The Munk Debates Podcast - Trump's military speech ramblings should concern every Canadian

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Rudyard and Andrew unpack the speeches made this week by U.S. Secretary of Defense Hegseth and President Trump to over 800 military generals. Trump indicated he wants to use American cities as training grounds to fight the enemy within. In plain terms, he wants to stick the military on dissenters in the United States. How much more alarming could this get? What purer definition of fascism is there? There has already been a purge in the senior ranks of the military, and it seems we are about to witness more. Do these generals carry out the orders of their commander-in-chief, or disobey unlawful commands? And what are the consequences of disobeying? Rudyard and Andrew then turn to Trump's suggestion - once again - of Canada becoming the 51st American state. Rudyard believes this is part of an attempt to get Canada to contribute financially to the Golden Dome defense shield. Is Trump making this a condition of a new trade agreement? Do Canadians still see Mark Carney as the leader best qualified to stand up to Trump and negotiate a good trade deal? And finally, how do we make Canada an attractive location for investment to withstand uncertainty from the U.S.?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.

There's a madman in the White House who really is the fulfillment of every paranoid fever dream of Canadian nationalists from decades past. It's just that they were applying these dreams to people like Mitt Romney, you know, George Bush, who would never have dreamed of doing anything sort of the Trump is doing. Roger Griffiths here at the Monk Debates. Welcome to our latest dialogue with Andrew Coyne, columnist at The Globe and Mail. I'm on the road this week, so Andrew is excusing me for being in the studio. Andrew, great to catch up with you. Nice to talk to you as well, Reggie. A couple topics to dig into in this week's show.

I think first we want to take up the rambling, so much shambolic address of the president to his legion. I don't know. What is a legion? A thousand. Maybe it wasn't a legion. But a lot of generals in Virginia this week where he once again, it's been a while, Andrew.

We've been blessed from some silence from the president in terms of rhetoric around the 51st state, but it was on display at this speech. So I want to talk to you about your takeaways from the speech. And then we can zero in on maybe why Canada is surfacing again and why possibly the Golden Dome is responsible for this. But first, Andrew, give us your sense of this occasion, these generals, what the president did and why possibly. It all seems like a bit of a mystery to this day. It was certainly a mystery to the assembled generals. You know, what could possibly necessitate having them all leave their theaters of operation around the world, all of the senior level of, you know, one-star generals and up, as I understand it,

800 of them from all over the world, all in one place, first of all, which is a security risk. Taking them all from their major operations was a security risk of another kind. It's just hard to imagine what could possibly necessitate that in the age of what we're doing now, Zoom calls. I mean, they have highly secure conference calls, the most secure in the world. The most consequential, important, significant meeting, it would be hard to imagine why you'd have to get them all in a room. But to do so, to hear, first of all, the Secretary for War, as he likes to call himself, Pete Hegseth, who never made it past major, as I understand it, first give a speech in which he lectured them all about how woke the military become.

and kind of read off a litany of things that, you know, the average guy you run into a bar would complain about the military or would say the military needs to do. We got to take these pussyfoot and rules off about rules of war and just let them do their thing. And, you know, we can't have women in combat. And, you know, just this endless litany of just mostly made-up grievances. What the assembled generals could possibly have imagined, what must have been going through their minds, is listening to this pipsqueak, former Fox News host, ranting on to them about how much more he knows about the military than them. It was just extraordinary on its own.

But as others have said, you're going to have to bracket the Trump speech with the Hegson speech. Because Trump comes on and mostly just rambles, as you say, just in absolutely incoherent, quite nutty style. Because we come to expect it, nobody is alarmed by it. Anybody watching that speech, you have to come away saying the guy is gone, the brain is gone. But with a deadly serious message in the middle of it all, which is that he wants the military to be, I believe the phrase he used was to use the America cities as training courses or training grounds for war fighting abroad, for the war, quote unquote, that he wants them to fight against, quote, unquote, the enemy within. So put those two together.

