EZRA LEVANT | Justin Trudeau meets with Ukraine’s leading Holocaust denier — and both the Canadian media and the Jewish lobby are silent
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
164.43481
Summary
Justin Trudeau meets with a Holocaust denier, and both the Canadian media and the Jewish lobby are silent. Ezra exposes the hypocrisy of the Canadian press, and asks if there's any good reason why a weak leader like Justin Trudeau would make a phone call to Vladimir Putin.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. You know, I saw a picture of Justin Trudeau meeting someone in Ukraine,
00:00:04.360
and I had no idea who he was because no Canadian journalist identified him, but the man identified
00:00:09.180
himself. His name was Andrei Melnick, and that name probably doesn't ring a bell, but
00:00:14.100
he's a prominent Holocaust denier. What was Trudeau doing meeting with him? I'll tell you
00:00:20.980
the details, but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. It's
00:00:25.220
this podcast, but with video, and especially on a show like today that's so useful. I want
00:00:30.440
to show you these pictures of Trudeau swanning around Kiev with this Nazi Holocaust denier.
00:00:37.500
You won't believe it unless you see it. Go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's
00:00:42.060
eight bucks a month. You get the video version of this daily podcast, and the eight bucks
00:00:45.940
a month may not sound like a lot to you, but we rely on it to pay the bills here. I'd be
00:00:52.020
very grateful if you subscribed. Please go to rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's
00:01:13.720
Tonight, Justin Trudeau meets with Ukraine's leading Holocaust denier, and both the Canadian
00:01:19.200
media and the Jewish lobby are silent. It's June 12th, and this is The Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:39.340
On the weekend, Justin Trudeau made a trip to Ukraine. Here's a photo of it arriving, being
00:01:46.200
greeted by a Ukrainian politician named Andrei Milnik. I'll talk about him a bit more. It
00:01:52.640
was a surprise trip to Ukraine for Trudeau, but in a way not surprising. Trudeau's far better
00:01:57.040
received there than he is here in Canada, where he's heckled mercilessly whenever he appears
00:02:02.780
in public spaces that aren't controlled by his staff.
00:02:06.320
Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! You fucking piece of shit! Fucking pedophile! Fuck you!
00:02:17.340
But it's not just the common people in Canada who are turning against Trudeau. The fancy people,
00:02:22.040
well, they're giving Trudeau a hard time, too. Dave Johnson, the disgraced former governor general,
00:02:27.360
hired by Trudeau to make his Chinese corruption scandal go away. Well, Johnson resigned, and it
00:02:32.500
looks just awful. A new poll by Abacus Research, which is run by a liberal activist, by the way,
00:02:38.280
so they're certainly as pro-Trudeau as they get. They found that only 20% of Canadians think Trudeau
00:02:44.120
deserves to be re-elected. That's incredible. That's the little red bar at the bottom there.
00:02:50.100
20% of Canadians think he's doing well. So basically, I don't know, that's all the government
00:02:55.180
employees, Chinese diplomats, and CBC staff, and that's about it. I mean, who wouldn't want to go
00:03:00.980
to Ukraine to be treated like a rock star? Trudeau just gave away another half billion dollars to
00:03:07.500
Ukraine's war. No debate in the House of Commons about it, let alone a vote. I mean, there was no
00:03:12.320
debate or vote about giving 13 billion dollars to Volkswagen to build a battery factory in Canada.
00:03:17.440
Half a billion here, 13 billion there. Pretty soon you're talking real money. Gee, I wonder why we're
00:03:23.140
having inflation and high taxes. The media that accompanied Trudeau on his trip to Ukraine were
00:03:28.820
gushing over him, of course. Look at this tweet from the Globe and Mail's Mark McKinnon, just as one
00:03:34.720
example. He says, at the Canadian embassy in Kiev, I asked PM Justin Trudeau whether he would take a
00:03:42.300
phone call from Vladimir Putin. After a long pause, oh, I bet it was very dramatic. He said he'd never
00:03:48.520
consider the question, quote, he is not someone that I have a particular level of trust or interest
00:03:56.300
in at this point. That's your question for Trudeau? Look, whenever you think of Putin, there are
00:04:03.180
various reasons why he might call, I don't know, Ukraine's Vladimir Zelensky, or Americans Joe Biden,
00:04:09.880
or France's Emmanuel Macron, or the UK's Rishi Sunak, or Xi Jinping of China, or Erdogan, or Germany's
00:04:16.060
Schultz. In what possible scenario could you imagine, either a good or a bad reason, can you
00:04:22.340
think of any reason why Putin would call Justin Trudeau? I mean, is there a less consequential
00:04:28.880
leader on the world stage? Is there a weaker lightweight than Trudeau? I'm truly curious
00:04:34.300
in what scenario the Globe and Mail thinks Putin would telephone Trudeau. I mean, for good or bad
00:04:40.280
reasons. Can you think of one? Even the United States and the United Kingdom and Australia have just set
00:04:45.920
up their own foreign affairs club called AUKUS, so they don't have to include Canada anymore.
00:04:54.240
Here's that same Mark McKinnon when Trudeau arrived this weekend. He tweets,
00:05:00.720
in standing up for press freedoms during his visit to Kiev, Justin Trudeau rediscovers Canada's historic
00:05:06.880
role in Ukraine. My take. Yeah, really, Trudeau standing up for press freedoms, that's a new one.
00:05:11.860
But for now, just look at that photo again. You see that man there again, that Andrei Melnyk? He met
00:05:18.240
Trudeau and was touring him around the Capitol. Now, I read Mark McKinnon's entire story in the Globe and
00:05:25.320
Mail, and it doesn't mention Melnyk. Same with every other media company that covered the trip.
