Jason Kenney resigns as the Prime Minister of Alberta, but not before he becomes the most hated politician in Canada. Ezra Levenant tells the story of how the hero of the Conservative Party of Canada became its most hated member.
00:05:37.640So it's always important for it to be something unconventional. No one's thought of, but that
00:05:42.000also, uh, has, you know, either is intellectually true or has some merit to it in the business
00:05:47.080context. Now, Bill Gates is a good investor, I suppose, but really he had one success in life,
00:05:52.940Microsoft, which engaged in monopolistic behavior to shut out its rivals. I'm not sure if Gates has
00:06:00.460had another success since then, but when you're sitting on a hundred billion dollars, you really
00:06:05.420don't need a second act and you certainly don't need to have to listen to anyone else. I think
00:06:12.380that's the difference between Gates and Elon Musk and Peter Thiel and some others who are clearly
00:06:17.460engaged in ongoing intellectual battles. They're not just coasting. I think that's what it's like
00:06:24.840for billionaires. Think of them as the center of a bullseye and there are rings of people trying to get
00:06:31.260to them, but it's hard. Everyone wants to get to them. You have to have a connection. You have to
00:06:35.980be vetted. You have to make it through a bodyguard of schedulers and assistants and actual bodyguards.
00:06:42.260And once you finally do, you're so grateful for the moment in the sun with them that you want to
00:06:47.960get them to agree with you, which is why you sort of agree with them. Um, which when you think about
00:06:54.120it is analogous to being a powerful politician, it's not about money then, but about political
00:07:01.220power, but you're surrounded by flatterers. Everyone wants your favor. Everyone wants your
00:07:07.360time. Everyone is a flatterer because they want something from you. And the difference is that
00:07:13.200politicians by definition can have their power taken away by rival politicians in a thunderclap
00:07:21.300moment in an election. You can have two billionaires in the same city, but you can't
00:07:26.980have two mayors in the same city. So politicians can make coalitions and alliances. But at the end
00:07:33.500of the day, I bet the average politician is a bit more paranoid and more suspicious of people
00:07:38.000than the average rich guy. Just speculating here. I mean, when you think about it, there's a finite
00:07:43.680amount of power. If you gain power, someone else loses it. Money is not that way. Both people
00:07:49.920in a relationship can get rich. And all of this is my long-winded way, my attempt to understand
00:07:57.340what the heck happened to Jason Kenney, who short years ago left parliament where he had been a
00:08:05.780star cabinet minister under Stephen Harper, where Kenney had been, in fact, and in perception,
00:08:12.700a strong conservative in most things except his open borders immigration, actually.
00:08:17.080Where he had at least a respect for populist conservatism, where he certainly expressed
00:08:22.340support for religious freedom, the skepticism of big government. And in the early months of the
00:08:28.280pandemic as premier, that was his approach. And it must have been hard. The entire world and certainly
00:08:35.340the entire public health deep state, all the media, all the so-called public health officers,
00:08:39.820the United Nations, World Health Organization, everything, everyone, all saying mask laws and
00:08:46.100lockdowns and bans on gatherings and closed schools and closed churches and closed playgrounds,
00:08:53.240none of which had ever been tried before. None of which had been proven in an experiment to be useful.
00:09:00.160None of which could pass any sort of civil liberties test. And he held out for a while.
00:09:05.160But then when he finally collapsed, he went more abusive than almost anyone else in Canada.
00:09:10.480I'll never forget when he issued anti-gathering orders and he had special punitive sections for
00:09:17.980churches, including funerals, where churches had lower gathering limits than liquor stores or
00:09:25.180Costco. Churches were singled out. And as he abandoned any pretense of caring about civil liberties or even
00:09:32.160science, his language started to track the attack language of Justin Trudeau and Teresa Tam.
00:09:38.680He started denouncing small business people who wanted to stay open. He started denouncing churches
00:09:45.140and pastors who not only wanted to exercise their freedom of religion and freedom of association,
00:09:51.180freedom of assembly, but were critical to helping congregants who had mental stress and anxiety and
00:09:58.760depression and worse because of the lockdowns. Jason Kenney became so abusive and punitive.
00:10:04.320It truly was that old, dark joke. The beatings will continue until the morale improves. But
00:10:09.740that's my point about no one being able to tell the emperor that he has no clothes, that he was naked.
00:10:17.860People missed, sorry, people mislead billionaires. People mislead dictators for the same reason.
