The Ezra Klein Show - Is This America’s Golden Age? A Debate.

Episode Date: June 20, 2025

Kevin Roberts, Kellyanne Conway, Ben Rhodes and I battled it out a few weeks ago on a stage in Toronto. This was for a Munk Debate on the motion: “Be it resolved, this is America’s Golden Age.” It might not surprise you that I was arguing the negative, alongside Rhodes, a former senior adviser to Barack Obama and the co-host of “Pod Save the World.” Roberts and Conway were on the other side. Roberts is the president of the Heritage Foundation and an architect of Project 2025. Conway was Donald Trump’s senior counselor in his first term. The Munk Debates organization has kindly let us share the audio of that debate with you. If you haven’t heard of the Munk Debates, you should really check it out. It’s a Canadian nonprofit that, for more than 15 years, has been hosting discussions on contentious, thought-provoking topics. If you go to its site and become a supporter, you can watch the entire video archive. A classic I recommend: “Be it resolved, religion is a force for good in the world” with Tony Blair debating Christopher Hitchens.Note: This recording has not been fact-checked by our team. Unlock full access to New York Times podcasts and explore everything from politics to pop culture. Subscribe today at nytimes.com/podcasts or on Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

I'm going to be few days, but we'll be back with a new episode next Friday. In the meantime, I wanted to share something I thought some of you might enjoy. A few weeks ago, I took part in a monk debate. The monk debates are fascinating if you haven't heard of them. They've been going for 15 years. They're this Canadian nonprofit. They put out two big debates a year on these really contentious topics. If you go to their site, it's in the show notes, and you become a member, you can watch this whole video archive. There's a classic one I recommend from 2010, Is Religion a Force

for good in the world with Tony Blair debating the late Christopher Hitchens. But this one, the one I participated in, was on the motion, quote, be it resolved, this is America's golden age. And I was arguing against the motion, as you might imagine. I don't think this is America's golden age. And I was doing so alongside Ben Rhodes, the former senior advisor to Barack Obama, and the co-host of Pod Save the World. On the other side, arguing for the motion,

was a president of the Heritage Foundation and the architect of Project 2025, Kevin Roberts, and Trump's former senior counselor, Kellyanne Conway. The Monk Debates have very kindly allowed us to share the full audio of that debate here. I hope you enjoy it. Welcome to tonight's Monk Debate. Tonight we're going to debate the golden age of America as the president has just proclaimed. Is it real?

Is this happening before our eyes or is something different unfolding? Is something darker underway? What we're going to do now is have this audience vote on tonight's resolution. So we're going to have one vote at the beginning of the evening, another vote at the end. do now is have this audience vote on tonight's resolution. So we're going to have one vote at the beginning of the evening, another vote at the end. You're voting on our motion, be it resolved. This is America's golden age.

I sense everybody's had a chance to vote. OK, I see a few people want a moment more. Let's go for that, and then we will hopefully get that vote up on the clock. Here we go. 15% of you are in favor of the motion. 85% of you are opposed. Okay. Okay.

There we go. This debate is definitely happening in Toronto, Canada, is it not? Now, what we'd like to do is ask you a second question, because it's important. We're all creative thinkers. Our minds can be changed. We can be swayed by what these debaters say on the stage. So that's exactly the question that we want to ask you now for our second audience vote. How much willingness is there in this room to change your perceptions? Here you go. 68% of you could change your minds. So debaters, this debate is a live one. People are open to hearing what

you all have to say. So let's get our debate underway as was agreed by all the participants in the speaking order. Kevin Roberts arguing in favour of the motion is up first. We'll put six minutes on the debate clock and turn the stage over to you. What a pleasure to be with you tonight. And I come as a friend of Canada, even though I'm an American. Actually, especially because I'm an American. And it is a real honor to be here with you to help facilitate along with my three fellow debaters, the noble mission of the Monk Debates,

which is civil discourse, a vital attribute in the shared cultural inheritance of our two countries. And of course, as I look at the debate results, I've drawn the conclusion that you're telling me there's a chance. I'm tempted to tear a few into submission, but I suspect that won't work. And so instead I've got an idea.

If you cheer for Kellyanne and me, then we will give you a 10% discount code for one of those new US gold cards to become US citizens. Full disclosure, that's a joke. I do not have the power to do that. And so I'll get right to it. The last four years were a dark age in American life. A dark age because it was a time when the government opened our southern border to chaos,

but also a time when that same government shut the doors of our schools and churches. It was a time when bureaucrats told our children that bigots are in fact somehow people who believe that boys are boys and girls are girls as opposed to understanding biology. These same bureaucrats told us that elites in Washington are somehow more important than people in middle America

who drive trucks, listen to country music, wear boots, guilty as charged on all three. Rather than having the understanding wear boots, guilty as charged on all three. Rather than having the understanding that we are unified as a people on one major objective since our revolution. That every American is born with the right to self-governance and now is the time to revitalize that belief.

But instead, instead, what happened over the last four years was that American society underwent a massive accelerating deterioration brought on by the left, sometimes accentuated by a few on the right, while the American people suffered. And the reason that we are at the dawn of a golden age is because the American people look at that.

They look at that double standard, they look at that status quo, and they say enough is enough. And so, even respecting our differences as friends, it won't surprise you that I stand here unapologetically, enthusiastically telling you that yes indeed, we are at the dawn of America's golden age. Of course, that would already be the case,

regardless of who won the presidency last year. That is to say that the American people have been clamoring for this kind of change for decades. But God blessed Donald Trump for bringing it to life and for having the courage in only four months in office to initiate a spate of reforms that admittedly the left finds a little disorienting. Disorienting because they've never experienced

this kind of vigor, this kind of dispatch by the political right in the United States. Disorienting because what it is doing is undermining the power structure of the DC administrative state that of course for 50, 60, 70 years has stood in the way of Americans flourishing. And one real important thing to keep in mind,

also keeping in mind that your Canadian media try to vaccinate you from the truth, is that Donald Trump remains very popular. Over half of Americans, as we sit here tonight, say that the country is on the right track. A market change, as you know, from the previous four years. Why do they say that? Because regardless of what they think about

Donald Trump as a person, regardless of what they think about Donald Trump as a person, regardless of what they think about specific policies, regardless of their recognition that this is just the dawn of the golden age and that it will take years and decades to accomplish its objectives, that we're finally back on the right track. And the advent of a Trump-Vance political coalition,

which is more working class, more multi-ethnic, means that Americans of all backgrounds, as it should be, support this agenda. And of course, in order for that agenda to realize the American dream, something that too few Americans believe in anymore, there will have to be success. And we've already seen success

in beginning to end the regulatory environment that stifles not the business of the Fortune 50 companies that collude with big government, but that stifle the American dream for small and middle class, small business owners and middle class Americans. And so I submit to you in closing, that this isn't just about America's golden age.

I'm here as a proud American. But to say that we're in America's golden age doesn't come at the expense of anyone else, especially our friends in Canada. So whether or not you want to be the 51st state, we invite you into this. Entirely up to you, that's the point. Part of the golden age is living in national sovereignty.

And so I'll close by telling you, we look forward to great success. Okay, audience, civility is one of the bywords here at the Monk Debate, so a little bit of hissing and booing is fine, but let's try to be respectful of our debaters here. Ezra, you're up next. Alright. Thank you to Monk for having us, to Canada for not putting a tariff on American debaters crossing your borders.

Thank you to my distinguished co-debatants. Is America entering a new golden age? I mean, I'm tempted to say, just like, look around. But maybe that's the problem, maybe it's the problem. Maybe it's what we've ceased to see that matters. The writer Charles Mann tells a story. He's at a wedding in the Pacific Northwest in America,

part of America important to me. He's at a table with all these 20-somethings who want to make the world better. We see the ways in which it currently falls short. And it's not that they're wrong, he writes, but he says, the heroic systems required to bring all the elements of their dinner to these tables by the sea were invisible to them.

Despite their fine education, they knew little about the mechanisms of today's food, water, energy, and public health systems. They wanted a better world, but they didn't know how this one worked. For man, that's the opening to a series on the basic infrastructure that undergirds our lives. For me, it's a way of thinking about where the Trump administration is going wrong.

I'm not going to tell you that the people in the Trump administration do not want, at least for Americans, a better world. But they are filled with contempt for the systems that undergird the world we've built. It's not just that they often don't know how they work, it's that they don't see the parts that are working. And so they're putting much more than they realize at risk. Donald Trump himself will tell you that America spent decades

getting systematically ripped off, that we opened ourselves to the world and the world picked our pockets. Did it? In 1990, America accounted for about two-fifths of the overall GDP of the G7 countries. Today we're about half. Per person, our economic output is about 40% higher

than it is in Western Europe, sorry to say, in Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan. Those gaps, our lead, have nearly doubled since 1990. A decade ago, analysts thought China would have overtaken the US as the world's largest economy by now. Instead, China's GDP has been slipping compared to ours, going from 75% of US GDP in 2021 to 65% in 2024. Now look, the economy is not everything,

but this idea that we're being relentlessly screwed, that we're just losing and losing and losing is wrong. It sees our moments of restraint where we don't maximize our power and leverage over our allies and partners and misses what that restraint buys us. The rest of the world's willingness to do business and set rules in a system we have built and where we have been the loudest voice to break that system, to alienate those allies

and partners, which is what the Trump administration is doing, doesn't serve America's interests. It's not going to bring us a golden age. And you don't have to take my word on it. Look, if America was entering a new golden age, you'd expect to see it somewhere, anywhere. Maybe the American people would be thrilled, and you all can check on your phones if that right track wrong track number is right. That's not what I see in most polls. The stock market should be booming.

