The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Trump Inauguration Day -- Things Are Changing

Episode Date: January 20, 2025

 A ceasefire in the Middle East, talks between Ukraine and Russia may soon begin. Canada braces for tariffs.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Trump Inauguration Day. Things are changing. Coming right up. And hello there. Welcome to Monday. welcome to another week, and welcome to the second Trump presidency, the inauguration speech about to take place in Washington as we sign on today on Sirius XM channel 167, but available all day on your podcast network. So I hope you enjoy the program. Today, what we're going to try and look at, you know, we haven't seen the Trump speech yet, but we know the world is changing as a result of what's about to happen in Washington.

And the most obvious place is in the Middle East. As a ceasefire took place over the weekend. There are still some things here and there that have to be worked out. But nevertheless, that world has changed and is changing as a result of Trump becoming president. And we're going to discuss that with, of course, our regular Monday guest, Dr. Janice Stein, from the Munk School at the University of Toronto, also the situation in Russia and Ukraine. But realizing all along that what's happening today in Washington is having an impact around the world.

It's going to have an impact in Canada in terms of the tariffs, what will be announced today, if it's today that it's announced, and just exactly how Canada has prepared to deal with that situation or to try and deal with it. So we're going to get into all of that with Dr. Stein in just a couple of moments' time. But also, I want to spend a moment here giving you a sense of what the Your Turn question is this week. And we'd like to do that on Mondays to give you some time to think about it and get your answers in before 6 p.m. Eastern Time on Wednesday.

The question this week is a little different than what we've done in the past. And I think part of the reason is there has been so much negativity around so many different issues in the last while, whether it's politics, whether it's international affairs, whether it's simply our challenges within our life, whether it's COVID, whether it's inflation, whether it's high-cost living, housing, immigration, you name it. So we want to try something a little different this week. I'm not sure how it's going to work out, but I want you to think about it. Here's the question. It's pretty straightforward.

The question is, what makes you happy? How do you get your happy on any day or any week? You know, is it a book? Is it a movie? Is it a conversation? Is it comfort food? Is it, you know, those are all kind of like obvious answers. But I want to know what's yours. What is your happy? How do you get to happy? Even at a time when things are really challenging. And we're certainly in one of those times now. So there's your question. Think about it. The idea is you tell me how you get to your happy, what it is, how you get there.

And like last week, which was without question the most successful week on your turn since we started this, people kept their answers short. And we had more answers in the space of an hour than we've ever had before. And I think you enjoyed it. The numbers certainly suggest you enjoyed it. Between you and the random ranter, last Thursday's program was the most successful

Your Turn we've had since we started it, in terms of numbers. Okay, so there's your question. How do you get to your happy space? What is it that gets you there? One. Two. Keep it short.

Three. Write to themansbridgepodcast at gmail.com And four. Always include your name and the location you're writing from. Those are conditions you need to meet.

So you do all those and the odds are it's going to get on the air. The other thing about last week is we had more new writers than ever before. That's wonderful. Plugged in from different parts of the country. The only place we missed, region we missed, was the north. You know, as a child of the north to some degree, that I am, I love seeing emails that come in from McAloy or Yellowknife or Whitehorse or yellow knife or white horse or anywhere in Canada's north, in the Arctic, up to Grease Fjord, where I was a couple of years ago.

I want to hear from you, so don't be shy. How do you get to your happy? How is that defined for you? All right, let's get to it. Dr. Janice Stein has helped guide us through so many different things in the last couple of years. And we're asking for help again today. And we're going to start by trying to understand what happened in the Middle East help again today. And we're going to start by trying to understand what happened in the Middle East over the weekend. And what does it mean for the future?

So here we go, this week, with Dr. Janice Stein. So Janice, we've all been around long enough to know that ceasefires in the Middle East sometimes don't last very long and sometimes they take a while to really get in place. So I imagine there will likely be a few hiccups in this one. But having said that, when things started to happen yesterday, and you were watching the live feed coming in from the Middle East, what struck you most?

I was really struck watching those feeds, but first with the small convoy that brought the hostages into the center of Gaza City. And then when the A-truck started to roll, that there was a significant Hamas police presence. You could see it. They had green armbands or headbands that they were wearing, and they were there in significant numbers. They had come out of the tunnels once the ceasefire started. there still is, for that to happen, there still is some command and control in place by Hamas on the ground in Gaza. What does that say about Hamas' ability to govern the situation that Hamas police are present? So there is more capacity there

than many had thought um and you know the trump administration sounding a very different note and not to speak of netanyahu and what he told his cabinet over the weekend in order to get this deal through uh netanyahu in particular has said, look, we will go back to war if we need to. And if Hamas, he threatened even on Saturday because they didn't get the names of the three hostages that he would not observe a ceasefire. So we're going to hear a lot of this over the next six weeks. But the bigger issue here is what does it mean for Hamas never to govern in Gaza again? That's really where all this will either come to grief or we will move into the second stage.

