The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it resolved: The future of Western politics is populist not liberal

Episode Date: August 19, 2020

Throughout the Western world, politics is undergoing a sea-change. Long-held notions of the role of government, trade and economic policy, foreign policy and immigration are being challenged by populist thinkers and movements. Does this surging populist agenda in Western nations signal a permanent shift in our politics? Or, is it a passing phenomenon that will remain at the fringes of society and political power? On the eve of a contentious US election, the Munk Debates shares an abridged version of the 2018 stage debate about the rise of populism as an ideology between Steve Bannon, former chief strategist for President Donald Trump, and David Frum, senior editor at The Atlantic and former speechwriter for George W. Bush.Sources: City TV, CBC, Canadian Press, Garry BakuniecBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

I think it's time for this toxic binary zero-sum madness to stop. We're not an imperial power. We're a revolutionary power. We are no longer in a world where you can plot out moves statesmen to statesmen like a chessboard. You don't know anything about my background to where I came from. It doesn't matter to you because fundamentally I'm a mean white man. We can't do this to the next generation because America will cease to exist. Welcome to the Monk Debates podcast. Every episode we provide you with a civil and substantive debate on the big issues of the day. Free of spin, focused on the facts and animated by smart conversation.

To arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal. Hello, I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffith. Those were the voices of hundreds of protesters who gathered in front of Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto in the autumn of 2018 prior to the start of a monk debate about the rise of populism as a political ideology. The protesters were directing their anger against one of the debate's speakers, Steve Bannon, President Trump's former chief strategist and former head of Breitbart news. Protesters believe that someone with Bannon's views, he himself had described Breitbart as a, quote,

alt-right platform should not be allowed to share them even in a debate format. I think Bannon is a very dangerous man because he peddles hate speech. But the over 2,800 people who showed up for the debate disagreed. Some argued while they might not concur with Steve Vannon's views, understanding these perspectives is essential to understanding the society that we're living in today. I understand their perspectives, but at the same time, I'm really interested in hearing what he has to say because I want to know what we should be fighting against. Steve Bannon was in Toronto to debate the motion, be it resolved, the future of Western

politics is populist, not liberal. His opponent was David Frum, Canadian-born, Washington-based, best-selling author, Atlantic Magazine senior editor, former speechwriter for George W. Bush, and staunch critic of President Trump's populist politics. The debate, like all monk debates, was civil and substantive, although perhaps. perhaps with the liveliest audience yet, as you'll soon hear in our abridged podcast of this important debate. Good evening. Thank you for being here for the Monk Debates on populism. My name is Rudyard Griffith.

It's my privilege to have the opportunity to organize this debate series and to once again act as your moderator. We're going to ask tonight from these two debaters to answer some important questions. Is the West living through a populist sea change that will irrevocably transform our politics? And can these longstanding liberal values, liberal values of trade, society, of politics, push back against this populist surge and reassert their primacy in the 21st century? Well, let's find out by getting this debate underway and getting our debaters out here, center state. arguing in favor of tonight's resolution, be it resolved, the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal, is the former strategist to President Donald Trump and global populist campaigner,

Stephen K. Bannon. Speaking against tonight's motion, be it resolved, the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal, is the best-selling author, Atlantic Magazine, senior editor and staunch critic of President Trump and populist politics. Toronto's own, David Frum. Let's get it underway. We're going to start with opening statements, eight minutes each, a bit longer than usual,

to give these two debaters time to articulate their views. And as per convention, the person speaking in favor of the motion will go first. So Stephen Bannon, I hand the podium over to you. Thank you. I want to thank the people of Toronto, the Monk family for hosting this, having me tonight, and for the men and women outside who are exercising their freedom of speech rights to protest. It's not a question of whether populism's on the rise and populism is going to be the political future. The only question before us is it going to be populist nationalism or populist socialism?

To understand the velocity, the depth of the populist revolt on a global basis, we have to go back to the beginning, what Hollywood would call the inciting incident. I want to take you back to September 18, 2008, Washington, D.C., the Oval Office, I think it's 10 or 11 o'clock in the morning. President Bush, David's... We respect your right to free speech, but we have... my correct audience, we have 2,800 people who want this debate to go on. So could I have a round of applause, please, for this debate to proceed. Thank you. Let's have a long round of applause.

Thank this woman. We appreciate that. Thank you very much. Okay, Stephen, you've got the floor again. Thank you. We're going to give you an extra minute on the clock. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. I'll play by the rules.

We're in the Oval Office. Secretary of the Federal Reserve, Benaki, Hank Paulson, Secretary of the Treasury, walk in, tell the President of the United States, by 5 o'clock this afternoon, by close the business, we need $1 trillion cash infusion into the American financial system. If we don't get it,

the American financial system will implode in 72 hours, the world financial system three days after. after that, and we will have global anarchy and chaos. The greatest enemies of the United States, Mussolini, Hitler, Tojo, the Soviet Union, Al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden. Nobody's ever brought the United States to its knees like that day. Who did that? Who is responsible for that?