Everyone everywhere should be buying American treasuries. Instead, here we have Fortune reporting, the stock market under Trump has seen one of its worst performances on record in the first 100 days of US presidency. Gallup finds 58% of Americans think this is a bad time to find a job. Inflation expectations are up, not down.

Our credit rating is getting downgraded. Investors are demanding a higher premium to buy 30-year treasuries. The stock market, treasuries, inflation, these are people betting on our future, not our present. If they thought we were entering a new golden age, they'd say so, they'd make some money on it. They don't, because we're not.

Maybe that's why Trump has seen his approval rating fall faster than any modern president in history save himself. I think, I think if both the markets and the people think things are going poorly, and again, you can check our polls, you should have a pretty high bar

for being told here tonight that they're actually going great. At the core of what's going wrong is that the Trump administration's contempt for cooperation. It's inability to distinguish when we are being taken advantage of from when we are leaving something on the table because that is how you protect the table. It's not that international trade is a perfect system.

It's not that our universities are perfect. Not that our nonprofits are perfect. Not that the U.S. federal government is a model of efficiency. I just wrote a book about all the ways that it isn't. But to see only what's wrong is to profane a remarkable inheritance. Abundance is a possibility in America, a reality for many Americans, because the government actually works pretty well. To make it work better could unleash wonders.

To destroy it, to drive the best people out of it, to treat it like the enemy could unleash horrors. And so too for trade and the dollar and the universities and foreign aid and the UN and NATO and much more. So too for the remarkable achievement that is due process. So too for the rules and norms that keep US presidents from accepting luxury planes from Qatar or hawking cryptocurrencies under their name. I gotta use my time y'all. Donald Trump said this very year that the European Union was quote formed to screw the United States. You can only utter those words aloud if you have the luxury of forgetting all the horrors the EU has created to prevent.

He can only utter those words aloud because the EU has been working. But that's his whole problem in miniature. He so fully takes for granted what works that he has no idea what he is putting at risk. America is not entering a new golden age. Its leaders are forgetting what built the last one. Two seconds to spare. Well played, Ezra. Kellyanne, you're up next.

Thank you very much. Thank you. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of gratitude. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so happy to be here. I'm so much and thank you. I'd like to add my voice to the chorus of gratitude to the entire team here in the Monk Debates for welcoming us and me tonight. I know that

Canada is an incredible, beautiful country filled with wonderful people. We share a 5,000 mile plus border and I'm very happy to be among you tonight and to have you as our neighbors to the north. America, yes, thank you. America is not just rebounding, it is roaring back with confidence and clarity. And even conviction, this is not the slow crawl of recovery. This is an intentional und undeniable momentum, I think hallmarked by the Trump kind of volume

and velocity with which he likes to operate. Seventy-two percent of Americans last election day said the country was headed off on the wrong track. It is simply impossible for a party in power to win another term of the presidency if nearly three quarters of the country believe in some form or fashion that things are not going their way. We know that we are in the precipice of the early days of a new golden age of America because that was the offer on the table by our new president, Donald J. Trump,

in last year's election. People heard that and they responded with a resounding victory. He won a majority of the popular vote. He won all seven swing states. And he swung what was once known as the Obama coalition in 2012 to Trump country 2024. Massive swings among non-college educated households. Sixteen percent overall among what you would refer to as worker non-college educated households, but the swing among African-American working

households, particularly male, Hispanic working households, particularly male, are undeniable. In 2024, so many Americans said, no more. It's over. You're no longer going to tell me, an individually thinking, sentient human being who has the freedom in our nation as you do here, to elect those you feel should represent you in your government.

No longer are you going to tell me who I am, what I believe, and how I should vote based on my age, my race, my ethnicity, my sexual orientation, my religion, whether I have a union membership, and even my political registration or my past voting preferences. This was the time with the offer of a new golden age of peace, prosperity, harmony, and stability on the table that Americans said, I'm going to take a chance on that. Why was that? Well, in part, President Trump got hired to do the job because he had done the job before.

And another part, he very clearly said, they broke it, I'll fix it. So it was those Americans who felt that they wanted to move on from a tin ear, tin age of decline and onto a new golden age in America, they answered that call. By 2019, pre-pandemic, we had explosive growth. The pundits howled and the establishment sneered, but the facts showed huge wage growth per household and a rising tide lifting all boats.

We had black, Hispanic, Asian-American families seeing the largest gains for the first time in decades. The forgotten man, forgotten woman, forgotten child felt like they had representation. We had parents feeling more secure in deciding where their children go to school and what is taught there. We had people without a college education,

not feeling marginalized and less than, but instead feeling like that golden age of manufacturing, of construction, of mining, of coal, and so an energy production was on the rise. We had no new wars. The first president in decades to not preside over a new war. He brought hostages and detainees home to our country. He took out terrorists like Qasem Soleimani and al-Baghdadi.

He brokered peace deals. He brokered bilateral trade deals with Canada and Mexico, with Japan, with Korea. Yes, it's the USMCA and your government signed it into law. And we're very grateful for that. And now in the second term, the results are coming in fast and strong. Consumer confidence has surged. Okay. I'm not surprised it was 85%, but I've made a career out of changing minds and hearts

and defying the critics and not being afraid to face down the naysayers, that's for sure. The Conference Board Index has jumped 12.3% to 98%, shattering expectations, and the optimism is backed by substance. Illegal immigration has plummeted. Our border is again secure after we relied to as a nation, saying there was no crisis at the border, but because we have two eyes and two ears each, we knew that was not true. Just nine illegal migrants were released between January and April compared to 184,000 according to the Biden administration and over the same period a year before. More than $8 trillion in new investment both through our domestic

companies, and of course as everyone witnessed two short weeks ago in the Middle East. I think the world is noticing these bilateral trade deals and in fact your own Prime Minister, Mark Carney, who came to the Oval Office and said thank you for your hospitality, your leadership Mr. President, your transformational, your focusing on the economy, on the American worker, securing your border and ending the scourge of fentanyl.

And he thanked him for that. And I'm with Mark Carney. This is the Golden Age of America. Okay, our first Mark Carney reference of the night. Well, well done, Kellyanne. Ben Rhodes, your turn for an opening statement. Take us away. Great.

Well, it's great to be here. I have to admit, the first time I heard about the topic of this debate, all I could think about was the Oval Office. And if you've seen it, gold vases, gold trim, it's a lot of gold. And, you know, it's made me think, what is a golden age anyway?

To me, it's a time when people feel like their lives are getting better. When there's a movement to the future that is more hopeful than the past. When people have a sense of belonging to something bigger than themselves. Is that what's happening in the United States right now? Of course not. And we know this. President Trump is creating a system that runs on corruption where you can buy anything from a presidential pardon to financial deregulation.

Law firms and media companies are expected to pay into a protection racket. Do what I say or else. If this is a golden age, why do you have to compel institutions to be a part of it? and age, why do you have to compel institutions to be a part of it? The order being brought to the immigration system, and I agree that the border needed to be secured, but this system is being run on terror. No one knows who will be deported or why. Consider that 75% of the people sent to a brutal prison

in El Salvador had no criminal record. Many of them came to America legally. That was in a study from the Cato Institute, not exactly my normal ideological fellow travelers. And this is only the beginning of the mass deportations. A society that runs on fear is not going through a golden age. Tariffs have already set back growth. They've raised prices.

They've destroyed the predictability and trust that trade depends upon. Countries will look elsewhere, most likely to China for trade. The so-called big beautiful bill that is working its way through Congress right now would be the largest wealth transfer in our history to the rich, exploding debt and deficits. Meanwhile, the sources of American wellbeing, from basic research to higher education,

to healthcare, to energy, are being dismantled. And these aren't numbers. These are new cancer treatments that won't be discovered. Rural healthcare clinics that will be shut down because of Medicaid cuts. Tens of thousands of jobs, if not hundreds, that are supported by foreign students, they will disappear. The best talent that the world has

to offer will go somewhere else. This is wind and solar power that will be developed not in America, but in China. This will make people's lives worse today and well into the future. Around the world, Trump has turned America into just another big corrupt country run by a strongman. He took Vladimir Putin's side

in terms of who started the war in Ukraine. He's insulted all men or allies. The destruction of USCID, according to one study from Boston University, is causing over 100 deaths an hour right now, most of them children. Now he has pledged in that inaugural address, territorial expansion.

