The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - What Happens If Biden Is Asked To Pardon Trump? - A Sunday "Race Next Door Special" On That And A Lot More with Bruce Anderson (#21)

Episode Date: November 8, 2020

Lots of issues to talk about on this Sunday morning special the day after Biden wins the US presidency.

Okay, we have a chief, or at least everybody seems to think we have a chief, except the former chief, who still claims he's the chief. He actually is until January 20th. But he wants to keep arguing about this. And he has some, to be fair, he has some of his fellow Republicans who are on side with him and are willing to carry on the fight. Although there appear to be an increasing number who are saying, you know what, let's concede and get the ball rolling on a transition. But that hasn't happened yet.

But what has happened is we are in a Sunday morning and get the ball rolling on a transition. But that hasn't happened yet. But what has happened is we are in a Sunday morning, and the race next door, the podcast within a podcast of the Bridge Daily, is up with a little special. Bruce is in, where are you? You're actually in Quebec, right? You're in the Quebec. Dan Home. Dan Home, Quebec.

Dan Home, Quebec. Beautiful Dan Home, Quebec on a beautiful lake. Yep. Yeah, and on a beautiful weekend. My gosh. I don't know what the weather's been like all over the country, but certainly in central Canada this weekend has been a knockout. It doesn't feel like almost mid-November.

It feels like mid-September. But anyway, whatever. We're not here to discuss the weather. We are here to discuss the decision yesterday that made Joseph Biden the president-elect of the United States. He would be the 46th president of the United States if, in fact, he's inaugurated on January 20th, as everyone assumes. We'll get into, well, let's start off with that. I'm a believer that the current president is all bluster and no follow-through, that if anything on an issue like this, he is what some have called him. He's a coward.

He's going to say all kinds of things about how he's going to hold up the process and how he's not going to allow Biden to take the presidency, that he claims he has all sorts of proof of a corrupt election process. I think that will back off. I mean, there's even talk in the last 24 hours that his son-in-law, the infamous Jared Kushner, has been trying to talk him into a concession. And one assumes some other people who are close by might be trying to suggest that as well, while others are staying, you know, stay and fight. I think in the end, this guy will leave

office, and it will be a peaceful transfer of power, and Biden will become president on January 20th. Where are you, sir, on that? Do you think he's going to hang on and fight to the end? Well, I don't think it's possible to know that. I guess I think that one thing we've all learned to our chagrin about Donald Trump is that he's very unpredictable and he likes it that way, but I don't think it's intentional on his part. I don't think he can kind of keep a thought for longer than until the next thing angers him or frustrates him or teases his attention away. I don't think he intends to surrender. I think he's kind of got it in his head that he can win this case. I also think that he's

stumbled upon another way to raise money. And he's addicted to the idea of getting people to give him money, even if the cause is nefarious. And you probably saw this, Peter, that he's been running these fundraising campaigns ostensibly for a super polished and highly effective legal effort, except it's not even in the fine print. It says, well, you know, some of the money can go to pay down his campaign debts. And I got to look at that and go, is that really to pay down campaign debts or is that somehow to put in his personal coffers at some point in the future? So I think he's looking at this and saying, I'm just going to kind of play it out like chaos every day. He's tweeting again

this morning, there's no indication whatsoever that if Jared Kushner spoke to him, that it had any effect whatsoever, at least up to this point in time. And so I think it's one of three really extraordinary things that we saw yesterday. One is, I don't think that the world has ever seen, except maybe going back to the end of World War II, an explosion of euphoria around the world, really, or in many, many parts of the world, and certainly in many parts of America. And I got the feeling that at least on the social media platforms that was happening in Canada too, this euphoria, not really at the election of Joe Biden, but I think at the demise and the rejection of Donald Trump. There have been other one-term presidents. I totally agree with that.

I think what we saw yesterday was more about Trump's loss than Biden's win. And that's not taking anything away from Biden. I think it was a relief on the part of that 51% of Americans who voted for Biden, that they were, as part of that deal, getting rid of Trump. Anyway, sorry to interrupt. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. No, no, no.

