DAVID MENZIES ｜ Why is Justin Trudeau so afraid of the working class？
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Summary
Ezra Levenshave's first experience with GM dates back to 1980, when he was still in high school and decided that the acquisition of a boss car would perhaps marginally improve his dating chances. And then, a few years later, the Camaro would be rendered a write-off.
Transcript
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Tonight, we all know that the Justin Trudeau liberals hate the independent press, but get
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this. So does General Motors. It's Tuesday, December 6, 2022. I'm David Menzies, and this
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For what it's worth, folks, my initial experience with General Motors dates back to
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1980. I was still in high school at the time, and I decided that the acquisition of a boss
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car would perhaps marginally improve my dating chances. So it was that I made the single most
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tragic financial decision of my entire life. I sold an appreciating asset, that would be
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my comic book collection, in order to purchase a depreciating asset, that would be a used
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1974 Chevy Camaro. And in the Department of Insult to Injury, in just two years, the Camaro would
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be rendered a write-off. What an investment, eh? Especially given that the Chevy failed to
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clinch a date. Yeah, that's right. I'm blaming my lack of romantic success on an automobile.
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Maybe I should have splurged for a set of chrome-colored mag wheels. Oh, and P.S., had I held on to that
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comic book collection. I could now buy a new Ferrari off the lot today. Loser. My only other
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GM experience came via Lady Menzoid acquiring a Chevrolet Venture minivan in 2001 and a Chevrolet
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Uplander minivan in 2009. Same van, different name. If GM believed in truth in advertising, they should
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have called those vehicles the Chevrolet dump truck, better suited for hauling garbage rather
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than people. Actually, a garbage hauler might be too kind. Indeed, I think of that classic Klingon
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put-down of the Starship Enterprise in the episode, The Trouble with Tribbles.
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Don't you think you should rephrase that? You're right. I should. I didn't mean to say that the
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Enterprise should be hauling garbage. I meant to say that it should be hauled away as garbage.
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Yeah, those GM minivans were cheap to acquire, all right, and the ownership experience was proof
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positive that the old adage of you get what you pay for is true. Indeed, those Chevy minivans in no way
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resembled such superb minivan products as the Toyota Sienna or the Honda Odyssey, which might explain why
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GM got out of the minivan business more than a decade ago while its Japanese competitors still sell
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these vehicles in impressive numbers. So you may ask, why am I going down memory lane vis-a-vis my
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experiences with GM? Well, it's because yesterday I had my absolute worst GM experience and it had
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nothing to do with a GM product and everything to do with GM politics. You see, ace videographer
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Lincoln Jay and I ventured out to Ingersoll, Ontario, the site of GM's Cammy factory, which is currently
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being retooled to make electric commercial vans. By the way, we weren't crashing a party here because
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on Sunday evening, I was personally invited to this press conference. Stated the invite, quote,
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GM officials will be joined by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ontario Premier Doug Ford,
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and Ontario Minister Vic Fidelli for an announcement, end quote. Oh, joy, I thought. GM has actually
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officially invited me to an event involving the PM and the Premier, both of whom look upon Rebel News
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staffers these days as being so many skunks to the garden party. But the truth of the matter, and you
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won't see this reported in any legacy media outlet, folks, is I had already been tipped off by an
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insider regarding some shenanigans that would be taking place in Ingersoll that day, which is to say
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this, the head honchos at the plant, which is still being retooled for EV production, told about 150
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construction workers and some 50 programmers to stay home that day. Why? Well, that's the thing.
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No reason was given. Just that all of these tradespeople were suddenly deemed to be persona non grata,
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at least for the Monday press conference event. Don't you find that odd, folks? And the workers,
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I'll tell you, they were mightily miffed. Missing a day's work meant losing eight hours of regular
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salary plus two hours worth of overtime. Canadians are hurting these days given inflation and rising
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interest rates. So why were they being given this unwanted day off? Well, according to sources,
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the unspoken strategy was simply this. Justin Trudeau is increasingly morphing into a control freak
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these days. That's why his itinerary in terms of where and when he is going to be isn't typically
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announced until the very last minute. That's because Justin is getting a little weary of this
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Are you 22nd, you communist? Go Trudeau, you're nothing but a communist pig. That's what you are.
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You're disgusting. We should resign. We are political prisoners.
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That's disgusting. Communist. Communist. Communist. Communist. The 22nd is finished. Go back to China, you
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you're a lover. You're a f**king traitor. Great to see you here. Great to see so many people
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ever say. You're a traitor. You're a traitor. You're a traitor. You're a traitor. You're a traitor.
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I'm glad you're here to have some haters as well. And I know I'll walk you out here with
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colleagues as well. This is a moment to gather and to celebrate being able to gather once again.