Yet when JD Vance went to Greenland, he couldn't find any Greenlanders who would meet with him. And when Trump demanded that Canada become the 51st state, I think the world heard a pretty resounding no. So wait, let me ask you guys. If this is such a golden age, why does nobody else want to be a part of it? The only binding logic to everything

that Trump does is the expansion of his own power. To take one example, tariffs are a tool that he controls. He threatens a 46% tariff on Vietnam, then Eric Trump flies over there and gets a 1.5 billion dollar golf course. Does anyone think that that's happening because of Eric Trump's business acumen? What jobs is that gonna bring back to America? The Emiratis invested two billion dollars in Trump's crypto venture. Qatar is building a five billion dollar Trump property on top of the plane.

The Saudis have poured billions into Jared Kushner's business for years. This is all happening in plain sight. And those who pay to play, they get something in return. Unlimited access to American artificial intelligence in the Gulf. What are the American people going to get out of that? Beyond a small number of tech CEOs and investors, nothing.

That's who the golden age is for. The Trump family, some very wealthy people, and maybe some people that are happy to see, brown people deported, and white South Africans taken into America as refugees. Our best presidents, and I count Ronald Reagan among them, tell a story about America that allows people to belong to something bigger than themselves, to be the best version of themselves. That is not what is happening in America today. My daughters are growing up in a country where the president is been

narrating for 10 years a story that is mainly about himself. A story filled with grievance and hatred and division. We can all feel it. It diminishes us. It fills us with anxiety and fear. Now during the pandemic I had the opportunity to FaceTime with Alexei Navalny. Poudini said, doesn't have to convince you that he's right or that he's not corrupt. He just has to convince you that everybody's corrupt, that the system's rigged. This is the politics of cynicism and apathy.

The cynicism that says that nothing matters and the apathy that says nothing can change. We cannot surrender to that. If we conclude that this is a golden age, if meanness and cruelty are exalted above tolerance and kindness, which are mocked, what does that say about us? We cannot afford to be cynical.

We cannot afford to be apathetic, because this is gonna get worse, people, and the only way out is insisting upon the truth, not acquiescing to some propaganda that this is a golden age, anywhere except the Golden Office. Applause Well done, Ben. Okay, now is an opportunity for rebuttals.

So we're going to put three minutes on the clock for each debater going in the same order as the Opening statements and it's a chance for each of them to reflect on what they've just heard from their opponents and start to Dig in as this debate unfolds. So Kevin you're gonna be up first. We'll put three minutes on the clock. The stage is all yours Thanks so much. And thanks to all the debaters for their good points I will say a couple of things at the top in this first rebuttal. The appropriate way to think about what's going on

and something that's very relevant in this debate is that the last several years, particularly the last four under the previous administration, was an age of inversion, an age of inversion. It was an age when Washington DC writ large, the federal government itself, the administrative state which the radical left has seen as its power structure

rather than looking to the American people as their source of power reigns supreme. And the promise of the golden age, which I'll remind my friends on the other side side is the resolution before us rather than Donald Trump, is that the American people have spoken and said that they want their country back. In fact, in focus grouping that we've done at Heritage and at Kellyanne is the foremost expert

in our country on this, what we heard repeatedly in the months leading up to the campaign was that Americans, whether they be African American men in Atlanta, This, what we heard repeatedly in the months leading up to the campaign was that Americans, whether they be African American men in Atlanta, Hispanic women in Phoenix, Arizona, working middle class, white women in Pittsburgh, said the same thing.

Not just that the American dream wasn't possible for them, but that someone has stolen it from them. That someone who had stolen it from them was that large structure in Washington, D.C. of the administrative state that Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have begun to dismantle. And we ought to see in that a great promise of what the golden age is really about.

It's about putting front and center the working class American, front and center the middle class American who wants to start a business. But let me mention a couple of successes in addition to Kellyanne's great list. And one in particular I think really does exemplify what the golden age is about and cuts through what begins to sound a little bit like

the Russia hoax and two failed impeachment attempts. And that's universal school choice, education freedom. Two weeks ago, when the great state of Texas passed a universal school choice bill, it marked and advent an American policy. And that is that as we sit here, for the first time, more than half of America's school children live in states where they can choose the school of their choice,

thereby ending the gravest social injustice of our era, and that is educational discrimination by zip code. That's precisely the kind of policy that America's golden age will continue to implement. Not on behalf of anyone in Washington, not on behalf of anyone in New York, but rather on behalf of Americans who've been told for too long,

especially when the other side is in power in Washington. Not just that they don't have power, but somehow that they must be second-class citizens. God bless Americans for standing up for, as Donald Trump says, common sense. I like that coinage, the age of inversions. I heard some inversions, and so I want to talk through them real quick.

So I found it interesting how much my co-debaters here focused on Trump's win, the polls. I know he likes to hear that kind of thing. Trump won a smaller percentage of the popular vote than Hillary Clinton did in losing in 2016. You gotta go back to 2000. You gotta go back to 2000 to find somebody winning the popular vote by less,

and now he's unpopular in the polls. So if you're gonna live by the polls, you're gonna die by the polls. Age of Inversion, the working class. Let's talk about what, because we're talking about whether we're at the dawn of the Golden Age, right? So what are they trying to do? The big, beautiful bill.

It costs about three trillion dollars unpaid for. Right? Unpaid for. If you don't buy a bunch of phony expiration dates, and you know you shouldn't buy the phony expiration dates, because they did the phony expiration dates in the 2017 bill. And in this bill, they're canceling all the expiration dates. So if you don't buy the gimmick, then it's more than $5 trillion on the debt.

In 2021, Kevin said, the United States of America is on the brink of financial disaster. 2022, I'm sorry, in 2022, that the debt ceiling is not a formality, it is an indispensable tool. We are adding to a 35ish trillion dollar debt, $5 trillion in one bill. It will in 2028 increase the American deficit by a third. It's part of the reason the bond market is freaking out.

And for what? To do what? That bill has $1.1 trillion of spending cuts to Medicaid, to food stamps. There's your working class. It has $1.1 trillion of tax cuts for people who make more than $500,000. It's so literal.

It is so literal, the wealth transfer. And then there's a bunch of other things that probably shouldn't be doing from destroying the loans that help out nuclear. We were just talking, Kellyanne was mentioning a bunch of manufacturing investment. A bunch of that is for the Inflation Reduction Act coming through all the money we're pumping into clean energy, an obvious industry of the future, but they're trying to cancel those loans, cancel that money, throw all those projects at risk. Meanwhile, China is racing ahead of us on electric vehicles and on all these technologies.

So things are not going well now. They're not going well now before the tariffs really hit. They're not going well now before we add all this to a debt that we were told just a couple of years ago under Joe Biden was putting us on the brink of financial disaster. They are not going well now before we move this money from people who cannot afford health care, from people who cannot afford food, to people who make more than $500,000 a year. I don't think this is what the American people voted for. I think if you look at the polling, it's not what they want, and when they begin to feel

it I think they're going to be pissed. But I think sitting here, right here tonight, we can look at what's coming, and we can say, this is not going to be good. And if it was going to be good, there would be something from polls to financial markets that would be telling us so. Thank you. I see a golden age for America because I'm an optimist. And that comes from not my politics or my career or being a mother of four wonderful children.

It comes from the way I was raised. It comes from being raised among people who did not go to college. My cousins, my male cousins telling me years ago while they sat in the union halls, day after day, sometimes week after week, sometimes month after month, waiting to be called on just for some work. And I was blessed enough to go to college and law school,

distinctive in my family and my geographic area where I was raised. And I said, enough to go to college and law school, distinctive in my family and my geographic area where I was raised. And I said, what's going on? He said, our jobs have been shipped to Mexico. Our jobs have been shipped here and there. And I didn't really understand what they meant. This is 30, 40 years ago. Ladies and gentlemen, I believe in a golden age of America

because Americans believe that our best days are ahead of us. And to buy into the con side tonight is a con. You have to be so pessimistic and so down and so critical of the country that has given so much to all of us. Think if you felt that way, coming to America and hearing people put down Canada. And you're thinking to yourself,

well, that isn't the way I feel. Sure, you can laugh all you want. The fact is that the Tax Cut and Jobs Act of 2017 repatriated a trillion dollars of wealth that was parked legally overseas. It gave us a child tax credit that will now be doubled. It brought the corporate tax rate in the USA from the 35% highest in the OECD to 21%, which was lower than the 23% average.

And it was predicted by people like them that corporate America is going to stuff their pockets with all those profits. And guess what happened? They raised the wages. They improved the benefits, many of them, that they were offering to folks. Thank you.

It's not even my brother. I'll have one. They invested in inventory and factories and facilities and research and development. And the individuals who have been relying upon a lower tax bracket for years now would have that ripped away if this weren't extended. We're in a golden age of energy, independence, production and dominance. And that benefits both of our countries. We're in a golden age of educational freedom, of the reduction of inflationary pressures. We're in a golden age of optimism.

Because without that, people who have far less than you and me, people who have far less than them, and I will not be lectured about polls by people who never saw Trump coming the first time and still deny that he's the president the second time. I also want to tell you that for all the talk about tolerance and even handedness, a colleague over there said in 2021, you can't wait to watch Letitia James put the Trump kids in jail. That's not the language of optimism in the golden age,

but no worry because the elite and the afeet are undermined, thank you. I don't know, I tweeted a lot of things. I actually have no memory of that, but that doesn't mean that it didn't happen. So look, one of the things Kevin and Kellyanne have continually pointed out is Trump's election victory.

