Rebel News Podcast - July 21, 2022


EZRA LEVANT | Trudeau’s bodyguards threaten reporters, again


Episode Stats

Length

1 hour

Words per Minute

169.5918

Word Count

10,320

Sentence Count

785

Hate Speech Sentences

23


Summary

Justin Trudeau's trip to Kelowna, British Columbia, was a liberal success, but did the Liberals have a problem with journalists asking the tough questions? Ezra Levenkamp takes you through every word of the story, and then has a big chat with our friend Joel Pollack.


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Hello, my rebels. Two stories for you today. The first is Trudeau's visit to Kelowna,
00:00:05.400 a lovely city in British Columbia. The most bizarre report you will see. I can't believe
00:00:11.340 it. I will read every word of it to you. Just incredible journalism. I'm serious. You gotta
00:00:18.440 read it. And then later, a big chat with our friend Joel Pollack. We're really catching up.
00:00:23.160 We haven't seen him in a while. He's got so many smart things to say, including about Ukraine,
00:00:26.900 which I didn't mean to ask him about, but we just got on that track.
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00:01:40.560 You're listening to our podcast.
00:01:46.780 Tonight, Trudeau's bodyguards threaten reporters again. It's July 20th, and this is the Ezra
00:01:57.400 LeVant Show.
00:01:58.340 You're fighting for freedom!
00:02:01.220 Shame on you, you censorious bug!
00:02:04.380 I saw this one sentence in a small regional newspaper that caught my eye on Twitter.
00:02:19.660 This is from the Kelowna Daily Courier in the B.C. interior. Here's a look at the article.
00:02:26.300 The headline is, Trudeau's muted trip to Kelowna, a liberal success. Well, that's important news that
00:02:35.920 every Colonian wants to know. Not was it a success for the country or their city, but did the liberals
00:02:42.640 succeed? The good news is our top investigative reporter looked into the matter and asked the
00:02:49.420 liberal party. And indeed, the news was good. The trip was a great success, if the liberals do say
00:02:55.580 so themselves. What a weird headline. Now, in fairness to the reporter, we don't know if he himself
00:03:01.280 wrote that headline. Often that's an editor or even the publisher writing the headline. So let's read
00:03:06.920 the story itself. I'm going to take you through every word. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's summer
00:03:12.640 listening tours stop in the Okanagan was as silent as advertised Tuesday. That's a weird way to describe
00:03:20.880 a political tour, isn't it? Silent. He toured a boys and girls club, a packing house, and a fruit stand
00:03:29.360 with reporters invited to take pictures and videos, but forbidden in advance to ask any questions.
00:03:37.200 Any shouted queries would result in police assisted eviction from the various premises,
00:03:45.760 handlers told the media. Silent. I mean, let's be honest. It's not like they'd be asking tough
00:03:53.200 questions even if they were allowed to. I mean, you know, my favorite example. Here's the star of
00:03:58.760 global news a few years back, the disgraced liberal Tom Clark, asking Trudeau the toughest question
00:04:05.800 he could. So I guess the first thing I should ask you is, are you feeling lucky?
00:04:10.240 I mean, the entire country wants to know, what shampoo do you use?
00:04:17.000 What a disappointing answer this is going to be. Whatever happens to be hanging around
00:04:22.140 at the time. Yeah. But imagine being told, no questions. You can only gaze upon Trudeau
00:04:30.280 and his wondrous new hairstyle. You can only transmit exactly what he himself wants you to see
00:04:36.420 and hear. He will essentially be your editor for you. He will give you exactly what words you need
00:04:42.520 to hear and show you exactly what you need to see. No questions, no raising other issues,
00:04:48.600 nothing in the public interest, just as the headline here says, what's in the liberal party's interest.
00:04:54.300 Imagine consenting to that, complying with that, and calling what you produce news.
00:05:02.760 Outside the B.C. Tree Fruits retail store on Vaughn Avenue in downtown Kelowna, one reporter risked
