The Munk Debates Podcast - The MAGA coalition is coming apart and Mark Carney's government underwhelms voters

Episode Date: November 19, 2025

To listen to the full episode consider becoming a donor to the Munk Debates for as little as $50 annually, or $1.00 per episode. Canadian donors receive a charitable tax receipt. Rudyard and Andrew talk about the MAGA coalition fracture over an upcoming vote to release the Epstein files. Cracks have already surfaced over Ukraine and tariffs, but so far no one has been willing to publicly criticize Trump. Why is this the red line for the President's supporters? Internal divisions over Nick Fuentes and Tucker Carlson are further sowing the seeds of discontent inside the GOP. In the second half of the show Rudyard and Andrew turn to the Canadian federal budget which passed this week without serious opposition from the other parties. Andrew gives his take on where the parties stand: Will the NDP vote for far left politician Avi Lewis as their next leader? Will Pierre Poilievre get enough support in his upcoming leadership review? And can Mark Carney build bridges with Alberta's Premier Danielle Smith and start delivering real results to voters after a long grace period?  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.

He's entering a period now where he's actually got to start showing results. I think people gave him a lot of slack for the first six months. He's in a tough situation. Trump's upsetting the apple card every six days, making it very hard to plan, etc. But at some point that you start to run out of that kind of room. And you start having to encounter the very real divisions that exist on this country on some major files. Welcome to the Monk Dialogues with Andrew Coyne. I'm Roger Griffiths, chair of the Monk Debates.

Our columnist is in studio with us today. Andrew, great to be in conversation. Nice to be with me. Let's kick off with the big news of this weekend coming into this week, which is a surprise reversal by President Trump, now calling on Congress to vote to release the Epstein files in total. A lot that could still happen here. It has to go forward to the Senate. We'll see how the Senate takes this up. How do you explain or characterize the president's violent flip-flop? late on Sunday night. I think basically he was getting the message from his party that dozens of them were prepared to vote for this motion to release the the documents.

So the old line is if the parade's going by, I must well get out in front of it rather than get trampled over it. Of course the as many people have said to him, you could just release this yourself. It's under the control of the government. You're the head of the government. All you have to do is say release the files. So it's a bit of theater in that respect as well. And then the final point being From the House, it goes to the Senate, there are already apparently talks between Speaker Johnson and the House of Representatives and Mr. Thune in the Senate saying, maybe you should look at this and hold it up because, of course, we're very concerned about their reputations of innocent people, et cetera. So the long and the short of it being merely because Trump flip-flops on that question doesn't mean that it necessarily gets released. Yeah, no, I think you're right about that.

the Senate does seem to be sending a signal that they could well delay, maybe indefinitely, the release on all kinds of different grounds. The other game that he may be playing, others have said, is he's announced an investigation, or he's ordered an investigation by the DOJ of the Democrats for their ties to Epstein, no Republican, certainly not himself. And that may offer him an excuse to say, well, we can't release the documents now because it's under investigation. Right, right. When earlier his FBI director, Cash Patel and Pambandi, his AG said it effectively, there was nothing to investigate in these files, Republican or Democrat.

And Trump had said the whole thing was a hoax. Now it's a hoax that he wants an investigation. I mean, they're obviously just playing games here. He's obviously cornered. He's obviously very nervous. You know, the point has been made that this is Trump finally behaving like normal guilty politicians do. Right? Usually, you know, when you're caught, when you're in trouble, you're trying to obfuscate and stall and, you know, hide things. Trump usually, when he's accused of things, just says, yeah, I did it. So what? So this is a bit, it's a bit more of a tribute to normalcy, shall we say, because the accusations are so scalding.

Yeah. Now, what's been interesting about this is the extent to which his mega coalition finally seemed to fracture on the issue of the release of these files. So we can talk about a whole host of other controversial topics from the rule of law to, you know, basic habeas corpus rights in America, all these things water underneath the proverbial bridge. But for some reason, Epstein, pedophilia, the sexual abuse of young girls and women, this is a red line. Well, give these people some do. A lot of them, you know, are dyed in the wall, QAnon people who are convinced there's a child sex ring. involving everybody. So at least they're being consistent with that belief and taking on. I think there's also a certain amount of political calculation going on that he may not be the asset he once was to them politically. Certainly when you look at that last set of elections

a couple weeks ago where the Democrats basically ran the table, if you're a Republican and if you think that the midterm elections are going to happen as a free and fair election, then you're very nervous. Donald Trump's now down in low to mid-30s on some estimates of presidential approval. that's the kind of number where most presidents are moving heaven and earth, trying to figure out how to turn those numbers around. Trump just seems to be doing more of the same stuff that has got him in this fix. So, yes, Epstein is the sort of the final unbridgeable divide, but there's been other things that have been splitting open that Republican coalition

to a greater or lesser extent. Ukraine, for example, there still are, you know, solid defense Republicans, even in the MAGA movement, prices and tariffs. You know, not many people in MAGA signed up for the idea that what they really wanted to do was to drive up prices of consumer goods for people. So the cracks have been there. People haven't dared step out of line even if they were uneasy about policies to a great extent because they still saw Trump as being this invincible thing, both in terms of helping them get reelected, but also not wanting them against you for your own primary campaign. And I think what you're seeing partly is people are increasingly not as afraid of them as they once were. Look at Marjorie Taylor Green, for example.

