The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Bridge: Encore Presentation - SMT - Is The Media The Enemy?

Episode Date: December 20, 2022

Today an encore presentation of an episode that originally aired on September 14th. Pierre Poilievre's first meeting with the media didn't go that well for either Poilievre or the media.  What should be taken from the encounter?  And can anyone win the political long game by attacking the media? And what would an SMT be without a little Donald Trump?

The following is an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge, originally aired on September 14th. And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You are just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. It's Smoke, Mir Wednesday, and if I sound a little different, it's because I'm in beautiful Halifax today. In fact, the two of us have been to almost both ends of the country. Not St. John's in Victoria, but Halifax and Vancouver this week. And it's great to get out of central Canada, even if it's just for a couple of days.

And we haven't, neither one of us have done that much traveling within the country since the pandemic. But how was Vancouver? The mountains still there? Oh, it was beautiful. It's such a beautiful city. There was a lot of smoke in the air, though. And I think that people there are worried and realizing that it may be a more permanent condition at this time of the year. So it's difficult to see that. But it was beautiful to be back in Vancouver. It was the first time I think I've been there since the pandemic. And as you know, Peter, I probably was there 200 times in the previous couple of decades. A lot of trips and not very many in the last bit. You know, we've both been overseas a couple of times since the pandemic started. But you're right about inside the country. You know, it is it's peculiar for the two of us,

both of whom through their variety of jobs that we have, have traveled this country from, you know, small town to big city for decades. And we've gone two, two and a half, almost three years without that kind of travel and touching base with people. And the country, you know, the country has changed in those couple of years. Yeah, it has changed a lot. I think the dynamics of the work that I do has changed a lot, which is have this experience that they're in the offices one, two,

maybe three days a week and the downtown cores are, there's a different dynamic because there just isn't as much foot traffic and nobody really knows whether or not that's going to change. So there's a sort of a general expectation that it will, but with no particular timeline and not a great deal of confidence that that's what's going to happen. It's just more of a, well, wouldn't it naturally? And ultimately, it sort of feels like it's going to come down to what kind of work people are doing as to whether or not they need to be in a common workspace. All right. Well, since the last time we talked,

which was Friday on Good Talk, the Conservatives have made their decision. Pierre Polyev is the leader, as was expected. And it's been a, well, it's been an interesting first couple of days for Polyev, and yesterday was no exception. He's made no bones about the fact throughout his campaign that he's no fan of the media. And he trotted out that line that was kind of a Trumpian line of the past few years, the media is the enemy. He brought that out again yesterday after what was a bit of a bizarre episode at his first media availability. That's what he called it.

It ran about 10 or 11 minutes, most of which, I guess, about eight or nine minutes of which was a statement on his part, both first in English, then in French. And then he took two questions, one in English, one in French, and that was it. But throughout certainly the first few minutes, there was an attempt by one of the journalists there, David Akin from Global Television, to try and get a question in. And he was quite aggressive in trying to do that. I'll play you the first minute of this appearance yesterday by Polyev.

Imagine he's walking into a Parliament Hill, I don't think it's a committee room. I think it's one of the hallways in the new area of Parliament. Well, not new. It's the temporary area of Parliament. Anyway, the main point is he goes up to a microphone and listen to how this plays out. You're not going to hear very well the sound coming from Aitken, but you're going to certainly get the understanding of what was going on. Here it is. Merci beaucoup d'être venu aujourd'hui. Thank you very much for coming. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. I appreciate it. I appreciate your presence here today. Before I begin, let me just say that... Thank you very much. I'm being heckled

here by... Thank you very much for your congratulations. Thank you very much for your questions. I'm going to begin my remarks now. Justin Trudeau is out of touch and Canadians are out of money. The cost of government is driving up the cost of living. A half a trillion dollars of inflationary deficits have bid up the cost of the goods we buy and the interest that Canadians pay. And that is why we are experiencing 40-year highs in inflation today. Okay, well, that gives you a sense of what was going on in that moment. That was yesterday in Ottawa. I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like that. I mean, there's always been attempts by journalists to get in

a question, but this was basically talking over or interrupting the leader of His Majesty's loyal opposition as he tried to give a statement at what was billed as a media availability. Now, there is an unease on the part of journalists who have not had the opportunity, with I think very few exceptions in the last six months, to question, challenge the assumptions made on the part of statements by Pierre Polyev. They haven't had that opportunity, and they've been anxious to get it. And clearly, Aiken, for one, yesterday, was not willing to let Polyev kind of steamroll through a statement and disappear. So he was challenging him. It didn't go well for either.

