DAILY | Trudeau Calls Election, Steve Sailer's Afghanistan
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 38 minutes
Words per Minute
151.2848
Summary
In the wake of the Taliban's rapid victory in Afghanistan, Ezra Levant reflects on the momentous victory by the Canadian troops in Afghanistan. He also talks about Justin Trudeau's decision to call an election, and a clip from a speech he made about tyranny and tyrants.
Transcript
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Hi everybody, Ezra Levant here. How are you doing? What an incredible weekend. I was riveted
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by the scenes coming out of Afghanistan of the Taliban reconquering that entire country
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in hours. You know, I recall, I'm old enough to remember the Gulf War after 9-11 when America,
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along with other allies, the UK in particular, and Canada had some jets if I recall, toppled Saddam
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Hussein in, that would be the first Gulf War, toppled Saddam Hussein in a matter of not even
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weeks. And it was regarded as such a military triumph, which indeed it was. And then other
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wars, more wars, Second Gulf War. And I think there was a bit of ethnocentricity to think,
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yeah, that's just the awesome power of American and allied military might, which of course it was.
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But then what do you say about the lightning-fast victory by the Taliban?
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Was that because of technology? I don't think it was. As Joe Biden boasted, the Afghan army
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had 300,000 troops with very modern weapons, really the same weapons that Americans used, and they
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fell like a house of cards. It wasn't the technology, it was the motivation, it was the
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belief in the cause, it was bravery and courage and standing for something.
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We'll talk more about this later in the show, but it was just stunning footage. I actually think that is the
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largest story of the day. But here in Canada, we have an election. Yesterday, Justin Trudeau
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went to the Governor General. As Canadians and Canadian supporters in Afghanistan were scrambling to get out,
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Trudeau thought a better use of his time, rather than work on that old thing, would be to prematurely call an election because he thinks it's in his political interest.
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I don't think that the Governor General should have said, no, I'm not letting you call an election.
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I think that that would be overstepping for the Governor General.
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But I think the Governor General should have sent him away for a few hours while she consulted.
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And during that time, I think she could have drafted a statement saying that because of the
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limited role of a constitutional monarchy, she's not going to interfere, but she does note that there's a
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grave situation going on that the government ought to attend to. So saying, yeah, I'll give you your
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election, but it's my duty as sort of a benign monarch to point something out. And that rebuke alone would
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have, I think, had reverberations for the whole campaign. That's just my own daydream of what I think
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ought to have happened. But of course, when Justin Trudeau handpicks the Governor General, she does what
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he says. We have a clip from Trudeau's announcement yesterday, a sort of an odd statement about tyranny
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and tyrants. It's clearly on his mind. Here, take a listen.
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We've seen situations where conservative backbenchers have referred to some of this
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government's decisions as tyrannical in terms of how we're creating mandates for vaccination
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of public servants or vaccination of people on trains and airplanes. Well, the answer to tyranny
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I'm not going to say that's quite a full-throated admission of tyranny, but it's obviously on his
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mind. What Justin Trudeau probably understands, but is dancing around, is that a tyranny punctuated
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by a day of voting every four years, or in this case, two years, does not change the tyrannical
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nature. Democracy is not just a day every four years or however many. It's a continuous process.
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It's a system of checks and balances. For example, the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which Pierre
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Trudeau shepherded into our Constitution, that applies all the time. That limits the government
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even during emergencies, even during pandemics. So you can't engage in tyrannical acts 364 days
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a year and then have an election one day a year and say, oh, this validates every illiberal
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thing I've done. It doesn't work that way. What the government does is subject to those checks
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and balances all the time. Now, the trouble in Canada is that our judges have been, have so
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far not stopped any of these clearly unconstitutional matters. And then there's the whole matter of
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Parliament itself, which barely sits anymore and is hobbled in many ways. I think that the
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fact that Trudeau repeated that word is interesting. It shows that it is on his mind. And he loves
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it. I mean, why should that be surprising to you? This is the guy who went to, you know, is
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a super fan of Castro's Cuba, called China, the country he most admires. We'll get back
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to Afghanistan later because I think it's incredible and deeply worrying. And the only people, I mean,
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obviously the Afghans are terribly worried. Can we show the footage of them scrambling to get
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on some of those American massive cargo jets? So, I mean, America's been in Afghanistan for
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20 years. There's wives and children there. There's civilians there. There's staff. So this
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is a plane. This is not an American cargo jet. This is some passenger jet. And they're literally
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Can you get the one where the plane is taxiing down the runway
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with 50 people literally clinging to the outside of the plane? That was a civilian airliner there,
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a commercial plane, I mean to say, that was probably being chartered
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to get people out. But the U.S. military had some really big planes. I think they're C-17s is their
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name. Yeah. Look at this. So this is, that's a mighty plane. And that could hold anything. I presume
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that's full of people. And look at these folks holding on. I don't know what they're thinking.
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Were they thinking that the plane would stop and let them in? Were they thinking they were going to hang
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on until the plane took off? Now there's another video, and I'm going to give you a viewer's discretion
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warning. Do you have the other video where it takes off and someone actually held on?
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You know, these military planes, first of all, I don't know if the pilot even knew anyone was still
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holding on. And I don't know what he was supposed to do. If civilians clinging onto a plane are going
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to stop you from taking off, you'll never take off. This really is like the fall of Saigon in South
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Vietnam. And it's actually not that important if you can find it. It's just a terrifying video.
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When one of those planes taxi down the runway, it didn't stop. It kept going. And the more sensible
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folks let go. So this is a longer version. This is from Al Jazeera. Is this the one that actually takes
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off and someone falls? All right, folks. So viewer discretion advised. Yeah. Okay. I'm glad that's on
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there. So it's taken off. And there was someone who was hanging on. There was someone who was hanging on.
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Very sad. You must be quite desperate to hold on to the outside of a
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military jet like that. Of course they're desperate. They're all going to be killed.
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I don't know about all of them, but many of them. We'll come back to that. But I want to talk about
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the Canadian election. I want to talk about the Canadian election. I think the Afghan story is an
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important Canadian story. Almost 160 Canadians died in Afghanistan. And some people might now, and
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and thousands more were injured, including through PTSD, psychological trauma, what used to be called
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shell shock of working in such a horrific place.
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Was all their sacrifice for nothing? Those are real questions.
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They're questions for Justin Trudeau. I doubt they'll be put to him in any serious way.
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They're questions for the United Kingdom, but they're mainly questions for the United States
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Who I note has been in hiding for several days.
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The only image of Joe Biden I have seen in the last 48 hours is a still photograph of him
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I know I said I'd talk about the Canadian election. I will. I promise you it's most of the show today.
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Um, so, Joe Biden as recently as last month said, oh no, the, the Afghan army is well trained,
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finely equipped, vastly outnumbered the Taliban. They'll hold for sure. Weeks went by and that was
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false. And then even in the final days, um, Biden administration officials were saying, oh no, no, no, no, no.
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There's no way it's going to fall in days. It fell in hours.
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And some of those images like the fall of Saigon, people desperate to flee.
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Um, so where is Joe Biden? Is he making a presidential address?
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Um, I see reports that they're moving thousands of American soldiers back into Afghanistan
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to help extract the stragglers. I'm not sure how that's going to go. Um,
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do you have the still image of him just in front of it? Yeah. So president, so this is, um,
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an image, an image, this is from Fox News, but this image was released, uh, by the White House.
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Here's Fox News caption, President Biden meeting his national security team virtually earlier today
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to discuss the evacuation of Americans and Afghans from Kabul. Now just hold this up there for a second.
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Um, there's a few things I find interesting about this. He's completely alone in the room.
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Um, I find that, um, unusual. Uh, can you zoom in? Can you open that picture up and zoom in on the picture itself?
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Uh, sort of, uh, yeah, the, the photo in that tweet.
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Uh, Richard Grinnell, who used to be the national security, uh, top, uh, cabinet official for Trump,
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the national security. Yeah, zoom in if you can on that, on that video wall there. Yeah.
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So, I don't know if you can see it, but those are different officials and their title or their offices.
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Like, I think that's Kamala Harris in the middle, actually. Um, do we have anything?
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Can we zoom in at all a little bit more? Uh, Rick Grinnell said,
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why is the national security and spy team not redacted?
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I mean, I think Kamala Harris is, uh, is one thing, but the other people there,
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when Joe Biden has an emergency national security crisis,
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um, and not with his cabinet, and in fact, there's no one there in the room with him,
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which I find odd. Like, no one, not one person. Um, why are you showing who the top spies are?
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Why are you, isn't that confidential information? So I thought that was one observation made by Rick
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Grinnell that I thought was very interesting. And if we get a higher res photo, that'd be great.
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The second thing, and I don't want to be too conspiratorial, but it is a question.
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Someone looked at the clocks on the wall. You know, when you're in certain places,
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they have all the different time zone clocks on the wall. Um, in this image, yeah, so, um, like JFK,
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uh, Naval Observatory, that's the name for the Vice President's Office. DNI, that's Director of
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National Intelligence, I believe. Scroll down a little bit. Doha Station, so that's, uh, in Qatar. So that's the CIA.
