CANADALAND

(Short Cuts) Populism Trumps Biden and Trudeau

It’s been a tough week for leadership in North America, with calls for resignation dominating the headlines on both sides of the border.

Paul Wells joins Emilie Nicolas to discuss the larger global context around Trudeau’s recent struggles, and how the international rise of the far right is an important and underreported factor in Canadian politics.

Then, Biden loses the debate and the New York Times. Unpacking the editorial board’s call for the president to step aside.

Host: Emilie Nicolas

Credits: James Nicholson (Producer), Caleb Thompson (Audio Editor), max collins (Production Manager), Karyn Pugliese (Editor-in-Chief)

Guest: Paul Wells

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Duration:: 44m
Broadcast on:: 04 Jul 2024
Audio Format:: mp3

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That's i-l-m-a-k-i-a-g-e.com/quiz. This episode is brought to you by Oxio. What's better than fast affordable internet? Fast free internet. I have Oxio at home, and I can tell you that Oxio does things differently, and that includes their referral program. Whenever you refer a new customer, you both get a month of free internet, but what's different about this deal is that it's unlimited. Some customers have stacked up over a decade the free internet with Oxio. Visit canada land.oxio.ca for an alternative telco internet experience. That's canada land.oxio.ca and use the promo code canada land and get your first month free. This episode is brought to you by Oxio. What's better than fast affordable internet? Fast free internet. I have Oxio at home, and I can tell you that Oxio does things differently, and that includes their referral program. Whenever you refer a new customer, you both get a month of free internet, but what's different about this deal is that it's unlimited. Some customers have stacked up over a decade the free internet with Oxio. Visit canada land.oxio.ca for an alternative telco internet experience. That's canada land.oxio.ca and use the promo code canada land and get your first month free. Canada land. Funded by you. Hi, this is Emilina Kala, your guest host for shortcuts this week, and I am joined by veteran political journalist Paul Wells. Welcome to the show, Paul. This week we're going to be discussing the calls for two-dose resignation, but in an international context of basically the G7 countries imploding, and Biden loses the debate and the New York Times editorial board. What's up with that? Welcome to Shortcuts, where we talk shit about the news. This episode is brought to you by Matt Grant, Mike Moses, Ian Taylor, Susan Jensen, Katie Heath, Noah Morris, Delilah Rosier, and Yusuf. Hi, I'm Yusuf. I'm a student at the University of Ottawa, and I support Canada land because of its unique, yet rigorous coverage of important issues from across Canada, not just from urban centers, but also from often forgotten regions such as the Meritimes. I'm especially appreciative of the heated, difficult, but all too necessary conversations that Canada land hosts, such as Robert Jago's harsh criticism of Jesse during their discussion of BDS cultural boycotts on shortcuts last month. Heads up. If you've been following Molly Thomas' Dear Taliben project, we played part one on the Monday show a few weeks ago. If not, you should really check it out. Part two of Dear Taliben comes out on Monday right here on the main Canada land feed. Stay tuned after the show for a sneak peek of part two of Dear Taliben. Tonight, Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden, two leaders, both under pressure, both facing questions about their political future. Tonight, questions of leadership calls for change on both sides of the border. In the past week, the news in North America have been filled with calls for resignation, both for Joe Biden, who will discuss in the second half of the show. Stay tuned. But also for Justin Trudeau. Once a media darling, Trudeau isn't doing much talking now following a stunning by-election loss in the Toronto St. Paul liberal stronghold last week. Here's what the last week has sounded like for Justin Trudeau. Well, this morning's news headlines did not pay in a good picture for the future of Prime Minister Trudeau. Hello, everyone. Happy Canada Day. But whatever the conservatives are doing, it worked Monday in the former liberal stronghold of Toronto St. Paul's. No matter where you are, I hope you're celebrating the incredible people, the land and the story that is Canada. But we're going to start on that email from a liberal MP to caucus calling for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to resign. It's a story of sacrifice. Politicians past and present saying Justin Trudeau needs to go. Safeguarded every day by trailblazers, journalists, activists, organizers. This freelance columnist for the Toronto Star says he overheard Trudeau's environment minister making phone calls to liberals while waiting for a train. Where we can disagree, sometimes passionately. And four days later, Trudeau still has not taken a single question from a reporter about that conservative triumph. But where we always come together in the pursuit of something greater than ourselves. Justin Trudeau says he is committed to staying on as Prime Minister. Brave, kind, resilient people. That is a story of Canada. Happy Canada Day. Newspaper headlines have told a similar story about Justin Trudeau. Obviously, the Toronto and the Ottawa ones. The one article that stood out was by Justin Ling in the Toronto Star who wrote a piece called Liberals Are Revolting Against Justin Trudeau. I heard it myself overhearing, essentially. Stephen Gilbo in the Toronto viral business lounge having a conversation with different liberals and P. And obviously, you saw the you saw the peaceful. