Episode 813: My friend from politics

Zain 0:01

This is The Strategist, episode 813. My name is Zain Velji. With me, as always, Stephen Carter.

Zain 0:09

No, no, no, no. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. Hold on. There's a division of labor here. And I don't get to do a lot on this show, okay? I've always been trying to be in your chair for a very long time. You never let me do it. And now you're just taking away what I have to be

Corey 0:23

be doing. I see the Toronto Star described you as a liberal strategist today. former liberal

Carter 0:29

that's the in and out so quick we didn't even think it was

Zain 0:32

was amazing i think i was there for a hot second uh but listen uh i've put that on my resume i just

Zain 0:39

let you know that what

Corey 0:40

what the toronto star fails to appreciate is that you can be part of the strategists plural but as a standalone strategist i don't think so that's like calling ringo star a beetle i just wouldn't do it such

Zain 0:53

such a prick first

Carter 0:55

first to take my job rob me

Zain 0:57

of my future how you

Zain 1:00

you doing carter i'm

Carter 1:01

i'm good i i took my wife uh bike riding today and i was gonna you know i taught her some new skills so like

Zain 1:08

like fucking horrible this is

Carter 1:09

is a total white guy story and then like every white guy teaching his wife new skills on a mountain bike i crashed a couple times because uh you

Carter 1:17

you know i'm an idiot it so it worked perfectly that's

Carter 1:21

that's great really well though i'm

Zain 1:22

i'm just gonna power through carter's story thank you carter for that story wonderful anecdote uh

Zain 1:27

uh you should try outside the nba is back oh we're getting nba scrimmages yeah

Corey 1:33

yeah the nba is back i

Corey 1:34

i haven't seen any games yet though bull

Zain 1:37

bull bull is balling out of his mind that's

Corey 1:38

that's what i hear i also hear gasol has lost a lot of weight skinny these are the these are the plot lines that are actually captivating me right now yeah

Zain 1:45

yeah nothing else is going on uh just the nba carter taking his wife for a bike ride and of course me uh having my future uh totally squashed now

Carter 1:55

now was your past that we squashed well okay

Zain 1:57

okay you know let's let's move beyond that because there's some important things to discuss namely that cory ogan will be appearing on west of center now now this is uh this is a podcast that carter you and i have been invited to already and they've finally gotten around as a pity invite to cory well

Carter 2:13

well i obviously i mean you You and I nailed it. We were fantastic. And now they're like, well, we'll bring in the weak link. We'll bring in the weak link to see

Carter 2:22

see what he can do. Well, I think actually

Corey 2:24

actually the way the producer described it was hoping third times the charm. Oh,

Zain 2:32

giving them a lot of free promo. I feel like we spent a good five

Zain 2:37

five minutes cumulatively promoing the West of Center podcast. podcast. I feel like, Corey, when you go on, you need to ensure that they return the favor. So I think the first five minutes you're on there, let's just talk about our podcast. I feel like that's what's going to be.

Corey 2:51

I think that's fair. Eat a bowl of Sherry's Berries, talk about my ND mattress, talk about the strategist. That's the plan.

Zain 2:59

ZipRecruiter, can never forget them. One of our premium sponsors who have yet to pay us. This is the third straight year that they have failed to pay us uh but we'll get back to that in a second on

Corey 3:08

on the uh on the off chance that any of our listeners are still with us do we want to talk about uh politics maybe for a bit why are you rushing what is with you today rushing

Carter 3:18

the agenda jesus christ for a second in for the kibitzing this is what they come for a fucking

Zain 3:23

fucking second i took your job at the toronto star and now you're just after me oh jesus christ hogan okay

Zain 3:30

okay let's move it on let's move it on to our first segment we

Zain 3:33

we should talk about the conservative leadership race oh okay carter calm the fuck down man three weeks

Carter 3:41

weeks in a row we opened with we couldn't

Carter 3:43

couldn't handle it okay yes the conservative leadership sorry you think

Zain 3:46

better just to let you know do you actually

Zain 3:50

actually think it's an upgrade well

Carter 3:53

you got a clown car on one hand and then you got a clown car on fire in the other hand you

Zain 3:57

you mean it works

Zain 3:59

well let's start there steven what are your thoughts so far i mean We're in the dog days of summer.

Zain 4:04

The conservatives, as they're sitting members right now, are having all guns pointed to the Finance Committee and Justin Trudeau on the WE scandal, if we may get to that. But let's talk about this leadership race. What are you thinking of it right now? What are you seeing of it from your strategist lens? What sort of tidbits are you picking up on? Well,

Carter 4:21

Well, I mean, I'm constantly amazed at how bad we do certain small pieces. We can't seem to create a video in this country to save our lives. Peter McKay's How to Fill Out the Ballot video made me hurt myself. It was painful. And, you

Carter 4:36

you know, I mean, granted, the subject matter is not that great. I mean, Peter McKay. But still, you should try something, right? Like, you have to try and get people to actually fill in their ballots. And yes, a ranked ballot with four choices does challenge many conservative voters. voters but you know this this shouldn't be that hard um to get attention in this time i mean everybody uh posting on twitter that they'd voted and they were mailing their their ballots in i

Carter 5:04

i mean my god is this what we've stooped to in canadian politics is this as low as we can get in terms of coming up with things to talk about i mean other than than throwing crap at trudeau i have yet to see anything that that vaguely interests me in any of these candidates date if

Zain 5:21

you haven't seen this video of peter mckay it's uh it's legendary it's about four minutes in length it starts with his wife uh going to the mailbox and getting the piece of mail which is of course the ballot to vote uh she then hands it over to peter who then like a staples sales rep uh photocopies his driver's license uh for the three minutes and 45 seconds she just stands there just looking at him um just sad i feel like it was she was just really just broken on the inside Corey, outside of videos, what are you sensing right now? What are you kind of feeling in this race? Is there anything you're picking up on or any threads that you kind of find interesting in the dog days of summer?

Corey 6:00

Well, I'm not feeling a lot, but I'm not really supposed to be. It's a leadership race for a political party that I'm not affiliated with. And they are for the members. They're not for us. And if they were targeting in such a broad way that I was capturing their communications, I was capturing that excitement. in some ways, I would say, boy, that's not time or money well spent, right? So let's just set that as the baseline. I think the idea that this has been a boring, see-nothing race is really where you stand. And if you're a conservative insider, maybe you're a little bit more engaged in it. And certainly, when

Corey 6:36

when you think about some of the fundamentals of the race, the size of the membership, the number of people who ran and paid $300,000 for it and all of that, there's reasons for the conservatives to think there's there's something there there's a foundation from which to build um but to answer your question about how am i feeling about it in terms of the strategy going forward it's really uh it's

Corey 6:57

it's really interesting to talk to conservative organizers i i think it's fair to say that both sides seem supremely both sides being in this case mckay and o'toole supremely confident they're going to win this thing and

Corey 7:08

and i don't actually believe that either either side is putting on airs both think they have the other and that

Corey 7:14

that to me says somebody is going to be disappointed

Corey 7:18

disappointed and there's a difference between losing and being disappointed right and if you're a party that has to come together afterwards and your reaction is one of shock it's going to take you a little bit longer to put your party back together so august 21st probably can't come soon enough for the concert is because they're going to have a bit of a mending job to do at the end of this thing no matter which one of those two ends up on top carter

Zain 7:39

carter you know we're We're about, you know, less than a month away from that August date that Corey mentioned. If you're organizing for one of these campaigns right now, you're a month away inside the bubble of a leadership race. Corey makes a very solid point that this is not for the general population. This is for the membership. If you're on the organizing or the campaign side right now, what are you back channeling? What are you back channeling to media? What are you back channeling to the rest of the membership? Is it just purely we're going to get this thing done? We're pure strength. We have this. Or is there more nuance you need to add to your message, especially when you're in such a small and tight bubble that you're communicating to?