And by the end of the day, Aiken was apologizing to Polyev. Polyev was doing his the media is the enemy line, which appeals to his base. And I think he was even trotting it out as a fundraising element last night within the Conservative Party, which always, you know, media bashing always works well as a fundraiser, especially for Conservatives. Anyway, I haven't seen anything like that. Bruce, what about you? Well, I think that it was a really interesting thing for us to observe,

and it is a good thing for us to talk about and analyze. There was a lot of smoke in Ottawa yesterday, and there's some important conversations that everybody needs to have. I think the first thing that occurs to me is that if you didn't know anything about the prior months of how Pierre Poiliev was approaching his political career and his ascendancy to the leadership, and all you heard was the beginning of that news conference, you'd think, well, that journalist didn't really, you know, probably should have let him get his statement out before asking the questions.

And so it'd be easy to just sort of look at that and say, well, if that's the entire story, then the journalist was, you know, if journalism is expecting politicians to follow certain protocols, then they have to follow certain protocols too. However, I think the backdrop for it is such an entirely controlled effort by Pierre Polyev that he didn't want to debate his opponents. He didn't want to submit to a lot of media scrutiny during his leadership race, that he did attack journalists who were critical of him or critical of his campaign in some way, including a journalist from Global News, the organization that David Akin works for. And that is part of the backdrop. It was probably also clear, although I don't know this for sure, to David Akin, that there were only going to be two questions, which, given the range of issues that exist in the

country today, and the legitimate role of the media to ask the new leader of the opposition what he thinks about them, the appointments that he made to the senior ranks surrounding him, there was so much more that Canadians would have wanted to know, and therefore that is the job of journalists in Ottawa, that David Akin's not wrong to say, we shouldn't be your props. You shouldn't be able to so control the work that we do. And at the same time, by the way, claim to be this avatar of freedom. You're the guy who's going to bring freedom and less gatekeeping, except you'll submit to two

questions. Well, I think the same day in St. Andrews-by-the-Sea, the prime minister took 11 questions, 28 minutes. 11 questions is pretty much, as you know, Peter, that's getting to the end of what the media might have to say. Usually the energy kind of runs out at, I don't know, question six, seven, eight. But 11 questions is not trying to manipulate, overly manipulate the relationship with the media. It's submitting yourself to some grilling, which I think is appropriate. And at the end of that process, if people still feel like there need to be more questions, well, it's, you know, it's probably a function of maybe the questions that were asked weren't asked the right way, there were too many redundancies. But two questions basically means he gets his statement out.

The only choice that most journalists have is to cover it. A couple of questions happen, short answers. He walks out the back door, which is what he did. And there's nothing to report on about what he thinks about our role in Ukraine, about what he thinks about the monarchy, what he thinks about the choices that he made among his caucus members, what he, you know, what beyond the inflation message that he really wanted to drill home is,

is on his mind. And so, you know, I think it's Trump playbook. I think it's the Trump playbook. And I include in that the idea that maybe he wanted to pick a fight. I don't think he particularly picked that one. But once he saw it happening, he ended up fundraising off it. As you say, he sent out fundraising messages saying the press are the enemy of what we're trying to do, basically. So send me money. And that's discouraging as a starting point. And it's certainly straight out of the Trump playbook, which, you know, it's not the first time in the last six months he's used the Trump playbook. Worked for Trump.

So far it's worked for Polyev. Saying there were two questions is being generous, really, because there was one in English, one in French, and especially if you're the electronic media, you're kind of limited to the one that's in the language that you use. You're not totally limited to that, but for the most part, you're limited to it. And therefore, there was just one to work with depending on which language you were in. The deeper point is, and I agree with you, he may have been looking for that opportunity yesterday and knew it was going to come, especially if he was only going to do two questions he knew that the the end of the the the media availability was going to be a lot of

people shouting you've only taken one question you're only taking two questions we've got a lot more come on stay at the microphone and that is in fact what happened and he knew that was going to happen now when I said he didn't uh you know sit down for media availabilities during the conservative leadership campaign, as far as I can tell, he only did one major sit down in the whole time. And it wasn't with a journalist. It was with the, to say it in the nicest way, the very controversial University of Toronto, Professor Jordan Peterson. But he said this during that interview. The political media in the parliamentary press gallery are part of the establishment that finds me threatening because I'm upsetting the apple cart.