The populist, Donald Trump? No, the elites. the financial, the corporate, the permanent political class that runs Washington, D.C., that's who did it. What was their solution to create money and bail themselves out? On the day that happened, the balance of the Federal Reserve was $880 billion. When Donald Trump took the oath of office January 20th, 2017, it was $4.5 trillion. We flooded the zone with liquidity. like the Bank of Tokyo, the Bank of England, the European Central Bank. The party of Davos,

the elites, bailed themselves out, afraid of some sort of deflationary death spiral. That's not a free bailout. There's a corollary to that. Savings accounts are zero. Pension funds have the biggest gap in history. You can't underwrite a bond in the United States because you only get, for a public school or waterworks, you get 2%. The little guy. The little guy would bear the burden of that. If you've owned assets, intellectual property, stocks, real estate, hedge fund, name it in the last 10 years, he had the greatest run in history. For everybody else, a disaster. 60% of our jobs versus citizens' jobs.

It wasn't Donald Trump. It wasn't the populist. The populist movement, the nationalist movement, is not a cause of that, it's a product of that. Donald Trump's presidency is not a cause of that. It's a product of that. When I stepped into the campaign in mid-August, the central number is not how far he's behind, is that 70% of the American people believe for the first time in our history

that the country was in decline and the elites were okay with that. That managed decline was the wave of the future. Whether it's an education of the southern border, China, Korea, Iran, our education, our health system. It was Donald Trump that turned that around.

It's the party... This is a very tough crowd. We'll have plenty of time to go through this. The party at Davos, the scientific, managerial, engineering, financial, cultural elite that run the world have left a financial wasteland and decoupled from the middle class and the working class throughout the world.

That is why Salvini and Orban and Brexit, Trump's economic nationalism doesn't care about your race, your religion, your ethnicity, your color. Okay, okay. I got a whole night to convert you. It doesn't. It doesn't matter. your gender doesn't matter your sexual preference. It matters. I said economic nationalism.

Work with me. It cares if you're a citizen. Look at the results. Look at the results today. Lowest black unemployment in history. Lowest Hispanic unemployment in what 30 years. Wages rising across the board. Manufacturing jobs coming back. The populist nationalist message in its policies are working in the United States and it's spreading. The revolt in Europe and now in Latin America. And I get contacted every day from Asia, from Africa, from the Middle East. We're at the beginning of a new political revolution, and that is populism. The only question before us is it going to be a populist nationalism that believes in capitalism and deconstructing the administrative state and giving the little guy a piece of the action

and break up this crony capitalism of big corporations and big guns? government, or is it going to be a Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders type of populist socialism? Because the party of Davos and the elites have blown too many calls. Too many existential events to rise of China. The $7 trillion spent on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The deregulation that led to the financial crisis in 2008. How the financial crisis was bailed out. where we are today in this over-leveraged society.

Because as you know, mostly in this room that work in finance, we're heading to another financial crisis. That is the question before us. What form of populism? And I hope tonight that the good people in Toronto will listen with open ears as we debate this topic. Thank you very much. Thank you, Stephen. David, we're going to put eight minutes on the clock for you for your opening statement.

You now have the stage. Thank you. Well, I think we are all here to welcome Steve Bannon to President Trump's least favorite country. But I'd like to begin tonight by taking the protesters' question very seriously. And to answer this question, why are we here? What are we hoping to achieve tonight? We're not here to mount an entertainment or to do a show. We are here to engage in the most important, the most dangerous challenge that liberal democratic institutions have faced since the end of communism.

Steve Bannon is a figure from history, a very important person. He advised the President of the United States at a time when that future president was on his way to losing. Steve Bannon helped to turn the campaign around. He has been an advisor to parties all across Europe, many of which hold power, as in Italy. He has been an advisor to the new president of Brazil. His brightbark.com became an urgent force in American politics, transforming the way conservatism used to be into a new kind of political movement. And all of that is his work.

So what do I hope to accomplish tonight by being here with him and engaging with him? First, I want to do three things. First, I want to speak to those who are genuinely undecided. There may not be so many, but you are important. And you may be wondering, does the kind of politics that Steve Bannon is speaking for and that President Trump articulates, does that politics offer me anything? Should I listen to it? And I'm here tonight to tell you, it offers you nothing.

It does not care about you. It does not respect you. Steve Vannon has said, he said it to Michael Lewis in an interview in February, it is anger and fear that drives people to the polls. Anger and fear is what is offered, but nothing substantial. Second, in addition to those who are undecided, I want to speak to those of you who see President Trump's politics for what it is and who resist it. I know how worried you are.

I know the fear that many feel. and I stand here to reignite your faith and to speak to your courage. These symbols that many of us wear tonight on our lapels remind us that this is not the first time that democracy has faced thugs and crooks and bullies and would-be dictators and those who seek to build themselves out by tearing others down.

This is not the first time that such people have puffed themselves as the wave of the future. They were wrong then, they are wrong now. We are here to show that we are here to show that we are what our parents and our grandparents were, and the challenges and threats they met and overcame, we can do the same. But the last group of people I want to speak to,

and maybe this is the most important, I want to speak to those who see Trump politics for what it is, and who support it anyway. Many people are excited by the joy of destruction, wrecking things they could never build, smashing things they do not understand. Steve Bannon has talked, is in the quote, of burning everything down. I'm sure he means that metaphorically.