Carter 8:12

There has to be some sort of a hook other than we're just winning. You know, you have to show them some sort of a reason why. And

Carter 8:18

And you saw that even Trump's campaign manager put out some information about how they're actually winning. You have to give them a reason to cover the campaigns. campaigns. And when you look at the Google results from the last

Carter 8:33

last week, there hasn't been much to cover because I don't think that even the backstories are working. Journalists love to cover the insider stuff. The insider, how are we doing something? But in this particular moment, the insider stuff is pretty boring. You've called every supporter that you have, making sure that they filled out the ballot the right way. And you've called them again, and you've called them again, and you've called them again, and you've called them again. And that's really all you can do because that's now how this campaign is going to be won or lost. And then you're going to sit around until August the 21st. I'm not sure whether or not you should be generating media or not generating media or generating attention or not generating attention because you don't want to help the other guy. So, you know, you're, you're just kind of sit. This is the downside of two things that I think the first thing is they were unfortunately impacted by COVID. This isn't their fault no one knew when the right time to put the you know the the dart in the in the calendar was it feels now like it's too late it's too long that's

Carter 9:33

that's not the conservative party's fault it'd be really fun to throw stones but you can't at that but the other thing that they did is they they they managed this process to have fewer candidates right last time was a gong show what was it 16 candidates um you know deepak obry was running i mean deepak obry didn't even get his own votes um you know like he didn't vote for himself in the leadership um that's where um you run into problems when you try and control these things too much right we had too many people last time so we're going to make a three hundred thousand dollar entry fee we're going to make it really hard for people to get in and so you wind up with uh two legitimate candidates and two of the uh far-right conservatives that that help rebrand your party as a far-right conservative party Because obviously, half of the candidates that are running are far right conservatives. And that's, you

Carter 10:26

that's not right for that party, if they're going to win in places like Quebec. back.

Zain 10:31

Corey, let's talk about the final month of a leadership race, right? You know, you guys have both run leadership campaigns. You know, sometimes these things drag on, but kind of what does the final stretch look like, regardless of what time of year it is? In this case, we're looking at summer, we kind of covered the summer context, but give our listeners a bit of an inside view as to what mechanics are going on right now in the final month of a leadership race.

Corey 10:55

Yeah, it's get out the vote mode, right? You are trying to persuade still, insofar as you think there are people still to be persuaded. But at this point, you should have a pretty good sense from your lists who's pretty locked for a candidate who is one of those persuadables. You're using your candidate as much as possible on those persuadables. Hopefully, they are working the phones like crazy to create that personal sense of connection in the areas where they do the highest value, especially in a point system. And then you are having everybody else in the campaign who is not persuasive. So, you know, the people who are carrying your water, your MPs, your senators, I suppose, and whatnot, you're getting them to yank vote, just pull vote as much as they can. And ideally, you don't need to use the people who persuade

Corey 11:38

persuade for pulling vote. Ideally, your organization is tight enough that you can distribute that workload accordingly. because lay organizer can pull vote lay organizer cannot persuade as a general rule right

Corey 11:51

um so so there's that allocation there's that nervousness there's the sense that your universe is kind of set and um it

Corey 12:00

is going to be what it is to a certain extent at this point we've talked about this before and you do have or maybe just me but you can have a habit of kind of spinning yourself up into a lot of very elaborate activities that are not necessarily of high value because this This is also a point where there are certain whole arms of your campaign that don't have very much to do, right?

Corey 12:20

right? In particular, I think about the communications arm, like when you think about broadcast communications. And so you have to sort of fight silly season as a campaign manager, too, because you're going to have a ton of ideas and a ton of quasi-idle communications

Corey 12:33

communications geniuses trying to have that one out-of-the-park swing.

Zain 12:38

Carter, anything to add there in terms of what are the mechanics in the final month of a leadership?

Carter 12:43

Well, no, I mean, it's also in this particular case, I think it's relatively straightforward because you've got two such front runners in other campaigns. There's a lot of deal making that goes on. This ranked ballot structure is very interesting. We're trying to figure out where a campaign's second, third, fourth choices is going to go. If there were more candidates is super important. I mean, we saw Maxime Bernier lead right up until the last ballot in the last conservative leadership. And

Carter 13:12

And that is where the work of the campaign manager, the campaign strategist, goes in the last few weeks. You

Carter 13:20

You know, I did a campaign in British Columbia and the deal was struck, I think, with about four weeks to go. And Andrew Wilkinson wound up winning the liberal leadership, I think, in no small part because of the deal that was done. But that work, you know, that takes a lot of time, a lot of effort. I mean, even us with Doug Horner, Alison Redford's leadership here, getting Doug Horner's voters to our side, Doug wasn't going to endorse. He refused to admit that he was going to come in third place. So getting him to change his mindset was near impossible. And that's why we concocted our endorse Doug Horner strategy. We told his voters who they were supposed to vote for. are this is interesting right now because you don't want to be aaron o'toole or peter mckay endorsing either derrick sloan or or leslin lewis lewis i get that right yeah

Carter 14:13

yeah um you know this is not they

Carter 14:19

they don't want to be endorsing those people because they don't want to be showing any weakness right now so there's no real strategy to try and pick up their votes other than just just trying to call every single person in the party.

Zain 14:30

Corey, you wanted to add something?

Corey 14:32

Well, I have long wondered if our campaigns aren't far longer than they need to be. You look at the British, you look at Boris Johnson. It was a month for round one and a month for round two. They had a two-round leadership contest concluded in two months. Now, the first round is just a vote of MPs, to be fair, but two months to finish everything, including a general membership vote. The Conservatives announced their leadership contest on December 12th, the day I remember, because it's my birthday. Strategist fans, mark your calendars. But that's eight months that you've got a leadership contest going on for. And obviously, COVID is a complicating factor here. But it was supposed to be June 27th. It was still supposed to be a six-month leadership contest. These are very long contests, and I do wonder how much value gets added in these later days.

Carter 15:20

Go ahead, Carter. You're adding a bunch of new members that

Carter 15:23

that aren't your core membership. This is the complaint about Alice in Redford all the way through is, you know, everybody goes out and they try and sell memberships and members have a value beyond the membership that they buy. But the longer a campaign goes, the more you're reaching past your your first targeted set to your second targeted set to your third targeted set. And the incremental value of the members being added in the fifth month is pretty minimal. minimal and oftentimes it is exactly the wrong type of membership for the party. I would love to see very quick two and three month leaderships, even a month and a half. We have at our fingertips the best communication tools we'll ever have. The problem is that campaigns need some time to spin up to raise money. But if you knew you were doing a month and a half leadership, they'd spin up their money really early. Well,

Corey 16:14

Well, and look, people are deadline-driven, so you're going to have that surge at the membership deadline, whether that membership deadline's in one month or in eight months. That's just the reality of things.

Carter 16:25

Yeah, I mean, if I had my druthers, I would mandate that every Canadian political party move to a shortened cycle and a delegated cycle. This one-member, one-vote cycle is the death knell of political parties.

Zain 16:36

And we kind of saw it last time with an unexpected leader, Andrew Scheer, and we might see it at this time for some people, especially, you know, for those who might be surprised and are not paying attention that Aaron O'Toole could end up being that leader. So let's talk about that a bit more, because O'Toole's been doing some interesting things, at least from the public facing standpoint. He talks about the party wanting to take climate change seriously. And until we get serious on climate change, we're not going to be in government. Surprising, one might say, considering he's the more further right of the two candidates with McKay and him being the top two. But let's talk about the O'Toole strategy right now. Corey, I'm going to to go to you on this first. If you're him right now, you know, outside of turning out the vote, are you looking to do anything else? Is there some version of an October surprise you're trying to throw into the mix? What's O'Toole doing right now?