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I was laughing from the headline on down. Is that what you have? Is that what the main, the main sentiment is laughter? First of all, congratulations to Justin Ling. That has to be the first interesting thing that's ever happened in the Toronto via one lounge. I'm familiar with that room and nothing happens. Secondly, people are astonished that Stephen Gilbo would not recognize a journalist sitting next to him. But Justin is a freelancer. He's not based in Ottawa anymore. Yeah, he's low key. Yeah. All of the members of Cabinet have a staffs to keep a certain distance between them and the other members of the sort of Ottawa bubble. I believe Stephen Gilbo would recognize me, but I wouldn't guarantee it. So, people shouldn't be so harsh on Gibo. The final thing is it's just astonishing that you would sense Stephen Gibo to Toronto to show up support for Justin Trudeau. Those members of the party who think that Trudeau is a problem and it's not clear how many liberals believe that. Those who do probably think that their climate policy and its champions Stephen Gilbo is part of the problem. And to say the least, he doesn't have an awful lot of Toronto chops. He's not a long time career politician. His career in climate activism didn't take him to Toronto business train lounges very often. It's an odd choice of a political shirpa for the Save Justin Trudeau leadership project. But then I guess, as Don Rumsfeld once said, you go to war with the army you've got. That makes sense. To me, I'm going to be honest with you. I've been struggling to get emotionally invested with the Trudeau drama. Part of it is it's been happening exactly at the same time as the US election drama. And we're going to get to that. But it feels like there is this mastodon that is go over going such a huge crisis right next to us. And it's very hard to have a conversation about Trudeau must go or not. Or even if Justin Trudeau is doing well or not, or how he's going to perform the next election, because all of that, to be honest, could be very much upset by whatever is going on in the US, especially if there was a Trump win that would change. I think the political conversation in Canada drastically. But overall, I'd say that I'm feeling like the conversation about the Canadian political crisis has been very insular in the sense that what we are seeing in Canada is a center basically imploding. And I haven't seen a lot of political journalism in the Toronto newspaper, the Ottawa newspapers, the English Canadian newspaper, putting that into the global context of what's been going on in Europe as well. And I feel like the French Canadian media are actually the ones doing that job right now of just putting what's happening to Justin Trudeau in conversation, what's happening with Joe Biden, but also what's happening to Emmanuel Macron, and what's been happening in European politics as well with the right rising and the far right rising in a way that's very, very dangerous and people attacking the fabric of democracy and the UK election that has been going over God knows how many prime ministers now in the last couple of years. And just like, the instability of it all seems to be outside of the scope of the conversation in English media way more than in French Canadian media. And as somebody who also follows both, I was wondering if you also noticed that split in terms of how things are being analyzed. I have to some extent. I think it has to do with two things. First of all, Frank of a media in Quebec artists some extent wired into Europe more than Anglophone media in the rest of Canada are because news sources from France provide a good chunk of the news diet in Quebec. Secondly, just about every news organization in Canada right now is a downtown news organization for the city that it serves. Newsroom budgets have collapsed for reasons that we probably don't need to rehearse one more time. Like the Ottawa citizen no longer has an editor who is spending half his time writing about Europe the way it did when Keith Spicer was editing the Ottawa citizen a million years ago. There's basically no room in newsroom budgets for a broader perspective. Right. But you're right, there's an interesting perspective. So for instance, the Canadian and British elections are very similar, well, except that we don't have an election in Canada yet, but the anticipated Canadian election and also the party stripe of the expected losers, which is going to be beaten bad in the UK election, which is happening today as a pro-Brexit Tory. And he's