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And on the left is the CIA, I presume in Langley. Why are you, and then State Department, that looks
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like, uh, the Secretary of State there. Why are you showing
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OSD, JCS, what's that, Joint Chiefs? Um, why are you showing the actual, I mean, so what, Kamala Harris,
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she's not, but who are those other folks in there? And the one right to the left of Kamala Harris. I can't
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quite make that out. Can you read that, what that says? CENTCOM, so that's the central command, uh,
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of the military. So, this photo alone has a tremendous amount of information, um,
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on who is briefing the President, who's involved. I bet they're running, uh, I bet the bad guys are
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running facial ID scans on those CIA operatives. Is it normal to bring a camera in to show the faces
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of CIA agents who are working in counter-terrorism? Asking for a dummy here. My favorite is JFK,
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wherever that is. Is that, I mean, there's a number of things named JFK. I don't know what that is.
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Um, they're wearing masks. Of course, that's the most important. Um, but look at the clocks up there.
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So, so you can see Washington DC 1129, which would mean five hours later in London. We know that. And
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there's Moscow time in Tehran and Beijing and Seoul. So that's, that's really good. Now, I saw an
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observation that the Moscow time was wrong here. Because I, some places the time zones change.
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Like, for example, in Saskatchewan, Canada, the time zone changes, um, differently. It doesn't,
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they don't have daylight savings time. Um, thanks very much. And so it could be that the President,
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and it's just a little trifling detail. Could be that in that situation room, whoever's in charge
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of the clocks just didn't fix it. But a more conspiratorial or speculative, um, or paranoid,
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uh, analysis might be, that ain't no photo from yesterday. That's a photo from another
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period of time in the year when that Moscow clock was accurate. Um, not every place in the world has
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daylight savings time. So, I mean, I'm not going to put too much stake in that. But don't you find
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it bloody odd that we haven't heard a word from Joe Biden? We haven't seen proof of life. I'm not
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saying he's dead. I'm just saying, where the heck is he? Like, isn't it bizarre in the extreme that he
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hasn't even touched down in Marine One, that's the name of the chopper, and said, folks, it's a very
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serious event. I'm meeting with my team right now. I'll have remarks later tonight. I mean, like,
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how long are you going to wait? Kabul fell yesterday. Um, is he okay? Is he sick?
00:17:10.320
Is he having a health episode? Did the stress get to him? Is he just more incoherent than normal?
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Why, why won't they even release a video? I'm not even saying that, I mean, I think it's pretty
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clear he wouldn't have the stamina to do a genuine press conference, but typically in grand moments
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like this, a president comes out and gives a set speech, usually from the Oval Office or something
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like that. It's, it could be pre-recorded, frankly. Um, why don't they have any proof of life kind of
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video? Again, I'm not saying he's dead. I'm just saying, where the heck is he? What's he doing? Is he okay?
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Is he healthy? Who's actually making the decisions? Was that image of him in the situation
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room a real image? Why are they showing the faces of individual CIA officers on the counterterrorism
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file? You know, I, I, I'm not very familiar with that world, but, um, I am, I do know that people in
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those positions, their faces and their names are a closely guarded secret for a variety of reasons,
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including their own security and safety. It's just incredible. Um, so how many days has it been
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since Biden has been seen? And also Jennifer, Jen Psaki, the White House press secretary. I mean,
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I haven't checked in the last hour, but, um, she's on vacation. That's what her autoresponder email
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says. I'm away for a week. Go to AOC's Twitter feed. Uh, last she tweeted was a couple of days
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ago, something about libraries, public libraries being just amazing. I wonder if she's broken her
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silence. I mean, maybe she was just enjoying the weekend. Um, yeah, her last tweet, shout out to
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libraries and library workers. We love and appreciate you. That's all. So that's, uh, two days ago. Hey,
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hey, hey, AOC, anything. And, and the one above that, just so you know, it's a pin tweet. It's got,
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uh, it's from, uh, almost a year ago. So it's not new. Um, so scroll down a little bit. So the only
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thing she has had to say in two days is shout out to my life. Hey, that was my library workers. Whoa.
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Hey, oh, library workers. Shout out to the libraries. Woo. Okay. Nothing else going on. I'm going to go away
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for a few days now because there's nothing else going on really. Is there anything else from,
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go to POTUS, uh, uh, twitter.com slash POTS, president of the United States. Has he had anything
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to say? Maybe something about ice cream, maybe his favorite flavor. Okay. I will be addressing the
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nation on Afghanistan at 345 today. All right, good. So we'll have some proof of life, hopefully.
00:19:52.560
Um, but before that, you can see the same thing. He hasn't had a word to say in two days.
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In fact, on August 14th, he was saying during the world wars, Native American code talkers use
00:20:07.200
that language to develop an unbreakable. So Afghanistan is falling, but you're talking about,
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and he's got something to say about Haiti. Hey, that's great. I, you know, I like Haitians as much
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as the next guy. You've got your own crisis, mate, but you haven't had a word to say about it in days.
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That's incredible. That photo of him all alone, though, was quite something, quite something.
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You know, there is just, let's, you know, we, we did the Afghan stuff first. I said I wasn't going to,
00:20:42.000
but let's just do one more thing. Can you show some of the troves of, of weaponry?
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Because the Americans left so hastily that they left behind staggering amounts of first-rate military
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hardware, trucks, and I don't know, I don't think there's any main battle tanks there, but
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armored vehicles and MRAPs, I think they're called, and obviously Humvees and personal weapon systems
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and helicopters. Now, some of these might have technically been owned by the Afghan army,
00:21:21.280
but they surrendered faster than Saddam Hussein surrendered in the first Gulf War.
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And some of these images are incredible. The Taliban now has an air force of American,
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they have more Black Hawk helicopters now than many other countries.
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And, I mean, it is a skill to fly a helicopter. I imagine that's pretty, pretty hard to do,
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probably even harder than flying a fixed-wing aircraft. But there was a video I saw online of
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Taliban taking over an air base. Yeah, now that, that looks like it's a little bit derelict, right?
00:22:05.200
So that, that looks like an aircraft that's having some trouble. But there, I saw a video of the Taliban
00:22:13.280
actually flying helicopters. There's also one of, it shows a road. Yeah, let's, let's see this one,
00:22:35.840
Thanks. Yeah, I won't ask for any more helicopter shots, but if you could find me the one on the road
00:22:59.280
to Iran. Now, I think what that, that video we showed there was, the Taliban getting into helicopters,
00:23:06.560
figuring out how to turn them on. But I think those folks there weren't pilots, so they didn't dare actually take off.
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They just said, let's turn this thing on for fun.
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Take my word for it, I won't ask Justin to find them now.
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But they, they were airborne. Yesterday they were airborne. And,
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um, I'm not sure if I could properly identify which helicopter that was. But I believe that's a Western
00:23:30.400
helicopter. I don't know if that's a CH. Yeah, sorry, I'm not even going to guess. I'll show my
00:23:34.240
ignorance if I try and guess. Um, but there were some quite, um, impressive hardware that is rather new.
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And it was given to the Afghan army. And they either defected or abandoned or surrendered at once.
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And a whole convoy of that is going up to Iran right now. And of course, China and Russia both
00:24:00.880
immediately recognized the new Taliban government. Uh, I think it's a certainty that all of that American
00:24:08.160
hardware and importantly the software, the computer side, the tech side will be dissected and copied and
00:24:15.520
stolen if it hasn't already been by those countries. And it's just incredible.
00:24:24.720
Oh, do you have a video there? Yeah, look at this. This is what I'm talking about. Now,
00:24:31.680
fairly standard vehicles. Although some of them have some
00:24:38.160
yeah, this is from Iran TV. This is going to Iran. Um, obviously these aren't American vehicles
00:24:45.040
there, but you could see some of that was clearly American made Humvees and other modified vehicles.
00:24:52.480
Just a disaster. I, um, I should say that I don't believe America should be the Globo cop.
00:25:01.120
I don't think it should be the world's policemen. I don't think Canada should be either. And more than 150
00:25:06.560
Canadians gave their life in Afghanistan. And they've got to be asking for what?
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Thousands of Americans, trillions of dollars. And for what? And for what?
00:25:22.240
Afghanistan is not a liberal democracy. You know, there was an incredible essay
00:25:26.160
by, um, by Steve Saylor in USA Today, 20 years ago. Can you find that Steve Saylor? Type in Steve
00:25:35.120
Saylor, man who would be king. We've talked about that movie before. It was a, it was a short story
00:25:41.760
written by Rudyard Kipling over a century ago about a couple of British soldiers, um,
00:25:49.680
who decided to become kings. And they went into Kafiristan, this very remote part of, I think,
00:25:59.040
Afghanistan, where there had been no contact with outside forces since Alexander the Great. And they
00:26:06.240
went in with 20 muskets or rifles or whatever. And they said, we know we can take them over. We're
00:26:11.840
tricksters. We'll take over the first town. We'll train some soldiers with our 20 guns. We'll take
00:26:17.600
over the next town, the next town. And we'll run the place. We'll conquer it. And they conquered it
00:26:21.520
very quickly. And then an amazing movie. Uh, yeah. There's Sean Connery and Michael Caine. What a great,
00:26:34.080
great movie. So Steve Saylor reviewed this amazing movie 20 years ago and said, look,
00:26:44.080
it's a work of fiction written by Rudyard Kipling. Because of course, before the Soviets in Afghanistan,
00:26:49.680
the British were in Afghanistan. And the question was, can any outside force hold Afghanistan?