00:05:32.980
None of them mentioned Melnyk. But there's no chance they didn't know who he is. He's the deputy foreign
00:05:38.900
minister of Ukraine. That's why he was meeting Trudeau and touring him around. That's why he
00:05:43.300
was the official greeter. But he's much more than that. He's a notorious Holocaust denier and Nazi
00:05:50.160
sympathizer. For real. I mean, a real Nazi, not a Nazi, like Trudeau calls anyone who disagrees with
00:05:56.300
them. Andrei Melnyk is a passionate defender of the Nazis, and he has caused international incidents
00:06:02.980
over it. I mean, watch just for a couple of minutes as he goes on a rant about how the Jews
00:06:08.580
are lying to him about the Holocaust and about how Stepan Bandera, Ukraine's leading Nazi during the
00:06:15.740
Second World War, was actually a good guy and don't believe the lies about him. This is an excerpt for a
00:06:20.420
much longer show. This wasn't a gaffe or an accident or a secret recording. Andrei Melnyk was on the record
00:06:27.760
very proudly and stubbornly defending the Nazi project in Ukraine. Watch for a bit.
00:06:33.860
That was, was sie, was du nennst. Es gab mehrere Massaker an Polen in der West-Ukraine
00:06:38.020
durchgeführt von den Barriere-Porten. Ja, und es gab auch, und es gab auch auf gleiche Weise
00:06:41.920
die gleichen Massaker der Polen gegenüber der Ukraine. Auch 10.000 der Ukraine. Macht ja nichts
00:06:46.180
besser. 10.000 der Ukraine wurden, das war, das war, das war ein Krieg. Und deswegen, das wollen
00:06:52.980
jetzt die Polen, also diese Geschichte, politisieren. Wir sind dagegen. Aber hat Israel Unrecht? Israel,
00:06:58.260
der Staat Israel, das 800.000 Juden auch von Banderas Truppen und Bandera umgekehrt? Also Israel,
00:07:02.880
was heißt? Denken Sie sich das aus? Ich weiß nicht, was Sie sich ausdenken, aber wir reden über Bandera. Und
00:07:09.180
wir reden über Bandera. Und schon ist die ganze Welt erkennt an, dass Bandera an der Ermordung von
00:07:13.200
den von hunderttausenden Juden beteiligt sind. Nein, das stimmt nicht. Außer die Ukraine. Es gibt keine Belege,
00:07:18.960
dass Bandera-Truppen hunderttausende Juden ermordet haben. Es gibt keine Belege. Es gibt,
00:07:24.480
das ist diese Narrative, dass die Russen bis heute durchsetzen und das in Deutschland und auch in Polen
00:07:30.900
und Israel auch unterstützen können. Denken sich die jüdischen Gemeinden das alle aus? Ich weiß nicht,
00:07:35.680
woher sie diese Daten nehmen, aber ich bin bereit, auch mit den jüdischen Gemeinden darüber sachlich
00:07:42.540
zu reden. Wenn sie wirklich nicht nur das wiederholen, was wir seit Jahrzehnten hören,
00:07:48.640
Bandera ist... Es gab Flugblätter, als die Deutschen reingekommen sind nach Reviv. Da hieß es,
00:07:53.460
Volk, das musst du wissen. Moskowiten, Polen, Ungaren und Juden, sie sind deine Feinde. Vernichte sie.
00:07:59.400
Das musst du wissen. Deine Führung. Dein Führer, Stepan Bandera. Was für Flugblätter? Als die Deutschen
00:08:07.140
gerade einmarschiert sind, da haben sie quasi an die Bevölkerung das verteilt, die ja noch unter anderer
00:08:13.180
Herrschaft an Lawanen. Die haben sich ja mit den Deutschen verbrüdert. Das ist doch ganz klar.
00:08:19.200
Also... Und ich frage mich, ich frage mich halt, ich meine, ich verstehe... Also ich werde dir heute
00:08:25.120
nichts sagen, dass ich mich davon distanziere. Und das war's. Ja. Und das war's. Das ist ja deine Entscheidung.
00:08:30.860
Ja, das ist meine Entscheidung und das kannst du nicht verstehen, aber weil... Ich verstehe nicht, wie man
00:08:36.700
jemanden als Helden bezeichnen kann, der gleichzeitig Massenmörder von Juden und Polen war.
00:08:42.860
Bandera war kein Massenmörder. Von Juden und Polen. Er war kein Massenmörder.
00:08:49.120
Das war part of a lengthy conversation. He denies that the Nazis killed 800,000 Ukrainian Jews.
00:08:55.400
He said there was zero evidence of it. He said that Germany and Poland and Israel were all lying
00:09:01.540
about it. In effect, he said those countries were faking the Holocaust and that it didn't
00:09:06.900
actually happen that way. Those countries were shocked. Poland and Israel lodged an official
00:09:12.360
diplomatic protest. Germany, which doesn't take kindly to Holocaust deniers, pressed Ukraine to dismiss
00:09:18.620
Melnick as their ambassador to Germany. And they did. Melnick literally caused an international
00:09:25.560
incident by championing the leading Ukrainian Nazi leader. It was so serious, Ukraine actually caved
00:09:33.140
and fired him. Else Germany would have deported him, I suppose. And that's literally the first man Trudeau
00:09:41.180
met with when he arrived in Kyiv. That's the man who toured around the city with Trudeau. Oh, and look
00:09:48.440
who was there too. Chrystia Freeland. You might recall that Freeland's own grandfather worked for
00:09:55.040
Bandera, the Ukrainian Nazis. Freeland's grandfather actually published a Nazi newspaper in Ukraine that
00:10:01.700
he had expropriated from a Jew, actually. I'm not blaming Freeland for her grandfather. How could I?
00:10:07.840
But she kept his identity a secret and whitewashed it and claimed it was Russian propaganda.
00:10:13.380
She literally tried the same tactic as Andrei Melnick of claiming that any concerns were fake.
