Saskatchewan Survivor's Guide
Saskatchewan Survivors' Guide: Ep 124
(upbeat music) - You found a copy of a Saskatchewan survivors guide with Tammy Robert and Paul Deshais. ♪ All the kids in the city are saying ♪ - Hey Tammy. - Hey Paul. - Been seeing a lot of you lately. (laughing) - Not too much, I hope. - No, it's good. You mentioned that we have to have this like emergency Saskatchewan survivors guide because we have a guest. - Yeah, it's probably one of the coolest guests we're ever gonna have, I think. Just by way of zeitgeist and impact on pop culture. So what we're gonna do today is go back to, not pop culture, political culture, but it's kind of the same thing right now down in the US. Today, that's what we're doing is we're gonna go back to the beginning of November when Donald Trump won and shocked significantly half of the US as normal because these things seem to broadside us in a number of ways, even when they seem ultimately really predictable. Representative Seth Molten is a Democrat in Massachusetts. Normally a pretty chill guy, he hasn't rattled a ton of cages, I don't think. PTSD has sort of been his thing. He's an, I think he believes he's in a rock vet. Mr. Molten though touched off a fur when he told the New York Times that the Democrats essentially screwed themselves by going too hard in defense of transgender rights. The next, within I think a day or two, we learn through the mass media that Seth Molten's aid has resigned in protest of those remarks. And it sort of kicked off a bit of a shitstorm both inside the Democratic Party and obviously again on the mass media side, the mainstream media side, but you know, over whether or not the Democrats can hold that space or need to push either laughter right. In a way, Seth Molten and his aid presented two very pivotal and different perspectives on the future of the Democratic Party within like very short order of Trump winning. And it sort of defined the aftermath almost more than Kamala because she also disappeared at the same time. So fast forward today and we've got that aid with us because he's a guy from Saskatoon. Matt Chilliak, he's 35, born and raised in Saskatoon. People from Saskatoon will know the Chilliak name. I mean, he's, I'd say probably just a middle class upbringing who somehow found himself as a senior aid down in Massachusetts to Seth Molten. And I think that's really, really cool in itself. And yeah, and caused this ripple. It was a guy from Saskatoon. So we've caught him 'cause he's home. So Matt, you can fill in all the places that I just screwed that up. - Sorry, it's good to be here and I think you got right. I have a Saskatoon, I'm a useask grad from the arts and sciences. I got my poli side degree there. And there aren't a lot of Saskis in DC, in US federal politics. So not something that gets highlighted a lot. I'll say on Twitter, I think I'm the only person who covers both Massachusetts and Saskatchewan politics. There's not a lot of overlap. It's me, it's about it. - Yeah, and I mean, you kind of do go way back on the Saskatchewan political scene. And you're a guy, I respect a lot because I shouldn't. And that doesn't make a lot of sense. But I mean, we don't agree on things and we haven't agreed on things in the past. And somehow you've not ever called me fat or all these things. You're completely respectful while also disagreeing with me, which to me is a mark of character right there. - But you've moved on as people tend to do in Saskatchewan when they get good at something. - I got a lot of credit to my wife. She's actually what brought me to the US. It wasn't necessarily my political skills that initially had the Democrats jumping at the bit to give me a visa. But I obviously had a few skills that I honed up here that eventually helped me land a good spot down in the US. You're right, Tammy, you and me have been on opposite sides. Well, on issues and even just like you were on the other side of the first campaign I worked on. - And we thought it had a lot publicly on that one too. Like I was a dick, but it's not personal for me in that case ever. It is for everybody. - This is like a really underlying principle that's important, working in politics. There will be people you disagree with that you butt heads with and then you go on and partner with or are aligned with. And there's sometimes breaks. Like the one I just had with my former boss that you described in short. It doesn't mean you hate the person or that you're out there like trashing them or trying to bring them down. It's just once in a while there are issues that come up that people are going to disagree on. It's normal thing in politics. - Did you know about the stance he was going to take on this floor it broke? - It surprised me, it definitely surprised me. So and you know, these things happen in the days after election, there's a lot swirling out there. People want to find a reason for what, I think you said it was shocking. Certainly wasn't surprising. I think to many of the people even that I work with our team. But in that moment, there's a lot of finger pointing that can happen and I expanded on this a little more in the not that I wrote, but I think it's really important that we don't go and throw some of the most vulnerable communities under the bus in a rush to find an easy explanation. There's a lot to be said about some of the policies and how we discuss them as the left as Democrats, as whether you're liberal or NDP or green here and how that discussion, especially with working class, maybe more blue collar voters might go. But we can do that without having to compromise our values and without putting some of those most vulnerable communities in even more harm's way. I think it's going to be happening with Trump and whether it's transgender people. - Oh, it's already happening. - Immigrants are just women even, right? There's a lot that's