The Munk Debates Podcast - Friday Focus: the US election enters the final stretch and North Korean troops join the war in Ukraine

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Friday Focus provides listeners with a focused, half-hour masterclass on the big issues, events and trends driving the news and current events. The show features Janice Gross Stein, the founding director of the Munk School of Global Affairs and bestselling author, in conversation with Rudyard Griffiths, Chair and moderator of the Munk Debates. The following is a sample of the Munk Debates’ weekly current affairs podcast, Friday Focus. Rudyard and Janice open the show with analysis of where the candidates stand as we enter the final stretch of this US election campaign. Rudyard believes Trump is positioned to squeak out a win thanks to the importance of the electoral college over the popular vote. And at a time of increased distrust of mainstream media, how and when will a winner be declared? How will a win be certified if there are challenges from the other party? In the second half of the show Rudyard and Janice turn their attention to Ukraine, where North Korean troops are aiding the Russian army's offensive. How much of an escalation is this development, and can untested North Korean troops really make a difference in this war? We are seeing the restructuring of alliances because of the Ukraine War, and a future where the threats in the Middle East and Asia are linked with the threats in Asia. In the final moments of the show Rudyard and Janice talk about the Ayatollah of Iran instructing his military to prepare for a counter strike on Israel for hitting its military targets - a surprise development that much of the foreign policy community did not expect. To access full-length editions of the Friday Focus podcast consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $25 annually, or $.50 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue. More information at www.munkdebates.com.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.

The following is a complimentary excerpt of this week's edition of the Friday Focus podcast by the Monk Debates. To access full-length editions of each and every episode, along with all kinds of great additional benefits and perks, become a donor to the Monk Debates. You can do that for as little as $25 a year, and you'll receive each and every year 50 Friday Focus episodes at full length. It's all available right now on our website in just a few. simple clicks, triple W. The Monk Debates.com. Look for the Friday Focus option in our navigation bar, the top right of the website. Make your donation, and we will send you each and every Friday a link to listen to the

full-length edition of this program. Thanks in advance for your generous contribution. Welcome to the Friday Focus podcast. Rudyard Griffiths here, the executive director of the Monk Debates. joined today by Janice Gross Stein, founding director of the Monk School of Global Affairs for our pre-U.S. Election show, Janice, November 1st, 2024 were in the final days, less than a week, to this historic vote. A lot of feedback and reaction to our podcast last week. Yes.

Indicating that both of us felt, again, not that it was a finality, by any stretch of the imagination, but the momentum we felt on our show last week was indicating a greater possibility of a Trump victory. How are you feeling today, Janice? Do you think Kamala Harris has had a good week? How do you think we're positioned going into the final days of this campaign? I think the final stretch record, which has an urgency about it and a frantic pace. I think she's had a better week than he has.

Let's start with that. Frankly, I'm going to use this, an academic word, horrific rally that we all saw in Madison Square Garden last week. We could take it apart and talk about the things that crossed the line from every perspective that went on there. But the bigger question is, we're enough undecided in the battleground states watching that rally. didn't move the needle in any way. And of course, we don't have the evidence to answer that question. Certainly, there was a wave of public condemnation of what went on last Sunday in Madison Square Gardens. Absolutely.

It's hard to figure out whether there has been a little bit of a bump for her. It seems that women in the early vote are turning out in large numbers. that, again, would be key to her strategy. She needs to make up for the loss in Hispanic and black voters males to Trump, to secure wins in some of these key battleground states. I'm kind of gone from last week to this week a little bit more in the direction of a coin toss that this is looking, is looking closer. I still think the issue said, as we discussed last week, unfortunately, is in Trump's favor

from immigration to inflation to the so-called world on fire argument that we're going to get into in a moment on the podcast. All of this would make him well positioned to squeak out a win. And remember, Janice, it's all about the electoral car. college. It's a strange system so you can you can win in the popular vote but lose the election because the electoral college can amplify your in a sense underperformance into overperformance, into a win. And Republicans generally have an advantage when it comes to the current red states that they hold in terms of how the electoral college is.

awarded. So I think as we go into next week, we've got to always keep on our mind that, you know, she needs to be ahead of him. We're going to need to see some exit polls on the fifth in the afternoon that show that she's really got her vote out. And she's performing, you know, that 2%, that critical 2 to 3% ahead of him in order not just to win a popular vote, but to prevail in the electoral college. You know, let me talk about the polls for one moment, rather than bounce a question to you because watch this all your professional life. One of the things that's so difficult to explain to people is there was always polling error. There's always polling error. And when you have a gap of just 1%, 2%, that's all within the margin of error, but there has to be polling error. We've never

at poll results that don't have some error. And the error always goes in one direction. The difficulty this time is we don't know which way the polling error is gone. It's not inconceivable, Reddard, that we could get an election result in which one or the other candidate sweeps those seven battleground states. That is a possibility if there is polling error that we haven't recognized and the difference turns out to be, which easily could be three or four percent rather than where it is now.

And that's why your comment about those exit polls is so important for people. What's the track record in past elections? How strong a predictor, exit polls. And those are polls where firms interview voters as they leave the voting votes and ask them how they voted. How good a predictor have they been of election results?

Indeed. We supposedly will have a pretty good indication as those, you know, waves of exit polls come out. Because, again, Janice, I think the reason they're slightly more powerful in the U.S. context is that they'll be looking at the exit polls in a few key counties in, you know, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, these kind of critical swing states, maybe put Michigan in there, but she's actually, Harris is looking pretty good in Michigan, not so good in Nevada, Nevada and Arizona. So I had the opportunity this week to catch up with Steve Schmidt, U.S. political analyst MSNBC. He ran the campaigns for John McCain, George W. Bush, Arnold Schwarzenegger,

His feeling was that we would know, have a good indication later in the afternoon on the 5th, if we see some real direction in these exit polls, in these key counties, that could give us not the final result, but an earlier indication as to who is indeed positioned to get those votes amplified through the Electoral College. and potentially clinch out a win. It could be days until that's finally, in a sense, adjudicated in the media. And that'll be a fascinating thing, Janice. There's a lot of talk about how the media declares a winner and when.

