The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: America's checks and balances are failing to restrain Donald Trump

Episode Date: August 6, 2025

Rudyard and Andrew start the show trying to understand why Trump's radical steps on immigration, education, and foreign policy have been met with so little resistance. Where are the checks and balances? Trump doesn't live by the usual dictates that other presidents have. He's not bound by conscience, obedience to convention, or public opinion, and the final test will come when or if he defies a Supreme Court ruling. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Andrew turn to developments in the Middle East where it is becoming increasingly clear that the Netanyahu government does not have a real plan for the future of Gaza. While Israel is often held to an unreasonably high standard when it comes to defending itself, it likewise should not be held to an unreasonably low standard. Israel is using up any international goodwill that it has left, and it is not in their self interest to continue this war. Unfortunately, there is no good or easy option right now, only a range of bad ones. Which one will Israel choose?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.

A lot of people have been investing a lot of hope in the idea that the courts are going to save democracy. I think the courts have slowed the dissent, slowed the collapse. But if Trump is willing as I think he is to defy a Supreme Court order, then we really are into mayhem. Welcome to our continuing conversations with Andrew Coyne, columnist of the Globe and Mail. Each week, Andrew is here in the studio talking about the latest developments in news around the world and here in Canada. Andrew, how's your summer going? It's not too bad. Thank you.

I'm taking it easy. Just relaxing. You have a real passion for animals. We are in the so-called dog days of summer. It is August. What do your dog days consist of it? We've got three rescue dogs at home. Three?

We'll see how long either of us lasts, but they're a lot of fun, but they're a lot of work. And they all get along with each other? They seem to, yeah. They're good guys. Okay. Let's talk about people not getting along with you. each other and people maybe who aren't always the best of guys. I'm talking about President Donald Trump. You've got a great column appearing in the Globe and Mail today as this episode of Monk Dialogues drops.

It's about the checks and balances that this president faces or not. And let's talk about it, because I think many of us have been confused that why is it now going seven months into this presidency, that he has seemed to been able to take these radical steps on immigration, on education, on foreign policy with seemingly so little resistance. Were other presidents just simply unaware of the vast powers that they had, their ability to kind of storm across the land and reshape America in their image? Or is something different going on? Is it less maybe about the president and more about the institutions and individuals and parts of America that are acting or not as checks and balances on him today? Well, there are a whole range of checks and balances beyond the formal one.

of the Congress and the Supreme Court and the rule of law, if you will, the Constitution. There's the bureaucracy, which, you know, can slow things down if they're, you know, if you don't have their enthusiastic support. There's the Federal Reserve as an independent institution. There are the military and the police who, you know, you ordinarily don't have direct control over. There's supposed to be some sort of arm's length. There's just the sort of chank and balance, if we will, of the president's own conscience. and his own willingness to conform to convention. And this is where you start to get into why Trump is so hard to put a stop to or to get your arms around is he doesn't live by or obey any of the usual dictates that even the most crooked presidents have done.

As I often say, Richard Nixon was a crook when no one was looking. But when the Supreme Court ordered him to hand over the tapes, he handed over the tapes. Trump is not certainly bound by any kind of conscience, certainly not by any obedience to convention. doesn't even seem to be that concern with public opinion for reasons that would certainly excite speculation, that he doesn't seem that worried about the pending defeat in the 2026 midterm elections, and as I say, you can speculate as to exactly why.

But when you look at all these different checks and balances, institutions that are supposed to check his power, he's kind of going through them one by one and disarming them. Some of them he controls things like the Congress. I mean, every president dreams of having a majority in both houses that is impervious, again, to any external restraint, but simply does whatever the president tells them to do. That's an unusual thing even in America. He is starting to get control of the courts. He's starting to stack his things, his people on there. But there's a whole set of other institutions where he may not control them, but he just basically ignores them.

He's starting to do that with the courts. He's ignored the Congress on occasion. So there's those two categories of institutions he controls, institutions that he doesn't control, but can ignore. And then you have one that remains, which is the financial markets, which he can neither control nor ignore. And these are hardly democratic institutions. They're amoral, they're imperfect, they're filled with very cynical people, but they don't owe him anything. And he owes them everything. The United States is a debtor nation. He's got to stay in their good stead if he wants to avoid a financial crisis.

