We do not want sympathy. We do not want. We want opportunities. Its appalling slander. I never said the word. It is that kind of restraint, is that kind of sober minded sensible intelligent Foreign Policy that obama represents so i guess what im telling you is he a sort of a quasicanadian. [applause] music music [applause] we are in the heart of Downtown Toronto a city that is home to more than 6 billion people. Carved into the water of lake ontario and here we are everyone at Roy Thompson Hall. Its distinctive interior design, we know what well reflected by day transparent by night. This is torontos premier concert hall. The venue usually for the biggest names in entertainment but tonight before 3000 people, the latest in a series of munk debates, a clash of ideas over u. S. President ial election. Good evening. It is once again my pleasure to be your moderator tonight for this debate. This important debate. Want to start by welcoming the north american Wide Television audience. Joining us right now on cspan across the continent to usa and here in canada coasttocoast on cpac. A hello also to the on line audience watching right now, Facebook Livestreaming this debate over facebook. Our social media partner. On the web sites of our digital and print partners and of course on our own web site the munk debates. Com and hello to all of you. The 3000 people who have once again filled Roy Thompson Hall to a munk debates capacity. Bravo. [applause] our ability year in and year out to bring the debate to bring to some of the worlds best debaters from the brightest minds, the sharpest thinkers to weigh in on the big global challenges and the issues and problems facing the world would not be possible without the generosity and the foresight and the commitment of our folks tonight so please join me in a warm appreciation for the munk debate founders. Bravo you guys. Thank you. [applause] so its a real treat to be of the host these debates in toronto. Lets get our teams at debaters out here center stage and our debates underway. We have a controversial motion. Its designed to fire up our participants and fire up the on Line Television and in the auditorium audience. That resolution be it resolved donald trump can make America Great again. Speaking for the motion our first debater tonight, please welcome the former speaker of the u. S. House of representatives and an adviser to the trump campaign, Newt Gingrich. [applause] speaker gingrich team made is the bestselling author, renowned radio broadcaster with over 5 million daily listeners coasttocoast in the United States and she is a force of nature and the american conservative movement. Ladies and gentlemen, laura ingraham. [applause] one great team at debaters deserves another and we have not disappointed you tonight. Be it resolved donald trump can make America Great again the former u. S. Labor secretary, acclaimed berkeley professor, filmmaker, author, one of the most formidable debaters at this time, robert reich. [applause] roberts debating partner canadian born to time governor of the state of michigan and the cochair Hillary Clintons white house transition team, please join me and no warm welcome to Jennifer Granholm. [applause] lets go through a very quick predebate checklist before we go to our Opening Statements. First we have a hashtag going tonight. Those in the hollow those watching on line hashtag munk debate. Let us know what you think. Join the debate in china conversation take part in our rolling poll also as the munk debate. Com vote and of course our countdown clock. For those of you who are regulars at the debate this is how we keep our debaters on their toes and our debates on time. We have a clock that will appear as the debaters opening and Closing Remarks count down to zero. Join me in a round of applause and that will let them know that its time to move on. We like to do that here. We like to keep our proceedings moving quickly. Lets finally preview how this audience of 3000 people here at Roy Thompson Hall voted on tonights resolution coming into the debate. In toronto, canada im curious here. Be it resolved donald trump can make America Great again. Do you agree or disagree . Lets see those numbers up on the screen. Ok. [applause] 14 . 14 agree and 86 disagree. Now, hey look you can change her mind. You will hear a lot in the next hour and a half. Depending on what you hear are you likely to change her vote over the next hour and a half. Assessing those numbers now, please. Ok, look at that. 46 of you could change your minds. 54 are decided. Lets just see how the decided you are. We will begin with their Opening Statements now and by colin speaker gingrich. Your six minutes begins now. First of all thank you all for coming out. I want to thank peter munk for creating a remarkable institution today was here a few years ago was secretary reich to debate economics and it was a great experience. It was one of the great debates in the entire north American Cities so that delighted to have a chance to talk to you. You might about laura and i would be put on edge by an 8614 vote but if you operate as a conservative and a Washington News media that would be reasonably good. So it does not particularly affect us. They also want to give a distinction. I would not have even come. The question had been resolved, the canadian should relax and not worry about the donald trump presidency. I think trump represents very real change. I think