00:10:24.960There is no one tasked with opposing them and embarrassing them and causing them to rethink
00:10:31.020things. The old king said jesters for that purpose. Who did Jason Kenney have? He started
00:10:37.060to believe what he heard. He started to believe what he said. Ralph Klein called that dome syndrome for
00:10:42.320the dome of the legislature. Preston Manning called that being auto-washed. There were things that
00:10:47.940happened that if they had happened under the leadership of Justin Trudeau or Rachel Notley as premier,
00:10:53.240Jason Kenney would have known they were wrong and would have said so. Police brutality against kids
00:10:59.160on an outdoor skating rink. Police invading a church during church services. That's insane.
00:11:11.060Please get out. Get out of this property. Immediately get out. Get out of this property. Immediately. Out. I
00:11:19.400don't want to hear anything out of this property. Immediately. I don't want to hear a word. Out. Out. Out. Out of this property. Immediately until you come back with a warrant. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out. Out of this property. Immediately out.
00:26:35.880I think he's a guy who thought he was going to work in a free speech oriented social media company and realized he was sort of more going into a commune and a spa.
00:28:48.660It's going to be hard for him to be like, oh, because people should make their own decision.
00:28:53.520It's like, no, but people don't know how to make a rational decision if you don't put out correct things that are supposed to be out in the pub.
00:29:01.920As an advertiser, as my business, as what I do every day and why I go out is, like, we want it to be as fair and transparent and accurate as possible.
00:29:14.080And if that means there's a level of censorship to make it correct, quote unquote, again, and what does correct mean?
00:29:22.860I guess it just kind of goes against the idea of, like, well, what is correct?
00:29:26.780If we're implementing all these rules and Elon wants to dismantle them, then technically our ideology has led us to not making money because we're not making money.
00:29:39.780And Elon wants to turn it the other way so that we can make money.
00:29:42.760There's a statement they need all 7,000 people to say.
00:29:46.900And so they can't, like, tell us the, like, the real truth.
00:30:16.440It's like some group that's trying to just out the employees.
00:30:18.940Like, they're trying to go on dates with them like this and record them and then go sell it to the New York Times and say this is what the Twitter employee is saying.
00:30:39.760I mean, I tell you, I salute your trade craft that your reporter managed to meet him organically in a way that, oh, just the deliciousness there.
00:30:53.240But the serious part of that, and there are a lot, but the idea that there's a correct idea that some bureaucrat, that that guy knows there's a correct idea and an incorrect idea, and he will be like this bureau of disinformation, and he will be the sole arbiter of truth, and he will make the decision for 300 million Twitter users.
00:31:14.460That's the most important takeaway for me there.
00:31:37.300You know, for a guy to be reading a Twitter security memo saying, don't go on a date with Project Veritas while he's on a date with Project Veritas.
00:31:47.680And I loved how your reporter said Project Veritas or something.
00:31:56.180Like I say, to stay cool under pressure like that without, you know, I mean, I wouldn't want to play poker against any of your undercover reporters.
00:32:24.180I don't know if you saw this, but James was at a comedy club in New York City to talk about exactly what happened with this whole Twitter situation.
00:32:30.520And this guy, Alex, who you just saw, he, James went out to ask him questions after this whole situation.
00:32:38.580And we put out the video last night, and James ran it through the comedy club of how Alex sprinted away from him, trying to hide from him in the street in these different places.
00:32:47.860It's actually, you should watch that video, too.
00:32:49.880And today, we're still putting out a conversation between Siro, the first guy you watched, and our journalist, once he found out that he was being recorded.
00:32:59.500And he also does not react in the most pleased way, if you can put it that way.
00:33:56.120Boy, I love those guys at Project Veritas.
00:34:09.940I mean, could you keep a straight face if you were on a date with someone, but you were actually on an undercover reporter, and they said, oh, I have to be careful for undercover reporters going on dates with me.
00:34:22.320Look at this warning from corporate security.
00:34:25.740I don't know how you could keep a straight face.
00:34:27.920I mean, like I said, I wouldn't want to play poker with those guys.
00:34:31.300I mean, I love some of those undercover cop movies.
00:34:33.620I mean, there's just some amazing ones, the drama, the stress, but those guys at Project Veritas do a great job.
00:34:56.540I used to be good chums with him, but I think the party has a fresh start, and I think that that's the best way, not to try and cover up what Kenny was doing.
00:35:04.940As a senior conservative asked me to do, I refused, obviously, but I think to actually get someone good in that chair.