00:10:21.180
Chrystia Freeland's grandfather was a Ukrainian Nazi and she tried to hide it. And there she is on the
00:10:27.980
weekend proudly touring around Kyiv with Justin Trudeau under the guidance of Ukraine's most senior
00:10:33.980
Nazi sympathizer, Andrei Melnick. He's not shy about his views. He's not a nobody. He was the former
00:10:40.720
ambassador to Germany. He caused a multinational scandal. It's still scandalous that he's in the Ukrainian
00:10:46.020
government at all. But for Trudeau and Freeland to choose to be toured around with him publicly, no less,
00:10:51.860
is so utterly gross. Before Melnick had his video rant against the Jews in Israel, Trudeau and Freeland
00:10:59.120
might have been able to plead ignorance. But after? No. The only possible explanation is that they're fine with
00:11:06.500
him. Either they're fine with him and they don't mind spending time with him, learning from him, being led
00:11:14.000
by him. Either they're fine with that or, God forbid, they actually agree with him. It's got to be one of the
00:11:21.180
two. And not a word from the media other than, Mr. Trudeau, if Putin called you on the phone, what would you
00:11:28.520
say? That's a child's question. That's a flattering hypothetical question that puffs up Trudeau. It's never
00:11:33.320
going to happen. But it's a lot easier to ask a dreamy question than that. Then why are you meeting
00:11:38.820
with Ukraine's leading Holocaust denier? Did the reporters who accompany Justin Trudeau on this trip
00:11:44.860
genuinely not know? Or are they simply afraid Vladimir Zelensky has banned opposition media
00:11:52.060
just as he's banned opposition political parties and he suspended elections in Ukraine indefinitely?
00:11:58.760
He's literally suspended elections until the war is over, until the emergency is over, which isn't
00:12:03.800
happening anytime soon. No wonder Trudeau likes this guy. Oh, and he's even cracking down on churches that
00:12:09.300
he thinks are insufficiently loyal. That's his move. Anyone in the media, in politics or religion who
00:12:14.520
doesn't support him, he says is a traitor working for Russia. So yeah, maybe journalists just don't want
00:12:20.380
to ask about Andre Melnick because they're afraid of being detained or jailed or worse. But what's the
00:12:28.020
excuse of Canada's official Jewish lobby? I say this as a Canadian and I say this as a Jew, and actually
00:12:34.680
as a former director of one of these groups, for years I was on the board of the Canada-Israel
00:12:39.000
Committee, which is now part of Canada's largest Jewish lobby group called CJA, or the Center for Israel
00:12:44.360
in Jewish Affairs. If you skim their website, you can see they claim to fight anti-Semitism
00:12:50.520
and Holocaust denial. Really? It's the same for the B'nai B'rith, which is a kind of competitor to CJA.
00:12:57.240
And then there's even a special Holocaust-oriented Jewish group called the Simon Wiesenthal Center.
00:13:03.960
I was checking their Twitter feeds all weekend and today, all three of these groups, and there's simply
00:13:09.000
nothing on Trudeau meeting and greeting and touring and learning and praising Ukraine's
00:13:17.960
CJ's busy, though. He's busy tweeting about an Israeli soccer team. Thanks for that.
00:13:23.480
And here's a tweet from the Simon Wiesenthal Center. They're upset about a spray-painted
00:13:27.640
swasca. I get it, me too. But which do you think is perhaps more momentous, Trudeau meeting with Ukraine's
00:13:33.720
leading Holocaust denier in public proudly and giving him half a billion dollars, or
00:13:38.680
some anonymous spray-painted graffiti on a fence? Look, it's pretty obvious what's going on here.
00:13:44.760
These Jewish lobby groups don't dare criticize Justin Trudeau. In fact,
00:13:49.240
the Simon Wiesenthal Center's new president just happens to be Michael Levitt, a former Trudeau MP.
00:13:55.720
Maybe that's why he was tweeting about golf this weekend instead of his former boss. Mustn't upset
00:14:02.600
the boss. Hey, do you remember a few months ago when Christine Anderson, the member of the European
00:14:07.960
Parliament from Germany, came to visit in Canada? Do you remember when she was denounced as a racist
00:14:13.960
by everyone? Everyone in the media, all the so-called human rights group, frankly,
00:14:18.760
even Pierre Paglia's office denounced him. Do you remember that, denouncing her?
00:14:23.880
I know Christine Anderson a little bit, not personally, but I know her politically.
00:14:26.920
I've interviewed her a few times before. She's great. She was really strong on freedom and the
00:14:31.960
truckers. It's just a reminder. It goes out to all the Canadians, especially the Canadian truckers.
00:14:39.160
I am so very proud of you. I applaud your bravery and your determination to stand up for freedom,
00:14:47.160
democracy and the rule of law. She was universally condemned as a Nazi,
00:14:53.160
but that's the thing about Germany. And it's a reason why they kicked out Milnik and refused to give
00:14:57.800
him, to have him as Ukraine's ambassador. It is literally a crime to be a Nazi in Germany.
00:15:05.080
So you can say a lot of things about Christine Anderson. You can say she's wrong or you don't
00:15:09.160
like her or whatever, but the accusation that she's a Nazi is actually not only untrue, it's legally
00:15:16.120
impossible. It is a crime in Germany to even say Heil Hitler or to fly a Nazi flag. Holocaust denial is a crime.
00:15:24.200
If she had said or done anything that this Nazi, Melnick, had said, she would be ejected from her
00:15:30.360
role and prosecuted and jailed. The insane and defamatory smears against her were built on nothing,
00:15:37.080
really just a factually false smear of her published in the Toronto Sun by liberal opposition trickster
00:15:42.600
Warren Kinsella. But nonetheless, Sija, the biggest Jewish lobby group in Canada, they went nuts over her.
00:15:49.080
Here's just one example. We're deeply concerned by Conservative Party of Canada MPs, Leslyn Lewis,
00:15:55.960
Dean Allison, Colin Carey, meeting with Christine Anderson, a member of the far-right German AFD party,
00:16:03.080
known for Islamophobic and anti-immigrant views. We raised this directly with Conservative Party
00:16:07.720
headquarters. So naming and shaming Conservative MPs for meeting with a Conservative member of the European
00:16:13.640
Parliament. Not just condemning them in public, but demanding the peer poly of discipline them. That's what
00:16:18.520
Sija was doing there. Nothing about Jews, by the way. Nothing about the Holocaust, by the way. She's never
00:16:23.720
said or done anything like that. She's actually a Philo-Semite. She likes the Jews. She likes Israel.