coming down the pipe here in the next Trump administration that I don't think we have our mind around how bad it could get. - So for the benefit of our audience, I'm just going to do a better job summarizing what exactly happened. It was a piece that ran in the New York Times on November 7th. So again, within just minutes, basically, of Kamala losing and its headline, "Devastated Democrats play the blame game and stare at a dark future." So that's the headline in the New York Times. And inside this, it's a pretty significant long read. Seth Molten said that Democrats had spent, quote, "Too much time trying not to offend anyone." And then he went on to say, "I have two little girls. I don't want them getting run over on a playing field by a male or formerly male athlete," he said. And then he goes on to say, "But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid of saying that." He then went on to, there was a backlash, obviously, inside the party and from various communities outside of it as well. It was also, we can get into what his views were before that, but he had been, until that point, very vocally supportive of transgender rights. But anyway, a few days later, when the Times went back to him and said like, "What's up with the backlash? Do you know, what do you have to say now?" He's Molten said, "I've never had more people, parents." And by the way, a lot of LGBTQT community members reach out to me and say, "Thank you for saying this." Some of them are just speaking authentically as parents. Some of them believe the trans movement has gone too far. It is imperiling the progress we've made. So that was in a piece that was published November 16th. So I don't even know, were you still there then, Matt? You had left it the way. - My determination was pretty quick the day that the first article ran. So that day I sent my resignation letter and logged off from Molten or Olga centrally. - You logged off, but what happened was, word gets out pretty quickly that Seth Molten's aid has resigned in protest to what happened, to what he said, sorry. And that was obviously fundamentally true. And that is where the media gets back into more familiar territory of who's gonna get canceled now. - There were some pretty interesting, Matt, you were mentioned on both Pierce Morgan and Bill Maher. So run that clip. - Last week, Massachusetts Congressman Seth Molten said, "I have two little girls. "I don't want them getting run over on a playing field "by a formerly male athlete. "But as a Democrat, I'm supposed to be afraid to say that." Yes, there's the problem in a nutshell. Because Congressman Molten sounds reasonable to me, but his campaign manager immediately resigned in protest. Let me make this as plain as I can to the smart people. The campaign manager who resigned, "Yeah, let that person go, and marginalize that guy." (audience applauds) - What did that feel like to suddenly be in that spotlight? - No, it's funny, I didn't even know about the Pierce Morgan one 'til weeks later, 'cause maybe it's just me, but who cares? 'Cause Rhett says what Pierce Morgan has to say about me a lot of people. - Yeah, and I mean, Bill Maher, I don't know. Norm McDonald is right about him, in my opinion. He's a bit of a stuck up guy who isn't really that funny, so. - I don't know, I don't know if McDonald's said well. - Norm McDonald, he gave Bill Maher a tough time. If you ever go back and watch, I think Norm is on Bill's show once. He wasn't really feeling the Hollywood elitist circles critiquing politics that the Bill's show gives off, so. - Interesting thing, some comedians, Larry, I feel a comedian is what he should be doing as being funny, that should be his goal to be funny. I feel some comedians, their goal is to be smart, and the funny is like a collateral thing. They want to be seen as smart. Your friend Bill Maher, for instance, he wants to be seen as an intellectual. - Dennis Miller. - Nobody likes a guy smarter than them. That's the worst guy you can be, a guy smarter than the audience. They're gonna hate you. - And listen, there is a little bit of a whiplash when you just quit your job, and I didn't post my letter of resignation publicly or anything like that, wasn't looking to make big waves, I just knew that I couldn't continue on there. But the rumor mail goes quickly, right? All of a sudden, day or two later, whatever, someone sends an email to what they thought was my email, and they get someone backwards, like, oh, by the way, that's not, email for that person anymore, and then people talk, and reporters find out, and so. It's a lot, you don't want to be in the news as political staff or something you should be avoiding if you're good at your job, but at the same time, sometimes, I guess something like that's inevitable. - So you didn't put the Bill Maher clip on your LinkedIn page? - No, no, I wish. I think I did mention it in my Twitter bio. - Yeah, yeah. - I've been called worse things by better people than that, so. - Yeah, exactly. And I think, again, it goes back to what you said before, and you are already very gainfully employed because in politics, in normal politics, and I think Massachusetts is still a relatively calm state, and they are also given where they are, quite committed to things like the constitution and- - But this is why he got a backlash, too. It's a very liberal, all of New England, more or less, but especially Massachusetts is fairly liberal. There aren't a lot of people in these purple districts, or maybe they need to worry about balancing some more moderate views. When you've got a seat that you only win by 1%, you might think, "Oh, I've got to reach out and cross out." This is a Democrat seat by 30 points, most elections, so. - But you've landed on your feet, you're fine. - Yeah, I'll be next month, I'll be announcing where I'm going and having fun with another elected official. - I'm