And we saw some of their power, at least in the short term, after the quote-unquote liberation day tariffs in the spring, when markets just reacted, you know, as he might in absolute fury, and Trump beat a hasty retreat. The final question, though, is, is even that going to deter him? Is Trump so far gone that he'd be willing even to drive the United States into a financial crisis? And with any other president, of course, you'd say, of course not. and they would have to basically jump to the market's tune. But Trump, you know, his secret weapon is he just doesn't care. Yeah. Yeah.

Let's go through some of these different institutions. And let's start with an institution that you're part of, the media. I think people have been surprised at the extent to which we have large media organizations entering into settlements with this president that can only be described as kind of shakedowns, as in some cases, pay-to-play schemes. They're settling because they have a merger that is in front of his administration. They're settling because they simply don't want to be on the wrong side of the administration writ large. What do you make of the American media's behavior since January?

Well, first of all, we've had, in media, I've had a great difficulty covering him with his multiple scandals or multiple, what would be career-ending statements or actions every single day. It violates all of the norms by which we cover politics, which is that people keep things hidden. They're discovered to their shame. There's an enormous scandal that makes them look bad. They basically have their tail between their legs. They put their hands up and they say, you got me, and we drive them out of public life. Trump doesn't care, doesn't hide it, puts it out in the shop window. Sometimes his minions come along and say, oh, the president didn't mean this, and the next day Trump goes out, no, I meant exactly that. And so in the sheer volume of it means we wind up giving them a volume discount.

We can't pursue every scandal, et cetera, and, you know, and the expectations game, everything else. So he's kind of disarmed the media game at the coverage level, the writing level. What we've also found is he's disarmed the media at the corporate level, and this has proved to be the real point of weakness. You can't, you know, not even Trump can go through and try to pick off every reporter, every columnist who criticize him. But they can go after the seeming height. of power, these enormous media organizations that prove, again, when somebody doesn't play by the normal rules. Somebody, ordinarily, presidents would not want to be seen to be deliberately intimidating a media, threatening them, bribing them, what have you. If you get a president who doesn't care and is allowed

not to care, because nobody calls them on it, then we've seen that the seeming power of these media titans is they're paper tigers. They're so afraid. They have such points of vulnerability in terms of their takeovers, et cetera, that they can be easily rolled. Let's move on to universities because this week we did see seemingly a settlement evolve with the university called Brown, which is a very respected Ivy League, approximately $50 million versus Harvard at $500 million. People at Harvard kind of musing, well, why aren't we getting the Brown deal? Why are we getting the Harvard deal?

I guess the question I would ask is, why is Harvard doing any deal at all? it has a $56 billion endowment. Yes, it receives $2 billion a year or so in federal grants and other support that the government can pull away. By my calculation, that endowment would last some 25 years, well beyond Donald Trump's projected natural lifespan. Well, the short answer is I don't know. I mean, there have been hopes that Harvard would stand firm and would not, Kay, would not do a deal. We'll see how that all plays out. The universities are a constant. complicated case because the universities, I think, have a lot to answer for not to Trump, but to the community. We just finished with a period in which, I think, universities in general,

American universities in particular, I think, came under real scrutiny for the degree to which they've allowed anti-Semitism to flourish on their campuses, for the degree which they've allowed speech to be unduly restrained. Obviously, there's different rules for universities as to what they'll tolerate on their campuses versus what the government may or may not. criticized or restrained. But we're obliged, I think, as a community, in particular universities, to live by the spirit of free speech. If we want enduring protections in law for free speech, we have to cultivate the culture that supports that idea. And universities have been falling down on that. The last people I want policing that or correcting that are the Trump people. And that's the problem.

They've been able to capitalize on some of this discontent that people deservedly have with the intellectual climate on a lot of the universities and use that to basically impose their own agenda, which may or may not have anything to do with free speech. In fact, we are seeing more and more that it's preposterous to talk about Trump or the Republican Party and free speech in the same breath. They are, if anything, militantly more determined to control speech than any, you know, left-wing ideologue was in the past. Moving on to the courts, what's your verdict on U.S. courts? We've seen a variety of senior federal judges come out with very substantive, accurate constitutional decisions, some of which seem to have had some bearing on the administration,

especially in its relation to the illegal removal of primarily Venezuelans, but other people that were caught up in deportations to El Salvador. door. The question I think everyone wonders, Andrew, is how long, if you call it a detente, maybe it's not even a detent between the president and courts, how long will this go on for? What is the trigger? I worry about tariffs, for instance. There is a tariff case going through the U.S. court system. It could land in the Supreme Court easily this year. That's the type of issue where I could see the president, given how much he's invested, how much he kind of personally believes in tariffs could cause a more significant rupture between the administration and the courts. Do you agree? Yeah, I mean, they're fighting a