00:05:08.980 such manhandling by asking Trudeau if he was going to meet with B.C. Premier John Horgan.
00:05:15.240 Other things today, a smiling Trudeau replied before getting into one of the big black SUVs that made up
00:05:21.840 his Okanagan convoy. Ah, convoy. Now slow down a bit. The toughest, roughest accountability question
00:05:30.100 the press gallery could muster is, would you meet with the premier? It's such a pitiful question.
00:05:36.460 It's so bloodless. It's actually the sort of thing you could just surely find out by looking at each
00:05:41.020 man's schedule, as are usually published on their websites, or you could even ask a press secretary
00:05:46.600 that question. It really is an administrative question. It's not a substantive policy question.
00:05:52.440 It's not, what do you say to homeowners on variable mortgages given the 1% interest rate height from the
00:05:59.080 Bank of Canada? That's a good question. Or why did you rewrite your Russia sanctions to exempt those big
00:06:05.720 natural gas turbines that Russia wants? I don't know. I mean, they don't even have to be that tough.
00:06:10.960 Just anything in the public interest. Anything substantive. Seriously, a logistical or scheduling
00:06:16.940 question that's almost secretarial, but apparently even that was too much. And the Kelowna Courier said
00:06:23.320 he risked manhandling for that. And no biggie. No, no, that's not the headline. The fact that the liberals
00:06:31.440 are just killing it out there, that's the headline, if they do say so. This reminds me of when the Turkish
00:06:38.500 authoritarian Erdogan visited the United States and his bodyguards roughed up Americans in America, and it was
00:06:47.160 so fine, apparently.
00:07:17.160 Except that the thug in the black convoy making threats to journalists to shut up is Canada's
00:07:37.220 authoritarian, not a foreign authoritarian. But, you know, his thugs do mean it. Remember what
00:07:43.520 Trudeau's bodyguards did to our own David Menzies for daring to ask the wrong question, for shouting
00:07:49.720 a question and not being silent? Remember this atrocity?
00:07:53.120 Ezra, uh, uh, we, uh, I don't have, no, it happened to Lincoln, but I just got brutally assaulted
00:08:01.360 by Trudeau's, uh, RCMP guys.
00:08:03.420 I want to, son. What is this? You cannot push me.
00:08:07.340 You move aside.
00:08:08.100 They smashed my face into a wooden wall.
00:08:18.620 Yeah, that's Trudeau. I'll read some more from the story.
00:08:22.560 Though a few of Trudeau's other summer appearances around the country have been met with protesters
00:08:27.860 allied with last winter's Ottawa-bound convoy, even forcing the hurried cancellation of some
00:08:34.620 such events, there was no such tumult waiting for Trudeau in Kelowna. That's likely because
00:08:40.380 the prime minister's office was extremely vague on just where exactly he was going to show up
00:08:45.240 in the Okanagan. The PMO's website didn't even refer to Kelowna or Summerland, the two cities
00:08:52.260 he was, uh, where he was to put in appearances, saying only the PM would be in the interior region,
00:08:58.680 British Columbia. As a result, anyone inclined to protest Trudeau's visit would have been hard
00:09:05.060 pressed to know where to take their placards. Only one protester, carrying a sign with an
00:09:09.840 expletive, was outside the packing house, and he was kept well away from the facility's front door
00:09:14.620 by police. Apparently discouraged, the man left before Trudeau reemerged on the street
00:09:20.460 from the adjacent fruit store 20 minutes later.
00:09:23.880 So we know why there weren't more protesters, but what does that have to do with why the press
00:09:30.280 gallery was told to shut up? By the way, I'm not necessarily a fan of signs with swear words on
00:09:36.380 them, but it's not illegal to swear in Canada. You should know that, and that's good, because Trudeau
00:09:42.340 himself likes to swear. Here he is calling a conservative MP, Peter Kent, a piece of SHIT.
00:09:48.360 Well, Mr. Speaker, my honorable colleague, if she had been in Durban, would have seen that,
