Transcript
SPEAKER_02
0:03
This is The Strategist, episode 802. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Chaz, how are you?
Corey
0:11
Pretty good, Zain. It is yet
Corey
0:13
yet another day in paradise. It is cloudy. It is gloomy. We're not allowed to leave our basements. And Stephen Carter continues to be irrelevant.
SPEAKER_02
0:22
I mean, nothing makes me happier than Stephen's irrelevance and the rain. Stephen, how are you doing?
Carter
0:27
I'm doing great. It
SPEAKER_02
0:28
It doesn't matter because you're irrelevant.
SPEAKER_02
0:37
you doing you weren't you weren't here last week for the last week's episode you were of course i wasn't
Carter
0:41
wasn't feeling good i wasn't you called us you
SPEAKER_02
0:44
you called us each about a dozen times claiming you had covet and said that the tests were wrong and that alberta was being run by some fascists because their tests uh were were providing uh false negatives listen
Carter
0:55
listen i i'm I'm still a big fan of the nasal swab. This throat swab crap is not nearly as accurate. Not nearly as accurate.
SPEAKER_02
1:03
Stephen is a changed man, having now recovered from COVID. I'm so glad. Corey, you doing well?
Corey
1:09
It's, you know, it continues to grate,
Corey
1:14
grate, the fact that I have to do a podcast with you two each week. But other than that, I'm doing pretty good. Good.
SPEAKER_02
1:19
Good. Let's move it on to our first segment. Our first segment.
SPEAKER_02
1:22
You're watching this motherfucker. That's right. That's right. I want to talk about Donald Trump. It's been a while since we've talked about Donald Trump. And by a while, I mean since last week. Guys, let's zoom out a bit this week, because I want to talk about his overall strategy and a pulse check on how it's working. So this week, he talks about how he himself is taking hydroxychloroquine, memeing out posts about Mitt Romney, sucking up all the oxygen at those press conferences.
SPEAKER_02
1:50
Basic question, Corey, is this this still working is this still the right political strategy for donald trump i
Corey
1:57
i guess i mean the guy is his
Corey
2:00
his lowest approval rating has been 37 and his highest 45 in the past what
Corey
2:05
what almost three years at this point so what
Corey
2:08
what are you gonna say i mean obviously it's still working and and even as americans are dying by the tens of thousands he gets right now on 538 i'm looking Looking at it, his approval rating is 43.7%, which in some sense, like, hey, that's less than 50%. Four in ten, more than four in ten Americans give this guy a pass? That is nuts. So, I mean, obviously it's still working. He's just keeping everybody spinning.
Corey
2:35
maybe that should disappoint us. It certainly disappoints me. But it really, I think, just speaks to the guy could do anything. Nobody cares. Everybody's in their corner. They're all fighting their fight. They're ignoring each other. And they're speaking to their bases. So
SPEAKER_02
2:47
So the same health check as before. Carter, for you, what do you think? Is this is this still the right thing to do? And, you know, listen, we're not too far away from an election now. So this 43 percent in a mobilized base is one thing. But can he continue on this path?
Carter
3:02
Well, I mean, he won. And he won using this strategy of being the reality show candidate. Now he's the reality show president. And he is speaking only to his base. And he is polarizing the other side and making Nancy Pelosi and Joe Biden turn into these people
Carter
3:24
people who only speak to their side. so the reason he's got 43.7 is that the group of people who are saying who are that 43.7 are saying i'm not even going to pay attention to the other side i'm not even going to listen to what they have to say because they just hate donald trump and
Carter
3:40
and so if you don't have truth anymore and you just have tribalism then it's very easy to for him to hold on to the very small group of people that still like him cory
SPEAKER_02
3:50
cory do you agree with it do you feel like that's what he's doing it
Corey
3:53
i you know i always wonder what donald trump i always have since we first started talking about him in the primaries as a serious candidate serious used in a very different sense than i normally use it how much of this is intentional and how much is just like he's he's like a
Corey
4:09
you know it's instinct he's he's an animal trapped in a corner and he lashes out he does crazy things and then we say oh how very clever of that fox to bite that person's finger you know but the
Corey
4:20
the thing that I think that both sides really need to think about, at least the reasonable sides of both sides need to think about is how much fodder they are giving to
Corey
4:29
to the other, like from a base point of view. So you mentioned Pelosi there. Pelosi calls him morbidly obese the other day.
Corey
4:37
Probably not wise. That's going to run in right wing Twitter. I mean, he's not I mean, he's a fat guy. He's not morbidly obese, at least not as it's defined in any kind of clinical sense. and there's
Corey
4:49
there's just so much exaggeration and so much naughtiness and there's so much bad behavior that it becomes very easy to find excuses to tune the other side out and um as long as that's going on yeah they're just gonna say this is my brand this is this is my team i'm
Corey
5:07
i'm with these guys ride or die with donald trump and the republican party well
Carter
5:14
further than that too because it means that we're not talking about the right things he fired his fourth inspector general on friday another late night purge on friday night getting rid of people who are investigating him or his team he fired his fourth one this is four that's a lot and he's and he fired him and what we're talking about today he's morbidly obese and he's taking some drug i mean zane the fact that you were able to say the name of that drug i gotta tell you that's pro you're very pro i take
SPEAKER_02
5:45
so yeah no i have to yeah
Carter
5:51
we're talking about those things because that's the trump playbook oh i did something shitty i'll do something even more shitty but it's only going to last three days and no one's going to be able to remember because our collective memory is about 14 seconds with this guy who continues to set off nuclear bombs boom another new thing boom another new thing that's his whole modus operandi i'm
SPEAKER_02
6:12
i'm hearing from both of you it's still working And before I get into Pelosi and Biden, which I want to do in a second, let's talk very quickly about the media. Corey, if you're providing comms advice, strategic advice to a media outlet in the States right now, and of course, you cannot provide the journalistic sort of like what you need to do, but how would you tell them to cover this thing? How would you tell them to put the right stuff on air, online? What would that look like? Oh,
Corey
6:35
Oh, look, I think one of the challenges here, and I mean, not
Corey
6:38
not to get like so
Corey
6:40
so basic and cliche about this, is that they are listening to people like me. They are thinking about it from a comms point of view, what sells, right? It's not really about holding
Corey
6:49
holding people to account. It never has been, by the way. It's not like newspapers in the 18th century were like these, you
Corey
6:55
you know, these public works that were paragons of virtue. They were like these shitty muckraking rags that talked about what bastards everybody was and they sold them to their partisan audiences. And so let's not like, you know, pretend otherwise. But if
Corey
7:10
the advice was what sells newspapers, what gets people watching television? Keep doing what you're doing. Seems to be working. You know, you're out there. You're doing your thing. Way to go, Fox News. if the
Corey
7:20
the question is like appealing to the better angels of journalism i
Corey
7:26
don't know i mean just
Corey
7:27
just make everybody go watch a few good men a few times i don't know zane like what do you think is going to be different here like this is just how the news media is and i don't mean that as a dig i mean that as that's that's just you know it's like a hornsby song some things are never going to change yeah
Corey
7:43
if you don't say oh don't you believe it i'm just i don't know what we're even doing here oh
Carter
7:50
don't you believe it um there you go was that good are you happy i still don't know
SPEAKER_02
7:54
know what we're doing here but that's fine keep going
Carter
7:56
it was pretty fucking tragic um
Carter
8:01
no i mean we have first of all let's understand that we have this we have this collective memory of the golden age of media and
Carter
8:07
and the golden age of media was a long time ago and it didn't last very long when it was there it
Carter
8:11
it came up out of the propaganda times
Carter
8:13
times of the 19 uh
Carter
8:15
uh the 1940s related to war came
Carter
8:18
came out of that and was as you
Carter
8:20
you know we had the anchors that we could trust on our television news and and those
Carter
8:24
those people were beyond reproach but cory's point about the media
Carter
8:29
never having really been these paragons of virtue is exactly right um but right now i don't want them necessarily to be paragons of virtue but i would like them to be uh focused on things that it actually matter? This is a pretty important time and reporting on the orange lunatic constantly when we have governors in the United States that are actually doing the work, I'd
Carter
8:52
I'd say point to the governors, cover the governors.