rearguard action. The courts are different in some ways from some of Trump's other opponents. We've seen this in court cases that the same kind of bamboozling and effortless lying that you can get away with in the general public sphere, the courts are built to withstand that. The courts are built to winnow truth from falsehood in a very methodical way. You can't just lie with impunity in a court. And so they've had some victories in that regard. You've got some very courageous judges that have been taking their task very seriously. I think they enjoy a level of public support as well. People think generally have respect for the courts. But once again, we run into norm breaking, more than norm breaking, lawbreaking. As I said, Nixon handed over the testimony the Supreme Court

ordered them to. Trump has a... already arguably defied court orders, which is an absolute breach of the rule of law. You know, that is part of the separation of powers. That is part of the constitutional order in the United States and in other democratic countries that when the courts rule on something, you are supposed to obey, even if you're the most powerful man on earth. The final test will be when something gets the Supreme Court. And as you mentioned, maybe it's the tariff law or something. but I think we I mean even with this court that seems to bend over backwards to please Trump but seems nevertheless to have some kind of bottom line at some

point you know that court is going to find something that Trump is going to ignore and then we really are into the deluge a lot of people have been vesting a lot of hope in the idea that the courts are going to save democracy I think the courts have slowed the dissent slowed the collapse but if Trump is willing as I think he is to defy a Supreme Court order than we really are into mayhem. Finally, let's move on to the institutions themselves. I mean, one of the things I think you and I have been admirers up to this point of America's former constitutional government, the extent to which checks and balances are real in a way

up until this point that they aren't necessarily in Canada where we have a disproportionately powerful executive vis-a-vis our legislator, not necessarily our courts, but definitely our legislature. What the heck has happened in the United States? Why has that tripartate structure that, you know, has served them so well as a constitutional democracy for so long, so in a sense suddenly broken down. It really concerns me. And I just was it was it had it been weakened under the surface? Was it was it ready to be pulled down? Why are these legislators, especially in the U.S. Senate, which again, traditionally is a more independent body than the Congress itself, why are they so craven, so absent, any kind of backbone to stand up, forget for themselves,

just the interests of their constituents say? This is a very large question. Partisanship, excessive partisanship has been, probably the United States has been growing for decades. Part of that, I think, is the self-sorting of the electorate. that people are moving into red states because they want to live in a more Republican climate, and they're moving into blue states because they want to live among Democrats. The electoral system, of course, recurring theme of mind, exaggerates and exacerbates that.

It just creates these kind of regional ghettos in the United States. So if you look at the system of registering as voters in the United States, you register as a Democrat or a Republican, therefore it's very much part of your identity. It's hard to see why anybody would be anything. else and you start to, so all of it was a problem before Trump comes along. And Trump is to some extent a symptom as much as a cause of this excessive thing. These days, it's hard to talk about as polarization, because I don't think the Democrats have gone off the cliff in the left wing department. The Republicans have just marched off a cliff in not even a right wing, but just a

crazy wing. But nevertheless, there was this polarization, this partisan identification before this. Trump comes along and tells all of his supporters, you do not need to be bound by any constraints. I myself, I'm not bound by any constraints in my personal life. And people found that very liberating, unfortunately. And so one of the things it's let loose is do whatever you need to do. Take no, take no prisoners, go to any lengths. And you've got people at the base who believe that, and therefore you've got an overlay of Republican officials who don't want to get offside with the base. You have this crazy, seemingly democratic

system of the primaries. But primaries plus big money means that Trump or Elon Musk or anybody else can go around threatening people saying, do what I say are all primary. So that becomes an instrument for enforcing party discipline. So you take that kind of trench warfare beginnings. And I talked about it in partisan terms. And you can talk about it in terms of the division. of American society between, you know, flyover states and coastal elites and this kind of class warfare that's been building that Trump again seized on. Class warfare organized around education and knowledge and what's a fact is a particularly toxic version of it. So we're at a situation now. Look what's happening now with the redistricting. Yes.

Americans always go to extremes anyway. That's in their DNA. That goes back to the days of the revolution. Just explain to our audience. You're talking about the redistricting of Texas of five seats where the Republicans in a really just brazen way are gerrymandering. Right in the middle of the election campaign. I mean, it's, you know, one of the arguments we'll make is, okay, let's have this fight when there's not an election actually happening or about to happen. So Trump orders this basically. They're, as you say, brazening it out.