who's suddenly done talking about backflips. It was a very funny routine with, you know, one of the hosts of the Daily Show saying to herself, my God, am I actually agreeing with Margaret Taylor Green? You know, the heavens have opened in the, you know. But I think you're right, Andrew, to point back to the Democratic gubernatorial and other wins two weeks ago, and I don't want to get ahead of ourselves, but there are people making the argument. I think there are some dots to connect to suggest. that the Trump presidency may not simply have failed a test, that the Trump presidency's high

watermark may well have been September into early October 2025. And based on, as you've noted, declining popularity in poll numbers, the weakening of the American economy, especially for middle class and lower class, working class Americans. And now the base, his own base, is that not, to some extent, a big tell, a big tell that a portion of people are saying to themselves, not just midterm elections, but 2028, what the heck are we going to look like? What's this party going to look like? What shape is this president going to be in? And, you know, power we've seen, especially in the United States, it can land on an individual as, you know, a mantle as it did on this president in January. and it can evaporate, just like Joe Biden in that disastrous debate performance, poof, it's gone.

Or I'll give you another Joe, Joe McCarthy. You know, everybody was afraid of Joe McCarthy until he went that one step too far, you know, taking on the army, for heaven's sakes. And when he was exposed as not being all powerful and people didn't need to be afraid of him, then suddenly they turned on them. And, of course, the same people who had supported him at the past voted to censure him. But that's the point. If you're reigning only by fear, then at some point when the fear, then at some point when the fear, is no longer there. You can't really call on reservoirs of, you're certainly not going to call

on reservoirs of loyalty because Trump's never been loyal to anyone. We should mention, however, also that another big fracas within the Republican Party or movement in recent times has been this whole thing kicked off by Tucker Carlson allowing or inviting Nick Fuentes onto his program and basically giving them a tongue bath. It's been fascinating watching people who have been quite willing to indulge in the most intolerant, xenophobic, bigoted statements about all kinds of things, suddenly deciding that actual Nazis are too far. And how on earth did this come into our movement? But interesting, though, the president was, as usual, nonplussed and noncommittal,

either about condemning or endorsing. Well, and his usual thing of, I don't know Fuentes. He had him to the White House for dinner. But this is his kind of mob boss line all the time is, well, I don't know this person. And people need to make their minds up. I never met. I know. Teach the controversy.

So, yeah, I mean, but drawing the line actual Nazis after your party has put troops in the streets, are arresting visible minorities off the streets and putting them in prison camps, shuddering Congress or ignoring Congress. I mean, it's comical seeing them get religion all of a sudden. As I say, it's certainly comical watching Marjor and Taylor Green deciding that people need to be kind to each other and we need to have a lot less of this nastiness in our politics. It's fun to watch. let's put that way. So to bring this back to Canada, you've been arguing in our conversations for a number of months now that we should not be hurrying to an agreement with this administration. That precisely what is happening now is what you were suggesting over the summer in our conversations

that we should be anticipating the air kind of seeping out of the Trump balloon and the presidency deflating. And as it deflates, either his willingness to reach a better deal with us or our ability to continue to hold off to, frankly, I don't know, wait until the midterms, wait until there's potentially allies in Congress who have control over one or both the Senate or the House of representatives who believe in free trade or who have a understanding of the importance of the Canada, U.S. relationship and are willing to prevent the president from vandalizing in the way that he has for the last nine months. Yeah. I mean, just because the president's weakened, however, doesn't mean he's not dangerous. And in fact, he may become more dangerous as a result. I mean, you and I have

talked about this. I think he's on a spiral anyway of getting just progressively worse and worse and worse for various, mostly psychological reasons. But when you are also weakened politically, many politicians will be quite dangerous at that point. We'll lash out. We'll seek to create external threats. We'll seek to unite people against a common foe. And you could well imagine, without a lot of difficulty, the kinds of links Trump will go internally

to try to change the subject, to try to focus attention on the designated enemy of the week. And you could certainly see him doing something crazy with Canada. So we're dealing with a madman, frankly. And yeah, you want to keep a madman talking, but you also want to be conscious of, you know, until he puts down the gun, you haven't dissolved the threat. Just to end on that, the predations of Donald Trump right now look directed towards Maduro

in Venezuela. We have a full U.S. carrier strike group now in the Caribbean. Secretary of State Marco Rubio has designated Maduro as a leader of a drug carteller group, which they've identified in Venezuela. You can take that as fact or not. Is this a conspicuous case of Wag the Dog here, which is about to unfold? And does that, again, set, as you say,

a more dangerous precedent for this presidency going forward, which is when he is confronted by an acute threat at home, in this case, the Epstein files, he's reaching for dangerous military involvement abroad. Yesterday, he was talking about striking Mexico. They've now killed, I think, 80 people, something like that in the Caribbean. No evidence that they were a threat of any kind. He's talked about putting resuming nuclear tests, which haven't been going for 30, 40 years, maybe longer.