curious about, as this is happening to you, and like transgender rights are very much, you know, sort of like central to what's happening, here in Saskatchewan, transgender rights are also, they were at the center of our provincial election. Can you like reflect upon this issue? Like something that, you know, just a few years ago, was certainly not in everyone's phase. And now it is being set up as, you know, the kingmaker or the king killer, right? Like it's the thing that is like, deciding political fortunes, you know, across North America. - It's really hard not to notice a lot of the attacks on this community. They really near the same attacks against gay folks from, you know, in the battle for gay marriage or even other things, you know, like there used to be a time when if someone was gay and teaching, that'd be the thing. And oh, we don't want it around our kids. Or, you know, we just don't want it mentioned to our kids 'cause it'll influence them to be like that. And it's always this idea that that is a bad thing. You know, I mean, certainly there are different considerations. It's not the exact same thing as the gay rights fight. But I think a lot of the people who lost that fight, you know, in the US, it's still relatively new. You know, Canada had a 10 year head start. I think it was 2013, 14, 15 that the US Supreme Court really recognized the right to gay marriage. And even things like, you know, the gay cake, gay wedding cake thing that was in the news a few years ago were a bakery didn't want to cook a cake for a gay wedding. Those are still actually pretty new battles. So as these battles have been lost by this kind of far right wing faction that is really a driving force in US politics, they've seen that they can easily move on to transgender people. They're just statistically if you're transgender people in society, you're a regular working family who doesn't have transgender people in their life. It's less likely they will know someone just because of this. And it's an easier attack point for them. And listen, I mean, obviously my perspective is one that we should not be giving into. So quickly and easily in such a knee-jerk reaction to a bad cycle, people point back to the gay marriage fight in 2004, in the US it was still going on when George Bush was reelected. A lot of people said, oh, that was probably like, Democrats are supporting, you know, gay rights a little too much. And if we went on with that line of thinking, you might not have gotten where we are, where it became politically popular enough and supported by I think today is something like two thirds of US voters. So it's important to stick to some values, even when they might be difficult to stick to. - I remember when gay marriage was an issue in Canada. One of the lines that you would hear is, well, I just don't want them throwing at my face. I don't want them like shoving it in my face. And it seemed like every time you turned on the news, you were seeing like a gay wedding. It was like every single day you were seeing gay weddings. And I think it was really agitating people, even though it was, you know, the minority of weddings that are taking place are between same-sex couples. And I feel like it's a similar thing with trans rights that they're not the majority. Like, and yet they, over the course of that election, trans athletes and trans issues were in the news multiple times a day, far more representative than their percentage representation in the population. And people were again saying, I just don't want them throwing at my face, shoving that transness in my face. - This definitely animates some people. And there's different kind of buckets of folks and how they view it. There's some people who just, they will not ever want to see a trans person. They don't believe it exists. They think they should be, you know, conversion therapy for trans folks. And it's a terrible thing that anyone would ever accept these people in any way. And, you know, some people have differing opinions about the boundaries of inclusion in some places. And those are fair discussions sometimes to have. But there are definitely a lot of people in that far religious right who just don't think it should be acknowledged. I think Donald Trump two days ago said that there's gonna be a federal law to declare that there are only two genders that are recognized in the U.S. and I don't even know the federal government. And we'll have that kind of jurisdiction in the U.S. But there's another bucket of people though who just, they're not familiar with it, right? And this is a really important part where maybe it can sometimes seem easy to think, well, if someone's first knee-jerk reaction might just kind of be like, you know, to raise their eyebrow and question something, whether it's letting a kid use, you know, their pronouns in school. A lot of times they can actually, if you sit down and talk for five or 10 minutes and talk about why it's important and how can be detrimental if we don't recognize their gender identity. A lot of people actually get on board with that. They'll understand that there might still be other, you know, areas where they'll still have questions and maybe for some people the boundaries of inclusion are a little tighter than for others. But, you know, I think it's really important again for folks on the left to just kind of see this as a point in time and not a make or break moment or we should just be running away from trans folks just because we think it'll make our next election easier. - That's what the right wants us to do, right? I mean, that's what we're trying to get the left to do is to abandon this. That's why Trump ran all those ads. That's why they're still going on this and probably will continue to for years. - The, and I think this is relevant to what's going on in Saskatchewan right now as well. How do you, as a political