going to be replaced by a boring moderate labor leader. Liberals could only hope for that to happen here. But meanwhile, the Passam Lamont, as you know, the National Rally, which is the inheritors of lapenism in France, are going to win pretty big on Sunday and they've got a chance of having a majority in the National Assembly. Similar parties now govern in the Netherlands and in Italy. And that's a story that isn't getting a lot of coverage here. I was going to go to Britain in France this week and cover their elections, but I deserve a break too. So I decided not to. Plus, I'm only one newsletter. Yes, you are. But what a newsletter you are. Listen, so maybe we dig a little bit deeper into what's been missing so that we're all on the same page here. But even before we go in deeper into what's been going on in France, just at the end of May, the Vox Organization in Spain organized a large gathering of the Western far right. And you had their Marine lapen, who as you mentioned, is the leader of the Rassam Lamont National, the far right in France, Victor Orban, who is leading Hungary, a dictator now at this point, Georgia Miloni, who's the prime minister in Italy, also associated with the far right, you had Javier Millet, who is the president of Argentina and who is making Donald Trump looks moderate in terms of his discourse. And so you have all of those people essentially consulting each other and creating an international global movement where one of those people winning is giving essentially fuel to the next person winning. There's also the rise of those same movements in Spain itself and in Portugal. And now in France, what you have is, as you mentioned already, in the last couple of days, you know, you had the first round of the legislative election that was sparked by Emmanuel Macron. And now in the second round, in the last couple of days, people have been struggling to essentially resign so that basically France is divided between tree blocks, the far right, the center and the left. And when the far right is likely to win, if the center and the left are in the race, either the center or the left is been resigning so that you have this comment front against the far right. And not everybody has been able to do that. And so we'll see what the results will be. But there is this really this huge fear that France might be governed by a far right party in the next, well, just next week, in terms of the at least the legislative power in the National Assembly. And that creates a lot of conversation in Montreal, even about, you know, why is it that the far right is on the rise? What is the connection between that and fears about immigration? What is the connection between that and misinformation, disinformation in the media, the media ecosystem? There's a lot of analysis around that. And then I'm reading about Justin Trudeau and his losing of a by-election and people basically going as vultures for whatever is left of Justin Trudeau. And I'm not seeing people understanding the gravity is what I would say, the gravity of the political moment we're in, where we're in one of the years or the year where you have the most election globally and the instability of Western, essentially, political democracies at this point. And I'm not sure we're talking seriously how unstable our ecosystems are and the G7 allies are right now. And what the consequences might be for us to not have that in mind while we're trying to upset Canada's political structure as well. As is often the case when we talk, there's a lot to unpack there. Yes. First of all, these right-wing groups are keeping an eye on one another and they follow each other's successes and failures. There was a fascinating interview that Steve Bannon gave the Trump acolyte. He spoke to David Brooks in the New York Times last week and he said, "On our show, War Room, I probably spend at least 20% of our time talking about international elements in our movements. We've made Nigel Farage a rock star, Georgia Molonia rock star, Marine Le Pen is a rock star, Geert Wilders is a rock star." As often as the case, I think Steve Bannon is taking more credit than he deserves. I think the people of the Netherlands made Geert Wilders a rock star, not Steve Bannon, but that's to show that they do talk to each other. I don't always make a lot of friends when I say I think the moderate brokerage center in a lot of these countries has to ask and solve some questions about our failures over the last 30 years, which has left a lot of room for radical alternatives to make their case. If I'd gone to France this week, I would have gone to Marseille, a city I've never visited, which is in every one of its electoral districts, a two-way fight between the extreme right and the extreme left. The Macron centrist party has collapsed, even though Macron tried to turn Marseille into a laboratory for his social policies. The people of Marseille said, "Thanks very much, we're going to go with Melanchon or Le Pen." The last thing I'll say is in 2018, the last time I interviewed Justin Trudeau, perhaps the last time I'll ever interview him because he hasn't been returning my calls lately, I asked him about democracy being in danger