Corey 17:22

So that is something you can do with the time between the end of the membership and, you know, the shooting actually happening, the ballots actually being counted. If you think you are going to win, you can start positioning yourself for that general election, for that broader conversation with Canadians, if you don't think he's going to trigger an election. And it does seem like he's taking a bit of a pivot towards the center. Even if you argue that it's not a big policy shift for him, he hasn't exactly had a change of heart around the carbon tax, for example. The fact that he is talking about an issue that so many Canadians place so highly, but is clearly not geared towards diehard conservative voters tells you, listen, if you didn't believe me saying, hey, I'm talking to insiders there who who think he he thinks he's going to win i think those actions show you that he thinks he's going to win he's starting to think about how he gets that broader tent built and he knows part of it has to be a climate change policy this is a glaring

Corey 18:15

glaring weakness of conservatives at this point yeah

Carter 18:18

yeah it was the reason i think the conservatives did so poorly in the last election it was the climate change election and they didn't have a real climate change policy if if they bring in a decent decent climate change policy um you at least check that box and realistically it's going to happen you know everybody's going to be asking for that policy anyways so get ahead of the game this is the the

Carter 18:40

the the opportunity to do that but you have to choose wisely if you're an O'Toole you can't choose any policy that's going to tick off your the core base and keep in mind both he and McKay did campaign

Carter 18:51

campaign to the right of center right of center right like these people were the right right wing they weren't just the right wing those are the people who uh bought memberships in the past those are the people who um were

Carter 19:05

were arguably behind two of the bigger candidates uh in the last in the last leadership so you know you can't necessarily go too far with the policy announcements that you should be putting out uh in order to start building that big tent until you know you've won yeah

Carter 19:21

you got to be

Corey 19:21

be careful because you have not won yet to your point carter it's um it's one of those things where if you're spending your time on this and perhaps making it less likely that you can persuade some of those very few voters that are still out there to be persuaded. That might not be time well spent.

Zain 19:37

So to that point, then, Corey, do you feel like this is a good strategy by O'Toole? Like, the conventional wisdom is that for him to win this thing, he obviously needs McCain not to win on the first ballot. And then he needs the social conservatives that would come with Lewis and Sloan to follow him through the subsequent rounds. With that being said, there's something like, you know, bringing up climate change into the into the zeitgeist of the race help him or is that just a risk right now as you see it well

Corey 20:01

well it's impossible to know without knowing his numbers if he feels like he's going to win 55 60 percent of the vote maybe it's the time to do it maybe it's to start bleeding a tiny bit of that back and uh and position yourself for what could be a snap election if we get to we maybe we'll talk a bit about some of the the timing questions around there but um you

Corey 20:20

you know You know, it's also quite possible because he comes baked in with it. It's the only Nixon could go to China thing. Maybe Aaron O'Toole is the conservative who can talk about climate change because his bona fides are not really in question here. People do tend to see him as a true blue conservative. So, again, they would have numbers that would let them know that. They would have some research and some insight into that. So it's tough to measure from the outside. I would say it's not inherently a bad strategy. It really depends on what they've got. what they understand the lay of the land to be. Carter,

Zain 20:54

Carter, same question to you. What do you make of the O'Toole strategy as you see it from the public face right now? This shift to the center a bit, knowing that for his success, he'll still need social conservatives to push him through.

Carter 21:05

I think he thinks he's doing really well. I think that he thinks his numbers are really strong and that he is going to be picking up second and third choices out of the other two candidates. And he's starting to position himself to be the leader of the Conservative Party of Canada. Um, if that's the case, I mean, I'm, I'm interested to see Peter McKay's response, but right now, what

Zain 21:28

for you? If you were running that, that shop right now, you're look, you're, you see this as a sign of confidence from your opponent. He's, he's clearly not going to win on the first ballot. This being O'Toole, if you're the McKay camp right now, are you, are you holding back? Are you issuing a response? What do you think you're doing? I

Carter 21:42

I don't know. I mean, these things get so convoluted by the time you're in these deep into these leaderships, you don't know what's up or down. Um, my strategy, if I were in the Peter mckay camp would be you do what you want to do i'm going to get my vote out you keep talking about climate change i'm going to focus on my getting my vote out um that was clearly the the message behind his botched video um maybe a new video you

Carter 22:04

you know something good carter does it does

Zain 22:06

does it just enhance the urgency to win on first ballot like i know that's been his strategy the whole time and he has to win on first ballot but does that just make it even more serious especially if your opponent thinks they've got you uh on a third fourth fifth round yeah

Carter 22:19

yeah i mean I mean, I think that there is no way that Peter McKay picks up significant amounts of votes from places three and four. And that's all that matters. So if he can't pick those significant votes up, then he needs to be in a position where he can win on the first ballot. I mean, let's assume that just for fun, 40% of the third and fourth candidates, Sloan and Lewis, drop off completely. Then you're left with 60% of the total. are you getting one of three of those ones if you're peter mckay maybe if you're lucky maybe it's one in five so the math on it is pretty pretty tough it means that mckay has to be uh

Carter 23:01

above a 46 i think in order to win depending on how many votes the other two pull like 46

Carter 23:09

46 is basically you've won like that's that's and i think that that's where he's going to have to be If he's at 45.8, I would be willing to bet $10 that he loses, which is a bet that Corey will take because he knows how good I am at prognostications.

Zain 23:25

Money begs Carter, puts his $10 down. Corey, I know you've got the archive of Stephen Carter predictions. We'll not play one here, but I've got the same question.

Carter 23:33

question. Well, hold on, Zane.

Carter 23:35

Jeb Bush needs to survive this primary and compete in a general. Jeb Bush is not surviving this primary. He's totally surviving this primary. Mark it down on your calendar, okay? OK, Stephen Carter. So hold on. Hold on. Jeb Bush is the guy.

Zain 23:51

Perfectly timed, Corey. It's like we knew that was going to happen.

Zain 23:55

Corey, I'll let you finish this segment off, which is same

Zain 23:58

same question. You know, if you are O'Toole, you're reading the tea leaves of your opponent. They feel like they've got the win behind their back, kind of like how Carter now has after that clip we played. If they feel like they've got that their win behind the back, you're the O'Toole campaign. They feel like they're shifting to the center. What would you add to Carter's strategy about get out the vote? Is there anything as you as a frontrunner needs to do right now, especially if your opponent thinks they've got you in subsequent rounds?

Corey 24:23

Well, if I'm McKay, I am not biting on the climate change issue. I'm definitely not – for starters, responding makes it clear that O'Toole is in the driver's seat, right? Right.

Corey 24:31

But also, only Nixon can go to China. It's not – you know, Hubert Humphrey couldn't go to China. McGovern couldn't go to China. His problem is if he says anything about climate change, the people who are only begrudgingly accepting him as a conservative are going to say, oh, I told you. The guy is full of shit. he's not actually a true blue conservative to use that phrase again so uh i i'm playing my game i'm not playing o'toole's game um my read of this race and it could be totally wrong because everything is through a fog hearing about it on a different continent you know by sailors who pass by here but i think mckay sold the most memberships uh i think he's got an enthusiasm problem i think I think the O'Toole campaign believes they have them when you consider the enthusiasm, plus, you know, plus the number of people who came maybe through McKay's membership portal, but aren't necessarily intending to vote for McKay. And if you're McKay, you got to get your vote out. You've got, if you've got lower enthusiasm, you got to work harder on GOTV. And that's what I would be spending my time on if I was Peter McKay. Okay,

Zain 25:37

Okay, let's move it on to our next segment. Our next segment, we

Zain 25:42

better talk about this person, woman, man, camera, TV.

Zain 25:48

let's talk about everyone's favorite, cognitively brilliant President of the United States. The Donald Trump saga continues as we know it has, and as we have, I would say, rightfully ignored over the past couple of weeks for other more pressing issues. But it has not changed. The level of news coverage for Donald Trump in the United States is still in rapid fire. You know, what are we seeing recently? Well, we're seeing that his campaign is now coming out explaining why he is lost for an election that's still 100 days away. We're seeing his campaign come out and talk about polls being falsified and not counting the strong GOP enthusiasm. He's also fired his campaign manager, which, by the way, this is where you guys take a bow around the Strategist podcast being the first and only political podcast to talk about that. So take that, Canada land. By the way, let me just tell you something. When people say, why are we so petty and taking a shit on Canada land? The answer is we will not stop until we are dominating the market. And that will continue. I feel like that's just on brand. So anyways, I'm going to leave that bracket on Canada land open. But anyways, no one else predicted it except us. The campaign managers fired. And now Hill Republicans are also distancing themselves from Donald Trump. Corey, what

Zain 27:05

what do you make of everything that you see from the Wallace interview to Trump's cognitive tests to all of the items mentioned above to the explanations of a campaign as to why they're going to lose? What are you seeing here? I

Corey 27:18

wish you could just take a month of this news coverage and go back in time to 2016 even.

