The Munk Debates main stage on May 29, from left to right: Kellyanne Conway, Kevin Roberts, Rudyard Griffiths, Ezra Klein, and Ben Rhodes. Photo courtesy of the Munk Debates.
The Spring Munk Debate on Trump’s America didn’t change Canadian hearts and minds.
By Vikram Nijhawan, Contributing Writer
For over 17 years, the Munk Debates have invited a wide range of ideas and voices into the public square—and often controversy, as a result.
During Donald Trump’s first presidency, the 2018 debate about the global rise of populism featured Stephen Bannon, American right-wing pundit and then-White House advisor. The presence of the controversial speaker led to protests outside Roy Thomson Hall, the event’s longtime venue. Police officers were injured in the process of containing them. A banner-waving protester who snuck in managed to hold up the event before security escorted her out.
Now, seven years later, fragile order remained top of mind for many attendants at this year’s Munk Debate on the evening of May 29. The sold-out event focused once more on the resurgent U.S. President and the upheaval his leadership is causing for his country and the rest of the world.
“I don’t know what to expect,” Leanne, an accountant who had attended the debates for years, told me outside Roy Thomson Hall before the event. “Hopefully, it will be civil, not like the politics in the U.S.”
The Munk Debates—the brain-child of its namesake, the late Canadian businessman Peter Munk—has certainly advertised itself as a platform for civil public discourse for years. There would be no violent unrest that night, save for a testy Canadian crowd, as two polar opposite pairs of American pundits debated the provocative motion, “Be it resolved, this is America’s golden age.”
“Oh God, no, I’m not for that!” Leanne said. She was far from the only one.
President Trump’s unfolding agenda has threatened to dismantle America’s 80-year leading role in the rules-based international order, traditionally defined by free trade, multilateralism, and solidarity among democratic countries. In just a few months, he’s ushered in a new political era, one in which even Canada’s sovereignty can no longer be taken for granted.
This debate on Canadian soil couldn’t have been timelier—but it could have been sooner. It was initially slated for last December, following Trump’s election victory, with Robert F. Kennedy to defend the motion. But Kennedy’s last-minute cabinet appointment by the new administration led him to pull out, forcing the Munk Debates to postpone the event until this spring.
PRO
In Kennedy’s place were two equally controversial figures in America’s conservative movement, each responsible for creating the cultural landscape that enabled Trump’s return to power in their own way.
Kellyanne Conway, Fox News voice and former advisor to Trump, and Kevin Roberts, head of the right-wing Heritage Foundation think tank, knew they were playing for a tough crowd. A mere 15% of the 3,000 in attendance voted Pro on the motion in the customary pre-debate poll.
“I come here as a friend of Canada, even though I’m American,” Roberts amended in his opening statement. “Actually, especially because I’m an American.”
The architect of the “Project 2025” plan put forward the Pro side’s case: that American prosperity had been moribund for years under an ever-growing “administrative state.” Trump’s presidency supposedly marked a turning point that would ultimately benefit not only his country but also the world.
That lofty stance alone would have been difficult for the audience to stomach, but it didn’t wash down well with Roberts’ ill-chosen concluding joke: extending a (voluntary) invitation of “51st state” citizenship to the crowd. He was met by a chorus of boos, leading the debate’s moderator Rudyard Griffiths to chide his compatriots for their lapse in decorum.
CON
The Con side, headlined by the New York Times’ Ezra Klein and Pod Save the World’s Ben Rhodes, weren’t having any of their opposition’s humour either (although Klein also did make a riff thanking the Munk Debates for “not imposing tariffs” on American debaters coming into Canada).
While Roberts set a sanctimonious tone in his opening, attacking the “corrupt” and morally decayed systems of American government, Klein stayed true to his policy-wonk roots, leveraging numbers and hard facts.
“If we really were entering a golden age, you think we’d see it, even a little bit,” the Abundance author said.
Klein referenced a slew of statistics coming out of Trump’s first hundred days in power, from the dismal stock market indexes to plummeting consumer confidence. He also dispelled the notion that flawed but functional government mechanisms were beyond repair.
“America is not entering a new golden age,” said Klein. “Its leaders are forgetting what built the last one.”
Replies Highlights
Conway, more attuned to the crowd’s sympathies than her debating partner, made some tepid appeals to their patriotism.
As a senior counsellor in Trump’s first administration, she reeled off his previous policy accomplishments that she witnessed, which included brokering the UCSMA trade deal between Canada and the U.S. in 2019. She received some scoffs from the audience in response, given Trump’s recent lambasting of this very deal.
Conway also referenced newly elected Prime Minister Mark Carney’s praise of Trump in their most recent meeting, whom he described as a “transformative leader” tackling deeply rooted issues like the economy and immigration.
“I’m with Mark Carney,” said Conway, the first of many glib remarks that evening.
Rhodes, no stranger himself to the insides of the Oval Office from working for the Obama administration, hit back against the “cynical, apathetic” narrative of decline in his opponent’s rhetoric: “If this is such a ‘golden age,’ why doesn’t anyone else want to be a part of it?”
He rebutted the notion that a country governed by fear, the authoritarian model followed by Vladimir Putin and other global bêtes noires, was the right path for America.
Roberts insisted early on that “facts” were an essential part of any debate, after gently correcting Griffiths about an updated U.S. court ruling that permitted Trump’s punitive tariffs. Conway, the originator of the term “alternative facts,” had a few of her own to shell out, to much disapproval from the crowd. She praised Trump’s transactional approach to negotiating, citing his threat to impose devastating tariffs against Canada back in November, to strongarm the country into stemming the inflow of “drugs and criminals” across the northern border.
“So then what did you guys do?” she posed rhetorically to the audience.
“Nothing,” came a murmur in reply, which the Canadian government’s response amounted to—an acknowledgment that the so-called border threat was nothing more than a bluff, and that a minor concession sufficed.
But Conway’s abrasiveness wasn’t just limited to her debating opposition or the audience. During the cross-examination portion, she even called out Griffiths for playing devil’s advocate and asking a pointed question about Trump’s controversial domestic policies.
“You’re the moderator? Okay,” she said, unconvinced.
The Pro side bore a heavy burden, stumbling, albeit persistently, toward the finish line. The opposition even conceded to some of Roberts and Conway’s more valid arguments, about America’s overstretched spending on allies or government departments in need of reform.
“Donald Trump is the wrong answer to the right question,” said Klein.
Conclusions
Image source: Munk Debates
Compared to the golden vision that Team M.A.G.A. preached, the pragmatism and immediacy of the Con side’s arguments for Trump’s destructive impact proved more compelling. The final audience poll was virtually unmoved—86% voted for the Con side.
“I was disappointed that [the Pro side] did not respond directly to key questions raised by the Con side, but rather reverted to their messaging,” Angie Peters, CEO of Toronto’s Yonge Street Mission charity, told me after the debate.
As a long-time donor to the Munk Debates, and a supporter of civil public dialogue, Peters hoped to better understand a perspective she disagreed with. She voted against the motion both before and after the debate.
“I would have needed the Pro side to address the key questions persuasively to change my opinion,” Peters said.
In his closing statement, Roberts invoked an apocryphal Winston Churchill quote, insisting that “the American people will always get it right—after they’ve tried everything else.”
Many who voted for Donald Trump last November may have thought they just needed one try to get it right. But then, so did the Canadian crowd who voted on that evening’s debate motion.
Vikram Nijhawan was a founding member and Senior Arts and Culture Editor for the Trinity Times from 2021-22.