00:09:54.260 in fact, Canada was among the leaders in... Order. Order. Order. Order. Order. Order. Order.
00:10:13.400 Order. Order. Order. Order. So it's not illegal to swear, even in Parliament. So why were police
00:10:19.800 involved in keeping someone far away from the outside of a building? Again, that's how they
00:10:25.480 roll in Turkey, but in Kelowna, Canada? I'll read some more. At the store, Trudeau asked BCTF
00:10:32.900 representatives questions about the fruit, such as whether the high-grade cherries shipped for
00:10:38.860 export were also available to locals. He paid for a small box of cherries with a $20 bill.
00:10:47.200 How are you today? The clerk asked Trudeau. I'm doing very well, but I'll be doing even better
00:10:53.720 when I get some Okanagan cherries in me, Trudeau replied. Wow. I smell a Pulitzer Prize here. This is
00:11:03.360 great accountability journalism. Really good investigative work. Thank God for the Fourth
00:11:09.000 Estate. You guys really are holding the Prime Minister to account for all of us. You literally
00:11:16.120 reported his banter buying some cherries, and then you published this in a newspaper as news.
00:11:24.900 At the end of the tour, the PMO was likely well-pleased with the silent movie-style news footage
00:11:30.020 it produced of Trudeau talking to kids and admiring Okanagan fruit. His departure from Kelowna's
00:11:37.040 industrial area was delayed a few moments when his convoy appeared to be hemmed in by semi-trailers
00:11:43.340 at either end. Though the black SUVs were blocking the middle of the street, the truck drivers did not
00:11:49.440 honk their horns. What a passive-aggressive news report that was, eh? I get the sense that the reporter,
00:11:57.880 Ron Seymour, is his name, might have actually liked to have written it a bit differently.
00:12:03.620 Different headline, maybe. Maybe focus a bit more on the bullying and the threats.
00:12:10.300 But that's not really the journalism that's allowed anymore, is it? He calls it silent movie
00:12:17.000 propaganda-style footage, but he acknowledges in a way that that's what he's doing too.
00:12:21.860 And let's look at that headline just once again. Trudeau's muted trip to Kelowna, a liberal success.
00:12:31.460 Would you say that's journalism? Who wrote that headline?
00:12:36.440 I'm guessing it's the guy who cashes the Trudeau checks to journalists in this country.
00:12:42.080 It's not just the propaganda. It's not just the slavish, slobbering love letter. It's that Ron Seymour
00:12:50.560 observed the bullying, the threats, the threats of violence. He observed a press gallery being
00:12:57.760 humiliated and loving it. And he observed one lone protester being pushed back by the cops like it
00:13:04.680 was in Turkey. And yet that's not the headline and no one else cares either. None of the reporters going
00:13:11.760 along with it in this convoy. Hey, look at this. This is from the Canada Revenue Agency website.
00:13:21.840 If you'll remember, if you see down there, this is the list of media companies, journalism
00:13:30.080 organizations that are licensed by Trudeau with the QCJO status, Qualified Canadian Journalism
00:13:37.680 Organizations. That's what Trudeau calls trusted journalists. And he can trust them. That's the
00:13:44.160 word he uses. So they're approved. They're licensed. The QCJO is a kind of government permit.
00:13:50.640 And with that license, you get government money. And you will soon get money from Facebook and Google
00:13:58.320 extracted by Trudeau. And soon you will get your stories boosted on the internet by Facebook and Google
00:14:06.240 by order of Canadian law. But only if you're a QCJO licensed media outlet. And if you don't have
00:14:12.560 that status, you won't get those things. You won't even have access to government events.
00:14:18.640 You won't get government money, of course, or Google or Facebook money, of course. And you will be
00:14:23.520 downranked by Facebook and Google on the internet. What you just read in the Kelowna Daily Courier,
00:14:30.640 and I read every word in the story to you, is what licensed Trudeau approved QCJO journalism looks