So, yeah, this is somebody who does not respect any known limits. And we have to keep making this point. We cannot discount any possibility with this person. He does not conform to rational self-interest, to logic, to, you know, the safety of the world. And I would not at all put past them the idea that they could do something in Venezuela. I mean, I would not weep a single tear at the fall of the Maduro regime, but the notion that the Americans would go in and topple them, I think that's not a particularly useful or wise use of U.S. resources.

President of Columbia indicating possibly that the Colombian military would intervene on the side of Venezuela. And here you are into regional conflict. And, of course, he was talking about sending troops. into Nigeria. Of course, we forget about that. And that's the thing, of course, is Trump says so many crazy things that in any normal president announcing that you were going to go in guns of blazing into Nigeria would just set off an absolute extraordinary ruckus. And Trump happens and people go, oh, well, he's crazy. So why should I pay much attention beyond five minutes? Yeah. Just finally,

to wrap up this section of the show for complimentary listeners and viewers, the security resolution on Trump's, Trump administration's Gaza plan, a international stabilization force. In all this chaos, Andrew, it seems like on this one file, we possibly can be somewhat hopeful that something better is happening as opposed to what was, frankly, an intolerable and unacceptable situation in Gaza

prior to the president's active involvement and engagement with Benjamin Netanyahu and with regional players to bring about a ceasefire, which has held to some extent with, you know, violations or incursions on either side. Is this one area where, for whatever set of circumstances, this president and this administration is actually doing something right? I would love to be able to say yes, but, I mean, come on. The things that are really conditioning events in the Middle East are things that have nothing to do with Trump or only sideways to do with. First of all, the turn of a number of Arab states towards Israel and against Hamas, putting out a resolution signed by all of them basically saying,

Hamas cannot be part of any post-war settlement. That's unprecedented. That was in the works long before Trump. Secondly, the peace settlement, quote-unquote, that has his name on it, is very similar to what was put out under Biden, which Trump then put a hold on because he wanted to get the credit for things. mostly the reaction when he brought it out for most people was, well, thank goodness he didn't mess it up. So behaving at a sort of a baseline level that you'd expect from American president is a classic example of Trump lowering expectations enough that he can step over it. I think you can probably give him some credit for in the first term, the Abram Accords. You know, I think he invested some capital in that.

And that is, I think, part of the deep foundations of where we're at now. And the other thing you might be able to give him some credit for, it's, kind of a double-ed sword is giving Netanyahu a free hand in the war. Now that obviously led to some terrible atrocities. It went to a point that Israeli public opinion was exhausted and had reached the point where they said, this is elite opinion, this is military and intelligence opinion saying there's no point in pressing on further with this. We're not getting any serious military gain from it at the cost of huge loss of life, huge loss of reputation for Israel. So that was about to happen anyway, I think, just out of sheer exhaustion. But maybe you could argue that a more

moderate president would have been trying to rein Netanyahu in and therefore would have put off the day at which that exhaustion would sit in. I don't know. It kind of reminds me people used to make kind of a sideways argument that Jimmy Carter was actually responsible for the fall of the Soviet Union because he kind of let the Soviets go into Afghanistan and they have exhausted them. But you're starting to get a little too cute. Three D chess. That's right. Andrew, we're going to say goodbye to our Complementary listeners and viewers, you've thankfully agreed to stay on with our monk donors to have a conversation about Canadian politics. A big budget has finally passed. There was some fun parliamentary theatrics that Andrew will break down in the context of his new book, A Crisis of Canadian Democracy.

Shout out to that and we'll put a link to it in our show notes. So back with our monk donors after this short break. Thank you for listening to the first half of Andrew Coins' Monk Dialogue. If you'd like to get the full program, consider becoming a monk donor. You can do that for as little as $50 a year, a buck a week. You also get a charitable tax receipt for your contribution to the monk debates. And you get access to our popular Friday program, Friday Focus with Janice Gross Stein. Sign up for all of your unique membership perks and privileges at triplew.

Munk MUNK Debates with an S.com, click on the join button on the top right hand corner of the screen. Thanks in advance for your generous support. The Monk debates are a project of the Aurea and Peter and Melanie Monk Charitable Foundations. Rudyard Griffiths and Ricky Gerowitz are the producers. Be sure to download and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. And if you like us, feel free to give us a five-stri- rating. Thank you again for listening.