But we are nearing the 80th anniversary of Crystal Noct, and there are people who understand burning non-metaphorically. And I'm here tonight to speak to all of them, and to say, you will lose. You will lose. You have been winning. It has been five good years for those people, but you will lose. And when you lose, your children will be.

be ashamed of you and they will disavow you and the future will not belong to you. Now, we have a definitional problem as we begin this debate because we're using words that have large meanings, liberal, populist, we're not exactly sure how to use them. And it's strange, and many people made the point, it's strange for me, a lifelong conservative to be here on the liberal side of this debate. And I'm not a liberal. I am a conservative, but what I and other conservatives in the English-speaking world have historically sought to conserve is a liberal heritage. And this is something that conservatives and liberal share. We are trying to conserve a state that does not steal, a media that does not lie, courts that respect the rights of all, and voting

that is available to everybody, even if the people who are counting the votes are afraid that those who are voting may vote against them. And what is populism? What is populism? It claims to speak for the people, but it always begins by subdividing the people and by saying some among the people because of their skin or the way they pray or their gender or whom they love or how they conduct themselves or for some other reason. Some of the people are not the people. They are those people. Populism begins by dividing the country between those people and us people and saying those people do not matter and our people do. And it is only on that basis. And you see President Trump doing this again and again where he will say things like, I got 52% of the vote of women. Well, that's not true.

He got 52% of the vote of white women, but the others don't matter. For him, the people is always, always only part of the people. Those who think differently and those who report on our crooked business deals or our clandestine connections with hostile foreign powers, they are enemies of the people, even though they are exercising the rights that you would think would belong to the people. Why will this populist movement lose? And why will our liberal institutions prevail?

And at bottom, it's for one reason. which is this new populism is a scam. It's a lie. It's a fake. It has nothing. Now, I don't mean that just in the sense that so many of its leaders are crooks, although they are.

President Trump is a crook. Victor Orban is a crook. Marine Le Pen is a crook. And I don't mean that in the sense they say things that are not true. I mean, they are looting Hungary on a post-Soviet scale. Marine Le Pen finances her party with Russia, money and by stealing European parliamentary funds, and Donald Trump is running the most unethical administration in American history, enriching himself as you go.

There's going to be a lot more to talk about tonight, but I want to just ensure all of you. Liberal democracy is stronger than it makes. Ladies and gentlemen, we're going to do something a little bit different tonight. We're going to have timed rebuttals here. We're going to let both of these debaters engage with what they've heard in the opening statements and really get this debate underway. We're going to have two of these rounds. Stephen, you're up first. We're going to put three minutes on the clock for you.

You know, this is the oldest trick in the book. Just smear the populist movement. You know, smear the deplorables. You know, Hillary Clinton tried that. We saw how it turned out. David, the reason that Donald Trump and the populist movement rose is because of the administration you worked in, right?

You keep talking about the ability to make these decisions, and, you know, how great a decision you're making, all these scumbags and thieves that are in the populist movement. The reason you call it that is, of course, Orban is winning with 70% of the vote. Damiro and Salvini are winning with two-thirds of the vote.

Bolsonaro, Captain Bolsonaro, wins with 55% of the vote. Donald Trump wins with over 300 electoral votes. Tough. Tough. In the watch of President Bush, we saw the inexorable rise of China, was told there was the second law of thermodynamics. Right there were going to come a liberal democracy and a free market capitalist.

And we watched the beginning process of the deindustrialization of the United States shipping all the manufacturing jobs over there. If you read J.D. Vance's, Hillbilly Elligies, the great sociological study of the deplorables, it shows you a direct correlation between the factories that left, the jobs that went with it in the opioid crisis. They took away people's self-worth and dignity. The second was the great decisions and the $7 trillion, that's Brown University,

Watson Center, that's not Breitbart, that's their analysis of what it costs on these wars that we still haven't won and are still in 17 years later. What, 10,000 dead, 40 or 50,000 combat casualties and $7 trillion spent. And the last is the financial debacle on their watch. You know, it's pretty easy to sit here

with all these highfalutin terms and how raising, The populist movement is not racist. Look at the economic benefits that are coming through President Trump's policy. And if you believe for a second, his thing about Obama, he didn't understand the math between $880 billion of $4.5 trillion. It's pretty easy to create things when you're flooding the zone with capital in destroying the basics of the Judeo-Christian West family, which is saving. You cannot save anymore. You can't, you don't have a pension plan.

