Munk Debate on the US Election September 30, 2016 Rudyard Griffiths: This is the heart of downtown Toronto, a city that is home to more than six million people, the skyline carved in the waters of Lake Ontario and here we are, everyone, at Roy Thomson Hall. Its distinctive exterior design, we know it well, reflective by day, transparent by night. This is Toronto’s premier concert hall. It’s a venue usually for the biggest names in entertainment, but tonight before 3,000 people the latest in a series of Munk Debates, a clash of ideas over the US presidential election. Good evening, my name is Rudyard Griffiths and it is once again my pleasure to be your moderator tonight for this debate, this important debate. I want to start by welcoming the North American wide television audience tuning in right now C-SPAN across the continental US and here in Canada coast to coast on CPAC. A warm hello also to the online audience watching right now; Facebook Live streaming this debate over facebook.com, our social media partner, on the websites of our digital and print partner theglobeandmail.com and, of course, on our own website themunkdebates.com and a hello to all of you, the 3,000 people who have once again filled Roy Thomson Hall to capacity. Bravo. Our ability year in and year out, debate in and debate out to bring to you some of the world’s best debaters, some of the brightest minds, the sharpest thinkers to weigh in on the big global challenges, issues and problems facing the world would not be possible without the generosity, the foresight and the commitment of our host tonight. So join me in a warm appreciation of Munk Debate founders Peter and Melanie Munk. Bravo, you guys. Thank you. It’s a real treat to be able to host these debates in Toronto and let’s do that right now. Let’s get our two teams of debaters out here - 1 - centre stage and our debate underway. We’ve got a controversial motion. It’s designed to fire up our participants and fire up the online television and in auditorium audience. That resolution: “Be it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again...” Speaking for the motion, our first debater tonight, please welcome the former speaker of the US House of Representatives and an advisor to the Trump campaign, Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich’s teammate is a bestselling author, renowned radio broadcaster with over five million daily listeners coast to coast in the United States and she’s a force of nature in the American conservative movement, ladies and gentlemen, Laura Ingraham. Wow, one great team of debaters deserves another and we have not disappointed you tonight. Speaking against the resolution “Be it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again...” is the former US Labour Secretary, acclaimed Berkley professor, filmmaker, author and one of the most formidable debaters of his time, Robert Reich. Robert’s debating partner, Canadian born, two-time governor of the State of Michigan and the co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s White House transition team, please join me in a warm Canadian welcome to Jennifer Granholm. Let’s go through a very quick pre-debate checklist before we go to our opening statements. First, we’ve got a hashtag going tonight. Those in the hall, those watching online, hashtag Munk Debate. Let us know what you think. Join the debate, join the conversation, take part in our rolling poll also at munkdebates.com\vote and, of course, our countdown clock for those of you who are regulars of the debate this is how we keep our debaters on their toes and our debates on time. We have a clock that will appear as the debaters’ opening and closing remarks count down to zero join me in a round of applause - 2 - and that will let them know that it’s time to move on. We like to do that here and we like to keep our proceedings moving quickly. Let’s finally review how this audience of 3,000 people here in Roy Thomson Hall voted on tonight’s resolution coming into the debate. It’s downtown Toronto, Canada. I’m curious here. There are some closet Trump supporters. Let’s find out. “Be it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again …” Do you agree or disagree? Let’s see those numbers up on the screen now. Okay. Fourteen percent. Fourteen percent agree, 86 percent disagree. Now, as we ask at every vote because hey, look, you can change your mind, you’re going to hear a lot in the next hour and a half, there’s some compelling arguments here back and forth so depending on what you hear are you likely to change your vote over the next hour and a half. Let’s have those numbers now please. Okay, look at that. This debate’s in play; 46 percent of you could change your mind, 54 percent are decided, but let’s just see how decided you are. We’re going to begin with our opening statements now. I’m going to call on Speaker Gingrich. Your six minutes begins now. Newt Gingrich: Well, first of all, thank you all for coming out and I want to thank Peter Munk for creating a remarkable institution. I was here a few years ago with Secretary Rice to debate economics and it was really a great experience. This is one of the great debates in the entire North America and so I’m delighted to be back and have a chance to talk with you. Now, you might have thought that Laura and I would be put on edge by an 86 to 14 vote, but actually if you operated as a conservative, even the Washington media, that would be actually a reasonably good ratio. So it doesn’t particularly affect us. And I also want to draw a distinction. I would not have agreed to come here if the - 3 - question had been resolved that Canadians should relax and not worry about a Donald Trump presidency. I think Trump represents very real change. I think he will aggressively put America’s interest first and I think, frankly, from the standpoint of any other country that has to raise issues because that’s a very different frame of reference than the way we’ve negotiated over the last couple of generations and sets up a lot of questions which aren’t answered and can’t be answered until we live through it. But what I would suggest to you is in the long run a very dynamic America that regains a Reagan level of economic growth, four, five, six percent a year. An America that is generating jobs and generating rapidly advancing income and an America which overhauls its infrastructure and an America which fundamentally reforms its civil service is in fact a better neighbour, a better customer, a better market to sell into and a better support for national security than an America which continues to decay. And I think part of what you don’t feel in Canada is the degree to which the American central government system is decaying. Example: We learned last week that in the veteran’s administration one-third of the calls to the suicide line go to call waiting so you can leave a message. Now just think about that. You’re a veteran. You’re depressed. You’re literally thinking about suicide. It’s two in the morning. You call a number you’ve been told will help you and one out of three times you get a tape recording. I mean this is a government level of incompetence that is beyond breathtaking and you see it again and again in our system. You look at your infrastructure. We are now $19 trillion in debt and large parts of infrastructure don’t work and there has to be a profound overhaul of our ability to compete in the world market. The director of national intelligence reported – staff report earlier this year that the Chinese last year stole $360 billion in intellectual property from the United States. We have an $800 billion trade - 4 - deficit. You can’t sustain that. And you also can’t talk about free trade when your largest trading partner or your second largest trading partner is stealing a third of a trillion dollars a year intellectual properties. And so the requirement to rethink and restructure. Finally, the whole issue of the war in the Middle East. It has been 37 years since the Ayatollah Khomeini illegally seized the American Embassy beginning Iran’s campaign against the United States. It has been 15 years since 9/11 when Islamic supremacists killed 3,000 people in the United States. We’re not winning. We have spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of young men and women, had tens of thousands of severe wounds and no serious person can argue we’re winning. And so when Trump says we need to rethink these things, I would argue that he’s not glib. He’s not a Yale trained lawyer. He hasn’t spent 46 years in public life like Secretary Clinton, but as a crude, rough and tumble businessman who had a habit of actually building things and making them work and having projects. I think he has the entrepreneurial drive. I think he has the courage and I think he has the force of originality that will enable us to start to break through and to literally make America great again.