around the world and what could the advocates of a healthier democracy do to counter that tendency? And he took several minutes to demonstrate that he didn't really have an answer to that question. One of the most powerful and clear-sided columns I've read in a really long time was actually just published on Tuesday in La Duvall by Jean-gauss Wannandau. It's called "The Far Right Doesn't Exist" and it's essentially a wink with the fact that everybody, both in Quebec and in France and many places around the world who are part of the far right, are denying that the far right even exists, that the far right is the thing they're seeing it as a label that's put on them, but it really doesn't exist. And so people are even fighting about the word "far right" right now and the label, there's legal definitions to it, especially in the French system, and so people are arguing over that. And he talks about that that European context, that global context in which a far right is rising, and he mentions Pierre Perriève, and he doesn't say he's the same, but he does say that Pierre Perriève is benefiting from that global context in the sense that it's lowering the bar to what dignity looks like in politics. And so when there are things that the conservative party is doing in saying that it is just not fact-based or not the truth, or just despite for journalists, or just the level of disdain that is coming now from the House of Commons questions period, well before obviously the summer break, all of that is normalized by an international context that we're not even looking at. So he's pointing that out, and he's also saying that the rise of the far right is a symptom of the basically a collapse of systems of political representation, where democracy is denied more and more, and where neoliberal policies just encourage everybody to just think for themselves. And in that way he says the neo-fascist and their partisans are not representing a threat to the system, but they are a productive system that has been failing ordinary people for years. And so it's not so much that, for example, Macron is trying to block the far right more than Macron created the far right, and if somebody like Macron wasn't in power, the far right wouldn't be as powerful. And we could do a similar analysis with the liberals and Justin Trudeau and the conservatives as well in the sense that it's because there has been social crises that haven't been solved in Canada that this kind of populist discourse is becoming so much stronger within the conservative party, and that it's giving it fuel. And at the same time, it's because there is so much fuel in that, in that conservative party that Justin Trudeau is also the way he's doing right now. And so those two kind of work together as a system, and we tend to see them as just pitted against one another, where really there's just two sides of the same coin. And I feel like that's getting very obvious when you look at the European system and the far right globally, you don't see it if you're just looking into tree and you're not seeing in the forest. And I think very few analysts in Canada are actually looking in the forest. Who are the analysts who would? Like who has a mandate to do that? I mean, Doug Saunders in the globe. Wow, I'm at the end of the list. That's the problem. That's right. Like while Jean-Franco's doing it, there's a couple people doing it. But if the 21st century is going to be about this level of mess, why is it that we're not prioritizing a level of political analysis and commentary that is at that level if the problem is at that level? Yeah, if you say that we don't have a media that's up to the current challenge, I'm going to say get in line. The more sophisticated, sustained, a conversation is the smaller in audience that it drives these days. And I've got hunches about how to address that, but I don't have a ready answer. What are your hunches? Basically, do it anyway. People who want to have productive conversations need to start looking for ways to have them that aren't hoping somebody else buys the Montreal Gazette. There's no messiah like happening. Just do it yourself kind of thing. Yeah, exactly. We are the ones we're waiting for. This episode is brought to you by AG1. Paul, do you have any ritual or routines you use to support your health as you're doing this really important work and trying to build different journalism and save democracy? Not nearly enough. I'm trying to take more walks and get on my bike more often, but unlike you, I don't cross-country ski. Yeah, no. Well, I've been trying to do that with global warming. It's been getting harder, but there are simpler things that you can still do. The most sustainable routines are often the things that you can do every day. And that's partly why AG1 is part of it for me. It's a foundational nutritional supplement that includes vitamins, superfood, pre and probiotics, as well as digestive enzymes. And unlike a lot of supplements out there, AG1 is actually backed by research. If I drink AG1 first thing in the morning, I do know that I have more energy and I need a little bit less coffee. That's actually something AG1 is studying. And they found that 91% of