The Democrats have decided, and it's a judgment call. The Democrats have decided we cannot wear the white hats in this anymore. If we simply stick by the ordinary rules, we're just going to get steamrolled. and so they're saying they're going to redistrict back at you. So that's a charming scenario where you're just going to have this just on both sides, just open manipulation of the electoral rolls to get the preferred result. So it's just everybody's going to the mattresses now. And as I certainly understand it from the Democratic perspective

because they're looking at the loss of American democracy. But the Republicans have convinced themselves that it's do or die. We're facing the end of our way of life and this kind of nonsense. So I hope that answers your question. It's just you take a society that was already at the fever point, and then Trump has just pushed everything that much further. So to conclude this part of our discussion, if you put all these different institutions and groups together,

is Trump a bug or a feature of American democracy? Let's say, let's leave aside now the questions as to whether there is a free and fair election in 2028. Will these same kind of abuses that have occurred to this variety of different institutions and groups continue under future presidents, under different parties, does Humpty Dumpty get put back together again? I mean, I think for Canadians as we wrestle with these trade negotiations, we start thinking longer term beyond Kuzma, the renewal of NAFTA, who the hell is our neighbor anymore?

is the chaos that we're seeing now a straight line into the next series of decades of American history or is this an aberration, frankly, that all of us can put behind us at a certain point? More the former than the latter. Trump is obviously vitally important. Individuals matter. Trump is a singular figure in world history. It's just nobody so completely devoid of any human virtue or attended to any customer convention or rule. So that is an important part. He has made things demonstrably worse. He's, you know, we should be glad when he is in one way or another left the scene.

But, and this was going to be my short answer to your last question is, it's the culture as well. The culture produced Trump. Trump has made the culture worse, but the culture is there. And the culture is now one of overwhelming expediency, a lack of decency or civility. You take no prisoner's approach to politics, et cetera. I'd say, especially on the Republican side. Changing the culture, that's the culture that explains ultimately why Republican senators won't do their job of standing up for constitutional rules and just roll over.

Until unless you change the culture of the United States, you're going to be rehearsing some version of these kinds of fights. And changing culture takes a long time. It can be done. So, for example, you know, if you go back 150 years and you're going to be, you know, if you go back 150 years in Canada, you know, it wasn't unusual or unheard of for judges to be taking bribes. And that kind of corruption in society, once it takes root, is really hard to change. But it can be done. We don't, you know, it doesn't happen today or very, very rarely. So you can make those difficult

cultural adjustments, but it takes a long time. And it takes a lot of reinforcement and it takes a lot of care and attention. So, yeah, I'll be relieved when Trump is gone. Whoever comes after him, can't possibly be as bad as he is. It will be the start of repairing American democracy. I hope if there's still one to repair. But it will still be a very damaged and dangerous place for many years to come, in my opinion. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates Podcast, come over to our website at triple-wmunkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free monk membership.

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Let's shift our conversation to the other big story since we last talked a week ago. And this is the growing realization, I think, by the international community that the government of Benjamin Netanyahu has no plan for Gaza, other than what we're hearing in the last 24 hours or so, possibly the full occupation, military occupation of the territory. I just think it's remarkable, Andrew, to think in the course of a. matter of few weeks, this government went from this incredible strategic victory over Iran that once again kind of shocked the world in terms of the effectiveness of Israel to defenestrate Iran to just now a few months later being turned into what Natali Bennett, the former PM of Israel called recently, I think yesterday, a pariah state. Yeah. You know, they used to say about Rudy Giuliani,

that he was very good in a crisis, but he was constantly creating crises. Back when he was the popular mayor of New York, not the diminished figure we saw later. Netanyahu, I think you're seeing in what you just described, both his strength and his weakness. He is bold, but he's also bullheaded and impervious to reason at times. There's a context to this going back to October the 7th, going back further than that, which is that Israel is often held to an unreasonably high standard when it comes to defending itself. It is in one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world, facing some of the most implacable foes, and yet is constantly being told to fight with one hand behind its back.

So understandably, people who are and should be defenders of Israel is the only democracy in the region, were inclined to say, look, that October 7th was such a horrific outrage, signaled such demented ambitions on the part of Hamas, that Israel has to be able to defend itself, and defending itself means using your army, and when you fight a war, people are going to die and be hurt by that, and that up to a point has to be done. And so people were prepared to defend Israel. I think people of goodwill were to a large extent.