00:16:29.720
But these Jewish groups were raging against her. Not a peep about Trudeau, though. Not from Sija, not from the
00:16:36.120
Simon Wiesenthal Center. Isn't that funny? I wrote an email to those three Jewish groups, and I have
00:16:44.840
some connection to each of them. Two of them, Sija and the Simon Wiesenthal Center, didn't even write
00:16:49.480
back. I mean, why would they? They've decided to stay quiet. They're not going to feed the fire here.
00:16:55.400
The third group, the B'nai B'rith, they wrote back. I'll give them credit for that. They said,
00:16:59.000
Hi, Ezra. Thanks for your email. We have researched Andrei Melnyk and found one contentious statement.
00:17:05.880
It's a highly disappointing statement. For certain, we denounce in the strongest possible
00:17:11.240
terms any remarks that have the capacity to distort or diminish the facts of the Holocaust. However,
00:17:16.600
our research did not produce any evidence that suggests Mr. Melnyk is a notorious Ukrainian
00:17:21.640
Nazi and Holocaust denier. Signed, Marty York, Director of Communications. Really.
00:17:29.640
Did you not see the video? Germany kicked him out. When was the last time Germany kicked out a
00:17:35.400
diplomat? It created an international scandal. Poland and Israel put up public statements condemning
00:17:41.080
him. That's not really enough to move the needle for the B'nai B'rith. Would they be making any public
00:17:47.640
comment at all? I wrote back to Marty and he said, Ezra, just to re-articulate my remarks in my previous
00:17:52.760
email to you, based on the evidence available to us, we don't share your interpretation. We will not be
00:17:57.880
making a public statement on this. Really. A private email telling me they don't like his
00:18:05.320
one contentious comment, but they're not going to even tweet about it. But even that is more than
00:18:11.720
Michael Levitt, the former Trudeau MP who now runs the Simon Wiesenthal Center. But of course,
00:18:17.080
I mean, he knows his job. Use the Simon Wiesenthal Center as a forum to call conservatives anti-Semites.
00:18:23.640
He'd never say that about his boss, Justin Trudeau. His job there is to smear conservatives, don't you
00:18:28.440
know? And siege it. What a disappointment. Not a peep from them, but why? Is it that important that
00:18:36.920
they ingratiate themselves with Trudeau? Will they literally abide a Nazi Holocaust denier just for that?
00:18:44.280
Well, that and a lot of money. You know, you can search online all the grants from Trudeau to
00:18:52.600
different groups. Here's a list of the grants given by Trudeau to the three organizations. 25 grand, 25 grand,
00:18:59.720
113 grand, 53 grand, 150 grand to the B'nai B'rith. There are literally 72 checks. It actually goes back,
00:19:07.720
predates Trudeau. I haven't added it all up, but it's millions. Maybe that's why the B'nai B'rith won't
00:19:14.520
criticize them publicly. Criticize a Nazi, get millions of dollars from the government. Here's the
00:19:23.480
Simon Wiesenthal group, 15 grand, 27 grand. I added it up, more than $200,000 from Justin Trudeau
00:19:30.680
since Michael Levitt, the Trudeau MP, took over a couple years ago. No wonder Michael Levitt won't
00:19:36.920
say a word about Trudeau's new Nazi friend. And then there's CJA, the biggest group. Here's a list of
00:19:43.640
their grants. Quarter of a million under Trudeau. Quarter of a million dollars, including a huge chunk
00:19:52.200
for, quote, fighting racism, just not Andrei Melnick's racism. That's an enormous amount of
00:19:59.560
money, but in another way, it's a tiny amount of money. I mean, is that really all it takes to make
00:20:04.840
a Holocaust remembrance group accept a Holocaust denier? For Jewish groups to stay silent from
00:20:11.080
someone who says the Jewish community is lying about the Holocaust? Is that all it takes?
00:20:17.960
What do you think? Do you think it's fine for Trudeau to swan around with a Holocaust-denying
00:20:24.840
Nazi apologist? And for Canada's regime media to ignore it? And for the Jewish lobby to abide it
00:20:32.520
or excuse it? I'm stunned, actually. I really am. But I'll tell you one thing. The next time Trudeau
00:20:38.040
accuses a trucker of being a Nazi, you'll know he's just using the Holocaust and the loss of six million
00:20:44.600
Jews as a partisan talking point, as a political weapon. Trudeau doesn't give a damn about actual
00:20:50.120
Nazis or actual Holocaust deniers. He just finished spending the weekend with one of them. He's fine
00:20:56.280
with them. And so is the Canadian media. And shockingly, so is Canada's official Jewish lobby
00:21:03.400
groups. That's what's sad here. You just can't take them seriously anymore. When they cry wolf about
00:21:10.360
anti-Semitism, how could you possibly believe them? Stay with us for more.
00:21:28.680
Hey, you want to be careful about accusing your political opponents of criminality. And
00:21:32.920
you don't want them to accuse you of the same easily because we don't want to criminalize
00:21:37.160
political disagreements. That's what I say whenever people say we should get Trudeau for treason.
00:21:42.600
I said, well, first of all, I don't think he's actually committed treason. He's done some
00:21:45.560
atrocious things. And who knows, maybe there will be some revelations in his secret deals
00:21:49.880
with the Chinese Communist Party. He's certainly trying to stop those facts from coming out.