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We don't like you. We've been two Canadians. We've been two Canadians. We've been two Canadians.
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Gee, it looks like even the canine contingency despises Trudeau these days.
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Jolly good for Fido, I say, who is once again proving that a dog is truly man's best friend.
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Now the crux of the matter regarding that one-day layoff of electricians and carpenters and assorted
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other real men and women building things with their hands was this. Trudeau's handlers were terrified
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that Justin would be targeted, you know, with a middle finger, or someone might heckle him,
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or someone might unfurl one of those infamous F Trudeau flags. Oh, we can't have that, can we?
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Justin is very sensitive, you know. So in order to protect Justin's uber-sensitive eyes and ears,
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GM management actually sent home more than 200 hard-working Canadians on that Monday merely on the
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suspicion that somebody might misbehave. Oh, and they weren't the only ones sent home that day.
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Because even though myself and Lincoln had invites from Erin Strolovich, she, her,
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a GM senior communications manager, a not so funny thing happened en route to the GM Ingersoll plant.
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By the time we got there, we were deemed to be persona non grata and told to beat it. Oh,
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by the way, here's a photo of Erin Strolovich, she, her. Do you think that anyone has ever mistaken
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Erin Strolovich, she, her for a he, him, or a zezer, or a tempters, or a vis-vers, or an e-m? By the way,
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folks, I'm not making up this pronoun crapola. I'm referencing this from some LGBTQIIAPP, etc. resource
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center. Oh, death, where is thy sting? Anyway, once we arrived on site, a lady with a clipboard,
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and forgive me, I don't know if this person was a she, her, or not, tersely informed us that we
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weren't allowed to take part in the press event, even though we showed her the printed invitations
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sent to us from Ms. Strolovich, she, her. Then along came another security person who told us to scram
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or else, yeah, and you guessed it, we'd be facing trespassing charges from law enforcement.
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We're not allowed access for you guys. Oh, I think there's been a mistake, sir.
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Erin Strolovich, last night, that's our confirmation. This is GM property. Right,
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a GM product communications person invited us. I'm just telling you this is trespassing, okay?
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Even though I've been invited by a GM employee. How is that trespassing? What the hell? It seemed
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like Lincoln and I had devolved from invited guests into the Batabi brothers from a night at the
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Roxbury. You know, those lovable losers who can never make it past the gatekeeper because
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they are never on the list. Ladies, all right, see you next week.
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My good hombre. Remember us? No. Doug and Steve Batabi? Your brothers? No. Yes? Man!
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It works every time. Yeah, I know. Now remember, you can't come in. It's time to play a little softball.
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Hey, good man. How's it going tonight? Good. You still can't come in. Well, that's not what a friend of
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mine told me. Maybe you know him. His name is Abraham. You don't know. What about his two
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friends? George Washington and George Washington. Let's not forget the other boy in the band,
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George Washington. He's a little lonely. He wants to join his buddies.
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And look who else we got. Roosevelt. Roosevelt. And Jefferson.
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Yeah, that's pretty much how Lincoln and I felt, except unlike the Batabi brothers, we were on the
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list. So it was that under threat of arrest, we decided to exit the parking lot, which is indeed
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private property. That's because we know that Justin Trudeau has no problem with utilizing violence
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violence, as the unnecessary invocation of the emergencies act has proven. Indeed, almost exactly
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a year to this day, we found out that Justin's Royal Canadian Mounted henchmen, well, they don't take
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kindly to pesky independent media people who might be prone to asking impolite questions of Prime Minister
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Blackface McGroper. Check out this video from last December outside the Brickworks Cider House in
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Toronto. And keep in mind that Lincoln and I were on a public sidewalk and posed absolutely
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Hey, this is assault. I'm on a sidewalk. What is this? I'm on a sidewalk.
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I am on a sidewalk. What is this? You cannot push me. No Russian word.
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Are you kidding? Are you kidding? I told you. What is this? You can't. Am I under arrest? Am I under arrest?
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Am I under arrest? Because otherwise you're no right. Absolutely egregious. And the biggest question of all
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is this, did Trudeau actually order his Stooges to rough me up like that? It's hard to believe that
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Justin's minions would spontaneously and collectively act like that, wouldn't you say?
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I can never prove my hypothesis, of course, unless one of those Mounties steps forward to do the right
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thing and confess to what really happened that night. But alas, that would not be a smart financial
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move for that particular Mountie now, would it? Oh, speaking of being financially compromised,
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that brings us to the legacy press. As we full know, the media watchdogs have now devolved into lap
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dogs. And yesterday they were, A, welcomed into the GM plant for the press conference,
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and B, did not raise a fuss about the independent media being barred. And C, did not report that 200
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plus tradespeople were sent home without pay. Oh, and D, did not give one second worth of coverage
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to the people who assembled outside the Ingersoll plant to protest against Justin Trudeau. Here,
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check it out. Well, I actually work here and I lost my job over the mandate, so this was a protest I
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wasn't going to miss. Is this because you refused to reveal your vaccination status?