If winning an election meant there was a golden age, then we have one every four years. Like the reality of winning an election doesn't automatically create the fact of a golden age, then we have one every four years. Like the reality of winning an election doesn't automatically create the fact of a golden age. It's a very peculiar thing that we're hearing tonight, that somehow just an election victory means that everything is gonna be good in America. And actually I think that part of the problem,

look, I'll be the first to say, my party screwed up. I wasn't in that Biden administration, but in all manner of ways, including thinking it was a good idea for Joe Biden run for reelection. There are all kinds of things. We could have a debate about all the things the Democratic Party did wrong.

But we're debating whether or not this is a golden age for America. It's a different question. And I think part of the problem is Trump has some capacity, some skill, and I certainly recognize he's been elected president. We wouldn't be here otherwise. He has some skill at identifying grievance that are real.

But I think that what he's doing is not going to solve those problems, is not going to make life better for those people that voted for him and put their trust in him. And also what he's doing goes so far beyond it. I'm not afraid to have this debate about immigration because look, as I said, the idea that we need to secure the border, the idea that that was mishandled for a time under the Biden administration, the idea that violent criminals should be deported. I think a lot of people in America would agree with that.

What people are finding now is that the people being deported are people that have been living in their communities for decades and never committed crimes. Or people that we promised. These Venezuelans were promised temporary protected status in the United States, that's why they came here. And now we're saying to them, no, you have to get out. I don't think that a country moves into a golden age

by withdrawing that kind of promise to people. That someone came to America for a bet, I'm optimistic about America, I love this country. I love Canada too, actually we're in Canada. I love both of our countries. But breaking a promise like that to someone who came here for the same reason that my family came here, all of our families came here because none of us are from America except for the indigenous people,

that is not a golden age. And let me just say one more thing. I mean first of all, it's not the first Trump term, it's much more extreme than that. USMCA, pretty solid. Guess who violated that one? Donald Trump in his second term, right? You guys know that.

And this is the problem. Kellyanne, I hear you, but the thing is, for you to say I don't love America, you're equating America and Donald Trump. I do not think Donald Trump and America are one and the same. And I think it's a very dangerous idea to tell people that it is. Thank you, debaters. Some great fault lines sitting up here.

So let me join the conversation through our little chum in the water and and see what happens. And Kevin, you, we haven't heard from you in this lineup. So let me come to you first on the news of the last 24 hours, which is that your premier court for trade has ruled virtually all the Trump tariffs illegal. Can you have a golden age in America without tariffs? Let me add, my friend, an update, which you may have been not privy to because you were preparing for this, which is that thank goodness a court with greater sense

overturned that decision. Yeah. Yeah. To be appealed again, no doubt. No doubt, but important to have the conversation. And it will go to the US Supreme Court. I just, I assume that as part of the civil discourse, we want facts to be part of the conversation.

Let's do it. Just making sure. Can tariffs, can the golden age include tariffs? As we've argued at Heritage, my economist colleagues are no doubt writing about it as we sit here. What we prefer is a reciprocal tariff system that dishonors the great violators of free trade. The European Union is one of the great violators of that.

To recognize that as an objective fact doesn't mean that Kellyanne and I dislike the European Union or any of the countries who are the violators we do dislike some of those countries like the Chinese Communist Party or that entity. Therefore if it's that plus we take the 10 reciprocal tariff and we convert that to a border adjustment tax something Canadians are very familiar with then our heritage economists are very optimistic about that, and I think because we're four months into this term and only six weeks into this tariff regime,

that by the time we get to the end of the third economic quarter, the administration will have succeeded in landing that plane. I understand that, to sum up here, the uncertainty, the lack of clarity, even the frustration from friends in Canada, but sort of to Kellyanne's point about the optimism and also knowing the men and women who are in charge of resolving this tariff or trade conflict,

we're very optimistic. So Ezra, let me come to you because you're writing and talking a lot about tariffs in your podcast and your column. There's an argument out there, you know it well, that we've talked about it tonight. America's fiscal position is awful. Tariffs are a way to generate revenue,

to offset the demands on the bond market that you've mentioned a few times tonight. So while you might not like tariffs in principle, are they necessary now for America to put its financial house in order? I think it's telling that the President of the Heritage Foundation, the President of the Heritage Foundation will not defend the tariffs as they exist.

Instead, the hope is that by the end of the second term, we've landed this tariffs plane in a place that makes some sense. Look, you can imagine plausible tariff regimes. We don't need it to raise revenue. You use taxes that are more broad-based to raise revenue, right? You just using tariffs creates a ton of distortions in the market. They also disadvantaged random players, also were watching the administration give exemptions and then unexemptions. What they've created to go back to something Ben was saying in his opening statement is a system of patronage where if you know Donald Trump, if you know someone who knows Donald Trump, if you can get

what you're saying in front of Donald Trump, if you know someone who knows Donald Trump, if you can get what you're saying in front of Donald Trump, maybe you get a better deal if you're a world leader with a good relationship to Donald Trump, but that's a bad way to run an economy. You want your tax system as a Heritage Foundation economist would tell you to be neutral, broad-based, and fair. What tariffs are not, particularly the way they're being done by this this administration day in, day out, on and off, is neutral, broad-based or fair to say nothing of predictable, which is what you need if you're going to have the kind of long-term investment decisions that actually create prosperity. These companies that are making and building big factories, these are five, 10-year capex investments in the billions of dollars.

If they don't know what the tariffs are going to be next week, they're not going to do that. They're just going to wait. Okay. Let me come to, let me come to Kellyanne and I urge the debaters to jump in, just catch my eye if you want to come in after somebody else. But Kellyanne, you were there in the first term, you were senior advisor to the president

when he put his first set of tariffs in place. How essential are tariffs, in your view, to the president's conception of this golden age that he is creating for America? Are they at the core of it? Are they at the periphery? I want to get a sense from you of the intensity of tariffs to the Trump project

in this second administration. They're pretty central. And I think tariffs 2024 were basically build the wall 2016. Nobody should be surprised that he followed through on his promise to issue tariffs. Let me just say this. Tariffs traditionally in the United States of America have been for two major purposes. One is to raise revenue. And we certainly have raised a lot of it while they've been on there, even now.

He's not the first president to do that. Secondly, tariffs serve the purpose of protecting vital American interests, vital American industries. And I would add to that at this stage, American security and sovereignty as well. There are two other reasons for the tariffs that are more Trumpian in nature.

One that you're very familiar with starting last November is to compel or incentivize transformative changes in behavior, may have nothing to do with goods and services. So the best earliest example was in November after he was elected right before Thanksgiving saying to Canada and Mexico, get your criminals and your drugs out of our country. And what did Canada and Mexico do?

Well, you can laugh, but what did you do? You appointed a fentanyl. That's not true. The facts matter. $1.3 billion you've invested in that. You made a fentanyl czar, and by the way, the numbers are down. Our FBI director yesterday announced

that in the first four months of this year, 400 and excuse me, 1000 kilos of fentanyl have been captured. That is enough to kill 480 million men, women and children, roughly the population of the US and Canada. So I'm so glad that that's funny. Hold on, I'm not done because I know why he does tariffs. And well, he can come in Canada. So I'm so glad that that's funny. Hold on, I'm not done because I know why he does tariffs. Well, he can come in here. But I think that tariffs, I think it's smart to think about small businesses.

They have operating capital for the next two to four weeks, not two to four months or two to four years. So that's an unintended consequence for some. I think it's smart to tariff things that we make, not things that we don't. To be called tequila, it has to be from a blue agave plant in Calisco, Mexico. We don't harvest cocoa, coffee, bananas. I think things like that are different,

and I'm very happy to hear the president and Secretary of Treasury Scott Besson insist that we're not gonna make sneakers and t-shirts necessarily in the US, but we are gonna make chips and computers. There you go. Ben, let's come to you on tariffs, and maybe connect it back to your discussion about corruption

and your argument that these tariffs in fact are a means to a different end, an end that's quite personal to the president and his family. Yeah, well, there are a couple of points I want to make about tariffs. The first is the kind of lack of clarity about what they're for. And actually the Canada example's a great one, there is not a fentanyl problem on the Northern border of the United States. Like, there's just not.

Like, objectively speaking, like I think the amount of fentanyl that was brought in, that was apprehended could fit in like a backpack, right, last year. And quite, that is true, Mexico, yes, Mexico, absolutely. There's not like a fentanyl crisis at this border. And so the problem is, Canadians didn't know why and probably still don't know why there were these tariffs.

There wasn't a clarity about what, if you accept the transactionalism of, we're putting this tariff on for X, a lot of these countries don't know what they're being asked to do, right? And you've all experienced that. Now, I want to talk about, I mentioned Vietnam. And the problem I have there is this is an incredibly important

country geopolitically, right? Geostrategically, if you're worried about the Chinese Communist Party, as I think there's a bipartisan concern. But Vietnam did a lot of things that we wanted them to do. We asked Vietnam to reshore out of China the manufacturing of things like Apple watches, right? There's been a lot of investment from Nike

and other shoe companies, again, who wanted to leave China and move there out, they thought they were doing the good thing, they thought they were being good American businesses by moving things to Vietnam. And then all of a sudden they get a 46% tariff dropped on them. So what are they gonna do? This is where corruption and I think geopolitics intersect.

