The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - SMT - Justin Trudeau and The American Right

Episode Date: December 20, 2023

It's the final regular episode of Smoke, Mirrors and The Truth and we focus on some comments Justin Trudeau made in his annual year-end interview with podcaster Terry DiMonte. The prime minister is clearly worried about the influence the American right is having on Canada.  Are we seeing a preview of the next election campaign? Bruce is here with his collector's edition of SMT!

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's a collector's edition today. It is the real deal. It is Smoke, Mirrors and the Truth, the last episode with Bruce Anderson. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. Bruce Anderson is in Ottawa today. And this kind of reminds me of whatever day that was back in the late 80s when MASH had its final episode. And then the 2000s Friends had its last episode. People will always regard this, what you're about to hear, the same way.

Here it is, the last episode. Regular episode. Well, and the whole cast is turned out. You and me. The two of us here here all the friends are here all the mashers are here for smoke mirrors and the truth but this is the the final that's right yeah this is the final like regular episode that's right because you've decided you've had enough you just can't take it anymore you've come up with every possible

smoke mirrors and the truth example over the last whatever it is almost three years you have no more there are no more smoke mirrors in the truth and i put them all out and now i have no more opinions except the ones that i'll have for fr. But I was like running out of opinions. And even I started to think, hmm, do I really care about that opinion? So I do have some for today, though. Okay, we'll get to them in a moment. We'll get to those in a moment because we have to mark this. This is a major moment in the lives of a lot of Canadians

because they've been writing ever since word leaked out on the grapevine that you were shutting her down for Wednesdays. SMT would be no more, and I'd be getting lots of letters. It's moving along, champ. And some really nice letters from people who are really upset by the fact that you're pulling the plug on Wednesdays. You know, some of your fans on YouTube have been writing as well. They're very upset.

The most delicate commentary in the world that you can find is on YouTube, as we all know. A lot of people just love to press their views. Well, I'm telling you, this is a big show, and I got dressed up for it. It's been a lot of fun. I've enjoyed it. It's been a great way for us to talk about politics and life a little bit. And I look forward to doing it from time to time. And I love doing Friday shows.

Yeah. Yeah. Bruce is not going far. So, as he says, he'll always be here for Fridays for Good Talk with Chantal. And I'm sure there's going to be the odd

time we can drag him back into the studio, haul out that great Smoke Mirrors and the Truth

theme music and have a special edition. In the meantime, I'm all dressed up for this show. I'm wearing my

grampy sweater, as those watching on YouTube can tell. i like that what are your what is that another uh leading brand you're a very brand conscious guy i you know i forget which i think this is an ll bean down in portland maine very nice that's good you know I usually just buy Canadian, but occasionally going back 50 years, I've been going to L.L. Bean. You just have to remember to keep your hand down.

For the viewers on YouTube, if you put your hand up too high, they can't see the book that you're trying to sell. You mean this one? It's actually on every book. We got it all over the place. Anyway, Grampy Sweater. What do your grandkids call you? They call you Grandpa?

Grandpa and Grandpa. But, you know, it evolves a little bit. Yes. It evolves a little bit. I'm Grampyy and I love it. Papa sometimes, but grampy usually. All right. This is that time of year.

I wrote about it in the buzz the other day where we drag out all the year-end interviews and the year-end panels. But the year-end interviews are mostly with the prime minister, and that goes back decades and decades. Used to just do one a year, and those were pretty special moments. And I always tend to remember Bruce Phillips, who was the CTV Bureau chief. You'll remember Bruce from the 70s and 80s.

Yes, you do. And was a terrific journalist. And he used to do these fabulous interviews that people would wait around for for weeks to hear his interview with Pierre Trudeau. And they were pretty good, pretty good interviews. And a couple of them were really good. Anyway, now prime ministers, I guess since Mulroney, have spread it around. You know, they do all the networks. They do the, you know,

all the print services or most of them. And as a result of that, they all tend to kind of blend into each other. They're all kind of the same. So there are rarely any big moments in those year-end interviews. Although the one that a lot of us tend to watch is Terry DeMonte's interview with Justin Trudeau. They've been friends for years before Justin got into politics. And Terry doesn't pretend to make this a journalistic interview.

