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 Torontoâs premier concert hall â 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 Americanâwide 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 worldâs 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.
Letâs get our two teams of debaters out here on stage and our debate underway. Weâve got a controversial motion, designed to fire up both our participants and the online, television, and in-house audience. Speaking for the motion, âBe it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again,â 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 Gingrichâs 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, âBe it resolved, Donald Trump can make America great again,â 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 Clintonâs White House transition team, Jennifer Granholm.
Letâs go through a very quick pre-debate checklist before we begin the opening statements. First, weâve got a social media hashtag tonight. Those in the hall and watching online, please use #MunkDebate to join the conversation. Youâre 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 tonightâs 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.
Letâs review how tonightâs audience voted on tonightâs resolution coming into the debate. Itâs downtown Toronto, Canada, after all, but Iâm sure there are some closet Trump supporters here tonight. You were asked to agree or disagree with the statement, âDonald Trump can make America great again.â Only 14 percent of you agree with the motion, while 86 percent disagree. However, as youâre 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 debateâs in play: 46 percent of you said you could change your mind, while 54 percent said you are already decided. Letâs see just how decided you really are.
Letâs 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 Iâm 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 doesnât 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 Americaâs interests first. And frankly, from the standpoint of any other country, that priority given to American interests has to raise questions â questions that canât be answered until we live through a Trump presidency â because thatâs 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 donât feel in Canada is the degree to which the American central government system is decaying.
Iâll 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. Youâre a veteran. Youâre depressed. Youâre thinking about suicide. Itâs two in the morning. You call a hotline youâve 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 donât 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 canât sustain that. And you also canât 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 Iranâs 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. Weâre 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 weâre winning. So, when Trump says we need to rethink these things, I would argue that heâs not being glib. Heâs not a Yale-trained lawyer. He hasnât spent forty-six years in public life like Secretary Clinton. Rather, heâs 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. Weâre 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. Somebodyâs shot in Chicago every two hours. Weâve lost more Americans in Chicago since 2009 than weâve 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 â but may be more like Andrew Jackson, the kind of leader whoâs capable of actually getting the system to work again â 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 â a...