Latest / Kvetch & Release / Circus Popcorn, Gas Pump Bills: U.S. Election Dysfunction Always Hits Canadian Wallets

Transcript

Circus Popcorn, Gas Pump Bills: U.S. Election Dysfunction Always Hits Canadian Wallets · Kvetch & Release

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: It is time for another episode of Litkey's Got a
• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Take featuring the one, the only John Litkey. And good morning.
• 0:07
  Speaker 2: Good morning.
• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Well, Johnny, midterm election day in the U.S. And it's
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: been a mess for the last couple of weeks. What
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: with Trump talking about men's rear ends, Mickey Minaj's rear end,
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: Arnold Palmer's body parts. In Alaska, voters have to find
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: out which candidate they're actually voting for. which Dan Sullivan
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: is the Republican incumbent who's running against some other guy
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: named Dan Sullivan. I mean, the guy's currently legally on
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: the ballot, but watching from our perspective here in Ontario,
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: is this brilliant political trickery or just pure absurdity?
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: You know, for me, Gene, I'm just enjoying the show.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: This is low-budget political theater. I mean, think about the
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: sheer volume of digital ink and breath we've wasted on
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: high-tech conspiracy fever dramas over the past few cycles. We've
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: heard about Jewish space lasers, Italian satellites flipping votes, people
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: hunting for microscopic bamboo fibers in Arizona ballots. Throw all
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: that out the window. If you want to throw a
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: wrench in the election, you don't need an algorithm. You
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: don't need a server farm. You just need another guy
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: named Dan. It's cheap. It takes zero technical sophistication. It's
• 1:21
  Speaker 2: pure comedic mischief. You know, Sarah Palin, she once said
• 1:25
  Speaker 2: that she could see Russia from her front porch in Alaska. Well,
• 1:28
  Speaker 2: looking across the river from Windsor at Detroit, I'm pretty
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: sure the river is getting filled up with Republican sweat
• 1:34
  Speaker 2: right now. Yeah.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: Well, down south, we're seeing a real high-tech campaign with
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: a lot of tricks, with over 180 million pumped into
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: artificial intelligence ads. There have been videos of candidates coloring
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: in Bibles, admitting to corruption, with no regulations and fewer
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: than 30% carrying disclaimers. We hear plenty of panic about AI,
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: but who's actually enabling and profiting off this wave of
• 2:02
  Speaker 1: what can only be described as digital slop.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: Follow the money. Silicon Valley is working both sides of
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: the street in cash and checks at every turn. I mean,
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: they've turned political deception into an end-to-end business model. They
• 2:15
  Speaker 2: buy and sell the machine learning engines that spit out
• 2:18
  Speaker 2: the fake videos of AI, and then they turn around
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: and charge the campaigns hundreds of millions of bucks to
• 2:23
  Speaker 2: broadcast and micro-target that slop across all their platforms. They're
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: monetizing the erosion end-to-end. It's basic reality erosion. Meanwhile, Fed
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: regulators and lawmakers have been paralyzed by how quick it
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: is dragging their feet on this issue, quite frankly, because,
• 2:40
  Speaker 2: you know, so many people that are in politics are, unfortunately,
• 2:44
  Speaker 2: too old to understand what most of this software really is.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, I think there was a poll of them recently.
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: They don't really understand exactly how social media works, for
• 2:51
  Speaker 2: gosh sakes. The tech platforms love to hide behind boilerplate,
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: claiming they're just neutral conduits, but that's just, it's nonsense.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: They're not neutral pipes. They're the arms dealers and the
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: broadcast towers profiting off.
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: Of the chaos.
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: But at least when it comes to the U.S. election,
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: we get to watch it rather than be involved in it.
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: You know, whether it's an AI ad, a duplicate name
• 3:14
  Speaker 1: on a ballot like up in Alaska, illicit robocalls. Oh,
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: and yesterday on X, I saw a video of a
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: woman who is now just coming forward two days before
• 3:24
  Speaker 1: the midterms. She's in her mid-30s, claiming that Donald Trump
• 3:28
  Speaker 1: raped her when she was seven. All these political dirty tricks,
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: they're as old as the continent itself. We've seen them
• 3:36
  Speaker 1: for years and years. So what are your top two
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: dirtiest political tricks in history on each side of the border?
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: I'm curious.
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: I went through last night and put these together for
• 3:47
  Speaker 2: you for this one. So in 1800 in the U.S.,
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: the Federalist newspapers ran front-page reports that Thomas Jefferson died
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: of fever. Dead. He was just dead. The lie ran
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: uncontested for three full weeks. The whole goal was to
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: spook electors out of casting their ballots for a dead man.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: I mean, why would you do that? So no algorithm,
