Steve Paikin: Hi, everybody. I'm Steve Paikin, and we are delighted to welcome you to this beautiful Isabel Bader Theatre at Victoria University on the campus of the University of Toronto. We want to welcome you and of course our live audience here for this edition of TVO Today Live.

When Canada's new Prime Minister visited the White House recently, he described President Trump as a transformational figure. Yes, he did not say whether the transformation was good or bad, but we can get into that tonight. Regardless, we are going to look to one of America's foremost columnists to understand that transformation and what it means for Canada. So, please help me welcome the author of seven books, the winner of three Pulitzer prizes, a columnist who is simply must reading in the New York Times, here's Thomas Friedman.

Thomas Friedman: Great to have you here. Thank you.

Steve Paikin: President Biden called you to talk about the future of NATO. You spoke to Donald Trump during his first term. You sat down with Barack Obama to talk geopolitics. So, let's start with this. What do you try to accomplish when you get that kind of an audience?

Thomas Friedman: Good question, Steve. Of course, it's different from each person, each president, but I think what you're really looking for is, you know, what is the deep thinking? What is the deep thing that's really motivating them, not just about this decision, but about everything they're doing? It's rarely a secret, it's rarely a news story that you're going to break. It's more understanding how that person thinks. That will then shape your reporting going forward.

Steve Paikin: You ask them stuff, but do they also ask you stuff? Did Donald Trump ask you questions?

Thomas Friedman: Yeah, they do. I never went to see Trump in person. I spoke to him on the phone twice. The second time was when I endorsed the Abraham Accords. Very enthusiastically, and at the time a lot of people on the left, progressives didn't, and I came out a second after and embraced it. And so, he called me a couple days later, and said, "Tom, I can't believe The New York Times let you do that." I said, "Donald, I can do whatever I want in The New York Times, believe it or not."

In general, my sort of general view of reporting is that these senior leaders, they're loaded pistols, and you never know when they're going to go off in your face. So it's not something I cultivate or go out to do. I'd actually much rather talk to you, I'd much rather talk to the audience. I'll actually know what are the limits of politics much more by talking to them than the senior leaders.

Steve Paikin: Because my hunch is this audience probably thinks Barack Obama, intellectually curious, he'd be asking all kinds of questions, and I suspect they also think Donald Trump, not particularly intellectually curious. He probably didn't ask any questions and just wanted to tell Tom what he thought. Am I close?

Thomas Friedman: There's a little of that. With Trump, everything is transactional. Did you write something he liked? Then he wants to reward you. He's also tweeted against me. So, if you write something he doesn't like, it goes the other way.

I came to be a columnist after being a reporter. I'm actually a reporter who has strong views on things, but every one of my opinions actually emerges from my reporting. I'm not an ideological person. I'm a very much a "both and" person, not an "either or" person. I'm for a high wall with a big gate. I'm for growing the pie and re-dividing the pie. I don't sit in my library and smoke a pipe and throw thunderbolts down on the world from some ideological quadrant.

Steve Paikin: Well, I wonder if you got in trouble for writing this. When you wrote that America is becoming, quote, "A rogue state led by an impulsive strongman disconnected from the rule of law and other constitutional American principles and values." Did you hear from Donald on that one?

Thomas Friedman: No, I've not spoken to him. I haven't spoken to a single person in this administration since they were sworn in. My choice because I'm much more interested in what's going on in the world. Having sources in this administration is one of the most dangerous things you can have, because everything depends on what Donald Trump just tweeted.

There's a new meme going on around at Wall Street now about Trump called the TACO trade. Trump Always Chickens Out. If you sold your stocks last week when he said 50% tariff on EU, you got creamed, because by Monday it was back to, "Oh, I'll do that later." He doesn't realize how much uncertainty he has injected everywhere. Your allies literally don't know the value of when you said yes.

Steve Paikin: But I think we have assumed on this side of the border that America had checks and balances in place so that when the president wanted to indulge in his worst instincts, there were people around him who could say, "Not so fast Mr. President." Are those checks and balances still in place today?

Thomas Friedman: The central truth of this moment is that Trump one was surrounded by buffers, and Trump two is surrounded by amplifiers. In Trump one, if he said "let's turn Gaza into a Club Med," they would say, "What an amazing idea. Let's study that," and by the time he got back to it, he's already gone. This time, no buffers.