That is all the work of the great elites of the permanent political class. The look at the populist movement is a bunch of racist, nativist xenophobes. Well, it's not. It's the backbone of our country, the most decent people on earth. Here in Canada, you're built upon the same, your same building blocks of the little guy, the little person. What do you call it, for the common good? I did work for President Bush, and I served him on one of the darkest days in America. American history, 9-11. I was in the White House that day. And I saw what the American spirit

could be. Steve Bannon voted for President Bush twice. But it is absolutely true that liberal democracy is in trouble now because of the failures that have happened in the past, because of the financial crisis and because of lost wars or unsuccessful wars. And it was true that liberal democracy in the 1930s got into trouble because of mistakes that were made. There would have been no fascism had the 1920s led to permanent success. The failures of a good system are not a reason to turn to an evil one. We have to renew and repair. When Steve Bannon and I talk, one of the things we had in common, and this is one of the things I really credit him for, is in a world of Republicans who said that everything was fine, Steve Bannon was one of the first people to see that things were not

fine. And we saw the same thing. We saw the stress that was happening to middle class incomes. We saw the tensions that were arising as wealth became more extremely unequal in the United States. And I think one of the reasons it's interesting to reconnect after this time is because we had very different responses to that. The populist movement seized those fissures and sees them as opportunities to exploit, to destroy, and to overthrow. And I see them as flaws that demand reform, constructive repair and renewal. What you're being asked to vote on tonight is,

not was everything handled well in the bush years? What period in history was everything handled well? Question is, what are you going to do about it? How are you going to respond? What kind of world do you want to build? The choice is between destruction and renewal, between freedom and non-freedom. And the choice is between a society that respects everybody, all the people, and a politics that defines the people against the people, always excludes someone else out. and that makes the basis of the nation, the suppression of much of the nation. We're not trying to stop elections. We're going to win elections.

We love elections. Because we're going to win. Victory begets victory. We're not saying don't have elections. We're the true anti-fascist. Fascism looks to worship the state. The Trump movement has three things. Economic nationalism, American first national security policy,

and deconstruction of, of the administrative state. The progressives over the last 40 or 50 years have built up an administrative state, bigger than the cabinet departments we have. It's something the founders never, it's a fourth branch of government. They're all about deconstructing,

it's not deregulation, it's taking the Leviathan apart brick by brick, which David Frum has argued for for 30 years of his professional life. Economic nationalism is putting your country first when it comes to the economy. and to not have the maximization of shareholder value, but have the maximization of citizenship value. If the Trump program and the populace are so bad, David,

how do we get the new NAFTA deal? And the key to the NAFTA deal, I forgot I'm in Toronto. It's to create a geostrategic manufacturing base that will counter East Asia and not allow Mexico to gain the system through Mexico. The benefits of this, as you see the supply chain, as you see the EU in Japan and Korea, have bilateral deals with us, are going to be enormous. It's going to bring our manufacturing.

It's like the original NAFTA when Canada's economy went up 10 times because of the manufacturing took from the U.S. How did we get the new NAFTA? A lot of responsible people surrounded Donald Trump and tried to encourage him to do as little damage as possible to the most important trading zone on Earth. You know, one of the questions we talk about here tonight is nationalism and globalism. Globalism.

It's supposed to be a bad word. You know, North American lungs breathe Chinese pollution. Russian missiles shoot down Malaysian airliners with European citizens aboard. The only way we're going to stop this planet from getting too hot for our species to live on is if we all work together. It's one planet. We love our countries. Only through countries can we exercise our democracy. But we work together with friends and partners.

How did Donald Trump get NAFTA by bullying people, not by treating them as partners? He's never been able to negotiate a win-win deal in his business career. So both Canada and Mexico are less powerful than the United States. And in the past, America always said, even though that was true, obviously, we can work cooperatively together. But this idea of America first or Hungary first, or France first, or Germany first, It gets progressively less attractive, doesn't it, as we name the other countries, who are going to put themselves first.

We let that behind to say, we are going to build a community of democratic nations who understand that, of course, there are clashing interests that have to be worked out, but we are stronger always when we work cooperatively and that we can build peace and prosperity. That's a liberal idea. In the truest sense,

because the thing we've been arguing about for 200 years is, is the relationship of human beings, one of domination and oppression or one of potential fruitful cooperation. And that is, that's the question on the ballot tonight. In the populist nationalist movement in Europe, is I've gone around and met the leaders. Not one leader, haven't heard one, say they want to destroy the European Union. What they talk about is the sovereignty of their country.

They want their countries back and they want their countries to be sovereign entities. And they want their citizens to be empowered. and not to kind of report to these transnational entities that have no accountability, the ECB and the EU. They want to make the European Union, not the United States of Europe where Italy's like South Carolina and France is Georgia,

they want to make it a collection of sovereign individual states that work together. Why is that so hard? Why is that demonized? Why is the nation state that's been with us, what, since the Treaty of Westphalia is the central building block of our country? our world? Why is also the nation state so scorn? Why is the term nationalism so scorn and demonized?

What people want is subsidiary. They want as much control as they can have as citizens. And that's through the nation state. Donald Trump gave that back to the American people. I know you may mock and ridicule it. But the economic turnaround didn't come from Obama. And everybody in the United States knows that. The most progressive president in the United States in the United States, and he can't defend this. Flooded the zone and bailed out the elite in our country. We have socialism in the United States for the very wealthy and the very poor and a brutal form of Darwinian capitalism for everybody else.

