LifeZette Editor-in-Chief Laura Ingraham and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich convinced a largely Canadian audience in Toronto Friday that Donald Trump could indeed make America great again.
The pair faced off against surrogates for Hillary Clinton in a Munk Debate. Originally established in 2008 as a charitable initiative, Munk Debates host some of the world’s leading thinkers, commentators and politicians debating some of the most important and controversial issues of the day.
“For anyone who’s for Hillary Clinton to raise the concept of conflict of interest shows a capacity for schizophrenia that is stunning.”
Friday’s debate saw Ingraham and Gingrich debate Robert Reich, secretary of labour under Bill Clinton and Jennifer Granholm, the first female governor of Michigan and co-chairwoman of Hillary Clinton’s transition team, over the following resolution. “Be It Resolved That: Donald Trump can make America great again.”
Before the debate began only 14 percent of the 3,000 strong audience was in favor of the resolution. After the debate finished, 20 percent were in favor of the resolution — a six point swing representing a 42 percent increase in support of the motion.
Both Gingrich and Ingraham gave highly effective opening statements. Ingraham began by quoting her opponents speaking out against the sort of policies Hillary Clinton inherently represents.
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“‘I’ve seen firsthand how effective Wall Street and big corporations are at wielding influence … to get the global deals they want,’” she said, quoting Reich. “‘Global deals like the Trans-Pacific Partnership will boost the profits of Wall Street and big corporations and make the richest one percent even richer, but they’ll contribute to the steady shrinkage of the American middle class.’”
For Granholm, she recalled the former governor’s reaction to the relocation of a Michigan Electrolux plant to Mexico, “NAFTA and KAFTA have given us SHAFTA.”
“Lots of folks in Washington complain that we don’t have enough bipartisanship,” said Ingraham. “But when it comes to this issue of globalization, I believe people of good faith on both sides increasingly agree that the current global trading system does not work for blue collar workers,” she said. Trump and his supporters are “simply asking for a system where American workers and businesses in America have a better chance to compete,” she explained.
Gingrich said he understood why Trump gives other nations pause, but explained why a President Trump would not just be good for America but for Canada as well.
“Trump represents very real change. I think he will aggressively put America’s interests first,” said Gingrich. “That’s a very different frame of reference than the way we’ve negotiated over the last couple of generation,” he said.
“In the long run, a very dynamic America that regains a Reagan level of economic growth,” Gingrich continued, “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 neighbor, a better customer and a better market to sell into.”
The alternative, according to Gingrich, is “an America which continues to decay.”
Both Ingraham and Gingrich were confident of Trump’s ability to reverse that decay. “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,” said Gingrich.
“Donald Trump will not be beholden to Wall Street. He will not be beholden to big donors,” said Ingraham.
Both Reich and Granholm offered the same tired denouncements of Trump that liberals have been offering for the better part of a year. The word demagoguery was in liberal use and there were at least three references to Adolf Hitler.
Their endorsements of Clinton were equally unconvincing. Reich implied Clinton deserved credit for her husband’s economic record while he was in office. “The Clintons have both been involved [in job creation] for most of their lives and I have seen it and have experienced it,” he said. “Bill Clinton as president presided over an economy that, because of his policies, created 22 million net new jobs in the United States,” Reich continued.
“Now, you’re saying that Hillary Clinton the feminist icon — we’re supposed to judge Hillary Clinton’s plan for the economy, Robert, from her husband’s record on the economy,” Ingraham shot back. “I thought that women stood for themselves,” she said to applause.
Granholm’s performance was also weak. When trying to convince people to support Hillary Clinton, it’s generally best not to remind them of her record of scandal and corruption — something Granholm accomplished while trying to accuse Trump of being open to foreign influence.
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“When he makes a foreign policy decision … as president that happened to benefit one of his companies, wouldn’t everyone be wondering — did he make that decision because he was going to line his children or his own pockets in the future, would our foreign policy as a country be for sale?” Granholm asked.
Gingrich pounced. “I think the chutzpah of a Clinton supporter worrying about conflict of interest is so infuriatingly breathtaking,” he said. “Under Hillary Clinton, the U.S. State Department lobbied the Haitian government against raising the minimum wage from three dollars a day to five dollars a day on behalf of people who happened to have given to the Clinton Foundation,” he said.
“For anyone who’s for Hillary Clinton to raise the concept of conflict of interest shows a capacity for schizophrenia that is stunning.”
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