So, sure, he's looking for these opportunities, and sometimes they're not hard to get. They just sort of happen right in front of him. To make that point and to lead him into this whole the media is the enemy thing, which is a popular phrase to use among a significant number of Canadians. Not the majority, not even close to the majority, I don't think.

But there is an increasing number of Canadians who feel that there's something missing in what their media is doing for them. Now, whether they think they're the enemy or not, I think that may be a stretch, but he's playing to something that works for him in attacking the media. Yeah, I think this is a really crucial question. And we've talked about it a bunch in different ways over the last year or so, Peter. I think there are a few things that are going on. presenters as pundits allows the audience to kind of come to the conclusion that some journalists may have a political agenda or a leaning or an affiliation or a preference, that sort of thing. And when we live in such polarizing times that people go, well, if I think that you're in favor

of Donald Trump, I'm not going to trust anything that you have to say. That's not an unreasonable way for a citizen to react, right? And for those people who happen to think that Donald Trump is the cat's meow, they might look at a journalist who's critical of Trump and say, I can't trust you because you don't like my guy. And this is a direction that we've seen developing for a long time. Once you start putting journalists on Twitter or allowing journalists to express their political observations, let me put it that way, on Twitter, you're inviting that kind of interpretation by the public. And this is when it becomes a bit of a challenge, is that the weaponization of social media for partisan means, means, you know, if you get a

politician who says, if I irritate, I raise more money. If I irritate, I draw bigger crowds. Now, I happen to think that Pierre Polyev is the best at irritating that maybe that we've ever seen in our lifetime in politics. It didn't used to be a criteria that you would be looking for. How can we find a leader who's super irritating? But in the times that we live in, irritating means breaking through the clutter. Irritating means saying things in a punchy way, a persuasive way. Parapoliev used yesterday to prosecute his message about inflation. I know that if I was a government minister listening to that, I would say he's a more effective communicator than almost anyone on our side. His messages cut through. He talked about things in a way that people could relate to. So I think the challenge for him right now is that irritation and the skills that go along with that have kind of carried him so far. And he probably is, you know, he's probably capable some days of looking at it and saying, if I just keep following that playbook, then the Trump version of it from a fundraising standpoint, that's going to work out really well for me.

I don't think that's true in Canada. I think there's a ceiling on how many people will endorse, embrace, go along with, accept that idea of political leadership. I can't guarantee it. We live in times that have no precedent in some respects. But as a general rule, I think Canadians prefer a calmer, more respectful relationship between political leadership and the media and the public, even if they do like communications that is clearer and cleaner and more precise and less flowery, if you like, which is a challenge that you and I've talked about for the government. You know, using irritation is a skill, as you've pointed out.

It's not like we haven't seen politicians in the past in this country who've used irritation as a way to try and make their point. But I don't think they had, and I think you're saying the same thing, I don't think they had the added skills that this guy has. You know, he's no dummy. He's smart. He's smart in the way of politics. He should be. He's run, what, seven times. He's been an MP since he was 24. I mean, he does know, he does understand politics. So I, my, when people have been asking me these last few days, what's going to happen? You know, these two titans up against each other, Trudeau and Polyev.

And I say, I don't know what's going to happen, but I would be very careful about underestimating either one of these two guys. They both are looked upon by certain elements of the population in a not good way. But that would be wrong to underestimate them. They are both. I think that's, I agree with you. I think that what's really happening is that, you know, Trudeau is most prime ministers who've been in office for a period of time is doing is it's a little bit like he's,

he's skilled now in the art of fencing and he's up against a UFC fighter. And that's going to look ugly some days, right? It's going to look awkward. The UFC fighter is going to inflict more pain than the fencer. And I think that to assume that, that Justin Trudeau won't be able to adjust is to miss everything about his competitive instincts that have been on display before. I think he has lapsed into a form of communication, a style of communication,

which doesn't serve him well in these times. But I also think he's an extremely smart person. I think he's made a lot of good decisions as prime minister. And I think he's also made a lot of good decisions as a politician, just from a competitive standpoint. So I wouldn't, you know, I think that the pendulum in terms of punditocracy or conventional wisdom tends to want to swing from this guy's really smart. No, no, wait, he's really stupid. The other guy's really smart and kind of back and forth. And the truth is, in my view, Justin Trudeau has a lot of political skills. And one of the most important skills you can have is to be able to kind of observe your situation, to observe what you're up against and to come up with a way to cope,

to adapt. And I think that's really, you know, the work that he's got ahead of him in terms of, I don't know if reset is the right word, but certainly a refresh of the political approach that the Liberals take now that there is somebody who is very different from Stephen Harper, very different from Andrew Scheer, very different from Aaron O'Toole. But you get extra remarks for remembering all the leaders they've had in the last couple of years. Right. But this is the guy who wrote in on the horse called Irritation. And the only other person we've seen make a meal out of that is Max Bernier. And Max makes his living doing that, but he didn't build a bigger party.