So I think that was one thing. I think the second thing is the spectacle of this incumbent doing what won't work over time and what everybody else who's sane about this knows won't work over time, which is to pretend that he can fight this without any real evidence, without any degree of support, even within the upper echelons of his party. He's got his family and he's got Rudy Giuliani and he's got a few other people who are kind of hangers on without any other place to go. But, you know, we can see this morning Mitt Romney taking off the gloves a little bit and getting pretty blunt about what

Trump's problem is in terms of connection to reality. And the third thing, which in a way is kind of, there's a risk that we don't notice it enough, don't pay enough attention to it. But the election of Kamala Harris, the first woman, a woman of color to be elected vice president. And for me, it's not just that she's a woman and she's a woman of color. It's that this comes on the heels of the most protracted and awful looking racial tension in America that we've seen. And kudos to her for running a campaign that helped support and elect the ticket. But kudos to Biden for saying from the get-go, I'm going to have a woman, I'm going to have

a woman of color as my running mate, even in a time when some people might have looked at that and said, well, isn't that going to be risky? Isn't that going to put your chances of defeating Donald Trump as important as they feel at some risk? He made that choice. He stuck with it. They ran a good campaign. And I couldn't help but notice, and I'm a father of two daughters, I couldn't help but notice all those faces of those girls in the audience last night and realizing what this means for them. Yeah, exactly. I mean, and her speech and her demeanor and everything about her last night was fantastic. And you couldn't watch that.

You know, even Karl Rove, who was commenting on Fox News last night, talked about how you could not watch that without feeling good and proud and have faith in America to see that happen. And, you know, another thing about Kamala Harris, in terms of the campaign she ran, you touched on a little bit, but I can't recall the last time there was a vice president who didn't stumble in something during a campaign, vice presidential candidate.

It's kind of natural. I mean, they were under the microscope, especially at the beginning of the campaign. And she didn't budge, even when some of the attacks against her were damn right racist right from the get-go. She handled herself extremely well, as well as any other vice presidential candidate I can remember, you know in my years of watching u.s elections and there have been some real bad ones uh in terms of their performance in a campaign this wasn't one of them this was a this was a textbook campaign on on both their parts really um they ran a great campaign yeah uh under constant attack a barrage of accusations from the other side,

you know, everything from personal to policy. Let me add a fourth thing to you that I particularly watched last night, yesterday and last night, aside from all the obvious things we saw on television, which was remarkable to watch. But there was also something else going on that kind of dovetails with what Brian Mulroney told us when he was a guest here last week. When we asked him whether or not he, whether he thought any of the leaders of the other leading countries in the old alliance,

would be upset if Donald Trump lost. And he said, without hesitation, he said, absolutely none. None of them would be upset. And the way we watched that unfold yesterday, I mean, the words were still coming out of the mouths of some of the anchors on American television declaring Biden the president-elect. When almost immediately the congratulation telegrams, emails, texts, whatever they were, started coming in from Angela Merkel, from Boris Johnson, right? It was supposedly, you know, a close friend of Donald Trump,

although I've never really believed that. From Macron in France, from Justin Trudeau in Ottawa, and from others. It was almost immediate. And then what happened? Et tu, Bruta? Not you too, buddy. Yes, buddy.

Buddy BB put out a text or email or a telegram last night. He waited until it was dark dark but he put it out and it was the most fawning congratulatory uh piece of words to joe biden from benjamin netanyahu who donald trump gave him everything he wanted over the last year they were great buddies he brought on the white house i don't know how many times put up the big embassy in jerusalem stuck jared kushner on there to to give him basically whatever he wanted in in some new alliances in the middle east but there was bb netanyahu saying joe i've known you for 45 years or whatever it is, long time. We've always been friends.

We know how to talk. You're a great friend of Israel. We're going to work hard together. Man, when Donald Trump saw that on Twitter, he must have exploded because that's like the knife in the back from one of supposedly one of his greatest allies on the international scene you know i think it's interesting you say that peter because i i do i agree with you about that i also it makes me you know recall the fact that at different times in his presidency and i love love saying his presidency in that kind of past tense,

I don't mind saying it this Sunday morning, but at different times, you could see what he was doing, which was he was making friends with Kim Jong-un and Vladimir Putin, and he was picking fights with the leaders of all of the traditional allies of America, with the exception of Benjamin Netanyahu. But he seemed to forget many times the horrible things that he said about those other leaders, those other democratic leaders, not the dictators, but the democratic leaders of America's allies, because he would then get asked, what's your relationship with them like? And he'd go, well, no, no, we're good. And the rest of the world would look at that and go, no, I don't think those are good relationships. They're pretty bad

relationships, actually. And I think one of the things that I'm struck by as I think about where is the, where is republicanism going? where is the Republican Party in America going, is that Trump said his agenda was America first. And the rest of the world looked at that and said, don't love the sound of it, but understand it. Understand that you campaigned on this notion that America is footing the bill for the defense of many other countries,

is unhappy with the trade relationship and the intellectual property issues with China. And so he's asserting something that is a rebalancing. But it didn't take very long before people realized that what he meant when he said America first was me first. And he, inside his party, and in that kind of fringe of America that turns out to be not very fringy he basically said it's okay to think about everything from a me first standpoint and that is the challenge I think that republicanism faces now and it's not the only part of the world where this problem exists is that if leaders say, me first is the right way to approach every political issue, we'll never get anything done.