00:26:57.520
Can you Google USA today, Steve Saylor? Because now that's a fictitious movie. It's a work of fiction.
00:27:04.720
It's a, it was a short story written by Rudyard Kipling. Written over a hundred years ago. Afghan
00:27:12.080
insights. Man who would be king. So look at the date on that. September 2001. I'm just going to read a
00:27:18.320
couple lines. No great adventure movie, no great adventure movie, not even Lawrence of Arabia, offers more
00:27:23.840
insights into the possibility of an upcoming war in Afghanistan than John Huston's 1975 film,
00:27:28.800
The Man Who Would Be King. Starring Sean Connery and Michael Caine, the film is based on an 1888 short
00:27:34.000
story by Rudyard Kipling that is set in Afghanistan. In the last two weeks, a couple of contradictory
00:27:39.280
assertions about Afghanistan have become commonplace in the press. I'm reading to you what he wrote before
00:27:43.600
the invasion. This was September 2001. This was right after 9-11.
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The first is that outsiders inevitably face horrifying defeat in Afghanistan. The second is that the U.S.
00:27:56.720
must not only kill Osama bin Laden and batter the Taliban regime, but should then take up the imperial
00:28:02.560
burden in Afghanistan. By the way, Rudyard Kipling wrote a poem called The White Man's Burden, which is,
00:28:09.440
I think he's bolderizing it here to call it the imperial burden. The U.S., they say, should conquer and pacify the
00:28:16.560
entire Texas-sized country, build a unified nation out of its warring ethnic groups, reconstruct its
00:28:22.880
economy, liberate its women, calm its furious holy men, and make it a middle-class democracy. This was written
00:28:29.760
20 years ago. The Man Who Would Be King reminds us that neither despair nor utopianism is a realistic
00:28:36.720
attitude for anyone contemplating a military incursion into that harsh land. It may seem strange to look to a
00:28:43.560
Victorian costume drama for perspectives on a 21st century war, but few movies have benefited more from the
00:28:50.280
energetic inspiration of a young genius and the skeptical wisdom of old artists who'd been everywhere and done
00:28:56.920
everything. Rudyard Kipling, the youngest man to win the Nobel Prize for Literature at age 41 in 1907, was only 22
00:29:04.760
when he wrote The Man Who Would Be King. Yet, and he'd already been shot at by a Paffin tribesman
00:29:12.280
in the famous Khyber Pass. Although out of fashion for decades, the Bombay-born Kipling is now the
00:29:18.200
literary immortal of the hour, as America contemplates the same question that so long plagued the British
00:29:22.920
Empire, what to do about Afghanistan? Kipling was long despised for his imperialism, yet at a time when
00:29:28.920
many, including more than a few anti-Taliban Afghans, want the U.S. to take responsibility
00:29:33.480
for Afghanistan, Kipling's sharp eye for the rewards and dangers of imperialism is suddenly
00:29:38.120
relevant once again. In the words of critic John Derbyshire, Kipling, quote, was an imperialist
00:29:43.720
utterly without illusions about what being an imperialist actually means, which in some ways
00:29:48.360
means that he was not really an imperialist at all. Yet it took 69-year-old John Huston to richly flesh
00:29:53.320
out Kipling's tall tale, adding an astute post-Vietnam moral. I'm not going to read
00:29:58.920
anymore. It's a very long article. It's on USA Today. I read the whole thing yesterday.
00:30:05.080
It's like it was written five minutes ago, but it was written 20 years ago. And by the way,
00:30:11.480
I'll just tell you his points. His first point is, anyone can conquer the Taliban or whatever it's
00:30:18.680
called at that moment. You know, it's just, you know, the Brits did it. The Soviets did it.
00:30:25.480
America did it. That's not the hard part. The hard part is holding it and ruling it
00:30:33.800
and overcoming local traditions, customs, religions, concepts that are immutable. And by the way,
00:30:42.040
if you've seen the movie, wonderful movie, Sean Connery, who quickly conquers Kfiristan,
00:30:49.400
as it's called, then said, well, I'm the king now, and I'm going to dispense justice. And it was going
00:30:54.760
okay. But then he wanted to marry beautiful Roxanne, a tribeswoman. And there was a reason I won't get
00:31:00.600
into now where that was completely contrary to all the rules of Kfiristan. But he was so set on it,
00:31:06.840
and it was his downfall. And I think there's an allegory there, too. There are certain things
00:31:12.280
about Afghanistan that will not be changed, and you will never do. And the Brits couldn't,
00:31:17.320
and the Soviets couldn't, and the Americans couldn't. And the man who would be king is, I know, listen,
00:31:23.000
I'm not saying it was a documentary, but it's a parable, and it's an allegory, and it's set there,
00:31:28.360
and it was by a guy who was actually there and was shot at, just in the 1888 version of an IED.
00:31:38.200
And so who's going to run Afghanistan now? Well, the Taliban. But I think China and Russia will come
00:31:45.960
in. Now, will they have better luck this time than last time? Well, I think on the China side,
00:31:50.680
there's not going to be any compunction about killing locals. I mean, China will kill, has,
00:31:58.600
you know, under Mao, killed tens of millions of its own people. China literally has set up Muslim
00:32:03.560
concentration camps for Uyghur Muslims in the west part of the country. If China has any footprint on
00:32:09.720
the ground, and I'm sure they will, they will be merciless with whoever they want. But why would they,
00:32:15.400
they're not going to try and seek to reform Afghanistan? The imperialists of Rudyard Kipling
00:32:24.520
thought, well, we can save them. We can, you know, can you call up his poem, White Man's Burden?
00:32:29.960
You're not allowed to read this poem anymore. But the British imperialists, like the Romans,
00:32:37.080
wanted to change where they were, bring in a code of laws, bring in bureaucracy and rules.
00:32:43.240
The Romans didn't bring in democracy, but, and the Brits really didn't either, but they at least
00:32:50.280
brought in a form of civilization, including that of Christianity. So this is an incredible poem,
00:32:57.560
which you're not even allowed to read these days. It's called The White Man's Burden.
00:33:01.160
And you might say, well, that's racist. But here's how it was viewed by Rudyard Kipling
00:33:07.320
over a century ago. I'm going to read this. I don't know if you're allowed to read this anymore.
00:33:11.560
Take up the white man's burden. Send forth the best you breed. Go bind your sons to exile,
00:33:20.360
to serve your captives' need, to wade in heavy harness on fluttered folk and wild,
00:33:26.280
your new-caught sullen peoples, half-devil and half-child. Take up the white man's burden,
00:33:31.320
impatience to abide, to veil the threat of terror and check the show of pride, by open speech and simple,
00:33:37.440
and hundred times made plain, to seek another's profit and work another's gain. Take up the white
00:33:43.760
man's burden, the savage wars of peace. Fill full the mouth of famine and bid the sickness cease.
00:33:51.280
When your goal is nearest, the end for others sought, watch sloth and heathen folly. Bring all your hopes
00:33:57.700
to naught. Take up the white man's burden, no tawdry rule of kings, but toil of surf and sweeper,
00:34:04.400
the tale of common things. The ports you shall not enter, the roads you shall not tread. Go mark
00:34:09.200
them with your living and mark them with your dead. Take up the white man's burden and reap his old
00:34:14.240
reward, the blame of those ye better, the hate of those ye guard, the cry of hosts ye humor,
00:34:21.280
us slowly toward the light. Why brought he us from bondage, our loved Egyptian knight? Take up the white
00:34:28.400
man's burden, ye dare not stoop to less, nor call too loud on freedom to cloak your weariness.
00:34:35.520
By all ye cry or whisper, by all ye leave or do, the silent, sullen people shall weigh your gods in
00:34:41.280
you. Take up the white man's burden, have done with childish days, the lightly proffered laurel,
00:34:47.360
the easy, ungrudged praise. Comes now to search your manhood through all the thankless years,
00:34:53.360
cold, edged with dear-bought wisdom, the judgment of your peers.
00:35:01.120
That, other than some of the archaic language and the unwoke word white man's burden, let's switch
00:35:07.920
the word, you know, I bet a lot of people who were woke or born after the year 1990,
00:35:12.560
I'm saying, don't say white man. Okay, fine, let's say, take up the neocons burden,
00:35:19.520
take up the globalist burden, take up the, what burden could we substitute that would get over
00:35:27.840
that word? Take up the globalist burden, take up the NGO burden, take up the world policeman,
00:35:34.160
take up the peacekeeping burden. Let's, yeah, that's the one. Take up the peacekeeping burden.