Again, I'm not the first person to say this. We need to take all the rules of engagement off the military and let them just be nasty people who kill people and break things for a living, as Heggs has said. And Trump's saying, and let them do that in the cities of America. I don't know how much more alarming it can get. I don't think it could be any clearer. And Trump was very deliberate and explicit

in what he was telling me wanted to do is he wants to sick the military on dissenters in the United States. states? What pure definition of fascism is there? An observation, and then let's go a little bit deeper into the kind of the menace behind both speeches. I guess on a positive note, I think what was notable was the decorum of the flag officers, that they hewed to convention, which is that they showed respect to the president standing on his entrance and standing on his exit, but probably almost to the number. They

were impassive. They barely reacted to the speech. It was actually kind of interesting to see the president having to struggle with that to an audience that wasn't, you know, a kind of sycophantic group of mega supporters. So I guess, Andrew, what I'm trying to get into my head is you're a flag officer. There's a chain of command. He is the commander in chief. What do you think when you go away as a flag officer, having listened to a speech like that, what are your thoughts about about that chain of command, about a crisis possibly in the future and orders that will come down through President Trump to Pete HECF to these officers when both your Secretary of War, not Secretary of Defense, and your president, you know, at best seem incoherent, at worst,

seemed to, as you suggest, be pursuing some kind of argument with you about how, you the military needs to come to the aid of America, not against foreign enemies, but against, you know, domestic foes. And let's, again, people who think this is hyperbole, the most chilling parts of Trump's speech is when he, you know, walks through in a kind of kids' storybook view of American history and elicits these examples of military action force inside the United States over the course of its history, as if to normalize this behavior now in the present. So what do you make, Andrew, both of the officers' reaction? And then, again, the menace that was kind of implied both by the Secretary of War

and by the president. It would have been much more newsworthy if they had responded and much more troubling if it had been a positive response. Their protocol is you don't applaud at political speeches. This is really drummed into them, particularly the officer. core level, that you swear or not to the constitution, not to any political leader. Everything I've ever seen says they take that deadly seriously. And so I think even if they had been in high approval of what they were hearing, I would

think and would hope that they would have responded the same way. We can't know for sure what their attitude. I mean, I have two theories about this. One is, these guys are trained professionals. They're an awfully impressive bunch. anytime you ever run into a senior American military officer, they're incredibly well-trained. These guys would have had years and years of experience

and you would think very little time whatsoever for this kind of game playing and fantasy world that Pete Higgis and Donald Trump represented. Leave aside the ominous thing. We'll get back to that. The contrasting theory is Trump appeals to a certain kind of guy. He appeals to sports guys.

You see this over and over. People, superstars you think would know better wind up endorsing him. He appeals to police guys, guys who, you know, have sworn to uphold the law, line up to grin with him with this serial lawbreaker. And he appeals to young army guys. They'll yell boo yada. Because they're not looking very closely, let me suggest, at the actual record of the guy. They're just picking up a vibe.

And there's something about, you know, a broader thing of a certain type of America. there's something about a vibe of him that tells them, this is my theory anyway, you know, it's a competitive dog-eat-dog world where only the tough survive, and this guy gets that, and I'm kind of all about that. And so therefore, you know, I'm going to, yeah, I don't approve of everything you've done, but I'm kind of in the same zone. And as I say, you certainly see evidence of that amongst the, you know, 19-year-old troops. are there officers who should know better

who are also tempted that I don't know. So that's point one. Point two is we shouldn't understate the degree of menace in the speech towards the officer corps, both from Hegzeth and from Trump. Hegseth said at one point,

if your heart sinks while you're listening to this, then you need to do the honorable thing and resign. So I'm laying down the law about how we're going to approach the military in the time, you know, as we go forward, like it or lump it, shape up or ship out, or suck up or ship out, which would be Trump's thing. Because Trump's message was, I'm going to meet with these guys, you know, and if I don't like any of them,

I'm going to sack them on the spot. So, you know, there are clearly, there have already been, there's already been something of a purge in the senior ranks of the military. It seems to me we're likely to see more, either because Trump and Hegisith themselves take people out who they don't think are on side with the program or because officers resigned because they cannot in good conscience pursue the course that they're being told.

And I think we're headed for dark days for the American society and for the military because they're already being given arguably lawless instructions against the Popsie Comitatis Act that you can't use the military for law enforcement. So arguably, at least, They're already being put in a state of being given illegal orders. And there's certainly been, would seem to me to have been illegal orders involved in shooting and destroying these little boats, you know, off of Venezuela, where there's no evidence that these were, even if they were drug runners, I don't think you can just slaughter people without a trial.

