The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: special US election episode

Episode Date: November 6, 2024

On this special edition of the Friday Focus podcast, Rudyard and Janice react to the election of Donald Trump. Voters this time around knew who Trump was and voted for him anyway. Rudyard sees this as significant a vote as Brexit: voters are fed up with the elite and showing their discontent at the ballot box. The Democratic Party needs to figure out how to reconnect with the working class, Hispanic, and Black communities, all of which they lost in droves last night. And which countries and world leaders stand to benefit and lose from last night's election outcome? Rudyard and Janice asses the upcoming fortunes and misfortunes of Ukraine, Russia, Iran, China, and Israel. And finally, in Canada: how will Trump's victory affect the political aspirations of Pierre Poilievre and Justin Trudeau?Become 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.

Welcome to an emergency edition of the Friday Focus podcast. No, it's not Friday, but Janice Stein and Rudyard Griffiths are coming to you today the morning of the 6th of November right after the shocking blowout results of last night's U.S. presidential and congressional elections. Well, Janice, not to take any pride in predictions because frankly I get as many wrong as I get Right, but you and I two weeks ago took a little black with our monk listenership for predicting a Trump victory. What did you see then and what of your assumptions that led you to that conclusion two weeks ago were manifest in how the election unfolded last night? you know, it is really fascinated. Rudyard, as I spent most of the last night a week. Two things that you and I talked about were transparent. One was the issue set. And you and I talked about that over and over.

I was absolutely fascinated, even in Pennsylvania, where the biggest issue was democracy, 33%. right behind it came the economy and everything else that you and I talked about. And that just washed over everything, frankly. The issue said people feel poor. They don't have confidence. They are in that they have a path forward in the economy. And more than that, that their kids have a path forward.

This has been an issue that's been there since Trump articulated. it really in 2016, really badly exacerbated by COVID in ways that we really haven't fully unpacked yet. But boy, if people don't pay attention and get the point, it's the economy stupid. And they're putting your head in the sand. And secondly, and this one is a big one that we're going to have to really understand, figure out men. men. This was the sharpest gender divide between men and women. And we can slice and dice it always and you will. I know, Richard. But we, the orthodoxy does not pay enough attention to men. And that's just a huge one. And let's throw in one more Twitter that Elon Musk. owns and it's very powerful still and it was all in for Trump. And all, you know, Elon Musk's tweets were the most followed for weeks and weeks and weeks and weeks. So the bigger problem here,

the information space, which is defining now for any election in, and you take that in Canada for them. Yeah, my three big takeaways were as follows, just to begin with Elon Musk, a lot of this has the feeling genus of what political scientists call late stage capitalism. That's when kind of capitalist societies start to get a whole lot

more unequal. They generally succumb to oligarchies and they succumbed ultimately to plutocracy, the rule of the rich. Elon Musk, to me, epitomizes that. He's the single largest U.S. government contractor. He now, supposedly a Trump

administration is going to be responsible for right-sizing government, for cutting significantly the size of American government. That may or may not be a good thing, but the fact is the blood-brain barrier between the kind of oligarchs, especially in Silicon Valley and the political machinery, which was being permeated over the last decade in more ways than one could imagine, has now fully kind of ruptured. And I think the American body politic is, unfortunately, the the patient that we're going to have to watch carefully as very powerful economic interests represented by Elon Musk, but lots of others, now start to exercise real control in shaping American society and policy. The second point I'd make is last night just trying to think

about what this is, how to kind of frame this, I think this is America's Brexit. In 2016, Americans, you know, saw Trump as a known unknown. They've, voted for him as much against Hillary Clinton as for any other reason. This time, he was a known known. And they knew about the felonies. They knew about the soft corruption. They knew about the misogyny. All of this was wide open, and he leaned into it.