Similarly, there's no doubt that Hamas is very adept at using propaganda, propping up fake things and fake outrages, and we saw our share of that. But if Israel should not be held to an unreasonably high standard, neither should it be held to an unreasonably low standard. not everything that's coming out of Hamas, out of Gaza is just a Hamas trick. Over time, there's an accumulation of evidence of terrible things happening there that go beyond what can be justified in terms of military necessity, particularly having had such success in its military objectives up to date. And that is why you are seeing a great number of not

just your usual, and I don't say this dismissively, but liberal critics in Israel, you know, your Harat's opinion writers, saying this has gone too far, but you're seeing military officials, former chiefs of the Army and security services, saying, look, we're not, there's no further military objective that certainly commensurate with the suffering that's being imposed that is going to be had by pursuing this campaign in Gaza. And Israel is using up the goodwill that it remains among certain sections outside of Israel. It's confusing and demoralizing and dividing its own population. And at some point in Israel's own interests,

it has to say this has gone on long enough. We cannot pursue this, or certainly not with the objective that the BB seems to have. People are right to say we should not reward Hamas post-October 7th with things like recognizing Palestinian state. I understand that argument. But neither should October 7th be used to reward intransigence on the Israeli right. And the people who, and let's not kid ourselves, don't believe in a two-state solution, want to don't believe in a Palestinian state at all,

and have quite extreme objectives. And that's the Netanyahu seems to be listening to and to and obeying. So I think the staunchest supporters of Israel are now saying, this has got to come to an end. Yeah. This week, though, we saw Hamas basically break off discussions with the Americans and Israelis on a negotiated settlement. Whether or not that has to do with the statements that Britain, France, and Canada have made regarding their willingness to recognize a Palestinian state or not is, I think, a debate

we can leave for another day. But what is Israel to do? if your opponent, your enemy refuses to surrender, has a variety of your citizens captured or dead, a few who unfortunately we've seen in the last week have been subject to what is clearly starvation tactics on the part of their Hamas captors. What are you to do? I mean, how do you end something when your opponent? opponent is unwilling or unable to end the conflict themselves. Yeah, I mean, there's no easier or good option in this.

There's only a range of bad options. What's clear, it seems to me, however, is that pursuing an attempt to just flatten Gaza or to occupy all of it is likely to be unsuccessful, is not likely to gain the freedom of the hostages, quite the contrary. So it's not that there's some interlocutor that you can now have a nice peace deal with, but you can choose not to take it that far. You can choose, you know, nothing requires Israel to go all the way to what Netanyahu is now talking. Nothing requires it to continue with a high-intensity military campaign.

There can be a period of consolidation. There can be a period where you're trying to get food to people, as difficult as that is, and as difficult as that is often because of Hamas. But, you know, if for no other reason than public relations, but I would hope it would be more than that, placing more of an emphasis on trying to stabilize the situation, it doesn't mean you're giving up anything, you're not rewarding Hamas if you simply halt your advance at this stage. I think that makes sense. As you say, there's a larger debate to be had about what goes on beyond this. When I look at the Canadian position, it was hedged about with so many conditions that you could, quote, cynically say, well, it's not going to happen. Like if the condition is they have to hold Democratic elections and Hamas has to release all the hostages and Hamas has to not be a part of any future settlement. Okay, I agree with all those. But that just tells me that we're not going to recognize the Palestinian state if those are genuine conditions and not just windowed us.

I don't subscribe to these arguments, but you know, you know them. And they are that if you look at how in World War II, the war in the Pacific ended. It ended with the dropping of two atomic bombs on two civilian cities and the previous year of fire bombing of the majority of Japan. Similarly, the end of Nazi Germany was brought about by the full-scale invasion of Germany by Russian troops from the east, destroying the thousand-year-old civilization that was Prussia and allies. troops pushing towards Berlin and reducing much of Germany to rubble. So, I mean, again, I do not subscribe to these arguments, but there are those that would say that are we being a little bit naive about how this conflict will end, given the fanaticism

