Perhaps the loveliest thing about Friday’s presidential election debate at Roy Thomson Hall was that it was an actual debate — without incessant sniffing, screaming, constant interruptions or mansplaining — which felt downright refreshing.

To “engage with the controversy of the moment,” the latest Munk Debate tackled the contested U.S. election with top American political talkers like Newt Gingrich and Laura Ingraham.

The motion before the sold-out 3,000-person Canadian audience was the following: Be It Resolved That, Donald Trump can make America Great Again.

It was a resolution Trump campaign advisor and former Republican presidential candidate Gingrich argued for with talk radio host and regular Fox News Channel contributor Ingraham.

Arguing against the resolution was Robert Reich, secretary of labour under Bill Clinton and member of President Barack Obama’s economic transition advisory board, who was joined by Jennifer Granholm, the first female governor of Michigan and co-chair of Hillary Clinton’s “transition team.”

Newt spoke first, trying to convince us that Canadians “had a much better chance” with Trump, whom he called a “crude, rough-and-tumble business man (who has) the entrepreneurial drive, courage and force of originality that will enable us to break through.”

Going into the debates, only 14 per cent of the audience polled agreed with him.

“I’m buying margaritas for all of you,” Ingraham told the 14 per cent in her opening line.

While she admitted Trump was “terrifying and offputting” for many people, she called him a “guy without any political experience who calls everyone out on their blankity blank.”

And — despite being laughed at — that she still thinks “Canadians are nice.”

The idea of a Trump presidency was not a joke to the opposition, however.

Reich, a professor of public policy at the University of California, Berkeley, began his debate with impassioned reasoning that America is suffering in conditions that invite authoritarian populism, channeled towards scapegoats: foreigners and immigrants.

“This is what we face right now.”

Granholm, mentioning that a Trump presidency was rated fourth of top 10 global risks by the Economist Intelligence Unit (the first time a politician has been so listed), implored Americans: “I’m begging you, please, for Canada’s sake, for the world’s sake” not to vote for him.

And on it went.

“Donald Trump has changed his opinion about as often as Clinton has changed her answer about emails,” argued Gingrich.

Ingraham got booed when she suggested that Clinton had “almost nothing to show for (her time in public life),” and then booed again for saying she was a “damsel in distress” and implying she was a bad feminist icon.

Granholm maintained that it was difficult to imagine a guy like Trump making America great again, “when everything in his personal life reeks of hypocrisy.”

And Reich argued that Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini were also considered “disruptors” in their day.

“I want to ask all of you, the 14 per cent still with Trump, to come over to our side for the simple reason that I want the United States to know that, here in Canada, you know right from wrong,” he said.

“Repudiate this person, who should never have been nominated to be the president of the United States.”

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In the end, the “pro” side won because it was able to sway the most votes: 20 per cent of the audience said, on the final ballot, that they were for the resolution.

“I would not like to see him win at all,” said Elaine Yaffe, 71, as she was leaving the event, adding she was surprised Trump even had 14 per cent support going into it.

“I would like to see him leave the United States and go find somewhere else to live — maybe the moon.”

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