It's two friends sitting down, kind of shooting the breeze. But he gets a lot out of it as a result. And this year's interview with the prime minister by Terry DeMonte, I think they did it in Vancouver, but he's a Montreal-based, or he was a Montreal-based broadcaster. He's retired now, but I'm not sure. Maybe he's living in Vancouver now. Anyway, it's a really interesting interview. The stuff that I pulled out of it is he basically got Trudeau to say that a lot of the problems that are facing the country

in terms of division and this kind of burned-down institutions attitude that some people have is a result of the convoy. And the influence on the convoy by American interests, the far right pushing convoy organizers to go after the Trudeau government, the progressive liberal government in their terms. It's funny because some progressives don't think it's very progressive at all, but nevertheless, that's what is suggested here, that it was the American right wing who pushed, and not only pushed, but financed.

And I think Trudeau's term in this interview is a huge financing from the American right of the convoy moment. Those numbers have been tossed around during the discussions about the convoy, about just how much money was involved. But it's interesting that here a couple of years later, when those kind of things, that kind of attitude is kind of buried away now, moved on trying to deal with other things, that Trudeau goes back to that, kind of sees that as a major moment in the way the country has unfolded since. What'd you make of that?

Well, I thought that, well, first of all, I think Justin Trudeau probably knows more than anybody exactly what the extent of American financial support or funding for the convoy was. I think it's, it's likely that that information was gathered. And so if he says that he believes that there was significant involvement, I don't certainly have evidence to refute that. I think that there's no question that there was rhetorical support and there continues to be that kind of rhetorical support. I mean, it was just a week ago that Joe Rogan, who has a massive, massive audience on YouTube, as you know, Peter, he talked about Justin Trudeau in an extremely disparaging way. I mean, he's entitled to do that office, but he talked about Trudeau's, pardon my word, shithole communist government.

It's very aggressive. And why is he doing that? Why are others like him deciding that they're going to really have at Canada? The theory that Trudeau laid out in that Damadi interview was that this was because these right wingers in the United States have a problem seeing Canada appear to be a place that's successful and progressive. And so they need to, you know, attack it as a way of showing their bona fides or making the case that America shouldn't go there, that kind of thing. That part of it, I felt a little bit less persuaded by, to be honest. But in I think it's Susan Delacorte's piece that you and I were both reading this morning, right? In the piece before that conversation, that part of the conversation,

I was really struck by something else that the prime minister was doing. And I and I agreed with him. He talked about what's going on in the United States. And he said that we do as a country need to be concerned about those influences arriving and becoming more mainstream in Canada. Now there are going to be people who are saying we need more of that. I see them on Twitter every day. You and I both see them on YouTube every day. They're out in force. I don't know how many of them are mechanized bots, trolls, what have you. But it's aggressive and it's never

ending. And the stuff that people say on the heels of things like Donald Trump using Adolf Hitler's language is shocking to me. And it never will not be shocking to me that somebody who is leading the polls to be president of the United States says the things about immigrants that Donald Trump is saying. He said two or three days ago. And then again, yesterday he repeated them.

He said, I know people are unhappy that I'm using this language, he said, but hear me out. And he said, and I don't read, I didn't read Mein Kampf, but people from around the world are coming and they're poisoning our country and they're ruining the blood of our country. These are very shocking, shocking times when we look at American democracy. He is a fascist and he is a racist. And if we don't think that those things are happening here, it's because we're not paying close enough attention in my view.