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Yep. I was even a health and safety representative here and I was kicked out of the plant as well.
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Wow. And was it suspended without pay or actual termination?
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Suspended without pay. Okay, then. I got my job back in June.
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Oh, so you're back at the plant then. Are you not worried they might,
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Ah, no. If you don't have freedom, you don't have anything. I have a little daughter at home and
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means a lot to be here. Yeah, nothing to see here, folks. Oh, and by the way,
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so adverse is Trudeau to protesters that his motorcade actually took back routes to the GM plant
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and entered via a back entrance as opposed to the main entrance. What a soy boy wimp.
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Incidentally, the very same day we were getting the bums rush in Ingersoll, Blacklock's reporter
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published a very disturbing story regarding what recently happened to them. Now, if you're not
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familiar with Blacklock's folks, you should get to know this superb independent media outlet. Like
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Rebel News, Blacklock's doesn't take Trudeau bailout and bribe money. Indeed, this outlet often blows the
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whistle on the mainstream vipers who gladly hurl themselves out to the Liberal Party of Canada.
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But they are very thin-skinned, these legacy media types, you see, and they are prone to carrying out
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vendettas in order to serve their political puppet masters. Check out this story entitled
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Parliamentary press gallery executives accompanied by armed police on Friday evicted Blacklock's.
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All questions were referred to a House of Commons employee. Blacklock said the eviction,
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first of its kind in the history of the National Press Building, was clear reprisal over its continued
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protests against media subsidies. Eviction followed Gallery President Guillaume Saint-Pierre's threat
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to terminate Blacklock's membership. The eviction letter stated Blacklock's managing editor,
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Tom Korsky, was impolite, disturbs the journalists around him, and streams parliamentary committee hearings
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on his computer. The complaints were made by three reporters, Emily Bergeron and Michelle Saba of
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Canadian Press and freelancer Helene Buzetti, a former Gallery president. 14 other reporters assigned
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desks in the National Press Building did not sign the complaint. Failure to observe these prohibitions
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actions could result in further and potentially more serious sanctions, including further and
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potentially permanent prohibitions, wrote President Saint-Pierre, correspondent for the Journal de
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Montreal, end quote. Oh my goodness gracious me! You mean Blacklock's employees were treated like
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criminals, perhaps even terrorists, because Mr. Korsky is impolite and that he
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disturbs the journalists around him? Well, off with his head then. Oh, but wait folks, there's more.
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Quote, Blacklock's is the only Press Gallery member eligible for federal subsidies that neither solicits
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nor accepts government funding. The eviction came one day after Blacklock's published access to
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information records detailing a private meeting between 35 unnamed publishers and the Canada Revenue
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Agency on distribution of $595 million in subsidies, end quote. Wow, hey, whatever happened to that old
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chestnut folks? You know, the public has the right to know. Oh, that media mantra is deader than disco
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when it comes to the lamestream press having its dirty laundry displayed in public. Funny that.
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Every outlet from Torstar to Global News would rather Canadians not know about their filthy lucre coming
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in via the PMO. What a disgrace. But Blacklock's is a lot like Rebel News in that it does not bend the
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knee. It does not get intimidated. It does not fly the white flag of surrender. To it, quote,
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we will now see the Press Gallery in court, Blacklock's stakeholders said in a statement. Our subsidized
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competitors met in secret, plotted punitive measures over petty grievances, and served an
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eviction notice accompanied by armed police. Their conduct is outrageous, end quote.
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This, folks, is indeed the sorry state of journalism in Justin Trudeau's Democratic People's Republic of
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Canada these days. First, he bribes the mainstream media to reinvent themselves as so many trained
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seals and stenographers. And for those unaccepting of the carrot, well, out comes the stick, figuratively
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and literally. And just wait to see what the Canadian free speech biosphere looks like should
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the Liberals be successful with their various bills to censor the internet in the months ahead.