Corey
8:55
Corey, before we move on.
Corey
8:57
Well, look, if you want, if you actually want some different outcomes here, you're going to have to talk about interests and how to align those interests. So how do you make holding Donald Trump to account marketable?
Corey
9:06
marketable? How do you make that popular how do you make that actually have an audience besides the people who watch pbs on sunday morning and uh talk about what they read in the new york times the day before with their spouse you're like it needs to be broadened it needs to become more populous and um that's going to require a bit of a sales job so as much as i said the problem is they're talking to comms people and what sells you're
Corey
9:30
you're going to need to bring in a certain amount of sensationalism to this coverage Because it sucks, but it's not even fighting fire with fire. It's acknowledging that these are commercial operations that have commercial interests. And until you can have a commercial interest in holding the president to account, forget
SPEAKER_02
9:48
want to move on to Biden because you guys have both mentioned him. Right now, Joe Biden is an old grandpa stuck in a basement with an internet feed trying to run his campaign. And so he puts himself into a corner because of this pandemic. But what does Biden need to do and is he doing what he needs to do, Carter? What do you make thus far of the last couple of weeks of the Biden strategy where the campaign's been focused on simply trying to get this guy to go viral? What is he doing right and what does he need to be doing?
Carter
10:17
I think he's, I mean,
Carter
10:19
mean, it's hard to do anything right when you're trapped in your basement. But at the same time, I think that what he's doing is he's taking, he's
Carter
10:28
he's trying to lead. He's trying to say what I would do, what I would do, what I would do. And what I would do is aren't playing.
Carter
10:36
No one's listening to the podcast where he's outlining in detail what he's going to do. No one's, you know, like his tweets, his media that he's putting out, his proclamations aren't
Carter
10:47
fall, aren't landing anywhere. But there's a tremendous market right now for empathy, tremendous market for him being good old Joe who understands me.
Carter
10:56
That is his fundamental strength. That's who people like. That's what they like about him. And he's walked away from that. He's walked away from that brand positioning because he thinks that he's got less time for it because he's trapped in his basement. And my argument would be no one thinks that Donald Trump is doing doing a good job. You don't need to contrast to Donald Trump in order to get Joe
Carter
11:19
Joe Biden would do better.
Carter
11:21
Show us who you are at your core. And Joe Biden at his core is a decent man who has the ability to empathize with other human beings. That's his core strength.
SPEAKER_02
11:31
who he is. You lean into empathy. Corey, is that the right strategy right now? If you're Biden, what are you doing? Do you need to be a knife fighter? Do you need to attack Trump on his own turf?
Corey
11:42
Look, I mean, Joe
Corey
11:44
Joe Biden is what he is, right? And Biden trying to lead from his basement is the perfect metaphor for his campaign. The guy is literally hiding from Tara Reid accusations in his basement right now. And it is unfortunate and it is rooted in this unhealthy machismo, but people do want to see leaders out there standing in the Rose Garden without their mask and saying i'm gonna i'm gonna what i don't know 50
Corey
12:08
50 style box the virus i'm not really clear what it comes from but he looks weak and um
Corey
12:13
um and and that is not going to go away as long as he's trying to run the resistance from from a bunker under siege i mean the it's just it's so so
Corey
12:23
so damning you know how he comes off and it ties into the problems he's got on his campaign right now i like the terror read accusation listen
Corey
12:30
listen zane last week you talked about him being a glad hander and needing to be out there and i it bothered me at the time and i i don't want to give you a pass on it and i did last week because carter wasn't here but it's
Corey
12:42
it's not it just he's
Corey
12:44
he's not a glad hand i mean the guy was not exactly filling up arenas like a rock star he's he is entirely the safe choice the democrats made because they didn't want to risk another choice because they didn't want to risk four more years and that's the classic front runner mistake you take no risks and you end up up with something that that's kind of shitty and it's not paying off i mean the polls right now show donald
Corey
13:06
donald trump with a lead in battleground states i'm not saying that'll hold um
Corey
13:11
but yeah he's like tens of thousands of americans are dying more than necessary the guy has fired his his fourth inspector general and he's right now if an election is held today probably going to win the election that's
Corey
13:23
that's what you're getting with joe biden right now so they do need either a bit of of a shakeup or they need to call this campaign what it is and just step out just say everything
Corey
13:31
everything is about not being trump you
SPEAKER_02
13:33
know carter take no risks and end up with something shitty has been your campaign motto for a long time um so so how do you how do you compare this i'm
SPEAKER_02
13:42
i'm sorry these birds are just brutal i know i know i know i forgot you i forgot you i
SPEAKER_02
13:48
i forgot you thought you you had covid okay
SPEAKER_02
13:56
wait oh because there's there's something there's something critical here that we should talk about because you actually genuinely feel like biden's mistake is that he's trying to lead i have not heard anyone make that criticism of joe biden in fact what i've heard people say is that he does not look presidential he does not look like even
Carter
14:13
no so then what is in his basement no
Carter
14:16
no but how look presidential how
Carter
14:18
how is he how is that a mistake because
Carter
14:20
because the other guy is able to stand out front of the of the white house and go into the press briefing room or wherever the hell he is on every day and and command from the podium the the free world right because that's that's his right as president that's the right that the the Americans have given him. The rest of us, by the way, the rest of the world have pulled the leader of the free world mantle off the president of the United States. They don't get that anymore. They don't get that automatically. But Joe
Carter
14:50
Joe can't compete with that. So this is the problem with every campaign that ultimately winds up losing. You're trying to compete on the wrong factor. If you're trying to compete with leadership against the guy who stands at the podium, him, the incumbent, you're going to lose. You're going to lose because the other guy, as bad as he is, as bad as Trump is, he's the one who gets to make a decision as to whether or not he fires the inspector general, whether or not he puts, you know, forces states into a free market situation for PPE. That's Trump's decision, not Biden's. Biden doesn't get to make any decisions.