And so good for Justin Trudeau to be talking about those influences and the risk that they become more insinuated into Canada. I happen to believe that there's a very real chance that the next election is going to be about whether or not we want that kind of conservative influence in Canada. And I think part of what Mr. Trudeau was doing in this interview was raising the profile of that choice, saying, look, I could sit here and talk about the things that my government has done. We can put a platform together for what we do in the future. But we maybe also want to talk about this question of what does conservative mean and what will it mean for Canada if conservative in Canada starts to

become more like what conservative means in the United States. So I thought it was quite an important interview, but that was the part that struck me the most. You know, and it's obviously his comments, they didn't come by accident. Let's put it this way. He's trying to raise that issue and he's also trying, you know, he's clearly trying to raise that issue, and he's also trying to paint the opposition in that same corner, the conservatives, the Polievs party. Now, that's going to be quite the dividing line between the two of them and how they go about it and how Poliev reacts to it. Because he's riding a similarly difficult line. He doesn't want to alienate those people who feel that way by, you know, criticizing them too much. That's why he, you know, that's why he shook hands with the convoy people,

right? At a distance. He shook hands with the convoy people, right? At a distance. He shook hands with them. So he's trying to walk a careful line there. Trudeau was going to try to push it, it seems, from these comments. I don't think they came by accident, and I don't think you do either. He wants to get that out there. He realized certain things align themselves that may benefit the parties

that are trying to stop Polyev, the Liberals, the NDP, whomever, the bloc in Quebec, knowing that it's aligned with the American election a year from now. So, yeah, there are going to be a lot of people, too, I think, who are going to. Well, I don't know about a lot, but there'll be some in the in the commentary who will criticize Trudeau for doing this in the interview that we're talking about. I think he he raised abortion rights and he said, you know, we've seen something happen in the United States that people said would never happen. The reversal of Roe v. Wade,

the loss of a woman's right to choose what to do with her own health. And he said, we need to, I think he said, we need to be conscious that that could happen. If it could happen there, it could happen here. And I think you're absolutely right, Peter, that what he's doing is saying not every conservative thinks this way. Not every conservative wants to roll back a woman's right to choose, but some do.

And the question of what kind of conservative movement is going to be influential if Pierre Pauliev wins an election is a legitimate question, in my opinion. It is legitimate to put the onus on Pierre Pauliev to answer the questions more directly and to not, I don't want to say get away with, but I mean, the risk is that he's doing exactly what you do, what you said, which is that he sends messages out to the more extreme elements of his party that aren't necessarily heard by everyone else, but reassure them that he's, you know, he's got their values and interests at heart. And he tries to keep the different parts of the conservative movement all hearing enough to make them feel energized to support him in the next election.

There's nothing wrong with that. That's all fair ball. I don't like some of what that that is from a substantive standpoint, but that's just my opinion. But I think the challenge that Trudeau has is if he doesn't raise these issues, if he doesn't try to draw this contrast, is anybody else? And that is a little bit of a question for news organizations, some of which are trying to do this. But there are others that aren't. And we've talked about that before. And I think so I would expect that we'll see more effort by the prime minister and others on the liberal side to keep on pushing for that clarity from Pierre Polyev and about what the conservative movement would look like if they were to win an election here in Canada. And I think it's in Canadians' interest to have that be a bigger part

of the conversation for the next year. It's interesting that this comes at a time, and I'm sure Trudeau didn't have any inkling of this when he made his remarks. It sounds like it was a few days ago, but just last night in the United States, the Colorado Supreme Court made a pretty major ruling that could have a huge impact on the way the American election unfolds, unless it's overturned by the Supreme Court, which is possible.

It'll go to the Supreme Court. But the ruling was basically that Trump is disqualified as a candidate for president, at least on the ballot in Colorado. But this is a thing that could spread a little bit because there are other states that are doing this, are considering the same thing in their Supreme Courts, state Supreme Courts. But this was a major decision that has thrown a spanner in the works, as they say, or they used to say years ago in the UK, in terms of the Republican, the Trump strategy. And I was fascinated last night that the other Republican candidates for president, such as they are, well behind, all came out on Trump's side, said this is outrageous.

The courts have no right to enter into this. This is simply a matter for voters, not for courts. So once again here, they've all aligned. Even Chris Christie. There was only one who wasn't. Asa Hutchinson. Yeah, but he's out of it already, right?