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For our protection, of course. Trudeau more and more resembles a dictator. This great dominion
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more and more resembles a banana republic. Although we don't grow bananas here, do we? So let's just
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call this nation a maple syrup republic, except it's far more sour than sweet. Oh, incidentally, while Trudeau
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and Ford praised the Ingersoll plant for going all EV, how odd that this would seem to be yet another case of
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do as we say, not as we do. Which is to say, did Blackface McGroper and Fat Bastard show up in electric
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vehicles themselves? Are you kidding? Range anxiety is for the ham and eggers out there, folks. These
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esteemed leaders get around in Chevy Suburbans and Ford Expeditions, you know, V8 festooned,
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supersized SUVs that aren't powered via the lithium crystals, but good old fashioned and reliable fossil
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fuels. Oh, and keep the engines running, Jeeves. We wouldn't want Justin's precious arse to be greeted
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by cold leather seats once the press conference wraps. Now, would we? As for what was said in that
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press conference, you'll have to reference the mainstream media reports for all the self-congratulatory
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details, given that, as I said, we were banished from that event under threat of arrest, even though,
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as previously stated, we had been invited there. But when it comes to GM choosing to honor an invitation
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or kowtowing to Justin Trudeau, well, it's really a no-brainer for the general to act unethically
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and immorally, wouldn't you say? After all, should GM go bankrupt yet again and require yet another
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taxpayer-funded bailout, you really don't want to make an enemy out of your Ottawa-based sugar daddy,
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do you? And for decades now, GM has not been run by rocket scientists. Indeed, you go back to the
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1960s and GM's North American market share for vehicles hovered around 50%. That's staggering.
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Imagine that. One out of every two cars on the road was manufactured by the general.
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And today, well, GM's market share is less than 16%. And consider this. The last time
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General Motors skidded into Chapter 11 was 2009. According to the Harvard Business Review,
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the reasons were many, including GM makes cars people don't want. GM is too slow to innovate
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because of its size. GM is too bureaucratic and unable to adjust to changing markets. GM's dealer
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network is too large. GM sold off its formerly profitable financing business, GMAC. Oh,
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and one more thing. GM had stopped making a profit since 2005. Indeed, since 2005 to the first quarter of
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2009, folks, GM had lost a staggering $90 billion US. In the here and now, GM is gambling big time on
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electrification. The company has stated that by 2035, which isn't really all that far away,
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100% of its vehicles will be electric. But what if this strategy does not pan out for a multitude of
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reasons? What if GM again craps out on its business strategy? Well, that's where government comes into
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play. GM, as the saying goes, is too big to fail. So if GM does go belly up in the years ahead,
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federal governments on both sides of the border will likely yet again bail out this bloated behemoth
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with your tax dollars. All of which is to say that GM unprofessionally revoking its invitations to
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Lincoln and I and then threatening to have us arrested, that was a no-brainer for the company.
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We're just a couple of schlubs that are part of the icky independent press. But the Liberal Party of
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Canada? Ooh, you don't want to offend those cats. After all, in 2035, they might still be in office or
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return to office. And if GM needs yet another bailout, it might be a really, really good thing
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to play nice with those politicians cutting the checks.
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A few months back, when Elon Musk began his hostile takeover of Twitter, many observers,
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myself included, found it somewhat baffling that the left was losing its collective mind
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over the proposed acquisition. After all, the lion's share of social media platforms are owned by
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left-leaning Silicon Valley tech giants. Why should they be so concerned that a single major platform
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would be veering right of center? Well, last week we received an answer to that query.
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That's when Elon Musk and journalist Matt Tebbe released the first batch of emails detailing
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collusion between the Biden campaign and Twitter under its previous regime. Indeed, it was revealed
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that former Twitter executive Vijaya Ghadi, who headed the company's legal policy and trust department,
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played a key role in the story's suppression, and that Twitter worked alongside the Biden
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campaign to censor content on the platform. That is a bombshell. For this is not a conspiracy theory, folks.
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Rather, this is a bona fide conspiracy period. And now this just in, Wikipedia is voting on the deletion of a page
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covering this topic because its editors have deemed it to be a nothing burger, with many claiming that the story isn't
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notable because mainstream media outlets did not provide it with significant coverage.
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Wow. As they say in the news business, talk about burying the lead. And with more on the
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ongoing story of Twitter is Rebel News reporter Ian Miles Chong. Welcome to the Ezra Levent show, Ian.
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Fantastic. Ian, so much to digest here. But first of all, what were your thoughts about former Twitter
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executives colluding with the Biden campaign to bury that Hunter Biden laptop scandal in the first place?