operative, see that message being communicated to the people who aren't familiar with trans people, aren't familiar with their rights or are opposed to them? Like, you talked about in your editorial that, you know, the Democrats, if they have people going door to door who are trans that if you, you know, it's hard to vote against somebody's rights if you meet them in person. And I'm just wondering how on like a mass scale do political parties create that message, create that narrative that, you know, this isn't a terrifying position to take. So what's your advice as a political operative on this? - Yeah, I mean, you really want to center it on the people impacted. And it's simple, just talking to people about having basic dignity and respect. And sometimes you can even get to points where you say, oh, I agree to disagree. Maybe you don't see 100% of what I'm telling you here and laying down. But a lot of people I think who are understanding or rational, even if they're politically opposed to us sometimes. And that campaign, we had conservatives, we had actual registered Republicans and Republican elected officials, not only endorsing our side, but coming in actively campaigning with us, right? Like these were definitely moderate Republicans in the New England kind of small L liberal vein. But because, you know, whether it's small government or, you know, even the parental rights people, right? Like you can say, well, a parental right is it. If I think that my kid's best upbringing is to have what they're telling us is their gender identity acknowledged. And I mean, listen, there's a lot of safeguards that the medical community has in place, right? But if a parent says that's how I want to raise my kid, 'cause I'm worried that if we don't do this, their mental health is going to be so bad or, you know, they might be contemplating suicide or just not living their best life. Well, we should respect that. That's not the government's business. I'm really glad, I mean, you brought up how this is definitely a big issue in Saskatchewan, 'cause of Scott Mo, really inserting it. I think originally it was the last year with the pronoun in the classroom question where you had to get parents' permission to do that, which is ridiculous, 'cause even if they wanted to find a compromised position, that wasn't it. A compromised position might've talked about how and when they might want to go and inform parents, but it wouldn't be, you know, an automatic, we don't do it unless we get a parent's okay on it. I was really glad to see that the NDP, just today, or yesterday, I think, came and voiced some support to Jared Clark, who's the NDP MLA, who's been targeted by Scott Mo by his policy proposal to, you know, to take that anti-trans fight further and talking about the bathroom and change from access in schools. So I'm glad to see that and hoping that they can, you know, stand firm in that position. - I guess where I have a problem is that I don't know, like I've lost faith after this like election, this American election, this provincial election, I'm starting to lose faith in people, that you can actually do these gentle outreach and change hearts and minds, especially when the Saskatchewan party, the Republicans, are pushing so hard to demonize people and they're really playing the fear card, which seems to be like the prime mover in politics. So like, do you have, like, do you guys have numbers? Do you have like stats to back up that position that we can like, we can shift the discourse? I need more hope. - Yeah, everything's always, there's always numbers behind it, right, that campaign in 2018 where we protected these transgender and non-discrimination laws. Part of the reason why we had Republicans coming in is 'cause we had done polling as a campaign to know that targeting, you know, called the mushy middle, the winnable middle, you know, voters who maybe aren't super conservative, super left weighing, they swing back and forth, you might call moderates, I guess, in the US. We found, we tested messages that we knew could move those middle ground voters the most. We found the people who needed, we knew needed to hear them. You know, you do some modeling about demographics when you run these and you can start really parsing through and seeing which households match those demographics that need to hear the message. And it worked, that campaign, you know, again, it's Massachusetts, things are a little more liberal there, but it was by no means a sure thing. There have been similar ballot initiatives in jurisdictions across the US that have been closer or even failed. And the approach we utilized there, I think that's something of 70% of the vote. You know, there, I don't think there was a city or town, don't quote me on that, it might've been one or two, out of the 350 or something in the state that we lost. And not just, you know, again, to go back, again, not just Massachusetts and blue places, ballot initiatives like the Seven One in municipalities and red states, like Alaska or Idaho. So there's some hope, I think it's certainly not easy. They've got an easier job running the fear message than we do having to counter a lot of the misinformation that used to run that fear message, but still important. - On that front on countering misinformation, we talked about the fact that not responding or countering seems to be a fatal flaw in the Democratic Party, whether it's the new Democratic Party of Saskatchewan or the Democratic Party in the United States, because you're right, the Republicans, especially at the tail end of that campaign, they went hard on this issue. And there was no real response from the Democrats. And I think in your piece in the Hill Times, you summed up really nicely how the Democrats or any party or any iteration of the Democrats can win without abandoning these fights. I wanted to talk though about the fear