The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, this is America's golden age

Episode Date: June 9, 2025

On this special podcast episode we are sharing the opening statements from the Munk Debate on Trump's America, which took place on May 29th in front of a sold out crowd of 3,000 people at Toronto's Roy Thomson Hall. The debate resolution was: Be it resolved, this is America's golden age Arguing in favour of the motion was the political consultant, pollster and senior counselor to President Trump during his first term in office, Kellyanne Conway. Her debate partner was the President of the right-wing think tank the Heritage Foundation, and the architect of Project 2025, Kevin D. Roberts. Opposing the motion was the New York Times columnist, podcaster, bestselling author, and one of America's most influential commentators, Ezra Klein. His debate partner was Ben Rhodes, who served as President Obama's senior advisor and is the co-host of the popular podcast Pod Save the World. To watch the full Munk Debate on Trump's America go to our website www.munkdebates.comBecome 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.

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. Are we even in a decent age? Are we even in an age we can feel good on a basic human level about it? The Golden Age of America means that people not as privileged. privileged as you and me perhaps can maybe achieve what we have. If this is such a golden age, why does nobody else want to be a part of it?

Welcome to this special edition of The Monk Debates podcast. On this episode, we're sharing the opening statements from the Monk debate on Trump's America, which took place on May 29th in front of a sold-out crowd of 3,000 people at Toronto's Roy Thompson Hall. The debate resolution, be it resolved. this is America's Golden Age. Arguing in favor of the motion was the political consultant, pollster, and senior counselor to President Trump during his first term, Kelly Ann Conway. Her debating partner was the president of the right-wing think tank, the Heritage Foundation, and the architect of Project 2025, Kevin D. Roberts.

opposing the motion was the New York Times columnist, podcaster, and bestselling author, one of America's most influential commentators, Ezra Klein. His debate partner was Ben Rhodes, who served President Obama as a senior advisor and his co-host of the popular podcast, Pod Save the World. As with all of our live monk debates, the audience voted on this resolution prior to hearing the debate. Initially, 85% of attendees voted against the debate motion and 15% were in favor. We did another poll after the debate to find out how many people had changed their minds once they'd listened to the arguments from both sides. But first, let's join the debate in action with Kevin D. Roberts giving his opening statement in favor of the motion.

Be it resolved, this is America's Golden Age. 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 U.S. gold cards to become U.S. 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 or 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 is 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, 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.

you on the right while the American people suffer. 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, 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 bless Donald Trump for bringing it to life and for having the courage in only four months in office to initiate a spate

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 specific policies, regardless of what they think about specific policies, regardless of, 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-Vant 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 debates. 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. 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. It's 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 what we've ceased to see that matters. The writer Charles Mann tells a story. He's at a wedding in the Pacific Northwestern America, part of America important to me. He's at a table with all these 20-somethings who want to make the world better, who 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 open 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 how China would have overtaken the U.S. as a world's largest 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 the 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 interest. 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 hundred days of U.S. presidency. Gallup finds 58%

of Americans think this is a bad time to find a job. Inflation, 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 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 non-profits 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 U.S. presidents from accepting luxury planes from Qatar or hawking cryptocurrencies under their name. I got to use my time, y'all. Donald Trump said this very year that the European Union was, quote, formed to screw the United States. You could only utter those words aloud if you were the luxury of forgetting

all the horrors of 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 but 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.

You're listening to a special edition of the Monk Debates podcast featuring the opening statements from our recent Monk debate on Trump's America. For details on how to watch the full 90-minute debate, one that I can say confidently you do not want to miss, visit our website, triple-w monkdebates.com. Now back to the program where we pick up with Kelly Ann Conway's opening remarks, arguing in favor of the resolution. This is America's Golden Age. like to add my voice to the chorus of gratitude to the entire team here and 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, undeniable momentum, I think hallmarked by the Trump kind of volume and velocity with which he likes to operate. 72% 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.

16% 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 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 with 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 held and the establishment sneered, but the facts showed huge wage growth per household and a rising tie 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, a 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 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. I'm trying to. Yes, it's a good. Yes, it's a lot of. 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 um changing minds and hearts and defying the critics and not

being afraid to face down the naysayers that's for sure uh the conference board index has 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 were lied 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, too 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, you're transformational, you're 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, Kelly Ann. 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? 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 well-being, from basic research to higher education to health care 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, 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 are of allies. The destruction of USAID, 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 J.D. 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 golf course.

Does anyone think that that's happening because of Eric Trump's business acumen? What jobs is that going to bring back to America? The Emirates invested $2 billion in Trump's crypto venture. Qatar is building a $5 billion 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 has 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. Putin, he 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 going to 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 a golden office. That wraps up today's special edition of the Mug Debates podcast. If you'd like to listen to the rest of the debate and find out

how the audience voted at the end of the evening, go to our website, triple Wmunkdivates.com. Also, we want to thank our participants, Kevin, Kellyanne, Ezra, and Ben for a civil and substantive debate on a topic that does not often lend itself to respectful discourse. If you have feedback or reflections on what you've just heard on this or any of our podcast, please send us an email to podcast at monkdebates.com. Thank you for helping us bring back the art of public debate and dialogue one conversation at a time. I'm your host and Marcos. I'm your host and Marquisites. moderator, Rudyard Griffiths. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations.

Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerwitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.