00:21:53.720
But we do not want to too easily criminalize a difference of opinion. First of all, we want to have
00:22:00.760
a freewheeling political public square. And second of all, don't think for a second
00:22:05.560
that it wouldn't be weaponized against our side first, because the other side has no compunction
00:22:11.640
about these things. They don't play by the Marcus of Queensbury rules. I look at the legal troubles of
00:22:18.440
Donald Trump and I compare them to the absolute immunity by the Democrats. Here's Hillary Clinton,
00:22:24.280
who tweeted this photo of herself the other day, wearing a hat that said, but her emails, a reference
00:22:29.480
to the illegal storage and use of a private email address on a private email server, and then
00:22:37.160
deleting tens of thousands of those contrary to the law. Do you think she was charged, detained,
00:22:44.040
searched, fingerprinted, any of that? Of course not. And she's so confident that she won't be. She'll
00:22:49.080
literally have a taunting ball cap pointing out her immunity. Well, not so Donald Trump. And joining us
00:22:57.320
now to talk about his latest legal travails is our friend Ben Weingarten, the senior contributor
00:23:02.920
for thefederalist.com. Ben, great to see you again. I'm trying to understand if these charges against
00:23:09.880
Donald Trump are just more noise, like the last 200 allegations against him, or if there's something
00:23:16.280
qualitatively different about these, because it's the legal system as opposed to just journalistic and
00:23:23.720
political hatchet jobs. Can you give our viewers, especially those of us up here in Canada who
00:23:28.440
maybe aren't following it super closely, what exactly is going on with Donald Trump and the
00:23:33.320
courts these days? Well, this federal indictment is qualitatively and frankly quantitatively different
00:23:41.800
from anything that we've seen in American history. And as you noted, the use of the legal system to
00:23:48.520
criminalize political dissent, certainly something that is no place in a free country and a free
00:23:53.640
society, and certainly something that is relatively anathema when you look at American political and
00:24:00.600
legal history. Now we have the first federal prosecution of a president, an indictment of a
00:24:07.400
former president and leading candidate for the Republican presidential nomination in 2024. And the
00:24:16.680
charges are very serious. And if you take all the counts and the years associated with them together,
00:24:21.320
you're talking about potentially hundreds of years behind bars. So that is qualitatively and
00:24:26.120
quantitatively different from what we've seen before. This case, however, is consistent with what
00:24:30.920
we've seen before in the sense that it represents the height of the weaponization and hyper politicization
00:24:37.720
of the national security and law enforcement apparatus, and can be seen as one act of a running tragedy
00:24:47.240
for America and for the free world, in which there have been efforts to sabotage and subvert,
00:24:55.080
quote unquote, our democracy, but really to undermine our republic, first beginning with Russiagate,
00:25:00.680
which sought effectively to halt the peaceful transfer of power to President Trump,
00:25:05.160
then continuing with Ukrainegate and the exploitation of January 6, and continuing with a slew of frivolous
00:25:11.480
suits now to this one. But again, this is different because these are Espionage Act charges,
00:25:19.080
which not to get too into the weeds, but there's a very strong, I believe, case to be made that that's
00:25:25.640
wholly inapt, that this case should have been, if it was going to be brought, that the relevant statutes
00:25:31.960
would have been the Presidential Records Act. And then on top of that, there's an obstruction case of
00:25:38.040
a non-crime, I would argue, layered on top. And this is something that is meaningful for many reasons
00:25:47.480
beyond being clear election interference and this arising at the very same time that Joe Biden faces
00:25:54.200
charges of allegedly taking a bribe and massive revelations about his family's own dubious dealings,
00:26:01.240
influence peddling, potentially criminal influence peddling with America's worst adversaries that could
00:26:06.280
have really compromised national security. But beyond that, what this reflects is essentially
00:26:13.160
a bureaucratic squabble and unhinged bureaucrats launching a case against the president, which was
00:26:21.560
a fishing expedition on grounds we've never seen before applied with very odd machinations as well,
00:26:29.800
given that this investigation and the grand jury originally and many of the major decisions leading
00:26:36.920
to this indictment were made in a DC venue, which would be favorable to the DOJ, not in Florida,
00:26:45.640
where the case is ultimately going to be heard. So there are many in the weeds aspects of this,
00:26:51.240
but I think at the highest level, we've never seen a prosecution brought like this,
00:26:55.240
an investigation executed the way this investigation was executed and a president be held, not just
00:27:01.800
treated unequally, but below the law. And you mentioned Hillary Clinton, Hillary Clinton was
00:27:06.920
a secretary of state dealing in such information. This is a president and a president does have different
00:27:13.000
powers from any other government officer as a commander in chief, when it comes to being able to
00:27:18.520
retain documents, access documents, share documents, etc. So no one has ever been treated as far below
00:27:25.080
the law, I would argue, as Donald Trump has been at such a senior position in the government,
00:27:29.880
the senior most position in the federal government.
00:27:31.960
Yeah, it's my understanding that by nature of the office, a president may declassify anything at
00:27:37.960
any time for any reason without any oversight. It is his power alone. And I mean, correct me if I'm wrong
00:27:45.000
on that. But also this wasn't in, for example, one of the things that the Clintons were doing
00:27:49.880
when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state is husband Bill was running the Clinton foundations
00:27:54.600
that was simultaneously raising donations, 10 million, 25 million dollars from other countries
00:28:01.880
that Hillary Clinton was operating with as secretary of state. So Hillary Clinton was making decisions
00:28:07.480
as secretary of state. And Bill was collecting literally eight figure checks from the same
00:28:14.120
countries. Donald Trump, it sounds like, just has some paperwork at Mar-a-Lago. He's not trying to
00:28:21.320
hustle, you know, 20 million dollar grants from Russia or Ukraine. It just seems so qualitatively different,
00:28:28.360
but they're going after him and not her or Obama or any others. I don't know.
00:28:34.120
I let me ask you this. Does it have a chance? Does this have a chance of success? Or is this such a
00:28:41.320
obvious, you know, attempt to make something out of nothing that it'll fail if not at the first
00:28:48.920
instance, certainly in any court of appeal? Does this have any chance of succeeding is what I'm saying.