Well they're gonna try to get through it. So it's like well maybe we can give the Trump organization a billion and a half dollar golf course. Nobody can defend this by the way. Like who can stand up and be like well no this is a good business deal because what the people of Vietnam really wanted was a Trump golf resort. But what I worry about is what countries are gonna to do is they're going to try to get

through it, but then what they're going to do is they're going to realign away from the United States. Xi Jinping landed in Vietnam the week after those terrorists were announced. And so what Vietnam has desperately tried to diversify and hedge and not be overly dependent on just China or the United States, Vietnam is just gonna move to the Chinese. The Europeans are going to stop listening to us on China. They're gonna start to have their own trade deals with China. They've already started to do it with Latin America,

with India. There's gonna be a global realignment away from the United States. There's gonna be a global realignment away from the dollar, as Ezra said. I just wanna focus on the family, because I think it's an important point,. I just want to focus on the resolution. Because we want to focus the debating on the resolution.

Are we in the dawn of America's golden age or not? So can these tariffs, how do they achieve that goal when it's clearly alienating a lot of your allies, a lot of the countries that could be partners for you economically in terms of security, in terms of welcoming American leadership, it's turning the rest of the countries that could be partners for you economically in terms of security, in terms of welcoming American leadership, it's turning the rest of the world off. So how does that, Kevin, in your mind,

set the preconditions for this golden age to start to unravel? Thanks for the excellent question, the opportunity to jump back in. There is no evidence that the purpose of tariffs is for corruption. I mean, that really is conspiratorial. It's absurd.

It's absurd on its face. It's absurd. But I'm gonna leave that off to the side because I'm focused on the resolution. And to the heart of your question, what's missing in this assessment is that President Trump is using tariffs as a tool of statecraft on behalf of the working American.

And what's disorienting to the world, too many countries and leaders of which have participated in an effort to make working class American second class citizens is that there's a president of the United States willing to stand up on their behalf. The audience can boo, hiss, whatever they wanna do, but for the United States of America, this is a long time coming and God bless Donald Trump,

so it's a vital tool that I think ultimately will be temporary. I'm gonna stake out a sensible, moderate position and say the tariffs are not only for corruption. I think we can all agree. So something that Kevin was saying I think is actually helpful, let's say he's right, and I think he is right in part. These are a tool of statecraft.

Let me put together two things people told me about Donald Trump. So one from inside his administration, one from outside. From outside they said to me, if you look at Donald Trump over the years as a person in finance, what he does is he borrows from the future. Borrow from the future in literal ways by just literally borrowing from the future. But he borrows from the future in policy, in goodwill,

in the way he treats business partners who he's going to kind of not pay and then just move on. And tariffs have that quality. So the other thing I want to connect in here that was told to me by a Trump person, that America's had all this surplus leverage sitting on the table and we are going to use it. All these other, like, weak, dumb American leaders who were not willing to stand up for the American worker and didn't use tariffs enough, but they used tariffs a fair amount, like Biden put a hundred percent tariff on Chinese EVs shortly before leaving office.

But they didn't have it, right? And we have all this leverage, we're the biggest market in the world. If they want to get in the door, they're going to have to pay the price. So here's the thing. He's just borrowing from the future on this. Yeah, you can bully a bunch of nations. You can bully Vietnam. You can bully an island full of penguins.

You can bully Mexico. you can bully an island full of penguins, you can bully Mexico, you can bully Malaysia, and they will come and they will try to give you trade deals. If they think it will help, they will try to bribe you. Qatar will give you a $400 million plane. People will invest in your cryptocurrency scheme, saying there's no corruption, that is conspiratorial. But what you are doing is you are borrowing from the future, because the thing they are doing behind that

is if this is what it means to be exposed to the US system, to US partners, to the US dollar, if it will become a noose around your neck, whenever anybody, any president wants to show you standing up for Americans, then you have to get away. And so they will come and they will flatter him, as Kellyanne quoted Mark Carney doing, and then on the other side, they're making plans

for how to make sure they are not as exposed to us in the future. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Yeah!

Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Let me bring Kellyanne back in. Kellyanne, you've got a consulting firm, you're no doubt talking to governments around the world, advising them on how to deal with the Trump administration at this moment with this tariff threat hanging over them. What is the argument that you're making to them? How are you saying that these tariffs are a win-win, a facilitation of American objectives and goals, but also in the interests of those countries. Because I think here in Canada, we're trying to understand that second piece

of that conversation. How is it in our interest to get on side with this tariff regime and the so-called golden age that will flow from it? Yeah, so no one said that that's what I'm saying to them or to other clients, but this is what I am saying. Make yourself a resource, not a rebel. In the age of Trump, everybody thinks they have to be a rebel. You need to be a resource.

This is the impact of them. This is the opportunity, the opening for a bilateral trade deal, which has been incredibly effective. People can snicker and sneer all they want. I mean, the fix is in here. I don't mind being here, but here are the facts. When President Trump said what he said in November

and said it again a couple months later, it worked. And it's worked in these countries to open up more bilateral trade agreements. Tomorrow, he'll go to the Mon Valley, Pennsylvania for a deal that I was for and he was against for a very long time, Nippon Steel acquiring US Steel. And he's going to go there. And that is the beginning,

not the thing that ended it and crushed it. That is the beginning of a major bilateral trade deal, in my humble opinion, between Japan and the U.S. There's more where that came from. You see it with Greer and Besant over in Switzerland, right before the big trip to the Middle East, meeting with their Chinese counterparts to talk about bilateral trade deals.

You see the president on the phone with Ursula in the EU over the weekend. So people can say, if you know the president, if you have access to the president, you can get a better deal. She picked up the phone and talked to him. And he said, I'll delay the tariffs until July. So the president is willing to listen and to learn when people are reasonable. I've seen it firsthand. Also, I think in the age of Trump, what I tell people is,

don't react to everything, try to reflect. How does this go into the whole macro plan? The president's gonna get more space and grace from workers, from working in America, than he will from elite, afeat America, frankly, because they know that he's here to build, to over-correct for over-globalization and to build an economy that works for everyone and where everyone can work

and that's going to take time and patience. But what I do tell them is, go in and show. You know, if you were gonna do, I tell people, if you were gonna do the platinum plan, investing in America, I have clients who go in and say, here's my term sheet. Because you're back, because we're optimistic about the economy, because we favor DREG and energy dominance

instead of this warm fossil fuels and fracking and the pausing the LNG permit nonsense the last administration did, made no policy or political sense, frankly. Because of all of that, we were going to invest in America. If the tariffs stay on, we're probably going to have to pull that back. So I tell people, be transparent and truthful,

but come in with the metrics, with the facts and the figures, and make your case. This is the stepping stone to our bilateral deals. And they're seeing it already. They've got folks coming. They're going there. They're on the phones. And the president looks at trade,

even beyond tariffs,, as a central part of his interrupted two-term legacy. Kellyanne, let's move from trade to security because we've obviously had a lot of concern here in Canada about how the Trump administration is thinking through the future of North America in terms of a security zone from the Panama Canal all the way to Greenland. Well, we're kind of in the future of North America in terms of a security zone from the Panama Canal all the way to Greenland.

Well, we're kind of in the middle of that. So Ben, let me come to you first and hear the kind of criticism from someone who sat there as a deputy director in the National Security Council of how you feel that this imagining of North America into more of a so-called fortress is undermining the proposition of a golden age?

Well, first of all, fundamentally, I think there's a worldview that essentially accepts spheres of influence, right? So this entire hemisphere is ours. Russia can have its former Soviet space. We don't care that much about the Ukrainians and the Chinese, you know, I'm looking at Taiwan and I'm worried about what happens in Taiwan later in a Trump administration. But just to focus on the America's piece.

Nobody wants this, right? I mean, like these are the worst possible ways. I totally agree with Ezra that the terrorists are not the beginning of a golden age because even if there are some deals made here and there, it's going to cause this realignment away. If you just take the three places that Trump has identified, he said out loud repeatedly that he wants these to be

under US sovereignty, right? The Panama Canal, that touches every nerve in Latin America about US bullying, about US not treating people like equal partners. That threat to Panama, I can guarantee you, is going to drive a lot of countries in Latin America to look to China, to be their trading partners, to look to each other, to pool resources,

to kind of resist that kind of American bullying. If you look at Greenland, this is a NATO ally. Denmark is a NATO ally of the United States. So he's literally threatening to annex the territory of somebody that we have a collective defense treaty with. And nevermind that the Greenlanders aren't interested in it either. So it's potentially fatal to NATO

to have the biggest power in NATO be threatening to take the territory of another one. And by the way, a country, Denmark, that has done more per capita for Ukraine than just about any member of NATO, they provided almost all of their artillery and shells, which is what the Ukrainians need. Not that they'd fight us in a war,

but the point is that at our insistence, they give all this military support to Ukraine and then we're threatening their territory. How are they gonna trust us ever again? And then Canada, I don't even, I mean, I guess we have to take it seriously, right? I mean, he keeps saying it. We're supposed to take Trump seriously and literally.