factor because it's what people play on. And so did Seth Molten, he did one of two things in my mind. He either spoke extremely emotionally on the phone with this reporter and just stuck by the decision or the sentiment, or it was an extremely calculated move. Now, I'm not gonna ask you about what was going on in Seth Molten's head, but why do you think he thought it was a, or why do you think any politician would think it was a good idea to stick by that position in 2024 as fiercely as he did? - It's hard to say, I mean, there's certainly a lot of folks in the districts were pretty upset about it. There's a large counter demonstration, one of the largest I've ever seen, sorry, not counter demonstration, large demonstration with over a couple hundred people at it, there's office a week or two later. - Sometimes people make political calculations and that's... - Yeah. - No, I get it. And LGBTQ voters, they overwhelmingly support the Democrats and they are, they're not going anywhere per se, but it's just when I think about these guys, like these politicians and just the way they toss this issue around. Anyway, I wanted to talk though about what Molten said because he evoked a very specific image of kids being run down, his girls, his little girls being run down on a field by a male athlete. And he's feeding into the imagery that came out of the Riley Gaines, Leah Thomas issue, which even I've struggled with to understand. And I have failed to find a reasonable explanation to this day about what is really the case there because the optics of that one are overwhelming. But you have some really good insight into why everyone can just relax. - I mean, listen, for starters, when we're talking about kids playing, especially the ages before they even hit puberty, whether they're trans or not, boy or girl, there's not enough testosterone coursing through those bodies to ever be worried about the safety component. I remember as a kid, we played COVID everything up until teenage years, right? When they kind of start splitting you up a little more, played soccer on the field with the girls and recess. We played dodgeball and gym class, whipping balls at everyone's head, didn't matter if they were born a girl. And then we had some tough girls too that would take out some of the boys in class. You know, again, the question of whether boundaries of inclusion, I think a lot of the athletic bodies, governing bodies are dealing with this, sorry. This isn't a new debate to them. It's a new one for a lot of people who just saw those Trump ads for the first time that were going nonstop during the election where they really tried to highlight both anti-immigrant and anti-transgender at the same time. But yeah, you know, the Olympics, you know, they make you test your testosterone levels, I think, and NCAA has rules about, you know, people being on hormone therapy. And sometimes these, you know, limits of inclusion are, like I said, sometimes they're tighter. The World Rugby Association says if you wanna compete internationally and women's rugby, you can't have ever just gone through male puberty. So if you, if that happened, it doesn't matter if you've done hormones or anything else, you just won't be competing. And I'm not gonna be the one to tell the women's ethic. Body's how to govern themselves, but I don't think that we should be telling them how to govern themselves in terms of telling them they have to be more restrictive either. The really, I think, one of the bad byproducts of this, which hunt for any trans athlete that we need to, like, single out and kick out of competition at any level, you saw it in the Olympics. The, I think she was from Algeria, I forget her name, but she was a boxer who went, went to gold. She won a medal, I think. And the whole time, you have these, they call themselves transvestigators. They are really just, like, bigoted assholes, in my opinion, who, like, spend their time online, like, assuming anyone that doesn't conform to, like, small and petite or, like, you know, they must secretly be a man accordingly. So, like, that's gonna happen more and more. We've heard there's new stories already of, and again, like, young kids where no one should really be that worried. Your kids playing Timbitt's hockey. Like, you know, I don't think they're gonna be again, run into the boards by some type, don't let me type and force her out there at that age. - It's just, it's about the demonization of that, of the individual, because, and it seems to me, it's either that, that or the change room, because that was the angle Mo took with Jared Clark's kids. And again, it just, it's a really difficult, but important point and-- - Bathroom's and change rooms came up a lot on that 2018 campaign I was onto. We knew that was gonna be one of their go-to messages, and we actually, we did a lot of preparation. This is something that the Harris campaign, I don't think did this cycle. They did not prepare, whether it's their top answer gets on TV, or the, like, common volunteer to make sure they've got in their script, like, what you can talk about on this issue when people say, oh, I just saw that Trump ad, and I want to ask you about transgender people and are gonna be safe in the bathrooms, right? Ton of evidence, it's just like, if someone's gonna be assaulting someone in the bathroom, very, very, like, overwhelmingly not gonna be a trans person attacking you, and they're actually more likely to be attacked. If you start, you know, really saying, oh, there's these strict rules, you're gonna have trans women who very much had, like, you would never doubt their gender being forced into the mens' or up the washroom, because maybe they were born, and it might even have just been born intersex, right, which is a common medical thing that we should consider it. There's a lot of living that live, if someone's doing something wrong in