Corey 27:25

even. I was going to say like 2000, but we are a frog in water. The fact that all of this has become normal is probably the most abnormal thing about it all. All of this is so deeply weird and so deeply disqualifying in any other time that it's actually a bit hard to process and it's certainly disorienting. And people talk a lot about whether Trump is crazy or crazy like a fox. Like I've said before, I think he's just a cornered animal. I think he's just a fox, right? But when

Corey 27:56

when you see some of these things like, oh, that's not counting the GOP support, that's not counting the GOP enthusiasm, every Republican campaign that's been losing, every presidential one in modern times has said a version of that. The Romney campaign said that. The McCain campaign said that. Do you remember the website UnSkewed Polls where they would take the support and say, well, more of the population is Republican, so let's just add Republicans into the – spoiler alert. The polls were not wrong in that case. And by the way, for everybody pointing to a polling miss in 2016, it wasn't exactly a huge miss. Hillary Clinton won the popular vote. It came down to relatively few votes in the Midwest. And Nate Silver, God love him, said there was a 30% chance this would happen. And then it happened. And people were floored. You know what? Next time you go and you put money on like the first 12 on roulette, you made the same bet that Nate Silver did that Trump was going to win. So let's give credit where credit's due there and let's not take a round out of the pollsters for last time. So all to say, he's losing. He's losing right now and it may be exacerbating some of the weirdness we're seeing. In some ways, I think our best hope is he loses big because he's also making noise about maybe not accepting the outcome of this election. Yeah,

Carter 29:11

I'm back and forth on both sides of that, because I think if he if he loses and it's close, he's going to say that it was obviously rigged. Look, we lost by a small number of votes. And if he loses and it's big, then he's going to say to his supporters, there's no way this could have happened. It's so obviously rigged. And if you look at the some of the polling has now started to ask the question, you know, is there a possibility that this election could be could be pulled or could be rigged? Most not quite most yet. I think it's 44 or 43 percent of Republican voters. Trump voters feel that this election is rigged and it is being stolen by Donald Trump. And he's got 100 days left, 100 days as of today to further that narrative. Then he gets another 100 days or thereabouts from the election until the swearing in of Joe Biden. And during both of those 100 day periods, we're going to see a misinformation campaign that is truly Trumpian because he is the king of misinformation. information. He

Carter 30:14

believes what he says, and he's surrounded himself with sycophants, none of which is going to walk into the Oval Office and say, sir, for

Carter 30:23

for the good of the country, we're leaving. I mean, who are we looking at that stellar list of staff that he's got on his team? Who are we looking at? Stephen Miller? You think Stephen Miller is going to walk in there and suddenly shift uh the direction that the the president is is taking it's not going to happen and uh you know bar bar is is the co-author of the situation that we're in this is not a situation that um that

Carter 30:53

that i'm particularly excited about i'm i'm i am beyond nervous uh about this situation and i fear that shots will be fired and and that prediction i'm not putting any money on because that's freaking me out. I'm freaked out.

Zain 31:08

That being said, Stephen, you know, let's put your values, your thoughts, your sentimentality aside, because that's what this show is all about. Oh,

Zain 31:17

that there was a call that you received right now. It's 99 days as of tomorrow. And I need you, Stephen Carter, to assemble a 99-day strategy, not to maybe necessarily win this campaign for Team Trump, but to maybe have better messaging than explaining why we're going going to lose. So let's start here. Give me some headlines. What would you be doing differently if you were in the Trump bubble right now, right? And I know he does, of course, doesn't prescribe and have the values that you share, but let's say you're hired to do this. What are some of the basic headlines and principles that you're constructing right now, knowing that this is potentially a ship that's going in only one direction, which is down? How are you constructing constructing the narrative of a losing campaign? Are you trying to, you know, continue the misinformation war? Are you going to pivot

Zain 32:09

pivot elsewhere? What do you do?

Carter 32:11

I'm going to remind everybody how great things were before COVID.

Carter 32:16

Right? Everything was great prior to COVID. Everything was moving along the way we wanted it to move. And then COVID came along. And this is just a temporary setback. But the markets have never were never so high. Employment was never ever so high you never had as much money in your pockets and you may not like president trump but i know that you like having money in your pockets i know that you liked having more

Carter 32:39

more opportunity than you've ever had it doesn't matter if you're black if you're hispanic or if you're white no one is there's never been a period where you didn't have more money in your pocket uh than under president trump and i would say that just because covet is hit um there's not a reason uh to back away from this. COVID is going to go away. And who do you want in the Oval Office when COVID is gone? Someone who puts more money in your jeans.

Zain 33:04

Interesting. So you're saying that America pre-COVID was great and that Donald Trump is going to make America great again. Very interesting. I like that. I think that's... Why are you being a dick? You asked me a terrible

Zain 33:19

that was quite an enlightened answer, which is you effectively Effectively, avoid talking about COVID. You just tell the American public that pre-COVID, the world was amazing under my leadership. It's not a bad strategy. You don't have many to play with. I actually don't think that's a bad message to hit on. Corey, same question to you. Do you want to both responding to Carter? It seems

Corey 33:38

seems pretty clear to me that was Trump's strategy, and it's getting harder and harder to ignore COVID. And so now he's having to look at it a bit more broadly. Let's get into tinfoil hat reckless speculation here. But the other thing that occurs to me when Trump says all of a sudden COVID is a big problem is you can't cancel elections or make it hard to vote if COVID is under control and no big deal. But if the disease is terrible, if all of a sudden things are very very bad. You have a basket of tools, and they don't necessarily need to take the form

Corey 34:11

of outright cancelling elections. But it could be, oh, no, this is very hard. You cannot vote in person like this. And you can only vote in these ways that'll make it less convenient for you if you're of a certain demographic. So if you're lower income, and you can't take time off work, if you're a minority who is in an area with fewer voting stations and has to travel to vote, I think that in some ways him saying the disease is terrible puts some of those things on that couldn't have been on under his previous strategy. So if I'm a Democrat, I'm watching very, very carefully because I am a suspicious man. And if my son shall be struck by lightning, I'm going to hold some people in this room accountable. And look, as

Corey 34:54

far as Trump goes on strategies of actually trying to win people's love, instead of just trying to get people not to be able to vote, which I still think is probably some version of a more likely GOP strategy. Talk about the economy. Absolutely. But then you're also going to be trying to put as much of a spotlight as possible on Joe Biden. You know, it's funny, we've been talking about Trump now for how many minutes? Joe Biden's name hasn't come up. That doesn't help Donald Trump.

Corey 35:23

Donald Trump needs people looking at Sleepy Joe and the fact that he

Corey 35:29

he just sort of fumbles his way through life at this point. Well,

Zain 35:32

Well, thank you so much, Corey. I just wanted to make mention that this segment has been brought to you by QAnon. QAnon, your one-stop shop for reckless speculation. Carter, what do you make of what Corey just said here? Because, I mean,

Zain 35:48

hate to say it, it's not horrible. It does make sense in the sense of, you know, you want to do a bit of both. You want to vote suppress however you can, if that means extending the life cycle of COVID. Man, as insane as that sounds. Well,

Corey 36:00

Well, I didn't say he was going to extend it. I'm saying he's no longer saying it's no big deal. Yeah,

Zain 36:04

Yeah, correct, correct, correct. And not having the escape hatch to say that things need to be done differently, right?

Zain 36:12

And then it's a bit of focusing attention on Joe and then doubling down on economy. Anything to respond to there?