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Well, it doesn't come to me as a surprise, given the predilection of these executives and the views that
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they hold. I mean, they all live in San Francisco. And I think Elon Musk even said it best that San
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Francisco is basically exporting its culture to the world, right? Its narratives are being exported right
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now, whether it's, you know, social, you know, like how they view society, how they view gender,
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for instance. And of course, it's politics as well. And if anything, they would want to protect their
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golden goose, which is, of course, Joe Biden. So to have a story that is humiliating to him,
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possibly damaging his chances at the election is something they would want to suppress. And that
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is exactly what they did. And it's fascinating, Ian, isn't it? Because we go back to when that
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happened. Twitter actually deleted or deplatformed the Twitter account of the New York Post, no less,
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because they had the scoop on this story. Meanwhile, they were still they were still catering
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to accounts held by the Taliban, held by the mullahs in Iran. Ian, this is astonishing
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that a company based in the land of the First Amendment would go on such a journalistic jihad
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in the first place. Absolutely. And I think a lot of conservatives in the U.S. have argued that
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Twitters and Facebooks and all these other platforms should lose their Section 230 rights,
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because they're acting as a publisher. They're behaving like editors instead of being neutral
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social media platforms. And I'm inclined to agree now. However, I would, you know, given that
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Elon Musk has taken over, maybe Section 230 is good after all. I think that we should be looking at all
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these other platforms, Meta and TikTok and YouTube, of course, which have similarly suppressed free
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speech and as well as the truth just in general. And, you know, it's so perversely ironic, isn't it, Ian?
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When we go back to when Elon Musk first set his sights on Twitter and people were freaking out and
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people at Twitter were freaking out. But to me, I talk about being the author of your own misfortune.
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In other words, if Twitter hadn't been so blatant in its censorship, if they hadn't been so obvious
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in deplatforming right of center views, this never would have aroused the curiosity of Elon Musk in the
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first place. What say you, my friend? That's absolutely correct. I mean, you don't have to be
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a genius, you know, looking at Twitter and not realizing that the suppression only goes one way.
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They talk about trust and safety. And yet the only people affected by their decisions or moderating
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decisions are people on the right or people on the center. Whereas Antifa, for instance, which is a
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far left militant organization, has been allowed to organize violent actions on Twitter itself and do so
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with impunity. You know, again, it is just fascinating to me. And it brings us to your most recent
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story on the Rebel News site, Ian, which is about Wikipedia having a non-trivial left-wing bias.
00:30:56.000
Those are the words from Elon Musk himself. What do you make of this business of Wikipedia
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thinking that this whole Hunter Biden laptop story is a nothing burger when I would argue it's the
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precise opposite? Well, it's working side by side with the media. This is not the first time that
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we've seen a kind of unspoken collusion between Wikipedia editors and their friends in the media,
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because I don't think they openly talk about this, but they certainly serve the same agenda. And that
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is what we're seeing right now. They want to suppress this story as a so-called nothing burger,
00:31:34.800
because it damages their narrative. So they will do anything in their power to ensure that the
00:31:40.240
story doesn't gain any traction or gain any legs. And they will claim that because the media is not
00:31:44.960
covering it, therefore it's not a story. And the media in turn can say the same thing. They'll say,
00:31:49.360
well, there's no Wikipedia page on it, so therefore it is not a notable story worth covering. And they've
00:31:54.720
done so numerous times. They did the same thing with the lab leak theory a couple of years ago when that
00:32:01.840
was suppressed. That was censored. And so hopefully Elon Musk comes out with his next batch of Twitter
00:32:07.600
files that will include the suppression of that story. I'm inclined to, you know, I would love to
00:32:14.160
see that, to see a bunch of people exposed, like maybe in the government or maybe with pharmaceutical
00:32:19.520
companies. Who knows? And maybe even law enforcement agencies, Ian, from what we're hearing about the FBI's
00:32:27.280
role in this, you know, the suppressing of the Hunter Biden story. But here's the thing, Ian. Elon Musk has
00:32:36.640
the fight of his life ahead of him, I think. He does. With, you know, getting control of Twitter,
00:32:42.960
warding off his enemies. We know Elon Musk, he does not wave the white flag of surrender. He does not
00:32:50.160
bend the knee to wokeism, you name it. But I'm wondering, does he have any allies in his corner?
00:32:57.760
Does he have any high powered, big financial allies that are going to come to his side in
00:33:05.680
this battle against big tech? I would say so. I mean, and even the people in big tech appear to,
00:33:12.560
some of them appear to be on his side, but they're simply too afraid to speak out against the media,
00:33:17.280
to speak out against the establishment. I mean, very recently we saw that Apple had pulled its
00:33:22.800
advertising from Twitter and Amazon had done the same and the media was cheering it on. They were
00:33:27.920
like, oh, Twitter's dead because it's lost about $200 million a year in advertising. And all Elon had
00:33:33.920
to do was take a trip to Apple to talk to Tim, the CEO there, and he immediately resumed the advertising.