I mean, he's already dropped out. So even Chris Christie, though, was supportive of that. So that fight, at the same time, it's now, nobody is having any trouble saying Trump's a fascist, just like you did a few moments ago. And they're saying it fully recognizing that, you know, fascism to some people is evil, but fascism to many people also can be extremely popular. We've witnessed it.

We've seen that. And we continue to see it in other places in our world today. And so people have to tread carefully in this discussion that's going to take place. Trump is now parroting the Hitler words words i don't care what he say i i believe him when he says he hasn't read mein kampf i don't think he's ever read a book well you know his uh his first wife ivana i gather had said in an interview some years ago that he kept speeches, Hitler speeches on his bedside reading table.

Now, I don't know who does that. I don't know if that's true, but that's what she said, apparently. Anyway, we don't need to litigate whether he read Hitler or uses the same kind of thematics. There's no question in my mind that he uses the same thematics that Hitler did. And the idea that a single individual should be above the law, should basically decide what is good for everybody and should be able to punish his opponents. All of the things that he's saying are, should be more terrifying to more people in America.

And the fact that they're not is quite worrying to me anyway, and I think should be to many Canadians as well, because whether or not you believe that those influences will happen here, even though I think there is some evidence that that has started to become the case, this is still our neighbor. This is still a country that we have a giant relationship with every day. And the risk of it becoming destabilized by another Trump presidency is not something to kind of sleepwalk towards. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's the Colorado decision is is fascinating. I agree with you. I it's fascinating in a number of respects. First of all, I think the the court has stayed its decision until January the third,

I think, because the fourth of January is the day in which they have to print the ballots. And they wanted to give the Supreme Court of the United States an opportunity if Trump was going to appeal the decision or somebody is going to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court to give that Supreme Court a chance to opine. I think it's a good thing. I think that it's better if the Supreme Court rules on this. And the legal scholars I was listening to this morning talk about this. They read the decision and they read the dissent because it wasn't a unanimous decision.

And they said the dissent was quite weak. And the decision was included language where the judges said, we understand the weight of this decision. We understand essentially that it may not be popular. But what our job is to do is to read the law and to describe how the law should be applied in this situation. And for those who haven't had a chance to read up on this yet, basically the law is a piece of the Constitution that said if you've been involved in an insurrection, you're not eligible to run for office. And now the dissenters are saying, yes, but that shouldn't apply to presidents,

even though they can't really fashion an argument based on anything in the Constitution. So it feels like it's a pretty strong legal decision. But then the question is, is the Supreme Court, if they handle it, if they take it on, I think they will. Are they going to make a more political decision or are they going to read the law and say the law is what the language says, which is if you're guilty of being involved in an insurrection, you can't run. And the politics of it, last point for me on what you'd raised is why are Chris Christie and Nikki Haley and Vivek, why are they all saying the court shouldn't decide this? Is it because they've decided that the court shouldn't have the power to decide what the law is? No, not really. That would be kind of a stupid position to take.

It's because they're all competing for those Republican votes that are with Trump right now. So they say things like, this should be decided by the voters, not the judges. But they also want him off the ballot. So they want that Colorado decision to stand. They probably want the Supreme Court to look at it and say, there's nothing wrong with the decision that Colorado took. But they, as candidates who want those votes, those Trump votes, they don't want to say, we don't think he should be on ballot. Bravo, Colorado Supreme Court. So they're playing a little bit of a political dance. It is smoke and

mirrors in the case of what those candidates are doing. They want that decision to stand. They want Trump off the ballot because they think then it's a race that they have a chance of winning, especially Nikki Haley. And I don't know if it's going to go that way, but it sure is your spanner in the works. It's a spanner in the works it's a spanner in the works the um the argument that they that the candidates the other candidates the christies and vivek what's his name and the and the others the argument that they said the rule they were saying the wrong thing is based on this because