Carter 36:18

Well, I mean, the challenge is that the process of the elections is articulated fairly clearly that it is the states who run these elections. I mean, I wouldn't put it past Trump and his team to say that the states are incapable of administering the elections. They've been incapable of dealing with COVID. It's all the state's faults. The federal government is going to step in. We're going to print ballots. We're going to mail those ballots out. And only the ballots mailed to the zip code 20500 are going to count in this election. any any ballots mailed somewhere else aren't going to count um the states are have have invalidated their right and it wouldn't and i'd watch a bunch of sycophantic republican governors line up and say it's the best idea they've ever heard um and then the democratic governors lose their mind um supreme court would lose their mind i would hope um but it would still still be a split decision because the supreme court's a disaster but you know this is that

Carter 37:24

that i don't put it beyond him i think it's impossible but i i think he could try so

Corey 37:29

so i i'm not actually saying that the federal government is going to take over the running of elections you only need republican governors in a couple of close swing states to do something along these lines with the you know but it needs to be consistent with the president's narrative or else it's not likely to help you and i also don't believe it'll be by mail i i think it'll just be a more difficult version of voting in person that will be made easier for certain demographics if it goes down this road but

Corey 37:52

but look he wants his october surprise to be a vaccine i i think that's the i've

Corey 37:57

i've already used one casino metaphor today i think he's putting all of his chips over there like he's hoping that come october there's some vaccine for this thing and he can take credit for it if

Zain 38:06

if they do uh end up going vote by mail of course there's an excellent uh video by peter mckay and wife that I feel like they

Zain 38:15

they should emulate if they go down that road. You guys talked about the states, and I want to go here for a second. So let's park the Trump conversation. If you are working for, let's say, one of the senators in a pretty Republican state right now, are you leaning into Trump knowing that this is a sinking ship? Are you still trying to do a slight pivot where you're distancing? What are you kind of doing if you're a Hill Republican or a Senate Senate Republican in a pretty strong Republican area. And let's be clear, Trump is losing in a lot of polls that have been traditionally very strong Republican areas. So how are you kind of distancing yourself without getting the wrath of the president for those who are going to show up for him at those polling stations? Carter?

Carter 38:58

Well, I mean, I think that you're seeing some people distance themselves on thinking around COVID right off the bat. That's the easy one. Trump Trump actually now is following a number of Republican governors. Some of the ones that doubled

Carter 39:14

doubled down early on Trump's rhetoric, DeSantis in Florida jumps out. They're really screwed, and backing away from that's going to be really hard. But let's divide the Republican Party into three parts. The first part are the Trumpers. right the the trumpers have been absolutely dedicated to trump and they're not going anywhere and yes there are congress people running for congress that do believe in the q anon conspiracies um so that group isn't going to change because it is foundational to who you are all the conspiracies all the stuff that trump has done so that group one-third of republicans don't change another group of trumpers um let's call them the jeff session trumpers the ones who jump And you can see, you know, Lindsey Graham comes to mind. You know, he was against Trump. It was going to be the downfall of the Republican Party.

Carter 40:06

And the second he won, even before he won, you know, Lindsey Graham, Lady G, he was, you know, he she was right there, right there. um i'm

Carter 40:17

i'm gonna say something nasty but you know our listeners can fill in the blank fill in the metaphor for what lady g was doing to trump um but that

Carter 40:26

that happens and then there's the third group of of trump of of of republicans and they're already gone they're already gone they're they're not making up uh they left some time ago is is it casick who's uh who's speaking to the democratic convention um you know like they left four years ago and they're gone i want to see what mitt romney does mitt romney you know he should be standing up and screaming at the top of his lungs every once in a while he puts out a strongly worded tweet um that's not good enough that's not going to be good enough and and he's lucky in that he doesn't face election in this in this cycle but uh

Carter 41:06

if he did i mean susan collins faces election she's trying to distance but she's dead she knows she's dead i don't even think she's putting up much of a fight so a lot of these people they know they're dead they're gonna

Carter 41:19

gonna try and figure out what to do with next with their their careers they're signing book deals they're moving on cory

Zain 41:25

cory you're wincing in disgust um of course your natural face that you make whenever steven speaks but uh but but but give me give me some some further context right if you're one of these folks that's on the bubble that isn't a trump based sort of candidate but he's the leader of your party and he's still popular with your party what are you trying to do in order to to survive and perhaps even secure your future post trump yeah

Corey 41:48

yeah well first of all the coolest thing about lindsey graham might be that he might be lady g so let's not let's not you're better than that carter i sincerely mean i'm

Carter 41:57

i'm not actually i I think you've known that for some time. I think

Carter 42:00

Lady G is the best thing in the history of mankind.

Corey 42:04

There was some innuendo there that I think we could have done without. But look, if you're

Corey 42:11

you're a senator in the United States and you are in a deep red state, you're ride or die with the president. His base is there, and they are going to determine either now or manifested otherwise in the future whether you live in a primary or not.

Corey 42:31

If you are a Republican in a blue state or a light red state, a purple state, yeah, I mean, this is probably – you've got your primary. This is your time to get off the train, right? Trump is losing by a lot, and this is where you've got to start putting some distance. And expect to see more Republicans talking about the value of having a strong check on Joe Biden and the risk of the Democrats having the House, Senate and presidency. You're going to see a lot more of that language coming, I think, through the fall if polls hold the way they are right now. We're

Zain 43:04

We're going to put a pin in it right there and we're going to move on to our next segment. Our next segment. Are we fucking doing this or what? Guys, it's finally time to talk about our favorite subject. The we enterprise, the we organization. The We Charity. I don't even know what they are at this point. So many revelations this week in the story that Stephen predicted would be dead three weeks ago. Let's start. Let's start. Wait, wait, wait.

Carter 43:32

Stephen Carter. So hold on. Jeb Bush is the guy.

Carter 43:38

three weeks ago, if the information that we knew three weeks ago had been all the information, this thing is over. But every week, this is the liberals modus operandi. Every week they say, you know what?

Carter 43:49

Let's stab ourselves in the foot again. Let's do it one more time. Let's do it one more time. Let's do it one more time. And they are the worst crisis managers in the history of politics. Over to you, Zane. My bad. No,

Zain 44:01

No, no, no. Let's go on this thread. Because how do you think this is happening? I mean, this is what I was talking about to the Toronto Star just a few days ago about this liberal strategy of how is this gone against the grain of issues management 101, Carter? Do you feel like the issues management team within the PMO just didn't know all the facts so they couldn't dump it all out? Or do you feel like this is moving so quickly? Or this can't be strategic, I guess is what I'm trying to say. Explain to me or speculate for me, what do you feel like is going on within the PMO and the issues management circle there?

Carter 44:34

Well, this isn't specific to we, but somewhere in this culture of the Liberal Party, there is a culture where when an issues manager or some sort of title comes to the minister and says, is this everything? The

Carter 44:47

The ministers say, oh, yeah, that's everything. That's everything. And then they don't tell the truth. they have some sort of a a problem where they don't air all the dirty laundry if it's done at one all at once it's over when it leaks out like this you know one day after one day after one day and and suddenly the finance minister is forced to write a forty one thousand dollar check i mean

Carter 45:09

which which does two things first of all you took forty one thousand dollars from a charity and secondly you've got forty one thousand dollars you can just write a check you know it sets off off this privilege problem that the liberals have with both Justin Trudeau and Bill Morneau, who don't know the, you know, maybe they know the literal price of milk, but they don't understand the importance of buying, of how challenging the world is in this particular moment. It just bothers me that this culture has happened at the Liberal Party where they don't have the foundation. Someone should walk into the minister's office, you know, whether it's the prime minister, whether it's the finance minister whether it's uh another minister you walk in and you say tell me everything now and if you don't tell me tell me everything there is to know and write your resignation letter i'm not walking out of this office until i have both of those things and if something is not in you know if you haven't told me everything and something else pops up i'm handing your resignation letter to the prime minister thank you we're done wow

Carter 46:15

i think there There has to be some hard ass shit happening in that in that prime prime minister's office.

