The Munk Debates Podcast - Munk Dialogue with Andrew Coyne: The American Experiment at 250 and Canada's pipeline gamble

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

What would America's Founding Fathers make of the state of U.S. politics as the nation celebrates the 250th anniversary of its independence? The constitutional rules they established to guide the republic and safeguard it against monarchical or dictatorial rule are being tested by President Trump, whose conduct has exposed potential weaknesses in the system. Andrew argues that America's checks and balances ultimately depend on everyone—from all three branches of government, and especially the commander-in-chief—respecting both the letter and the spirit of the Constitution. Twenty-five years from now, will America still be the democratic republic we know today?In the second half of the show, Rudyard and Andrew examine the Canadian government's announcement that it will build a new, government-funded 1,000-kilometre oil pipeline from Alberta to British Columbia. The decision to press ahead despite the environmental concerns that have long plagued similar projects underscores just how politically important this pipeline has become—for both Western Canada and Ottawa. Should Canadians be concerned that it will be built by a federal Crown corporation? And how can the government hope to keep costs under control when the proposed route appears so technically complex?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.

You can have all these checks and balances, but it depends to some extent on people agreeing to play by the rules. It depends on the president observing some kind of norm, including putting its hands up and saying, you got me when he's caught. And even more so, it depends upon the people in the other branches of government doing their job of holding the president, in this case, to account. Welcome to the Monk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne. for the 3rd of July, 2026. I'm Roger Griffiths Chair of the Monk Debates. Andrew, great to be in conversation with you again. Happy to be with you.

Talking about big events, we've just gone through Canada Day. Some of it's maybe subdued, hot one, definitely, sweltering. I want to focus, though, in the United States and July 4th, because it's a more significant event in the kind of civic calendar, 250 years of the U.S. Republic. So let's begin in broad strokes, Andrew. What does this anniversary for you commemorate? What does it say maybe about, you know, the broader themes of America's kind of endurance

as one of the most fascinating, relevant, impactful countries that we've known, even before the modern era? Well, it's fascinating that it commemorates not the founding of the country as a continent, Constitutional Republic, but the Declaration of Independence. In fact, it's only the date of the passage of the final text of the independence. The actual declaration came two days earlier, but never mind.

So that tells you something. It tells you that America, about two things about America. One is that it was founded on certain ideals, well represented in the Declaration of Independence. And that has remained the case. if you scratch an American and you ask them what's you know what is it that makes an American they will talk about things like the Constitution the Declaration of Independence the Bill of Rights America's mission in the world these kinds of things and that's in some ways a very attractive character it's a very idealistic form of nationalism but idealism can also

mean extremism if it's not tempered by realism and pragmatism and there's an extremist streak that runs through Americans as well and that That's again connected with their founding in that it was a revolution. It was an abrupt rupture and a violent one. And contrast that with Canada. Our National Day commemorates the going into effect of legislation passed by the Imperial Parliament, creating the constitutional structure of Canada. We didn't have a revolution.

We had a series of staging posts along the way to full sovereignty, the statute of Westminster in 1931, the Constitution, Second Constitution in 1982. So the difference between the countries, I know it's maybe a bit cliche, but in this case it's true. That is very much part of our national characters in both countries.

America is more idealistic than us, is more adherent to principle than us, but can also get really caught up in massive doctrinal disputes that everyone goes to the mats and doesn't give an inch, we are better able at accommodating each other, finding out, making allowance for each other, finding ways to agree with each other, sometimes at the cost of principle. And so it's a bit of a tradeoff.

What do you think the American founding fathers would analyze in terms of the state of American politics right now, today? How would they react? Act to, you know, those rules that they set down to guide this Republic over a quarter of a millennia ago. And in some ways, Andrew, we've talked about this a lot over the last year. Those rules are now being tested like never before. Would they have anticipated a scenario like this? Would they, would they in some ways be quite familiar with Trump insofar as their constitution

in effect was an attempt and a successful one, arguably, for many, many decades, for two and a half centuries to protect against monarchical dictatorial rule. That was the world that they lived in. That was the world that they came out of. That was the world in which their revolution was forged. Up to a point they would recognize it. And you're absolutely right. And you find this throughout in the federalist papers and other statements at the time. They were very wary of a tyrant emerging, another king, what have you. They had certainly, as you say, had an experience of arbitrary rule under George the third, with troops being stationed in people's houses and all the various other grievances that they had at the time of the revolution. And so you're right that they set up this elaborate

system of checks and balances and separation of powers to create competing power centers to prevent any one of them from achieving a monopoly on power and thereby to keep each other in check. And as you say, it worked reasonably well for most of America's history. What they didn't anticipate perhaps was somebody on the scale of Trump, somebody so completely unbound by any norms. I know we've talked about this before, but I think the comparison is really apt. Richard Nixon was a crook. Richard Nixon broke the law. Richard Nixon tried to spy on his opponents and tried to get the CIA to lean on the FBI. So he was definitely a crook,