Carter
15:26
Biden has to play to his strengths. He can't be competing as though he's Pelosi or as though he's Bernie or as though he's one of
Carter
15:35
of the other lesser candidates. He has to be himself and play to his only strength. And his only strength, I
Carter
15:43
I would argue, is empathy.
SPEAKER_02
15:46
Corey, let's talk about this tactically very quickly. Given the box that he's in, the fact that he's not able to go out, he's in the basement, he can't necessarily take the proverbial podium, what are
SPEAKER_02
15:57
are you advising him? What should he be doing that he isn't right now? Now, he's got a bad podcast. He's got a mediocre app. I mean, he's doing the things, but they just aren't landing. I mean, is there is there anything that he needs to be doing right now that you would suggest?
Corey
16:09
Well, first of all, it's a lectern, not a podium. You stand on a podium. You guys are both ignorant.
Corey
16:14
I knew I was opening that
Corey
16:18
Second of all, it's
Corey
16:20
it's not as though Donald Trump's strategy is unbeatable. It's this Rose Garden strategy that Jimmy Carter applied, not to great effect, frankly, right? Right. Which is you're at the White House. You look presidential. You stay off the campaign trail. What what is interesting, though, is Joe Biden seems to be trying a Rose Garden strategy without a Rose Garden. Like he's in one place and he's making these things. But his strength is not empathy.
Corey
16:42
empathy. I mean, I mean, he he has this whole Grandpa Simpson thing about rambling stories and whatnot. His strength is that he's not Trump. He's literally from the last administration. He is literally the
Corey
16:54
last guy, right? As much as is constitutionally possible. That is the only thing he has going for him right now.
SPEAKER_02
17:00
And nothing illustrates that point more, Corey, than the current anticipation for who his new VP is going to be. Because there's an expectation that that's going to be the fresh face. That's going to be the female candidate or the female part of the ticket for him. So, like, if you're tactically looking at the vice presidency and naming your VP, heading into, I guess, a non-existent Democratic convention, what are you kind of thinking of? Like, are you wanting to put more juice into that? Are you wanting to put the focal point onto Biden instead? Like, how are you kind of thinking about this?
Corey
17:32
mean, I guess, what's
Corey
17:33
what's your choice? I mean, you either have too much electricity down ticket and everybody starts saying, oh, boy, or you have somebody who makes you look good by comparison. Oh, boy, right? right? I mean, he doesn't have a lot of good choices on that matter.
Corey
17:46
Win or lose, love it or hate it, this is going to be an election about him, not whoever he puts on his ticket with him. We've seen what happens when you try to do the maverick
Corey
17:54
maverick-y choice, right? John McCain tried that. And sure, we got a great HBO movie out of it, but he didn't- Great is
SPEAKER_02
18:03
is an overstatement. Just want to let you know. It was not great. It was mediocre at best.
Corey
18:09
Yeah, a lot of judgment from you, Zane. A lot of judgment. When
Carter
18:11
was the last time we had someone lower on the ticket outshine the guy on the top of the ticket?
Corey
18:17
I mean, Palin, I would argue, would be the one there. I
Carter
18:20
I don't think that she outshone McCain. I think that she was
Carter
18:24
was an absolute disaster and that took away. But this idea that you can choose someone who is far too
Carter
18:31
too bright, too exceptional, someone who outshines through their competence the actual leader on the ticket. it like is that
Carter
18:40
that a thing that we really need to worry about like if if he was to choose camilla camilla camilla camilla harris who
Carter
18:47
who the hell would care like she's phenomenal i think she's spectacular i think that her her poise her presence her ability to speak would reinforce
Carter
18:56
know all the negatives that joe biden brings but i still don't think she outshines him yeah
Corey
19:01
yeah and and i think to your point there it's because it doesn't because they're not given in the microphone for that long or at that decibel rating but if that became the strategy if it become joe's a little sleepy we're going to put somebody else there as the understudy and they're going to be on a few more nights a week right then
Corey
19:19
then there is the real risk of that and and that
Corey
19:22
that is arguably what happened with sarah powell right all of a sudden mccain was putting her into into these different situations there was a little too much electricity there and he lost control of his his own campaign there and i'm not saying that the problem with that campaign was that she looked too strong but certainly it uh accentuated a lot of the weaknesses that mccain had because if if the campaign becomes and you said this so in
Corey
19:45
in some ways i'm going to try to skewer you with your own words here steven but if
Corey
19:49
if if this is about a ballot question and if the ballot question becomes about who's got the most dynamism and energy and he tries to to
Corey
19:56
to say that is it and so i'm going to do that with my vice presidential pick and i'm going to give it to them trump's
Corey
20:01
trump's going to win that, right? I mean, love or hate Trump, he's a showman. We're
SPEAKER_02
20:04
We're going to leave it there and move on to our next segment. Our next segment, no more pipe from Uncle Joe. And listen, this did not deserve its own segment other than for me to just say that title. Let's talk about Joe Biden and Keystone XL. So he came out with the policy proposal yesterday, which is ruffling some feathers here in Canada, saying that he would retroactively rescind the go forward on Keystone don't excel if he becomes president. Corey, what do you think? Good strategy, bad strategy, good policy, bad policy. I think I know where you stand on the policy piece, but talk to me about the strategy piece, both for him in the United States, but also kind of the ramifications here.
Corey
20:43
thing about the strategy is it really, to me, underlines the last thing I was saying, and in some ways even fed into my last comments here, which is what is this campaign? And And this
Corey
20:53
this is just another attempt to get the energy that was with the other campaigns, with the Warren campaign, with the Sanders campaign.
Corey
21:03
it's just so off brand for who he actually is. I wonder if there's any value into it whatsoever. And when you start thinking about those Midwestern swing states that gave the election to Trump last time,
Corey
21:13
I don't know. I mean, I haven't seen any polling specific on this issue on KXL. But it doesn't necessarily strike me as the kind of thing that swing voters who are worried about the slow economic decline of the United States, especially considering
Corey
21:25
considering how much they lay on the feet of the environmental movement. It just doesn't necessarily seem like it's good strategy beyond attempting to mobilize people. And I do not believe it's going to mobilize people. I just I just at the end of the day, don't think that this
Corey
21:39
this was the last thing like, oh, I'm fine with Joe Biden now, now that he opposes KXL and he's going to kind of flip it around. When
Corey
21:46
you think about the strategy for
Corey
21:50
for democratic politics, okay, I guess, but again,
Corey
21:55
again, we have seen election after election, the most recent being 2016. You don't actually need to be the exciting candidate before the general election period begins because they're all going to rally to you. I mean, the Democrats might not have been excited about Hillary Clinton, I mean,
Corey
22:13
they were there. I mean, by November, the energy level was nuts on both sides. Everybody was so charged up. I just feel like he spent a lot of currency with swing voters to get a base that was always going to be there with him at the end of the day.