Zain 46:20

Let's before I go to you, Corey, I want to I want to pick this thread up with Carter. Is that how issues management offices run? Like, give our listeners an understanding, right? You ran a bunch of issues managers when you were in the premier's office. Is this how you, you know, have them if there's a scandal or something, you have them go to ministers? You think that's a normal practice? You think that's a special practice? Just give us the insight as to how this could work on the inside. This

Carter 46:42

This was my job in our government. We didn't have issued managers like Matt

Carter 46:48

Matt Wolf. That was

Corey 46:49

was a new thing. That

Corey 46:51

a new thing, I think, in 2015. We paid for

Carter 46:54

Anyways, I went in and I actually, it's like my first day. We had a mistake from one of our ministers and I was sent in to clean it up. And you go into the minister's office. Actually, the minister is called to your office, which gives you a sense of how weird this is. Ministers call to your office. They come in with their hat in hand and you say to them,

Carter 47:16

this is how this is going to end.

Carter 47:18

You know, you've just been appointed minister. It's no problem for us to change you.

Carter 47:25

And they tell you everything. And then you put forward a plan to manage it.

Carter 47:29

And then it's managed. And then once it's over, you go to the minister and you say, thank you for telling me everything.

Carter 47:35

This is done. And

Carter 47:35

And it never comes comes back again because it's just done and that minister is able to continue their career as a minister of the crown because but it's it's the half it's the it's the dishonesty by omission that seems to and i don't know if it's because no one in the pmo is is is you know picking up the phone and calling or getting getting the minister into the office or if it's um omission from the ministers themselves like how did bill morneau not say oh by the way i went on this trip with my family to Africa, you know, maybe

Carter 48:12

maybe I should pay this back. How was that not brought up in the very first meeting where they were discussing how this thing's going to, how this is going to unfold? I

Zain 48:20

I don't understand it.

Zain 48:21

Corey, give us your reaction, both on this broad scope of issues management, how you strong arm a minister, but also what you think happened here. Why are the liberals inflicting a drip campaign on themselves on a weekly basis? Francis?

Corey 48:34

Well, first off, very nice Toronto Star humblebrag. I mean,

Zain 48:39

we talked about it up front. You literally outed me at

Corey 48:43

at the top. The important thing to keep in mind is that in Calgary, nobody cares about the Toronto Star. And I think you actually had to lower your billable rate as a result of showing up in that newspaper. The second thing, though, I would say is that we We are actually making the assumption that these details were not shared with issues managers. There is a possibility that Morneau said, hey, I just

Corey 49:08

just want you to know there's also this trip thing. That's

Corey 49:10

And somebody made the assessment like, oh, okay, well, that seems fine, which is unlikely. Or maybe even like, oh, God, well, if you pay them back, that's going to look quite guilty. So let's just – let's hold on that. Let's not invite that grenade in our face. and um and maybe just before they got to committee they became aware of the fact that people were aware of this fact that someone had it made decisions made that's not an excuse that that doesn't actually preclude the strategy both of you were talking about which is get absolutely everything out first i'm just saying we

Corey 49:40

we don't actually know it was more no who held back on this one it could be that it was actually mismanaged that's a good point

Corey 49:46

and um and look they they should have absolutely unloaded everything out the door including things that that they didn't necessarily think were problems on day one. I was talking to a friend about this very topic. We were both incredulous about liberals be liberal in and their ability to just blow off their feet on this matter. And he was reminding me about in 96 when Glenn Clark became premier, there was a scandal with BC Hydro. And this was right after Glenn Clark wins the leadership.

Corey 50:12

They dropped everything, everything you could possibly,

Corey 50:16

possibly know about this scandal to the media.

Corey 50:19

Brutal coverage for a couple of days. and then there was nothing left to report like and all of a sudden it's starved of oxygen and a couple of weeks later went to the polls and he wins so um there is a model here that is proven time and again which is like don't

Corey 50:32

don't bleed all over the field right just just take it all on the chin and move on and um and

Corey 50:38

let me just sort of wrap by saying like how rich is more no i mean he is i left 41 000 in my other pants rich you know it's just it's crazy yeah

Zain 50:47

yeah this all checks out cory Corey, very similar to what I told the Toronto Star earlier today.

Zain 50:55

Very similar. Okay, let's take a shift from Morneau to Trudeau for a second. He's going to be appearing at the Finance Committee. Carter, talk to me about the strategy. So, you know, if you were running that PMO, would you yay and green light the strategy for Trudeau to show up at Finance Committee? Let's start there first.

Carter 51:12

No, I wouldn't. But maybe he has no choice now. Now, um, back,

Carter 51:17

back, and I think I said I wouldn't two weeks ago, but

Carter 51:20

but again, now that they keep shitting on themselves, it feels like they may, you know, they may need the, the

Carter 51:26

the prime minister to step in and, and take the punches. Um, but imagine, imagine that that's the last step in your strategy. You know, you've had four weeks on this problem and your last step on your strategy is okay.

Carter 51:39

guess we're going to put the prime minister in to take the punches. Um, like who, who designs that strategy to end that way? I certainly wouldn't have designed the strategy to end that way. I would have had Morneau as the primary problem. But, you know, again, if this

Carter 51:58

this is all managed properly, then we don't wind up here. And the idea, by the way, that information is not going to get to the media is laughable. All information gets to the media. It just takes time.

Carter 52:09

So you can't control these types of things. So, yeah, I'm not a big fan of Trudeau going and going to the committee, but I'm not sure they have the choice left. What I would be doing right now is the most intense, the most intense prep work ever. The problem is the more you train Trudeau, the worse he sounds. His authenticity leaves him because he's spouting lines. minds. But you know what? I think in the middle of the summer in a committee meeting run by our friend Skippy, I'm fine. I'm fine with just putting him up there robot-like and having

Carter 52:48

having him answer the questions in his robot tones.

Zain 52:51

So no new information for you, Carter, right? This is strict talking points, all prepped. This is not explaining the process of how this thing happened. This is going

Zain 52:59

going back and feeding back to messaging?

Carter 53:01

Yeah, because this was all explained how this this happened last week. This was all explained. We've been through the committee already where the nuts and bolts of who said what and who thought of what has been described. Do not add any fuel to this fire by saying anything out of step with what has been said before. New information at this point is bad information.

Zain 53:24

Yeah. Corey, same question to you. Would you have advised Trudeau go to finance committee? And regardless of now that he's there, what are you advising him to to do yeah

Corey 53:33

yeah look i mean absent a time machine after last week he had to go to the committee if they had done radical transparency up the top and dropped everything and he could say credibly to the canadian people there's nothing left to find out here you know for weeks there's been no new details then you can get away with with trying to avoid a committee appearance but the fact that we are learning details about this so regularly just it makes it look like he's trying to hide if he doesn't go to committee so he's got to go i mean he's got to do that and And when he's there, he's got to hope there's nothing new. Now, if I'm the conservatives, there's going to be something new. If they haven't held back a bit of ammunition for this, this is the show. This is the prime minister on the stand.

Corey 54:15

Well, then they've played this one inelegantly, I should say. But we'll see. This could be a massive nothing burger, or this could be the start of a whole new chapter of this thing. Carter,

Zain 54:26

Carter, with that being said, the fact that we're on to week four of this story, that details are constantly being rolled out, that the basic political strategy of collecting and dumping hasn't necessarily been allowed for the liberals, are we at the point where

Zain 54:43

where a head needs to roll, where someone needs to proverbially fall on their sword, leave, resign, get fired? inspired are we in that territory right now part a and part b if so who yeah

Carter 54:57

yeah i mean i think the problem with that strategy is that i think canadians would only be satisfied with maybe maybe three different names uh the finance minister the prime minister and the chief of staff and i'm not sure that any of those three want their heads to roll and i'm not sure the prime minister wants any of those three heads to roll um so

Carter 55:14

so if you're stuck managing this if you're being told that you've got to manage it without that um you

Carter 55:21

you know i think you're still you know the the prime minister's appearance is everything uh ultimately the head that is probably the most likely to roll is bill morneau uh

Carter 55:30

uh he's the one who made the you know and again this will go to cory's point if cory's correct and they knew this information then his head doesn't need to roll but if his if they didn't know this information it was new then yeah i think you got a real case that you you've lost ministerial trust and uh you gotta go cory

Zain 55:50

cory same question to you are we at that point where someone needs to go and who uh

Corey 55:56

uh i don't think so maybe it would be an interesting play at this point because i don't know that it would stop the bleeding it might actually just exacerbate it because all of a sudden um well your problem fundamentally is that the most damning story story is, maybe Morneau is creeping up there with the $41,000, but the most damning story is still the prime minister's family, right?