people know this, that they need less coffee after 60 days of drinking AG1. We also know that gut health is really important for overall health, and that AG1 has been shown to double the amount of healthy bacteria in your gut. And that is huge doubling. So it's proven. So there's one product I trust to support my whole body health, and it's AG1. And that's why I've been partnered with them for a really long time. Try AG1 and get a free one year supply of vitamin D3K2 and 5 free AG1 travel packs with your first purchase at drinkag1.com/canadoland. And while supplies last, you'll also get a limited edition of AG1 hacked with your purchase. That's drinkag1.com/canadoland. Paul, what would you like to do you know this week? I was just in Montreal covering the jazz fest. Yeah, we miss each other. One of the nice things about having a newsletter is that I sometimes try my readers patience and I write what I want to write about instead of only writing about Canadian politics. And the thing that struck me is it is a very strange thing to write about music in a critical way to try and assess what musicians are doing, because almost no one is doing it anymore. And it's so different from my early days of the Montreal Gazette. I think it's that we had five reporters full time covering the jazz festival. Lidivoir had three or four. I met Brian Miles, the current publisher of Lidivoir, when he was covering the jazz festival. And any act that came to town could expect four or five reviews in the papers over the next several days, which led to conversation about music and creativity that has basically vanished since then. And then I thought as I often do, that just means that music in Montreal is one of many news deserts that have popped up all over. I only became aware of the idea of news deserts probably five years ago. These are areas of our public life that don't get a lot of coverage. As a lot bigger than jazz music in Montreal, almost no paper in the country has a courthouse reporter anymore, who just sits in the courthouse and covers whatever is interesting in our justice system today. That goes all the way up to the Supreme Court of Canada. There is no full-time newspaper reporter covering the proceedings of the Supreme Court. There are a couple of reporters who write about the big decisions at the end of the whole process. But these are trials that take years. They are complex matters of legal tactics. They're complex matters of jurisprudence. And as we've just seen in the United States, sometimes they make really important decisions that affect a lot of lives. And amazingly, that's a news desert. My old employer, McLean's actually tried to get a grant, one of these government grants, to cover local news. And the argument we made was that the Supreme Court of Canada was local news, and that we should have a full-time reporter to cover it, didn't get the grant. But these news deserts are popping up all over. That's what I was thinking about this week. It's always interesting when we have conversations, because you have this long view on the landscape and how it's been changing in a generation. I find it fascinating in terms of the Jasmine and just music in general. I'm seeing a lot of radio interview, I think Hasu Canada is doing a really good job there. But it's interesting how you're shifting, essentially, from art's criticism, which still exists, but it's freelancer, and it's very, very fragile, to a landscape of artists being promoted by media in a way that feels very promotional. And so it's the criticism part of it that's gone. And obviously, social media now also play a big role in terms of having a conversation about music, but that is different from critical journalism. Really important conversation. You duly know the poll. What do you got? You know, we were just talking about French politics and the international context. I wanted to duly know something that's related to that, but kind of an aside. I find it fascinating living in Montreal that people might not know that, but the French assembly has M&A members of the National Assembly that are representative of basically writings, quote, unquote, that are outside of France, representing French citizens living overseas. And there is, since 2012, there has been a North American French writing for both Canada and the US and Montreal being such a huge French diaspora. We're actually at the center of the French election right now. If I walk around in my neighborhood, I'm in the Patomo Royale, which is basically like little France. You have posters from the different political parties all around me. And even my local M&A, Reubagazale, has been campaigning for the left coalition in France. And it's triggered a lot of conversation about foreign interference actually in a way that's very cute. But there is this sense that we are some sort of a French colony in the sense that we're just this overseas territory that is part of the national conversation in France. And people are fighting here for the Montreal votes. Usually the votes are organized at the Montreal Convention Center because there are so many French citizens. And so I wanted to put that in context with the conversation that we just had, because