00:14:38.960 like. It is obedient. It is cringeworthy. It is partisan propaganda. It's humiliating, but
00:14:46.480 they do it because they're beggars, the QCJO journalists. And we don't do that here.
00:14:53.520 But we're one of the only ones in Canada who don't take that government money.
00:14:57.840 You know, sometimes countries become dictatorships overnight in a revolution or a war.
00:15:07.600 Thinking of the Taliban retaking Afghanistan, not that it was a vibrant democracy before that.
00:15:14.320 But I think more often it happens slowly, step by step. Hitler became chancellor in 1933,
00:15:22.000 but it took him six years to fully corrupt Germany and turn it into a full-blown Nazi dictatorship. Six
00:15:30.320 years it took him. Venezuela didn't become a dictatorship overnight either.
00:15:37.440 Do you really think there's some magic reason why Canada would be immune
00:15:41.200 to this step-by-step descent into authoritarianism?
00:15:48.880 Stay with us for more. We've got a great interview with Joel Pollack next.
00:15:52.160 Hey, welcome back. We're so focused on our own prime minister, as we should be. I mean,
00:16:09.200 we're Canadian media, most of our viewers are Canadian, and Justin Trudeau truly is atrocious.
00:16:14.480 By the way, I see that Joe Biden is around 38 percent approval rating in the polls, depending
00:16:22.400 on the pollster you look at in America. And that's regarded as atrocious. That's worse than
00:16:26.960 Donald Trump even had at the lowest ebb of his presidency. But may I remind you that Justin Trudeau
00:16:34.800 won the last election with just 32 percent. Even on his great victory day, he was six percent more
00:16:42.480 unpopular than Joe Biden in his atrocious worst polling numbers. Of course, that is hidden in
00:16:50.320 Canada by the NDP's blind support for Trudeau, giving him an effective coalition government. And
00:16:56.080 most importantly, as I said in my monologue, the media party, which is now fully rented or even owned
00:17:02.240 by the government. But let's look south of the border, because I think that what Joe Biden does and
00:17:07.520 what the Americans do has as much an effect on us in some ways as what Trudeau does. And of course,
00:17:14.800 I'm Republican in my leanings, though I'm not an American citizen. I am worried about the state
00:17:21.600 of their president, because I don't know if what he says has any cognitive truth to it. I don't know
00:17:28.560 if the president's losing it. I think he's a weak president. And then he goes ahead and says something
00:17:33.040 like this just today. Is Joe Biden saying he has his cancer?
00:17:39.520 And guess what? The first frost, you know what was happening? It had to put on their windshield
00:17:45.760 wipers to get literally the oil slick off the window. That's why I and so damn many other people
00:17:51.360 I grew up have cancer and why can't for the longest time Delaware had the highest cancer rate in the
00:17:57.280 nation. I don't know. He said that in the present tense. Did he simply misspeak? Or is he
00:18:04.080 telling us something about his health that might cause him to step aside? There's so many things I
00:18:08.800 want to talk about about Joe Biden, about his recent trip to the Middle East, including to Saudi Arabia,
00:18:14.480 where he fist bumped the leader of that country. I want to talk about inflation and Russia and oil and gas.
00:18:22.160 And who better to take us through all those things than our friend Joel Pollack, senior editor at large
00:18:26.960 at Breitbart dot com. We haven't had him back on in a while. What a pleasure to see you again,
00:18:31.360 Joel. Nice to see you. Thanks for being here. Do you think Joe Biden simply misspoke on that cancer
00:18:36.640 thing? I mean, I don't want to put too much in on a gaffe. Or do you think he was really telling us
00:18:41.120 something? Well, we don't actually know what the state of the president's health is because it's never
00:18:46.320 clear what he's talking about. We don't know if it was just a gaffe, if he was trying to identify
00:18:52.880 with the audience. Sometimes he does that. He places himself in stories. He makes up things about