He was able to get a certain number of votes. I think that what Pierre Pauliev did is he took all of Max Bernier's votes, effectively got them to sign up to elect him leader of the Conservative Party. I'm exaggerating a bit, but I think he painted the People's Party Conservative blue. And it remains to be seen if that horse called the irritation is going to carry him much further. And part of that is going to be on Trudeau. Will Trudeau allow that to happen or will he meet that challenge in a very direct and effective way?

Okay. One last question on this issue. And that is whether or not history tells us that you can win by making the media the enemy. Can you win without the media? Can you win by ignoring sit-down interviews, by ignoring media availabilities, by ignoring scrums and questions shouted from the media. Can you win in today's age without that? Absolutely.

Yeah, absolutely you can. I think the – I don't say that feeling good about it, but I also feel that there are two dimensions to that. I don't say that feeling good about it. But I also feel that there are two dimensions to that. One is how much the media matter to how many voters anymore, just in the terms of how people accumulate their information and develop their opinions. And the trend line on that is pretty bleak. What we see in our research is that a lot more people develop their opinions based on what they hear from their friends and their acquaintances and their peer group and their social media friends and followers than develop their opinions based on what they read columnists write. You know, people like you and I and a lot of folks in

elected politics and the organizers of parties, and I and a lot of folks in elected politics and the organizers of parties, we all consume a lot of commentary, professional commentary, journalistic commentary, but we're a bit of an anomaly. We're not reflective of the broader public. When we do that, we over-consume that kind of information, that kind of commentary, and the public underconsumes it. And really what we're talking about is a third of the public pays attention to politics and will vote. And that's the third that pays some attention to the media. And most of that third already have their kind of opinions and their favorites and their preferences. And we can observe what they're thinking. A third won't vote, won't pay attention.

It's that middle third that your question really pertains to. And are those people going to vote? Yes. Are they going to consume a lot of information? No. Are they going to end up consuming a little bit of information in the course of an election campaign? Yes. What is that going to look like?

Is it going to be reading a daily newspaper? Probably not. Is it watching a nightly news TV program? Sorry to say, definitely not. It is going to be stuff on Facebook, stuff that they kind of hear from friends and fellows that they work with or people that they work with. It's going to be that kind of thing. And it'll be more likely to be marked by some sort of an event, some sort of a disruption, something that happened that became newsworthy. And now the default has always been a debate. But Pierre Polyev appears not to have liked debating, didn't want to do it with his rivals in this. It's a bit

surprising in a way because he's pretty effective on his feet. I don't know whether or not he's going to take the same approach in an election against Trudeau. Is he going to want to avoid debates or is he going to want to have debates? I think Trudeau would have been better served to have more in the last election campaign. He only had one and it was a bit of a schmazzle. He didn't really get to sort of say what he had to say because there was so much noise around a couple of questions that were asked. But I think that the question of the role of the media is partly a question of how does the media get back into that box where it's reporting and analysis, not opinion, or what's the right balance there. And I don't have the answer to how or whether they will do that. But as long

as it feels more like opinion, it is going to be possible for politicians to say, well, it's your opinion, and maybe your opinion is a little bit biased. And, you know, in Polyev's case, he says more than that. And I just want to deliver my message directly to people. We're going to take a break. I think this is a really good discussion. I look forward to hearing what people have to say about this too. And our listeners are always eager to throw in their opinion. So if you have some thoughts on this, send them in like now to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. Okay, we're going to take a break.