Corey 56:18

Like this is, you know, the $41,000 is not even nearly, it's not even a fifth of what the prime minister's mother was paid by this organization. So it's tough to say what Morneau did was wrong, but what Trudeau did was fine. And I think that that's the challenge that they've ultimately got right now. So I think they've just got to, I

Corey 56:40

I suspect they they just need to batten down the hatches unless there's some sort of creative angle that I'm just not thinking of right now. This is this is the challenge. It's it would be such a different story if this was a scandal of one of his ministers. But this is foundationally a Trudeau scandal. And if people start resigning about that, that

Corey 56:56

that is very dangerous place to be if you're the president.

Carter 57:00

Yeah, go ahead, Carter. When

Carter 57:01

When Jerry Butts stepped down with the S&C Lavalin affair, it didn't have any positive impact. All you did was lose Jerry Butts. Arguably one of the you You know, he's he's a smart man. He him being in the office is stronger and better. When he left, it had no practical

Carter 57:17

practical impact on removing the scandal away from Justin Trudeau. Now it just became a scandal that was so big that he lost his principal advisor, his principal secretary. You

Carter 57:27

You do not want that situation to happen right now. I think Corey's right. This should this should be a stand pat strategy.

Zain 57:35

You know, let's put a pin on on the liberals right now and what they're doing. And I want to look at the other stream very quickly of this WE scandal and saga, and that is WE themselves, the organization. So the Kuehlberger brothers will also be appearing at Finance Committee. But I want to not focus on that as much as I want to focus on their messaging and their communications. So when we chatted about them previously, last three weeks or so, we talked about, you know, what media advice we would give to them. They came out with their Globe and Mail piece. The word we is killing me right now. Oh, yeah. I'm just going to say it over and over again. It is going to be the bingo card word of the show and all subsequent episodes, Corey. However, however, we,

Zain 58:13

we, as in the three of us, is that better? Do you like that better? It's nice. I

Carter 58:17

I like it. It's good. Yeah. Three of

Zain 58:18

of us talked about what they were doing in terms of media strategy. Well, it turns out as soon as they did their initial apology tour, we're going to focus back on our, you know, get back to the roots of our organization. They have since moved on to a much more offensive strategy. They're going after journalists. They're going after Brian Lilly at The Sun, calling him out for a little bit of misinformation and misreporting that he had to apologize for. They're going after Charity Watch for the letter grade that Charity Watch gave them. And they're, of course, going after CanadaLand and Jesse Brown, who arguably was the first to introduce WE into the public zeitgeist. What do you kind of make of the organization's pivot from an initial, we need to introspect, we need to be true to ourselves, we're going to go back to our fundamental roots, and now saying, fuck all of you, we're just going to take as many shots as we can and go down swinging? Any kind of thoughts that you have on what you're seeing from WE?

Corey 59:13

Yeah, the opening with Sunshine and Roses and then punching everybody in the face is aggressive PR in that sense. That combo is a hallmark of Navigator, a PR firm in Toronto, who I believe has been hired by WE. And you can expect to see more of that when you start thinking about a bunch of different, yeah, I'm not even going to get into it, but like just Google Navigator and look at how they've dealt with some of their PR candidates. This is very par

Corey 59:39

par for the course. And I suspect that you are going to see we continue to be aggressive and continue to try to move the spotlight from them to their accusers and make people doubt whether those accusers have anything legitimate to say. That coupled with their, look, we are taking an honest look at ourselves is kind of that, you know, hug and punch strategy that Navigator is famous for. Corey,

Zain 1:00:02

Corey, is that the right strategy in your mind? Like from what you sense right now, the current appetite for we as an organization, is this the right strategy?

Corey 1:00:10

Well, I don't know it's the wrong one. You have to kind of keep in mind where we is most exposed, and that is in those boardroom settings. They've lost a couple of major corporate donors. KPMG, tell us. KPMG is an accounting firm. It's not shocking that a scandal that involves accounting questions at its core, right, whether the charity was paying for it or not, that they would be a little squeamish about it. But where

Corey 1:00:33

where they are exposed is in a boardroom. Somebody suggests a contribution to we or suggests pulling a previous commitment to we. And

Corey 1:00:40

And somebody says, well, hold on that

Corey 1:00:42

that Jesse Brown accuser. Do you know X about him? Right. And they're able to kind of bleed into the conversation and create that ambiguity at that boardroom setting. setting, that's

Corey 1:00:52

that's not such a bad strategy to deal with that, because you are not actually trying to win over the public writ large at this moment. You are trying to keep the lights on, and that means keeping the boards from moving rashly. You want to make sure they're maintaining their commitments, or you want to make sure if a commitment proposal is coming forward that somebody at least is there saying, that's probably bullshit, the accusation you heard about them. Carter,

Zain 1:01:11

Carter, what do you make of the we offensive that we're seeing right now on messaging?

Carter 1:01:16

Well, I think that it would be one thing if there was any sort of plausible deniability. there isn't much plausible deniability on this. The prime minister's office is, you know, the prime minister is going to be testifying in front of a committee. The boardrooms of Canada know that we is a part of this scandal. And now they know that they're punching people. This is, you know, they were going to be in trouble. I thought that the strategy of really reinvesting in the good work that you do, so you could go back to your corporate sponsors in six months, months, nine months, and say, look, we've really refocused ourselves on the good work that we do overseas and for children. It's hard for corporate sponsors, I think, to walk away from good work. I don't think it's hard for corporate sponsors to walk away from a fistfight. And they're in a fistfight. I think that if this is a navigator strategy, this is the wrong strategy. I think that it's going to hurt we in the long run. And we'll

Carter 1:02:14

we'll see. I mean, I'm

Carter 1:02:17

I'm an aggressive communicator. I love getting into a communications fight, but

Carter 1:02:23

but this just never felt like the time to fight. This has always felt like a

Carter 1:02:27

a time to regroup around that which you value the most, and that is supposed to be the good work, not punching Jesse Brown in the face, although I'm a fan in general.

Zain 1:02:40

I mean, he got to go testify at the Finance Committee. I have no idea what no

Zain 1:02:45

asked us. No one's asked us. I mean,

Carter 1:02:47

mean, really, we're the ones with the insight here. And Jesse Brown gets into a committee. I am putting

Carter 1:02:52

it on the record. Why is a journalist going to a committee? Is he a journalist or is he a tattletale? What is he? Because if he's a journalist, you don't go to the committee. So that means he's a tattletale.

Zain 1:03:03

Let me tell you something. The finance committee, we don't know what we are, but we will show up. We will 100% show up. We can do a live show for the finance committee. it's something we've done private gigs in the past that also serve as testimony uh so of

Zain 1:03:18

course just making that offer to the finance committee give us a shout um you can find my digits uh just look for today's toronto star you'll find it in there um

Corey 1:03:29

okay let's move it to our final segment our

Zain 1:03:30

our over under and our lightning round guys are you ready totally

Zain 1:03:34

totally all ready carter i'm going to to you first on a scale of one to 10, one to 10, how damaging are the revelations of Governor General Julie, Julie Payette for Justin Trudeau and his government on a scale of one to 10?

Carter 1:03:48

You know, I'm a cup

Carter 1:03:51

cup half full kind of guy on this one, cup half empty.