SPEAKER_02
22:26
Carter, do you believe that? Do you feel like the left wing Sanders base that has driven a real deep wedge into the party was going to show up anyways? Or was there a risk that they sit on their hands and something like this? He was is absolutely like a necessity for him to do in order to kind of bring them over.
Carter
22:43
I think the numbers from 2016 show that there are people who are going to sit on their hands who aren't excited by the candidates and who don't come out and vote for them. I don't think you win them over by a single policy announcement. I don't think that saying, well, I'm going to get, you know, we're against KXL or we're going to be for green energy solutions. That's not going going to win them over what's going to win them over is a sense that you
Carter
23:07
represent them and the problem with joe biden and the problem with hillary clinton is that they don't represent a lot of these people um so trying to win them over uh versus saying well where's my where's my real core and i'm going to make that core go and vote like the reality is you don't get 100 of the vote out 100 of voters will not vote so what's the number of people who will vote and how do you you get 51 or 52 percent of those people out uh you need to beat um you
Carter
23:35
you need to win in certain states i'm not sure that the
Carter
23:40
know really plays in wisconsin i just don't see how he's he's
Carter
23:46
um swing states by you
Carter
23:49
you know opposing a pipeline right down red america it's
Carter
23:53
it's very confusing to me um
Carter
23:55
um also i mean this
Carter
23:58
this is a this is a weird pipeline it's going to be mostly done or it's going to be in the ground mostly by the time this thing is done so maybe not entirely but there's going to be an awful lot of work that is
Carter
24:09
has been completed on this pipeline because keep in mind it's being done in phases it's not like one pipe from southern united states all the way up to alberta it's been parts of it already been opened uh
Carter
24:20
i'm really at a loss to understand
Carter
24:23
understand how this is uh going
Carter
24:25
going to really change joe biden's fortunes.
Corey
24:29
Yeah, I mean, if this was part of who he was, and not just a bid to get the kids to love cool, hip Uncle Joe, maybe but like, I mean, this just comes off as transactional politics. And I just don't think it's going to get him what he wants.
SPEAKER_02
24:41
Corey, sticking with you on this. So this obviously has ramifications for our country, and more specifically for our home province here in Alberta. If you're advising the Alberta government, which up until recently you were, if you were advising them as to how to deal with this, since we've seen this movie before, what would you tell them? Would you tell them to go hard against Biden? Would you tell them to stay quiet in the midst of a pandemic layering on our current sort of context and zeitgeist? What's what's the strategic advice for government?
Corey
25:08
Yeah, I think they did exactly what they needed to do, which was to try to not get dragged into this. The reality even in Alberta is that Donald Trump is a fairly unpopular character. I'm sure they do not want to make this, you know, a proxy war for the United States presidential
Corey
25:22
presidential election. So the words chosen were measured, and I think that's appropriate.
Corey
25:27
One of the challenges, of course, here in Alberta is that there is going to be a group of people who get very animated by this, right? You're going to see a lot of the pro-Trump Alberta come out here. And there's, look, don't kid yourself, there's a pro-Trump cohort in
Corey
25:40
in every province, right? And it's not that much bigger in Alberta. We're really talking on the margins here, but it's going to just reinforce a bit of a narrative, and it's going to reinforce this sort of victimhood culture but it
Corey
25:53
it really changes the
Corey
25:56
view of the decision that the government made a couple well what a month ago now to invest in kxl too right it a
Corey
26:03
a it explains a bit if it looked that precarious but b it
Corey
26:07
it shows you how this was not like transmountain right like the government invested in transmountain if you're the federal government basically de-risked the project said it's going to be built but
Corey
26:17
but when you're dealing with a foreign government that that has entirely different political footballs, a lot of problems there. And so the
Corey
26:24
the conversation in Alberta, I'm
Corey
26:26
I'm worried, will become unhelpful and unhealthy. And it will be about this victimhood and look at us and everybody's out to get us. When maybe it should really be, OK, like, is this still going to keep happening? Maybe not all the time, but 10 percent of the time, 20 percent of the time. Say you're very right wing and you believe that things will swing back. You probably don't assume they're going to swing back forever for all times.
Corey
26:47
And if oil is always going to be perpetually that football, the pipelines are always going to be that conversation that's under threat. As a province, I think it just underlines the need to
Corey
26:58
to have a plan B, frankly, right? I mean, we can talk about oil, we can talk about pipelines, we can certainly talk about Trans Mountain opening up markets overseas. seas.
Corey
27:10
there is a trend here, right? There's a trend in Europe. There's a trend in the United States. And even if you just want to call it a trend with the left in those areas, and
Corey
27:18
and I think that would be doing it a disservice because I think it's a broader societal trend,
Corey
27:23
things are changing. And if whenever there's a left-wing government in power in those jurisdictions, our market is going to take a hit. We got to start talking about some smart hedges.
SPEAKER_02
27:32
Carter, was the Alberta strategy on point here? Measured words, try to stay out of it? Or is there something else you'd advise to respond to this Biden proposal?
Carter
27:43
I think that the policy of the Alberta government has been for quite some time to maximize the oil resources that we have while we can.
Carter
27:56
government I was a part of, there was certainly a sense that this wasn't going to last forever.
Carter
28:01
Of course, we didn't take much in the way of action, and
Carter
28:04
and it's easy not to take action.
Carter
28:07
The problem that we're seeing now is that we're taking action to try and invest
Carter
28:13
double down on the oil and gas market.
Carter
28:16
One of the things I've always talked about on this podcast is that the gas market has been dead for a long time.
Carter
28:22
When Ralph Klein was balancing the budget in Alberta and posting enormous surpluses and sending out Ralph bucks, We had natural gas at $8, $9 and $10. We have natural gas under $2 right now.
Carter
28:34
So the only thing left
Carter
28:37
left is oil. Oil is incredibly volatile. Even
Carter
28:40
Even if you're looking at it and saying, well, we're going to use oil for 30 years or 40 or 50 years. Of
Carter
28:46
course we are. Of
Carter
28:47
Of course we are. It's not a question of whether or not we're going to use oil. It's
Carter
28:50
It's a question of supply and demand. right
Carter
28:53
doesn't matter how much natural gas we're using we're using more natural gas in the world today than we ever had but
Carter
28:59
but price is still under two dollars because we can produce more and
Carter
29:03
and that's the that's the other side of the equation that i think that kenny has done us a disservice with because he doesn't talk about what
Carter
29:10
what happens when supply is so easy to access in the united states
Carter
29:14
we're not able to have a price for our our product
Carter
29:18
product that makes sense and
Carter
29:20
and then how are we going to diversify? How are we going to get out of this mess? Because getting out of this mess was not taking $8 billion and earmarking it for TransCanada.