00:35:39.520
But look at, you know, go and help people, go and fight sickness, go and liberate, did he say
00:35:46.720
liberate women there? Was that in there? Or that was, that was in the USA Today story.
00:35:52.480
Raise people up, civilize them, build things, thank, unthanked, unthanked.
00:36:00.720
That was written in 1899. Steve Saylor's review of the Man Who Would Be King was written in 2001.
00:36:09.920
And here we are in 2021. And I think they are all correct.
00:36:15.520
Which is, you want to go in and smash up some terrorists? Hey, count me in as a moral supporter.
00:36:22.360
But again, you have to, I mean, unless you're a soldier ready to do the soldiering,
00:36:26.520
I don't think you should ever be too gung-ho about a war with someone else's kids, am I right?
00:36:33.640
It's easy to be armchair, an armchair soldier. Adam Smith talked about that, about how bored,
00:36:42.600
fancy, luxurious city folk like to play war games with someone else's kids. Even Adam Smith talked about
00:36:48.840
that. But if it's about destroying terrorist networks and blowing up things, you know,
00:36:55.000
these days that's, I suppose, easy enough with airplanes and missiles. But if you want to have
00:36:59.960
boots on the ground and hold the country for 20 full years, you're an imperialist again. Sorry. I mean,
00:37:09.160
take out the archaic language, swap the word white out and put in just, you know,
00:37:15.320
Operation Enduring Freedom or whatever it's called. How's what the United States and Canada
00:37:21.240
and Britain and other countries did over the last 20 years in Afghanistan any different
00:37:26.360
from what Rudyard Kipling was talking about? How's it any different? I really recommend the movie
00:37:30.680
The Man Who Would Be King. All right, we're going to read some chats now. And like I said,
00:37:35.240
we're going to start today's show with the Canadian election. So now that I got my little preamble out
00:37:42.360
of the way, 37-minute preamble, the show is about to begin, my friends. We're going to talk
00:37:48.200
about the Canadian election. It's actually quite important that we do because we have so many things
00:37:52.760
that I want to tell you about. Let's whip through some super chats. Hyperchat, History Club World,
00:37:58.280
how well do you think the Conservative Party, the Maverick Party and the PPC will do in this election?
00:38:02.520
Do you think any of the parties will interact with you as journalists or will you be trapped in police
00:38:07.240
custody? Follow History Club on Instagram. Oh yeah, I think the PPC and in fact, I think we
00:38:14.920
interviewed Maxime Bernier just a couple days ago, even in the weekend. Maverick Party, I think
00:38:21.320
Sheila has interviewed Jay Hill and I expect we'll do that some more. Yeah, I think those parties are
00:38:27.960
hungry enough for media coverage that they will not turn their nose up at us. But I think that both
00:38:33.160
the Liberals and the Aaron O'Toole Conservatives will, although I don't know if I told you, I was
00:38:37.800
at an event in Edmonton a couple weeks ago and there were two MPs there, I'm not going to name them,
00:38:43.800
and I saw them across the room and they came up to me and they said hi to me and they asked for
00:38:49.240
selfies with me. And maybe I told you the story already and I said if you post those you'll get
00:38:53.480
fired and they said they didn't care. So the snobby look-down-your-nose-ishness of the Aaron O'Toole
00:39:03.080
Conservatives is not a view shared by all their MPs, I'm pleased to say. On Rumble, Roxford N3,
00:39:09.800
he's going to say he was re-elected so people voted for Vax Passports so it's not tyranny. That's
00:39:13.800
exactly what he's going to say. Rumble, Daughters of Narcissus, how long do you think the ban on the
00:39:19.800
Unvax flying will last? I have to decide whether to jump on a plane or I might not get to see other
00:39:24.600
family for who knows how long. Well that's a real consideration. The announcement was like a
00:39:30.040
like a tweet, like just a little, you know, very short statement. There's no legislation,
00:39:35.320
there's no regulation, there's no rules, there's no question period. So I don't know if it's actually
00:39:41.640
going to take effect immediately. But you know what, to be very candid, if I were you I would get my
00:39:47.480
family reunions going. If you wanted, if you were going to visit someone, I would do so
00:39:52.280
in the next month or so. I absolutely would. I think there's going to be a big battle,
00:39:55.960
big civil liberties battle, and seeing how the courts so far have not struck down any part of
00:40:00.200
the lockdowns, I'm not optimistic. Hyperchat, Enoch the Salty Pretzel, I'm more concerned about all the
00:40:06.840
women and girls being rounded up and kidnapped by the Taliban as sex slaves and unwilling wives.
00:40:10.760
Also you can expect Bachabazi to be fully back on the Taliban menu. You're talking about basically
00:40:17.720
rape slavery, both of women and boys. Absolutely that's back on. And by the way, the man who would
00:40:26.280
be king treats that issue, there's an incredible scene, I'll tell you, where they conquer a little
00:40:33.240
village, Sean Connery and Michael Caine. And the local chief offers up a whole bunch of women,
00:40:43.400
including very young women, including I think some of his daughters. And Daniel, and one of them,
00:40:53.720
Sean Connery and Michael Caine is outraged and says, you, you barbarian. And the other says,
00:40:59.160
oh, local customs. And then, and immediately, the warlord says, oh, if you don't want women,
00:41:07.000
I have boys. And then the other one, I think it was Michael Caine O'Connery said, local customs,
00:41:13.640
or so I forget the exact, but the idea of raping boys, which is called Bachabazi, if I'm pronouncing
00:41:23.960
that correct, which goes on, on mass today, and which allied soldiers had to turn a blind eye to,
00:41:30.360
because that's one of those local customs. That was in the movie, The Man Who Would Be King. I
00:41:34.120
really recommend it. I wonder if you could find that, that clip of The Man Who Would Be King. It's,
00:41:42.280
they're basically offering him girls. And then they said, would you prefer boys? And, and the way that
00:41:47.960
Michael Caine and Sean Connery react to that culturally is identical to the treatment of
00:41:56.920
women today, and boys today, frankly. That they are the sexual playthings of men, and they don't
00:42:05.240
have civil rights in their chattel, and Sharia law supports them. Terrifying. You know, if you could
00:42:13.960
find that clip, it's, and the movie was in 1975. Roger Tipling in the 1880s, the movie in 1975,
00:42:24.840
the great essay by Donald, Steve Saylor in 2001, and here we are in 2021. Has anything changed under
00:42:31.400
the sun? Nothing changes under the sun. Hyperchat from History Club World. Why doesn't Canada or
00:42:39.320
America send resources in to evacuate as many citizens as humanly as possible? Send the military
00:42:43.880
military to control the airport and some surrounding land and allow people in and just resettle them
00:42:47.640
in Canada, America, or onto cruise ships. Who? How many? What? Yeah, you, there's, how many people
00:42:54.280
in Afghanistan? I, I used to know that number. Afghanistan population. 38 million. It's exactly
00:43:01.320
the size of Canada. So what are you proposing? To take 10, 20, 30 thousand or 10, 20, 30 million
00:43:08.760
people and just move them here? Going to, going to do that for the whole world? Like, at what point
00:43:17.960
do you say, okay, we're a country, they're a country? You know, there's a lot of blame to go around for the
00:43:22.520
generals and for Joe Biden and even for previous presidents, Trump, Obama, Bush. But at what point
00:43:31.000
do you say, hang on, this is your country, you really did have soldiers and equipment, and if you didn't
00:43:40.200
fight for your country, we should fight more? Or maybe you don't see your country as a Disney-fied version,
00:43:50.840
a knockoff of America. Maybe you really are like Kafiristan in the movie The Men Who Would Be King.
00:44:01.000
Rumble, frosty night. Rebel News, what do you think the outcome of the election will be? All right,
00:44:11.240
I said I was going to start with the show on the election, so let's do that. Justin, let's,
00:44:15.960
you know, it's got a few things out of, out of the way there. Let's start the show right.
00:44:21.960
Yeah, let's start the show. Play the, play the YouTube warning. Let's start the show. That was a bonus.
00:44:27.240
You just got yourself a bonus 45 minutes on Afghanistan. But today's show is about something
00:44:32.360
completely different. It's about the Canadian election. Throw the warning up there.
00:44:35.880
Warning. Censorship. Warning. Censorship. Warning. Censorship.
00:44:42.920
Hello, everybody. Ezra Levant here, August 16th. It's a pleasure to be with you.
00:44:47.320
For those who joined for a special bonus pre-show, great to have you back.
00:44:51.240
For those who are just joining now, welcome. As advertised, today's show will be about the election.
00:44:58.040
For those who just enjoyed the 45-minute director's cut bonus blooper reel, you're welcome.
00:45:05.400
I do recommend The Man Who Would Be King. In case you didn't know, I recommend that movie.
00:45:11.320
Who doesn't like Michael Caine and Sean Connery? One of my favorite things to say is ba'o awo'a.
00:45:19.720
All right, back to today's hot news, which is the election. I think it's going to be a disastrous election.