this is not just happening abroad. This is happening locally. And it's also explains why there has been so much media coverage of it. Like there's so many French citizens who came to Montreal and are now working with La Paris de d'Avoix, in Canada, Jean-Alle Montreal. And they are covering their own elections, sending basically local journalists to cover the French elections doing field work, you know, talking to French locally in Montreal. And I think it's important for people to get that if they want to understand the gap we were just talking about earlier in terms of how things are covered and how Europe is actually so, so, so close to us when we live in that part of the country. Duly noted. This episode is brought to you by Oxio. Paul, do you ever get stressed when you're not connected to the internet? Or are you one of those really, really awkwardly Zen people? No, I am totally, I'm totally phone addicted. Yes. So I get stressed a lot when I have to live in the real world. Yeah, it can be nice for people who are not addicted. The few that few people are left to have the occasional break from connectivity. But myself, I'm like, Paul, I need my internet at home and all over, but especially at home to be fast, reliable and stress free, especially with remote work, having dependable internet is so important. And so that's why I recommend Oxio. I've had it for about two years now, and it's been a great experience for me. It's fast, it's consistent, and I don't have to think about it. I also like that I don't have to worry about my terms contracts, price hikes, or hidden fees, or having to renegotiate any plan. Oxio is what happens when people who love the internet create an internet provider, they keep you connected and they get out of the way. Visit kennedylan.oxio.ca for internet from an alternative option that actually gives a damn. That's kennedylan.oxio.ca and use the promo code kennedylan and get your first month free. This episode is brought to you by BetterHelp. I think we know by now that what we see on social media is like usually not real. And the way that people pick out these moments of their lives to share on Instagram and elsewhere, and often it's like, you know, it's good nature, they just want to show you their beautiful family or their beautiful vacation or the beautiful things they have. But really, they are kind of making these advertisements for themselves. And we can't help, but compare our own experience. But like those moments don't show us what people are really going through, and it's not fair to ourselves to compare what we're going through to these idealized moments. Why not use your screen to do something that helps your mental health and doesn't like degrade it? BetterHelp is all about making it just easier to connect with a mental health professional. As the largest online therapy provider in the world, BetterHelp can provide access to mental health professionals with a wide variety of expertise. Stop comparing and start focusing with BetterHelp. Visit BetterHelp.com/CanadaLand today to get 10% off of your first month. That is better. H-E-L-P.com/CanadaLand. As we're recording, we're hearing reports that Biden actually might be considering resigning, but later in a call with his staff, he's apparently denied this. So at this point, it seems that things are still up in the air. I don't debate as well as I used to. But I know what I do know. I know how to tell the truth. The worst of any major party candidate since debate started with Kennedy Nixon in 1960. That's how bad it was. I really don't know what he said at the end of their sentence. I don't think he knows what he said either. Let's continue the breaking news right now. The New York Times editorial board once again calling for President Biden to drop out of the race. The New York Times, when you've lost the New York Times editorial board, which they came out an hour and a half ago and said, you know, he should step down, that is going to give cover to a lot of the circle, the wagons people, to start inching over into the dump him now camp. Here's just a sample of what the Times editorial board released earlier tonight. Quotes voters, however, cannot be expected to ignore what was instead playing to see Mr. Biden is not the man he was four years ago. Not surprisingly, over the past week, there's been a flurry of hot takes about Biden's viability as a candidate. But what stood out was an opinion piece published by the New York Times editorial board. We discussed in the first section of the show that democracy is being challenged all around the world with the rise of the far right. Of course, democracy is also being challenged in the United States, perhaps more importantly than any other place with Donald Trump's bid for reelection. In the last week, the media has been focused on Joe Biden's stumbling performance at the debate, which happened last Thursday. The performance was actually so bad that it led to calls for him to step aside as well as genuine concerns about his health. Not surprisingly, there was a flurry of hot takes about Biden's viability as a candidate. But what stood out was an opinion piece published by the New York Times editorial board