We'll never solve COVID. We'll never have as strong an economy as we can have again. And I think the rest of the world leaders saw that pretty early on, that me first was really Donald Trump first. It wasn't even America first. I want to touch briefly on the Canada-US relationship now, because, you know, Justin Trudeau knows Joe Biden. They have a relationship based on his time as vice president. He came to Canada on that kind of, you know, the Obama administration's final tour, sort of dropped around. They had a good time in Ottawa, and there was, you know, lots of fabulous pictures put out of the two of them together, and, you know, clearly seeming to enjoy each other's

company. But there is some patchwork needed there to fix this relationship. And one assumes that because Obama and Justin Trudeau got along really well, that Biden and Trudeau will continue on the relationship they started to have near the end of that administration. That doesn't mean there aren't issues on the table, but it probably does mean, I would guess, that something that was abandoned by the Trump people

will be restored, and that is the kind of tradition that the first out-of-country trip the U.S. president takes is to Canada, their closest neighbor, their largest trading partner, the blah, blah, blah,-country trip the U.S. president takes is to Canada, their closest neighbor, their largest trading partner, the blah, blah, blah, you know, the routine. It wouldn't surprise me at all if Biden comes to Canada quickly. You know, Kamala Harris has a Canadian background. She grew up partly in Montreal during her kind of, I think, early teen years. Susan Rice is expected to be somewhere in a cabinet.

She has a lot of Canadian connections, having lived in Toronto. So that relationship has the potential to be strong and good, but the issues, they don't necessarily dovetail in terms of where both sides are on things. So, you know, there could be some tensions. I think that's right. I think that's right. I think both leaders, Trudeau and Biden, are more committed to the idea that even if you disagree privately, the public part of the diplomacy, what you say about each other, what you say about the relationship with each other should emphasize the positive. And I think that Trump basically took the opposite approach,

which is even if you were agreeing privately, publicly, you'd say that you were unhappy with the other leader. Now, this is Trump. This wasn't Trudeau. So on one level, I think we can imagine that disagreements won't turn into fights in the public square and name-calling and having surrogates like your trade representative, call the Canadian Prime Minister names. And that's obviously a good thing. I do think you're right that there are going to be some crucial issues. I don't think they're going to be impossible to deal with. But one that's on the table fairly soon, think is the keystone pipeline and we know that energy politics in canada has been a a pretty divisive issue from time to time and president-elect biden has made it clear that he intends to cancel the keystone pipeline and canada has officially said that it's in favor of that pipeline. And, you know, there are domestic problems within America for that pipeline,

but we'll see how that goes. Because there are other issues associated with the pipeline that aren't really just a climate change issue. America, because of all of the development under Trump, is kind of awash with its own supply of oil. Maybe doesn't need the Canadian product as much. So I expect that one to be an early test of what is the kind of intention of the US government and how is the Canadian government going to understand that internal dynamic within the Democratic Party,

which we should spend a minute on. Because that's an obvious concern for Biden as he takes office right now, and it's going to manifest itself in areas like climate policy and pipeline policy pretty early on. Well, go ahead then. I have one that kind of relates to that, and it's coming out of left field, but why don't you start in center field with what you have in mind? Look, I think that some of the most interesting things that I was noting yesterday was the commentary by Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who was really taking the Democratic leadership to task, saying that the problem that she saw was that they were too afraid of radical solutions.

They were too afraid of an ambitious progressive agenda. And that if they had been less afraid and had championed a more aggressive, ambitious progressive agenda, they wouldn't have lost seats in the House and they would have done better even in the Senate. Now, I don't know whether she's right or not, but I know that that is a very active conversation and has been. And it was sort of a blanket was thrown over it. You know, the Bernie Sanders, Hillary Clinton version of it and the Bernie Sanders, Joe Biden version of it. And Biden was successful in throwing a blanket over this conversation for the purposes of getting across the finish line

and taking out Donald Trump. But it's back with a vengeance. And part of the reason that it's back with a vengeance is it isn't really just a question of what's the best electoral strategy. Ocasio-Cortez and others in the Democratic Party, they recognize something that we sort of see in a Canadian politics sometimes, which is that for young people, the system isn't working. The economic system isn't working as well as it needs to for them to feel enthused about it. So it can be a progressive agenda or a more progressive than Donald Trump agenda. But if it doesn't solve issues of housing affordability, of opportunity, of what to do in a gig economy where you don't really know where the next batch of work is going to come from, if you're worried about climate change and you really want ambition in that area, Ocasio-Cortez isn't wrong to identify this as a problem.

