Advice for Andrew Scheer, as the Rebel heads to the Conservative Party convention
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Summary
The Rebel is heading to the Conservative Party Convention in Halifax, Canada this week, but only one media outlet has been banned from attending, and that media outlet is The Rebel. Is Andrew Scheer banning us because we don t agree with him on immigration? Or because we think he's wrong about something else? Ezra explains why The Rebel should be allowed to attend the convention.
Transcript
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Tonight, the rebel heads to the Conservative Party convention.
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It's August 22nd and you're watching The Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here and you won't give them an answer.
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You come here once a year with a sign and you feel morally superior.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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As you may have heard, Conservative Party leader Andrew Scheer has banned rebel reporters from attending the party convention this week in Halifax.
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He's invited Trudeau's CBC, though, and the Toronto Star.
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He's invited McLean's magazine and all the left-wing opinion sites like Vice and the Huffington Post.
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The one media outlet he's banned is us, the rebel.
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If we stopped reporting on things just because some politician told us to stop reporting on things, we wouldn't do any reporting at all, would we?
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And even if we're forced to do our reporting from outside the convention center on the street, you know it's going to be more fair and accurate than Trudeau's CBC will be.
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I mean, seriously, this is Rosemary Barton, the flagship political reporter for the CBC, taking a girlish selfie with Justin Trudeau, just like a teenager giggling at a Justin Bieber concert.
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Imagine having a conservative convention and blocking the only media outlet that report on it straight, and imagine choosing to entrust your message to hostile filters like her.
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Andrew Scheer banning us is weird, and it's petty, and it's counterproductive, and it's confusing.
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Of course, Scheer doesn't agree with everything we've ever said here at The Rebel.
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I mean, we've made more than 9,700 videos, and many of them are controversial.
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I disagree with some of them myself, but that implies Scheer agrees with the other media he's letting in, I think?
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I won't talk more about that here for my full discussion of Andrew Scheer's ban.
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You can go to letusreport.com, where we also have a petition to Andrew Scheer, and basically we tell him to get real and focus on his real enemies, Trudeau and the CBC.
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We also ask for your help to crowdfund our trip to Halifax for the convention.
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If you can help us cover the cost of our flights and rooms, that would be great.
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I'm going, and we have two staff going also, A-Tan and our videographer Efron.
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But I want to talk to you today about something else.
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I want to tell you what I told a senior Conservative Party MP who called me up this week.
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I've had more phone calls and emails from senior conservatives in the last week or 10 days than I have had in the past year.
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And it started before we were banned from the convention.
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It started when Maxime Bernier started tweeting about Trudeau's extreme multiculturalism.
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I've done a whole show on Bernier's tweets, so I'm not going to go through them again.
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But in a nutshell, Bernier teed off of a short video from Trudeau where Trudeau was repeating his incessant message track that diversity is our strength.
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Bernier just dissected that blather, that completely empty cliche, that hollow soundbite in a way I hadn't seen done before, either in the Conservative media and certainly in Conservative politics.
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It was a huge hit with Conservative Party members and with severely normal citizens who were just sick of Trudeau's saccharine showbiz shallowness.
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And the media loved it, too, because it was a real fight, right?
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I mean, the media were obviously on Trudeau's side in the fight, but at least it wasn't boring.
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In the middle of summertime August, they need something to talk about, and Bernier gave it to them.
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And, of course, they also used it to demonstrate how weak Andrew Scheer has been, by contrast.
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Maxime Bernier, through a few tweets, was able to take up all the oxygen in the room, as they say.
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He dominated the national conversation for days.
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Yes, others were criticizing him, and by others I mainly mean the political media industrial complex,
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And as the new Angus Reid poll shows us, the issues that Bernier was discussing were very much in the minds of Canadians.
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I mean, support for immigration is an all-time low.
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So it was great, except that when Maxime Bernier is the star, by virtue of just a few tweets,
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because he, as always, is bland and tepid and lukewarm.
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As Donald Trump said about Jeb Bush, he's low energy.
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I will be a commander-in-chief that will have the back of the military.
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I won't be a divider-in-chief or an agitator-in-chief.
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I won't be out there blowharding, talking a big game without backing it up.
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I think the next president needs to be a lot quieter,
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but send a signal that we're prepared to act in the national security interests of this country
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to get back in the business of creating a more peaceful world.
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Now, Stephen Harper wasn't particularly high energy in his style either.
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I mean, he didn't holler, he didn't swear, he wasn't extreme or even that vivid.
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He was no Donald Trump, but he was serious and he was clear and he didn't hide his views.
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You don't have to be high energy to be clear and principled and forceful.
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I remember when he did his first scrum after becoming prime minister a dozen years ago,
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I mean, they're all interchangeable, aren't they?
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But one of the wags on Parliament Hill noted that Harper gave the shortest public statement
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And remember, we just came off the heels of Paul Martin.
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And yet this Harper hater noted that he said so much more, so succinctly.
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He said more than that waffler, Mr. Dithers, Paul Martin.
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So you don't have to be Mr. Charisma to be an effective communicator.
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No one would look at Stephen Harper and say, he's dashing.
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When you look at Andrew Scheer, you get the sense that he's obfuscating, avoiding,
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just trying to avoid being pinned down on anything,
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just trying to survive in the hopes that Justin Trudeau will fail
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and the prime ministership will fall into his lap by default.
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So he's not doing anything or saying anything controversial, is what I mean,
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which is the real reason that Andrew Scheer is banning us from his convention.
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As you probably know, Andrew Scheer's campaign manager, this guy, Hamish Marshall,
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And Andrew Scheer came on The Rebel during his leadership campaign.
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It's just that he's so much more risk-averse now because he already got what he wanted from
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So now that he's won the leadership, he's more concerned with other people,
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namely not offending the Wendy Mesleys or the Paul Wellses of the world.
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Your campaign manager now, Hamish Marshall, was directly involved with building Rebel.
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Are you not at all worried about messages of sending out now,
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I mean, that Rebel has gone so far down this white supremacist path?
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Why is he working with people who were associated with Rebel Media and Ezra Levant?