titled "To serve his country, President Biden should leave the race." Now, I want to know what you thought when you saw that title, Paul, but I just want to say that to me, the meme perhaps that captured it all was actually an image of George Bush as a nade was whispering in his ear that the World Trade Center had been hit by a plane. But the meme was actually just replacing with the caption of the New York Times editorial board as fallen just as a way to basically express how well-chattering it is within the American media ecosystem. What were your reaction when you saw what the New York Times did, but also how the even CNN and how the media environment in the U.S. reacted to Joe Biden's performance at the last debate. So I didn't see the debate live. I was at a concert at the jazz festival. Good for you. It was a good concert, too. But when I got out, I checked my phone. And I had friends who were panicking because they couldn't imagine that Biden would perform as badly as he did. That was essentially the universal reaction in my social circle among people who watched the thing. And I've been watching the fallout from that with some fascination. There are people who are mad at the New York Times for reporting this and for having an opinion about it and for essentially making it harder for Biden to continue as the correct president who's not Donald Trump. I think that's ridiculous. I think it's the job of a newspaper to report the news. I think it is at least reasonable to say that Joe Biden cannot continue as the Democrat nominee because the stakes are so high. The one thing I'll note is that this continues a complicated year between Biden and the New York Times. The Biden White House is furious at the times for being so critical of the president. They wonder when the times will be critical of Donald Trump, which I think is an astonishing thing to wonder because I'm a time subscriber and my god, they go after Trump with a baseball bat every day. And he gives them a lot of material. And the current editor of the New York Times, Joe Khan gave an interview to Semaphore online publication a few weeks ago about how he's trying to essentially correct for some of the excesses of the previous regime at the times, 2020-22, which was COVID, Trump, Black Lives Matter, January 6. And he believes, as does the current publisher at the times, that the times became too much of a combat journal of the cultural left. And it has to get back to being a newspaper of record or more of a newspaper of record. I guess the best way to sum up that evolution is that the times became very much a paper for its readers who are really happy with it being a combat journal of the cultural left. And now it's trying to put some distance between itself and its readers. And a lot of readers are not happy. A lot of readers are declaring online that they're not going to read the times anymore because if they wanted Joe Biden's life to be difficult, they could just watch Fox News. It's not the problem, though. The idea that, you know, don't be so tough on Joe Biden, maybe leaning us to that place we're in now when we're, I'm hearing journalists raising questions about the Democrats nominee and president of the United States being fit for office, like, is the idea that we should postpone or muzzle or or not be too harsh on Joe Biden actually led us to having a conversation about Joe Biden being a good idea right now in early July or in the June and early July rather than, you know, way back when there was a lot more time to think about alternatives. So I've, I mean, I've got a lot of patience for that. The idea that if we had we, the metaphorical we of the media, had been tougher on or more skeptical of Joe Biden in 2021 and 2022, there wouldn't be a crisis in the Trump opposition in 2024. I mean, every time I ask hard questions of a political figure, usually in absentia, like, I write the questions I would ask if I was allowed to ask questions of our leaders. That leaders supporters get furious at me. And you know, what are you doing? The answer I usually give is the questions exist whether we ask them or not. So we might as well ask them. Right. And the fitness of an 82 year old man to apply for four more years of the hardest job in the world is a question that exists whether or not we ask it. There's a part of me that thinks that there is a part of Joe Biden's staff that sees that. And that this is why we also saw the earliest debate in presidential campaign history that the debate was pushed this early in the season so that maybe there would be still time before a democratic convention for them to correct course, if necessary. It's kind of a, you know, if you stumble in the debate and everybody starts raising question about you're not fit for office better, earlier than later. Yeah. And if you are good, then good. So it seems like even the timing of the debate wasn't, you know, happenstance. It was something that people who are worried internally was thinking about as well. I mean, I wonder whether they preferred to have the debate in June because they thought he would be three months worse in September. I mean, like, I wonder if it's that dark inside that White House, you