Hamas, interestingly enough, doesn't want to govern. You know, Yaya Sinwar said early on, 2021, two years before the attack, he wanted out of governance. Big distraction. He didn't want to collect the garbage. He didn't want

to supervise access to water. He didn't want to supervise tax collection. He gave a really astounding speech that made me sit up at the time that I read it. He said his goal was to strengthen Hamas's military capacity to take on Israel, to create an Islamic state. And he was happy to give governance over to the Palestinian Authority or anybody else who would take it over. That's the narrow band we've got here, Peter, to move to the next stage. daily things you need to do, he's going to be doing that with the tacit permission of Hamas that will remain just behind the scenes.

Well, you mentioned how the Trump administration, the new Trump administration, looks at this. Their point man, their national security advisor, and it's a name we should all get used to, Mike Waltz, because we're going to hear a lot from him over various situations unfolding in the world. But right away yesterday, even before the inauguration, he was on CBS and he said this about governance. He said, Hamas will never govern Gaza. That is completely unacceptable. And I guess that's unacceptable on any level, whether it's a hidden governance or not. That's going to be, that is just a huge challenge, frankly. You know, in Israel, left to right, it doesn't matter. This is what's changed as a result

of the war. There's no acceptance for any kind of Hamas leadership in Gaza going forward. A bus wants no Hamas leadership. Even, you know, Palestinian leaders who are opposed to a bus in Gaza, like Marwan Barghouti, for instance, and Mustafa Barghouti. It's a very well-known family in Palestinian politics. One, nothing to do with Hamas. And they are really clear that Hamas has brought a catastrophe on the Palestinian people.

But boy, watching those feats yesterday, you know, power lives on the ground. And as Mao Zedong said, it comes out of the barrel of a gun. And you could tell, Peter, where the control was. It was on the ground. And it is not going to be easy to dislodge. Well, the other thing Walt said made it pretty clear that the Americans under Trump, you know, want this to work or they're going to get more involved than they have been. I mean, I think his quote was, if Hamas reneges on the deal, the U.S. will support Israel, quote, in doing what it has to do. Yeah.

So what's reneging on the deal, Peter? Hamas over the weekend on Saturday was supposed to have given the names of the three hostages they were releasing. That is written into the agreement. They didn't do it. Is that been egging on the deal? You know, Netanyahu gave a speech on Saturday night. He said, we're not going to observe a ceasefire.

They are breaking the agreement. Well, the ceasefire went ahead. I think the big picture here, and this is going to be the challenge for Trump, it was when he put his thumb on the scale, frankly, and said to Netanyahu, I want this done before my inauguration. Trump's campaign on ending the war between Russia and Ukraine in 24 hours, you and I made a bet. We said that wasn't going to happen. I think we're going to win that. There was an opportunity to get a ceasefire here. How heavily does Donald Trump weigh in with Netanyahu six weeks from now and says to me, you do not start this war again. I don't want to preside over the kind of bloodshed and killing that we've seen in the Middle East.

I think there's a fairly good chance that may happen. And this is the one guy, Trump, I don't think Netanyahu can gain. Well, as you say, we're going to find out in the next six weeks. If this ceasefire holds, it's only a six-week ceasefire, and then something else has got to happen. You know, it's very dicey, Peter. There's no question. All the opinion, all the informed opinion is we won't get to the second stage. It's just such a hill to climb, both inside Israel,

with the Netanyahu government. They lost a minister, Ben-Gur, who resigned yesterday. They lost four members. So he now has a 66 out of 120 seat government, loses one more far right party. He's got a very narrow margin here. That's always important. But it's also public opinion in Israel. But there are still probably at least 25 to 30 living

hostages that will not be released in this first phase. And that is a big asset that Hamas has at its disposal. There is an overwhelming desire in the Israeli public not to start this again until all those hostages are out. Give me your sense of Netanyahu's position, how stable it is given, you know, obviously what happened

over the last few days in terms of losing some of the support he has. But, I mean, he's got a lineup of problems aside from this war. Huge, huge. Can he politically survive this next while? Look, if I were fully rational i would say no he cannot but this man has had 100 political deaths peter and somehow you wake up the next morning and he's still there uh this is this is this is the Houdini of political leaders everywhere in the world.