00:28:54.120
Well, before I go there, let's also just note, and then there's Joe Biden who had records from
00:28:59.160
his time as a senator and a vice president when he had no authority to declassify them,
00:29:04.440
let alone take them, and they were in his possession. And I even hasten, I even hasten to
00:29:10.360
go into this, you know, double standard aspect of it because such a case has never been brought
00:29:15.640
against a president or a vice president or anyone else at this level on these kinds of grounds,
00:29:20.600
investigated in these ways with the shock and awe raid on his estate, etc. There's nothing else like
00:29:27.320
this. And so that's why I hasten to even go into let's look at precedent or there's a case judicial
00:29:33.640
watch pursued against Bill Clinton about tapes that were hidden in his socks drawer, which show that he
00:29:39.400
basically had clear free ran to do with them as he wished. Without even going there, you know,
00:29:44.680
this gets to the broader point that you're asking about, you know, not so much is there merit to this
00:29:50.440
necessarily. But where does it ultimately go? And, you know, luckily in this case, unlike in many
00:29:57.080
other cases, particularly in D.C., a hostile deep state dominated venue, it does appear that the
00:30:03.720
judge presiding over this case, Judge Cannon, who was a Trump appointed judge, made rulings with
00:30:10.280
respect to a special master reviewing the documents that the FBI had taken originally from Mar-a-Lago,
00:30:16.680
made judgments that seemed to hold merit and that seemed to challenge the government's position
00:30:21.800
in certain instances, and rightfully so. However, what I would say is that we don't know how what
00:30:28.840
this jury is ultimately going to be composed of. I mean, I trust a jury of Floridians in a Southern
00:30:33.960
district, probably over in Washington, D.C., but you know that the prosecution will be as zealous and as
00:30:41.720
enraged as they could possibly be. And the special counsel, Jack Smith, obviously does not want to
00:30:47.720
lose this case. So I wouldn't put anything past them. Now, ultimately, where does this go?
00:30:52.840
This may ultimately end up being appealed upwards, and it could potentially end up in front of the
00:30:57.320
Supreme Court. And one of the things I've been speculating about is that one of the reasons they
00:31:02.280
are now attacking Judge Cannon, they being many in the media aligned with the prosecutors bringing this
00:31:09.080
case, is that ultimately, this is telegraphing what they will do with the Supreme Court, which
00:31:13.400
they've been attacking, as you know, mercilessly for years now, particularly as the composition
00:31:18.440
changed and became more conservative under Trump, to attack that court and call it illegitimate,
00:31:23.960
and to try to claim that these trumped-up ethics violations that are not there with respect to the
00:31:29.880
likes of a Justice Clarence Thomas, for example. And I believe that ultimately, if and when this case,
00:31:35.320
or several other cases, because there's other prosecutions ongoing, do end up at the Supreme
00:31:40.120
Court, that there's going to be a massive campaign to try and coerce and threaten those justices,
00:31:46.680
directly or indirectly, to rule rightly, as the progressives who dominate here would like them
00:31:53.480
to rule. And I think that's where this is ultimately going, is if and when any or all of these cases go to
00:31:58.920
the Supreme Court, and there may be other indictments forthcoming, there's going to be a massive
00:32:02.600
pressure campaign against whoever is perceived to be weak-kneed to try and get the court to go along
00:32:08.600
and make what, in my judgment, would be a grossly negligible and horrific rulings
00:32:13.960
for our republic, and again, more broadly, for the free world.
00:32:17.960
You know, I have a question for you. There's so many of these things, and they all sound the same to me.
00:32:23.160
This one's going to bring down Trump, Stormy Daniels this, you know, the Russians,
00:32:27.400
like there's just, there's been so many of these, and they all feel the same. And I know they're all
00:32:31.800
a little different, but it's such a blur. And every time Democrat cable news whips it up, this is,
00:32:38.520
the walls are closing. We've probably all seen the TV mashup of journalists using that turn of
00:32:44.440
phrase, the walls are closing in, the walls are closing in. They really said that for four years
00:32:48.520
when he was president. So to me, I start to tune it out as noise. I say, oh yeah, they're going after
00:32:55.720
Trump and he's quarreling back. I'm not even going to look at the details. I believe that the deep
00:33:00.920
state, so to speak, is how to get them. But I guess on the other side, there's a lot of people
00:33:05.400
who are either Democrats or some independents who are saying, another one of these, I'm not going to
00:33:10.680
look into the details. I just know that Trump equals chaos. Trump equals, you know, he's talking about
00:33:18.520
himself. He's defending himself. He's calling for vengeance. He's showing his emotion. I'm not even going
00:33:24.440
to look at the details. It's just a bunch of quarreling, quarrelsome people. So for me,
00:33:30.680
I tune it out and say, oh, that's just the deep state. But I suppose the other side tunes it out
00:33:35.160
and say, oh, that's Trump. We know he's guilty. He's just never not in trouble. And I guess that's,
00:33:40.680
that's a PR win for the other side is there's probably more people. There's probably enough people
00:33:45.880
who are just sick of the Trump moving festival of oddities and curiosities that say, I just got,
00:33:55.240
I just don't want that anymore. Biden is awful, but at least he's not, you know, he stumbles and
00:34:01.080
he forgets his words, but at least it's not like a moving thunderstorm all the time. What do you think
00:34:06.600
of that? Yeah, I think that's part of the point. I think they want to instill Trump fatigue so that
00:34:12.920
even people who view the deep state's attacks as egregious or who voted for Trump once or twice
00:34:21.720
might say, you know, enough is enough. I don't want to deal with the headache. But what I would
00:34:26.200
argue the counter to that is if you let Trump be victim of this system, you are next. And we've
00:34:33.560
already seen, and to think that someone who would be purportedly unimpeachable and have none of Trump's
00:34:39.560
foibles wouldn't still be subjected to an equal assault to the extent they presented a real threat
00:34:46.600
to the powers that be is beyond foolish and beyond an underestimation of what we're up against. I mean,
00:34:52.200
we've seen something akin to in Canada where you have parents concerned about their kids being
00:34:58.280
indoctrinated in racial Marxism in schools or who oppose draconian COVID-19 related policies
00:35:05.400
who are targeted literally as domestic terrorists. You had a bulletin put out by an FBI office
00:35:12.360
calling for potentially trying to implant spies in local Catholic churches. And this is stuff that is
00:35:19.880
totally anathema to our system. And then, of course, obviously, the J6 prosecutions where you have
00:35:26.920
the lowliest of people with non-criminal backgrounds who are treated as domestic terrorists. And sometimes
00:35:34.040
the federal prosecutors try to slap them with terrorism enhancements and such. So Trump is the
00:35:39.720
tip of the iceberg here. It's potentially millions of Americans that are under threat, their liberties
00:35:46.360
under threat. And to your point, however, I do agree as well, it's easy to become desensitized to
00:35:53.480
these assaults because it's just perpetual. But there is something different here, which is,
00:35:59.720
it's one thing when it comes to impeachment and removal, let's say, which is the highest of all
00:36:04.600
political remedies. Now we're talking about federal prosecutors with weaponized law at a time where
00:36:12.360
any and all conservative lawyers, by the way, in America are under assault by organized pressure from
00:36:18.120
the left. There's something called 65 project where they target for personal and professional ruination.
