Can Donald Trump Make America Great Again?

The Munk Debates

Newt Gingrich, Robert Reich, Laura Ingraham, Jennifer Granholm

• Publisher: House of Anansi Press
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781487002695
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: American Government
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Will Donald J. Trump be America's next president? For some, his brash, politically incorrect campaign is the panacea for the Washington and Wall Street elites that have saddled the country with endless wars, an anemic economy, and growing racial division. Trump's boosters believe he will usher in a Reagan-like era of domestic prosperity at home, and free America from a destructive global web of counterproductive trade agreements and military entanglements abroad. Trump's critics are having none of this. They see not a president in waiting, but a dangerously unstable and inexperienced demagogue — one who threatens U.S. democracy and global peace and security. Rather than being a harbinger of the country's renewal, Trump's candidacy is supposedly destroying the social fabric of America by demonizing minorities, denigrating women, and exacerbating racial differences.

To engage with the controversy of the moment, the Fall 2016 Munk Debate will move the motion: Be it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again…

CAN DONALD TRUMP
MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?

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 at Roy Thomson Hall, its distinctive exterior design reflective by day, transparent by night. This is Toronto’s premier concert hall — a venue typically reserved for the biggest names in entertainment. But tonight, before an audience of three thousand, we are here for the latest in a series of Munk Debates, a clash of ideas over the U.S. presidential election.

Good evening. My name is Rudyard Griffiths and it is once again my pleasure to be your moderator tonight for this important debate. I want to start by welcoming the North American–wide television and radio audience tuning in right now on C-SPAN across the continental U.S., and here in Canada coast-to-coast on CPAC. A warm hello also to the online audience watching right now via our social media partner, Facebook Live, at facebook.com; on the website of our digital and print partner, theglobeandmail.com; and on our own website, themunkdebates.com. And a hello to all of you, the three thousand people who have once again filled Roy Thomson Hall to capacity for another Munk Debate.

Our ability year in and year out, debate in and debate out, to bring you some of the world’s best debaters, some of the brightest minds and the sharpest thinkers, to weigh in on the big global challenges, issues and problems facing the world today would not be possible without the generosity, foresight, and commitment of our hosts tonight. Please join me in a warm appreciation of Munk Debate founders Peter and Melanie Munk.

Let’s get our two teams of debaters out here on stage and our debate underway. We’ve got a controversial motion, designed to fire up both our participants and the online, television, and in-house audience. Speaking for the motion, “Be it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again,” is former Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, New York Times bestselling author, and an adviser to the Trump campaign, Newt Gingrich. Speaker Gingrich’s teammate tonight is Laura Ingraham, a renowned radio broadcaster with over five million daily listeners, and a true force of nature in the American conservative movement.

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 U.S. secretary of labor, acclaimed Berkeley professor, filmmaker, author, and one of the most formidable debaters of his time, Robert Reich. His debating partner is the Canadian-born, two-term governor of the state of Michigan, and the co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s White House transition team, Jennifer Granholm.

Let’s go through a very quick pre-debate checklist before we begin the opening statements. First, we’ve got a social media hashtag tonight. Those in the hall and watching online, please use #MunkDebate to join the conversation. You’re also invited to take part in our rolling poll at themunkdebate.com/vote. For those of you unfamiliar with the Munk Debates, our countdown clock will appear on the screen at various times during tonight’s debate, including for opening and closing statements, and for timed rebuttals. When you see it count down to zero, please join me in a round of applause. This will keep our speakers on their toes, and our debate on schedule.

Let’s review how tonight’s audience voted on tonight’s resolution coming into the debate. It’s downtown Toronto, Canada, after all, but I’m sure there are some closet Trump supporters here tonight. You were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, “Donald Trump can make America great again.” Only 14 percent of you agree with the motion, while 86 percent disagree. However, as you’re going to hear a lot of compelling arguments from both sides in the next hour and half, we asked you a second question: Are you open to changing your vote depending on what you hear during this debate? The results suggest this debate’s in play: 46 percent of you said you could change your mind, while 54 percent said you are already decided. Let’s see just how decided you really are.