But it seems, at least in some of these cases, that they weren't drug runners or people smugglers. they were just fishermen. And not nearly enough attention has been paid to this because those were war crimes or crimes anyway, that the people who carried them out are as guilty of as the president who ordered it because there's no defense of I was just following orders. And so I think what Trump was warning, advising these generals was I've got more things like that coming down the pike than I'm going to tell you to do. and it's going to be a real test for the military is do they carry out these illegal orders?

Do they disobey unlawful orders as their military code instructs them to do? And if they do, what are the consequences for those that refuse to carry them out? I think you're exactly right, Andrew. I think this speech, if you want to imply some kind of evil genius to the president's ramblings, it is to set up a message of, I told you so. I told you what I was going to do. You're now disobeying me, and you're off to the brig. And the next guy or next woman, not maybe in Pete Hicks as Department of War,

the next officer's up and the same order is given, and your choice is the brig or follow what the commander-in-chief says. So I think there's often a temptation. I do this at times to kind of take the president's shambolic rhetoric and demeanor as somehow just noise. But I did sense with this speech, and that's where I want to go next, was to the reference to Canada for the first time in a while. We've now heard another musing about the 51st state. This was in the context of the so-called Golden Dome, which is, of course, how Trump would decide to describe an intercontinental ballistic defense system for North America.

Andrew's significant that he waits months to revisit one of his favorite slights against Canada and does it in front of basically the commanders of his military. Was that just pure coincidence? You know, his descriptions of Canada is weak. It seems a kind of flashback to the spring. And I wonder what you think might have precipitated that. Was it the audience? Was it something off stage that we're unaware of?

And obviously we can't speculate. I don't know, Andrew. I always wonder if these things are just coincidence or if they're, you know, but at the same time, I want to be careful about reading too much into it. Yeah, I mean, you do have to be careful. Just before I get to that,

just let me finish off one thought about why they called all these guys in person to that meeting. I think I've seen some say, well, they wanted a backdrop. They wanted an impressive sight. I think it was a domination exercise. 100%. It was a humiliation exercise.

Yeah. I'm going to make you sit there and listen to me. While I tell you to do things that you're not allowed to do, that probably every fiber of your professional training tells you not to do, and I'm going to make you sit here and listen to me. So that may solve that particular riddle. I do think you want to be careful. If I, you know, Trump says things more or less at random.

It's entirely possible that the Canada thing just popped into his head as he was riffing. It is hard even for Trump. And I know, I think we've talked about this, you have to avoid the temptation to ascribe to Trump normal motives, normal modes of thinking. I'll make it a hostage to fortune here. It is hard for me to imagine even Trump could be thinking that he could somehow, carry off any kind of military action against Canada. Certainly not an invasion. What I do worry about, which I think we've talked about before, is more the absence of military action by the United States in the event that somebody decides to start testing our sovereignty claims in the North. I mean,

we've had versions of this with the Americans themselves when it comes to relatively benign things like sailing through the Northwest Passes. But I really think, this century may, sometime this century, sooner rather than later, we may find that our assumption, our cozy assumption, that we could maintain our claim to the second largest landmass in the world, which has always basically been predicated on the fact on the Monroe Doctrine, that the Americans would not tolerate any intrusion by another power into our soil, may prove to be illusory, that somebody at some point is going to set up shop in the North and just see what we do about it and see what the Americans do about it.

And it may be the Americans who set up the shop. And certainly I could imagine Trump saying, well, give me a piece of the action. Yeah. Or Canada, what are you going to pay me to protect? You know, this is a, you know, we've had a great run for 150 years. But I think looking forward, we have to be thinking about how do we protect our soil. How do we maintain our sovereignty over in the most territorial sense of the word? Yeah. So such a great segue to the Golden Dome itself, because it seems to cut both ways that

on one sense, you know, Canada has under previous governments like the Martin government, had to consider and ultimately reject the idea of, you know, staging missile defense systems inside Canadian territory as an assertion of Canadian sovereignty. I don't think it's a For instance, though, that the president both around the election and in the context of the supposed renegotiation of the trading relationship with Canada has repeatedly flagged the Golden Dome, a project that could run from $150 billion to half a trillion dollars, and a kind of a shakedown scheme, vis-a-vis Canada paying for a portion, a not insignificant amount, to be covered by this so-called Golden Dome. A completely unproven technology at this point.