of Hamas, just as bad as the worst of Imperial Japan or the worst of Nazi Germany? And that when you're dealing with a fanatic, ideological, it's not even a regime, anymore, rag-tag band of fighters, your options are circumscribed. If they went in and had a peace or not a peace deal, let's say a truce, Hamas would remain. They would continue to attack and bomb their own civilians, Israeli troops. If we bring in fighters from outside, from Egypt or elsewhere, no doubt they would be attacked and bombed also. So is there something that? Is there something a cold, horrible logic that to resolve this conflict does require the complete conquest of Gaza and the subjugation of Hamas in the same way that Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany was subjugated

in World War II. I don't believe so because as odious and bestial as Hamas is, they are not the same kind of power as Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany were. This is more in the nature of, I mean, their ambitions are certainly existential, but it's more in the nature of, of an insurgency that you're trying to, if you can, extirpate, but at the very least hold. Let's remember how much the situation has changed in the last two years to Israel's credit in terms of some of its military and foreign policy successes. I'm not attributing these all to Israel, but, but, you know, when you look at how badly off Iran is, how weakened Iran is, how weakened Iran's clients are, not just Hamas, but Hezbollah.

if you look at the collapse of the Syrian dictatorship and the role that it could play. I might mention also the absence of Saddam Hussein, but there's a very different landscape and much more prospect of Israeli long-term success, I would say now than two, three, four, five years ago. So, yeah, you've got an implacable foe, absolutely fanatic, but much weakened, much, much weakened in the form of Hamas. You know, some wars end, as you say, with a total war, absolute victory. Some wars end like the Korean War with an armistice. And people all too often raise those and discount the possibility of absolute victory in other conflicts. I think I'm more inclined to fight on in Ukraine, for example.

But I think in this case, I think you can make an argument that Israel has reached a point or can reach a point where it has so limited Hamas's ability to really. strike at it and where Hamas's supply chains and support networks are so weakened themselves that it's a very different architecture than it would have been five years ago. Yeah. Let's end by bringing this back to Canada. So we've had this statement and I agree with you. There are so many conditions in the statement. It's very unlikely that you'd have a Rubik's cube suddenly clicked together in Canada on that basis, acknowledge Palestinian state. But to what extent does the statement concern you to the degree that?

that it could be perceived, and some people have argued this, that it is rewarding Hamas's, not only their violence and their terrorism, but they're intransigence, and that this would not have come about if Hamas had not held out to this point, and that it is legitimizing Hamas, and their brutal strategy towards the people of Gaza, holding them as hostages, and that they are not being encouraged to take another path by these statements that have come from now Britain, France, and Canada. I think it depends. Again, you know, Hamas has been greatly weakened, if not defeated.

So it's not like this has been a big triumph for that. Anytime you win something, you always face a choice of, in a conflict like this, you always raise a choice of who do you try to co-opt and who do you try to punish? Who do you try to bring inside the tent and who do you say you can never come back? It's very clear that whatever comes in the Middle East, Hamas will be no part of. They have utterly squandered any attempt, not that they ever had from anybody sensible, but I think even amongst Palestinians, they're now viewed as just beyond the pale. I'm not saying this is the right thing at the right time,

but I also don't dismiss it as being exactly the same as if, you'd come out with this statement three years ago. I think context matters. I think the situation on the ground matters in terms of what the actual consequence of this. If we had not attached those conditions, I'd be a lot more concerned because I think that's closer to what you're describing.

But if the conditions are, basically, we're willing to support a two-state solution that excludes Hamas that has real security guarantees for Israel that are much more within reach, it seems to me, after this horrible war than they might have been in the past. So, you know, it's been an awful war.

It's been terrible suffering, but I would not say that nothing's been achieved by it. I think the whole, as I say, the whole landscape of the Middle East is different now than it was three years ago, two years ago. And I think we blind ourselves if we don't recognize that, at least or at least take that into account when we're making these kinds of judgments. Yeah. Well, Andrew, we're going to have to leave it there. I know you've got three dogs to walk. So what time is it? Okay, my friend, your dog walking time.

You're busy with a leash. Certainly. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for watching this edition of Monk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne, columnist of the global mail. If you're on our YouTube channel, please click subscribe and also click on that little notification bell. And we'll send you our next video with Andrew as soon as it's published. If you're over on our podcast feed, thanks for being there. Quarter of a million people downloading podcast monthly on the Monk Debates podcast channel. Do that along with your friends and family by sharing this podcast with them. We thank you. you in advance. I'm Rudyard Griffiths, chair of the Monk Debates. Thanks for watching and listening. We'll talk to you again soon. Bye-bye. 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 podcast. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-star rating. Thank you again for listening.