He leaned into it into his campaign, which was dark and dyspeptic, and filled with, you know, all kinds of racist and misogyn. as kind of tropes. And they still voted for him and they still elected him. I think there's a lot of similarities here to what happened in England around Brexit where voters in the north of England, traditional labor voters revolted from their party, fed up with elites, fed up maybe with that late capitalist vibe that was running through their country of economic inequality, of a sense of people on the wrong track. 76% of Americans believe their country was on the wrong track.

So I put this all together, Janice, and I want to ask you, how, how, what's the right word, apocal? I don't know, how significant is this event? Because I feel that it should be seen up there with something like a Brexit, something that was genuinely significant, both in itself and in terms of what might happen next. You know, Rudid, it is a great metaphor to explore, really, because this is a revolutionary moment in the United States is what you're saying. And it's not just the last four years. It starts in 2016.

We get a Biden indirect. I mean, in many ways, because Biden is an anachronism in American politics. He's a working class guy. You know, he could relate. Nobody would call Biden woke, whatever else I want to call Biden. That's not who he is. And he always knew that, frankly. And that's why he was able to win in Pennsylvania and restore the blue wall.

Let's look at Brexit for a minute. Where's the United Kingdom now? You know, you can say Brexit was late-stage capitalism. the majority in the United Kingdom would like to undo it now. They're looking at, and it's not long after it happened. It's very short in the sweep of history. They want to take that vote back if they can because they look at this. They've been through prime minister after prime minister after prime minister,

and the economy is worse than it was at the time they voted. So I always ask when I hear late stage capitalism, Yeah, but what's late, late stage? What's coming next? I don't think there's anybody, you included Reddard, who thinks that capitalism is dying and we're about to replace it with a different economic system. I think the trends of late capitalism will intensify as they did under Brexit and they'll intensify under Trump. Let me ask you one more question.

But then there's a way back. Let's hope. Let's hope. I think the forces aligned and arrayed against that way back are, as that's, they were in last night's vote are pretty manifest. They're at scale right now, and it's hard to see that path. But let's hope it can and will emerge, maybe in reaction to the Trump victory. The Democratic Party clearly needs to get its head and act in order and reconnect with working class Americans, Hispanics, blacks, they lost them all last night.

Everyone, everyone. I mean, let's just pause over that for a minute. They lost Hispanics. They lost but it's blocks and it was particularly bad among men. I want to say to it, if there's one group we've neglected in the last 25 years, it's men, it's young men, it's dropouts from schools. Richard Reeves is talking about that now. But we've known this for 25 years. We do nothing, nothing to address that problem. So before we talk about, I want to save some time in our special half-hour edition today to talk about the impacts for Canada.

but before we do that you know new york times as always has a great handline this morning america elects it strong men you and i have been talking a lot over the last few years on this program about the rise of strong men yeah putin ergoia and turkey uh jie the list goes on and on so should we see last night janice as simply the united states in american democracy after a long period of time joining a a certain way of of thinking about politics and leadership and national identity, which frankly, if you want to be objective about it and stand back, is rife and rampant around the world.

So why would, could, or should America be immune from this? Yeah, I think that's right. You know, as this election season intensified, people would ask me and I would say, yeah, don't mistake this for a U.S. only phenomenon. If you're missing the story in Germany, you're missing the story in Italy where, in fact, somebody who sounded a lot like Donald Trump, once she came to office, moved to the center. That's not going to happen in the case of the United States. Brexit. You know, Erdogan and Turkey.

This is a worldwide phenomenon, frankly, and each country colors within its own lines colors its own way. but whether you call populism, whether you call it soft fascism, and it is that in some cases, we are seeing this not only in the rich democratic world, but in the turkeys and in the Indias of the world as well. Great insight is Janice. Let's shift in the back half now of our special half-hour edition. You're tuning in listening to Friday. Focus on a Wednesday, because we got to cover.

what happened in the United States last night. It was big for America, big for the world, and big for Canada. So let's talk briefly about the world, Janice, and then Canada. Who are the big winners last night? Selensky, obviously, this is a worst case outcome. Chinese stocks overnight selling off significantly based on Trump's threat of significant tariffs against an already embattled Chinese economy. Russia, clearly a big winner. What about a rank? Just go around the horn for us quickly. Okay. Gigi Ping, that is really interesting.