We have no idea whether it can, in fact, defend us against an intercontinental ballistic missile attack. So how are we to think about the Golden Dome? Because I don't think it's going to go away. The president alluded, again, you have no idea if this is real or not, but that he had been talking to the Canadians, presumably Mark Carney, about the Golden Dome as recently as the last few weeks. So is this a Trojan horse, Andrew? Is this something under a different administration and other context we might well have considered and it might have well have been in our interest?

Right. And maybe under Trump, at least this would be my view. I think we have to think of the Golden Dome very carefully in terms of what it would mean, what it would signal actually about our sovereignty and about our ability to, quote, defend ourselves, whether against the United States or anybody else. It is a deeper integration into continental security orchestrated and organized by the American. at large. Yeah. I'm not, we've had this discussion before.

I'm not as troubled by that idea in principle as you are. I think continental defense has all, well, since the Second World War has been basically the tradition between our two countries. We are in a very different world than we were for most of the post-war era in that nuclear proliferation is now a fact.

We're no longer talking about a kind of a stable prisoner's dilemma of game theory with the Soviets. We're now looking at actors like North Korea who are just vastly unstable, not able to hit us probably with a missile today, but they're getting lots of funding from China and who knows what they'll be capable of all in the future. So we do have to be thinking seriously about seemingly implausible threats. I agree with you that the ballistic missile defense is a long way to go before it is probably practicable. but I'm not offended by the idea in principle. I think it's also probably true, as you're saying, it'll be vastly expensive.

But at some point, it may come on stream where it's a practical reality, and I don't have any objection to Canada, in principle, to being part of that. But I suspect that's not going to happen for a long time to come. So that's the good news, is I don't think we're going to be facing

a decision with Donald Trump in the presidency, if there's a God in heaven. But you don't think, Andrew, that he's tying this to, he's making it a condition of a trade agreement, of a renegotiation of Kuzma. It's up there in his wish list with supply management, with, you know, whatever bill in Canada related to the regulation of American big tech. This is one of his demands. He seems to be continuing to assert it. And I don't think the timing is coincidental.

But he's also saying he won't give it to us unless we pay him. a whack of dough. So, you know, he seems to be talking, if what you're saying is accurate, then he's talking at two sides of his mouth because it's hard to demand it and then also say, but I'm not going to give it to you unless you, unless you pony up. Or unless you join as the 51st day, which is what he said and his speech. I suspect we can stiff arm that with any serious negotiating. But what I think, what I was going to go with was this, I think this, what it points. points to, that's much more troubling to me is, and this to me has always been the worry with Trump

more than annexation or invasion or thing, is vassalization, is attempting to circumscribe our foreign defense policy options, our defense policy options, our trade policy options, towards the rest of the world, and force them into an American mold. Obviously, to some extent they always have been, but the free trade agreement was a free trade agreement, not a customs union. We were free to strike any trade arrangement we wanted with other countries. And we saw during the first negotiation, renegotiation of NAFTA, the Americans basically telling us we couldn't strike a free trade treaty with China. Well, you know, we don't want to strike a free trade treaty with China these days with their current leadership, or we certainly

shouldn't want to. But how far are they prepared to push this now that Trump is completely unleashed and unhinged? What kinds of demands are they going to be making? in that regard, and not just in terms of external policies, but at what point does resource policy? I mean, I'm going to sound like Maude Barlow here. But, you know, it's not that Maude was right. It's that Trump is a once-in-a-millenium disaster. There's a madman in the White House who really is the fulfillment of every paranoid fever dream of Canadian nationalists from decades past.

It's just that they were applying these dreams to people like Mitt Romney, you know, George Bush. who would never have dreamed of doing anything of the sort of the Trump is doing. How do you think this plays in Canada? I know in the past these remarks, I think, were deeply worrying for Canadians. I think they had a big effect on the election outcome in April of this year. If the president resurfaces this rhetoric, how does that impact us politically? What does it do in terms of this parliament, maybe the budget, the reaction of the budget? I think it's quite consequential.

I think that you and I were joking before you came on air about our kind of strange kind of sadomasochistic relationship with this president that we were a bit petrified, understand it, a little bit scared when we're the focus of attention. But then when he ignores us, we equally wonder about the silence. And he has this horrible way, I think, with all of us of kind of dominating our attention. Well, and how could he not? Look, you know, we used to say to ourselves, if we were smart, anyway, the line used to be, if you had to live next to a superpower, which other superpower would you want to live next to?