The devil catch the hindmost. That's what the future entails if we don't get this right in Trump's administration and further administrations. If we don't bring out the benefits of capitalism. If we allow the millennials, the millennials are nothing but 18th century Russian. surfs right now. They're better fed. They're better fed. They're better clothed. They're in better shape. They have more access to more information. They don't own anything and they're not going to own anything. Because of Obama, because of what Obama did, they're 20% behind today where

their parents were. And they live in a gig economy. They can't afford a house. There's no pension plans. There's no careers. That, by the way, is the biggest potential for our populist movement is the millennials because they're going to see the logic of what we're talking about. Oh my Lord, did they bring me to Toronto to defend the Obama economic record? Steve Bannon cares a lot about manufacturing jobs. Since the bottom of the recession, I've looked all these things up, I don't carry this up around in my head. Since the bottom of the recession, the United States economy has created 1.2 million manufacturing jobs. Two-thirds of those jobs were created while Barack Obama was president, one-third since Donald Trump has taken the presidency.

The Trump economy is the continuation of the Obama economy, but with more tariffs, more inflation, and higher interest rates. Populism always ends in economic disaster, because populist economics is not interested in results, and it's not interested in the future. It is an attempt to exploit emotions to gain power. President Trump on the campaign trail has compared, keeps accusing the Democrats of wanting to turn the United States into Venezuela. But his policies really are inspired by Juan Perron's Argentina. High tariffs, massive borrowing. The United States is going to run a trillion dollar economy, a trillion dollar deficit in the coming fiscal year,

a bigger deficit than George H.W. Bush ran to win the first Gulf War, and a bigger deficit than George W. Bush ran to fight the second Gulf War. It is a funny thing to talk about millennials here, because I don't know there are very many here, unfortunately. A few, some of mine, they're unpersuaded. They're unpersuaded, they're unmovilized. Because like all people, millennials, like all human beings, like every group, every one of us,

they can feel when they are respected, and they know who has their interests at heart. What we're really arguing about is not who's right or wrong, although, of course, I'm right. We're arguing about to whom does the future belong, because it's possible to be right and still to lose. But the future belongs to my side of the argument, because the future only belongs to those who care about it.

The future does not belong to those who immolate the future in order to achieve a temporary advantage. That is the policy of the Trump administration. And that's what all of these high inflation, high tariff parties across Europe are. They don't know what they want to do. They only know who they hate. And hate doesn't build. This is just too good. So I'm going to put another three minutes on the clock for you, Steve.

You're not getting off too easy tonight. Another three minutes. Come back on David on those points. You know, this is the whole thing. The other smear. which I never thought David would stoop to, given his, my esteem for him as a public intellectual. This whole thing about hate.

You know, Donald Trump, when he wanted, he's supposed to hate Muslims, right? It's supposed to hate, be an Islamophob. Where's the first place Donald Trump went? Read the book. Hang on. Hang on. Hang on.

It was to bring, bear with me. The Islamic world had reached out to us. There was been limited engagement during the Obama administration. Obama administration was engaged with Iran. So the first summit in Riyadh was set up to talk about and discuss three things that they brought up. Number one, how do you eradicate Islamic terrorism from the face of earth by cutting off the financing? Number two, how does the Arab world come together as one with Israel to start? the expansion of Iran.

And number three, the Islamic world says, we know we have to go through some sort of form of modernity. Can you assist us in some way? We have to do this ourselves. Right? Three aspects that they asked for. Even before we won the election,

when Trump met with him at the UN. So how does Trump get to be called a hater? He went over there and said, hey, here's the system of how we stop the financing of radical Islamic terrorism. because it's blowing back on your societies today in Western Europe and the United States. And look at the improvement we've made in just two years. Look at the eradication of the physical caliphate of ISIS that was done in conjunction.

Remember, in 2014, ISIS had 8 million people under slavery. They had oil wells. They were taxing people. That was Trump coming together with the Muslim world to destroy it. In addition, it was the beginning of an alliance. a beginning of a partnership, as imperfect as it is in that part of the world, with the Arab world in Israel and the United States and the nations ultimately of Europe, to stop the expeditionary expansion of Hezbollah and Iran.

And the third was to assist the Arab world in any way, in any way, understanding they have to do it just like Christianity had to do it, to go through its own enlightenment. And yet Trump is smeared every day as an Islamophob and a hater. He's anything but, and it's his actions, his actions. Look, it's the signal in the noise. Listen to the signal. He puts it out every day through actions.

The noise, I understand, is a flashbang grenade, okay? You guys have been superb. You practically made me irrelevant in this debate, and that's a sign of a great debate when the moderator doesn't have to step in. But I want to just cover off, because I'm conscious of our time, I want to cover off a couple questions that I know are on people's minds watching online in this audience. Critical test of this presidency. He seems to have campaigned out of a populist playbook.

Hard message on immigration. Some would say shocking message on immigration. Hard message on China and on trade. And a demonization of the media and so-called elites. Why isn't that a powerful proof point? for your opponent here tonight. The best defense of Donald Trump is the job's just too hard for him.

He's not a, the best defense is, he, you know, he looks cruel and unfeeling and bigoted and hateful, but really the problem is he's just never run a large enterprise before, and he certainly never paid his debts before. So how could he do it? The buck must stop anywhere else.

It is an amazing fact about the presidency that you do have to deal with other people, and you do have to make compromises, and you do have to build coalitions, and if you can't do that, then you're not very good at the job of being president. The economy is not only growing at three, three and a half, some say maybe four percent. I realize we owe President Obama all that, three and a half percent. Trump is taking liquidity out of the market.