00:36:25.160
Any and all judges who might represent conservatives, for example, in election integrity cases,
00:36:29.960
the group gets its name for the 65 lawsuits that were tossed around election integrity in 2020.
00:36:37.080
So there's not necessarily people out there willing to provide defense in a federal prosecution.
00:36:43.000
It's easy to slip up and be caught on a technicality. And essentially, you have to be a thousand percent
00:36:48.440
right. And the other side can still concoct things to make you look wrong or bad and create unease
00:36:55.880
within the jury. And that's why I think a lot of people got a very weak knee when they saw the
00:37:00.520
indictment. Because if you look at the indictment, it presents things that make it appear as if Trump
00:37:06.360
has tried to mislead or thrown investigators off from some heinous crime. And that is what is different
00:37:14.440
here is that you have the strongest, most powerful law enforcement apparatus going after him now.
00:37:21.640
And you don't know what's going to happen in a court and when it gets kicked up potentially to higher
00:37:25.720
courts. So the legal peril is more potential legal peril here is significantly more substantial.
00:37:32.920
And of course, it's in the middle of a presidential election as well. So on the one hand, yes,
00:37:37.480
it's a never ending assault and the walls are perpetually closing in, but not really closing in.
00:37:41.960
On the other hand, this represents kind of the heightening to its apex of the assaults,
00:37:47.560
because you're talking about Trump behind bars at the end of the day.
00:37:51.320
You know, I see Trump has made a statement on his own version of Twitter called Truth Social,
00:37:55.800
and I'm just going to read a little bit about it. It says, this is Trump. Now that the seal is broken,
00:38:01.720
he's talking about the information about the Biden family taking crimes. In addition to closing the
00:38:08.360
border and removing all of the criminal elements that have illegally invaded our country, making
00:38:12.760
America energy independent and even dominant again, and immediately ending the war between
00:38:16.920
Russia and Ukraine, I will appoint a real special prosecutor to go after the most corrupt president in
00:38:21.640
the history of the USA, Joe Biden, the entire Biden crime family, and all others involved with
00:38:26.520
the destruction of our elections borders and country itself. And I read that and I can't help. And by the way,
00:38:33.800
I think I was the biggest Trump booster in the entire country of Canada, other than maybe Conrad Black
00:38:39.560
in 2016. I mean, well, there was only two of us, us and Conrad Black. So it's not hard to be the
00:38:46.120
biggest or the second biggest. So I mean, and there was a lot of things I loved about Trump. But when I
00:38:51.960
read this, I think, you had four years, brother, including when you had strong support in the Congress,
00:38:58.520
you didn't build the wall. Yes, he did make America energy independent, but he didn't fight
00:39:05.880
hard. He didn't prosecute Hillary or Obama. And maybe he shouldn't have, but he was not using all
00:39:11.960
the levers of state that he could. And, you know, especially the wall rings, the wall does not ring
00:39:17.880
true to me. He had four years. And yes, I know the problems he faced, but I know a Democrat would have
00:39:23.400
forced it through. And I don't think that Ron DeSantis is going to be able to beat Trump in the
00:39:29.240
primary. But the one thing I'll say about DeSantis is he was Democrat-like in his commitment to use
00:39:36.840
all the tools available to him, all the legal leverage. There was one prosecutor who would
00:39:43.160
refuse to enforce some law. I forget which one. DeSantis fired him. Like that's an unthinkable
00:39:49.640
act of political power to most Republicans. Democrats don't think twice about it.
00:39:55.320
You know, he would take on Disney and rip up their agreement. And frankly, right or wrong,
00:40:01.400
he showed a chutzpah, a willingness to do dramatic things because he had that power and he wasn't shy
00:40:10.200
about using that power. And I think the problem that America has, and definitely we have it in Canada
00:40:15.580
too, is that the other side has no limits on their ambition and their quest for power,
00:40:21.660
and they will literally do anything. And I don't want to become like that. I don't want to be an
00:40:25.260
ends justify the means totalitarian. But I think our side could use a little bit more courage and
00:40:31.980
audacity in using the legitimate legal and constitutional authority we have. When I look at
00:40:37.340
Trump's statement, I think, I don't believe you, sir, because you didn't do it for four years.
00:40:42.220
I don't believe if he's reelected, he's going to go after Biden. I just don't believe it.
00:40:48.860
Yeah. What I would say is, I think, kind of looked at from the opposite perspective,
00:40:54.940
the other side, so to speak, acts with total impunity precisely because they feel they will pay
00:41:02.300
nothing even remotely close to a commensurate price to the kind they inflict on their political foes.
