The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - Who Is Donald Trump?

Episode Date: September 9, 2026

For the past two years, we have relied on the very experienced foreign and domestic correspondent, Keith Boag, to give us his take on Donald Trump. Keith covered him in Washington during Trump's first term, 2016-2020, and has been watching him from afar during his second, 2024 to the present. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

And hello there, Peter Mansbridge here. You're just moments away from the latest episode of The Bridge. Donald Trump. Who is he, really? Another one of our fabulous conversations with one of your favorites, Keith Bogue, coming right up. So let's face it, who do we end up talking about even though we, many of us despise the guy? Who do we end up talking about?

We talk about Donald Trump. And why? Because he's affecting our lives. And right now he's affecting them big time. So we're going to talk about him a little more today. Ever since he came on the scene in the 2016 campaign, I've talked to Keith Boeke about him. Because Keith is not only a great correspondent, great journalist.

He was our Washington correspondent when I was at the CBC, and he was at the CBC. He was also our chief political correspondent in Ottawa. So he covers politics, U.S. politics, Canadian politics, world politics. And he gets fascinated sometimes by certain individuals who are in that political picture. And who could be more fascinating, no matter how you feel about him,

than Donald Trump. So Keith has been our go-to person for the last couple of years. And we talked to him everywhere, three or four months. And I know it's popular because I get lots of mail saying, bring back Keith Bog. Well, here we go. Start of a new season.

With the situation with Canada and the United States, kind of on the edge again, we go to Keith. And, well, you'll see it in our conversation, the way I, what I'm looking for. And I trust Keith to give us. his not only honest assessment, but his well-researched assessment.

And that's what's important. He's constantly looking at this issue. So let's get things started. I've had this conversation with Keith not too long ago this week and I wanted to share it with you. So let's get started. Here he is, our man, Keith Bog. Talk for starters about your view. currently of Donald Trump.

And I ask you because we've relied on you these last few years to keep us informed as to your sense of where where Trump's heading, what he's doing, what he's thinking. And you've been great on that based on the years of experience you've had covering the guy, both in the field, in the White House, and from afar. So let me start this way. before we get in any particular. It's a very general way.

Since we last talked, which is, I think, about six months ago, a lot's happened. Has your view of Trump changed at all? My personal view of Trump has not changed ever. The view of his political circumstances has changed. And I think we're learning that hits. His reaction to the changing circumstances, which he finds himself, or I rather should say,

which he's made for himself, he doesn't seem prepared to deal with. He appears to be like the most naive politician we've ever seen. And he finds himself in greater trouble politically with his own base than he has ever been before. Two main reasons that has happened. The first one was the Epstein Files, and he had attached himself very closely to the Epstein Files as the person who was going to tell all, reveal all, and sort of damn the torpedoes, never mind the political cost. And he clearly has not done that. He's now the guy who's doing his best to make sure they never come out. And he actually belittles those who think that there's a story there. And that is completely

contrary to the unshakable belief of some in the Maga base. And the second thing, of course, is the Iran War, a violation of another sacred promise that he had made to his base, never to involve, to get the U.S. out of wars and not get into new ones. And he's become extremely militaristic in this term. And the Iran War has exposed a number of things that have to do with the competence of his administration, the honesty of his administration, and the foolishness of his administration. And we have seen, for the first time, I think, serious players, I'm thinking of J.D. Vance,

getting their story out. I mean, I am assuming that everybody understands that the leaks to the New York Times, that distance J.D. Vance from the decision to go to war, are, in fact, coming from people around J.D. Vance, who feel that's an important narrative to get out there in order to protect his political future vis-a-vis the 2028 election. So I think the answer to your question is that we're seeing how Trump behaves in a set of circumstances that he has not experienced before. But I think later in this conversation, we're going to talk about how different Trump, what they call Trump 2.0 is, meaning this term, as compared to Trump 1.0, which was his first

four years in office. And we will. there seems to be considerable a difference between those two. But I still hearken back to that original question, which is your basic view of him, in spite of these major moments that have happened in the last year, especially the last six months, your view of how he operates,

how he thinks, what he does, hasn't changed. So I've refined it in these ways. And here we are right away getting into the difference between the first administration and the second. He's much more confident in this administration that he has the right answer to every question. He is also much more deliberate in choosing people who are subservient to him to fill important roles. In the first administration, he took advice from people.