Carter
29:30
And from what I'm seeing today,
Carter
29:32
it sounds like KXL,
Carter
29:35
if it is canceled by the next administration, there
Carter
29:38
there is no legal opportunity to go back and say, well, we're suing you for all the costs. I'm not sure entirely if that's true. I'm following Andrew Leach. I'll quote him on Twitter.
Carter
29:48
He's the one who's asking that question question because
Carter
29:50
because it sounds like it
Carter
29:52
it isn't going to be just as simple as, well, we'll recoup our losses. And when we say ours, it
Carter
29:59
it is now Albertans. Albertans are now invested in KXL and it's under threat. And we as a province should be very worried about that. The same way that we as a nation need to be very worried about TMX and making sure that TMX is up as soon as possible and producing so that we're able to recoup our investment as a country in that particular pipeline.
SPEAKER_02
30:23
Corey, quick question here. Is there a role for the feds at all strategy-wise? Should they keep their powder dry on this one? Is there any strategic upside for them to say anything, get involved? What do you think?
Corey
30:34
Well, you know, isn't
Corey
30:36
isn't it interesting how we're all getting involved in each other's elections now? You remember when Barack Obama endorsed Justin Trudeau and hey, here we are. Now we're in a weird world. But the
Corey
30:48
action that the Fed should be taking and I'm sure are taking is behind the scenes. Right. It's working those back channels. It's it's making sure there's sufficient wiggle room. There's ways that Joe Biden can say when he gets in, like, well, look, I would want to cancel it. But for these reasons, we're already too far or there's this, you know, there's
Corey
31:06
there's this change to the legal framework and it would expose us to this liability. I just won't do that to the American people. And shame on Donald Trump for putting in this trap so that all of a sudden that we're subject to this liability. Right. I mean, that's the conversation that needs to be happening behind the scenes. The feds need to be putting in essentially
Corey
31:22
essentially these these mechanisms or working with the current U.S. administration to put in mechanisms to ensure KXL goes forward if that's what they want. I suspect it's what they want.
Corey
31:32
Look, it is not or it should not be controversial that there will be a day after oil for Alberta. We used to talk about this in the 90s, right? But we talked about it then as,
Corey
31:41
hey, we're going to run out of oil someday, you
Corey
31:44
know? And now the conversation we have is, hey, the world might move past oil someday.
Corey
31:49
That is eliciting a very different, very defensive response for Albertans.
Corey
31:56
you know, my counsel is we got to be thinking about this as a finite resource regardless, right? Now, whether it's finite because of time and policy or finite because there's only so much effing oil in the ground, we
Corey
32:06
we are going to run out. And the diversification conversation needs to happen, and it needs to happen at an accelerated clip.
SPEAKER_02
32:13
Carter, any final words, Fed strategy, anything you want to add to what Corey said?
Carter
32:18
no i i think the feds take a a
Carter
32:21
beating i guess on their oil and gas policy but let's not forget that um
Carter
32:26
um they're the ones right now who are standing up like adults and telling us that we actually have to start thinking about um a carbon less
Carter
32:34
less atmosphere like putting out less carbon intense intense GHGs.
Carter
32:39
GHGs. But we're not doing
Carter
32:42
doing that in Alberta because we have decided that we hate the Trudeau liberals. Let's just leave aside the Trudeau liberals and just look at what the rest of the world is doing. That's what Corey opened with. That's what I'll close with. This isn't just Canada. This is the whole freaking world.
SPEAKER_02
32:59
Let's move it on to our next segment. And our next segment, Sexy Has a Time, and it's 9 a.m. Eastern. I want to talk about Justin Trudeau. It's been a few weeks since we've talked about him, his daily press conferences and press briefings, walking out, strolling to the microphone, talking about what's going on that day, really controlling the agenda in a similar way to Donald Trump in terms of having no real way for the opposition to get their voice in there unless they shoot themselves in the foot, which we can discuss another time around the conservatives. But let's talk about Justin Trudeau. And Carter, I want to start with you on this, which is, what
SPEAKER_02
33:31
what do you make of the current strategy, right? So I know we're in the midst of a pandemic, we're in the midst of a crisis, But this is the strategist. We talk about political strategy. And what do you think of the
SPEAKER_02
33:41
the Trudeau strategy right now of controlling the room? Is it effective? Do you feel like there's some roadblocks ahead? I just want to kind of hear your thoughts.
Carter
33:49
Yeah, I mean, I think it's great. I think that owning the agenda from day one and announcing everything every day from the same podium at the same time,
Carter
33:58
I mean, it's crisis communications one-on-one. When you're doing a crisis communication, speak
Carter
34:03
speak often, speak consistently, tell them what you did yesterday, tell them what you're going to do tomorrow. That way you're able to own the agenda, own the communication cycles. And if you look, Justin Trudeau has been successful in that. He's not the only one. Doug Ford has done the same. Jason Kenney, to a degree, has done the same. Certainly, Adrian
Carter
34:25
Adrian Dix, as the health minister in BC, has done an amazing job of controlling the agenda.
Carter
34:33
is crisis communications and watching it being done well at a political level really defines the opposition. And perhaps the best measure of whether or not Trudeau is doing a good job is taking a look at how Andrew Scheer is completely floundering, unable to find oxygen, unable to speak about what even in critique he would do that would be different than this sitting prime minister. I
Carter
35:00
I think it's been brilliant.
SPEAKER_02
35:03
Corey same question to you right do you do you feel like there's there's any elements of what Trudeau's doing right now that could backfire or do you feel like because we're in this crisis moment as you someone who's advised many clients on crisis communications that he can he can control the agenda control the room do you feel like there's any downside to what he's doing yeah
Corey
35:21
yeah this is just good crisis comms and some of the language and the framing here I just I want to caution about because then people will start thinking every time there's communications people up there during a crisis it's about control and spin and agenda but the reality is it's more about clear channels consistently offered which is something carter said at the top so i don't want to pretend that this is cutting against his point here but look you open the doors and they're going to come through the windows and by providing that regular drumbeat of okay i'm the media i know they will be available then i can ask these questions then this is how i'm going to get that information
Corey
35:52
um you you're actually you're providing kind of a public safety benefit right you know you you're You're creating this way that fewer rumors are likely to come to life. Less disinformation will be out there in the world. And
Corey
36:06
And it does have the added benefit of keeping you on agenda. And it does strike me that a lot of what is best practice in crisis communications is best practice in campaigns, too. But they're applied for very different reasons. One of them is really more about making sure that you're keeping
Corey
36:20
keeping the landscape clear of weeds. Right. And like I said, open doors, it'll come through the windows. When
Corey
36:27
you talk about the federal government's response and you talk about 9am
Corey
36:30
9am and the Justin Trudeau show, remember
Corey
36:32
remember that early on, it
Corey
36:34
it was a little confused. He had a lot of ministers out there as well that were almost stepping on top of each other and there'd be multiple daily scrums from the federal government. And that wasn't very good. And that wasn't very clear because it was different people saying different parts of the story, saying different emphasis. this. They've landed on this over time. This is best practice. And I think they should be commended for that.