00:45:27.000
For two reasons. The first reason is the media, which helps us understand the world, which shapes
00:45:37.160
perceptions which are more powerful than reality, and who have an important role to challenge the powers
00:45:43.000
that be. The Canadian media, which is always tilted left and has always been infected by government
00:45:52.360
dogma and government propaganda and government interests through the CBC, the state broadcaster,
00:45:59.160
has almost completely wiped out independent journalists.
00:46:03.640
And I don't know if you saw the story a week ago in blacklocks.ca.
00:46:09.240
Blacklocks reporter, one of the few independent media sources in the country.
00:46:12.920
Now the subsidies are secret. Heritage Minister Stephen Gilboa's department refuses to name publications
00:46:19.800
awarded, publishers awarded nearly $61 million in pre-election emergency relief.
00:46:26.440
The grants were to ensure readers receive timely information they require from their government.
00:46:33.240
So they just gave out $61 million to the media right before the election as a pre-election
00:46:40.280
tip, bribe, commission, payoff, solidarity fund. So the media were bad enough. The CBC media was the worst.
00:46:50.040
And you just gave them $61 million, and you're keeping their name secret for the election. So the media
00:46:58.200
is now completely compromised. And they don't care if you know it. They just took their own union news
00:47:05.400
from their media unions to run anti-conservative campaign attack ads.
00:47:12.200
Who are the independent journalists in this country? Well, aside from Rebel News, there's
00:47:16.360
True North, TNC.news. There's Spencer Fernando. There's Western Standard Online. There's a guy out in BC,
00:47:24.760
I think it's called The Breaker. It's Bob Mackin. There's Black Box Reporter.
00:47:31.480
I think I've just gone through it. The Post Millennial does some independent journalism,
00:47:36.120
but they're mainly just rewrite news stories on Twitter. I don't know how much primary journalism
00:47:43.240
they do. I like them, but they don't do primary journalism. That's it, I think. All the newspapers
00:47:52.760
are on the take, all the TV stations, all the radio stations. So that's the first problem. You can't
00:47:59.160
trust the media anymore. Not that you really ever could, but now they're just completely in the tank.
00:48:02.840
The second problem is that Her Majesty's loyal opposition, the official opposition,
00:48:09.560
and the official critics. You know, these are titles, and they're actually jobs and job descriptions,
00:48:14.920
and you're paid for it. Well, the Conservative Party isn't really conservative, and the opposition
00:48:20.120
isn't really opposing. So who is? In the pre-show, the bonus material, we talked about how Trudeau said,
00:48:30.200
if you don't like a tyranny, now it's your time to speak up. Let's play that clip one more time,
00:48:34.120
because it is quite impressive. Trudeau is saying, well, I can't be a tyrant, because we're having
00:48:39.160
this election. Take a look. We've seen situations where Conservative backbenchers have referred to
00:48:46.680
some of this government's decisions as tyrannical in terms of how we're creating mandates for vaccination
00:48:54.200
of public servants or vaccination of people on trains and airplanes. Well, the answer to tyranny
00:49:01.320
is to have an election. No, that's not true, because an election is a moment
00:49:07.720
every four years. Tyranny can exist punctuated by the odd election. By the way, this health
00:49:17.880
vaccination, the biosecurity state, social credit system, vax passport, whatever you want to call it,
00:49:25.720
it wasn't debated in Parliament, wasn't introduced as a bill, wasn't subject to scrutiny in the House of
00:49:32.520
Commons Committee. They've had a year and a half, by the way, but they just haven't. Not that O'Toole
00:49:38.360
would oppose it. I just read his platform today. Not a word opposing it. Not a word opposing it.
00:49:46.760
So it is not disproof of a tyranny that once every four years you have a vote.
00:49:55.160
Living in a free country, it's free every day, and the government doesn't get to misbehave and violate
00:50:00.680
civil liberties every day. So problem number one, the media is completely complicit, bought off
00:50:09.720
by the governing party, and they don't even hide it anymore. Problem number two is that the party who
00:50:19.160
is given special status in Parliament, special budgets, special rights and privileges to oppose
00:50:25.080
is not opposing. And they call themselves conservative, but I don't see the conservative part.
00:50:31.640
They're like salt that's lost its saltiness. What is it even? And I want to show you a moment
00:50:38.200
yesterday that I think is just absolutely, couldn't be more succinct, showing the problem.
00:50:46.120
You know, there's a guy named Andrew Coyne. I think he's 61. I think he was born in 1960,
00:50:53.560
if memory serves. He's a young looking 61. He's been a journalist as long as I can remember.
00:51:03.640
I think he's a dozen years older than me, so I sort of always looked up to him a bit because he was
00:51:08.120
always a cycle ahead of me in life. And I don't read him much anymore. I find him boring and predictable
00:51:16.760
and very establishment and often self-contradictory, but whatever, I'm sure he has the same views about me.
00:51:24.360
But he's regarded as sort of like, I mean, he's the establishment for sure, but he's been like he's had,
00:51:31.320
he's been like a marquee columnist. They show his name in this picture. He's on TV. He was,
00:51:39.160
had senior positions with the Globe and Mail. Then he went to the National Post. Then he moved
00:51:43.880
back to the Globe and Mail, which sort of tells you really Tweedledee, Tweedledum. There's no real
00:51:47.240
difference in Canada's newspapers. So I'm not going to call him a dean of anything, and I'm not going to
00:51:52.920
say it's particularly accomplished. I don't think he's ever written a book. I don't think he's actually
00:51:56.520
ever done anything other than be sort of just like, you know, those two grumpy old men in the Muppets.
00:52:01.800
who sit up there in the opera and just, you know, the peanut gallery and just heckle.
00:52:06.360
I mean, he's not as old as them, but he just sort of like, what does he do other than hang out,
00:52:10.680
hang around and give some half witty comeback that sounds smart. But when you think about it,
00:52:15.720
you, you know, a day later, you forgot, what did he say? What did he say? He comes and goes,
00:52:22.120
and you don't even remember what it is. Anyhow, my point is, he couldn't be more of a man of the
00:52:27.640
establishment. In fact, that's really his entire CV, is he was born to his father, who was an
00:52:33.240
important man in the Bank of Canada. And because he had that important last name, life has been easy
00:52:38.920
for him rather than rather like Justin Trudeau's. So that's Andrew Coyne. He's the establishment man
00:52:45.880
in the media party. Although bizarrely, he votes NDP, he votes green, which I think is a sign of
00:52:53.720
philosophical schizophrenia. But look at him yesterday. Look at this tweet. Andrew Lawton
00:53:02.520
gets the first question? Seriously? Well, now what does this mean? Hold this on the screen.
00:53:09.800
So there was a press conference. I think this was Erin O'Toole's press conference. The
00:53:13.800
unconservative conservative, the opposition leader who doesn't oppose, the salt that has lost its
00:53:20.920
saltiness. Erin O'Toole, footnote in history, the man who makes Andrew Scheer look passionate.
00:53:30.040
So Erin O'Toole was having a press conference and Andrew Lawton, our friend from due north, was there.
00:53:35.480
And he got the first question. Now, my experience is you can get the first question sometimes
00:53:40.520
by showing up first and getting to the microphone early. Sometimes that's just how it's chosen. Are you
00:53:46.920
there first? But whatever it is, maybe he was chosen first. Maybe it was on the phone. So maybe
00:53:52.680
he just logged in first. Maybe it was random. I understand this may have been on the phone,
00:53:58.360
but it doesn't matter because someone has to be first. And if you're in a press conference,
00:54:03.160
you know, hopefully it goes on for long enough that you get a range of questions. So it actually
00:54:08.600
doesn't even matter who goes first, I don't think. If it goes on for 5, 10, 15 minutes and
00:54:15.000
you cycle through some questions, does it matter? First, second, third?
00:54:21.320
Like, journalistically, does it matter? Justin, can you think of a reason why it might matter?
00:54:27.000
Maybe, ah, good point. So Justin says maybe people stop watching after the first few minutes. That
00:54:32.280
would be for the live audience, but I don't think a lot of people were riveted to their TV screens. Oh,
00:54:36.520
wow. Aaron O'Toole's going to make a statement. I got to tune in now. I think reporters would listen
00:54:41.160
to it and then go write something. I don't think that's like a white hot live show. Oh my God,
00:54:45.160
Aaron O'Toole's live streaming. Oh my God. Is he on Instagram live? I got to watch Aaron O'Toole. He's
00:54:50.920
got, hey guys, it's a, it's a beautiful Sunday afternoon. Put down everything. Andrew Coyne is,
00:54:57.880
Andrew Coyne. Aaron O'Toole is live streaming, guys. I don't even know what accent that was. I don't
00:55:03.960
know what that was. That just came out of me. Um, so my point is it absolutely doesn't matter
00:55:10.520
the order other than if you're about snobbery and if you just really care about that. And oh my God,
00:55:22.040
he's wearing that suit. Did you see that? That hasn't been, that hasn't been in fashion in four
00:55:29.960
years. Oh my God. You know, I hear he didn't go to University of Toronto like me. I hear he went to
00:55:40.760
a, well, he's not our kind here. Let me just put it that way. And that haircut, I mean, um, wow. He
00:55:48.920
went to, uh, first choice haircutters. Uh, I don't like to get change back from a hundred when I go to
00:55:54.760
myself. Like it's pure snobbery is what I'm saying. Pure snobbery. Look at that tweet again from Andrew
00:56:00.840
Coyne. Andrew Lawton gets the first question. Seriously. But what does that mean? I know Andrew
00:56:13.240
Lawton. He's on our show all the time. So you're not even, so you're not even pretending that you
00:56:20.680
believe in free speech or an open press or independent press or, or different voices.