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Your campaign director, Hamish Marshall, was a director of the corporation
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Stephen Taylor is working on social media with you, was also associated with Rebel Media.
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To what point are you taking on the baggage of Rebel Media when you work with folks like that?
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Anyways, so with that preamble asides, let me give you my own thoughts on what Andrew Scheer
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Not just my criticisms or my analysis of what he's doing wrong.
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You have to diagnose the problem, but then you've got to give a prescription.
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What advice would I give Andrew Scheer if he wasn't blackballing us from his convention?
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I'll tell you, because I've received more phone calls and emails and private messages
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on Twitter from conservative MPs and staff in the past week or so than I have in the past
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year, including senior allies of Scheer, including senior MPs in his shadow cabinet,
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and including senior party staff, frankly, people who Scheer has told not to come on our TV show.
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And let me say the first thing about all of this, about all these people.
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None of them are looking to throw Scheer overboard.
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Patrick Brown did so many outrageous things and had such a huge double life.
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He truly was a ticking time bomb of personal scandals.
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And he was running the party so poorly, so much political corruption, so many shenanigans,
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So he really had to be thrown overboard, and thank God he was.
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Like Patrick Brown, he has no affairs with young girls.
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Like Patrick Brown, he has no corrupt business deals.
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What you see is what you get with Andrew Scheer.
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In that way, he reminds me of Preston Manning, which is a good thing.
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So there's no emergency reason to throw Andrew Scheer overboard, as there was with Patrick
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Brown, and there was no long-standing reason to either, like with Patrick Brown's corruption.
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And more to the point, Andrew Scheer's only been the leader for 15 months, and the election
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is less than a year away, so he still has time to improve.
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And more to the point, there is no real time to replace him unless there was a Patrick Brown
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style emergency, which I don't think is going to happen.
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So what's notable about every single conservative insider who has approached me is that none
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They all just really, really want him to do better than he's doing.
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But the fact that they're talking to me, an outsider, about that is unusual.
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As I said to one MP, why are you talking to me about this?
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And seriously, what advice would I have about internal party dynamics?
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But maybe that's a symptom of a problem right there.
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Maybe there aren't frank enough internal discussions in the party around the shadow
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Confidential, behind-closed-doors conversations.
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Just heart-to-heart conversations by these MPs and senators who would say,
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Andrew, you've got to start firing on all cylinders.
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Fifteen months have gone by and you haven't really made your mark yet.
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Many of the calls and emails I've received have been sparked by Maxime Bernier.
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And these are not Bernier campaigners or loyalists.
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These aren't people who want to do over, at least not before the next federal election.
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It's people who see the ease and skill with which Bernier is tackling issues that really
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connect with the conservative base and expand that base and take on the media party and dominate
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the national conversation and hold Trudeau to account and rev up party loyalists as in
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These people who call me want both of those things.
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They want someone who leads, someone who inspires, but they want it to be done in a principled
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They don't want to replace Scheer with Bernier because that's logistically and temporally impossible
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now, other than through a crisis like Patrick Brown.
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It would shake the party to his foundations to do that now.
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If you're so desperate as an MP or a senior staffer to have a conversation about Andrew
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Scheer that you're calling an outsider like me, that's a bad sign that you don't have a
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And if you're talking to me, I'm guessing you're also talking to other journalists too.
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If I'm being included in this Ottawa gossip, you can bet that other less sympathetic journalists
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are being included too, especially the more gossip-driven journalists like John Iverson
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But the second obvious point, besides the fact that Scheer is actually not cementing the
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support of his own caucus, I don't think he's talking to his MPs or senators often though,
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They're fascinated, as we all are, by Maxime Bernier.
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As I said to everyone who called me or emailed me, Bernier isn't actually really doing anything
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If he were, you'd expect him to focus all his energies on that portfolio and be quiet
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I mean, he used to be, but Andrew Scheer fired him for talking about supply management.
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And do you think he's just going to sit there like a potted plant?
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Of course he's free to opine on the stories of the day.
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He's not mowing any other critics' lawns, in particular, when he talks about Trudeau's
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It's fair game for any MP to talk about it, don't you think?
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I mean, the CBC smeared Bernier the other day, remember that?
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Again, there's nothing wrong with him doing that.
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But any member of parliament who was attacked by the CBC can and should say that.
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I suppose Bernier was touching on immigration issues a bit, but not particularly at odds
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He was just more clear and more powerful in his communication style than most of them are.
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I see that this morning, the official critic for immigration, Michelle Rempel, had a press
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Bernier noted, rather roughly, that it was her and other colleagues who were criticizing
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him just a few days ago for being too aggressive.
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He comes across as having charisma and leadership.
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So, as I've told any conservative who asks me, one of Scheer's challenges is, what are
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This is not the first time in history that a prime minister or a party leader has had an
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Yesterday, Lauren Gunter and I talked about how Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin quarreled for
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Now, we focused on how Jean Chrétien finally handed over the reins of the Liberal Party to
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Paul Martin, but put in various poison pills to wreck it for his successor.
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But the real lesson is that Jean Chrétien managed to harness Paul Martin's strengths and keep
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it together for a decade before it all fell apart.
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He knew Paul Martin was ambitious and connected and had a strong reputation with certain
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And Chrétien found a modus vivendi, a way of living together with his rival that was successful.
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Isn't that, in a way, one of Chrétien's most significant achievements?
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Only in that it allowed Chrétien to have any of his other achievements.
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Imagine if instead Paul Martin would have bolted from the party or behaved in a mutinous manner.
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He slowly colonized all the levers of the party.
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But he kept his political gunpowder dry for a decade.
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He didn't shoot at Jean Chrétien until the very end when he felt their agreement had expired.
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Isn't Andrew Scheer's first job to unify his party behind him, to not only make himself
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the true leader in reality as well as in form, but to find out how to deploy Maxime Bernier's
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strengths to the benefit of the party itself, to Scheer's own benefit?
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Yes, yes, we know they have policy differences, especially on supply management.
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How odd that Andrew Scheer would let that obscure, weird issue derail party unity, especially
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when, what, 80% of the party knows that supply management of dairy cartels is the wrong policy.