00:41:09.660
And so it's incumbent upon anyone who wants to be the next Republican president to lay out
00:41:15.180
not only concretely what their agenda is to wield power in service of just and true ends consistent
00:41:26.460
with law and consistent with liberty and justice. And at the same time, also to explain how they're going
00:41:33.980
to overcome an administrative state that has become a state unto itself that acts with total impunity,
00:41:42.380
and that is going to be 99.999% at your throat from well before day one and throw at you everything
00:41:51.020
they threw at Donald Trump in his first term and then subsequently. Plus, how are you going to overcome
00:41:57.260
that? And I think those are massive questions to anyone who wants to be president. And by the way,
00:42:01.740
it may be an intractable problem, at least in one or two terms, when you have an administrative
00:42:07.260
state that is wholly antithetical in its views to yours, that knows it will outlast you or is
00:42:15.020
confident that it will outlast you, and that holds views that are diametrically opposite and will do
00:42:20.860
anything and everything to stop you within and without the law. And that is the real challenge to
00:42:27.180
anyone who wants to be an executive. It requires the utmost thinking and prudence with respect to
00:42:34.460
all of your cabinet picks and beyond. But even that still many layers down, you're going to be
00:42:39.900
facing people who want to subvert and sabotage you. And that's a massive challenge to overcome. And it's
00:42:45.500
why civil service reform has to be among the first items for anyone who wants to be the next Republican
00:42:52.620
president. Yeah. Well, that's all terrifying and depressing. I saw an analysis of George Soros
00:42:59.020
when he went after the district attorneys and when he went after the secretaries of state positions.
00:43:04.700
And someone said, well, that's Soros. He is an arbitrager. And he realized you could spend 50
00:43:11.740
million or 100 million dollars in the presidential race or 20 million dollars in the Senate race
00:43:17.820
and maybe make a difference. But you could spend one million dollars in an election of this prosecutor
00:43:25.260
or half a million dollars for the secretary of state of this small state. And on the state level,
00:43:31.740
secretary of state is not about foreign affairs. It's about things like running the election. So
00:43:35.580
Soros thought I could spend a hundred million bucks and not win, or I could spend one million dollars in
00:43:42.700
a hundred little races, win most of them and make a disproportionate difference. I don't know if
00:43:48.860
there's anyone on our side who even thinks that way. And by the way, now Soros has formally handed his
00:43:54.780
empire over to his even more radical son, Alex Soros, who his first announcement, he's going to be even
00:44:00.300
more political than his father. I am worried about these things. And if America can't resist them,
00:44:05.580
well then how could any country like the UK or Canada resist them? I'm a little bit afraid of that.
00:44:14.300
Yeah, I would just say our side has not, I don't know if it's something that it is ill-equipped to do
00:44:22.940
or just has not developed the reflexes for, but the left almost definitionally has been about
00:44:28.300
organizing, overtaking institutions, wielding power. That is not something that the right has been
00:44:35.260
uncomfortable doing. It doesn't have muscles that's built up over generations doing so.
00:44:42.140
But I think you have to ask the question, what would a conservative George Soros do? What would
00:44:46.940
a conservative Nancy Pelosi do? What would a conservative Chuck Schumer do? What would a
00:44:50.860
conservative Barack Obama do? If you're not thinking the way the left thinks and operating with an equal and
00:44:58.460
opposite sort of gusto and shrewdness and seriousness in your strategy and tactics,
00:45:05.020
then ultimately you're going to lose. Almost definitionally, you're going to lose.
00:45:08.940
So the right has to think more like the left, to your point, in terms of its ambitions and in
00:45:15.020
terms of how to wield power in ways that are actually durable. Because of course, if it's just
00:45:20.220
executive action, we know that can be very quickly unwound, while the other side is dominating all the
00:45:25.900
institutions, the cultural institutions, the social and political institutions. And it sets
00:45:30.780
itself up to be the dominant power, regardless of these temporary interregnums that we might have.
00:45:35.980
So we need to be thinking very ambitiously, very strategically and shrewdly and over a long term.
00:45:43.100
And that may mean taking some tactical losses in the interim to compete and ultimately triumph over the
00:45:48.700
long run. Well, that's a big, that's a tall order, but it took 30 years or maybe 60 years to get into
00:45:57.500
this pickle and maybe it'll take us long to get out. Ben Weingarten, great to see you again. Ben is
00:46:01.740
the senior contributor for thefederalist.com. We'll see you again soon. Thank you. All right. Stay with us.
00:46:20.540
Hey, welcome back. Your email's to me. Golden Retriever says no mainstream news outlet will
00:46:24.380
touch the video with the Muslim kids. But if Catholic schools don't want pride flags, the PM has to comment
00:46:29.980
on it. Oh, absolutely right. I mean, it reminds me of when those 50 Catholic churches were torched or
00:46:36.380
vandalized, not a peep from anyone in the establishment, by the way, not from the RCMP,
00:46:41.420
no politicians, no media crusade. It was just, oh, well, you know, they sort of deserve it.
00:46:47.420
JC 510 says forcing LGBTQ doctrine down people's throats, it's going to hurt their community in
00:46:53.020
the long run. And then when will people start? And then when people start with the hate towards
00:46:57.500
these groups, the progressives will move on to another political issue and abandon them.
00:47:01.180
I think they want to provoke. I mean, there's this thing in different cities of painting crosswalks
00:47:09.740
in the rainbow flag colors. And obviously crosswalks are on the street and obviously people drive on them.
00:47:17.340
So paint a crosswalk. If there's tire marks on it, claim that it's a hate crime. Rinse and repeat. It's
00:47:24.780
it's crazy. On April Hutchinson, Heidi B says, I remember a time when unions actually protected
00:47:31.580
their members. As for athletes feeling safe and respected, clearly that is not happening here.
00:47:36.940
Well, there's different ways to look at it, but one way that's increasingly clear to me
00:47:42.300
is that this really is a war on women. I mean, my whole life I thought feminism was overreaching. I
00:47:48.060
thought, you know, you have equality before the law and, you know, right to vote, right to hold any
00:47:53.740
office, the right to go to university, right to do things. And if women choose not to do that and
00:47:58.380
they choose to be homemakers or some other path, that's their choice. I thought feminism should take
00:48:03.580
a victory lap and, you know, OK, we got what we wanted. But incredibly, they are actually losing ground
00:48:13.020
in women's spaces, whether it's a prison or a battered women's shelter or a sports team or a
00:48:18.700
changing room. Women today actually have fewer rights than women did in 1980.
00:48:27.180
Women are actually losing rights. And I think a lot of people who would call themselves feminists
00:48:34.300
are staying silent about that. I find it very strange that me, a right wing guy, is more feminist
00:48:40.780
than most feminists. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at
00:48:46.940
Rebel World Highquarters, to you at home, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.