You do not wanna be a part of the United States. But I know plenty of people in Canada who think, well, he wants our resources. Maybe it's just Western Canada, maybe it'll happen like late in the term. I mean, I can't articulate what this fortress is because nobody else wants to be a part of it. And the trust that is being violated is going to,

the reason it's not a golden age is because it is, we're losing friends in a world in which we should want more friends. We're losing markets in places like Latin America that are gonna be looking to China. We're losing NATO allies that we might need in the next crisis. And so talk about spending down the future

and it's not the far distant future. I'm talking about the future in two, three, four years. There are gonna be crises that happen and we're gonna look around for our friends. Okay, let me come back to Kevin here because the Heritage Foundation doesn't just do economics, you do a lot of foreign policy in international relations. So I think it'd be interesting for this audience to hear the case from you for this Fortress America. We're hearing also about this

this new idea of a golden dome, a missile defense system that Canada potentially could join and be part of. I think Canadians also would acknowledge all of us that we have been free riding on American national defense in this continent for going on a couple of generations. So let's hear the argument for Fortress America. Thanks for saying that so I didn't have to. We know. Look, this is a point of real,

and I would say intellectually honest clash in the debate. I respect Ben's position, I disagree, but I respect his position, because it's a very traditional left of center foreign policy approach. So even accounting for the disagreement, it's a very good summary of what the left believes. I'm gonna respond regarding the resolution,

which is what you would like me to do. I'm actually among all of the issues that make me optimistic about this being the golden age, perhaps the most optimistic because of this, because of national security. And to your point, and I'll be brief about this, Heritage publishes an annual index called the Index of Military Strength.

And what's been happening, short version of a long story, is that the United States and its Western allies, including Canada, but remember, including the United States, has seen its ranking in military strength go down, ultimately because of a lack of investment. What Donald Trump has done, objectively, if you speak to the current Secretary General of NATO, the former Secretary General of NATO,

both of whom in the last year and a half have given speeches at Heritage, is to remind our NATO allies in particular that they have to stop freeloading. Now, I understand that sometimes it may be difficult to figure out what the rhetoric means, but I think for people who are curious about where this conservative foreign policy reset is going

under the golden age, read JD Vance's speech in Munich. It's one of the most significant consequential speeches by any American in the last 25 years. Because what it does is home in on this very point. That is that the United States cannot afford to be the world's peacekeeper. The European states, Canada as well, can no longer continue to build a welfare state

that causes their fiscal crisis on the backs of the American taxpayer. It's a classic example. It's a classic example in the very crux of what Kellyanne and I are saying, which is that this golden age, it hinges upon, an upending of the status quo, this reality being one of them.

I'll close with a couple of statistics. Last fiscal year, the United States spent 3.4% of its GDP on defense. Canada spent something under 1.4%. Your prime minister, maybe because he wants to make the president happy, but I'm just an American, I'm assuming maybe he means it as well. If we're gonna pick on Trump, maybe we'll pick on Mark Carney.

He said Canada needs to get to 2%. France, where I just was the last few days, wanting to do the same thing. Countries all over NATO wanting to do the same thing, to meet where the United States is an investment, but also where Poland and the Baltic States are. This is what we mean, that the status quo is coming to an end and that everyone will benefit

because collectively, first and foremost with our Canadian friends, even if you don't like Donald Trump, we will draw a line in the sand against the Chinese Communist Party because of this excellent policy. Let's go to, uh, Ezra, let's have, let's have the rebuttal to that because you are, I mean, you've been talking a lot about America's fiscal position.

You're spending more on debt servicing right now than you are on national defense. How can America continue to shoulder this global burden of security, not just for Canada, but for Europe, for Asia, for all around the world? Isn't it time to have a reset in terms of the relationship and isn't Donald Trump bringing that reset to the table? I think this is absolutely half right. Donald Trump is right, as many people have been saying this for a long time are right, that Europe needs to spend more on defense.

And if Trump alienating Europe revitalizes Europe and gets them to act with a little bit more vigor again, cut their own regulations, recognize they can't just sit under an American umbrella, that actually would be good for everybody, possibly except us, but possibly us too. Not everything Trump does, not everything JD Vance says is wrong. It just isn't. I will say two things about this though, where I do think there's a little bit more room for critique. One is that this is not the way to fix our fiscal position. Not adding $5 trillion, $5 trillion to the debt

for tax cuts tilted towards the wealthy, that'd be a good way to start. You can also, if those tax cuts are so great and so important, you could pay for them. You could cut the spending if it's worth it. Not making the problem much, much, much worse. That so dwarfs any of the money we're talking about from tariffs, any of the money we're talking about from tariffs,

any of the money we're talking about from European defense spending, that we're just, I mean, you're dealing with very, very different orders of magnitude. The other thing, there's a line that Donald Trump is often the wrong answer to the right question. And I saw this a lot with Doge, and I think it's actually true in a way on defense. There is so much our government could do better. There is so much the American government could do better.

And one of the things it could do so much better is procurement and contracting, which is just a disaster all the way through. But to change procurement and contracting and to change civil service rules and to do all the things that would actually make the government more efficient in the long run, you got gotta do this thing that Trump administration often doesn't like to do, which is go through the tedious process of lawmaking, of rules, of regulations.

And so, they used Doge as this hack and slash operation. They fired who they could fire quickly and semi-legally. Although a bunch of people kept getting hired back. People like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau have been fired and hired three or four times now because it wasn't legal, because they didn't want to go do it the right way. And so they didn't actually fix any of the problems. They fired probationary employees.

Those are the newest, youngest, and often most talented people in the government. There are a lot of people brought in for smaller tours because they're only going to come from industry for a couple of years. They're gone. We lost all these people in AI just because we had just stood up the AI agencies. Because we've only begun taking that as a question seriously recently. And then it didn't work, so Elon Musk is out. But they could have. They had actually support. He did win in 2024.

There were a bunch of Democrats ready to deal. People like Ro Khanna wanted to work with them on defense reform, and they just didn't do it. And we are not well prepared. Our war games do not go well. We know that we are spending huge amounts of money on weapons nobody wants. So what do we do?

We decapitate the agency that gives HIV medications to poor children in Africa, and we don't touch the Pentagon. That's not the way to make our fiscal position better. It's not the way to make our country stronger. And it's just the Trump administration taking ideological shortcuts. It would be better if they would do the hard work to solve the actual problems they identify.

Thank you, yeah. I know. Just gonna go to Carmen. work to solve the actual problems they identify. To build on Ezra's critique here, Kelly, and to come to you, you talked about it in your opening remarks, the speed, the velocity with which this administration has acted. How is that conductive of a golden age? Isn't it instead, as Ezra said, reckless, unnecessary, counter to advancing the very priorities that you no doubt would like to see the government be effective on? So give us our answer.

You're the moderator, okay. And he's a reporter. Wow, any other negatives? Let me just say as somebody who sat with the American delegation at the Munich Security Conference while the vice president delivered those remarks, the buzz around there absolutely was that because Trump is back in office, European countries are going to go ahead and pay more toward NATO, more toward Ukraine. They're in for $100 billion. We're in for $350 billion. I totally support what Ukraine is doing.

And also, since the other countries were mentioned, I just wanted to add Germany in there. For the first time in a very long time, Germany, about two months ago, announced a half a trillion dollars of investment in its infrastructure, its energy, its defense. That was new. And that's also, its energy, its defense, that was new. And that's also, I think, heating this call.

Sure, Trump works with a volume and velocity that exhausts staffers one third his age, defies political gravity and the sclerosis that is Washington. But ladies and gentlemen, he basically just got there. And all the problems and ills and negativity that you're just being dragged down with tonight didn't happen in the last four months.

The last four years were an embarrassment to the United States of America, and it got corrected in this election, and it is relevant. We lived through four years of a national embarrassment worldwide. The withdrawal from Afghanistan, at least one if not two of these gentlemen to my left, somehow your right, heralded as a victory, was a disgrace. It went against the advice of all the generals.

We left 13 service members to die, and we left our billions of dollars worth of equipment and technology in the wingspan of China, who gobbled it up at Bagram Air Force Base. I mean, Putin tends to annex sovereign nations, Crimea 2014, and invade sovereign nations, Ukraine 2022, when Joe Biden's in the White House.

First, as Obama's vice president, and secondly, as the president himself. I mean, the list goes on and on. It's very embarrassing to have emboldened Iran so that they can produce enough oil to stockpile cash and fund the terrorists to get us into, to not do a damn thing about these wars in Ukraine and the Middle East.