00:56:25.640
And you are, and, and even if you think this in your own mind, Andrew Coyne,
00:56:33.400
and that's fine. We all have our foibles. You're a snob. Fine. You think this thought in your heart.
00:56:39.640
Fine. We get it. You're fancy because you had the good luck of being born after your father rather than
00:56:45.400
before him. We get it. It's the Justin Trudeau, Peter Pan. You've just, everything you have is by
00:56:51.720
virtue of your father. We get it. But don't say those things out loud because what you're saying is
00:56:59.080
not only do I think I'm better than Andrew Lawton, but I don't think he should be treated the same as
00:57:05.800
me. See, that's the difference. You're not just saying, haha, dumb question. Okay, got it. Dumb question.
00:57:12.120
That's a judgment on the, on his smarts. And is his question good? And, you know, but Andrew Lawton
00:57:19.160
gets the first, I am offended. I am the one who gets the first question. I am better than him.
00:57:26.920
Andrew Coyne, of course, isn't just a bailout taker from Justin Trudeau. He's far worse than that.
00:57:34.360
Look, 99% of journalists in Canada take Trudeau's money.
00:57:37.240
But Andrew Coyne is one of a handful who put on a show about, I don't like government subsidies for
00:57:45.400
newspapers, but I'm gonna take it. Andrew Coyne, who for years rails against the CBC,
00:57:53.560
getting government money, is on a thousand bucks a pop on their ad issue panel. Now,
00:57:57.880
that's what it was 10 years ago. I guess he gets a lot more now. So Andrew Coyne is the worst in the
00:58:03.320
world in that he takes the bailout money, but he doesn't have the grace to shut up about it,
00:58:08.120
take the money and shut up about it. That's what 99% of journalists do. Andrew Coyne takes the money.
00:58:13.240
He says, I sure don't like taking this money, but I'll take it. He's only worked for bailout media,
00:58:19.720
in fact. And you can see his rage. I think he hates Andrew Lawton for that reason alone.
00:58:27.720
Not because Andrew Lawton might not be in the highest styles or have the finest pedigree. I
00:58:33.720
think that what actually burns up Andrew Coyne is that Andrew Lawton is a more independent,
00:58:39.160
credible, trustworthy, arm's length, neutral journalist than Andrew Coyne. Because unlike
00:58:44.040
Andrew Coyne, Andrew Lawton doesn't take money from Trudeau on Monday and then report on him on Tuesday.
00:58:49.960
So I'm excited to tell you that the government, which took over the debate commission, you know
00:58:59.720
every year there's a debate. It used to be done by the TV networks. They had sort of a consortium,
00:59:04.280
they figured out on their own. Trudeau nationalized that. And look at who he installed as his debate
00:59:12.760
moderator. There's going to be five people asking questions in English. And one of them is Rosemary
00:59:18.040
Barton, who she, she's, um, that gal. Oh my God. I was so excited. I was so close to him.
00:59:29.800
I, I felt him brush up against my hair. I, I could feel the warmth of his body.
00:59:35.800
I love you. Do we still have video? I think that the CBC had Twitter take it down. When she went on
00:59:45.720
that platonic date with Trudeau, remember that? And they talked about what he was listening to.
00:59:49.560
What podcasts are you listening to? What's the, what do you do on a rainy day? Do you ever just daydream?
00:59:58.600
What's your favorite color? If you could be anything, like I, a couple of those I'm making up as jokes,
01:00:05.080
but I'm not actually like, what's on, what's on your podcast? This is what Rosemary Barton asked him on
01:00:11.320
their platonic date. I think she thinks she's dating him or could date him or something. Do we have to take a look?
01:00:20.360
Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near? Just like me, they long to be close to you.
01:00:45.400
Why do stars fall down from the sky every time you walk by? Just like me, they long to be close to you.
01:01:10.440
On the day that you were born, the angels got together and decided to create a dream come true.
01:01:20.320
You know, that loving look, you, I mean, find yourself someone who looks at you the way Rosemary Barton looks at
01:01:26.620
Justin Trudeau and hang on to that because that is true love. Now that's a funny version, but we have, believe it or not,
01:01:32.140
the serious version of that, where you actually hear her questions to him, is much, much worse.
01:01:37.260
Hey, um, if you were a prime minister, what would you do? Hey, what are you listening to in your podcast now?
01:01:47.640
Yeah, sorry, I'm just excited a little bit. Rosemary, yeah, this tweet has been withheld in response to a report
01:01:57.560
from the copyright holder. Um, the CBC hates this tweet so much, and there's another one we have of, uh, of, anyway,
01:02:06.440
so Rosemary Barton, Trudeau's platonic girlfriend. Hey, what, um, Justin, what's it like to be so pretty?
01:02:15.640
Um, she's actually one of the moderators of the English language debate, which is incredible in itself,
01:02:25.840
a state broadcaster, platonic girlfriend, selfie taker, so obviously in love. I mean, why don't you guys just get a room?
01:02:35.240
Um, like, so compromised to begin with. But she actually, if you remember in the last election campaign,
01:02:44.840
sued the Conservative Party. I mean, she was the plaintiff. Rosemary Barton versus Conservative Party
01:02:51.840
of Canada. She sued the Conservative Party. In court. And you're the moderator? Because you're neutral.
01:03:06.640
It is just incredible. I want to show you what the Debates Commission, you might recall last year,
01:03:13.360
we applied for our journalists to be accredited. At the very last moment, they declined.
01:03:19.360
And they gave us like a one-line answer, which wasn't the real answer. So we rushed to court the
01:03:25.040
next business day. They told us on Friday morning, you're not allowed in. We were in court on Monday
01:03:29.360
morning. Emergency application before the Federal Court of Canada. And I couldn't even believe it, we won.
01:03:38.880
The Federal Court of Canada said it was unreasonable and time was of the essence. They ordered the Debates
01:03:47.040
Commission to let us in. And David Menzies and Kian Bextie and Andrew Lawton, the three journalists who
01:03:52.960
were banned, got in and asked the best questions, by the way. So that was humiliating for Trudeau and for
01:04:03.520
the mean girls like Andrew Coyne who wanted to keep us out. So they just released the new rules. They just
01:04:09.120
released media accreditation for the 44th general election. The Leaders Debate Commission is mandated
01:04:16.240
by its Constituting Order and Council to organize two leaders debates for the next federal general
01:04:20.800
election, one in each official language. See, right there you can see why Trudeau did it. Before,
01:04:25.200
there were several debates, but Trudeau doesn't like debates. Media representatives wishing to have access
01:04:31.040
to the debates organized by the commission must apply to be accredited by the commission. So the
01:04:35.040
government will decide if he gets to ask questions of the government. Now, scroll down a little bit
01:04:41.920
there. This is just amazing. The commission recognizes the media organizations, columnists,
01:04:53.120
or commentators may have an editorial point of view or endorse political candidates or political causes.
01:05:00.080
However, a conflict of interest arises when the media organization or journalist
01:05:04.800
becomes an active participant in the story that they are covering. Now, this next part is called
01:05:11.280
the Rebel News Clause. According to the CAJ, Canadian Association of Journalists, a conflict of interest,
01:05:20.560
one, when an organization, oh, there is a conflict of interest, one, when an organization becomes an actor in
01:05:29.760
the stories it tells, including providing and applying financial and legal assistance to some of its
01:05:36.320
sources to work toward a desired outcome or offering free legal services, crowd funds to help some
01:05:44.640
individuals in stories hire lawyers, purchases political advertising, and launches petitions.
01:05:50.160
I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder, I wonder who crowd funds legal fees for clients.
01:06:20.400
Or has a president whose name rhymes with Shmezra.
01:06:29.040
But if you have something called fightthefines.com, you're not allowed in.
01:06:33.360
No, no, no, no, no. We're not discriminating against Rebel News. But if you happen to crowdfund legal fees for Arthur Pavlovsky, you're not allowed in. What's that got to do with the federal election? Oh, nothing. But if your boss's name rhymes with Shmezra, you're not allowed in either. But we're not targeting Rebel News and we're not bitter about losing to them in federal court last time. No, no, no. Why would you say that? Put that back up. This is so unbelievable.
01:06:59.020
When a reporter writes opinion pieces about subjects they also cover as journalists, endorses political candidates or causes, takes part in demonstrations, signs petitions, does public relations work, fundraisers and makes financial contributions.
01:07:15.940
OK, well, I've got to tell you right now that Andrew Coyne, the Saints, and Rosemary Barton, who herself, how about when you go to court to sue?
01:07:24.740
How about when you go to court to sue the conservatives? Is that OK? Is that OK? Because Rosemary Barton did that.