In the short term, even if he loses that other right-wing party, which he clearly will if they move to the second phase, the leaders of the centrist parties have said they will not bring the government down. And that is an effort to push this into the second phase so they get the remaining hostages out. That's probably three months of certainty that he survives as the prime minister. If he loses control of the Israeli parliament,

there are six more months in which he's the caretaker prime minister. We have nine more months guaranteed of Netanyahu as the prime minister of Israel, one way or the other. That's not a short runway. And again, I was so struck by what Steve Witkoff was able to do. That is Donald Trump's special Middle East envoy. You know, it's a really interesting story. He called Netanyahu on a Friday and said, I'm coming tomorrow.

I want to see you. And Netanyahu said, no, no said, I'm coming tomorrow. I want to see you. And Netanyahu said, no, no, no. It's the Jewish Sabbath. We observe the Sabbath. We don't work on Saturday. He said, you didn't hear me. I want to see you. You don't have a choice.

That's the only, when that's the president of the United States saying that to you that's all they meant they meant on the Sabbath there's a toughness there Joe Biden did not have Anthony Blinken did not have I think that's the

that's the really differentiating factor from where we are then and where we are now with the Trump administration. Okay. I have two things I still want to bring up in terms of the Middle East before we leave it. Gaza is a shambles. It's just a disaster zone. You know, the place has to be rebuilt. Its health care system has to be rebuilt.

Its education system has to be rebuilt. The whole thing is a shambles. Who's going to do it? So, you know, you're right, it's a shambles. I'm searching for the words to talk about the magnitude of this challenge, Peter. $40 billion, $50 billion, who knows? And who's going to do it? Let me just add, who's going to do it with Hamas in the background?

Who's going to do it without an assurance that the ceasefire is permanent and that everything that goes in beyond humanitarian aid is not yet going to be wasted if the war starts up again? So I don't think anyone is going to do it unless we get through that second phase. We're talking about at least, you know, three, four months in which 608 trucks will cross the border. And there is a commitment in the deal by Israel to allow reconstruction. What does that mean? That it will allow cement and wood in those trucks. Up till now, it's been inspecting every truck to search for cement because they're used in part of the manufacture of some of the weapons. We will get really, there will be a significant difference in food, in access to water, in access to medicine. But reconstruction is not going to start.

There's no Gulf state. I can tell you the Saudis, the Emiratis are not going to pour billions of dollars in again and watch it be blown up. They're making it very clear. But they would do it if it was made clear. They would do it if they had confidence that the ceasefire was going to become permanent. Yes, they would. Here's the other question. You know, like I know, that after, I guess, the second intifada, the interests of a good part of the rest of the world said, I'm sick of the Middle East story.

I can't take it anymore. And they didn't want to hear it. They didn't want to read it. They didn't want to see it. Western news agencies pulled out of the Middle East for a variety of reasons, but that was part of it. They've been backing in for the last year and a half because of October 7th.

Yeah. Now what happens? So much depends on whether the ceasefire hole news organizations cover fighting, they cover dramatic stories. And so you're absolutely right. They came back in because everybody knew within hours of October 7th that war was back in the Middle East. If there's a ceasefire and they can get past that second stage and there is still a deal between the Trump administration and the Saudis at the end of this. It's going to take

if it happens at all, it will take six months to a year. If that happens, the Middle East falls off the agenda. There's no constituency inside the Trump administration for this. They're focused on China. And, you know, this is Inauguration Day in the United States. There is already a leak from the people around Trump that his first visit, he wants to be to Beijing.

There's a TikTok story in the United States, which a lot of young people really care about how that one works out. The Middle East will again recede. That's why Hamas did it, because the Middle East was marginalized. There was no attention to the Palestinian problem. But the irony is they get it back only when there's terrible violence. And it doesn't last. Okay, let's look at the other one.

Russia, Ukraine. You know, obviously Zelensky's sitting there in Kiev, and he has watched what's happened in the Middle East, and he's watched what Trump has managed to seemingly accomplish. And he's begun the suck-up process that happens around Trump, right? Yeah. What did he say? I was reading his quotes from his New Year's address.