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Imagine if Andrew Scheer made a deal with Bernier and let Bernier himself be the point man on that
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file. As in, imagine if Andrew Scheer said to Bernier, okay, tough guy, you want the
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Conservative Party to take on the Quebec dairy industry? Literally the sacred cows, sacred
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milk cows that can't, are fine. Imagine Andrew Scheer saying, fine, I agree with your idea,
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I accept your idea, but you have to execute it. Your job, Maxime Bernier, is to come up with
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the new policy and to be the salesman for it in Quebec. Go in and do the heavy lifting
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yourself. You want it? You got it. Would that be smart? I think it would be. It would take
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away Bernier's policy grievance. It would give Bernier a very busy job to keep him occupied.
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And it would actually use Bernier's talents and skills, his Quebec reputation, his French
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fluency, his confidence and knowledge in the file. And if Andrew Scheer really thinks it's
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political suicide to take on the dairy cartel, why, what better gift to give to his rival Bernier?
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Now, I'm just brainstorming here, but really, Jean Chrétien put Bay Street Paul Martin onto
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the toughest file he could, selling the GST to the country after promising he'd scrap it,
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reducing the deficit, fixing the country's finances. That was probably the toughest job
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in the government in the time. So Chrétien not only relied on Martin's talents, but he kept
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him busy and gave him the tough job. Isn't that an obvious template here? There are other
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scenarios, of course. I don't know, make Bernier the co-leader for Quebec. Give him the title,
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deputy leader. Give him the job of going around Quebec and digging up the political backyards
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of liberals and the NDP. Again, what a great fit, including Bernier's views on immigration
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and culture. Because remember from the Angus Rea poll we saw yesterday, Quebec is the province
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where literally 51% of people want less immigration. It's the highest number in Canada after Saskatchewan.
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Bernier is a total fit for that file. While the Anglo press in Canada has been savaging Bernier,
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the Quebec press is almost unanimous in support of him. Great. Send Maxime Bernier out with the
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mission of winning 25 seats in Quebec, 35 seats. Why not? Go take them from the NDP. The Bloc Quebecois is
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dead. Look at how Justin Trudeau badmouths old stock Quebecois. I think Maxime Bernier could do
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it. Now that's just brainstorming. Cut a deal with Bernier. Use his talents. You don't like him?
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You don't want to compromise with your rival? That's odd. Andrew Scheer compromises on everything
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else. He talks to the media who hate him. He submits to them. He submits to dairy farmers,
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whatever. But he won't compromise with the guy who won 49% of the vote last year and who has a
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larger public presence than he does. You'd think compromise would be Scheer's strength. It's what
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he did for a decade as the Speaker of the House. As I told any conservatives who complained to me,
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there are two other options with Maxime Bernier. You could fire him from the party.
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Good luck with that. That would cause a rift. That would demoralize the party.
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De-energize it. Especially in Quebec. I mean, it's one thing for Andrew Scheer to bravely ban
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the grassroots rebel, but to ban Bernier. That's really telling 49% of the party to leave.
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And on what basis? Because he's cutting into the leader's celebrity action? Because he's taking the
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media limelight? Sorry, media attention is earned. It's not given. Andrew Scheer won't get any more
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media coverage if he sacks Bernier. The opposite. Bernier will completely be unleashed. He will not
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be restrained at all. He'll be the daily go-to source for the media on anything, including to
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criticize Scheer. I mean, I guess Scheer will get more press than he ever has before, but it'll all
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be about how the party is splitting up, how he's dividing the right after Stephen Harper united it.
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So yeah, firing Bernier probably won't work. And Andrew Scheer's default policy has been what you'd
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expect. Passivity, inertia, indecision, hesitation. He's just closing his eyes and ears and hoping that
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all this bad stuff will go away. That's called denial, and it's not working very well, is it?
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So the first solution for Andrew Scheer is to strike a deal with Bernier like Chrétien did with Martin.
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And if he can't do that, doesn't that say something about his abilities as a political leader? If he
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can't handle Bernier, how could he, as a future prime minister, how could he handle bigger, tougher
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challenges like, oh, I don't know, John Horgan, the recalcitrant premier of British Columbia,
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he was blocking the pipeline unconstitutionally? Or how could he possibly handle Donald Trump in an
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after negotiation? If you can't handle Bernier, you can't handle Horgan or Trump. It's a test. You bet
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it is. I think there's still a lot of goodwill towards Andrew Scheer in the party. I still have
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goodwill towards him, too, despite how he's treated us here at the Rebel. Of course, we want him to win
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over Justin Trudeau. Of course, we don't want Bernier to split the party. That would just give
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the liberals another 10 years in power. But Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader, has not been very
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conservative, and he has not shown a lot of leadership. Politics can be a centrifugal force,
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you know what I mean? Things falling apart. Stresses and grievances and issues can pull a party
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apart, can pull a caucus apart for sure, and grassroots members. The leader, his job is to hold them
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together through a common sense of mission and action and through example and by inspiration.
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I don't think Andrew Scheer is ticking those boxes yet. When senior party staffers working in his office
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are contacting me, telling me they agree with their criticism of Andrew Scheer,
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that's not good. His own inner team isn't even gelled yet. How are you going to inspire the country
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if you can't inspire your own staff? But let me end with my long-standing criticism, because I think
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it all goes, well, I mean, it goes to all these other issues, and that's Andrew Scheer's fear
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of the mainstream media. I had a phone call with a very senior member of Scheer's team,
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I'm not going to say who, and I said, why are you guys boycotting us? Why are you banning us?
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Why won't you even, why are you telling all your MPs not even to talk to us? And forget about me,
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I mean, it's not personal. How about talk to David Menzies? How about talk to Sheila Gunn-Reed?
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How about talk to any of our people? And my senior, senior connection said, because if we interact
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with you, the rebel, that in itself becomes a media story for a whole week. And it's true, he's right.