This is actually in itself now become controversial. And all eyes will be on Fox because Fox here to the conservative movement in America. is still kind of the one media brand that kind of punctures the thought bubbles of Center Right America. So I think if you're a viewer, as we all will be next week, keep an eye on Fox and what Fox does in terms of declaring a winner or not, that'll be the critical kind of media signal as to where this campaign could be going. And let's just take that conversation one bit further because there is history with Fox about its, you know, when and how it declares winners. There was controversy

the last time. And my suspicion, right here is that Fox will be super careful that's not. And we'll have metric. You know, the rule of thumb for the statisticians who are listening, to us. The rule of thumb is that you have to be 99% sure that the second place candidate cannot overtake the first place candidate before you call a winner. That's what the statisticians in the networks tend to use. So it's a high bar to declare a winner and it may take longer. But my saying, Fox knows as to CNN. They all know. that they are under scrutiny. And my feeling is, despite all the heated rhetoric,

that they will be scrupulous in following the metrics. One little tidbit I heard from Steve Schmidt will be releasing that audio on the hub of my interview with him. Definitely worth checking out early next week. He, again, is a never-trumper. And his concern is that if, Trump thinks they're losing because the campaign will have their own internal exit polling. He thinks, and again, I think this would play to what we know about Trump.

Trump will come out early and declare himself the winner. Yeah. He did that last time. Yeah. So the extent to which the media can even, I think, play the important role that historically they have, which is to create the beginnings of the peaceful. transition of power. Remember creating that sense that, okay, we have a winner and now it's up to these political campaigns and figures to act somewhat responsibly and affect that peaceful

transition of power by having one candidate concede to the other. Steve Schmidt's contention was that that's a non-starter with Trump. If they think they're losing, they're going to come out right away and declare a win. I think that's a really important point. And unless Let's distinguish two issues here, graduate. If Trump wins, based on the electoral polls, based on the exit polls, and he declared a winner, and he self-declares. He's one of there's no issue, right? The issue really becomes, if it's increasingly clear, that Harris will win

and he declares himself a winner, then we're into a very complicated legal process for which the Republican Party has been, and the Democrats, by the way, have been preparing four months. The lawyers are armed. They're ready to go. There will be challenges in every one of those battleground states

and more about disqualified ballots and uncounted ballots. I think people want to distinguish between two things. What, in fact, do the best polls tell us really happened and then how does that result gets certified. It's a very different world if Harris wins and there are these challenges. And that's one set of problems. That's entirely different from the world we will face if Trump wins.

Better to have the second problem. We're not going to get away with no problems this time. But I have to say, as somebody who thinks about the implications of the election on the role of the United States in the world, and there's a very consequential role, I would prefer to have the second problem rather than the first. I'm not as worried as many people are about dealing with that second problem. We're more worried about the first.

Tell me, Janice, just finally, the risk of political violence here. You know, many people are saying that that risk is real, and we shouldn't be fooling ourselves about how this, the Trump campaign will behave and how some of his supporters will react. That said, these same concerns were raised in the 2020 election.

Yeah. And there was no violence. It was a peaceful election, thankfully, on that day. And there was other than January 6th, yes, which happened, you know, a number of months later. The election itself and the immediate aftermath was violence free. So do you think this time is different? Is there a heightened risk? Or can we have some confidence that, you know, as the January 6 episode shows, if you are foolish enough to try to use violence in an American election or any context around it, you will have the full force of the federal state coming down on you.

and a lot of these January 6 protesters, hundreds of them now, are serving, you know, multiple year sentences in federal penitentiaries. Let's take off the table entirely. Roger any discussion of civil war. You know, some very, very able people. And Steve and Marsh at Canadian Church, it's really able. I was worried about civil war. I think that is not on the table, frankly.

So let's take that off the table. I think paradoxically, and I agree with you, that the risk of political bonds less. And why is that? Because the extensive preparations the Republican Party has made to contest these election results in the court. They literally, they've done two things, okay? They've made a big investment at the state level in electing officials. certify elections, which we've never seen happen before. You also mentioned how many Republican governors there are who have a say in the certification process. And it's at the state level that

these electors get sent to Congress. So there is a path for really contested electoral process, but you do it in the courts. And the more optimistic you are that you can get a done in the courts, the less likely you are to resort to political violence because that invalidates it all. So I actually am less worried about political violence in 2024 than I was in 2020. And I think another January 6th, interestingly, I was just in Washington, there are big fences around the Capitol building, right? Wow. Yeah, which is, again, you know, unprecedented. And, you in U.S. politics, the police forces are all alerted and aware. We're not going to have a situation of the kind that we had last time,

where it was unclear which official had the authority to call the police, the Capitol Police, and it took three hours for them to get there. So I think what happened last January 6th is not a good model for this year. Okay, Janice, let's say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and join our monk curators and supporters on the other side of this short break. We're going to talk about the North Korean troop deployment into Russia, potentially headed to the front lines of the war with Ukraine and what's happening in that conflict. And then let's just finally on the end of the show talk a little bit about rumblings from Iran

that a strike on Israel on Israeli military sites is imminent. back after this short break. Thanks for listening to this excerpt of the Friday Focus podcast. To get full-length editions of each and every episode of this program, simply go to our website, triple-w The Monk Debates.com. Click on the Friday Focus tab in our navigation on the top right of the site. Make a donation as little as $25 a year of 50 cents an episode,

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