00:33:40.800
So I think that he does have allies. They're just very silent about it. So I'm not too concerned
00:33:46.240
about it on that front, because I think a lot of people believe in Elon's vision for a democratic
00:33:51.600
future, one that allows for free speech. And that future cannot happen if the establishment suppresses
00:33:58.080
people and enacts tyranny on the majority of us, because we deserve to know the truth and we deserve
00:34:03.680
to be able to talk about it. And I think a lot of people understand that the future that Elon wants
00:34:09.200
cannot be realized unless there is democracy and freedom on the internet.
00:34:15.360
And you know, when it comes to democracy and freedom on the internet, Ian, I mean,
00:34:19.200
I look at the other fight that Elon Musk is having with Apple and Apple had announced it was dropping
00:34:26.080
its AirDrop app for the demonstrators in China. And I mean, there was much to demonstrate about the
00:34:34.720
Uyghur Muslim minority. There is a genocide going on right now. There are forced labor camps. There
00:34:40.880
are people being physically sealed into their apartment units. And yet, where is Apple when
00:34:47.120
it comes to speaking out against that? Or where is the NBA or Disney or Hollywood? The silence is
00:34:55.120
It's absolutely deafening. I mean, look at the athletes who instruct everybody to bend their
00:35:00.560
knee to Black Lives Matter, for instance. LeBron James, for instance, he is a cheerleader for China.
00:35:08.560
And at the same time, he talks about social justice in the West, but he's not concerned about the social
00:35:13.600
justice issues that are happening elsewhere, because he's more than happy to take their money and money
00:35:20.800
for him. And a lot of people like him, people in positions of power, celebrities,
00:35:26.640
they are more than happy to virtue signal. But that's all it is. It's just virtue signaling.
00:35:31.360
They don't actually care about these issues. They only go with what's popular.
00:35:35.760
Yeah. The hypocrisy turns my stomach in. It really does. One last question, my friend.
00:35:42.480
I'm going to ask you to look into your crystal ball here. If you're to look down the road, say,
00:35:47.680
three, six months, a year from now. And I know this is a fast moving story. It's changing every day.
00:35:53.760
But where do you see Elon Musk and Twitter in the months to come? I mean, does he emerge as a victor?
00:36:02.240
Is Twitter going to be a profit spending platform? What do you see, my friend?
00:36:08.480
I believe so. I think that he has a vision. He has a plan. This is a man who has some of the most
00:36:14.480
lucrative companies on the planet. We're talking Tesla. He took a company that was basically nothing
00:36:19.920
and turned it into a trillion dollar enterprises, one of the most valuable companies on the market.
00:36:25.920
It is a leader when it comes to EV technology or even the future of automobiles. So I think that
00:36:32.320
Twitter is going to be the future of social media. He does have a plan for something called X,
00:36:36.480
which is basically his idea of having a universal social media platform that incorporates YouTube
00:36:42.400
style videos, TikTok style shorts and so on, as well as long form written content, which is something
00:36:49.760
that is currently dominated, I guess, by Substack and Medium. But to be able to monetize it and have
00:36:55.600
it all on Twitter for content creators, for writers, for journalists, independent journalists like Matt
00:37:01.120
Taibbi, for instance, and Barry Weiss, who also has access to the Twitter files,
00:37:04.960
for them to be able to promote to their audience a whole bunch of content. And of course, Glenn
00:37:09.760
Greenwald, he's amazing. And he would have video content on Twitter. So I do see Twitter being that
00:37:15.840
medium. And he does have a plan for that. And speaking of Twitter itself, I mean, just today,
00:37:20.880
just a few minutes ago, Elon announced that he was cleaning house and he removed a certain individual
00:37:26.480
who was responsible for the suppression of the Twitter files when that was happening. So he is
00:37:32.560
definitely taking action to clean house and to make Twitter in general just a better place.
00:37:37.040
Well, I hope you are right, Ian. And I suspect you are. I mean, like I said, this is a fast moving
00:37:43.040
story. There's so many revelations to come, I'm sure, in the weeks and months ahead. And I would say
00:37:49.520
there are some very nervous people who haven't been outed yet in terms of their role in suppressing
00:37:57.280
certain stories and, dare I say, going against the First Amendment of the United States. Incredible
00:38:03.600
piece. Ian, thank you so much for your insight, as always, my friend.