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All those gossips on the lobbyist panels, on the TV shows, they would go nuts. The Trudeau fangirls
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of the CBC would go nuts. What my connection said to me is completely true. But it is also completely
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pitiful and not conservative and not leaderly. It's an admission that Andrew Scheer and the people
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around him care more about what the gossip girls say than they do about their own internal compass
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about what's right and wrong and how to govern, let alone their own party's base. On any given day,
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we hear the rebel have more viewers than the CBC's show The National, their flagship news show,
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has on TV. So it's not even like the CBC is a real threat. And those viewers, they're not voting
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conservative anyway. So the only threat here is psychologically, emotionally, Andrew Scheer
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is actually being bullied, being pushed around, being peer pressured by a small group of people who
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hate him. It's, it's a kind of battered women's syndrome, kind of Stockholm syndrome. He keeps
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thinking that maybe if he just appeases the CBC and McLean's and the Toronto Star and the Huffington
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Post, maybe they'll really like him and be kind to him next time. And maybe even they'll cheer for him
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in the next election. No, that's not going to happen. Other than the Toronto Sun, the rebel will
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be the only media in the country who gives him and the conservatives a fair shake. But as long as he
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seeks the approval of the media party, he will be hamstrung. He won't be able to clearly articulate
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conservative ideas. He won't be able to take on sacred cows like the Quebec dairy cartel. He'll be
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afraid of dealing with conservative leaders like Maxime Bernier. And he'll continue his weird
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boycott of the biggest conservative media outlet in Canada. That's my advice for Andrew Scheer.
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I've given it to, I don't know, half a dozen of his MPs and senators and staff.
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I wonder what they'll do with it. Maybe I'm wrong. I mean, after all, I'm just an armchair critic,
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right? Easy for me to say these things. But if I'm wrong, can you tell me a better strategy?
00:26:28.660
In fact, can you discern any strategy at all, other than the old Patrick Brown rope-a-dope? Stay
00:26:36.920
quiet. Stay quiet. Take the pounding from the CBC and just hope it all works out to plan.
00:26:58.660
How would you feel if Paul Bernardo or Carla Homolka had a pleasant tour of Parliament Hill?
00:27:14.480
What if they went inside the buildings? Would you ask what they were doing? Who they met with?
00:27:19.100
Why would Paul Bernardo be allowed on Parliament Hill? Well, that's a question I think we should
00:27:25.220
be asking about another convicted, confessed, sadistic murderer named Omar Khadar. And look
00:27:32.280
at this photo. That's Omar Khadar and his wife having a happy walk on Parliament Hill. Joining us
00:27:41.360
now to talk about this is our friend Andrew Lawton, who is a fellow with the True North Initiative
00:27:46.300
and a columnist with loony politics. Andrew, talk about loony politics. Omar Khadar is a sort of hero
00:27:54.260
to the left. And I think there's a bubble in Ottawa that actually thinks he's a good guy.
00:28:00.140
Justin Trudeau is part of that bubble. He gave him a public apology in $10.5 million.
00:28:05.100
Do you think my analogy of Carla Homolka or Paul Bernardo is too much? Do you, or do you think that the
00:28:11.420
truth is somewhere in between? How would you characterize Omar Khadar and his visit to the
00:28:16.260
Parliament? Well, quite frankly, Ezra, the comparison I would make is if, let's say, in an alternate
00:28:21.240
universe, Michael Zeehoff-Beebo were alive and free, a man who killed a soldier in the name of Islamic
00:28:29.180
terrorism. If Michael Zeehoff-Beebo were alive today and were allowed to walk on Parliament Hill, that would
00:28:34.460
be reprehensible to people. And it's not a hugely distinct scenario here that Omar Khadar, who killed a
00:28:40.860
soldier, confessed to it, and on the record is convicted. I mean, we're not even talking about
00:28:45.900
one of these weird scenarios where, let's say, he got off. I mean, he was convicted. And that is on
00:28:51.140
the books today. So when you're going into any secure government facility, whether it's Parliament
00:28:55.340
Hill, whether it's the Toronto Courthouse, or whether it's the county clerk's office in rural Alberta,
00:29:00.860
there are risks associated with letting security be so lax. And Parliament Hill, especially after the
00:29:08.780
2014 shooting, has clamped down a lot. It's a lot more secure there than when I worked there
00:29:13.540
almost a decade ago. And the fact that anyone with a murder conviction, especially Omar Khadar,
00:29:18.700
should be allowed to just waltz in there, should concern Canadians.
00:29:21.740
Yeah. Well, I want to show you three images in a row. The first one is Jaspal Atwal. He is a convicted
00:29:30.820
terrorist. That's what the judge called him. He was convicted of attempting to assassinate a cabinet
00:29:37.780
minister from India who happened to be on vacation in Canada. So that's terrorist number one. Here's
00:29:44.280
another image of Joshua Boyle, who was married at one point to Omar Khadar's sister and took his
00:29:53.200
subsequent wife to Afghanistan, where they were captured or met up with the Taliban. And he's
00:29:59.460
currently being charged with a variety of serious criminal offenses in Ottawa. So that's the second
00:30:05.780
person affiliated with terrorism that Justin Trudeau has met with. And now we have Omar Khadar
00:30:11.620
on Parliament Hill. I think it raises the real question, Andrew, who did he meet there? Because
00:30:18.140
it's possible to tour Parliament and just look at it like a building. I mean, you could walk through it,
00:30:23.680
you could look at the view. But let me quote to you from the Globe and Mail story on this subject,
00:30:28.220
because I find this distressing. This is an official quote from the Prime Minister's office.
00:30:34.060
The Prime Minister did not meet with Omar Khadar, nor did any senior ministers, PMO, Prime Minister's
00:30:41.700
Office spokeswoman Eleanor Catanaro said. It's shocking, Andrew, that we actually need confirmation
00:30:50.220
that Trudeau didn't meet with a terrorist murderer. But everyone knows he very well could have,
00:30:58.120
given his affection for terrorists. But what struck me, and put that up just for one more second,
00:31:02.880
what struck me is look at the use of the lawyerly wiggle words. No senior ministers met with him.