He's taken $360 billion in quantitative tightening. He's not opening up the spigots to liquidity. And what he's doing in national security, he is the one that's trying to rejuvenate NATO. He is the one that sitting there and go, hey, you cannot, listen. the British can put up one combat division, the French two combat divisions, you know, all the rest of NATO are combat division. The United States can't bear the entire burden. We have a trillion dollar defense bill.

I know it says $780 billion. It's a trillion dollars, okay? It's a trillion dollars. We can't afford to continue to do that. It's not that we don't want to be engaged in the world, and we will be engaged in the world. But what Trump is saying, from Europe to the Persian Gulf, South China Sea, Northwest Europe, It's trade deals, commercial relationships, capital markets, and an American security guarantee. That has to change.

We have to have partners like we have allies in Canada, in Israel, in UAE. Everybody else has to step on and be an ally. We're not looking for protectors. That's what Trump's saying. I haven't seen one, and David, we can get into this. I haven't seen, and I don't want the discussion of populism to devolve about Trump's presidency, I haven't seen a bad decision from Trump yet. I'm your son-up man.

When we talk about Trump and NATO, when we talk about Trump and NATO, this is where I really feel for the poignancy of Steve Bannon's position tonight. Steve Bannon wore the uniform of the United States. I believe your daughter, where is it now? Yes, she's 101st Airborne. And Steve Bannon described the Trump family's meeting in Trump Tower with agents of the Russian state as borderline treason. So I accept that you believe in America's defense relationship with this. traditional allies. But your president does not and his family does not, and they are selling

the United States. David, do you disagree though? Let's talk about NATO, because this is about American first national security. Donald Trump is trying to save that alliance. What he's saying is people have to put in 2% of GDP, right? You just can't continue

on like this. When we first stepped in, we put a $30 billion supplemental just because of operational readiness. The entire German defense budget is not more than $30 billion. We're not looking for protectors, and that's what's Trump's saying. Trump is more engaged in the Persian Gulf. He's more engaged in the South China Sea.

He's more engaged in the Northwest Pacific. He's more engaged in NATO than any president living memory. But he's doing it in a way to say, hey, we can't bear the entire burden anymore. We just can't. The deplorables, it's all on their shoulders. It's their kids and their money. And it's come time that we're not looking to be an empire. We're not an imperial power.

we're a revolutionary power. If the suggestion, if the suggestion is, as you've made a couple of times, that it's the deplorables, meaning Trump supporters who are doing the fighting for the United States, this is an example of one of the real ills of populism

because may I remind you that that force is one third made up of non-white people who certainly did not vote for Donald Trump, and they get forgotten and omitted from this story. But overhanging all of this, I don't think you can talk about the Trump foreign policy. And any of these, by the way, these parties that you advise through Europe, they all, they all have some sinister, murky connection to Russian power. The National Front,

funded by them. Your Italian friends have, and as I said, I do not put this on you, I know you wore the uniform. But I don't know how you, having worn the uniform, can sit with these people who have these sinister connections and know that there is someone else who does not have the interests of your country, my adopted country, at heart, and he is calling the tune for all of these populist parties. I want to return to Russia in a second, but I want to talk about the first one. My daughter, when she had her last command,

she's back at West Point where she's on the staff. I think she had 15 non-commissioned officers, all of them African-American are Hispanic, right? I think something like a third or 40% of the United States Army today is made of African-Americans alone. Donald Trump understands that. The deplorables understand that. Remember, one of the focuses we have, that's why black unemployment's so low, Hispanic unemployment, so low.

One of the focuses we have as a populist movement is to take 25% of Bernie Sanders movement, the economic nationalists in that. The focus, and I've said this from day one, it's to get a third to 40% of the African-American vote and a third to 40% of the Hispanic vote, the working class and the middle class. That realignment, that realignment with the Trump base will give us a governing majority for 50 years. It'll be like 1932. 1.8 million African Americans that voted for Barack Obama did not vote for Hillary Clinton. Now, they weren't prepared to vote for Donald Trump. And I think you're going to see the same thing. They may not be prepared to vote for Donald Trump now, but it's a process.

If Donald Trump and his Republican Party, as it's been remade, not the McCain Party, not the Bush Party, not the party I believe in, if they believe that African Americans were going to vote for them, they would allow them to vote rather than bending heaven and earth to stop them. And that's a question we've got to address tonight, Stephen, which is the incredible hate that has seemed to have surfaced. You know, you are the avowed architect of the Muslim travel ban in the United States. You participated in that. You are someone who goes...

The travel ban that was upheld by the Supreme Court of the United States. That travel ban? That travel ban. Okay, thank you. You are someone who's participated in rallies where your democratic opponents are called evil un-American. Are you really going to say to this audience tonight that all of that vitriol,

all that hot populist rhetoric is not responsible for the spike that we've seen and the numbers are real in terms of political violence and even worst white supremacist terror? You look, by the way, did Hillary Clinton not two weeks ago or three?