00:38:08.560
You got it. And folks, that was Ian Miles Chung somewhere in Malaysia. Keep it here. More of the
00:38:29.920
Well, folks, tons of feedback regarding Ezra's monologue yesterday. And that would be about how
00:38:35.360
Oxfordshire County in England has come up with a crackpot war on the car scheme that just absolutely
00:38:44.720
baffles the mind. Chappers04 writes, it's an incredible story which has been barely reported
00:38:52.400
on in the UK, despite or perhaps because this is being a horrific abuse of power. You know,
00:39:00.160
you're absolutely right. By the way, folks, the story in a nutshell is how Oxfordshire County
00:39:05.680
is implementing traffic filters. That's a fancy way of saying you can't drive on these particular
00:39:12.560
streets at these particular times or you'll be fined. They want people to walk, cycle,
00:39:20.160
or take public transit. Here's the thing, though. What if I don't want to walk or don't want to cycle
00:39:25.680
or don't want to take public transit? What if I can't? What if I'm picking up bags and bags of
00:39:30.640
groceries and I need my car? Oh, no, no, no. You will do what the powers that be do. Of course,
00:39:37.520
they'll likely be getting around in their limousines. What a disgrace. Viscerally Truthful
00:39:44.000
writes, traffic filter? Orwell warned us about the use of these euphemisms. You know,
00:39:50.320
you're absolutely right. You know, if there's one person from history who I could sit down with folks
00:39:56.480
and have dinner with, it would indeed be George Orwell. For his, you know, future world of 1984
00:40:04.640
to become true with every passing month and year, I'm sure would even scare him. And CHRCH writes,
00:40:15.120
gee, it's almost as if the conspiracy cooks were right again. You are watching the beginning of the
00:40:22.160
climate lockdowns. Yeah, you know what? I don't even know if the climate crisis is part of this
00:40:28.080
nonsense. Just, folks, do me a favor. Please, please, please, none of you send that story or
00:40:34.560
Ezra's monologue to Mayor John Tory. He's used the last two and a half years of the COVID pandemic
00:40:40.640
to declare his own war on the car, ripping out car lanes for bicycle lanes. We sure as hell don't want
00:40:48.400
John Tory to cotton on to this harebrained scheme. Well, folks, that wraps up tonight's edition of
00:40:55.280
the Ezreal Event Show. Thanks so much for tuning in. The big boss man, he'll be back here tomorrow,
00:41:00.720
Wednesday night. In the meantime, stay safe and stay sane. Journalist Matt Tybee released an explosive
00:41:08.320
thread detailing Twitter's decision to censor the New York Post reporting on Hunter Biden's abandoned
00:41:13.680
laptop, which revealed evidence of corruption at the highest levels of the government to the highest
00:41:19.600
levels of the FBI and big tech. Internal emails revealed that the Biden campaign in the DNC colluded
00:41:26.480
with Twitter to censor both information and their political opponents as they were given a direct line
00:41:32.160
of service to Twitter's team of censors. The executive at Twitter, who was named and playing a key role
00:41:39.040
in suppressing the Hunter Biden laptop story is none other than Twitter's top lawyer, Vajaya Gaddy,
00:41:44.880
the former head of legal policy and trust who has a history of being accused of censoring conservative
00:41:51.040
voices. We're a platform that serves the world. So we're a global 75% of the users of Twitter are
00:41:58.080
outside of the United States. Right, right, right. So we don't apply laws of just one country when we're
00:42:04.800
thinking about it. We think about how do you have a global standard that can meet the threshold of
00:42:11.280
as many countries as possible because we want all the people in the world to be able to participate
00:42:15.280
in this conversation. And also meet elections like the Indian election coming up as well.
00:42:19.280
Right. And my understanding is you were also accused of being biased against conservatives in
00:42:23.120
India recently. There was a report on that as well as you held up a sign that said something
00:42:28.000
offensive about the Brahmin. Mm hmm. Yeah. So in that sense, even in other countries,
00:42:34.720
you're accused of the same things that you're being accused of by American conservatives.
00:42:38.480
I think that the situations are very, very different. And I don't think that that the ideologies in play
00:42:45.280
are the same at all. Earlier this year, the Biden administration appointed Gaddy to be on the advisory
00:42:50.880
committee of the Department of Homeland Security's new Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency,
00:42:57.120
otherwise known as the disinformation team, which was ultimately disbanded after public outcry.
00:43:02.800
Gaddy's role on Biden's disinformation team was to provide advice and recommendations to Homeland Security
00:43:09.840
about how the government could better combat misinformation and disinformation,
00:43:14.640
according to The New York Post. During her time on the committee, she helped draft a report that had
00:43:20.560
similar characteristics to George Orwell's Ministry of Truth, which demanded that the government
00:43:26.960
have a greater role in censoring social media platforms of all sizes, mainstream media, cable
00:43:32.480
news, hyper-partisan media, talk, radio, and other online resources. Gaddy has also been accused by
00:43:39.200
Elon Musk of playing a critical role in Twitter's decision to ban former President Donald Trump from
00:43:45.200
the platform. Her role as Twitter's top censor reportedly made her $17 million in the year 2021.