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: no bots, just the blunt force con of he's dead.
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: It was brutal. It was ruthless. And at the time,
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: it took three weeks to disprove it. Second, this was
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: during Nixon's dirty tricks campaigns that would eventually lead to
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: him and Watergate in leaving office. And 72, the Canuck letter.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: This is so funny. They wanted to get the Democratic frontrunner,
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: Ed Muskie, out of the race. So they had a
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: fake letter written up that said that he condoned a slur, Canuck,
• 4:36
  Speaker 2: against French Canadians. There was actually enough fallout during this
• 4:40
  Speaker 2: election campaign for him that it caused, it tanked his campaign,
• 4:44
  Speaker 2: and it actually helped him blow the lid off of
• 4:46
  Speaker 2: Watergate eventually, and it managed to drag Canada into the mess.
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: So that's on their side. On our side, who can
• 4:52
  Speaker 2: forget in 2011, Pierre Poutine and the robo-calls, of course,
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: sending people to the wrong polling stations, separate the street.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: And then this was really good. In 1917, the Wartime
• 5:04
  Speaker 2: Elections Act... Sir Borden, Prime Minister Borden, had a resistance
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: over conscription, so he used the power of the state
• 5:13
  Speaker 2: to rewrite the election. He gave the vote to female
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: relatives of overseas voters, excuse me, overseas soldiers who were
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: backing the war, while at the same time stripping the
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: voting rights of naturalized immigrant enemy aliens, quote-unquote. That was
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: brazen at the time. Still is. Yeah.
• 5:34
  Speaker 1: Here's what I'm worried about. If the Republicans take a
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: beating or if the results end up being deadlocked, you know,
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: we might hear Trump saying, you know, it was rigged.
• 5:43
  Speaker 1: It was rigged. It was rigged. I think based on
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: his campaigning and what he's been talking about, who knows,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: maybe martial law, or is there a very real possibility
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: that Washington points its fingers North and starts up the
• 5:58
  Speaker 1: whole Canada's meddling in our election trade routine?
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: You know, look across the river from Windsor, and we
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: know this script. The second things go sour in American
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: domestic politics, Washington will always look for a scapegoat. And
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: right now, we're right here with a target on us
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: and all the lights on. We've already seen this bad
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: faith rhetoric play out. American officials, of course, crying foul
• 6:21
  Speaker 2: over our anti-terrorist messaging, saying it's foreign interference. That's hypocritical,
• 6:25
  Speaker 2: and it's meant to distract the base. But Ottawa can't
• 6:28
  Speaker 2: afford to handle this by rolling over or curling into
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: a defensive bunker. Canada needs backbones, and we have to
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: defend the Windsor-Detroit industrial corridor, hold the line on cross-border trade,
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: and assort our legal economic rights without getting sucked into
• 6:42
  Speaker 2: their hyper-partisan soap opera, which is going to be a
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: very tough thing to do because regardless of which way
• 6:48
  Speaker 2: the vote goes, it'll be a soap opera. But you
• 6:51
  Speaker 2: can't and you don't appease a bully by apologizing for
• 6:55
  Speaker 2: your existence. So this is something that us Canadians are
• 6:57
  Speaker 2: going to have to try to figure out. Just don't
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: apologize instinctively.
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: But we always say, I'm sorry.
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sorry about that, Gene.
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: Listen, Canadians can laugh at the circus, but between the
• 7:08
  Speaker 1: tariff war, supply chain standoffs, rising gas prices in Canada,
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: the price of groceries driven by foreign conflicts, how does
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: this outcome hit everyday families?
• 7:20
  Speaker 2: You know, Canadians love watching the American circus from the
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: comfort of our couches with a bowl of popcorn, but
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: our households are the ones who still get handed the
• 7:28
  Speaker 2: bill inadvertently. When Washington ratchets up the threats, retaliatory tariffs
• 7:33
  Speaker 2: snap into place. When international conflicts escalate energy prices and
• 7:37
  Speaker 2: bottleneck shipping lanes, every single cost increases, trickles down directly
• 7:42
  Speaker 2: onto our economy as well. And you don't feel it
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: in theoretical policy white papers. You feel it in the
• 7:48
  Speaker 2: grocery checkout in St. Catharines. I feel it here at
• 7:51
  Speaker 2: the Windsor pump, gas pumps. So we can laugh, of course,
• 7:54
  Speaker 2: at having two Dan Sullivans on the ballot in Alaska.
• 7:58
  Speaker 2: But until we lock down cross-border trade stability and we
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: stop taking economic punches from protectionist tantrums down south, everyday
• 8:07
  Speaker 2: Canadian working families will remain squarely in the crosshairs. So, again,
• 8:12
  Speaker 2: I'm glad that the United States president and our prime
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: minister are having conversations on the phone. I want to
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: see a deal, and I want to see it signed
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: if it's a good one. But let's get there.
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. Another great take. We'll talk to you Thursday.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: Looking forward to it. Thank you, Jim.
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: John Litke, Litke's Got a Take.