We're getting off topic here. No, no, no. Let's not go back and start arguing. This is a debate about Hillary Clinton. No, no, no, no, this is the topic. The topic is, Can you answer the question? Hang on,

can you answer the question? No. There is no correlation. There's no correlation. No. There's no correlation between the rhetoric of our movement and what is going on. The first individual was obviously mentally ill, right,

for many, many decades. He had done this back in the 1990s, and the horrible tragedy in Pittsburgh with the massacre thought Trump was too close to the Jewish people because he had moved our embassy to Jerusalem. He thought Trump was too pro the Jewish people in the United States.

He thought he was too anti-BDS. This guy was a hardcore anti-Semite, okay? And someone hated the Jewish people. How can you lay that on Donald Trump? The rhetoric on the left is just as bad. The opposition party media will not report it. Please, spare me, spare me, spare me. It's always Trump's supporters

that are the racist. It's always Trump supporters that are the cause of all this. They never talk about Antifa. They never talk about the intimidation. That's never mentioned. The violence that's brought up by the Democratic left

is far worse than it's brought up by our movement. A few minutes ago this evening, Steve Bannon said that when you're assessing President Trump, you have to distinguish the signals from the noise, the things he does from the things he says. So I wrote words for a president, and one of the things I learned was that what a president says is what a president does.

Obviously, President Trump is in no way accountable for that terrible crime in Pittsburgh. Obviously, what he is accountable for is what he didn't do decently afterwards. Presidents do set tone and give permission. Now, most of us will never behave wrongly, no matter who the president is. And that's why American society is not dissolving as we speak. because if people acted like the president, the place would be Gotham City. But there are people who are at the cusp

and who are asking themselves, are my behavior is normal? I mean, we have seen, and this is one of the reasons that Breitbart was so powerful, unfortunately, I think not for good. I mean, you can see the radicalization that has happened even within

the so-called legitimate conservative media. How much more radical Fox News is, how much more credence it gives to crazy conspiracy theories. And how much more, by the way, while of course no one wants violence, how much more airtime it gives to subliminal anti-Semitic messaging. I think, you know, anti-Semitic.

Subliminal anti-Semitic. I think everyone, every Jew who hears the way George Soros has talked about knows the text beneath the text. When George, and I think in a way I try to, I can't, of course, put myself completely in the person's shoes, but try to imagine how must appear to be to black people or to Mexican Americans or to Asian Americans or members of any other group.

When you hear this barrage and you hear something that seems like, oh, we're just talking about this one shadowy mastermind, a plutocratic person who bends the world to his will through his monetary conspiracy, not everybody else, just as one person, we all hear it and we know what is meant. And it has resonance through history, and we feel endangered. Closing statements, we're going to put five minutes on the clock

for you, David, and then, Stephen, as per custom, you get the last word. Donald Trump is going to lose because a lot of people who voted Republican in every election since 1984, especially women, are going to say, enough. This is not me. This is not America. And across Europe, one of the things that needs to be borne in mind through all of these so-called populist parties across Europe, none of them are quite ever able to get an actual majority of the vote. They get stuck at about one-third. And the secret of the... their power is not democracy, not to win elections, but to manipulate the political process, to manipulate the media process, to use, to break institutions, to take over courts, to corrupt

media in order to exert power in anti-democratic ways. And that is indeed what Donald Trump has been doing in the United States, slowly corroding institutions. He is not a popular figure. Populism is not popular. Populism is the art of subdividing the country and excluding much of the nation from the rest of the nation in order to justify the authority of some. We are here tonight to talk about where the future is going. And we are here, I'm going to ask you for a little bit of an act of faith, not just to wear these, but to think about what they mean, the sacrifice that earned them. We wear these to remember people who shouldered our arms at a time when things seemed a lot more hopeless than they do now, a lot more frightening than they do now. A lot more frightening than they do

now. In 1940, 1939, things seemed worse. And the people we were up against seemed more dangerous, and the forces of good seem more divided. But they prevail. And so will we. Liberal democracy is stronger than it looks, because human kindness and decency are stronger than they look. The cruel always think the kind are weak. But they're going to discover that loyalty and patriotism, these are tremendous resources, and they are going to begin to be felt more and more. It's been five years of a losing hand for those who believe in the things that I do and that I hope that many of you do. Whatever our party identification, whatever you call yourself,

if you believe in free trade, if you believe in free in society, if you believe in an executive that's accountable to the legislature, if you believe in honest government, if you believe that the head of government shouldn't steal and do business on the side and shouldn't be beholden to Vladimir Putin. If you believe those things, it's been five tough years. But at another dark moment, another great American president, Franklin Roosevelt, said, history has recorded who fired the first shot,

but in the end, all that will matter is who fires the last shot. And on this one, the future belongs the people who cherish the future. Not to the people who are despoiling it, not to the people who are indifferent, not to the people who are at for advantage, not to the people who know what they are against, and can only tell you how to wreck, but to the people who actually have answers to the challenges

that we, as democratic societies, face. The challenge of dealing with concentrated wealth, the challenge of making sure that economies grow faster, environmental challenges, the challenges of effectively and fairly governing a multi-ethnic society, the challenges of building ways men and women can live together on terms of respect and equality. Those challenges, the people have answers to them.