people that you would say he understood to have more experience and more knowledge about how the system works. He doesn't seem to believe any of that anymore. I mean, to take one example as kind of the archetype, his appointment of Pete Heggseth as a Secretary of Defense, now named Secretary of War, there were people who were around him, who are loyal Republicans, who had serious doubts about that as it was unfolding. But it represents what has been, I think, a kind of pattern in Trump's decision-making about these kinds of things,

which is to appoint people who are in over their heads because then he makes sure he has absolute control over them. It's called by some, I think, an inverted hierarchy. He did the same with his choice for the, chairman of the joint chiefs of staff. He chose a three-star general. Three-star generals don't think of themselves as being at that point in their careers

where they would be considered for that role. It's usually a four-star general. And so what we have is a three-star general who was appointed, who was given his fourth-star when he was confirmed by the Senate, and who was essentially learning that the role that he has to play there is a very political role.

He is supposed to give, He is supposed to understand the politics of a situation. And that doesn't mean he gives political advice, but he gives advice in the context of the political situation as he understands it. And he's supposed to recognize it. He seems not to employ any of that kind of thinking in the advice that he gave to Trump about the Iran mission, where he more or less says, if you want to do it, I'll make sure we can do it. That's turned out not to be very helpful to Trump, as who he's. see he's sort of put himself into a war that it seems he cannot win and he's done so without really solid advice for the people who are going from the people who are going to

conduct that war and we are seeing increasingly now that the that the Pentagon was not properly prepared for the war they find themselves in let me follow that up for is that helpful yeah it is but it does raise this this question about in particular about Hexeth, because you say to yourself, you know, Trump has always not being shy about firing people, especially if things look bad, especially if it looks like that person or that department or that issue has been totally screwed. Why is Hexath still got his job? Especially when, you know, the Iran war has gone south, looks bad on.

Trump for sure, he can point the finger at Hegseth by firing him and putting somebody else in there and getting out of the war somehow. And it can look like he's moved. So like, why doesn't he do something on that like that? There are a number of reasons why, I think, have to do with his personality. First of all, he never admits when he's made a mistake. And firing Pete Hegsat at this point when, you know, I mean, it's the number one story on the agenda right now is how is he going to handle the war in Iran. But he's never been shy about firing people. I mean, he fired Pam Bondi.

He makes up some kind of a story and how she's disappointed him personally. Right. But Pete Hexseth has done everything that Trump said. He is, and he was such a controversial appointment to begin with. Second, does firing Pete Heg-Seth

also amount to conceding that the war has not been won? It's not I mean, he's trying to tell us now, where the administration is trying to tell us through J.D. Vance just last week, that it isn't a war at all anymore, that the war was over, as they said, it would be within six weeks. And all of this is just mopping up, which is clearly untrue. But if that's the story that's coming out of the White House, then why would you be firing Pete Hegset? That's a problem that he has created for himself that makes it difficult for, makes it difficult for him to do. Maybe a more sensible thing is his, when you fire somebody, you should know what your next move is going to be, and he may not, because that is a very difficult problem. I don't read anybody or hear anybody who has a clean solution to the war in Iran that would satisfy Trump that could be accomplished without him having to admit that he made a mistake and that the situation that he's withdrawing from is worse than the one that existed before he started the war. So I think all of those things make it complex. The other things, the other

we notice is that he, you know, I think we have to consider that he's genuinely more interested in silly things, such as his renovation projects, building an art, building a ballroom. He seems genuinely more interested in those things than in really important things, such as the war in Iran. And I think it has mystified and confounded people. Why Iran is not the number one thing that he is trying to resolve. It's not going to be easy and maybe he just can't face it, but he has to. He has to because it is, it's just not going to go away. It is infinitely more important than the ballroom and the arch and so on. But these features of his personality are exposing them, revealing themselves now in a very disturbing way. And I think that the people around who must be

disturbed by it as well. I'll just do an aside on the arch, because I hadn't realized until the last week or so when I was reading about it. This thing, which is, you know, not far from the Lincoln Memorial and within side of the Arlington Cemetery, it basically separates the view from one to the other. Yes. It's huge. It's huge. It's huge.

It's twice as big as the Art de Triumph in Paris. Yeah. And, you know, you and I have been lucky enough to be there in Paris. It's big when you stand next to it's really big. Yeah. But this one is twice as big as that. So you literally won't see anything from the Lincoln Memorial. If you're trying to look up at the Arlington Cemetery, you're not going to see it.