00:31:10.120
Doesn't that immediately ask the question, well, did any junior ministers meet with him? Did any back
00:31:16.500
to start defining? And when you need to start qualifying, I would say if I were Justin Trudeau,
00:31:21.220
he didn't meet with anyone connected to our party, anyone connected to our government at all. And
00:31:25.580
that would be certainly what I'd hope was the case. But as you mentioned earlier, Ezra,
00:31:29.760
Omar Khadar has cemented himself as somewhat of a folk hero among Canada's left. And despite Justin
00:31:36.240
Trudeau's proclamation that the $10.5 million was just this regrettable inevitability,
00:31:41.760
it was something that he chose to do. They chose to go to bat for Omar Khadar. And if he has any type
00:31:48.160
of audience with a representative of the federal government or even a backbench MP, that is
00:31:52.800
something that at the very least Canadians should know about. And if he and his wife were just
00:31:56.440
deciding to take a stroll on Parliament Hill just out of a civic pride or something like that,
00:32:01.300
I don't know if he has any, then that's one thing. But it's quite another that him getting into
00:32:06.040
the building had no checks and balances or the worst case scenario, which is that it did get
00:32:11.060
reviewed and someone said, yes, he's good to enter. And that would happen if there was a meeting on the
00:32:15.400
Hill. Yeah. What I'm curious about also is Omar Khadar, I think, lives in Edmonton. I'm not sure. I
00:32:22.280
know that's where he went to school. That's where some of his legal cases were. So to get from Edmonton
00:32:27.720
to Ottawa, there's different ways to do. You can drive, but most people would fly. I'm curious if
00:32:33.800
Omar Khadar is on Canada's no-fly list. He's a convicted, confessed Al-Qaeda terrorist. I don't
00:32:42.040
know what the risk of him reoffending is. I know it's not zero. I wonder if he flew on WestJet or Air
00:32:50.100
Canada, and I wonder what the other passengers felt like being on an airplane, if he did indeed fly,
00:32:57.280
with an Al-Qaeda terrorist. The fact that he can go into our House of Parliament, and I suspect he did
00:33:05.620
fly, shows the moral inversion of our world today. What do you think? Yeah, and I would be very careful
00:33:13.120
for a lot of people weighing in here. This is not me saying that I think Omar Khadar is posing a risk
00:33:19.020
on Parliament or posing a risk on an airline. But as I mentioned earlier, he is on the record,
00:33:23.820
he is on the record a convicted felon, a convicted murderer, and a convicted murderer of a terror-related
00:33:29.840
offense. That should mean something when it comes to security. And the thing about Parliament Hill in
00:33:35.320
particular, and airline security, is that the people that truly suffer from all of these bizarre and
00:33:41.280
absurd measures are typically people that cause no harm to anyone else. When, you know, little old
00:33:45.880
ladies have to take off their shoes, and people get patted down and groped and all that, and at
00:33:50.700
Parliament Hill, where you can sometimes be waiting hours to get through. So the fact that all of these
00:33:55.280
measures are there for everyone, but someone who is a confessed murderer can just waltz right in there
00:34:00.940
is exactly the problem. And again, this is not me saying that Khadar poses a threat, but if that is
00:34:06.940
where the bar is set, that even being convicted of a terror-related offense doesn't keep you on the
00:34:11.820
front lawn instead of inside Parliament, there is a big security discussion we need to have here.
00:34:16.780
Yeah. Well, I find it troubling, and I know that if the shoe were on the other foot, if, let's say,
00:34:24.640
a neo-Nazi, not even a violent terrorist, because, you know, the phenomenon of white terrorism, I can't
00:34:32.600
even think of it. I suppose you could talk about the IRA in Northern Ireland back in the day, or the
00:34:37.800
mafia or something, the Red Brigades. But if some right-wing white supremacist like Richard Spencer
00:34:44.300
came to Ottawa and was photographed on Parliament Hill, you know that the Globe and Mail would
00:34:49.440
literally phone every single MP's office and say, did you meet with him? Did you meet with him?
00:34:54.020
Even though Richard Spencer, although he's a racist, he's not a terrorist, there is no such
00:34:59.160
curiosity here. I wonder if Ikra Khalid or Omar al-Jabra or other lower-level MPs or staff met with
00:35:08.560
Omar Khadar. There's no such curiosity at the Globe and Mail. Last word to you, Andrew, what do you think?
00:35:12.880
Yeah, and I think that's the big question here. I mean, what the security procedures are, what it
00:35:17.480
actually takes to get banned from entering is a big question here. I would also direct people to
00:35:22.800
the language used by Dennis Edney, the former lawyer of Omar Khadar, who said that anyone who
00:35:27.760
raises an issue with this, so you and I right now, Ezra and the Conservative Senator Leo Housakis,
00:35:32.780
anyone who takes issue with this is doing it from a place of Islamophobia. So we didn't know one of the
00:35:37.880
unintended consequences of M-103, as even terrorists should be allowed to waltz into Parliament.
00:35:43.000
That's the true Canadian dream there. Yeah, and if you complain about terrorism,
00:35:47.020
well, you're obviously just racist. Yeah. Well, Andrew, it's great to have you back on the show.
00:35:50.520
You keep up the fight. Likewise. All right, there you have it. Andrew Lawton, he's a fellow with the
00:35:54.640
True North Initiative, along with our friend Candace Malcolm, and he's a columnist with Looney Politics.
00:35:59.600
Stay with us. More Head on the Rebel. What does election interference look like in the age of
00:36:16.620
high tech? Well, if you listen to liberals, it looks like Russian trolls brainwashing the state
00:36:23.780
of Wisconsin not to vote for Hillary Clinton or something like that. That's the theory, at least.
00:36:30.340
And of course, Robert Mueller has been investigating this Russian collusion for more than a year and a
00:36:34.440
half and has found nothing other than some minor cases of tax evasion unrelated to the election.
00:36:41.180
But I think we can take a guess at what actual election meddling through technology looks like,
00:36:47.580
because it's happening before our very eyes every day. And I bring your attention to a new article
00:36:52.780
on Breitbart.com, written by our friend Alan Bokhari. Let me tell you the title of it. It's called
00:36:57.660
This is What Election Interference Actually Looks Like. And let me read to you the first sentence of it.