This is not what he wanted. So just for everybody to understand that, because we love China, Iran, Russia, altogether, this that does not get the picture in this case. This is not what Shishi Ping wanted. For Iran, nightmare. This is, in fact, their nightmare doubt. It was Trump who walked away from the nuclear arms deal with Trump.

This is the worst possible result. for Russia. Putin, as a Russian commentator put it in the wee hours of the morning, the worst it is in the United States, the better it is for us. And they're looking at all the consequences of this. B.B. Netanyahu fired his defense minister yesterday. Got lost in all the U.S. election discussion. Best possible outcome for him. It's what he's been hanging on for and hoping against hope what happened. Palestinians, not a good outcome, not a good outcome at all. They would have been much, they would have been much better off with the Harris administration

and you have to go back to Michigan and ask at times why people don't vote in their self-interest. For Canadians, I know we're going to come to that. This is a moment when every Canadian needs to draw in their breath and focus on what these next four years are going to look like for us. I'm glad you ended your answer on Canada there because that's where I want to end the show today. We're seeing the potential here for a Republican sweep. They've won the Senate. They've obviously secured the presidency. There'll be a fight here for the House, but the chances are odds on, this could be a Trump sweep of the entire U.S. government, Congress and the executive.

For Canada, this clearly has some big implications. We've got NAFTA up for negotiation in the next 12 to 18 months. But more importantly, Janice, I wonder what your thoughts are just about uncertainty. I worry that this is going to cast a pall of uncertainty over a lot of decisions in Canada. Decisions that individuals are going to make about investing in Canada. Decisions that Canadian corporations are soon going to have to make about where they do business, where they manufacture their goods, where they provide. their services from.

Uncertainty is a killer. And I want to hear you on that. And then let's just briefly round out on federal politics, how this potentially shakes up Ottawa in the political scene there. You know, full disclosure here, I've been writing for a year about a strategy we call Mattermore, anticipating this, anticipating we would face, not the sweep that you talked about.

Because just to say for a moment, how important a divided Congress has always been to Canada because Canada works very, very hard with Congress people. That's always been a way in for Canada for the last 30, 40 years. That's going to be a much weaker suit now in the new Senate than it was. It's going to concentrate focus on the White House. But what we've been arguing is Canada has to take a hard look. It has assets that the United States wants and needs. And to reassure Canadians in this moment, let me go back to just one example.

When Trump slapped tariffs on aluminum and steel, Canadian aluminum and steel, he did that last time around, he didn't do it to our uranium. That's because he needs it. We have going into this energy assets, critical minerals, defense assets that the United States needs no matter what, we have to be focused, figure out where we fit in U.S. supply chains and understand as tough as this is for changing at this moment. We are part of North America. Our economy is dependent on North America. We are now fully. integrated into U.S. supply chains, we have to find those value add propositions for us and double down on them. Yeah, I hope so, and I think that's a smart strategy, and I hope people are listening to you in the monk school. My concern is that, you know, the Trump of 2024 is in a very different position than when he first became president in 2016. The American government has run up significant,

large-scale trillions of dollars in debt under him and then under Biden in response to the COVID pandemic and then Biden again in response to reshoring and the over-stimulation of the economy that led to a lot of the inflation. America is running structural deficits now, 7 to 8 percent. It's the second largest expense item in their federal budget ahead of the military behind only old age kind of social security and other other income support programs so that the fiscal picture of America today versus 2016 has deteriorated significantly and that's why i think Canada needs to be way more realistic here and on point that tariffs are no longer for trump some kind of bully stick that he uses as a tool to get other things that he wants from