a bathroom or a change room, it could be a, don't care what gender you are, if there's an old man being inappropriate in the men's bathroom, like, yes, that's a problem. We should address that, go tell someone, but, like, someone hurly changing in the corner, and kids don't even really change in high school for Jim anymore, in the way, so. - Yeah, future crime thing, right? That's so insidious and difficult to, nobody's done anything, nothing's happened, and these kids haven't done anything to anybody. And then, of course, you know, there was these sort of random and very, very non-transparent parental complaints, but once again, that's not a legitimate, it's certainly not a legitimate reason for a response that on that level. And we should point out, because I did criticize Carla back before, and it seems she has come out today and said that Scott Moe should apologize to Jared Clark. I'm not really clear what prompted this today, two days before Christmas, but I'll look at that later and find out. So, I mean, that's a good thing, though. It was really important that she do that. That's a leader-to-leader thing. But it leads me to also believe that there is hesitation inside the Democratic or the NDP, sorry, on this issue. And I have other reasons to believe that as well, because the reality is, is that Carla was not behind this, and the, no, my, like, his caucus really did not come out behind him when he read this statement. God, that's gonna be a month ago now. So, here's my question for you. What drives, and your, let's point out, a cis-gendered white male, kid from Saskatchewan, you know, you should be an asshole by every statistic out there. You had a really cool job, you know, the United States Congress, you could have unilaterally moved to a, you know, different states. But my point is, why this issue? Why did you choose to die on this hill? - Totally. And I mean, that's been other times I've disagreed with former bosses, right? It's really normal that you should probably disagree with your boss on something. If you're 100% on board with everything all the time, with anyone, you should probably, like, go get your head checked, 'cause you're probably just parroting, you know, their views internally becoming your views. But for this issue specifically, listen, I've always had good people around me that have centered me a little bit and reminded me that it's not just all about me all the time. But I think having worked alongside a lot of folks from the LGBTQ community, it definitely gave me some extra perspectives as well. And just really made me know that when I saw what was happening that day, I knew kind of that this was gonna be, you know, a bit of a page we were gonna be stuck on. - When did you start working with Molten? - That's like, it's a long time ago. Five years ago, almost. - Okay, right, because he promoted, like he went out of his way to promote LGBTQ equality in the house. His real action campaign was endorsed by the Human Rights Campaign, which is the nation's, the US's largest advocacy group for that community. He co-sponsored bills, including the House Democrats' transgender bill of rights, which was supposed to guarantee trans athletes the right to participate. My point here is you were probably a big part of those processes, getting those bills together and getting them passed. So-- - Not on bills so much 'cause that's only on the political side. So I, you know, political side, you don't actually handle the legislation. You're not going through the process of filing and-- - But you're working with the group still. - Well, you are 100%, yeah, and more so even than anyone else, I guess you're-- - Right, exactly. - You keep your seat and I was very involved in helping us or that. - What do you think is gonna happen now to that kind of process and those kind of issues? - I don't think there's actually gonna be as much change to all the process of politicking. Both parties will readjust a bit. The Republican side more might change more than anything actually 'cause they're, I think in a constant state of change over the last 10 years, all of it obviously dominated by Donald Trump dictating his will to the party, but because he's so volatile and can just kind of set off on wanting to invade this country or the other country or who knows what else. It's made an environment where people need to be ready for anything. On the Democratic side, I think a lot of the, despite the handful of Democrats who kind of bristled at trans rights or any other issue of this election, I think there's gonna be a lot of the same coalitions that exist there. There might be some changes, there most likely will be, but in two years they'll be tested again. That's the great thing of the US system and not in the habit of making predictions, but if we just look at what's happened in the past, usually after a presidential win, there's a bit of a wave, the other wave. 2018 might be a really good example to look at right after Trump got elected. The first time in 2016, two years later, there were many Democrats who got elected in the House and they retook the majority there. I would expect that there's a good chance that could happen, it could happen again in 2026. - I feel like it's different this time. Like I feel like last time that two years after Trump was elected, there was very much a very strong resistance movement, they called themselves a resistance. And there was like a constant daily, when is this gonna collapse, when is this gonna change, when are we gonna be able to fix this? And so I think people were primed at the two year mark to really sort of like come out and fight back against Trump. I, every time I peek back at what's going on in American media, I am stunned by the level of capitulation that's already happening, even from like forces on the left. Like I just saw a thing today about a chunk younger from the