Let’s welcome all the debaters to the stage.

We agreed beforehand to the order of opening statements. Speaker Gingrich, your six minutes start now.

NEWT GINGRICH: First of all, thank you all for coming out this evening. I especially want to thank Peter Munk for creating a remarkable institution in the Munk Debates. I was here a few years ago to debate economics and it was really a great experience. This is one of the greatest debates series in the entirety of North America and I’m delighted to be back.

You might think that Laura and I would be put on edge by an eighty-six to fourteen vote. But if you operated as a conservative in the United States and were used to dealing with the Washington media, that would actually be a reasonably good ratio. So it doesn’t particularly affect us.

I also want to draw a distinction: I would not have agreed to come here tonight if the resolution had suggested 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 interests first. And frankly, from the standpoint of any other country, that priority given to American interests has to raise questions — questions that can’t be answered until we live through a Trump presidency — because that’s very different from the way America has negotiated over the last couple of generations. But I would suggest that in the long run a dynamic America that regains Reagan-era levels of economic growth of 4, 5, or 6 percent a year; an America that is generating jobs and rapidly advancing income; and an America that overhauls its infrastructure and fundamentally reforms its civil service is a better neighbour, a better customer, a better market for international goods, and a better support for national security than an America that 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.

I’ll give you an example: We learned last week that in the Department of Veterans Affairs, one-third of the calls to the suicide prevention hotline are automatically transferred to a mailbox where callers are asked to leave a message. Just think about that. You’re a veteran. You’re depressed. You’re thinking about suicide. It’s two in the morning. You call a hotline you’ve been told will help you, and one out of three times you get a taped recording. This is a level of incompetence that is beyond breathtaking. And you see it again and again in our current system.

The United States is now $19 trillion in debt, and large parts of our infrastructure simply don’t work. There has to be a profound overhaul of our ability to compete in the world market. The director of national intelligence reported earlier this year that the Chinese stole $360 billion in intellectual property from the United States in 2015. We have an $800 billion trade deficit. You can’t sustain that. And you also can’t talk about free trade when your second-largest trading partner is stealing a third of a trillion dollars per year from you in intellectual properties. We need to rethink and restructure.

Finally, the whole issue of the war in the Middle East. It has been thirty-seven years since the Ayatollah Khomeini illegally seized the American embassy, beginning Iran’s campaign of aggression toward the United States. It has been fifteen years since 9/11, when Islamic supremacists killed three thousand people in the United States. We’re not winning. We have spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of young men and women, and suffered tens of thousands of severe wounds. No serious person can argue we’re winning. So, when Trump says we need to rethink these things, I would argue that he’s not being glib. He’s not a Yale-trained lawyer. He hasn’t spent forty-six years in public life like Secretary Clinton. Rather, he’s a rough-and-tumble businessman with a habit of actually building things and making them work. He has the entrepreneurial drive, the courage, and the force of originality that will enable us to literally make America great again.

In the absence of very profound change, the United States is going to continue to decay. We’re going to become a weaker partner for you (Canada), which will have bad implications for both of our economies and for our collective national security. This year, there have been over three thousand people shot in Chicago, five hundred of whom were killed. Somebody’s shot in Chicago every two hours. We’ve lost more Americans in Chicago since 2009 than we’ve lost in Iraq and Afghanistan combined. Lowering those numbers will require profound, fundamental rethinking. And if that means we need to elect a rough-and-tumble guy who is not a very subtle, glib, or sophisticated person — but may be more like Andrew Jackson, the kind of leader who’s capable of actually getting the system to work again — then so be it. I would argue that electing a president who will bring real change to America is a better bet for the future than to continue the current system, the current policies, the current bureaucracies, the current mess in Washington — a...

Table of contents

• Openers
• Contents
• CAN DONALD TRUMPMAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN?
• Acknowledgements
• About the Debaters
• About the Editor
• About the Munk Debates