01:07:33.020
Andrew Coyne endorses and condemns politicians every day. Would he be kept out?
01:07:41.360
That is called the Rebel News. We don't like you. We're not letting you sit with us at the lunch table because you're not with the cool kids.
01:07:55.280
You and Andrew Lawton are really meanies. And anyone and I'm not saying Rebel News is banned, but anyone who has a fight the fines campaign for Arthur Pawlowski is banned.
01:08:04.040
That just may happen to be Rebel News. That just may happen to be Rebel News. But if it is, it's purely a coincidence.
01:08:11.060
That could be called the Rebel News section. They are so afraid of anyone who is not bought and paid for on their payroll.
01:08:23.020
Andrew Coyne is the voice of these people. Andrew Lawton got the first question. He's not our kind, dear.
01:08:36.780
What a bunch of snobs. Andrew Coyne is the snob. But this government debate commission hates Rebel News because we sued them and we beat them like a drum in court.
01:08:48.760
And they were humiliated because they were shown to be a bunch of partisan hats.
01:08:52.940
So they're really super smart bureaucrats, handpicked by Justin Trudeau, said, well, I know, we'll just pass a law that Rebel News is not allowed to ask us questions.
01:09:05.160
Like, I mean, there are other crowd funders in Canada. I think that, I think True North does, I think what they do could be called crowd funding.
01:09:12.860
I'm not sure. They have subscriptions. And Canada Land, for example, a left-wing gossip podcast, they ask, like, is what they do called even, I don't think, you know, I don't think they even ask for donations.
01:09:26.180
They do. They ask for donations. They ask for donations. Is that called crowd funding? I don't know.
01:09:30.680
And then there's rabble. Like, I don't even really know. What is crowd funding? Crowd funding is when you ask a crowd to, like, ask the public for funding.
01:09:40.060
We use the word crowd funding every day. I guess we could say donations or something.
01:09:46.660
But really, all crowd funding is is a way of getting paid.
01:09:50.740
So what, put that back up, those rules back again. It's quite something that they would talk about being funded by viewers as disqualifying, but being funded by Trudeau.
01:10:01.980
According to the CAJ, there is a conflict of interest when an organization becomes an actor in the stories it tells, including providing and applying financial and legal assistance to some of its sources to work toward a desired outcome or offering free legal.
01:10:21.200
What does free legal services for Arthur have to do with whether we can ask Justin Trudeau a question?
01:10:26.540
Listen, crowd funding to help some individuals in stories hire lawyers, purchases political advertisers, and we don't do that, and launches petitions.
01:10:41.880
That is called the rebel news. We don't like you. You guys are really mean, but we just don't have the courage to say we don't like you, so we're going to pretend that we're being really, really neutral and this could catch anybody.
01:10:53.400
How about just say you're not allowed to come if the president of your company is a pudgy Jewish guy with glasses and, you know, who lives in Toronto, around an eighth of a ton, you know.
01:11:11.900
Why not, like, why not just say, if you work with Ezra, you're not allowed.
01:11:17.540
Like, why go through all those weird, and if you crowdfund legal assistance for someone, what has that got to do with that?
01:11:25.540
What is helping Arthur? Like, they're crowdfunding legal resources for civil liberties.
01:11:30.620
What has that even got to do with asking a question of Jagmeet Singh?
01:11:38.300
Excuse me, Jagmeet Singh, I have a question for you about vaccine passports.
01:11:44.860
You are crowdfunding a lawyer for someone in Calgary right now, so you can't ask Jagmeet Singh about vaccine passports.
01:11:56.900
That's the triple truth. That's what's going on.
01:12:00.620
Hyperchat from History Club World, will Rebel News be suing the commission again and again?
01:12:13.240
How can it be illegal to use taxpayer dollars to buy the media for political gain?
01:12:20.520
We just started the show again, for people who are just joining us.
01:12:27.240
I read, like, a whole item from USA Today back in 2001.
01:13:09.740
And help fund our 2021 Canadian election coverage and view our election plans below.
01:13:14.840
Yeah, this is why we can't go to the elections debate.
01:13:20.280
Because we're asking our viewers for money instead of asking Trudeau for money.
01:13:35.980
Rebel News doesn't take any funding from Mr. Stan Trudeau.
01:13:38.980
Well, Trudeau just gave $61 million in secret payments to news reporters on the eve of the election.
01:13:44.280
And he won't say who he paid until after the election.
01:13:49.740
Normally, the media would dig into secret payments to liberal friends.
01:13:54.520
Which explains the total silence amongst the mainstream media.
01:13:56.700
But they took the bribe on the top of their regular bailouts.
01:14:01.780
We're one of the few news companies not on the take.
01:14:11.020
But we're not going down without a fight, everybody.
01:14:20.380
Deploy the largest group of rebel journalists ever assembled.
01:14:24.060
Get them out in the field, not just in their home cities, but traveling.
01:14:30.240
Make our premium shows, which are normally behind the paywall.
01:14:33.300
Make them free for everyone during the election period.
01:14:37.740
Have a free speech legal team ready to fight against a certain censorship
01:14:42.560
that will be thrown against us and other independent journalists.
01:14:47.400
And we already started with our first election lawsuit.
01:14:50.260
We're not just going to ask tough questions or just Dan Trudeau as liberals.
01:14:53.340
We're going to ask tough questions of all politicians.
01:14:58.340
Because we're alarmed that he has given up on true conservative ideas.
01:15:11.080
Can we add the Maverick Party to that right now?
01:15:13.920
So we're going to fix the S on the first sentence.
01:15:22.620
And Derek Sloan has plans, too, that we're curious about.
01:15:26.680
If we want to talk about the issues, the media won't.
01:15:33.440
We filed a legal challenge already to Elections Canada there.
01:15:36.880
I haven't even had a chance to talk about that.
01:15:41.880
Hey, can you go to rebelnews.com slash journalists?
01:16:30.620
Raheel Raza, who's the head of our advisory board.
01:16:41.340
Adam Sos in Calgary, holding down the fort there.
01:17:05.500
Then we've got Kian Simone, who joined us in Calgary.
01:17:09.360
We call him K2, because we had another guy in Calgary named Kian, Kian Bextie.
01:17:16.400
And then, truly one of the favorite people I've met over the years at Rebel.
01:17:30.340
And he's really going to work hard in this election.
01:17:33.300
Not that he wouldn't have done it without the promise.
01:17:35.780
But we're going to have him flying around so much.
01:17:48.100
Now, down under, we have Alexandra Marshall, just joined us.
01:17:53.560
In Toronto, Catherine Krozanowski, if I'm saying that right.
01:17:57.780
And on Twitter, I think she's the crow or something, which I think shows a sense of humor.
01:18:02.380
Lincoln Jay, you know, the ladies love him, girls adore him.
01:18:27.140
He got a ticket, swear to God, for shaking hands.
01:18:33.860
Yankee Pollock, who just did great work in Montreal.
01:18:43.040
Is there a problem with Matt Brevner's, because that's the one name I noticed that's not on there.
01:18:51.320
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19.
01:19:04.920
So, you know how many people we have in Canada on the telly?
01:19:14.820
So, you'll notice that I'm not talking about people who are purely behind the scenes.
01:19:18.360
Now, you can see about half these folks do behind the scenes work as well as on camera.
01:19:23.400
Like Andrew Chapados and Sidney and Mocha and Efron and Kian.
01:19:28.740
So, I'd say half these people split their time between behind the scenes work and on camera work.
01:19:34.180
But, me, Sheila, David, Drea, Adam, Tamara, Alexa, are only on TV.
01:20:06.000
I happen to know, because I was talking to a lawyer for McLean's Magazine,
01:20:14.940
So, they're not even talking about, right now they have some freelancers or whatever.
01:20:21.300
And we have 17 Canadian on-air talent plus 2 Australians.
01:20:29.020
What's my point besides my pride and joy in this talent?
01:20:38.720
We're deploying these 17 people into the field in the election.
01:20:43.860
Now, the Parliamentary Press Gallery and the Andrew Coins of the World
01:20:48.960
and the Justin Trudeau Debates Commissions, they seem to dislike crowdfunding.
01:21:01.860
Well, I know what I would do if I was McLean's Magazine.
01:21:04.720
I'd call up the Prime Minister's office and say, give us some money.
01:21:11.220
You see this little thing on the right-hand side?
01:21:13.100
Payment one time, monthly, 10 bucks, 100 bucks, whatever, 1,000.
01:21:20.840
But apparently, the government thinks crowdfunding is really, really evil.
01:21:25.080
They would prefer it if you took their government grants.
01:21:40.180
And if you want us to continue our Real Reporters Plan, then that's how you can help us.
01:21:45.580
I think it's quite something that they explicitly say they don't like crowdfunding.
01:21:54.040
Because every bloody one of them is on the take from Justin Trudeau.
01:21:57.360
Andrew Coyne's snobby, oh my God, just since you refreshed that, we got eight more donors?