And now that's at Trump's feet. So he's gonna do what he can, or this administration can do what they can, but I keep hearing all these things that just started yesterday, and they did not start yesterday. So the volume and velocity is, a lot of people don't like it, it confuses them,

it threatens them, I think people are jealous often of how quickly Trump tries to go through things. Yeah, because he gets a lot done and people wanted that back in our country. But I also believe that he's a man in a rush because of those four years that were between his two terms. And he sees a lot of things that need to be

ripped out root and branch, a lot of seedlings planted above the soil that can just be blown away that are fairly new. But there's no question, there's a mandate for change. just be blown away that are fairly new, but there's no question there's a mandate for change. By the way, that went on here, that's gone on in dozens of countries around this world. There's been this anti-incumbent, give me some change

fervor for a while now in our last few elections. Domestically, yes, I think the volume and velocity works because Washington is a place where inertia is the most powerful physical force and less and until overtaken by friction, let him be the friction we need. Well said, Kellyanne. I'm gonna talk to you just in a moment, Ben,

but let me just, because it's a big part of, Kevin, and what you're trying to do at the Heritage Foundation, which is, you mentioned it this evening, the administrative state, the deconstruction of the administrative state. Many of us here in Canada watching that see it as an assault on the courts, as the suspension of fundamental rights and freedoms on behalf of your fellow citizens.

I mean, how do you reconcile what you would see as the positive effects of doing away with the administrative state with the seeming chaos and insecurity and anxiety that Ben talked about that many people feel in this moment in your own country. How is that symbolic of a golden age? Whatever assault involving the courts is the courts assaulting the popularly elected president of the United States in their will. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

Oh. Was that the heritage's position when they would overturn Biden and Obama rules? To equate that instance. Because I remember that it wasn't. To equate that instance with the spate of nonsense that's going on by the day is just objectively unacceptable. But to answer your question,

there's a really good example here, which you Ezra mentioned, and that's procurement and contract reform, and I'm glad we agree on that. It's curious though, and I mean that honestly, not as a jive, it's curious to me, that someone with your intellect, your thoughtfulness, we disagree, would not recognize that in order to break

the stranglehold that Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, for example, have on procurement and contracts so that they can spend money on munitions for the last borrower, rather than innovating in order to make sure that the right contractors, hopefully including those two great companies, was gonna require some experimentation. And if you look as an example at the president's budget request

to Congress after the reconciliation bill, there's all kinds of evidence in Secretary Hegseth's reform, about reform. And so I think, again, as the dawn of the golden age, that we will continue to see in budget request after budget request this kind of success. But to your question, sir, I will say that the big concern that we have

at the Heritage Foundation is that an individual district court judge is able to run roughshod over the popular will of the American people. It's very appropriate that Congress take action to rectify that situation. Ed, let's bring you in. I mean, a couple of things. I just, I do think it's important to note.

I mean, Kellyanne, the Afghan withdrawal was negotiated by Trump. Like Biden actually extended it. Trump is trying to get back into the... Because he is against it, Vice General. I wasn't in the government at the time, I'm just telling you what happened. How did you allow Putin to take Crimea when you were there?

How did that happen? Is that Trump's fault? Donald Trump negotiated the deal with the Taliban to leave Afghanistan. How did you allow Vladimir Putin to annex a sovereign nation, Crimea, while you were there? We could debate this. We could definitely debate this for a long time.

Why did you empower Iran? I want to talk about whether this is a golden age. So I wanna talk, I actually, there's things. That wasn't. What, no, okay. Kevin, I wanna talk to you about the defense piece of this, because I think it's interesting, because I, if you follow me, like there's some areas

where I do think there needs to be a wholesale rethink of things that we do in our foreign policy. One of the problems I have though, and I mean this really sincerely, like I'm building on sincerely, like to, I'm building on something Ezra said. Yes, there needs to be more burden sharing. But it's not burden sharing because first of all,

why is our defense budget still going up? You know, why do we need to have a trillion dollar defense budget? We're not getting any savings out of the fact that other countries are spending more. And part of the reason why is that what you would want is a system in which we have allies and we are all force multipliers.

And part of what the Europeans are doing now is a good that they're spending, yes, but they're having to develop redundant capabilities because they can't rely on us anymore. Canada is probably gonna have to do the same thing. And so a way in which we could, sincerely, because I hear you on some of the things you're trying to do, but the way in which you get savings,

and the way that you can get meaningful fiscal payback from burden sharing is not to say, well, we're all just gonna spend more on defense, but we're gonna basically pull back from NATO, we're not gonna have an American as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. We're gonna scare the Canadians, and maybe in the back of their heads,

they're gonna have to start planning for a world in which the United States is an adversary. And so then you have allies creating redundant capabilities. That is a gift to Russia and China at the end of the day. We would be so much stronger if we were working on harmonizing our defense capabilities, if we were working on harmonizing our defense capabilities, if we were working on harmonizing our supply chains. And the opposite is happening right now.

So, Ezra, let's give you the last word in this moderated section, and we'll move to closing statements. Maybe I'll just mention something on Germany, because Kellyanne brought it up, and it touches on something Ben said. It's true that Germany is increasing defense spending. It's true that in certain ways Germany is reawakening, which I think is probably good.

It's been an iffy thing in history for my people. But what are they doing? Like, actually. Well, among other things, they're welcoming BYD plants into their country. We wanted Europe to be buying American electric vehicles. That was one of our goals. Now, because we have become increasingly an unstable ally for them,

they are welcoming in Chinese plants with the very same cars that we are trying to compete against and keep out of this country. Europe, there's just a big piece in the Wall Street Journal on this, is basically terrified of being reliant on Starlink, one of our great companies right now. There is, it's being treated by the rest of the world like Huawei. So they're putting a bunch of money to try and build a redundant Starlink so they don't

have to be reliant on Elon Musk and his alliance with Donald Trump. It would be good for Europe to spend more. It would be good for Europe to reawaken. It would be good for Europe to spend more. It would be good for Europe to reawaken. It would be good for the European economies to be stronger. It is not good for them to increasingly see a need to decouple and protect themselves, not just from us, but from our companies. If you go look at what France and German

and UK universities are doing right now, they are putting out the welcome carpet. They're saying to all of these academics either being kicked out or who begin to believe they need to flee or who have had their grants cancelled in America, come here, work for us. We used to be like the company that had the pick of every talent in the world. Everybody wanted to come to America. Now we're watching outflow amongst some

of the most talented people, the AI researchers. Because they don't trust being here, they don't trust that they won't be kicked out, we're watching the government, the Trump administration, because it couldn't break Harvard. Now shut down temporarily, we'll see, all interviews for students coming into the US. Trying to break that as an entire source of inflow.

Trump says, hey, maybe that'll be better. More spots for US workers. That's the, it is unfathomable how unable he is to see positive summit directions. One reason we let in so many of these students is because we charge them very high tuitions so that the working class in America can go to college often for free.

And then, with the PhD students, two thirds of them or three quarters of them stay in America and invent and patent things where we are, and they build companies in America. Losing these things is losing strength. Four years in which many of the talented people who might have come to our country and contributed their genius don't, in which allies put their energy into making sure

they're not relying on our companies, on our cars, on our energy infrastructure, on our partnership and trust. Give that four years and you have real damage. Because these things don't just show up tomorrow. They show up over time in the companies that don't get founded here. They show up over time in the industry we don't get. And that's how we're gonna end up weaker.

Thank you. Thank you, Lisa. Okay, we're gonna go to closing statements. Four minutes on the clock. We're gonna do it in the opposite order of the opening. So Ben, the stage is yours. I'm gonna exit stage right and we'll put four minutes there. Let's have your closing statement. So I want to actually start with that JD Vann speech in Europe that we heard about, because

I think it's important for you to hear what was in it. Which was essentially, yes, an attack on Europe for a variety of things, including the failure of Europe to embrace its own far right parties. And in Germany, he refused to meet with the German chancellor scolded the people in that room for the way in which they treat the AFD, the Alternative for Germany, which is the legacy of neo-Nazis in Germany, and then met with the leader of the AFD.

I don't know what is advanced by that. I don't know why the United States once was the leader of the AFD. I don't know what is advanced by that. I don't know why the United States wants to become the kind of vanguard of a certain kind of right wing politics in the world that is grievance based. I mean, Kevin, I actually admire the Heritage Foundation's work in terms of the passion you bring to it.

And Kellyanne, I hear you on optimism, but that's not to me optimism. That's grievance, that's anger, that's something from the past that we built a lot of institutions and structures and norms and rules to avoid. It's something from the past that we built a lot of institutions and structures and norms and rules to avoid. Now, I don't think we heard anything today

about why other than the fact that Donald Trump is president, this is going to be some golden age. There are a couple of things that I think are really gonna impact all of our lives for instance. One is artificial intelligence. That's gonna come online. That's gonna be gonna impact all of our lives, for instance. One is artificial intelligence. That's gonna come online. That's gonna be a big part of our lives in the next four years.

What's the plan to prevent mass job displacement from that? Do we think that that's part of the golden ages and vision? No, it's can I get a big number announced with Sam Altman? Can I say yes to the Saudis and the Emiratis because we want a lot of AI here. What is going to be done to the working class of the United States or Canada if we don't manage the deployment of these technologies?

We didn't hear a thing about climate change or clean energy and I know we're not supposed to talk about that anymore but it's happening. And in the it's, you know, we're not supposed to talk about that anymore, but it's happening. And in the United States, not only are we pulling out of the Paris Agreement, not only are we trying to undo the clean energy investments in the Inflation Reduction Act, we're actually dismantling FEMA,

the people that are gonna protect us from those hurricanes. It's as if the future is not coming. It's as if it doesn't exist. And you know who's been, and to put on my national security hat doesn't exist. And you know who's been, and to put on my national security hat for a minute here, you know who's spent a decade redesigning their entire economy around clean energy and technology. China.