i agree with they all want trump out right so saying what they did said sends a message to the supreme court um in washington it's sending a message to them where the message you know it's a top heavy political court right Very much favoring the conservatives as we all know from their rulings of the last couple of years. And so if it's a political Supreme Court then they're looking for a message from

the Republican side as to what they want. And so if the message coming back is we want you to overturn this, which seems to be what they're saying, we want you to overturn this, which seems to be what they're saying, whether they believe it or not, then that's quite possibly the result they're going to get from the Supreme Court. If their message had been, the court's right, it should stand by the court,

the Supreme Court might think a different way. Now, who knows? I mean, a lot of faith is placed in the Supreme Court as one of the three areas of jurisdiction in the United States, that they'll have a major say here. There's a lot of cases that are either already in front of the Supreme Court or are going to be in the next few months as a result of Trump. So all these decisions are going to have an enormous impact on the way this plays out through the year.

But as of this moment, he's disqualified from running for the president in one of the states. Those number of states could grow, and you could have this real battle between states and the federal government or the national government in the United States over who has the right to disqualify. Well, I think one of the interesting things you're touching on is what is the relationship between the Republican movement, Donald Trump, and the Supreme Court. And what I've seen happening in the Republican race in the last set of while convinces me that more and more of the big money donors and influencers behind the scenes of the Republican Party are pushing for Nikki Haley to win.

They're putting money into her campaign, the Koch brothers, they're putting a lot of kind of effort to find another candidate than Donald Trump. And the one that they've sort of seemed to have focused on now is Nikki Haley. They don't seem to think that Ron DeSantis has it anymore and nobody else is even really in the game. So if you sort of follow the logic of that, that most of the kind of the Republican machine that isn't full Trump machine really doesn't want Trump, think he's a risk to the country, think that he might be a risk to the Republican Party. In other words, that him being the candidate makes it less likely that Republicans will win.

Is that influence the version of the Republican influence that might happen at the Supreme Court as opposed to Trump who appointed some of these judges? And I kind of wonder because these are positions that are appointed for life. You know, once Trump appointed these people, he can't really do anything to them. They don't need to be Trumpy over the Republican Party, if you understand the distinction I'm trying to draw out there, right? If they think the right thing to do is on the law to uphold the Colorado decision because they see it that way and they feel that the Republican Party will, on some level, kind of be happier if Trump is prevented from running,

that may be an influence. I mean, we're not used to having politics influence our judicial system in the way that Americans are accustomed to it. But I think the safest bet is that it will influence how they approach it. I just don't know whether they're Trumpy judges or whether they're more Republican judges in the context of how this decision will play itself out politically. Okay, we're going to take a break, but just before we do, you know, you and I are both of an age where we've seen a lot of stuff happen on the political front, obviously in our country, but also south of the border.

When you kind of look back to the, you know, the Bruce Anderson of the 70s and 80s and 90s, do you ever go, what happened? Like, you know, democracy used to be this shining city on a hill, whatever term you want to use, that being a Reagan one. Do you ever go, what happened here? It suddenly has crept up on us or seemingly crept up on us or something's happened.

You know, we weren't listening to the right people. We were only listening to the people with influence, usually in urban areas in our countries. And meanwhile, there's this great expanse of other Canadians, other Americans who feel they weren't being heard. And this has now boiled over to the point where democracy is not the only option anymore. You actually have people who are attracted to this idea of dictatorship, fascism, whatever you want to call it. What happened? Yeah, I ask myself that question almost every day.

And I was having an interesting conversation about it with one of my daughters the other evening. And there are times when just having a kind of a family conversation about politics and political issues can feel a little bit trying for me now. Because there are so many things that I see that I didn't think I would see in my lifetime. More difficult set of issues that seem kind of large and intractable, but more problematically, that we seem to have lost a lot of the impetus

to find our collective interest, to compromise in the interests of making progress. And, you know, what do I think is behind it? To be honest, I think that for all the benefits of connectivity in the internet age, the ability for people to express rage and the sentiments that otherwise people would have checked a little bit that there would have been guardrails on the conversation that there would have been more of a an instinct to kind of work through mechanisms that that are built to produce compromise to produce mutually beneficial solutions, not perfect, but, you know, to the line that has been used a lot, better than the other alternatives, democracy,

is I think that we've now got a culture that is so fixated and impatient on getting its way. And it's not true about everybody, but it is true about a larger number of people. And it's a bigger part of the public conversation than it has ever been. And it's instantaneous nonstop. So it's influenced politics. It's influenced media. It's influenced government.