00:43:52.960
So what exactly did the Twitter files reveal? Let's dig in. Journalist Matt Taby, who obtained exclusive
00:43:59.840
access to Twitter's internal documents, writes, The Twitter files tell an incredible story from
00:44:05.440
inside one of the world's largest and most influential social media platforms. Twitter,
00:44:10.880
in its conception, was a brilliant tool for enabling instant mass communication, making a true,
00:44:16.880
real-time global conversation possible for the first time. In an early conception, Twitter more
00:44:23.040
than lived up to its mission statement, giving people the power to create and share ideas and
00:44:28.800
information instantly without barriers. As time progressed, the company was slowly forced to add
00:44:35.520
those barriers. Some of the first tools for controlling speech were designed to combat the likes
00:44:41.280
of spam and financial fraudsters. But slowly over time, Twitter staff and executives began to find
00:44:48.160
more and more uses for these tools. Outsiders began petitioning the company to manipulate speech
00:44:54.240
as well. First a little, then more often, then constantly, Matt writes. By 2020, requests from
00:45:00.880
connected actors to delete tweets were routine. One executive would write to another,
00:45:05.840
more to review from the Biden team. The reply would come back, handled. Celebrities and unknown allies
00:45:12.960
alike could be removed or reviewed at the behest of a political party. Both parties had access to these
00:45:19.200
tools. For instance, in 2020, requests from both the Trump White House and the Biden campaign were
00:45:25.360
received and honored. However, this system wasn't balanced. It was based on contracts. And because Twitter
00:45:31.840
was and is overwhelmingly staffed by people of one political orientation, there were more channels,
00:45:38.640
more ways to complain, open to the left, to Democrats than the right. Which brings us to
00:45:44.960
the Twitter files. Part one, how and why Twitter blocked the Hunter Biden laptop story. Matt writes,
00:45:52.480
on October 14th of 2020, the New York Post published Biden secret emails and expose based on the contents of
00:45:59.840
Hunter Biden's abandoned laptop. Twitter took extraordinary steps to suppress this story, removing links
00:46:05.680
and posting warnings that it may be unsafe. They even blocked its transmission via direct message, a tool
00:46:12.560
reserved for extreme cases like child pornography. White House spokeswoman Kayleigh McEnany was locked out of her
00:46:19.280
account for tweeting about the story, prompting a furious letter from Trump campaign staffer Michael Hahn.
00:46:25.360
This led to Twitter's public policy executive Caroline Strom to find out the reasoning behind why the story was
00:46:33.200
censored. Several employees noted that there was tension between the communications and policy teams who had
00:46:39.120
little or less control over moderation and the safety trust in legal teams. Strom was told that the laptop story had been
00:46:47.200
removed for a violation of the company's quote hacked materials policy. The decision was made at the highest
00:46:54.880
level of the company, but without the knowledge of CEO Jack Dorsey, with the former head of legal policy and
00:47:02.160
trust, Vaheya Gaddy, playing a key role. One former employee told Tabby that hacking was the excuse, but within a few hours,
00:47:11.040
pretty much everyone realized that wasn't going to hold. But no one had the guts to reverse it.
00:47:17.200
The confusion was evident in a lengthy exchange which included Gaddy and former trust and safety chief
00:47:23.600
Yoel Roth. Communications official Trenton Kennedy writes, I'm struggling to understand the policy basis for
00:47:31.600
marking this story unsafe. Yoel Roth writes, this is an emerging situation where facts remain unclear,
00:47:39.200
given the severe risks and lessons of 2016 were erring on the side of including a warning and preventing
00:47:45.520
this content from being amplified. Roth's remarks about 2016 is in reference to the FBI's investigation
00:47:53.600
into Hillary Clinton's emails, which was released close to the 2016 presidential election. Like how the
00:48:00.400
New York Post reporting was released close to the 2020 presidential election, Roth didn't want the
00:48:05.680
report to ruin Joe Biden's chance of becoming president. The former vice president of global
00:48:11.600
communications Brandon Borman asks, can we truthfully claim that this is part of the policy to which
00:48:18.800
former deputy general counsel Jim Baker advised that caution is warranted. Tybee writes that the problem
00:48:27.760
with the hacked materials ruling several sources said was that this normally required an official law
00:48:33.840
enforcement finding of a hack. But such a finding never appears throughout what one executive describes
00:48:40.320
as a whirlwind 24-hour company-wide mess. Musk says that the idea behind Twitter files is to come clean
00:48:48.560
on everything that has happened in the past in order to build public trust for the future.
00:48:54.720
Tybee concludes that there is more to be exposed, which will include answers to questions about issues like
00:49:01.760
shadow banning, boosting follower accounts, the fate of various individual accounts, and more.
00:49:08.160
So buckle up and stay tuned for the next episode of the Twitter files.