Mr. Zelensky said he had no doubt that the new American president is willing and capable of achieving peace and ending Putin's aggression in comments that embody his approach to winning over Trump. Just days later, Zelensky told an American podcaster that Trump

won as he was a much stronger candidate than Kamala Harris, adding he showed that he can do it intellectually and physically. Man, oh, man. Oh, wow. As he jumped on the ship here now. Oh, wow. Oh, wow.

And boy, does he get Trump when he's that last sentence, when he says he showed that he could do it intellectually and physically, right? That is flattery of exactly the kind of thing that Donald Trump, well, like, you know, we just talked about a possible trip by Donald Trump to Beijing. There's also a rumored meeting coming up with, or at least a phone call very shortly after the inauguration between Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump. Now, what's on the agenda of that call? We don't see

any movement yet substantively between either Putin on this issue or Zelensky. They're both saying, doing all the right things with respect to Donald Trump, but neither side has really moved yet. You know, Trump is going to have to put in place some kind of process here. He walked into the Middle East after an excruciating nine-month process of negotiation, where Joe Biden had a negotiator on the ground, you know, agonizing over the small details. And he was working with the Qataris. There was a structure and a process, nothing like that yet between Russia and Ukraine. It's going to be a much, if it happens at all, Peterraine it's going to be a much if it happens at

all peter it's going to be a much longer story here it's tougher yeah but it may take that personal diplomacy stuff yeah you know and that would mean more than a phone call way more than a phone call and way more than you see donald Donald Trump could say to Bibi Netanyahu, listen, brother, you didn't hear me. I'm telling you I want that. And, you know, that's probably got to be the biggest surprise that Netanyahu has had. I think there was a huge miscalculation on his part

as to what he would be able to extract from Trump. Vladimir Putin, much more sophisticated, not likely to misjudge Trump. And Trump doesn't have anything like the leverage over Putin that he has over Netanyahu. He does have leverage with Zelensky because they are such big, such important suppliers of military assistance and diplomatic support, but they're not alone in the way they are with Israel. The United States is Israel's only meaningful military supplier. That's been true for 25 years.

Not true. The Europeans have a capacity if they get their act together. And there was a fascinating story that just came out a few days ago. It was the intelligence agencies in the United States stepping out from behind the shadows as they prepare to leave office and talking about the role they played in Ukraine after the failed counteroffensive, where they invested huge amounts of money in the drone industry in Ukraine and connected

them with leading technologists in the United States and made possible, you know, the domestic manufacturing of drones, which has been key to Ukraine in these last 18 months. So they have leverage over Zelensky. The United States is important. What does that tell us? The pressure is going to be more on one side than on the other to make concessions here. What can Putin reasonably think he can extract from Trump?

Oh, there's a set of things that Putin really wants. And most important is an off-ramp for some of those sanctions. That really matters to Vladimir Putin right now. Why? Because the Russian economy is finally beginning to struggle, right? The Russian ruble is falling. Inflation rates are very high. There's official rates and there's unofficial rates.

I think the unofficial rates probably double. Interest rates, 21%. 21%. You know, we remember in Canada, we had, I think, two years once where there were 18% nearly crushed us.

Yeah. 21% and it this very high, lowest growth rate in the Russian economy projected for 2025 of four years. Putin wants an end to those sanctions. I think Trump would give it to him. If there was a ceasefire, that one had feasible confidence that would stick. Same issues we're going to go through.

He might be able to get a ceasefire. How long does it last? And do you target the removal of those sanctions? Some come off after three months. Some come off after nine months if there's no renewal of faith. Okay. Last word on this. Peter, you're absolutely right.

The spade work hasn't been done for the process, and believe it or not, all those nerdy diplomats actually know something. Process matters. You have to have a process in order to get this over the line. And you have to have that flattery that we talked about a few minutes ago. You sure do. The one part I left off is there's a Ukrainian MP who's from Zelensky's party

who's nominated Trump for a Nobel Peace Prize. Now, that's flattery. That is smart, too, because we all know Donald Trump wants it. Yeah. And that is flattery, but it's really smart flattery. Mind you, you know, if you can prove that the Middle East, the ceasefire is happening because of Trump, and if you can prove that Ukraine-Russia war stops because of Trump, I don't know.

Oh, yeah. That's a pretty good case for a peace prize. You know, I would say there's a better case if he's able to do that for a peace prize for Donald Trump than there was for Barack Obama. Right. And that's certainly what Trump feels. Okay. We're going to do a quick pause and we come back and talk about what's about to happen in the United States.