It has created more tension and friction around the world. I sound like a Luddite saying that it's connectivity. That's, you know, connectivity has produced a lot of good things, but I think that it's unleashed a form of energy that rather than politicians and leaders in society figuring out how to limit control and shape. We're ending up right now anyway, heading in the opposite direction, letting it do things that make it harder to solve climate change, make it harder to keep people safe from harm, make it harder to prevent wars from breaking out.

And so in that conversation with my daughter, she was hearing me be a little bit like that. And she helpfully reminded me that there are some things that have improved. She talked about the rights of women. She talked about the way that people think about diversity and inclusion. And I think those are good points. I do think that there have been, in my lifetime, significant gains. I think that part of what I feel is that a lot of those things are at risk right now. And it feels like it's time for people to talk about them, not kind of wish them away. And anyway, time for that break? What do you think about all of that? Yeah, almost.

You know, I agree with you on all that. And the irony, of course, is those gains that you did, the two examples you gave, are part of the reason that there's a turn against those gains. Like there are people who feel strongly that those aren't gains, those are losses. You know, I don't want this to sound like a plug for the book, although I know it'll come out like that.

But one of the things I got in, along with Mark Bulgich, in doing the research on this book how canada works was a sense from the people that we talked to because they're all you know people that nobody's ever heard of before generally other than their families and friends many of them live in small towns and rural parts of the country. And there was a sense from them of respect that we were even talking to them about their life, about their work, about what matters to them. In the sense that people of, you know, my calling, hadn't talked to them before.

Because I do think that's part of what's happened here. And I do think that's what, you know, the Roger Ailes and Steve Bannon and their puppet Trump preyed on, you know, 10 years ago. Yes. As they started off this trail. And it's still out there. It's still an issue. It's still a problem.

Okay. Well, we'll take that break, and then we will come right back with something very different right after this. And we're back for the final segment of the final episode, regular episode of Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bruce Anderson's in Ottawa, and Peter Mansbridge in Stratford, Ontario. It's good to have you with us, listening on Sirius XM,

Channel 167 Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform, and on YouTube. So wherever you're joining us, glad to have you with us. We've only got a couple of minutes left, so we're kind of robbing this topic, but you funneled me some poll data yesterday that I find interesting. In some ways, it kind of fits with the earlier discussion. In other ways, it's very different. But it was polling data on the issue of support or the lack of it for Joe Biden's policy on the Middle East, israel hamas question in particular and the it was basically separated by age you know young people versus old people and the gap is enormous what's that telling us yeah yeah we had this a version of this conversation a little while ago i think we

were talking about this generational disconnect in how older people understand the history of Israel, the history of anti-S, whose knowledge of that history is more faint, and for whom the more prominent stories that they've consumed about tensions in that part of the world involve a sense that the government of Israel, and in particular the Netanyahu government, has not been a good faith actor towards the idea of a two-state solution. And I think that the problem that Biden has, and you can see that he's trying to step away from that situation now, is that by offering a pretty strong measure of support for the Netanyahu government going into Gaza to eradicate Hamas in the wake of the October 7th massacre. he can't control, who is now perpetuating trauma on a lot of civilians. And this, for many people, not just young people,

is not something that they want to sign on to. They do believe that Hamas committed atrocious acts of terrorism and need to be dealt with. But they don't trust the Netanyahu government to be a good faith actor in trying to get to a place of peace and a two-state solution. And so you're seeing politicians who don't quite know how to unhook themselves from the Netanyahu government, take it in the chin, especially from young voters who are saying, we're not denying that the Holocaust or anti-Semitism are important, but Netanyahu is not a good faith actor in trying to figure out what to do about this, to get to a place of peace, to understand that a two-state solution is necessary. And we've seen the Biden administration kind of move their language about the Netanyahu government in the last little while.