And that's so important to the whole idea of Arlington Cemetery that it is visible, an ever-present reminder of the sacrifices that had been made for the country. And that is why I think so many reasonable people consider this proposal for an arch, an obscenity. Well, like so many of his vanity projects, I mean, he said the other day, nobody's going to build anything in my name

or for my name after I'm gone, so I've got to do it now. Which may be one of the simple truths that he's managed to say because most of what he says is not a simple truth or any kind of truth. Let me just before we go into some of the particular situations that exist today.

Do you, you know, this is the second term, it's the final term, no matter what he says. And I think when you really study his words, I think he accepts that. He knows this is it. Now, when you're in your second term, you're a lame duck. Do you think he's a lame duck? Oh, I'm persnickety on the term lame duck. Okay. I'll tell you why.

I mean, I think Lane Duck is a suggestion that he is without power. He is not without power. Lane Duck should really be the period when he is without legitimacy, which will only happen after the 2028 election. For instance, they call, we're going into a midterm election now. After the midterm election, if it turns out the Democrats, for instance, do we get control of the House, then we will be in what's called the lame duck period. It would be illegitimate for the Republicans to use their full authority in the House, knowing that their

sex successors have already been chosen by the voting public. That's how I look at the term lame duck. So no, Trump is not a lame duck in that sense now. There are certain things, but there are largely political things over which he's losing control for sure. But the president retains the powers that he has on day one right up until the lame dot period of either its first or second term. And if he's reelected, the powers that he has on day one of his election and the powers that he has at the end of his two administrations are the same.

And I think we've seen how that works. You know, here's a good example, I think. During the financial meltdown in 2008, we had an election. President George W. Bush did not do anything dramatic without consulting Barack Obama and John McCain first, because he realized that the country was going to the polls very soon, and it would be illegitimate for him to act without consulting them about what they could live with when they took over that problem. So again, my point, and I hate being persnickety about it, but my point is that it's really more about the legitimacy than it is about power. And Trump retains a lot of power.

And incidentally, I would add also to your statement that his presidency will come to an end. I agree with that. But I've come to the view that he intends to give up the office, but not the power and influence. I don't mean the formal power, but I can't imagine that Trump goes quietly off into a retirement somewhere and doesn't try to interfere with, if there isn't a Republican president who follows him into the White House. I can't imagine that Trump wouldn't relish every opportunity to interfere and show that he's still the real force within the party. I think that's what his exit's going to look like if there's a Republican who follows him in the White House. If there's a Democrat, that's a lot harder. And he may actually witness the erasing of his legacy in lots of ways, both symbolically and substantively. I'm going to ask you a question here now, which you will probably say I'm not in his head, so I don't know the answer to that question.

but I'll ask you it anyway, now that I've taken your answer for me. You know, I ask you what your sense of Trump was, how you saw him these days. How do you think he sees himself? The other days, he kind of flippantly said, I'm, you know, I'm the greatest president that's ever been leading this country. Now, I don't know whether he believes that, or maybe he does believe that. what do you think? Well, I can't get inside his head, Peter.

So I think one of the things you mentioned a couple of minutes ago about him acknowledging that nobody's going to build monuments to him was really a revealing reflection. And it makes me think he actually, you know, we talk a lot about how he denies reality and lives in a made-up world where he is, he is. is universally loved, that he has all the right answers where he never makes mistakes. That suggests, that comment suggests, he knows he's making it up all along. His behavior does the same as well. His inability to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election is a political tactic now.

And I think there's a lot, I think there's sufficient evidence for us. to see that he knows that's not true. And I think it's therefore fair to wonder if he doesn't know exactly who he is, how he looks, and what his legacy is going to be, and he doesn't like it one bit. You know, you talk about loyalty and how he is, I was going to say how he's loyal to some people,

although sometimes I wonder whether he's loyal to anyone other than himself. every once in a while when it looks like Vance is prepping himself a little too much, he'll do something to make you doubt his loyalty to Vance. But two people who he's clearly loyal to, and I find I hadn't even thought of this until Richard Engel asked them a question the other day. Richard Engel, a great NBC correspondent, especially on wars. past and present.

Richard Engel asked of Jared Kushner and Steve Whitkoff, the two people that Trump uses as his envoys on every potential peace plan out there, and more. Ask them why anybody should assume they're any good at their job. They're not trained diplomats. They're basically real estate guys who've, cut lots of deals in the past on real estate. But haven't been that successful on anything that Trump has sent them on, whether it's

Russia, Ukraine, whether it's Iran. Kushner answered for the two of them basically saying, I got Kuzma. He was part of those negotiations in Trump won. Trump called it a great deal and now dumps all over it and says it has to be replaced. and the Olympics. That's what Jared Kushner points to those two as his great successes. I would have thought he would point to the Abraham Accords. Actually, he did say the Abraham Accords.