When we come back, one of our most popular topics, one I know Bruce always just loves. He paws at the ground, anxious to talk about Donald Trump. And welcome back. Peter Mansbridge here in Halifax on this day. This, in a way, relates to the first half of Smoke Mirrors and the Truth today, which is the questions about the media and how it handles important issues and how it handles interviews. I've got a clip, a one-minute clip from an interview that was done with Jared Kushner, and we know who that is. That's the

son-in-law, married to Ivanka Trump, of the former President of the United States, the one-term, twice-impeached president of the United States, Donald Trump. One of the things that threw out this whole Mar-a-Lago issue about the documents that were seized from his residence in Florida, classified, top secret, etc., etc., you know the story, is that nobody from the Trump orbit, as they call it, has been out front defending him with the kind of vigor that we've seen in past times. There have been a couple, but not many. So Jared Kushner is selling a book. Like, who isn't selling a book?

So he was doing an interview on a book with Sky News' Kay Burley. And it's interesting to listen to this for a couple of reasons. I'm not going to tell you what those reasons are until you listen to it. So here's a minute out of that interview. Here we go. He's shattered there, very tranquil place for the family. He's shattered by an FBI raid. Why did the president take home top secret documents? You have to ask him that question. But, you know, what I will say is if you look at my book, you'll see that he was under constant attack. But he took top secret documents home, potentially risking the security of the

United States. Yeah, I think that it's something that, again, this seems like it's an issue of paperwork that should have been able to be worked out between DOJ and him. I don't know what he took or what he didn't take. But I think right now we're relying on leaks to the media, which is the same thing. We've seen the photograph, haven't we, where it says top secret? Yeah, like I said, I've seen a lot of allegations made by the media over my four years that turned out not to be true. So I think that this whole thing is actually elevated. So the fact that we've seen photographs that say top secret document, we should wait and see whether or not they were, even though we're being told by the FBI that they were. Yeah. Like I said, I go into my book, the accusations that were made of Trump.

If you could answer that question. Yeah. I mean, first of all, he was the president of the United States. He had the highest clearance in the world. So I don't know if, like this may be a paperwork issue. This may be, I don't know. Like I said, I haven't been involved in the details of it. Well, full marks to Kay Burley because she didn't let him get away with too much.

Although I'll say this, one minute, and he managed to plug his book twice in an interview about his father-in-law's, you know, basically stealing, I don't think there's any way to talk about it, top secret documents out of the White House and taking them to his private home in Florida. Now, my question about this is not about the particulars of the details or how he flogged his book in the middle of this interview, which, of course, is what his book publisher wants him to do, no matter what the interview is about. Mention the book. Well, he certainly did that.

My question is about the power of the lie, right? Don't tell me he doesn't have some idea what was going on there. The guy was the most senior player inside the White House, and I assume he still has a relationship with his father-in-law, although some people, the conspiracy theorists on the opposite side of the QAnon group are convinced that it was this guy, the son-in-law, who has been leaking some of the details. I don't know whether that's true. Somehow doubted. But nevertheless, it goes back to this issue of power of the lie and whether or not you can just keep saying it as Trump believes and eventually people will believe.

Yeah. So when I when I love I watch this thing two or three times, I was on a long flight and the Wi-Fi was good. So I watched it a couple of times because I thought, well, it is kind of a masterclass by that journalist to just keep on sort of saying, well, you know, but let me just stop you there and ask this question again. And so I found that fascinating and a reminder of what it sounds like. And she did it in a very polite but persistent way. And, of course, she was asking a question that was extremely pertinent and she saw what he was trying to do which was like rag the puck skate around chew up some clock um keep it pleasant he referred to his book in every second sentence i think which obviously reminded us why he was there but But I was also, I was listening to it thinking,

okay, I'm Donald Trump, and I think everybody's out to get me, maybe him too. And I want to listen very carefully to what he's saying and how am I going to react. And I'm Donald Trump. And when I put that Donald Trump hat on, which is very awkward for me, it doesn't fit very well. I'm outraged.

I am outraged at this kid. I'm watching him and I'm going, he never said that, you know, I made peace with North Korea. He never said that, you know, I signed a deal in the Middle East. He never said how I made the economy better than it's ever been. He never told people all the things that I did instead. And he never said I was entitled to those documents because I had declassified them. And everybody just, you know, go about your business and leave this man alone. He's a brilliant genius who should be our president again. None of that was on offer from Jared.