But the challenge ultimately is how for the Democrats to be ambitious enough to satisfy those needs that minorities and young people and people with lower incomes feel about the way the system is working, but without risking another Trump, without risking a flip over in the other direction again, and correspondingly losses of rights for minorities, of opportunities for lower income people. It's not an easy challenge for Biden. And as a probable one-term president, it's going to be a challenge that's And as a probable one-term president, it's going to be a challenge that's going to be visited upon Vice President Harris, Vice President-elect Harris too.

But it's a very big subplot here and one that isn't only in the United States, I would say. I'm not going to argue with you on that. And I'm not going to argue with her because AOC, you know, it was right to bring it up and right to use in her defense that and you you hinted at it was that in you know to the surprise of many democrats lost seats in the house of representatives i can't remember where the total is now four or five but you know that's a significant number. None of them were in seats that were picked up last time round in, you know,

two years ago in areas where the progressives or the radicals, you call them what you want, won their seats. They all won reelection. They did not lose their seats. It was more the moderates who lost their seats. And in fact, it was all the moderates who lost their seats. And in fact, it was all the moderates who lost their seats. And that's a pretty strong argument to help back you up in the argument you're, you're, you're talking about.

Um, because you know, she and those who believe in her want change now, they're not willing to wait forever for change. They want change now. They want to see it now. They want to see it now. They want to see their opportunities as a result of attaining power taken advantage of, and they're not seeing it. So you're right.

That's going to be a fight on the big issues that is going to last. Well, it'll last as long as they don't win. They'll become this rump within the party, searching for a better phrase, but they will be part of that Democratic Party that is arguing for change, arguing for change now. Here's the other one. I'm going to throw it to you, and I gave you no warning on this,

but I was thinking of it during the night because I have no doubt in my mind this is going to be something that's going to be an immediate issue for the new president. And I would be shocked if it hasn't already come up in some of the conversation that goes on with his closest people. And that is, what do you do with the outgoing president who is being investigated in a number of districts,

including the Southern District of New York, for crimes and could easily be charged once he's out of office. So what do you do? Do you, as the new president, give the outgoing president a pardon? To save the country. This was the excuse used by Gerald Ford on Richard Nixon to save the country from the spectacle of having a former president in the dock and probably a former president and half of his family in the dock as well. And so that is going to come up. or later. I can, I would, I would bet money on it that in the first interview he gives,

somebody is going to ask him that. Would you pardon Donald Trump? So what do you do? Yeah. A million, a million, a million percent. No, a million percent. No. Uh, for all kinds of reasons. Uh, I know that's bad math, but, but here's the good argument. Uh, why don't do that? I mean, I remember, uh, Ford took heat. Oh, he took a lot of heat.

Back then it was much, much gentler time. And, you know, when I think about what Nixon did compared to what Trump did, I'm just flabbergasted that Nixon ever got tossed out of office and it was so hard to get Trump out. But anyway, that's a different issue, maybe for a different day. But look, I think that the one thing that stands above all others in answering this question is Trump's efforts to manipulate the Justice Department, the course of justice, to suit his own political agenda, to bend to his will through his attorney general, was horrifying to watch. Very, very worrying from the standpoint of good governance. So at the very least, the simplest thing for Biden to do is not to risk incurring the wrath of all of the people who were so joyous last night dancing in the streets by saying,

and now we're going to give this guy a get out of jail card for free. But simply to say, it really shouldn't be the case that the president gets that involved. And then Trump has a choice. He can resign. Pence can be made president for days, weeks, whatever. And Pence can pardon him if that's what they want to do. So that's, you know, that's how I would look at it. If I was in Biden's White House advising him, I think that there's no argument that he should take any preemptive measure. And if Trump and Pence want to work something out, I guess they can give it a shot. What would you do? I like the scenario you just outlined at the end, is you try to figure out a way that Pence becomes president for the last month or something.