But Engel basically said, given what's happened since October 7th and the lack of real progress on peace in that area, he kind of discounted the Abraham Accords. Anyway, why the loyalty to those two, when they've proven on some pretty big stuff in Trump too, not to have managed any success? So I can speak more directly to loyalty to Jared Kushner because I know more about it.

And one of the things I know about it that maybe not fully appreciated is how long the Kushner relationship with the Netanyahu family dates back to. And when you start putting Netanyahu into this with Trump and the problems they face, their similar worldviews in terms of what they consider to be leadership. And then you remember that, or maybe you don't. remember, maybe he didn't know that when Bibi Netanyahu would visit the United States many years ago, he would stay at the Kushner's house. And Kushner was a kid back then, and he would give up his room, his bedroom for Bibi Netanyahu. That's a long history of a close relationship

that now is brought directly into the Trump family through his daughter, Jared's wife, Ivanka. Yeah. So I think those things, those things, because they're so deeply personal, are much more important to Trump. And he understands them in a way that we can't really penetrate, but we can see the evidence that these, that if there's a strong relationship there, it probably exists on a, on a personal basis that has a longer and deeper history than is obvious to everyone. Okay, we're going to take quick break.

And focus on our next segment on the midterms. You've briefly mentioned them a little while ago, but I want to talk about them and what's at stake for Donald Trump, because there are times that I kind of look at and think, does he even care what's going to happen there, what could happen there? So I want to get to that with you, but first of all, We'll be going to take this quick break. We'll be back right after this.

And welcome back. You're listening to the bridge right here on Sirius XM. Our guest this week on this day is Keith Boat, former chief political correspondent for the CBC in Ottawa, former chief Washington correspondent for the CBC. And correspondent in a number of other places around the world. So Keith's got lots of experience, but one of his. passions in a way has been studying Donald Trump. He was on the campaign, covering the campaign in Trump 1 and watches it sometimes from afar on Trump 2. The program is also available on our podcast on a variety of different platforms, any one of which you may connect to the bridge on.

Okay. Let's get to this, Keith. Oh, I should promote once again our question of the week, which has got, well, I may end up having something to do with Trump, but you've only got a couple more hours left here on this Wednesday to enter it at the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. The question is pretty simple. what did you learn about yourself or your country or about any other particular situation this past summer? Obviously, a lot of people want to enter into the whole issue between the United States and Canada, and you're free to do that if you wish. Keep in mind, 75 words or less is the limit for the letters.

Got to have them in by 3 o'clock Eastern time today, so you don't have much time left if you have. haven't already sent them in. Include your name and the location you're writing from. That's it. Okay, Keith, the midterm elections, you mentioned them in our first half, and I want to get to them now, because if you just go by the polls and the analysis and the commentary, it looks like the Republicans could be heading to a disastrous midterm elections.

Trump isn't on the ballot per se, even though he says, consider me on the ballot. That's what you should be thinking and runs all kinds of terms. Like if we do bad, if the Republicans do bad in these midterms, they may never end up in the White House again.

So I want to know what from you, what your sense, first of all, is in the importance of the midterm elections. Do we overstate that importance? Do we misunderstand what's actually happening there? So where you go? You tell me. So I think we're in an environment now that favors Democrats in the same way that it favored Democrats in 2018.

And we know that led to a kind of blue wave that and the consequences of that for the president were that he was investigated and he was impeached twice. And those are things that he might have feared at that time. In both cases, in all cases, he can now remember that he survived. And because he survived, he, I think, can be assumed to fear those consequences less, which may account for why he appears to you and to many others, as though he doesn't really care how the midterms turn out. His political behavior seems to be contrary to his interests in many examples. The trade war with Canada being one of them.

Iran is another. His sense that he can turn it around by making himself the issue also seems to be contrary to the way most other people would read the situation, because he is at the lowest depths of his popularity now compared to any other moment in this term or in his first term. There's no reason really to believe that he's an asset to the Republican brand at all. And the challenge seems to be formidable because, as I said, we're in a democratic environment now, and it's kind of every man and woman for themselves.