Corey
36:54
I don't think, though, that the liberals should kid themselves that their poll numbers and approval ratings right now are anything but artificial and based on the moment we're in.
SPEAKER_02
37:03
Yeah. Yeah. Carter, and I wanted to get into this because, of course, with an eye to reelection and minority government, what's the what's the strategy to kind of maintain what Corey's called artificially inflated polls? But how do you maximize them, even though, you know, they're going to take a dip? How do you maximize them going forward or try to lock them in as much as you can in this moment?
Carter
37:20
Well, I'm going to answer with an unusual answer for me, and that is, I don't know.
Carter
37:25
And I don't know for... We
SPEAKER_02
37:27
on the show, Stephen.
Carter
37:28
You're supposed to be bombastic and loud.
Carter
37:31
I'm not done yet. Here we go.
Carter
37:35
Here's why I don't know.
Carter
37:37
If this is a single bump that ends, let's say, by the end of June, and we get back to something vaguely resembling normal life by September.
Carter
37:45
Then it's very difficult to see this sustaining itself to the next election, regardless of when the next election is.
Carter
37:52
However, if this does what other pandemics in history have done with one bump, two bumps, three bumps, four bumps, then you have a very long-term model where normalcy is out the window. And in that environment, I think that the Trudeau government can, or frankly, any of the provincial governments, I don't want to make this partisan, it's not about the Trudeau liberals, it's about the government of the day, whether it's Jason Kenney, Doug Ford, or Justin
Carter
38:24
those governments can be successful by continuing to own the communication cycle. I don't think we ever tire in
Carter
38:32
in a crisis of being told what's happening, what's going on, what the government's thinking.
Carter
38:38
I think that we will pay attention for as long as these blips
Carter
38:41
blips continue to, you know, the humps continue to happen.
Carter
38:44
But if this is over right away, if this is it, if it was a one-time
Carter
38:49
-time wonder, then I
Carter
38:52
I really don't know how it ends.
SPEAKER_02
38:55
Corey, inverse question to you. If you're the, you know, alleged frontrunner, Peter McKay right now for the Conservatives, what are you trying to do? I mean, outside of putting up bad memes and getting some amateur advice about your campaign. What are you trying to do to pierce through and ensure that these temporary poll numbers are just that, temporary?
Corey
39:16
know, if I'm in the McKay campaign, I am not, I
Corey
39:19
I think it would be a real mistake to be focused on what the liberals are doing right now. I am not at all convinced that when they start counting the ballots for the conservative leadership,
Corey
39:29
that he's got the energy on his side that's going to carry him over the ballot. ballot so so wrong focus is what i would say if i'm peter mckay i'm not talking about how i bring the fight to trudeau if i am it's only in the context of proving to my conservative compatriots um you
Corey
39:45
you know that i'm that i'm the fighter and the shit kicker i need to be to win the next election
Corey
39:50
uh instead i would really really be drawing those contrasts with with my major conservative opponents and um that's
Corey
39:57
that's a totally different audience that's a totally different radio play So, you
Corey
40:01
you know, if that's his focus right now, he's way ahead of himself and he's making that classic, quote unquote, front runner mistake.
SPEAKER_02
40:07
Carter, do you agree? Should McKay kind of assume the leadership position, go toe to toe with Trudeau? Or should his focus squarely be within this leadership race that Corey, I think, very astutely points out is not locked up for him?
Carter
40:20
Well, I would be focusing on the leadership race. The problem is that the way that he seems to be focusing on the leadership race is to say, well, I have to go and find the most right wing conservatives that I possibly can. And
Carter
40:30
I'm going to appeal to the right-wing conservatives in the same fashion that happened
Corey
40:35
the last— Well, Peter McKay, I've just realized he's the Joe Biden of the right in Canada. I mean, they're playing the exact same playbook in reverse. Someone
SPEAKER_02
40:43
Someone get this guy a bad podcast in a basement and we're there.
Corey
40:46
Oh, my God. He might
SPEAKER_02
40:49
have one. Has anybody
SPEAKER_02
40:50
No, no. No one has looked. Carter, you may have looked, but I have definitely not looked.
Carter
40:54
Oh, no. I can assure you I have not looked for the Peter McKay podcast. podcast it's it's hard enough to listen to him in interviews he's
SPEAKER_02
41:00
he's not filling it with peter mckay is that what his thing was by the way just a total detour that thing where he tried to convince people to have the election early i don't know will you answer the call anyways carter i'm interrupting you go ahead no
Carter
41:11
no i mean it's the worst i i just don't understand these leadership campaigns especially leadership campaigns on the right it is like a constant battle to win over the most hardened conservatives um and
Carter
41:23
and the thing that kills me is that the hardened conservatives are They're the most fleeting group.
Carter
41:29
They will jump ship on you every opportunity they get. They are not loyal. They will jump to the next guy as fast as humanly possible. And,
Carter
41:39
know, it certainly doesn't build for long range electoral success. And I think that Justin Trudeau is probably happy every single day to watch Peter McKay walk towards the
Carter
41:51
the right wing of the party. It's got to be making him so happy.
Corey
41:55
Well, look, I'm not breaking new ground to say that there are left-wing and right-wing purity tests. And the problem with the most strident
Corey
42:01
strident supporters on both sides are you
Corey
42:04
you only need to fail the purity test once and you're dead to them, to your point, I think, Stephen. So
Corey
42:09
they're always looking for the next flavor of the month, the next person who can show their righteousness for the cause, fighting against any kind of unpopularity
Corey
42:18
unpopularity that may exist with the center and whatnot. not insane look at them they're a paragon of excellence because they've always been there no matter how unpopular that opinion was but you
Corey
42:28
we do live in a democracy so you do need to turn your eye to the entire country at a certain point if you want to give or
Corey
42:35
or be given the opportunity to govern so at
Corey
42:37
at some point we're going to have to unpack these leadership race overall and some of these broader trends that have occurred here because they're
Corey
42:44
they're pretty interesting um whether it's here or in the united states or even in europe how how these things are unfolding now is really, I
Corey
42:52
I don't know, I would say suboptimal, but that might be the understatement of the year.