The answers will always beat the non-answers. Something positive will always beat something dark. That is something anyway that I believe and that I ask you to believe. I think we are going to see, when all of this is done, that the people who have done the right thing will be able to look back on their records with pride.

And the people have done the wrong thing will not. And that the answers tonight on the other side of this aisle are heading to something that George Bush, for whom I work so memorably called, History's Graveyard of Discarded Lies. I ask you to vote against the resolution, but above all, for your faith in yourselves, in what you've built, in a better world,

in a world based on mutual respect, not on the domination of some by others. That was very good, David, and irrelevant. President Trump identified himself as a nationalist the other day, right? And the media went to a complete meltdown. Judge President Trump in this populist movement, and the populist movement worldwide, judged by their actions.

Hold them accountable. We're not perfect. People are trying to figure this out of this ago, but I will tell you one thing. The little guy. This is about the little guy. versus the elites. The little guy identifies with that, whether it's in Hungary,

whether it's in Italy, whether it's in Brazil, whether it's in the United States of America. The future obviously belongs to populism. It's only going to be defined by, is it left-wing populism or conservative and right-wing populism? Is it about deconstructing the administrative state

and opening up the power of capitalism? Or is it going to be about more state intervention in your entire life? Because that is going to be the future. The other thing is look beyond the smears, the signal and the noise. Look at the signal, look at the actions, look how they're bringing people in.

Look how this populist movement will reach out and take the economic nationalist. Look how we will go and accommodate and bring in a third of the African-American vote in our country, something the Republican Party for decades and decades and decades. Talked about it never did. Look at it right now, I think it's 40%

the poll today, 40% of Hispanics agree with what President Trump's doing, on the border. Because they understand they bear the burden of the solutions of that. I'm not saying President Trump's perfect. He wouldn't say he's perfect. He's a very imperfect instrument. He might not say he's an imperfect instrument. I can understand David's frustration. I can understand the angst. You know, as one of the senior public intellectuals and leaders of the Bush administration, the traditional public, the Republican Party. Look at the 16 people that ran against President Trump in 2016 or the 14. They were a flower of a generation of donor money, of

heritage, of AEI, of Cato, of Paul Singer, of the Cokes, of all of it. And look at the quality of the people. Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio, Governor Christie, Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, every vertical had its best person. It was the strongest field in the history of the Republican Party. And Donald Trump cut through that like a sift through grass, right? Why? Because he talked about trade. He talked about this radical idea, a radical idea of free trade, particularly when you're going against a totalitarian mercantilist society like China. He talked about the de-industrialization in our country. He talked about what people, where people's lives are. He talked about what mattered. That's why he won. That's why he won the Republican primary, and that's why he beat Hillary Clinton. Our whole thing

was to compare and contrast. You're the tribune of the people, and she is the guardian of a corrupt and incompetent elite, a permanent political class. Somehow I see I'm not quite connecting. This is the future. And it's not, and I realize David tonight, try to demonize this. It's not racist. It's not nativist. It's not xenophobic.

The deplorables are the finest people. We're in the fourth turning of American history. We had the revolution, the Civil War, Great Depression in World War II. And now the fourth turning. Every 80 to 100 years, this happens because in generational history, It's about how you're raised, how you raise the generation.

We're in the great fourth turning. In the next 10, 15 or 20 years, the United States is going to be, we're either going to be the country we're bequeath or going to be something totally different. And the backbone of our country, we're not an idea, America is not an idea, it's a nation. We have the greatest land and the greatest resources. We have divinely inspired constitution and declaration of independence. But that's not a strength. Our strength is deplorable, just like in Canada. It's the little guy.

It's upon their shoulders, everything rest. And they're the backbone of the populist movement. They're not racist. They're not nativist. They're not xenopholes. They're citizens of the greatest country in mankind's history. And they, not Donald Trump, not Stephen K. Bannon, not Mike Pence. They are going to lead us through this great turmoil to come.

Thank you very much for having us to do. While that wraps up our podcast of a memorable monk debate held at Roy Thompson Hall in Toronto in 2018, back in a time when was still possible to argue persuasively in person. Prior to the debate, we polled the audience on their views on the resolution. Again, that motion being, be it resolved, the future of Western politics is populist, not liberal. The results were 28% in favor of the motion, 72% opposed. When we pulled the audience at the end of the debate, opinions had not changed. 28% were still in favor, 72% still opposed. So the debate was technically a draw.

Two years later on the eve of a contentious U.S. election, I want to thank the speakers who participated in our debate on populism, Steve Bannon and David Frum. They show that even on contentious issues, it's possible to share opposing views and to debate those views in a civil and substantive way. Thank you, our audience, for listening to this debate and helping us bring back the art of public debate One conversation at a time.

I'm your moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk Debates are produced by Antica Productions and supported by the Monk Foundation. Rudyard Griffiths, Maryland, Missouri, and Christina Campbell are the producers. The Monk Debates podcast is mixed by Kieran Lynch. The president of Antica Productions is Stuart Cox. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcast.

And if you like us, feel free. to give us a five-star rating. Thanks again for listening.