everybody who is looking carefully at what are the political consequences of a higher inflation rate is how long do people think it's going to last? How severe do they think it's going to be? What do they think is causing it? And what, if anything, do they think it's going to be? What do they think is causing it?

And what, if anything, do they think can be done about it? And this is an unusual version of an inflation risk in terms of politics. It's unusual in the sense that I think it happens at a time when the government feels on some days like it's lost its energy a little bit. It's a bit out of gas. It doesn't have the same share of voice. It doesn't command the same attention to what it's doing. So we had the finance minister and Deputy Prime Minister Chris Chifrillon make a big announcement about inflation.

I think it was just last week. But given the enormity of the inflation issue, you just don't get the sense that people are dialing into what the government's saying, in part because they think that there is a bit of age on this government right now, and there's a sense of the seamness of its message. And that's always a risk for incumbent governments, and I think it's one that this one faces right now. But the other reason why this inflation rate situation is different is it's not part of what used to be in our political psychology, which is that if things are good now, two years from now, they're not going to be good. If things are bad now, two years from now, they're going to be good. That we went through these economic cycles. They were relatively predictable and would happen over and over and over again.

This one is, we haven't had those cycles very much for the last decade or so. Not to the same degree that you and I might remember from earlier decades. And so people were kind of accustomed to a low interest rate, low inflation environment for a very long period of time. What's going on right now is supply chain problems caused in part by the pandemic, caused in part by Russia's invasion of Ukraine. And so people don't know whether those are cyclical, how likely they are to endure, how severe they are to get, what happens if the zero COVID policies in China go away and supply chains start to repair themselves, what happens if the Russia-Ukraine war is ended. And so I think that the political price that the federal government is paying at this moment is attenuated, is less because those factors are in people's minds.

But there's also always the question of, well, if you're not happy with what's going on, what would you do differently? And that's where our political system has opinions on the right and opinions on the left. And there will be those on the right who say we need a government that will stop spending so much money because that's pumping up inflation. And there will be others who say we need a government that spends money or cuts taxes in order to help people who are really hurting. And those people will tend to look more for a progressive option. And over all of that, right now, the last time we measured, which is about a month ago, there's about 42% who say it's better if government doesn't try to do anything about inflation because the things that it will do will end up costing us more

and working less well than we imagined. And meanwhile, inflation is bad in other parts of the world too. So I don't see in the near term, a very significant political risk for the government, except if people start to say, they just don't seem to be able to, you know, to get motivated and practical and to solve problems. The passport system seems broken down. The airports are broken down. They don't seem able to kind of muster the same energy that they did a few years ago. And maybe that's part of the problem with inflation. If that constellation of attitude starts to develop, there will be um pressure politically but it'll probably come not just from the right but from the left as well you know you made me think about

the say the last 50 years uh the times at which a government was facing um inflation and how it how that factored in the election, the next election that those governments faced. And I kind of isolate three major times. The first one was the early 70s when the liberals were in power, Pierre Trudeau. They just had a minority government in 72. The oil shock hit the world.

Inflation started to have an impact. By the time of the 74 election, inflation was one of those issues that was front and center for a lot of Canadians. The Liberals came back with a majority government, partly based on the fact Canadians didn't like the alternative that was being offered by the Conservatives, which was a very strict wage and price control policy the irony of course is that within two years the liberals introduced that very same policy as their own wage and price controls and they paid the price in the 79 election but that was kind of the inflation factor then the early 80s when inflation really took off and interest rates really took off,

Pierre Trudeau was once again the prime minister. But in the 84 election, Brian Mulroney won with the biggest majority in the history of the country. Partly based on these, you know, liberals have been in power too long. They lied, you know, they have lied to us about various policies. They're arrogant. They're this. They're that. The energy policy of the early 80s was a disaster,

especially in Western Canada. Anyway, and then the next time was the early 90s, which draws some comparisons to what we're seeing right now because Jean Chrétien campaigned, among other things, on getting rid of the governor of the bank of canada having him replaced that he was the the cause of all economic problems including uh an inflationary uh cycle that was starting uh at that time so you have a kind of uneven past here in the sense that do governments pay a price for inflation which is underlineslines your point here.

You know, the first one, the early 70s, the Liberals maintained power. And the next two, the governing party lost power. So it's interesting to look at it through the history lens and to try and understand what we're witnessing right now. Yeah, yeah. And I think there are two especially important pain points that are a bit unique right now. One is the cost of housing and what's happening with that and what's going to happen with that. And are we in a situation where we're going to continue to feel

that pressure? I mean, there are some people who say that it's a housing bubble and prices are going to drop. On the other hand, there are others who say, well, we're we are going to continue to have more people looking for housing than there are new housing units being built. In which case, it's unlikely that we'll have that kind of downward pressure on on prices for housing, even if interest rates grow up. We'll have some, I guess. But so the housing thing is a really tough one for governments, especially as it seems like across parties and the two principal levels of government, there's a general consensus that we need to have more immigration in order to keep on providing the labor force that we need to support our economy and to support the social programs that we care about as a country. And the other is energy. And I do think that this question of windfall profits on energy is going to come is going to

keep coming back to the fore. I mean, some people say, well, the government should kind of give a gas tax holiday. And I kind of look at that and go, I'm not an economist. But if I just look at the politics of that, it looks good on the surface. But if the government just sort of surrenders that tax revenue for a period of time and gasoline prices don't really go down, all that happens is that the profits of the producers go up, that's going to feel like a pretty lousy political solution. And it's not going to bring any relief for any incumbent government that is feeling the pressure from the public. So

we see that debate about the gasoline tax happening in the United States a little bit here and this idea of windfall profits tax. And there's some people who say, well, no, government shouldn't intervene in the economy that way and do these kind of windfall profit taxes. And I generally think most Canadians would be of the same view. But with gas prices doing what they have been doing, I can imagine that there will be more political pressure in that area too. Is inflation the number one issue for Canadians right now? You know, that's, it's become a much more difficult question to answer over time, because people don't really decide there's only one issue. And not everybody agrees on what the issue is.

There are a lot of people who say climate change is the number one issue, and they're going to continue to feel that climate change is the number one issue. There are a lot of people who say that the cost of housing is the number one issue because they're in that market and are finding it really hard. Now, do they see that as an inflation issue or a cost of housing issue? The inflationary impact is probably relatively modest because they were having trouble with it last year and the year before and the year before that. So I always admire the persistence of people in asking that question, but I don't love the question. question well on that happy note uh let's uh call it a day for this day and for uh this season on the truth yeah it's been fun we've had dealt with a lot of issues here and we don't always we're not always able to define the smoke, the mirrors, or the truth on all these, but it gives us an opportunity to bat them around.

And it's nice to know that a lot of people consider this an important part of their week. To hear this show and to either get angry at what we say or agree with what we say, and so often many of them write about what we say. And speaking of that, this is your last opportunity to write on, you know, before the summer hiatus begins. So the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Get them in today because I'm going to be doing an early recording of tomorrow's The Bridge, which is the Your Turn edition,

because I've got a million things to do tomorrow. So I want to try and put that to bed early. So if you have something you'd like to say on any topic, the ones we've dealt with here today or anything else that we've been talking about this week, drop us a line. Anyway, Bruce, have a great hiatus, as they say. Have a great hiatus to you, Peter.

I look forward to seeing you soon. You got it. All right, that's it for the Bridge, Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth on this day. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. Thank you.