young Turks. He's now paddling around with Charlie Kirk. The way that people are sucking up in advance to Trump's regime, even before it's established, I'm concerned that there isn't going to be that backlash and that pendulum swing at the midterms. - What are you seeing on the ground there? - And even aside from the media apparatus, and I think you're right, there is a little bit of someone we're giving in a little bit with Joe and Micah and morning Joe on MSNBC, like all a whole bit about like how they went and kissed the ring at Marlago, which for MSNBC, which has seen this kind of their more lefty network, was an odd thing for a lot of their viewers. More importantly, within the quote unquote resistance and the boots on the ground, there's definitely some exhaustion. A lot of people probably weren't as surprised as others about the election. And so there's some people who right now really lick in the wounds, I guess. I think that what makes me think that we will still see, at least amongst the kind of activist base, more so that resistance pick up again, is I do not expect Trump to be tamer this time around. And once, you know, in the first two years too, if he's really learned his lessons, they'll go do the crazy shit, 'cause that's when you've got the most ability in political capital to do crazy shit. I think that once that gets going, that resistance is gonna perk up straight quite, you know, again, and be out there. Might not look the same as 2016 did, but I think they're definitely there. I think that the voting public even is still gonna be paying attention and will react kind in the same way. That 2018 wave, you know, it was the Muslim ban that had happened the year before. I think we were starting to get the results of the Mueller report so we knew about foreign influence and the Russia connection to Trump. And there might've been a couple other things that got that going, but if we believe Trump's gonna do what he said he's gonna do in these next couple of years, it's gonna blow some of that stuff out of the water. - I think that it was really important to me today to, first of all, convey that there is a lot of the same principles across the board when it comes to the US and Canadian politics, but also just, you know, decency when it comes to why it's important to just hold your own on this stuff, because whether we're talking gay rights or gay marriage or transgender rights, we're talking about change and how people respond to and handle change. And as long as there's people like Matt who are willing to stand up for the change and keeping humanity moving forward, you know, I think that we're gonna be okay. Matt, what would be the best crossover advice you'd give the NDP based on what you've learned from the inner machinations of the Democratic Party in the US, what advice would you give their strategists here in Saskatchewan? - For your advice, I still have a few friends too, so I'll make sure I text them the same advice so they don't miss out if they don't tune in to their survivor podcast here. - Listen, I don't wanna sound too contradictory in this. It might end up sounding like a contradiction nonetheless, but you do need to build, and especially in a place like Saskatchewan that has some conservative leanings, I view the US as a whole in this way as well, you need to build a big tent. That is a, you're not gonna win just by playing off to the left. The Republicans can do that 'cause they've got a whole different set of rules and landscape on their side. - You said go along to get along, which I thought was a great way to put it. - There's a limit to this though, and if you're building your tent too far out into the right, in this case, people forget what the poll under that tent is. - Why do you do that when, yeah, I mean, I fully understand what you're talking about right from the beginning about contradictions because that is what Saskatchewan is, and that's where I find that, I think with the Democrats, at least, they have a foundation of winning. It's hard to feel like a bunch of losers when your guy is the president of the United States. In Saskatchewan, we have a party that hasn't seen any kind of significant power for 20 or years or almost here, and very disillusioned and contradictory, even within itself on issues like climate change. So, that tent becomes, it almost needs, it has different rooms, and that's kind of the problem. Maybe the tent has off-shoots, and it's just, you know, it's-- - The room you can bring people into the easiest is usually talking about pocketbook issues, economic populism, I think really is something that politics of the left need to get back on board with, and probably used to-- - Is it really about focusing on what we all agree on, or trying to figure it out, or is that populism? - I mean, what everyone agrees on is a few more bucks in their wallet, or, you know, wages going up, but they're being jobs available when they want them. In Saskatchewan here, I think maybe a bread and butter issue for the NDP on that would be healthcare, right? Like, they're known for that, that's the brand, and it seems like healthcare's a mess here right now. So, you could probably spin some populist messaging out of that, just to find folks who will agree that the healthcare systems are a mess, and will be maybe easily reminded that the NDP are the party that have, you know, have done well on healthcare in the past. Maybe a couple bumps along the road, but generally, or at the very least, I mean, sometimes you gotta go negative. Some, it's often sometimes also just convincing someone that the SaaS party is screwing something up, and it's time to flip the switch. - You've seen leadership. You've seen the impact that a change in leadership can have on a party. You were at the Democratic Convention in Chicago that absolute circus mayhem, but also, you know, just a huge contrast