It's a very dangerous situation. No one really knows what's happening. He fired the head of the American NSA on the advice of a witch doctor named Laura Loomer, a conspiracy buff. That guy spent his whole career preparing for this job, and a nut, a witch doctor, told our president to fire him, and he fired him. But we can't obsess on that, because the next transgression is only 30 seconds away.

Steve Paikin: You famously described in one of your books that the world was becoming increasingly interdependent, "flattening" was the way you described it, getting fairer. Is Donald trying to unwind that?

Thomas Friedman: No, I totally misread that. Not "fair." I said the world was flat in the way I meant it, which is that more people in more places can now compete, connect, and collaborate on more things than ever before. It means more equal opportunity.

That girl said "Mr. Friedman, I just used ChatGPT last weekend." I said, "You used ChatGPT on a VPN from China and you're asking me if the world is flat?" So, yes, it's flatter than ever in the way that technology is enabling more of us to compete, connect, and collaborate. If you change the way America is, you will change the way the world is, and you will miss that period when it's gone.

Steve Paikin: We see that President Trump is now threatening Apple. He wants iPhones manufactured in the United States. Tell us more about what you mean by that.

Thomas Friedman: The iPhone symbolizes how a lot of products are made today, in complex adaptive coalitions, ecosystems. The great thing about complex products is they solve complex problems. The world has actually moved much more to an ecosystem economy.

Ford F-150 pickup truck, today 32% of its parts are made in America. If you interrupt that ecosystem, you are unable to solve those complex problems at a price point that people can enjoy. The iPhone would cost $3,500 if we tried to make it all in America. Trump's belief in tariffs is not a conviction, it's a superstition, because it has nothing to do with reality.

Steve Paikin: How exactly we are supposed to regather trust with somebody who was supposed to be our best friend?

Thomas Friedman: We're not in a tariff war, we are in a trust war right now. Trust is the only legal performance-enhancing drug. Where trust is in the room, it's like a hard floor. Without trust it's like the Syrian desert.

AI is like a vapor. It's going into everything—your watch, car, toaster, even your hip replacement. When AI is everything, everything becomes TikTok: Who owns the data? Who controls the algorithm? If we can't trust each other, all we're going to sell China is soybeans and all they're going to sell us is soy sauce. Donald Trump is in a tariff war on the cusp of that huge debate.

Steve Paikin: The president put out something on Truth Social in which he said, "We're gonna build the Golden Dome defence system. Canada, if you agree to become the 51st state, it's free." What the hell do we do about this 51st state nonsense?

Steve Paikin: Pay no attention to any of this. It's all stupid, it's all ridiculous. It's stuff that he throws out to get some cheese out there for the rabbits in the press to all chase. It's an embarrassment to this American. If you're asking me, is it gonna happen? It's not gonna happen. My short answer is just wait this guy out.

Steve Paikin: Your column today, I suspect, is gonna go in the Pantheon of Friedman columns, because it really gave me the impression that... we're cooked! It was a very depressing column.

Thomas Friedman: There is always a spark of hope in everything I write. I'm still for two states for two people. There's about a five percent chance this can work, but I'm devoting 100% of my energy to that, because the alternative will be no states for two people, a grinding civil war.

What I was warning Israelis is that whatever you think was the right proportion of retribution, you've gone past it. If you don't partner with a Palestinian authority, you're going to create a world where my grandson and granddaughter are gonna know what it is to be Jewish in a world where the Jewish state is a pariah state.

Audience Member: How do we stay optimistic given that there's the Trump third term and all this?

Thomas Friedman: Every Canadian and every American should have to take a course in digital civics. The internet is an unfiltered stream full of diamonds and rusty cans and broken glass. If you don't build the internal filter to understand the difference, then we have a real problem.

Someone once asked me: "Is God in cyberspace?" If we want God to be in cyberspace, we have to bring him there by how we behave there. The more complex the world gets, the more everything old and slow matters more than ever—the 10 Commandments, do unto others as you wish them to do unto you.

Steve Paikin: Thank you join me in thanking the guy who answered the questions. Tom Friedman. I'm Steve Paikin. Thank you and good night.