00:37:04.760
The purge of the right on social media was once a slow trickle, with high-profile bans happening only
00:37:09.640
occasionally and then subsiding with just three months until the midterm elections. The masters of
00:37:14.780
the universe in Silicon Valley have turned online censorship into a cascade. And joining us now via Skype
00:37:20.740
from the United Kingdom is our friend Alan Bokhari, who's the senior technology correspondent
00:37:25.340
for Breitbart.com. Alan, you've really brought together a lot of strings and threads that we've
00:37:32.400
been talking about for months, haven't you? They're really picking up the tempo as we get closer to the
00:37:38.780
November elections. They absolutely are. And this whole thing we've been hearing from the Democrats
00:37:45.580
over the past year about election interference, even anti-Trump political psychologists admit
00:37:52.360
that the fake news and propaganda put out by Russian bots had virtually no impact on the election because
00:38:00.700
the small amount of ads they were putting out through Facebook, it was a tiny amount.
00:38:08.440
They were only reaching voters, they were only reaching partisan voters, voters who had already made up their mind.
00:38:13.460
So it wasn't actually reaching undecided voters.
00:38:16.920
The main, I think the best theory with regards to Russia is that the reason they make these sort of very small
00:38:22.340
investments in Facebook ads around election time is to create sort of panic and discord
00:38:27.480
in U.S. politics rather than influence votes directly. And in terms of creating panic, we know Russia
00:38:34.460
succeeded, but largely thanks to the Democrats, they didn't actually impact voters with propaganda.
00:38:42.360
There was one famous case on Facebook, and this comes from the vice president of advertising himself,
00:38:48.600
who reviewed all the Russian ads. And he gave an example, I think it was in Texas,
00:38:52.780
of Russian Facebook ads promoting literally both sides of a street rally.
00:39:01.760
So you had two street rallies competing against each other, and only a few dozen people attended.
00:39:08.940
Russia paid for both sides. It was a trivial little bump in the road, and it was in Texas,
00:39:17.420
It's weird, but to say that that influenced a billion, a $2 billion election campaign is a joke.
00:39:25.000
Yeah, it misses the point. And the reason they fund both sides is to create uncertainty and panic in political culture.
00:39:33.020
So if Russia is, say, funding both sides of a rally, then both sides of a rally will sort of not treat each other in good faith,
00:39:38.700
they'll accuse each other of being paid off by the Russians.
00:39:41.020
Like Democrats and Republicans will both start to doubt their own movements and wonder if their movements are legitimate.
00:39:49.020
So it has all these other effects, but it doesn't really affect voters.
00:39:53.340
It isn't really designed to favor one side of an election. That sort of misses the point.
00:40:03.860
What does seem to be designed to favor one side of an election is what Facebook and Twitter
00:40:08.520
and all these other social platforms are doing on their own, these mass suspensions of conservatives.
00:40:14.740
Well, I mean, our former colleague, Gavin McInnes, who's gone on to CRTV, and we still keep in touch with him.
00:40:20.920
I mean, he's hilarious. He's crazy. He's a gonzo journalist. He's a comedian.
00:40:25.560
But he's also, underneath it all, a conservative folk philosopher.
00:40:31.240
And, I mean, he's an interesting character, but I would say he's similar to liberal late-night comedy hosts,
00:40:38.500
who they've got a shtick, they have some talents, but underneath it all, they have an ideology.
00:40:43.760
And, you know, they go too far. They get crazy. I mean, they do things that are rude.
00:40:48.380
But underneath it, they have a liberal point of view.
00:40:50.440
I see that as Gavin on the right, but he was deleted, and he had more than a quarter million,
00:40:56.980
about a quarter million followers, and all of his followers, who call themselves the Proud Boys,
00:41:02.460
they had all of their accounts deleted at once, no notice, no warning, no appeal, no explanation.
00:41:10.360
Millions of followers amongst all of his Proud Boys combined.
00:41:15.200
That level of censorship, when you're in the million censorship mark,
00:41:20.660
that has more effect than anything the Russians did.
00:41:25.080
That doesn't even talk about other voices on the right.
00:41:28.000
I mean, Alex Jones, perhaps the biggest censorship target of them all.
00:41:35.160
Alan, we've been working here at The Rebel for three and a half years.
00:41:37.780
We're very proud that we just hit the million subscriber mark on YouTube.
00:41:41.140
Alex Jones had 2.4 million, and I'm not here to endorse all his messages.
00:41:48.340
There's a whole level of humor and showbiz and schtick there too.
00:41:53.820
But again, underneath it, he has the ideology of skepticism and dissent
00:42:09.920
Yeah. And, you know, these Silicon Valley giants, these masters of the universe,
00:42:14.900
have no respect for alternative media or alternative journalists.
00:42:18.920
They even banned one of our graphics artists who does work for the Breitbart
00:42:22.280
who actually designed the header image on that article.
00:42:25.120
And as he said, you know, what this really does before an election is severely hamper,
00:42:33.860
almost cripple the rights ability to organize online.
00:42:37.620
I mean, the digital space is where sort of grassroots movements are now sort of incubated and built.
00:42:43.880
And as he said, they didn't just ban Gavin McInnes.
00:42:46.740
They banned his last relation that he founded, the Proud Boys.
00:42:56.500
There have actually been many instances where the Proud Boys have been attacked by Antifa,
00:43:03.000
But they certainly don't advocate violence and silence.
00:43:07.200
They're sort of like the Guardian Angels that would go in New York subways in the 80s.
00:43:15.060
They would be like to stand against the muggers.
00:43:18.260
It would be shocking to have the Guardian Angels arrested, but not the muggers.
00:43:28.000
Have you, I mean, you study this more than anyone else I know.
00:43:30.560
Have you, in all of your travels, in all of your research, in all of your surfing the
00:43:35.840
net, come across a liberal or leftist who has been censored?
00:43:51.600
I mean, it's funny how many rebel or rebel alumni have been censored.
00:44:06.000
Have you ever encountered a liberal figure who has been censored from social media?
00:44:15.260
Well, it's an interesting question because it depends how we define liberal and left-wing.
00:44:19.560
So you look at someone like Sarah Jong, who's been embraced by the liberal establishment,
00:44:24.600
you know, given a cushy job at the New York Times.