00:18:58.160 his past as a way of trying to establish a bond with the audience. Remember, he claimed to drive
00:19:03.280 an 18 wheeler truck. He's made a number of other outlandish claims. And this might have been one of
00:19:08.720 them, you know, trying to establish a kind of sense of empathy with the audience or from the audience by
00:19:14.160 talking about having cancer. We also know that he had some non-melanoma skin cancers or skin
00:19:23.600 abnormalities removed before he became president. So maybe he was talking about that. I don't know
00:19:28.560 what that has to do with having oil on your windshield. But that's the other bizarre part
00:19:32.960 of this, that he claimed you could get cancer from having oil on the windshield of your car.
00:19:36.640 So he's out to lunch in general on a lot of this stuff. And he has been invisible from public view
00:19:45.680 for the last three or four days leading up to this event. He returned from his trip to the Middle East,
00:19:50.400 and then he could not be found, would not be produced, had no public events on his schedule.
00:19:55.440 And when the White House was asked, where's Joe Biden? They said, well, he's very busy.
00:19:59.520 But we don't know what's going on. We don't know. Perhaps he is receiving cancer treatment. Perhaps
00:20:03.760 he was completely wiped out by the physical exertion of the trip or the time difference,
00:20:08.320 jet lag. I mean, we have no idea. So it's never clear what's happening with this president.
00:20:13.680 And we know that the White House is not letting the public know as much as they do about the state
00:20:19.600 of the president's health. So we don't know. It's just one of those weird things. But it could be his
00:20:24.640 way of letting slip that he's not well. And there is a lot of speculation about his age and about
00:20:30.720 Democrats' desire to replace him as president. With his approval numbers so low, they want to
00:20:37.120 have a chance of going into the midterm elections without Joe Biden as a sort of albatross around
00:20:42.560 their necks. Of course, the only person who's more unpopular than Joe Biden is his vice president,
00:20:46.240 Kamala Harris, who would step into the role. So I'm not sure that's a solution.
00:20:49.360 But we just don't know what it means. We are asking the White House. We have yet to receive a response.
00:20:53.440 Yeah. You know, I remember the last time we spoke, I asked you, do you think Joe Biden
00:20:58.320 will be the Democrat running again in 2024? And you answered without missing a beat that you did
00:21:03.680 not think so. And you know what? I see more and more Democrats saying that publicly, refusing to
00:21:10.560 endorse Biden. Here's a strange story in The New York Times. They quote-unquote expert
00:21:17.360 about how Joe Biden is a super ager. He's amazing. I didn't know that that was a thing and they were
00:21:23.920 experts in it. But the fact that they're talking about how old he is and his decline in The New
00:21:28.640 York Times says that there's at least a wing of the Democrats that has come to terms with, look,
00:21:33.200 Joe Biden will always have a place in our hearts as Democrats. He beat Trump, they would say. Some are
00:21:41.120 skeptical about that. So give him his just desserts, make him, you know, some sort of regent, but get
00:21:48.000 him out of there because he's going to destroy us. I think the Democrats have used him for their
00:21:53.040 purpose. And frankly, it feels like elder abuse from here forward. The problem for Democrats is not
00:22:00.800 Joe Biden. The problem for Democrats is the policies of the Democratic Party. Voters are moving to the
00:22:07.200 Republican Party, particularly Hispanic voters whom the Democrats thought were going to be in their
00:22:12.000 camp for generations because of the policies of the Democratic Party. Voters in San Francisco
00:22:17.680 threw out their district attorney not because of Joe Biden, but because of the left-wing progressive
00:22:21.600 policies bankrolled by George Soros, which simply don't work. They're about to do the same in Los
00:22:26.160 Angeles with our own district attorney, George Gascon. And they're moving to the right. Latino voters just