We were just in this remarkable, talk about a golden dome, you know, we had our defense paid for by another country. You know, the worst that we imagined of them if we were sensible was, oh, they're not paying enough attention to us or they're sending us too many movies or these kinds of relatively trivial complaints. And meanwhile, we were selling, you know, resources and exports by the gazillion to them and prospering mightily by our proximity to the greatest superpower of the world had ever known. Well, when that superpower, when that best friend, closest neighbor, largest trading partner and historic protector turns into an adversary, then our whole world has been

turned inside out and upside down. There's just no two ways about it. We have always been able to assume since 1867, admittedly in the aftermath of the U.S. Civil War, that we would have a stable, united, democratic country to our South that we wouldn't have to worry about. Wouldn't have to worry about it directly causing trouble for us by sending in trips or what have you, and wouldn't have to worry about its own internal stability, that it would remain a rock of stability in a world of turmoil. Well, we can't assume that either. The Americans are heading into a really dark and divisive period.

You don't have to call up civil war images, but certainly civil disorder, I think is almost inevitable to go back to our previous conversation. Both the prospect of overt interference in our operations, whether just by threats or what have you, and internal instability, these are things we've never had to really seriously contemplate. So, of course, they will, they affect everything. They affect our trade policy. It affects our economic policy. But, you know, particularly when you have a president who is also enacting massively destabilizing crazy economic policies, whether from tariffs to running up the deficit to massive amounts, to monetizing the debt by interfering with the Federal Reserve, all these things

create enormous risks on the economic horizon that you would never previously have had to work into your calculations. And lo and behold, we're doing this at a time when our finances are rapidly destabilizing. So, yeah, it cannot help being a major part of our politics. It certainly should be. People should not kid themselves that because for a couple of weeks Donald Trump doesn't talk about annexation, that the threat has gone away. And the really confounding thing, as we've been discussing now for several months, is there's no clear-cut answer.

as to what is the policy that you pursue in the face of it. It really puts a premium on judgment and political skill at the leadership level. And, you know, I think that's problematic for the conservatives, frankly. We'll see. Maybe people will pale on Mark Carney as time goes on if he's not seen to be delivering the goods. But certainly in that election in the spring, people had a good look at the conservative leader and the liberal leader, the new one. and they decided they thought the liberal leader looked more like somebody who had the necessary personal skills and personal qualities to handle this kind of situation.

And certainly that has to be the focus for the conservative leader is persuading people that he's also that guy or better that guy. If you're enjoying the Monk Debates podcast, come over to our website at triple W monkdebates.com. That's MUNK DebateswithanS.com and check out our free Monk membership. As a complimentary monk member, you get all kinds of great perks and benefits, access to our weekly email, summarizing our best debates, and ticketing privileges at our main stage debates, special news information, and offers all courtesy of the Monk debates. You can grab your complimentary monk membership again right now at triple w monkdebates.com. Simply look to the top

navigation on the website and follow the links. Thanks in advance for joining our community. We've seen a threat again from the president this week of a 100% tariff on movies made outside of the United States, which have a huge impact on Toronto and Vancouver. We've seen an additional 10% tariff on our softwood lumber. Shameless plug, another organization I'm involved with the hub where on the publisher, we had an interview with Daniel Smith. the Premier of Alberta and Pete Hoixstra, the ambassador to Canada from the United States.

The ambassador indicating that he saw a high probability that any kind of trade agreement with Canada would be pushed off until after the midterms, 27. Andrew, how do we manage this? It just seems like it's a kind of death by a thousand cuts we're getting chipped away at and any type of resolution that would remove the uncertainty hanging over the economy, which the president in his speech this week seemed to indicate, in his view, is making Canada a week. And I think you can make an argument that we are losing manufacturing jobs already to the United States. This trade uncertainty has a real cost.

What do we do? 2027 seems like an eternity from now. Yeah. And we've talked about this before, and let me just quickly restate. I don't think we should be focused. everything on trade negotiations. This is not a rational negotiating partner with a serious set of demands and some assurance that we're ultimately heading to the same direction. Usually in trade negotiations, whatever protectionist nonsense goes on, both sides basically understand

that they want to get to a more free trading arrangement. He doesn't. Point one. Point two, we have no assurance that he'll make good on any promises he makes. If he makes any promises, You just can't trust them in any way, shape, or form. So I don't think we should be putting a lot of eggs in that basket. I think what we need to be doing is trumpproofing, if you will, our economy to the extent that we can. And what I mean by that is, you're talking about, you know, to the extent to which investment decisions are being shifted back into the states because of the uncertainty and the tariff thing is we've got to make ourselves such an attractive location for investment that you can withstand even that. And that's not an impossible thing to do. It's difficult.