The supply chains are, who is going to bet on America if we're pulling out of the industries that are gonna matter to the future of the global energy economy, and we're allowing our AI to be outsourced to the highest bidder, in this case, the Emirates. So this is not a golden age. A golden age would make people hopeful for the future, would address the challenges of the future,

would make investments and do things today that are going to make life better for people's children and their children. That is not what is happening at all. And we have heard nothing to suggest that it is. And so we are giving away our values. We are giving away our national unity.

We're giving away our faith in one another. Donald Trump doesn't even want to bring the country together. He just wants to hold enough of his people in place so that he can do whatever he wants to do. That's not a golden age. And I think that that's been clear tonight. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you again for welcoming me here tonight. Typically, a golden age signifies harmony, stability, peace, prosperity, opportunity. And perhaps the difficulty for some to see that it could come is that it's been absent for so long. And I can understand that, I can sympathize with that.

Because when you've done without something for so long, it just becomes the norm. We get used to it. And we get this pessimism and this negativity that you've seen on full display. Boy, for people who don't want to equate a golden age with Donald Trump, they sure love to say his name. Every noun, verb, adjective, and adverb. But it is true that he's ushering this in.

But more so are the American people. What is the golden age of America? It's the golden age of Canada. It's the golden age of any free country where its individual citizens feel that they can elect those who represent them, that they can work where they want, love who they want, be who they want.

The golden age of America, the golden age of America is upon us. I see it because I see the small businesses, the moms and pops that feel they can survive and thrive with less regulation, with lower taxes, with more energy independence, with less regulation, with lower taxes, with more energy and dependence, with more freedom to create and innovate, to hire and to expand.

The golden age of America I see through the mothers and fathers who have more of a say where their children go to school and what is taught there. The taxpayers, the property owners, the construction workers, the welders, the plumbers, the pipe fitters, for whom it is unfair to ask them to pay for the student loans of doctors and lawyers. I see a golden age of America where we now have

an enforceable, visible border that is more in control, where people say 10 million folks come here is unfair. It's larger than the population of 39 states, and then they open up their phones and look at at least one network and see people getting cell phones and clothing with tags on them and cash and hotel rooms and your kid's seat in a New York City classroom

and they say that's not fair. The golden age of America means that people not as privileged as you and me perhaps can maybe achieve what we have. It means that their version of the American dream, whatever that is and whoever they are, from where they've come and to where they go, that the American dream is affordable, accessible,

and achievable for them. Ladies and gentlemen, whether we're in America, Canada, or almost anywhere else, we suffer an epidemic, if I may, of looking the other way. I think the golden age of America forces us to say that we either achieve that golden age or we don't even see it. Because to see it means that we have to work hard.

There is no revolution without sacrifice and hard work. And this is a time where so many Americans have said for the last several decades, I'm not sure that our best days are ahead of us. I'm not sure that my children and my grandchildren will do better than I did. That is new to America, and that is sad, regardless of who's in the Oval Office.

And so if the golden age of America means that people feel, it's not iron, it's not silver, it's not bronze, it certainly isn't tin, but that it's one in which everybody can share and at least aspire without being snickered at, without being felt less than, without being judged by people who really don't know them to make themselves feel better about who they are or maybe who they're not.

That to me is the golden age, but it begins with a kind of optimism and hopefulness that a girl raised by a single mom like me can make it all the way to the White House and that my children and their children and your children can prosper as well. Thank you. All right.

I sort of thought we had the harder job here tonight. Friendlier crowd, but the harder job. Because, I mean, I hope for the 15% of you on the other side, something I said connected tonight, but I walked in here knowing it was gonna be a pretty lopsided vote against we're in a golden age. I tried to convince the organizers, let's make this about, is Trump governing in American interests?

Right, not even a golden age. Let's make it an easier task. Let's give him about, is Trump governing in American interests? Not even a golden age. Let's make it an easier task. Let's give him a lower bar. I want to talk here in the closing about something we haven't talked about all that much, but it is a lower bar. No, I don't think we're in a golden age. I think it would be, I almost don't think it needs

to be argued this heavily. Are we even in a decent age? Are we even in an age we can feel good on a basic human level about? There are a lot of policy arguments worth having, and we've had a number of them on the stage, and I appreciate having them on the stage. Is it a good idea to cut Medicaid and food stamps

to give tax cuts to rich people? Should we have Europe? Should we push Europe in the way we are to rearm? There's also just a question of decency, moral character, national character, that I think is meaningful. For me, one of the moments in the Trump administration that felt most signal, felt most important.

There was a day, do you all know what ASMR videos are? Have you ever heard of these? They're these videos of kind of soothing, repetitive sounds, people combing a hair or something. It's not my thing, to be honest. It's a little weird. But the White House, whoever runs the White House X account is sort of terminally online. And they put up a video called immigrant ASMR.

And it was video and the sound of immigrants being deported dragging the manacles behind them. And then sound of the manacles being raised and lowered, the chains they were in. People who had fled to be here. Whatever you think about whether or not they should be here, whether or not they should be deported, many of these people came here in fear. If you have to deport them, you do it with a heavy heart. Later on, there was a day on the internet when OpenAI, to talk about AI,

had released a new version or a new plugin or a new instance of ChatGPT, and it can make anything look like a Miyazaki film. People were putting up their family pictures and putting up their landscapes and it all looked like these wonderful little cartoons. And the Trump White House account, the official account, put up one of a woman crying, weeping, as two border agents deported her. And then Elon Musk put up his little,

he retweeted it to his billion, you know, forcing his thing on a billion followers with a little laughing cry face. When you stomp on the part of yourself that is repulsed by this kind of cruelty, something important dies. It's completely separate from the policy. It's completely separate from whether you think

we should have fewer immigrants or more immigrants. And what's worse is that to get ahead in Trump's administration, his party in America, that the way you have to argue, the way you're supposed to comport yourself looks like this too often. I can make the argument till I'm blue in the face about why their budget policy is bad.

I can tell you that I think the tariffs are bad, and to be honest, you didn't hear the tariffs defended here tonight. You heard some other system of tariffs may be defended. You didn't hear the debt being added defended here tonight. You heard it ignored. You didn't even really hear a bunch of the cuts being defended here. But what I think is really indefensible is the cruelty and the corruption.

You could believe everything Donald Trump believes, everything JD Vance believes, but you don't have to take these payoffs and you don't have to Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Kellyann and my new friends and compatriots. True as well. What a wonderful civil discourse. As I think about the resolution,

give them a round of applause. I want as much time added as Ezra got during Q&A. As I think about the resolution, I tend to take a long-term view. I'm trained as an early American historian. I tend to think in decades and centuries for better and for worse. And as I was reflecting on that this afternoon,

I spent some time speaking with some of your countrymen, a handful of truckers who were disadvantaged to be polite a few years ago and continue to be by your government. (*audience applauding*) Regardless of what you think about their claims, we ought to believe in the West, if in fact Canada will participate in this golden age, that free speech and free expression and free association

are sacred and natural rights. And then as I was talking to them, the encouragement that I gave them is encouragement that I will give you. And it's a quip that you know from Winston Churchill, which is that the American people will always get it right after they try everything else. And I think while it's certainly true

that transitioning from an age where something like what your government continues to do to those truckers will become an era with no double standards, an era where Washington and national capitals around the world are less important than the people who elect representatives to those capitals, that it's not always going to be easy that it's not always going to be easy. It's not always going to be smooth.

And yes, we're just but months into this new golden age in America. And yes, there is uncertainty. But there is a tremendous amount of hope evidenced by the large number of new people who have joined this Golden Age coalition. I'll observe politely that that important point that both Kellyanne and I made early in this debate

was never rebutted, never rebutted because it can't be. Whether you like Donald Trump or not isn't the question tonight. I happen to love him as a person and a president. 85% of you will hold that against me. But the reality is that when Mr. Trump leaves the stage, that this golden age will continue by his successor if his successor, regardless of who he or she is,

regardless of which party they belong to, continues to put the American people ahead of the interests of Washington and also the interests of the big capital houses in New York and London, and of course the super nationalists in Brussels. That's what the golden age is about. You've gotten evidence from Kellyanne and me tonight

that there's tremendous policy success thus far. And to adopt that long-term view, thinking ahead to the end of this century, I realize that this isn't just a question before you tonight. This is a question for all of us in the West. And I want you to know from this American friend, in spite of our apparent differences,

that we want you too to experience that golden age because it's about freedom. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, some great closing statements there. So now the fun part of the evening, we get to have our final vote on our resolution be it resolved.

This is America's Golden Age. So I want you to get out to your clickers again. We started out this evening. Our first question we asked you obviously was a resolution itself. Were you for or against? 85% of you did not believe that this was America's golden age. 15% of you did. TKO, a technical victory here for the pro side increasing their vote by 1%.

Conside. Yes, by 1%, sorry. The conside is up. So we have a technical victory. Maybe we could shake hands on it and call it a kind of friendly draw.