By the time we finish our conversation, Trump will be at the podium giving his inaugural address. We'll talk about that briefly right after this. All right, we're back for this segment of our Monday episode of The Bridge. Dr. Janice Stein with us from the Munk School, the University of Toronto. You're listening on SiriusXM, Channel 167, Canada Talks, or on your favorite podcast platform.

Wherever you're listening, we're glad to have you with us. So it's cold. It seems to be cold everywhere. I'm going to be in Winnipeg tonight, and it's really cold there. Anyway, the situation in the U u.s is such that they had to have their uh inauguration ceremony indoors instead of uh outside peter i hate to interrupt you how is he going to estimate the size of their crowd i think that's one of us i i think it's safe to assume as many people do that that's also part of the reason they're inside,

is that there was no way he was going to get a big crowd in these cold temperatures. And the last thing he wanted was comparisons on crowd size. But obviously, you know, that speech last time he was inaugurated in January 2017 was a very dark speech. Oh, yeah. I don't know what we're going to hear here, but there are going to be countries around the world, not the least of which is Canada, watching very closely to see what he says in that speech and also what he does in terms of executive orders during the day in terms of tariffs.

What are you going to be watching for? You know, first of all, I'm actually struck, Peter, there are no leaks about the content of those executive orders. There's a disciplined team. I mean, those executive orders are written. You know, lawyers have reviewed them. You have to have lawyers review them, although not

Department of Justice lawyers. They brought in their own lawyers to review these executive orders. But it's absolutely astonishing. There's no leak. So our embassy does not yet know what the nature of the tariffs will be and how extensive they will be. I expect there's going to be significant tariffs against Canada.

You know, there is an elevation of Canada to the top levels of his concern, which is really astonishing. That did not happen at the early onset of its administration last time. And our prime minister and his whole team are huddled in Ottawa waiting for information on those executive orders because their plan is to retaliate in a very carefully calibrated way. Whatever he does, they've got a series of measures

that are designed specifically to retaliate at that level. No more, but no less. And they are waiting for the information to come out. You know, I ask myself, why this attention to Canada? Shouldn't be at the top of his agenda, frankly. There's only really two reasons that are persuasive here. One is he needs the revenue. United States is at the top of its debt ceiling.

He wants to do tax cuts. And as frankly stupid, I was looking for a nice word, as stupid as tariffs are in this day and age for a country that trades globally like the United States, they're going to generate revenue. And that's a part of this that I think we probably haven't been paying enough attention to. The second is this notion now of the United States that he has, and a lot of his advisors have, pulling back from the world. What does that mean? Consolidating their regional dominance. So that pushes us up along with Panama and Greenland

because we are, like it or not, part of the sphere of influence, that old-fashioned 19th century imperial world. We live next door. And we can't do a thing about that. Old-fashioned 19th century imperial world. We live next door. And we can't do a thing about that. There's nothing we can do. So there's, you know, many frustrated Canadians over the last week have said,

well, this is a wake-up call. We're going to diversify our trade. 40 years of trying to do that. And frankly, we haven't moved the needle. So what's at stake for Canada when we see those executive orders? How serious is this? And what does that tell us about his determination here?

Regardless of all the economic arguments that we're going to make, what does that tell us about his determination to treat us in a fundamentally different way than we've experienced for 200 years? When did the penny drop in Ottawa? I guess there's two ways of looking at that. There's sort of when did the penny drop politically and when did the penny drop bureaucratically? Okay.

There are two different answers. You're absolutely right. The penny dropped politically very, very late. Very, very late. You know, literally December, which is very late, despite a lot of work and warning uh that this was coming now at the bureaucratic level that's not true the work really began last summer even before the u.s election the work began last summer uh our embassy in washington wholly focused on this wholly focused on this, wholly focused on this, and doing the kind of work, you know, where you lobby each congressperson, you lobby the governors. There was a lot, and it was a Team

Canada diplomatic approach, not political, but diplomatic, that was run by the ambassador. They've been at this for six months. Even then, the senior civil servants who are working on this never expected 25%, never expected a threat of that order of magnitude. And I'm hoping it's less than that. Here's the best I'm hoping for Peter, that it's a calibrated strategy, that he starts with five or seven, that's as he is wont to do. Well, if you don't do X, Y, and Z, they'll go up to 10 or 15, but builds in a waiting period before he goes all the way up on this. Because 25% is a devastating number for the Canadian economy. Devastating. And devastating for national unity.