SPEAKER_02
42:56
I want to close this bracket on Trudeau before we move on. Carter, to you, crisis communications isn't a blank check. It doesn't mean you just get to do whatever you want as however long this crisis lasts. So the question I have for you is what roadblocks or barriers does Trudeau and his political team need to be be aware of as they as they suck up all the oxygen during this pandemic well
Carter
43:20
well one of the things i like to remind people of is that we're all inherently selfish so as voters we're we're tremendously selfish people so
Carter
43:28
so my view is that as long as trudeau
Carter
43:32
trudeau continues to play to our selfishness he should be fine if
Carter
43:36
if he starts to ask us to collectively make sacrifices beyond that which which we aren't prepared to make for ourselves, then
Carter
43:44
then he runs into trouble. And that's where we ran in. That's where we run into trouble with spending cuts. Everybody's pro spending cuts until it impacts them. Right.
Carter
43:51
Right. Everybody's pro taxation increases as long as it increases taxes on someone else. Those are kind of our our baked in positions. I think that there's going to be some calls
Carter
44:04
calls for something vaguely resembling retribution. revolution uh you
Carter
44:08
you know i think that if you were ever going to pass a wealth tax in canada uh this fall is probably the time to do it um you
Carter
44:15
you could just simply take some tweets from some billionaires uh
Carter
44:18
uh put them together in a greatest hits album and you could have a wealth tax by the end of the weekend uh
Carter
44:23
uh so you know there's there are certain populist elements that are available to him that he should be willing to take and uh he shouldn't ask too much of us because we are
Carter
44:35
we're still scared. We're still afraid of the future. And asking
Carter
44:39
asking a lot of the general population will create havoc.
Carter
44:45
But there are others that we are more than willing to take retribution on.
SPEAKER_02
44:50
Corey, final word in the segment to you. What are the roadblocks you need to be aware of?
Corey
44:54
It's like the most demoralizing, cynical things Stephen Carter has said in months. That's It's just ridiculous. Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what your country can do for you. The Stephen Carter version of the JFK speech.
Corey
45:10
I mean, you're not exactly rocking my world by saying people are fundamentally self-interested when it comes to these things. But there are better angels you can call to here.
Corey
45:19
And I do share your view that this is probably a good opportunity to do something big. egg um one
Corey
45:26
one of the things that donald trump um well
Corey
45:30
well frankly donald trump too but donald trump justin trudeau anybody who's leading a nation right now needs to be very very
Corey
45:36
very nervous about is
Corey
45:37
is that they have done in a matter of weeks what
Corey
45:40
what we were always told was basically impossible right like universal basic basic incomes can't really be done uh all of these supports that would bankrupt the country well we did them all uh the country's still standing i'm not saying that There's not going to be long-term consequences for that economically, fiscally, all of those things. But
Corey
45:58
government has kind of proven that it can be the solution to some pretty big questions here. I mean, if you wanted a proof of concept for some of these things and the ability of government to deeply intervene in the economy, told
Corey
46:10
told everyone to stay home, gave everybody a bunch of money, is basically paying all of Suncourse employees right now. I mean, like this
Corey
46:18
this pretty fundamental remaking of society, and they did it overnight.
Corey
46:22
I mean, in the blink of an eye in terms of governance
Corey
46:25
governance processes and whatnot. So if I am a leader of a nation right now, I am really worried about the expectations that I have set. And I am really worried, I
Corey
46:36
I think more broadly, frankly, about how we've kind of just broken all of the rules of the game. You want to talk about standard economics and moral hazard, this idea that some behavior is just de-risked by government, so those behaviors get implemented, even though they're really bad, right?
Corey
46:52
Well, we used to talk about the global financial crisis being bad for that, right? Like all of these companies that should have gone out of business, we propped up because we had to, because otherwise we'd be all screwed.
Corey
47:01
We have done that times
Corey
47:03
times 10, you know, way worse than it was or better, whatever your view is, than during the GFC. and
Corey
47:10
can't do that without remaking some things and so i'd
Corey
47:14
i'd be worried about expectations i'd always i'd also be worried about what i need to do to kind of unspool this and clean this all up yeah
SPEAKER_02
47:21
yeah and on that carter i want to just ask one more follow-up which is the time to do big things requires political capital so when you're facing an election potentially in a minority situation how do you get these things done you've got this golden opportunity with this vector protector presented to you with cloud cover of COVID, so to speak, but you're also not operating with the majority government. What's the move?
Carter
47:43
I'd act as though I was running with the majority government. Who's my opposition? Who are the people who are actually opposed to me? The conservative MPs. That's about it.
Carter
47:51
You're not going to see the same opposition out of the New Democrats. You're not going to see the same opposition out of the Green Party or the Bloc Quebecois.
Carter
47:58
So you've got a de facto majority government. And the leader for this, the person who showed us how to do this the best, Stephen Harper.
Carter
48:05
Stephen Harper's minority was operated as a majority because he knew ultimately no one else wanted to bring the government down.
Carter
48:12
So if the government, if
Carter
48:13
if no one wants to go to an election, then you get to operate as though you've got a majority. And believe me, no one wants to go to an election.
Carter
48:21
No one has the money, no one's ready, and no one wants to fight on these terms.
SPEAKER_02
48:26
All righty, let's move it on from From there to our next segment, our next segment, Mailbag Listener Questions.
SPEAKER_02
48:32
All right, let's move it on to our next segment, the Over, Under, and Lightning Round.
SPEAKER_02
48:36
Like what I did there? They sent so many questions. Thank you, by the way, all of you, to sending your questions. You
SPEAKER_02
48:41
You should have known we're not going to read any of them.
SPEAKER_02
48:43
Our Over, Under, and our Lightning Round, Corey, over to you. On a scale of 1 to 10, how would you rate Jason Kenney's performance this week, shifting to Alberta politics? So as a reminder to the audience, you know, he this week also encompassed encompassed when he came out in the 11th hour quite literally with 11 hours left telling calgary they couldn't open some key industries at the same time how would you rank his performance this week
Corey
49:05
oh you know i i would say a seven it's it's not ideal the 11 hour thing that's certainly given a lot of fodder for people but what are you going to do i mean at at the end of the day is it preferable is it preferable that you say go ahead even though it's not safe is it preferable you make that call before
Corey
49:20
before you need to i'm not sure there was a good solution here
SPEAKER_02
49:23
carter one to ten for Jason Kenney?
Carter
49:24
I'm going to give him a six and I'm just going to pick up. I mean, the difference between 11 hours and 24 hours is actually quite significant. And they knew the answer 24 hours before. So they should have given the answer as soon as they had it. And I think that's one of the elements of crisis communications. When you're doing proper crisis communications, when something has changed, you communicate it. You don't just blindly stick to the communication cycle. And that's where Kenny failed us.
Corey
49:51
Well, what you're doing, though, is you're You're baking in an assumption there, right, that this was a done deal 24 hours before, and maybe it was, but you don't know.
Carter
49:58
That's the response I'm seeing is that it was done in advance.