but he broke the law in secret. He paid the tribute to the law of hiding from it, if you will. Trump does it out in the open. Trump's abuses of power are no secret, and it's even more corrupting than Nixon in that sense, that when you simply do it openly and just shrugged when anybody objects, and when you have no shame and are bound by none of these norms or conventions or customs,

including the custom and convention that we obey the law, it's very hard to know exactly how to handle somebody like that. Trump's behavior is on a scale that we have not seen for probably a couple of millennia in terms of world leaders. And so it's exposed the flaws, if you will, in the Constitution. You can have all these checks and benefits. balances, but it depends to some extent on people agreeing to play by the rules. It depends on the president observing some kind of norm, including putting its hands up and saying, you got me

when he's caught. And even more so, it depends upon the people in the other branches of government doing their job of holding the president, in this case, to account. The courts have been doing that tolerably well, particularly the lower courts. The Supreme Court has been 50-50, at best. The lower courts have issued a string of rulings against Trump's illegal acts that have helped to at least slow him down on some of his projects. But the Congress has been a disgrace, particularly obviously the members of the Republican side. Now, I'm looking at this from Canada where we never expect our government side MPs to do anything to hold the executive into account. So we've absorbed our own undemocratic norm where we just think, oh, the job of the government

MP is just to wave through whatever the government does, which was not always the case. We used to have a much more robust sense that even government side MPs are supposed to be watchdogs on spending, are supposed to represent their constituencies and not just be foot soldiers for the government. But the United States, until recently, had more of a tradition that even if you, were on the same party as the republic as the president um you might speak out against him you might vote against him in congress in congress there was much more of that idea and it's that's really collapsed in recent times the republican congressman tick in the house of representatives but to a great extent also in the senate which had even an even prouder tradition of cross party voting a cross

party collaboration uh it's really broken down under trump partly because people are afraid of being quote unquote primary, as they say, in the United States, where if the president comes out against them in their internal party races, they won't get the nomination. And in some cases, so were reported, people are literally physically afraid for their lives from Trump's supporters. So when this kind of lawlessness and violence implicit or explicit is afoot, it really does call upon, what did Tom Payne call it, talk, you know, that the, you, you know, the, you know, the, you, it These are the times that try men's souls. The sunshine patriots are not the people you need at times like this.

You need people who are willing to take risks, put their lives and their sacred honor on the line as the revolutionary leaders did. Andrew, what do you think is different, though, as we hit this 250th anniversary? Because there have been other periods, as recently as the 1960s, You can go back to the Jim Crow laws. You can go back to the Annabellum South, the institution of slavery. There's been many periods of American history, of intense internal civic strife violence.

There have been, you know, a series of alcoholics, chronic alcoholics as president. James Ulysses Grant comes to mind. I'm sure there were others. In other words, there were presidents who were disasters in the past. past too. But Andrew, doesn't it feel different today? For some reason, nothing on this day of a millennium? Yeah. So what, what is that? Is that, is that something new in America's political culture that's emerged after a quarter of millennium? Is it the singular

figure of Trump? Is he the alpha and omega that helps explain this? I guess what I'm trying to understand is this anniversary seems to be marked at a, at a moment of kind of abnormality. Yes, there's continuities and themes to the past. Again, America is a very violent, tumultuous. It is a revolutionary democracy. But something feels different, doesn't it? Yes. And it's both Trump and the system and the society that produced him.

He's the cause and the consequence. First of all, and this is the point we've emphasized before, but we'll make it again. You have to avoid comparing Trump to any previous president. to do so is to normalize, and he's completely abnormal. We've had, as you say, the United States has had corrupt presidents in the past, but nothing like this scale of corruption. It's had incompetent presence in the past, but nothing like this degree of just childlike incompetence.

He is each of the qualities you might find in a failed president, but taken to a far greater degree, And it's all of those things combined. It's not just the corruption or the incompetence or the racism or the war mongering. It's all of these things on a scale that we've never seen. And the mind has difficulty coming to grips with this. The mind always wants to default to normalcy. The mind always wants to put things into a box that we've seen before.

And I find myself doing this constantly and having to struggle to sort of embrace the completeness of Trump. And so the only way I can put it and have what it is, in every situation, he will always do not just the wrong thing, but the worst possible thing you can think of. And he does so consistently that you realize it's not an, it's not accident, it's not a coincidence. It's a policy. It's a point of principle for him in the same way that a good man always does the right thing or tries to. So he has an inverted sense of morals or what one should do in different situations. And you can set your watch by it. Whatever is the right thing, he will do the opposite on any issue. So that's the first point.