Because our most important asset in that trading relationship, oil and gas. And the Premier of Alberta has made herself really clear that she does not want to see any export limits on Alberta oil and gas. And we all talk a lot about the breakup of this country that could happen in Quebec. Probably not enough about the importance of Alberta to the Federation. So this is dangerous territory for Canada. It's dangerous economically. It's dangerous politically. What's your view on the man that we're looking at now in terms of,

and I mean Trump, in terms of the way we looked at him eight years ago when he was inaugurated and the way we should be looking at him today? Yeah, that's a really great question because I don't think everybody's quite caught up to the Trump that we're dealing with today. You know, Trump walked into the White House eight years ago, completely unprepared, didn't have, frankly, a clue about how government works, surrounded himself with experienced people who did understand. And then spent the first two and a half years pushing against those experienced people because he didn't like the advice he was getting. So there was internal civil war in the Trump administration for the first two, three years, which frankly distracted them.

He's a very different person coming back this time. He knows it's his last term. He knows he has this period between now and the midterms, because you start campaigning for the next election right after the U.S. midterms to get it done. He's coming in with a group of advisors who have spent months working on these issues, Peter. That's why they're going to come in with some hundred executive orders ready to go and no leaks. This is a disciplined team that we are dealing with. Very, very different from the kind of erratic impulse of Trump that we had to deal with last time. And I think much more threatening because they're so disciplined and they have a plan

and they have people who can execute on that plan. Well, we have to take this very, very, very seriously. Yeah. I mean, within the next couple of hours, we're going to be living in a very different world than we were living in just a couple of hours ago. Yeah. And that's why we need you. And we will be talking again seven days from now.

So Janice, thanks so much for this. Well, I am going to be glued to those reports. It's glued. Aren't we all. Okay. Take care.

Have the best week we can have. Yeah, exactly. Well, there you go. How should we describe this? Our first conversation with Dr. Janice Stein in the new era of Donald Trump back in the White House. Janice will join us again, of course, next Monday. And I know so many of you because you write and tell me. I so look forward to Mondays with Dr. Stein.

It's a great launch a week, great way to launch a week, great way to try and understand our world. You don't have to agree with Janice all the time, and some of you don't, but it spurs you into that mode of thinking about the international situation. And it's a good conversation, always. A brief look forward.

I outlined to you at the beginning of the program, and if you missed it, go back and listen to it. This week's question of the week, how do you missed it, go back and listen to it. This week's question of the week, how do you get to your happy spot? Your happy spot, how do you get there? We spend so much time on negative thoughts often that this is going to be a different kind of week on your turn. I don't know whether we can get the random ranter into that mode,

but certainly hope to get you into that mode. So write your letters before your emails before 6 p.m. on Wednesday, themansbridgepodcast.gmail.com. Include your name and your location. Keep it short. I want to give you a heads up about tomorrow. Tomorrow is the return of Smoke, Mirrors, and the Truth. Bridge veterans from a couple of years ago will remember SMT.

We used to do it on Wednesdays with Bruce, Bruce Anderson. We're bringing back SMT at least for the life of the Liberal Leadership Campaign. And it gives us the opportunity to bring Bruce back into the House. He told us last Friday on Good Talk that while he is an active volunteer for the Carney campaign now, during the Liberal Leadership race, that he thought it was best to withdraw from good talk, at least for now. But we don't want to lose him, and you don't want to lose him. And you made

that clear in the letters I've heard. So we're bringing him back in his new partisan role of actively working with the Liberal campaign, at least the campaign of Carney, Mark Carney, in a volunteer role, unpaid, an advisor role. So Bruce will be on SMT, but he'll be joined by Fred Delory, who is a good friend and also the last campaign manager for the Conservative Party of Canada during the 2021 campaign when Aaron O'Toole was the leader. So Fred and Bruce will get together for Smoke Mirrors, No Truth,

where we'll try to look at the Liberal leadership campaign and the things that are impacting it and peel back the mystery on some of the things that are happening. So we're looking forward to that. That'll be tomorrow on Tuesdays for hopefully the length of the Liberal leadership campaign. We'll also touch base tomorrow with Keith Bogue for a few minutes. Keith has helped guide us through 2024 on the U.S. election situation

as a former Washington bureau chief. And Keith will give us a sense of his thoughts post-inauguration as the new Trump presidency launches. So that's tomorrow. Wednesday, Encore. Thursday, Your Turn. Friday, Good Talk, where Rob Russo will be taking Bruce's spot for the length of the Liberal leadership campaign.

Okay, that's it for this day. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks so much for listening. It's been great having you with us. Talk to you again tomorrow.