And once this silly little dance that's going on right now, about, oh, it was crooked, it was, you know, there were millions of votes that came out of nowhere, fell off the back of a truck, blah, blah, blah. Once that is done, then he's got to, one assumes that he and his family are going to start trying to position themselves for what's bound to be coming. You know, he hasn't been charged so far because he's the president,

and presidents, it's believed, by the Department of Justice and by Robert Mueller, could not be charged. But as soon as he's out of that office, he can be charged. And that's where a pardon could come into play. So the Pence idea... But we don't even know the full range... We don't. ...of possible crimes, right and and so the notion that between

now and january you could even figure out how many things you'd want to consider pardoning him for uh takes you to a place where you go well it's just some sort of blanket pardon and i think from the standpoint of where's the what's the public smell test for that? A blanket pardon? It doesn't matter what you've done that we might find out about years down the road, but it's going to be okay? I just don't see the reason why anybody would do that. That's what they gave Nixon, right? But you're also right in, you know, that blew up in Gerald Ford's face.

Someone could argue that's why he lost the election a year later, a year and a half later in 1976 to Jimmy Carter. That's how Jimmy Carter became president because Gerald Ford had pardoned Richard Nixon. I don't know. I think it's an interesting one. Trump showed a lot of, Trump shows a great deal of, uh, interest in using the courts. And so if I'm Biden, I say, let the courts decide, uh, if there are charges to be laid and, uh, and judgments to be passed, let's let, um, let's let the system do its work. Okay.

Um, this has been a special edition of the race Next Door. That's 30 minutes on for your Sunday pleasure. Unless you have something else you would like to throw into this mix, Bruce, we'll probably keep it short. short? I don't really. I mean, I think I have a kind of a small abiding worry about this one issue that we talked on a little bit with Chantal the other day, which is that if it's true that there's a kind of a nutty fringe in America that was responsible for a lot of the things that we saw and felt badly about in the recent years and it's becoming more nutty and less fringy as we grapple with putting the pieces back together again of kind of world order and a sense of calm rather than chaos and especially as we try to figure out a path forward with COVID, we are going to need those media organizations that can play some sort of guardrailing role to stick with that. Recognizing all the things that you and Chantal and others have said about, is it really their role?

And I'm kind of looking at it going, if it isn't going to be their role, it's all of our role on some level to try to keep the conversation from being more whatever anybody wants to say, they can get the biggest platform and say it. And we won't be, we'll be paralyzed, basically unable to sort of say, well, wait, you know, if you tell people things that are manifestly untrue, manifestly dangerous for themselves, manifestly dangerous for the world, but still there's nothing we can do about it because doing something about it crosses other kind of ethical lines. I'm worried about that still, and I'm worried about it more now as it relates to COVID and as to, it relates to who's going to try to grab the flag that Donald Trump is eventually going to surrender. Is it going to be somebody who's going to try to grab the flag that Donald Trump is eventually going to surrender?

Is it going to be somebody who's more built like Mitt Romney, or is it going to be another Trump? Somebody from the hotline radio programming world or from the fringes of the entertainment world? Who knows? But I do have a little bit of concern about that. But I'm kind of suppressing it today, Peter, because it's a beautiful sunny day here, as you say, in Central Canada, and a day to feel good about yesterday's result. You know, I think we all share the concern you have. I mean, I know I do, and I don't want to speak for Chantel, but I know what she was saying the other day as it related to one particular incident. But I also, you know, this trying to define, and this can be the basis of yet another lengthier conversation

about the role of the media in particular, in what is a very different landscape than existed even five years ago, maybe even a year ago. Forget about Trump and all that, but just generally the landscape that the media has and the role that it plays in, whether it's traditional media or new media, social media, what have you, it's, you know, there's a vigorous conversation here.

And, you know, the playing field seems to keep changing. And as a result, the conversation becomes even that more important. Okay, look, let's leave it at that for now. Tomorrow, I'm going to, you know, barring some huge development on this story, I'm actually going to spend the podcast tomorrow talking about my book, which comes out on Tuesday, Extraordinary Canadians. So I'll tell you everything about it tomorrow

with my co-author, Mark Bulgich. Tuesday, we should probably do some catch-up on COVID because it's worse than it's ever been. Ontario yesterday, more than 1,100 new cases. That pales in comparison to the U.S. where there were, what, I don't know, 125,000, 130,000 new cases yesterday. These numbers are like skyrocketing. Yeah, big problems in Alberta too now.

Yeah, Alberta, Manitoba. yeah alberta manitoba manitoba manitoba it's like you know they were getting like two or three cases a day at their worst point now suddenly they're up around 500 they were the other day so we got to talk about covet probably on tuesday and then by midweek we'll be back i'm sure we'll be back with a race next door of some kind. But the way this story keeps changing, who knows, we could be back tonight. Listen, Bruce, thanks so much, as always. Peter, great to talk to you.

Yep, and we'll talk to all of you in 24 hours.