to what the GOP's convention looked like. How important is leadership to a political party? - Oh, critical, listen, the fiasco of Joe Biden highlights this, and don't get me wrong, I think he does not get enough credit for being the amount they accomplished in his first term. He was a working class and progressive as a president. I think anyone could have hoped for, expected from Joe Biden, or from any other Democrats at that level where they're running for president. But if you don't refresh your leadership ranks, this is a problem for Democrats across the board, politics in general, but, you know, politicians in general, you don't want any party being seen as status quo stuck in the past, not dynamic. President Obama captured lightning in a bottle when he ran. He was under the age of 50. Justin Trudeau, when he first ran, hard to imagine today, but he was wildly popular in 2015 because he was a young dynamic leader, despite being a familiar name. Bill Clinton in the '90s was a pretty young guy when he got elected president. Doesn't do us well that we only have people who are in their '70s or '80s that we point to as our leaders. We need to give younger people experience so that they, you know, can speak to people in the language of the times. - Do you think if Kamala had done everything exactly the same and everything had gone exactly the same, but she had a penis, things would have gone differently? - I mean, there's no doubt that sexism and racism. - But do you think it genuinely played a part? Like, do you think if everything else was the same? And if she was the only difference was that she was a man. It's given that gender's been part of this discussion all day. Like, do you think it genuinely would have made a difference? Would the Democrats be about to inaugurate a new-- - I don't know how much of a difference? So I can't, I'm not gonna say it was the difference maker and that she was-- - No, nobody's saying. - Listen, I mean, like the six swing states that, you know, they needed three of them or something, whatever, it depends how you count it. A lot of those were like one percent, two percent differences. So, you know, it's easy to imagine a scenario where there's enough voters in the two or three or four of those states that might have needed who would have voted for, and no one would ever say, oh yeah, go vote for a man or a woman. Some people might, but it's the way we're hardwired to look at, you know, strong leader versus, you know, and that gets tied to women more than it does, sorry, tied to men more than it does for women. - Yeah, that mushy middle, I don't know if gender would play a role in there, and that's where we get back to the debate of, you know, did the GOP push the narrative on the Democrats with the change, I think one of the commercials they ran was Kamala's all about they/them or something like that. - Yeah, those are the big fanist ones. The Harrisists for they/them jumped us for you, and I think they tied immigration into it somehow too, and it was just your like, ultimate fear, stoking fear about-- - A cauldron of bullshit, yeah. - As somebody who was like obsessively watching American politics over the last like decade, how awesome is it to be working in DC? Is it like it is in my imagination? - Maybe a little bit, I should know, I worked in Massachusetts more so than being on the ground in DC, I would go there like often as well, but I'm definitely in the district kind of guy. DC kind of sometimes feels like a big college town. It's a very professional place when you're walking around the kind of, you know, downtown, the capital area. It's a city though, it's got its hits misses like anywhere else. It is kind of cool like going into like, you know, the Congress and walking around the hallways there. You realize how accessible, surprisingly, you can just like, if you wanted to go show up and like go knock on Marjorly Taylor Green's door, and you probably won't find her, but see your staff and you can do that. - Well, yeah, we saw that just a little bit four years to go around. Isn't that what January 6th really was about? - Yeah, they didn't let those guys in. - Oh, no, they didn't. - They were showed up on the January 7th, maybe a couple of them too, got it. That part is actually like, there's a scary factor definitely the like the amount of vitriol, you know, it's politics that like, you know, just like pops up and gets directed to anyone. In Canada, you have people that's partisan. I mean, it exists and it's getting, it has been getting worse. I think like, you know, you could probably go back to like the Canadian Alliance days even. And like, you know, your night, the right became a thing and in the U.S. it seems so much worse. It's just gonna get all the guns and like militia culture in some places. You know, it gives you goosebumps once in a while. - Thanks so much, Matt. I mean, this was, this was really fun. And I just think it's so cool that, you know, one of the biggest stories after the election was, you know, about this guy from Saskatoon and his impact on, on not just the news cycle and the narrative, but I think on the party. And I think going back to what I said before, you and Seth kind of put the party in polarized positions, but also it's very clear that the party's gonna have to come up with a stance. - Thanks for having me. I very much appreciate the invite to come join you all. And yeah. - Come back next time you're in Saskatchewan. - When Donald Trump starts invading, I will either come and join your show to talk about Donald Trump invading or you'll see me out there somewhere like joining one of those militias, but they'll be like the Canadian version. - We have militias like that here, maybe. Get them ready. Or the next federal election, maybe two. Who knows? That could all be happening at the same time. 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