leaders from NATO from whoever they are now in in his wild world of sweeping corporate tax cuts no taxes on car loans no taxes on tips no taxes on overtime pay hundreds and hundreds of billions of potential tax expenditures tariffs become a feature not a bug i think in trump 2.0 and i think we're going to we're going to hope that can align those tariffs or blunt their impact because of our proximity and what we can deliver to the U.S. But I think we have to be much more realistic that this is a very different America in terms of its fiscal picture and position than in 2016. Let's wrap to show Janice on federal politics in Canada because we've been talking a bit

over at the hub about how a Trump victory could possibly reignite or reawaken some prospects for our armed battle prime minister, Justin Trudeau in his liberal party. I say this with no criticism, but there's a long, deep streak of anti-Americanism in Canada. Trump has elicited and electrified that kind of vein of outrage and indigestion in his first presidency. There's a potential to do that again. Do you think this possibly moves up the timing, Janus, of a Canadian federal election on the basis that this prime minister could legitimately say, I need a mandate to confront this president. I need a mandate to confront what could be in a matter of day

as a unified Republican MAGA, Senate, Congress, and executive in the United States of America. I don't know whether it moves it up by how much, whether it's just a matter of months, whether they use the budget as the framing document for an election, knowing it won't be passed, but they use it anyway. But I do think this is the ballot question now. This is what the liberals are going to run on. Better than anyone else, we can deal with this. We will keep our distance.

We know how to handle this. And boy, Roger, frankly, what a dangerous campaign to run on. Because if we know anything about Trump, we know he pays attention to what political leaders say about him. never forget. I am watching for what Pierre Paulyer says this morning when he congratulates him. And for both leaders, for Trudeau and for Pallet, they are walking a tight rope. How do I keep my distance from something that I know most Canadians, frankly, dislike intensely, but at the same time, give myself enough room because they are going to, as Donald Trump would say, have to do a deal with me.

It is a problem for both of them in different ways, but it's the ballot question now. Yeah. You know, I don't think it's odds unlikely, but I think that there could be a chance of a snap election before what one might anticipate normally, a federal budget in March, you know, it was April of last year.

That budget, people are saying, you know, would in a sense be the election platform? Yeah. some of the other parties may not want the liberals in a sense to be able to table a budget to therefore table an election platform. And I don't know. This prime minister at times is a bit of a risk taker. He likes to kind of be seen and I think see himself as kind of stepping into the historical moment. He did that after COVID.

Remember, we had in effect a snap election, at least an election outside of our fixed. dates regarding federal elections in order to kind of get a post-COVID mandate. I think this again is is at least one bird in the hand, not two, but for this PM as he contemplates how to possibly revive his party and his own prospects down over 20% percentage points in the polls facing in a sense many of the same issues that clearly, you know, annihilated the candidacy of Kamala Harris. inflation, a sense of Canada on the wrong track, the, you know, the meme that the country is broken, which seems to have resonated a lot over the last 18 months. Well, Janice, thank you

for finding some time for us. Interesting times, aren't they? Yes, that old Chinese curse. We are in the middle of it. We will do a regular show on Friday listeners, but we just wanted to bring you this special edition of Friday Focus to hopefully get a lot of. We're going to give you some analysis and insights on. I think what Janice and I agree is a turning point. I think that's a way to think of it. This is America has chosen an on ramp, an off ramp. We'll let you characterize it. There will be consequences. This is a consequential moment that we are in the middle of. Be well, everyone. We'll talk to you again on Friday. Bye, bye. Thank you for listening to this episode of the Friday Focus podcast.

I'm Roger Griffith, the chair of the Monk Debates. I'm joined on this program each week by Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs. Janice and I would love to hear your reactions on what you've just heard on today's program and also your thoughts and suggestions about future topics and ideas that we should be covering on Friday Focus. Please send us your suggestions now to podcast at monk debates. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com.

This podcast is generously underwritten by the Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundation. Visit our website, triplew monkdebates.com to access hundreds of podcasts, dialogues, and debates on all the big issues and ideas shaping our world and driving the public conversation. While you're there, consider upgrading your membership for extra perks like ticketing privileges to our live debates and gift memberships for friends and family. We'll talk to you again next week. Bye-bye for now.