What was on offer was, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know. Now, you could say that he was given legal advice because maybe he does know, and he doesn't want to get caught up in this obstruction of justice question, which is swirling around all of them. But he could have said, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know about that. But also, here's some reasons to admire Donald Trump, which he didn't do. So when you use that old quote about be there and be square, and you were saying, I'm pawing the ground to talk about Trump, I was like, yeah, I am. I, you know, I believe in what Jesse Jackson said in 1988, keep hope alive. I remain hopeful that

one day in a courtroom, Donald Trump is going to be on trial and judged. And, um, yeah, my, my hope remains strong, including after watching that interview, because I didn't hear Jared Kushner say anything that was a sturdy defense of what looks like a pretty bad set of facts for Donald Trump. Do you think you're ever going to see that day in a courtroom? I do. Keep hope alive, Pete. You got to. You know, when the Mar-a-Lago, you know, listen, all the way through January 6th, I had the hearings. I assumed that's the way it was leading.

It never got there, at least hasn't got there yet. Now Mar-a-Lago starts off with a bang. You figure the next thing you're going to do is see him in an orange jumpsuit. But no, that hasn't happened. It's early, may still happen. But I don't happened. It's early, may still happen, but I don't know. Increasingly, I think that this shows the rot inside the judicial system. If you're powerful enough, if you've got the money enough,

if you can just keep getting lawyers, get one, fire one, get another one, fire another one, get another one, appeal this one, get another one. Appeal this, appeal that. You can stretch this out forever. Did you watch the program on MSNBC last night, Rachel Wagner's show, I think, about the law firm that has supported the Trump machine? and how influential that firm has become, both as a place for people who are exiting the Trump administration to go and practice a particular version of law, including law that supports conservative causes. Nothing necessarily nefarious about that, but also that Don McGahn,

who was legal counsel for the president, for president Trump, when he went into the white house, he made it his business to make sure that no appointment opportunity was left unfilled throughout the judicial system, that he flooded that system on behalf of this law firm with some people from that law firm into the courts. And now I'm watching people who are commenting on American politics, knowledgeable people who are kind of showing you the map of how many partisan judges are red versus blue and what that likely means in terms of how these cases go.

And essentially what they're saying is you need to understand the judiciary in the United States as you understand the House and the Senate. And that's a sad and dispiriting state of affairs for a country that prides itself on having this constitution that creates these three different PowerPoints, executive, legislative and judiciary. And that's all seemingly getting unwound. Because if it doesn't come true, there'll be that moment down the road, Peter, when you're going to have to get that crow sandwich into your mouth. And we're all going to like watching that again. But your prediction might come true. And if it does, it'll be because of the corruption, I think, of the judiciary because it's impossible for me to believe that somewhere in his shambolic behavior donald trump didn't break some laws you know for those who want trump in jail um they will embrace

my prediction because of the the streak i'm on of losing on predictions. They will say, this is great. This is the best thing that's happened. Obviously, the guy's going to jail. Pete's due. They'll say Pete's due. My dad used to say that all the time when we came over from England and Malaya and we'd watch baseball. He was a big cricketer.

He was a bowler. And he used to watch baseball and try to figure it out. And I remember when he first started watching it, he said, the ball doesn't really curve. You know, there's no such thing as a slider. He just refused to believe it until finally the television coverage got so good he couldn't deny it anymore. But he used to watch batters, and they would come up to bat, and they'd be, you know, like zero for three on the night or zero for four on the night, and he'd look at me and say, he's overdue. He's due for a hit. He's due. He's due for a hit.

And I, you know, so whenever I watch a baseball game now, as I was last night watching the Blue Jays come back again, I was doing the same thing. He's due. This guy's due and bang. Well, it's not like gambling where your odds of getting a winning lottery ticket don't improve just because you lost all the other times. It is more like baseball where a 300 hitter year in,

year out is going to hit the ball one out of every three times. So I'm not saying you're a 300-hitter. It's been a bad season for you, but I think you are going to get some hits somewhere along the way. Now, I know it was just a slip of the tongue, but for those who may want to follow up on it, it's Alex Wagner. Alex Wagner, Yes. Sorry. Rachel Maddow is who she's replaced Tuesdays and Fridays on MSNBC.

And I'm a huge Alex Wagner fan, have been for years. And glad to see her. She's still getting used to the position, but she's a smart, tough journalist. And this was a good piece. It was based on a book that has just been released about this law firm and the role that it has played in reshaping U.S. politics. And so Last Night was a particularly good segment. Good. And this has been a good segment, too.

I appreciate all your comments on all the subjects we dealt with today and look forward to hearing you later in the week when Chantel joins us on Friday. All right, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. We'll talk to you again in 24 hours. You've been listening to an encore presentation of The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge. Originally aired on September 14th.