you will aggressively put americas interests first and i think frankly that has to raise issues because thats a very different frame of reference than the way we have negotiated over the last couple of generations and it sets up a lot of questions which arent answered and cant be answered until we lived through it. What i would suggest to you is in the long run a very dynamic america that regains a reagan level of Economic Growth, four, five, 6 a year. In america that is generating jobs, generating rapidly advancing income and america in which overhauls its infrastructure in america which reforms the Civil Service which is in fact a better neighbor, a better customer, a better market to sell into that better support for National Security than an america which continues to decay. I think part of what you dont feel in canada is the degree to which the american Central Government system is decaying. For example we learned last week that the Veterans Administration , one third of the cause of suicide lights go to call waiting so you can leave a message. Just think about that. You are veteran and you are depressed. You are literally thinking about suicide. Its 2 00 in the morning. You call a number you were told will help you in one out of three times you get a tape recording. This is a government level of incompetence that is beyond breathtaking and you see it again and again in our system. The liquor of the structure we are now 19 trillion in debt and in large part due to the the infrastructure does not work. It has to be a profound overhaul to compete in the world market. The director of National Intelligence reported, Staff Reporter earlier this year that the chinese last year stole 360 billion in intellectual property in the United States. We have an 800 billiondollar. Deficit. You cant sustain it and you also can talk about free trade when your largest trading partner or your secondlargest trading partner is feeling a third of a trillion dollars a year in intellectual properties. And so the requirements that we think finally the whole issue of the war in the middle east. It has been 37 years since the Ayatollah Khamenei illegally seized the American Embassy beginning irans campaign against the United States. It has been 15 years since 9 11 when islamic supremacists killed 3000 people in the United States. We are not winning. We have spent trillions of dollars, lost thousands of young men and women, had tens of thousands of severe ones and no serious person can argue that we are winning. When trump says we need to rethink this i would argue that he is not a lib and he is not a harbor harvard trained lawyer but as a crude roughandtumble businessman that has a habit of actually building things and making them work and projects he has the entrepreneurial drive and i think he has the courage and i think he has the originality that will enable us to start to break through and to literally make America Great again and i think in the absence of very profound change the United States is going to continue to change. We will become a weaker partner for you. Its going to have bad implications for both of our economies and bad implications for both of our National Security than an america for example this year we have over 3000 people shot in chicago and over 500 killed. Somebody is shot in chicago every two hours. That requires profound fundamental rethinking. We have lost more americans in chicago since 2009 than we have lost in iraq and afghanistan combined and if that means we are we need a roughandtumble guy who is frankly not a very subtle, not a very glib, not a very sophisticated person but he may just be like Andrew Jackson the kind of person you need to break through and actually make the system work again and i would argue thats a much better gamble for the future than to continue the Current System, the current policies, the current bureaucracies, the current mess in washington and thats why i think we have a better chance of making America Great again with donald trump. [applause] thank you speaker gingrich. Robert reich you are up next for your Opening Statement, six minutes on the clock. Thank you. I love to debate Newt Gingrich because we agree on nothing. [laughter] but in a very goodnatured way. I have been in canada for about 24 hours and i am so reassured to learn that country to my fears that the canadians are not contemplating building a wall. The off chance that donald trump becomes president most of us want to come north. But let me just say this. On a proposition and the fact that 86 of you are with governor granholm and me is something of a challenge. We want to get you up to 88 or 90 but the difficulty of arguing this proposition is knowing where to begin. Honestly. [applause] let me just Say Something here and its very sincere. When you have a lot of people in a society who feel economically stressed and in the United States to a lesser extent in canada, you have a much much Better Safety net in canada. In the United States we have a lot of the old working class and a lot of middle last, lower middle class people who have been on the downward escalator for years and part of that i dont want to cast aspersions for part of it i remember because i was labor secretary when speaker gingrich was speaker and one of the frustrations i had, no dispersions of all is trying to get job training and more education spending in trying to get Infrastructure Spending and earned income tax credit