SPEAKER_02
50:02
There we go. That's the Carter we know, just piecing together whatever and just being bombastically confident about it. I love it. You're back, Stephen. I'm
Carter
50:09
I'm back. That moment of I don't know is gone. It's in my rearview
SPEAKER_02
50:13
Which is why this next question comes to you, because even though she's no longer in politics anymore, on a scale of one to 10 jewel pods, how smart was it for Ronna Ambrose to take a board seat with with an e-cigarette manufacturer? I'm
Carter
50:26
I'm sure it is a 10 financially, but
Carter
50:29
but politically it was about a one. Oh, my God. That
Carter
50:35
That was brutal. But you know what?
Carter
50:38
You can't begrudge people making a living.
Carter
50:41
But at the same time, man, there's got to be more opportunity out there for
SPEAKER_02
50:45
Corey, one to ten Juul pods. What do you rank in this?
Corey
50:48
Well, it depends on how successful she is. She's obviously part of a strategy, right? And that strategy that Juul is implementing is presenting Juul as a safe alternative to smoking and maybe not even something that you should fear at all. maybe maybe this this whole idea of like vape lung and whatnot has just been overblown and certainly wasn't tied to anything like jewel it was it was tied to kind of these these off black market versions of all of this so if at all at the end of all of this jewel comes out as the healthy alternative and that is in part because they managed to get a federal effing health minister on their board of directors to be able to say listen i understand these things i understand the science this is something we're tackling that's fine well
Corey
51:27
well then she's she's gravy it's it's great right it's almost a smoking cessation thing and she can walk out of that with her pockets full and with her conscience clear but
Corey
51:36
but if this goes a different way then i mean she's basically she's
Corey
51:41
she's basically a pr firm working for big tobacco like one that the three of us used to work for right and it's going to it's
Corey
51:49
it's it's gonna look bad gonna
SPEAKER_02
51:51
bad by the way pockets full and conscious clear is the handbook that every uh brown child gets when when they're two years old.
SPEAKER_02
51:58
It is our guiding light. I got one alongside the Quran, just to let you know. People
SPEAKER_02
52:04
to know that. People needed to know that at this stage of the podcast. We're intimate enough. Carter, to you, one redo for Justin Trudeau this week. Anything that you saw policy-wise? You're talking about borders. We're talking about extending their closures. Or politically, that you'd want Justin Trudeau to have a redo on?
Carter
52:21
man, I don't think there is anything. I feel like
Carter
52:23
like the- You're very complimentary.
Carter
52:25
they're i gotta i'm gonna have to do some uh i
Carter
52:29
mean all of my redos go i mean i my i guess my outrage is just so tackled and contained with trump that i'm not able to to
Carter
52:37
to really focus i mean i i the only redo that i would do is the redo for for kenny on uh on
Carter
52:43
on announcing the uh
Carter
52:46
the restaurants closure in calgary a little bit late but
Carter
52:49
but i'm not critical of any of the governments that are doing this except the u.s federal one
SPEAKER_02
52:55
cory anything on trudeau any redos that he needed this week i
Corey
52:59
i don't i i don't think so a bit of the both side ism around the fight between china and the united states around the who was probably as i
Corey
53:09
i mean it was so lame but it was so liberal i mean it's just very on brand with them but i i would have liked to have seen an actual policy statement there instead of this, just this, I don't know. I personally felt it was just weak. But
Corey
53:23
But no, I mean, the
Corey
53:26
the world keeps spinning. People continue to get their CERB checks.
Corey
53:30
The federal government continues to do very well in the polls. And when
Corey
53:35
when we look next door, I mean, I think we're all relatively thankful. So, so not much to say about Trudeau. Corey,
SPEAKER_02
53:41
Corey, back to you. You know, over, under, on one, over, under, on one, the number of political aides Andrew Scheer talked with before telling Evan Solomon that he is not continuing his rescinding of his U.S. citizenship. That cringeworthy moment. How many people did Andrew Scheer talk to?
Corey
53:59
What are the rules about selling insurance in the United States?
Corey
54:03
What was the logic of this? I don't know. I mean, like the thing that confuses me about this sincerely is why
Corey
54:09
why not? Like, is his plan to go to the United States? Does he just want to continue to file U.S. taxes? I don't I don't know what his post politics play is, but
Corey
54:18
but I'm actually quite surprised to hear it would be potentially leaving the door open to America. And it's just it's
Corey
54:24
it's just a bit of a nail in the coffin to what was previously a pretty good political career. You think about him as being the youngest speaker and where he is now as
Corey
54:32
as as just this universally
Corey
54:34
universally acknowledged disappointment. It didn't need to be like this. And I just don't know why he wants to go out on this note. He
Carter
54:39
He was really acknowledged as a pretty darn good speaker. I mean, he wasn't seen as being overly partisan. He wasn't seen as being, you
Carter
54:48
you know, not knowledgeable of the rules. He knew what he was doing as a speaker and he did a fine job. And now he's that
Carter
54:54
And that's quite a step down.
Corey
54:58
Well, it tells you a lot about what he thinks his prospects are in this country as
SPEAKER_02
55:02
I'm going with under. And who knows, he might end up in Oklahoma. That seems to be the most popular place, both past and present.
SPEAKER_02
55:11
By the way, if you don't know what I'm talking about, just Google Michelle Rempel, Oklahoma. And then if you don't know what I'm talking about, Google Rob Anders, Oklahoma. And you'll find a clip from eight years ago where he looks like a total lunatic at a
Corey
55:22
a Republican debate. I'm going to throw this back to you, Zane. Do you think that by the end of the year, Oklahoma will have more MPs than Alberta will have opposition MPs?
SPEAKER_02
55:36
definitely. There is no doubt about it whatsoever, especially depending on the outcome of the election in November. But yes, that is very, very likely. All righty. Last question to you, Corey. Corey, you know, Stephen has asked for some assessment on the podcast and he wanted it done in public on a scale of 1 to 10. How has Stephen performed today?
Corey
55:53
Oh, terribly. I mean, so
Corey
55:56
so bad that I'm not even going to bother reminding you that 1 to 10 is a terrible scale because it's only got 9 points on it.
Corey
56:04
We're going to give it a C.
SPEAKER_02
56:09
Carter, Ed, your take on how Corey could decipher how many numbers are between 1 and 10 because he had to take three shots at it there. But that's fine. I
Corey
56:16
I got it. It's okay.
SPEAKER_02
56:19
We'll leave it there. We're going to leave it there. Carter, I just said we're leaving it there. We're leaving it there.
SPEAKER_02
56:25
We're leaving it there.
SPEAKER_02
56:26
Okay, fine. I'll give you one more chance to take a jab at Corey.
Corey
56:32
way to end with a bang, Zane.
SPEAKER_02
56:35
that's a wrap on episode 802 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Velji. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. We'll see you next time.