And you can see that there's a certain tension around whether people want to be sort of either figuratively or actually standing next to Republican standing next to Trump on the political stage. But he isn't going to run again. And because he has survived investigation and impeachment before, I think those are strong arguments. that he thinks he can lose this. So why is he saying things that lead people to believe that he's in a desperate enough situation to want to try to determine the outcome of the midterm elections by, to use a testy term, by rigging them either through intimidation

or through these things that he wants to do to give the United States Postal Service some control over who gets to receive mail-in ballots. These are all things that look like desperation, the desperation of somebody who wants to win. But it's incongruent. It doesn't seem to make, like, there's no kind of consistency to it.

And as we both say, there are reasons why he may not really give it him. So what is it? What is the midterm election now? And has the sense of it, the importance of it, has it changed? Yeah, I think it has changed a lot. You know, I think people are correctly saying that this midterm election is a referendum on Trump, but midterm elections have become referendums on the administration of the White House for a number of years now.

And I like to remind people of how different things were when I first started covering Washington, which was in 1995. Duke Gingrich had just won a sweeping election, or his party had won a sweeping election that would make him the Speaker of the House. And people forget that was the first time in 40 years that Republicans had won the House. And so when you consider what politics must have been like through those 40 years, you had 26 years of Republican presidents. and they somehow managed to work with a Democratic-controlled house. And they did so because they were able to find that there was common ground in both parties on certain issues. I go back as an example to point out how in the 1960s Lyndon Johnson was able to find support for the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act within the Republican Caucus.

in fact, there was a bigger percentage of Republicans' percentage of Republicans who voted to support those pieces of legislation than in the Democratic Caucus during the Reagan years. Say that again, because that's really hard. So the Democratic caucus was bigger than the Republican caucus after the 1964 elections and after the 1960. It was just bigger. I'm talking about the Senate here. But in the Senate, the smaller, a greater number of,

the smaller caucus, the Republican caucus, voted for the civil rights legislation than the Democratic caucus. So there were more Democratic votes, but the percentage of that caucus was smaller than the Republican caucus. I hope that's clear. It can be a little bit confusing. Yeah. But, yeah.

But does that say that on that issue, civil rights? Yeah. The Republicans were more forward thinking at that time than Democrats. What it says is that the strongest opposition was regional opposition from the South, and the Democrats controlled the South, the Dixiecrats. And Lyndon Johnson had more trouble persuading them to support the legislation than he did, persuading Republicans to support the legislation. That was the real struggle for him.

And people tried to say that it was an easy win for him because look at how many Democrats he had. No, it was not easy. It took all of Lyndon Johnson's political skills to bring his own party on board. Let me just jump ahead for a Republican example with the Reagan administration and tax cuts. Remember the Reagan Democrats? Some of them were happy to support the tax cuts that became kind of the centerpiece of the Reagan administration. and in some ways, they were supporting what would become consensus thinking right through Reagan, Bush, and Clinton. He did it with support from Democrats.

So, reaching across the aisle, knowing that people in different parties could have different views from the mainstream of their own parties, was a normal feature of politics back then, but it is not now. Both parties now have purity tests, ideological purity tests. They are much, much more cohesive in their ideology. And they are both Democrats and Republicans more likely to treat the opposing party, not as a rival, but as a political enemy. And the destructiveness of that, I think, is evident in the politics that we see today, where compromises is a dirty word, where, you know, you can have, at the beginning of the Obama administration, you could have Mitch McConnell say that our main goal

will be to make Obama a one-term president. I mean, that's a nakedly political pursuit that seems to have no concern for what's the best thing for the country. And I think part of the result of that is less gets done. The public is more frustrated. And you see that it does fuel perhaps the attorney. traction of extreme or candidates who are, who are pitted against the establishments of their own party.

Donald Trump was certainly bad in 2016, but so was Bernie Sanders. And both of them surprised the political institutions that were their party. And I think they have made a long-lasting change in how people view politics. And we are seeing something similar to that in the rise in Democratic Socialism. of America in certain areas of the Democratic Party. And the Democratic Party, as an institution, seems as confused about how to deal with that as the Republican Party was in 2016 with the rise of Magna and Donald Trump. Both of them are challenges to what they consider their rightful authority in the party,

and they don't know how to manage it. I'm glad you've given us a little, this slice of history, because it makes you rethink some assumptions that a lot of us have made that, you know, and we see it in this country too, that polarization has always existed. Because it hasn't. It clearly hasn't. From just listening to you talk about, you know, the period before the early 90s. You know, I think back to the 80s and the short time I was in Washington.