Second point, though, as you alluded, is you can't look at Trump, as singular a figure as he is, in isolation from the society that elected him. He wasn't dropped in America from a passing jet. they elected him not once but twice. And the second time after he launched a coup. So the first time he was elected, I could kind of get it. I think if you were paying attention at all,

you'd see that he was completely unfit. But I understand how people who wanted to send a message and shake up the system and thought he was various things that he was manifestly not. I could understand why people might have voted for him in 2016. But to vote again for him in 2024 is just perverse. And what it tells you is, among other things, is that there's a, there's such a divide in the United States. They're so polarized around ideology, around party, around race, around culture, around geography, around education, that one section of the community either genuinely likes Trump, for whatever reasons might explain that, or are prepared to put up with them.

because at least he's not the other guys. And even better, he'll make the other guys mad. He'll own the libs. He'll make the media set their hair on fire. And when you have that degree of alienation, where you have a large section of American society that is fundamentally alienated from the America that the founders created.

They are alienated from all of the institutions of American life, the Congress, the courts, everything. They all think they're bogus and rigged and everything that Trump says they are. When people have reached that direction, degree of alienation. Then you've got a problem whether or not you elect a Trump. I mean, Trump is the malignant fruit of that and then has, there's all sorts of consequences that flow from Trump being in office. So how they got into that state, I'll just very briefly recap, is, I think,

is there were existing divisions that you see in other societies, particularly are these divisions that have emerged on culture and education and geography. In American terms, they talk about the coastal elites versus the, you know, the people in flyover country, but there are, equivalence in every Western society, the rural urban divide, the educated versus less educated divide. These are real factors in our politics, but much more so in the United States than anywhere else. Then, more uniquely to America, they had these series of traumas in the last 20, 25 years, 9-11, the Iraq war, the financial crisis, the housing market collapse, again, echoes of which you can find in other countries, nothing like the kind of impact they had

the United States and they combined to take people who already distrusted fancy pants people with two degrees who were looking down their noses at them they convinced these people that they were had reason to resent these people because they were all idiots nobody knew what they were doing the experts were all wrong you know the people in power were we're idiots it just convinced them I think that there was just no reason to defer to anybody then you add social media which again is a factor in every country but I think you could say because America does these things first

and to the fullest extent has had more impact there in terms of just maddening everybody. Again, convincing people, they don't need to listen to experts, they don't need to listen to authorities except the ones that they choose to listen to. They can just Google it.

They can just do their own research. And that also led to this breakdown in the socialization of knowledge, as I call it. And then finally then you add as the icing on the case, Trump, who just lies hundreds of times a day, complete disregard of the truth, again, doesn't bother to hide it, doesn't care whether you believe his lies or not. His sole mission, whether it's intended or not, is just to discredit truth as any kind of reference point. So you add all these

things together, and you have, I think, the fruit for, or the soil, I should say, for this kind of situation where you can elect somebody who's just obviously a madman, slash child, and do it not once but twice. So final question, Andrew, in 25 years from now, are we celebrating the 275th anniversary of a Democratic constitutional American Republic? Or, you know, is America just fundamentally on a different trajectory? I mean, a quarter of a millennia is a long time for any political system. You can go back through the history of Europe and you can look at different ways that European society organized itself during the Renaissance, the medieval period, its own democracies and tumultuous 19th century.

Things come to an end. There are new beginnings, painful or positive. History will decide, the future will decide. But how confident are you right now in the inevitability? the American Republic, its durability going forward? Well, I'm certainly not certain of it. And I think in any time in the past, if you'd ask me that question, I would say, oh, of course it will be around.

It's built to last. I don't think we can say that with certainty. And in fact, we're coming towards some very important testing points. Nothing's inevitable. Things are not necessarily path dependent, but they can be. And if, I mean, the first test is going to be the midterm elections and whether they're held as free and fair elections. And certainly Trump is giving every indication that he's going to try every means he can to try and tilt the pitch in these elections and or how he'll deal with the results. He didn't like the result in 2020 and tried to overturn it.

So we'll have to see, first of all, that'll be an important testing case, and then there'll be 2028. Is Trump still a candidate in 2028 for a third election, which would be manifestly unconstitutional, but again, doesn't seem to bother. Will there be an election in 2020 or will Trump somehow just decide to stay on? These are, it may sound like absurd questions, but you just simply can't rule anything out at this point. if there are fair elections in 2028 or elections, will they be fair? And a lot will, of the future of the republic, will hang on what happens, I think, in these elections. Or certainly it will be possible. Now, it's possible we have the worst kinds of results in 2026 and 2028, but somehow, you know,

they claw their way back to a democratic system of government after that. So all these things are possible. But you can also see a scenario where historians mark the decline of the American Republic as a democracy from this point on. So, you know, what are the probabilities? I would still say I would say it's a greater than 50-50 chance that 25 years from now America will still be the Democratic Republic that we know in some form. I think that's a greater likely than not. but it's not 100%, which is pretty much what I would have said

up until recently. Yeah. Well, Andrew, great analysis, great insights. We're going to say goodbye to our complimentary listeners and viewers, but if you're enjoying these monk debate dialogues with Andrew, we have a special back half exclusive for a monk donor. So head over to our website, triplew.munk, M-N-K, DebateswithanS.com.

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