Carter 1:03:56

I've worked with female politicians, and they get accused of things every single day that I don't necessarily, you know, that if a man was to do it, I don't think they get the same type of accusations. So I'm not sure that I'm buying this at this particular moment. I think that an investigation is warranted, but I think that women in high profiles are very poorly treated, and sometimes the accusations that follow them aren't true. Now, having said that, if

Carter 1:04:33

the accusations are true, then the prime minister should be having a strong conversation with the governor general about her future. And her future should probably involve Elon Musk's trip to Mars. I think that that would be something that would be right up her alley. Because,

Carter 1:04:51

Because, you know, if these accusations are true, that's not a good start. And I will say that one of my friends from politics tweeted that he

Carter 1:05:00

wasn't sure about the governor general's behavior, but he knows that our chief of staff is, and I'm quoting, a bully.

Carter 1:05:05

So there's probably some truth to this. But, you know, the investigation is the right play.

Zain 1:05:13

Carter, your line, my friend from politics, almost sounds as fake as my Canadian girlfriend. By the way, just to let you know, my

Zain 1:05:20

my friend from politics. Corey, same question to you. one to ten scale how bad is this for for the prime minister so

Corey 1:05:27

i think it's an eight uh i think this is about expectations and her expectations of her staff uh are not aligned with what her staff's expectations are of the job and this goes back to the early days of the gg where it was it was pretty clear that she was less interested in being a ceremonial figurehead leader and wanted to mix And so in that case, I think that in some ways, this is a canary in the coal mine, but not for an abusive Gigi. For a Gigi who does not understand the job, is wanting more from the staff. I'll tell you something, the regal representative, that is not the bright center of the universe. That is not where you get the comms people who are working until midnight each night. And if that's her expectation of them, that's because she thinks she's in politics and she's not. And so I think the misalignment actually makes me think that there's a bigger problem that you've got to keep your eye on with the Gigi. And it's not about her being a bully. It's about the fact that she does not know what her job is.

Zain 1:06:28

Great answer, Corey. Thank you for answering the question on that one to ten scale. I really appreciate it. I'm trying something

Corey 1:06:33

something new today. That means

Zain 1:06:34

means a lot to me. I was disappointed. It does mean a lot to me.

Zain 1:06:37

Carter, over to you. Are you in or out this week, in or out this week on what you've seen with the Conservative Party and their strategy, mainly focused on the Finance Committee, mainly focused on how they've, you know, unearthed some of the new allegations, how they've handled them? Are you in or out on what you're seeing from the Conservative Party this week?

Carter 1:06:55

I think it's still a fail for me. I mean, the work

Carter 1:06:58

work that Skippy has done, Pierre Pelliev, I always think it's too much. I think that, you know, they were screaming wolf from the very beginning. And now there may be a wolf in the $41,000 for Morneau. But because they were screaming it for so long, I've been, you know, I've been chatting with all kinds of people about

Carter 1:07:20

about this particular scandal. It's still not there. it's a three percent drop in the polling numbers so that's a real drop in polling numbers uh but

Carter 1:07:30

in in terms of people who are on

Carter 1:07:32

on the street you

Carter 1:07:34

you know mountain biking like real people do uh it's just not it's not it's not generating any any

Carter 1:07:40

any real flair cory

Zain 1:07:42

cory are you in or out on the conservatives and what they've been doing this week and

Corey 1:07:46

and i mean we're still talking about it the polls are narrowing sheer is saying it's for the next leader to decide whether there's an election called it's It's everything the CPC would have wanted three weeks ago. How do you possibly fault them for where they are today, given

Corey 1:08:00

given the shitstorm that is around the liberals right now?

Zain 1:08:04

Corey is in. Carter is out. Carter, our next question for you, on a scale of 1 to 10, once again, going back to 1 to 10, how well does Justin Trudeau perform at the Finance Committee?

Zain 1:08:18

Another prognostication question, Corey. Get the recorder. Recorder. Get the second backup recorder.

Carter 1:08:24

I think he's going to be very well rehearsed. I think his lines are going to be robotic and have that tone that makes me crazy. So I think it's going to be a robotic performance. I don't know where to put that on your scale. I'm going to give it a mediocre.

Zain 1:08:46

Oh, thank you, Carter, so much. Corey, same question to you. One to ten, how does Trudeau perform? form it's

Corey 1:08:51

it's like a popcorn movie there's going to be a divide between the critics and the public i think critics are going to hate it they're going to give it like a three uh because they will see that roboticness that steven has is rightly pointed out and that that not particularly overwhelmingly talented drama teacher thing that he sometimes has uh i think the public is going to be sated by it by and large not over overwhelmingly enthusiastic but a six or a seven from the public.

Zain 1:09:19

Corey, I'm going back to you on this one. Yes or no. In the next couple of weeks, do we see someone from the Trudeau government resign? That could be a chief of staff. That could be Morneau. That could be someone in the mix. Let's say in the next three week timeline. Yes or no. Are you seeing someone go?

Corey 1:09:35

Well, I think you'll see resignations, but they're not going to be. Well, I don't know. This one I'm curious about. I'm not necessarily sure it would even be a smart idea, as I mentioned, for people to resign. It's quite possible even it's lower or in a different place than you think. Maybe someone in the public service falls on the surface. Maybe someone in the public service legitimately screwed up. And I suspect that someone somewhere in that grand federal apparatus will resign related to this issue.

Zain 1:10:01

Corey says yes and expands the scope. Carter, are

Zain 1:10:04

are we going to see someone resign in the next three weeks from the Trudeau government?

Carter 1:10:08

No, absolutely not. Not going to happen. and uh i think that uh the reality that now

Corey 1:10:14

now it is going to happen

Carter 1:10:15

happen oh yeah for sure right like it's just it's okay just one second jeb

Carter 1:10:20

jeb bush is the guy you

Carter 1:10:22

you know you're unlikable you're unlikable is the problem uh i'm the likable one which is a real a real significant issue you

Carter 1:10:31

know there will be no resignation zane move on to your next question and

Zain 1:10:34

and our final question is a listener question once again a listener question that is correct you can bribe us with a five-star our review and ask a listener question this one comes us to to us from j bumstead uh the review is a bribe i feel like this may be a j bumstead we know and he asks what should the edmonton team formerly known as the eskimos change their name to uh of course we haven't had a lot of regional content on this uh on this particular episode uh should it be uh the great whites uh question mark an obscure symbol uh cory you've put your hand up uh this could only mean pure disaster go ahead i

Corey 1:11:09

i can kill two birds with one stone on this one so uh zane you have some edmonton roots yes

Corey 1:11:15

uh you're the vice son of the vice regal representative for starters very well done again you are aware that uh and for those who are not from alberta there was a controversy about a decade back where edmonton took off their sign city of champions and changed it to ed or alberta's capital city which just tells you a lot about the psyche that edmonton sometimes carries around edmonton's a beautiful city by the way i love edmonton but we

Corey 1:11:38

we can kill two birds with one stone you call them the edmonton champions and you put city of champions back on that sign everybody is happy i'll

Corey 1:11:50

i'll accept my my applause now uh

Zain 1:11:55

do you uh what

Carter 1:11:55

what do you remember back in the day that landed

Carter 1:11:58

landed like a stone

Zain 1:11:59

by the way we

Carter 1:11:59

we first we first started talking about this and i said the the problem is the cfl team does not have the money to redesign their logo i am willing to put money down again another 10 bucks cory this is going to be 20 bucks in your pocket this week um 10 bucks down that whatever the new word is it's going to start with e just because they do not want to redesign that logo and have to redo all of the branding that they've got got everywhere because they literally can't afford it so it will be the edmonton empire it

Carter 1:12:32

it has been noted it has been said it shall be done cory

Zain 1:12:35

cory finishes off i

Corey 1:12:37

i would be so easy just take part of the e out of the the logo the second e edmonton champions too expensive

Carter 1:12:43

expensive i'm telling you

Corey 1:12:44

you right here first you heard it's gonna catch on like a prairie fire just watch

Zain 1:12:49

we are gonna leave it there jay bum said thank you for your review you can leave us a five-star review we will ask Ask your question. We may not ask your question. We may ignore it. We may give completely overhyped answers like Corey Hogan just did, but we'll play around with it.

Zain 1:13:04

And we'll leave it there. That's a wrap for Episode 813 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgey. With me, as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter, and we will see you next time.

Transcript