And those days, I mean, there were lots of issues that divided the parties, but at the same time, there was this incredible relationship between the president, Reagan, and the Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, where they'd meet frequently. They'd work stuff out. Yeah. You know, and it was a very different time. You never hear about that anymore in the States, or at least we haven't for some time. and to a degree you don't hear about it in Canada either.

Yeah. But, you know, that can be turned against him, and it was by Newt Gingrich, who decided in the 80s and made it his project to discomfort the Republicans who had become, he thought, too comfortable and lazy and accepting defeat after defeat at the polls. Forty years of defeats in the House, Republicans accepted and compromised.

And Gingrich deliberately treated that as an embarrassment to the party and escalated tensions and created an environment where winning was, where the party's success was much more important, it seemed, than the country's success. and he would treat that relationship between Reagan and Tip O'Neill as a kind of corruption where people should be suspicious about what they said in private, because it didn't match what political rivals say about each other in public. And by creating that suspicion and the image of a cozy club between Republicans and Democrats, he ignored whether it was productive in our own. he ignored what the Reagan administration had accomplished with Democrats, or what other presidents had accomplished with Democrats.

And instead, when he had the power to do it, he was the first to really lead his caucus towards impeaching the president and over his personal conduct and making character an issue for why Republicans should not just disagree with Democrats but hate them, despise them, have contempt for them. Don't see him preaching that line anymore. He had a lot of skeletons in the old closet, didn't he?

Exactly. Listen, we're out of time. So let me just end on this one. And in a way it circles back to that opening question about the way you see Trump today. there are a fair number of people who think that Trump is suffering some of the problems he's got right now simply because of his age

and his health, issues about, you know, potential dementia, issues about unexplained, you know, marks on his hands and various things like that. Is that part of the story right now? His health? I mean, you're not a doctor and I'm not a doctor. No, but let me answer that question. Sure.

Because I have thought about this for a long time. His age may have something to do with this. But we are not comfortable with talking about the president's mental health. I'm not a doctor, you're not a doctor. My understanding of diagnosis is that it often begins with lay people such as myself who say there's something wrong with this guy, I better get, or this man or this woman, I better get them to seek professional help. That often is where it starts.

So I don't think we should be as shy as we are. I mean, we wouldn't do it if somebody was physically sick. You know, we saw somebody, you know, riding on the bus and, you know, they're sitting at one end of the bus and they're hacking and coughing and doing all kinds of. of things and you don't want to sit next to them because you don't know what they have, but you know they got something. And I feel I've always felt the same way with Trump. I think his behavior is so antisocial and clearly antisocial. His inability or his complete disregard for the truth is pathological. I think we can see these things with our own eyes without having to label it as a diagnosis of a specific mental illness. But in a general sense,

like you and me. You know, he doesn't hold himself to what we consider the normal standards of behavior in in society. People put up with it, maybe they excuse it by saying, oh, that's just Trump. But really, it deserves closer to examination and interrogation than that. So some of the things that may look like old age, I think, are really manifestations of something that has been a part of his personality and his character from day one. Okay, we're going to leave it at that. Clearly, there's going to be a lot to talk about over these next months on Donald Trump, and we're lucky enough to have Keith Bogue with us to do that talking.

So listen, Keith, thank you for this. We'll talk to you again soon. Thank you so much for having me. I hope I haven't gone too far. Oh, Keith Keith is funny. I hope I haven't gone too far. What would too far be

about Donald Trump? I'm not sure the answer to that question. Great to have Keith on the program again, as always, and we'll have them on again. Probably after the midterms when we try and pick up the pieces and figure out what it all meant. That's going to do it for today,

a reminder that tomorrow Thursday, it's your turn, and the random ranter. The ranter will be back with his thoughts on something. I don't know what yet, but we'll see. Your thoughts on the question

that has been outlined, which is basically, what did you learn this summer? About yourself or about your country or about any particular issue? We'd love to hear from you. You've only got a couple of hours left

to get your answer to that question in to the Mansbridge podcast at gmail.com. 75 words or fewer, or is it or less? It's one of those two. Name and location you're writing from are important as well. And you've got to have it in by 3 o'clock Eastern time this afternoon. So as I said, that doesn't give you much time. But look forward to hearing from you, nevertheless.

All right, that's going to do it for today. I'm Peter Mansbridge. Thanks much for listening. Talk to you again in less than 24 hours.