But if we're hyper-competitive, for example, on our tax rates, if we make ourselves, you know, in every conceivable way, an attractive location for investment, there must be a point at which you can overcome at least some of that drag from Trump's actions for at least some businesses. You know, the different ones will make estimations at different points along a curve. And I think that, to me, is a much more, is something we have to be doing anyway because of the productivity crisis that we're in.

We're now growing at only 1.5% per annum on average after inflation. And if you back out immigration, our growth is probably zero or negative. It could be. That's right. We'll have to see. But at a time when we're facing a huge buildup in our defense spending, when we're facing a rapidly aging population and all of that means for health care costs, particularly for the provinces. You know, the time when we most need faster growth, growth is cratering. This is another emergency. Let me throw another thing

on the plate. Yeah, yeah. Another shrimp on the Barbie. We've got potential separatist threats now in two provinces. I mean, one, I take a little more seriously than the other, but they're both potentially serious, more or less simultaneously. You know, the PQ could well become the government of Quebec next year. But here's the beyond the fact that there's now two problems, it's here's the other wild card. We've got a president of the United States who one could well imagine giving aid and comfort to one or both of them. We've got, you know, we've got, it's like Charles de Gaulle, you know, yelling Vive la Quebec Libra.

That was on one visit. You could well imagine Trump doing the same. So that is just a completely unprecedented type of threat. And I just saw a story where some of these Alberta separatist lunes were down in Washington, but to their telling, having meetings with cabinet-level officers. Now, maybe they're exaggerating, but maybe they're not. Andrew, I just want to end with a short immemorial friend of ours, someone that you went to university with that had a big impact. on me in terms of public policy and the monk debates had played a role and formally as an

advisor to the Oriya Foundation and the established among the monk debates was our friend Nigel Wright who passed away unexpectedly this week. I just wanted if you wanted to say a few words about Nigel, his contribution to public discourse in Canada and a sadness that is passing but also a life of impact and consequence? I think the reactions that you've seen across party lines from, it's remarkable, the unanimity and the same themes emerge of manifest decency, brilliance, hard work, and integrity. Now, I'm in a peculiar position because I was critical of him, even though we were friends going back to university days, for this one mistake that I think he made in the matter of the Mike Duffy payment. But I never lost my admiration for him as a person. And I don't

think anybody did. I think it was widely seen. Either people didn't think he was bad at all and he shouldn't apologize. But those of us who thought it was a mistake, it was a mistake. Even people in the very peak of things can in the heat of the battle or the, you know, with a million things on his desk, make an error. But I can tell you, going back to university days, you know, I was lucky enough to be in a very talented class at Trinity. There were a lot of people who came out of there and went on to do big things. And there were a lot of very, very bright people and accomplished people. But if you ask anybody who was there at the time, we all thought Nigel was going to be the next prime minister or, you know, even better, the chief of staff, the prime minister.

We all knew that Nigel was the one who was going to do the biggest things. He just gave off that, you know, aura. So it's absolutely dumbfounding. He was 62, looked 35. you know, ran a half marathon three times a week, something like that. But it's just one of those awful, bitter things that when your number comes up, your number comes up. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway, we do acknowledge and thank him at the Monk debates for his early advice to the Muck Foundation, the role that he played on our advisory board, and just the wise counsel and advice that he gave me informally over many, many years. So Nigel, you are missed. Andrew, we're going to leave the show there. Thank you so much for coming on and accommodating my travel schedule this week. I will see you in the studio. I hope at least all be in the studio next week and look forward to continuing these dialogues with you.

See you next week. Thank you for listening to this version of Mug Dialogues on Roger Griffiths Chair of Muck Debates. Please head over to our podcast channel and join the quarter of a million people or so downloading our podcasts each month. We really appreciate your comments and reviews. so keep those coming. Check out our YouTube page. 90,000 subscribers and counting. We must be doing something right. Tons of great debates on there. Past dialogues with Andrew and my friend Janice Stein. You can get the first part of her and my conversation each week on international affairs as part of our Friday Focus show free on YouTube. Until next time, I'm Rudyard Griffith. Bye bye.

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