01:22:16.500
I just find, like, Justin, would you not agree with me that it's remarkable
01:22:19.480
that the Debates Commission specifically talks about crowdfunding?
01:22:24.700
Let me tell you what I think about crowdfunding.
01:22:27.360
I mean, occasionally if a donation comes in, someone brings it to my attention,
01:22:35.000
But do you think I know those, do you think I've even looked at those 707 names?
01:22:41.120
I can just tell you, let me just tell you right now, I have not.
01:22:44.740
I have not looked, I mean, and maybe those 707 people are saying, Ezra, I wish you would.
01:22:49.220
Ezra, you could be a little bit better in the thank you notes department.
01:22:54.220
But what I regard that, and maybe you don't like to hear this,
01:22:57.440
I regard not knowing who those 707 people is as a plus.
01:23:03.260
Not a single reporter here knows who those people,
01:23:05.380
because we obviously keep that list private, both for legal reasons and moral reasons.
01:23:09.480
No one at Rebel News knows who our crowdfunders are.
01:23:14.800
So they're out there, and they can follow our mission without fear or favor.
01:23:28.380
So they're not in the back of their mind saying,
01:23:31.980
because my boss just got $5 million from the bailout fund,
01:23:35.600
so maybe I'm not going to ask a tough question.
01:23:37.500
Oh, I better not ask Stephen Gilboa a tough question,
01:23:45.900
you know, oh, we're getting money from, you know,
01:23:47.900
Facebook and Google pay a lot of media companies directly.
01:23:59.980
and Facebook is now paying news companies directly,
01:24:02.580
if Facebook gives you a half a million dollars,
01:24:07.420
yeah, they're going to expect that you're not going to condemn them in your editorials.
01:24:13.200
So if I just told you the 17 Canadian reporters we have,
01:24:21.120
those 17 reporters do not know who those 707 donors are,
01:24:27.480
and they will not know who those 707 donors are.
01:24:31.040
So those 17 reporters are more neutral and more independent
01:24:34.040
than Andrew Coyne, the CBC, the Global Mail, the Toronto Star, Global News,
01:24:41.760
or any other Unifor or Canada Media Guild company.
01:24:49.280
But it is so bizarre to me that the Debates Commission has specifically singled out crowdfunding.
01:24:56.620
And there's, by the way, I don't think there's any other media company in Canada
01:25:17.640
Andrew Lawton reminded me that I chipped into a video they made.
01:25:25.540
if you get your money from Justin Trudeau, you're neutral.
01:25:28.360
If you get your money from 707 strangers, you're compromised.
01:25:34.720
If you donate money to Unifor's campaign against Erin O'Toole, you're neutral.
01:25:41.220
If you donate money to Arthur Pavlovsky's civil liberties lawyers,
01:25:54.980
they didn't actually say the word fight the fines.
01:26:03.780
Crowdfund to help some individuals in stories hire lawyers.
01:26:19.380
That is the, we don't like Rebel News and we sort of lack the courage to say it,
01:26:28.740
And Andrew Coyne will just come out and say it.
01:26:30.780
He's a snob and Rebel News and Andrew Lawton are not our kind deer.
01:26:34.000
But Justin Trudeau's handpicked us and so he told us to ban Rebel News.
01:26:39.220
And we're just going to say we're not against Rebel News necessarily,
01:26:43.460
but if you happen to be a crowdfunded conservative website who also helps civil liberties people,
01:27:01.680
That list of who's allowed and who's not is de facto an ad for Rebel News.
01:27:08.620
Because you know we are the only media they insist on keeping out.
01:27:16.500
Is it really because we crowdfunded lawyers for Arthur Pawlowski?
01:27:29.920
Well, you certainly can't come to a national debate and ask questions about anything.
01:28:18.060
In fact, I want to say thank you to those people right now.
01:28:22.460
Do you understand the difference between me being grateful but not wanting to have a boss?
01:28:28.760
And the average donation, I haven't checked in a while, but last time I checked, the average donation to Rebel News, I think, was $53.
01:28:34.300
So don't ever let me say I don't value a $53 donation.
01:28:42.540
But you see, when I say we have a $53 donation average, do you know what that means?
01:28:48.020
That means everyone has an opinion and we hear everyone's opinion.
01:29:02.320
But since the average donor is $53, everyone's opinions count, but no one counts too much, if you understand what I'm saying.
01:29:11.380
If we took a million dollars from Justin Trudeau or Stephen Gilboa, his opinion would count too much.
01:29:19.200
And not just that, they're the center of the news.
01:29:21.000
How can you take money from the center of the news?
01:29:32.100
Sometimes people say, oh, Ezra, you guys are crowdfunding too much.
01:29:48.180
But the reason I'm telling you it's better is, number one, you're not forced to support us.
01:29:57.740
Unlike the $61 million payoff to the journalists before the election, you're forced to support them.
01:30:03.600
But number two, our journalists, they don't know who those 716 people are.
01:30:19.320
Isn't it crazy that they specifically say crowdfunding is a downside, but they love the government on the take reports?
01:30:32.140
We did the 45-minute pre-show about Afghanistan.
01:30:50.520
You know, I want to say one quick thing and then I've got to go because I've been going on a little long today.
01:30:55.120
Can I tell you that we have a great event coming up in Regina, Saskatchewan?
01:31:03.300
As you can see from the Latin, Regina means queen.
01:31:06.340
And one of the nicknames of that great town is the Queen City.
01:31:10.760
And on September 14th, we are having an evening with Dr. Patrick Moore, the co-founder of Greenpeace.
01:31:17.600
Now, you might recall that we originally scheduled this event when he was unseemly deplatformed by the city of Regina.
01:31:26.600
The city of Regina government was having a conference.
01:31:37.720
In fact, he came on one of our rebel cruises once.
01:31:47.800
But he's not, he's not a partisan guy who only cares about, like, Greenpeace has lost its way is what I'm saying.
01:32:02.180
The only one deplatformed from that conference because a bunch of cancel culture types canceled him.
01:32:06.880
And the city of Regina, shame on them, canceled him.
01:32:09.540
I know him enough that I called him up on the phone.
01:32:33.520
We will pay you what you were going to be paid.
01:32:39.560
It's an opportunity to show that you actually were the star.
01:32:43.720
So we booked a venue called the Conexus Arts Center, which is a beautiful building.
01:32:57.480
The capacity of the main theater, I think, is 2,200.
01:33:00.400
By the way, the original City of Regina conference only had room for a few hundred people.
01:33:14.460
The fools of the city of Regina thought, oh, someone complained.
01:33:19.160
He was the most interesting thing at the conference.
01:33:27.300
So we had to postpone and postpone again and again and again and again and again.
01:33:37.840
In fact, I'm going to check literally right now in real time because I got a little app here telling me how many people.
01:33:44.340
So whenever people asked for a refund because of the constant postponement, we gave it to them, obviously.
01:33:56.660
But we're selling tickets some more because there's room.
01:34:02.660
Oh, and by the way, we got a little pre-show VIP wine and cheese and then a dinner afterwards with Patrick Moore if you want to come to that.
01:34:10.120
But I'm so excited that we are proceeding with that event two years late, but we're proceeding with it.
01:34:20.760
If you asked for a refund and got your ticket refunded, you can buy a ticket again if you like.
01:34:32.620
I just wanted to tell you that because, boy, we should have had that event before, but the pandemic stopped us.
01:34:41.560
And it's not just about getting together after being apart from each other.
01:34:44.940
It's about re-platforming a guy who is de-platformed, re-platforming a guy and showing the city of Regina shame on them.
01:34:59.620
But give me one more glance at realreporters.ca.
01:35:08.540
That's if you believe in our crowdfunded journalism.
01:35:17.240
Literally, as we've been here, it was 7.07, then 7.15, then 7.16, then whatever to whatever way.
01:35:28.680
It's like, you know, this is what PBS used to do with their telethons.
01:35:36.000
Oh, Mr. Trudeau, can I have some free millions of dollars?
01:35:52.240
Or someone who calls up Justin Trudeau and begs?
01:35:57.060
And you don't think he reminds you who gave you the million dollars?
01:36:00.080
I'm so grossed out by the bailout media, the bought-off media, the $61 million secret payment media.
01:36:07.840
And for the government commission to say, to specifically say crowdfunding is a no-no.
01:36:19.120
And the fact that they hate our civil liberties project for fight the fines.
01:36:23.560
By the way, that's done through the Democracy Fund.
01:36:27.740
The Democracy Fund, not that you would be dumb not to know it.
01:36:30.600
But if you're trying to attack us for that, do your research.
01:36:35.800
That money goes to the Democracy Fund, which is an independent CRA charity that pays.
01:36:40.760
When we raise money for Arthur Pawlowski or the other 2,200 clients,
01:36:53.980
I love the fact that our very independence is what bugs the debate commission.
01:37:08.460
But we're the most independent in many measures.
01:37:15.800
And that's specifically what the government debates commission hates.
01:37:23.700
You know, I bet it's still the same because it's, you know, just because I'm impatient doesn't mean that someone else.
01:37:57.940
Here's a dog video that will hopefully make you feel a little bit better about your day.