which is a wage subsidy for people at the bottom and getting a lot of opportunities and recreating equal opportunity, widening the circle of prosperity but the Republican Congress and the republicans wouldnt do it. All they wanted was trickledown economics. Trickledown economics are tax cuts for the rich and you pretend it trickles down to everybody else. It didnt come it doesnt, it is a cruel hoax and the net results of those years are all of this years senate fact we have seen basically the standoff now for about 25 years the net result is you have a large and growing percentage of americans who feel with some justification that the game is rigged against them. My friends, you know as well as i do what happens when you have a larger percentage of their population feeling like the system is rigged against them. We can see a lot of the same stresses occurring in europe and elsewhere around the world. You create the conditions in which demagoguery is rife. You always invite authoritarian populism. There is an history to different forms of populism. One i will call authoritarian. Those are the demagogues that want to channel that anger and anxiety and fear and channel it toward scapegoats and want to blame foreigners or immigrants were minority groups. This is nothing new. We have seen the tragedy of what happened 70, 80 or 90 years ago in europe is still within levering memory or at least within the minds that the reform and political system. You make equal opportunity a reality and thats the only alternative when people are stressed. In other words it really is a choice between authoritarian populism or performance populism and thats what we face right now the United States. Thats why donald trump is in the words of the cincinnati inquirer for example. The cincinnati inquirer if you dont know is a republican publication or it has been, back in 150 years has not endorsed a democrat but what did it do a few weeks ago . Endorsed Hillary Clinton. If said quote donald trump is a clear and present danger to the United States and also to the world. Now i dont have to do this. Fact i have about one minute him left but you know this. This is a man who denies Climate Change is caused by humans who calls Vladimir Putin a stronger leader than president obama, who says president obama invented isis who for years has claimed president obama was not even born in the United States. Ironically its an embarrassment an embarrassment here. To suggest that the death of Supreme CourtJustice Antonin Scalia was part of a plot. He refers to women he doesnt like his pigs and slobs and call the former Miss Universe miss piggy. He said thousands and thousands of muslims in new jersey celebrated the twin towers collapsing, wants to ban muslims from entering. Says a federal judge has a conflict of interest in considering a case against trump universiuniversi ty because of his mexican heritage and i could go on and on. You get the point. This is demagoguery. This is wielding anxiety and frustration and pointing it at them. This is hatemongering. This is undermining the social fabric of the United States. So its not just that donald trump is a problem. The problem is that donald trump has already poisoned the well and we have got to all of us here tonight get rid of him. [applause] we will next go to you laura ingram. Your six minutes is on the clock. I want to thank everyone here for coming tonight. Its such a great privilege to be with all of you and i cant believe 14 of the people in this room actually support the proposition. I will buy margaritas for all of you, all of you at the fun table. I am honestly thrilled to be here to support the proposition and i would like to begin with a quote from march of this year. Here it goes. I have seen firsthand how excessive wall street in the corporations are at wielding influence using lobbyists, Campaign Donations and subtle promises of future jobs to get the global deals they want. Opal feels like a Transpacific Partnership will boost the profits of wall streets corporations and make the richest 1 even richer but they will will conjure you to the steady shrinkage of the american middle class. That quote was posted by robert reich former secretary of labor for the Clinton Administration and our opposition tonight. Next i would like to quote at 2000 article about the decision of electrolux. We have had electrolux vacuums in my house in connecticut. They will leave greenville michigan for mexico. Governor Jennifer Granholm was disappointed by electrolux decision to abandon greenville. She promised to persuade the company tuesday to stay assembling a package of more than 120 million in state and local tax credits. The city offered to build the plant, the local union agreed to give as up as much is 33 million in wages. They said theres nothing you can do to compensate for the fact that we are able to pay 1. 57 an hour to mexico granholm recalls. Thats when i started to say quoting governor granholm nafta to embarrass our distinguished opponents tonight. I really didnt. I quoted them to show that we actually share Common Ground and i think its important to say that even at a debate. Lots of folks in washington complain that we dont have enough bipartisanship, and people from different parties cant agree on policies to make the lives of the average american better, but when it comes to this issue of globalization, i believe people of good faith on both sides increasingly agree that t