know. I mean, look, if I was an American, I would vote for Joe Biden if he was dead and getting worse. And I think history will have an easy time understanding the notion of somebody who essentially wore himself out trying to save the country by his lights. I think that people can't freak out because either the Democratic Party or the media are failing to deliver a sure thing in the November presidential election. There can be no such thing. Sometimes it's hard to believe journalists are doing their best. Sometimes it's hard to believe, but the Democratic Party is trying to step up to the challenge it's facing. And sometimes the results are not that lovely. But one of the predominant characteristics of our time is the too easy assumption of bad faith. I think people are trying. Right. Even if if people were to change, I can do most likely cumulare hires, but it's still in the works before the Democratic Convention, there'd be probably legal challenges to that done by the Republican. It would be it would be a unprecedented, therefore, a legal mess. You know, even if it happens at that point or even later on during the election and people contest either the legitimacy of having elected the criminal or the legitimacy of having elected somebody who's health is failing. I wonder, and maybe that's what we conclude on, all of this having so much of an impact on us in Canada and even our national safety in some ways, definitely the tone of our democratic debates here. One place that is going to be covering the American election is actually Canada lands the back bench. But more generally speaking, Paul, what do you think Canadian media should be doing in terms of covering the American election? I think the only answer is you do as well as you can. I know because I've lived through it that every time a journalist writes about American politics, you open yourself up to accusations of getting it wrong. That's an argument for as much diversity of viewpoint and opinion as you can get. Maybe get interested in stories before they become crises. In 2017, it became clear to me that Joe Biden was planning a run for the presidency. He turned a memoir about his son's death from cancer into a kind of a macabre pre-marketing exercise for a political run. I wrote a column saying, "For all my tremendous affection for the guy, I thought it was a bad idea for him to run because I wasn't sure he had his motivation straight in his own head. If a memoir about his son's death was a testing exercise for a presidential run. As with this, as with the health of democracy, as with the effectiveness of our public policy, things matter even before they're a crisis." It seems to be a thread in our conversation is that the journalism that's necessary isn't the one that's going to draw the more clicks in a sense. When you're already in a crisis, that's when it's easier to draw attention to the topic. But by that time, it's kind of already too late to lay the groundwork for analysis. And so resisting the urge to do what's trendy seems to be something that Canadian journalism really, really needs right now. And to do that, it would need more resources. That's a discussion for another day. Thank you for that poll. That's for cuts this week. Thanks for joining me. You can email me about it at immediately@canandaland.com. And I read, of course, everything that you send. Paul, where can people find you? I'm at paulwells.substack.com. It is easy to subscribe without paying. And then you can email me by answering anything that you receive from me on the sub stack. Awesome. This episode is produced by James Nicholson, with additional production by Caleb Thompson. Our production coordinator is Max Collins. Our editor in chief is Karen Pughese. The music is by so-called syndication, is by CFUV1019 FM in Victoria. And visit them online at CFUV.ca. If you value this podcast, please support us. We rely on listeners like you paying for journalism. As a supporter, you'll get premium access to all our shows at free, including early releases and bonus content. You'll also get our exclusive newsletter discounts on Canada Landmerch, invites and tickets to our live and virtual events. And more than anything, you'll be a part of the solution to Canada's journalism crisis. And you'll be keeping our work free and accessible to everybody. Come join us now. Click the link in your show notes or go to canandaland.com/join. You can listen at free on Amazon Music, included with Prime. Thanks for sticking around. Part 2 of Dear Taliban comes out on Monday, right here, on the main Canada Land feed. Here's a preview. We slept one night and then we woke up and then boom, cobble fell to the hands of these people. And the first thing that was coming to my lunch, just leave the country. Hey, it's Paige DeSorbbo from Giggly Squad. High quality fashion, without the price tag, say hello to Quince. I'm snagging high-end essentials like cozy cashmere sweaters, sleek leather jackets, fine jewelry, and so much more, with Quince being 50 to 80% less than similar brands. And they partner with factories that prioritize safe, ethical, and responsible manufacturing. I love that. 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