00:44:27.560
She made dozens upon dozens of tweets that would clearly violate Twitter's hate speech
00:44:35.620
But, you know, she said she made these comments about white people.
00:44:37.940
So not only is she allowed to keep her account on Twitter, she's actually verified and not
00:44:42.120
even asked to delete tweets where she says things like, you know, white people are groveling
00:44:48.160
Their opinions are like dogs pissing on fire hydrants.
00:44:51.280
She says she feels joy when being cruel to old white men.
00:44:54.820
And she, Twitter hasn't even asked her to delete these tweets and they've verified her account
00:44:59.840
So that's a perfect example of Twitter's double standard check.
00:45:02.600
However, there actually was an example a few days ago, just right after I published this
00:45:22.600
Or they said something unkind about John McCain.
00:45:29.760
And I think they were then subject to a mass flagging campaign.
00:45:33.480
So this is like an anti-war, anti-establishment journalist, anti-Hillary Clinton, I would say.
00:45:40.460
Sort of in the mold of Glenn Greenwald, but a little bit less high profile.
00:45:47.220
And she had her account banned on Twitter for a few days.
00:45:55.680
But I think it's mainly happening to the anti-establishment left rather than the mainstream left.
00:46:02.100
I want to ask you, because Donald Trump has finally weighed in.
00:46:07.360
He had a series of tweets the other day, and we showed them on the screen.
00:46:12.540
He said that he would rather abide the fake news of CNN than to enter into a world of censorship.
00:46:22.480
Because he said he'd take CNN with a grain of salt or he doesn't watch it at all.
00:46:26.760
He would prefer that world than the world of censorship.
00:46:29.700
But he clearly was criticizing the censorship by the social media companies.
00:46:34.860
I'm glad that Donald Trump has finally weighed in on the subject.
00:46:38.620
But so far, he's just outlined his philosophy and his sort of sentiments or feelings.
00:46:44.780
He has not announced any legislation, any executive orders, any prosecutions, any commissions.
00:47:01.700
It's his musings, I think, that led to the detente with North Korea.
00:47:10.480
But do you think that his musings will be followed up with any action,
00:47:15.000
especially given how imminent the midterm elections are?
00:47:18.240
Well, a lot of people who know more about what's going on in the White House than me say there is going to be some sort of action.
00:47:28.000
Some are even saying there might be an executive order.
00:47:31.100
It's impossible to know that for sure unless you're in Trump's head.
00:47:35.120
But certainly he'll be having some pushback from sort of free market advocates who say you should just leave these companies alone.
00:47:43.120
They're private companies, which would be a huge mistake, in my opinion, for Republicans if they want to actually survive the midterms and, indeed, future elections.
00:47:53.380
Because the amount of power these companies have to swing elections is vast.
00:48:02.160
I think, actually, what Donald Trump said yesterday at his rally was quite smart.
00:48:08.040
He spoke of how the internet has sort of turned everyone into journalists.
00:48:12.260
He has specific words for everyone, sort of their own newspaper now.
00:48:17.740
And actually, liberal news organizations like CNN and The Guardian before 2013 and 2016 used to celebrate the fact that, you know,
00:48:27.020
the web and unlock this era of citizen journalism where anyone with a Twitter account could report the news.
00:48:33.700
Of course, now they've turned on that idea and they want to reinstall themselves as the gatekeepers of these social media platforms where they're favored
00:48:43.460
and where other users have their content downranked and given a low trustworthiness ranking.
00:48:49.640
But Donald Trump was actually making a point that these news organizations themselves used to make,
00:48:54.860
which is that the internet has turned everyone into a citizen journalist.
00:48:57.880
And Trump's point is that if everyone's a citizen journalist, then everyone should have the same free speech rights.
00:49:01.720
CNN should not have more likes to propagate their message than, you know, an average Joe.
00:49:09.760
And what it did is it captured some of the only free speech energy in the media is for they themselves.
00:49:17.820
The legacy media deeply cares about free speech for them.
00:49:23.820
He said, well, we all have the same status as you legacy media types.
00:49:37.140
I think it was one of your colleagues from the UK, in fact, Tomlinson, if I'm not mistaken.
00:49:44.720
Or Montgomery, who had their Airbnb account canceled for political reasons.
00:49:58.840
And forgive me, Jack Montgomery, that's who it was.
00:50:04.320
Just Airbnb, which for our viewers who don't know, that's you can rent out like a spare room in your house for 100 bucks.
00:50:11.800
And it's basically like Uber, but for spare rooms.
00:50:22.260
So Jack Montgomery had his Airbnb account suspended for political reasons.
00:50:29.840
But what scares me, Alan, is not just the political censorship, but when they start going after your things that are unrelated to politics whatsoever.
00:50:38.500
Airbnb, they went after Robert Spencer's MasterCard account.
00:50:43.060
That's terrifying because that destroys your ability to live a normal life.
00:50:49.540
Yeah, I think that social media actually feeds into a much wider, more serious problem, which is the political segregation of the entire economy.
00:50:59.760
What's happening is that we have far left radicals who are pressuring big corporations to essentially make conservatives and Trump supporters second class citizens.
00:51:09.140
You can't access basic services like bank accounts and spare rooms and social media.
00:51:20.360
We had Red Hen, that restaurant in Virginia, kicking out Sarah Sanders because she worked for the Trump administration.
00:51:27.540
I've actually heard the other day of a comic book store kicking out a guy who supports Comicsgate, which is sort of like this game of age style movement around comic books.
00:51:37.660
So there's a real – the partisan divide in America is extremely strong at the moment, and it's now being outsourced into the economy because, you know, America has a First Amendment.
00:51:52.140
You aren't allowed to take control of the government and just censor people.
00:51:55.300
And in any case, the left doesn't have control of the government.
00:51:57.180
So what they're doing is they're trying to take over these huge corporations instead, which now have, you know, so much control over our lives and aren't really bound by any rules which say they can't discriminate on the basis of politics.
00:52:08.680
So I think we're – I think this is one of the reasons why the James Damore case is so important because it's about political discrimination.
00:52:14.940
It's about whether a company can fire you for political reasons.
00:52:20.240
I think there needs to also be a conversation about whether companies can just deny you service for political reasons, whether that's a social media company or MasterCard or Airbnb.