I think because they feel as though they're being implicated in actions that they can't endorse and that they can't control. And the Canadian government, I think, has felt a similar tension. And a lot of it does have to do with the fact that older people have a more vital sense of what this situation means for Jewish people because of the history as they consumed it, whereas younger people, and it's not to suggest that they don't know enough about the past to know what's right, both can be right.

It can be quite legitimate to say we need to support the Jewish community around the world in the face of this awful rise in anti-Semitism and we need to support people of Israel in their fight to end this kind of terrorist act. But it can also be true to say that the Netanyahu government is not a friend of the idea of peace, at least in the context of a two-state solution in that region, and that that is the solution that has the greatest chance of saving the most lives for civilians in that region. Yeah. You know, I, like a lot of people, and this is why it's so important that a younger generation engage on this topic

because we've been through it all our lives. You know, since Israel was founded in 1948, it's been one situation like this, similar to this, after another ever since. And it's time for fresh, new ideas. I mean, you talked about connectivity earlier. I can remember Shimon Peres saying to me, the solution is going to be young people and the fact that they have connectivity that we never had. They can engage, they can talk.

Hasn't happened so far, or it hasn't happened to a degree that a solution has been found or worked upon. But it is time that that generation engage and enough of the old guys with old arguments trying to find solutions. Yeah, I'm with you. I think we do need, and I think it's, in a way, it's difficult to see the conversation become framed as the, do you support Israel or do you support the Palestinian people?

When I think the real point that most people want to get to is to find a path to peace that saves civilian lives and recognize that Hamas is a terrorist organization and needs to be dealt with, but that the Netanyahu government can't be counted on to be as reliable a partner in that search for peace as many people would want. Bruce, we're going to miss you around here on Wednesdays. There's no doubt about that. Your fans are going to miss you.

Your critics are going to miss you. You won't have me. What was Nixon's line? Won't have me to kick around anymore. Something like that. Yeah, no. They'll still have their chance to get their licks in. It's been a lot of fun, Peter.

And I don't know that when we started doing this, that we would think that we would be here with you almost a kind of 11 million downloads in the most popular podcast in Canadian politics all the time. And now you're doing that great newsletter, which if people haven't signed on to it, it's free. It's called The Buzz. It shows up in your inbox every Saturday. It's fantastic.

So, yeah, you and I are going to continue to talk about politics on Fridays, and we're going to talk about it on our time off as friends. And as I said before, I'll be happy to come back from time to time and do a smoke mirrors and truth, uh, episode. But, um, the two a week thing was just a little bit more opinion than I felt I could muster on every single week. Well, we were all benefited from it one way or another, and, and I do appreciate it. Um, Bruce is, as he says, will be back on Fridays,

including this Friday when we have our special kind of year-end edition of Good Talk. And if you're looking for the buzz, that newsletter, go to nationalnewswatch.com slash newsletter to sign up. Once again, it's free, and you'll get it in your inbox every Saturday morning by 7 a.m. Eastern. It's just kind of a reflection of some of the stories that I've been watching each week and

a few anecdotes along the way. So that's it for this day. Tomorrow it's your turn and I've been blown away by the number of letters that we've had this week of people responding to my suggestion the other day of your favorite Christmas memory. We'll have those. We'll have the

best of the group, at least the best, according to me, of the group. And the winner at the end will receive a signed copy of, you guessed it, How Canada Works. Friday, it's Good Talk with Chantel and Bruce.

Also tomorrow, the Random Rancher and his thoughts for the holiday season. Thanks again, Bruce. We'll talk on Friday. And that's it for this day. Thanks for listening. Talk soon, Dean. Yep. Thanks for listening.

Talk to you again in 24 hours.