00:52:32.880
And, of course, you're talking about James Damore.
00:52:34.480
He's the former Google employee who was fired for daring to criticize their obscure gender theories.
00:52:43.700
I truly believe that your journalism on this subject is not only the best journalism in its field, but this field of journalism, studying how Silicon Valley has become politically radicalized and weaponized.
00:52:58.640
I believe it is the leading issue of our day because through social media we perceive the world and react to the world.
00:53:04.980
And that is why it's the choke point for those who seek to cut us off and affect our politics.
00:53:13.860
And it's always a pleasure to have 15 minutes of your time on the show.
00:53:22.680
He is the senior technology correspondent for Breitbart.com.
00:53:25.980
And I encourage you to read his latest article on Breitbart.
00:53:29.160
It's called This Is What Election Interference Actually Looks Like.
00:53:46.960
On the direction of the Conservative Party under Andrew Scheer, Peter writes,
00:53:50.440
The worst thing right-leaning voters can do this coming federal election is to not vote.
00:53:55.460
The Conservative Party of Canada is the one that can boot the current narcissistic fool out of the office.
00:54:07.500
And what I really think is going on is that Andrew Scheer says,
00:54:13.840
First of all, I had them when I needed them to win the leadership.
00:54:22.660
Win the party leadership by tacking to the right,
00:54:25.360
and then go back to the left and try and win the approval of the CBC and the Star.
00:54:30.920
I think the problem with that is, first of all,
00:54:33.940
Maxime Bernier is actually better known and better liked in the party than Andrew Scheer,
00:54:42.380
you could just flip off the energy, enthusiasm,
00:54:46.900
volunteering, and other commitment from the party base.
00:54:53.480
And maybe people just don't put in the energy to convince people.
00:54:57.580
I love this Andrew Scheer at parties, over coffee, at the office.
00:55:01.280
Maybe you just flick off the lights in 100,000 warriors who would have been volunteer ambassadors for the party.
00:55:08.540
So demoralizing your base, it's not a good idea, especially when you're starting behind 5% to 10% in the polls, as Andrew Scheer is.
00:55:30.580
But how about in Quebec, where you have a provincial party that's going hardline against immigration?
00:55:36.540
If Andrew Scheer is not going to lead after all of Justin Trudeau's gaffes and these successes on the provincial level,
00:55:42.340
do you think he's going to be in the lead in the polls when the liberals finally rev up their campaign?
00:55:46.900
He's got to get a better strategy than he has now.
00:55:52.160
The conversation with Lauren was very good, wishing isn't going to make Bernier leader as much as I want it to be so.
00:55:58.820
But Scheer is walking a very thin line with his base and should start paying attention.
00:56:04.400
Banning the rebel is going to be that last straw for a lot of conservatives.
00:56:11.060
And look, we're not a political party and I'm not a political leader and I don't have to make the decisions with the responsibilities of Andrew Scheer.
00:56:18.000
I laid out some strategies in my monologue today.
00:56:22.240
I said, number one, you're obviously not talking to your MP, senators and staff enough if they're calling me.
00:56:28.080
And if they're calling me, they're gossiping to other people, too.
00:56:31.380
Number two, if you can't deal with Maxime Bernier the same way that Chrétien dealt with Paul Martin,
00:56:36.400
then you're not quite ready to be prime minister because dealing with rivals and challenges is what prime ministers do every day.
00:56:43.480
Chrétien managed to deploy Paul Martin to the benefit of Jean Chrétien
00:56:47.440
and to the benefit of the country for a decade.
00:56:50.480
Surely, a man with Maxime Bernier's talents and geographical support and popular support
00:56:56.040
can be put to a use that he accepts and that's good for the party and that's good for the country.
00:57:01.460
And so far, Andrew Scheer's just avoiding all that.
00:57:05.800
is he's got to stop caring about what the CBC and the Star says
00:57:08.400
because it's hampering his ability to think clearly.
00:57:11.020
That's my advice, and I don't think it's self-serving advice.
00:57:14.940
I think that's genuine advice, and it's frankly what I told these Tories who called me up.
00:57:19.920
On my monologue yesterday about that new Angus Reid poll revealing that only 6% of Canadians want more immigration,
00:57:25.540
Yeah, I think you're talking about Christian Arabs, and I think you're talking about Yazidis.
00:57:41.400
Weirdly, Justin Trudeau takes anyone from the region without sorting them between the lambs and the wolves.
00:57:53.160
At least under Stephen Harper, they focused on at-risk minorities, mainly Christians,
00:58:00.020
But I think the real answer is to find a solution in the region.
00:58:04.540
It makes much more sense for Syrian migrants to be repatriated to Syria,
00:58:10.480
where they speak Arabic, and everything from the climate to the food to the job skills to the traditions,
00:58:20.460
And by the way, if you worry about economics, as anyone who pays taxes should,
00:58:24.200
a dollar goes a lot further there than it does over here.
00:58:28.580
I think the answer is not to bring the Middle East problems here or anywhere else around the world.
00:58:34.380
It's to, if we can, help out a little bit over there.
00:58:39.920
I saw the government of Japan was sponsoring a refugee camp for Christians.
00:58:50.920
I think the total number of refugees that Iraq, sorry, that Japan took in the whole year was under 50.
00:59:01.500
Don't you think that's something we should consider too?
00:59:03.160
I think we need to spend some more time absorbing the million migrants we've taken in over the last three years.
00:59:15.620
My friend David Menzies will be covering the show tomorrow.
00:59:23.160
And of course, we will be putting YouTube videos up.
00:59:25.400
I don't know if Andrew Scheer is going to let us in.
00:59:28.560
I think he is much more aggressive and stubborn towards us than he is towards Justin Trudeau.
00:59:36.360
I mean, grow up, big guy, and focus on the real prize.
00:59:43.780
I mean, maybe the cool kids like Wendy Masley and Paul Martin give you a thumbs up.
00:59:48.860
But I don't think that's going to move you any closer to becoming prime minister.
00:59:54.280
Take on the real problems, and that's your only way to win.
00:59:59.580
On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters and around the world,