00:22:32.000 elected a Latina Republican in a border constituency in Texas, which hadn't happened for decades.
00:22:40.720 And you're seeing that because people are just fed up with Democratic policies. So there's this idea
00:22:45.360 that Joe Biden isn't being aggressive enough on climate change, aggressive enough in defending
00:22:50.160 abortion rights, aggressive enough on all these left-wing priorities. What the Democrats don't get is that
00:22:55.200 nobody cares about that stuff. And in fact, a lot of it is offensive to voters. Voters are worried about
00:23:00.000 inflation. They're worried about crime. They're worried about education. They're worried about
00:23:03.360 health care. Democrats aren't talking about those things anymore. They're talking about these wedge
00:23:07.520 cultural issues, the transgender pronouns, all the stuff that means nothing to anybody.
00:23:12.320 They're talking about climate change when Americans are paying record prices at the pump.
00:23:16.240 Gas prices have come back a little bit, but there's no guarantee they're not going to go back up again,
00:23:20.320 especially because production is so low in the United States. These are all the results of
00:23:23.920 explicit choices by the Democratic Party. That does not improve if Joe Biden's out of the picture.
00:23:29.360 If he is replaced, he'll be replaced by someone more left-wing than he is. And that's just going
00:23:32.880 to take the party further down the road that voters are rejecting. So there's a cognitive dissonance in
00:23:37.840 the Democratic Party. They're talking about Joe Biden's age because they feel the midterm election
00:23:42.960 verdict is coming. They're trying to avoid it. They're trying to avoid defeat in 2024. The presidential
00:23:48.080 election is basically already underway. You got candidates visiting Iowa, New Hampshire, and so forth.
00:23:52.960 The Democrats know that they're in trouble, but they're not yet reckoning with the fact that they
00:23:58.000 are the reason they're in trouble. They keep running down the same failed path. And Joe Biden is not the
00:24:04.000 problem. In fact, Joe Biden is probably the one thing that is restraining the party from doing even worse.
00:24:10.080 You know, I see different names being touted as potential successors. One name that baffles me,
00:24:16.480 he was a candidate in the primaries, in the presidential primaries last time around. He loves that nickname,
00:24:22.560 Mayor Pete, Pete Buttigieg, who was like a McKinsey business consultant who actually worked
00:24:29.280 for a Canadian company that paid a massive fine for bread price fixing. Like this Pete Buttigieg is an
00:24:37.680 interesting and unusual character. I think he's awful as a candidate, but I hear him touted all the time.
00:24:45.840 I feel like he's really out of touch, as you would expect from a McKinsey
00:24:48.880 management consultant. Here he is the other day saying the problem is not high energy prices,
00:24:56.080 it's with Americans who just won't get on board with Teslas or whatever. Here he is talking about
00:25:02.160 transitioning to clean energy. Take a quick look. I'm still astonished that some folks, and I felt this
00:25:09.360 testifying in Congress yesterday, some folks seem to really struggle to let go of the status quo.
00:25:15.760 We've heard that same thing in Canada. Our own finance minister says, yeah, prices are high.
00:25:21.120 That's why we all need to go green. I don't know if that language works in 2022. I just,
00:25:27.440 you know, what's the alternative, buy an $80,000 Tesla? I think Pete Buttigieg is an awful choice
00:25:33.840 for a successor, but he's awful on policy like you say.
00:25:38.400 Well, let me deal with Buttigieg as a candidate first, and then I'll talk about the issue of the
00:25:42.800 electric cars that he's trying to push. I have covered politics for a long time. I've been around
00:25:48.080 politicians for a long time. I've never been as unimpressed in person with a politician as I was
00:25:53.520 with Pete Buttigieg. On stage, he looks very handsome, very polished. In person, he looks very diminished,
00:26:00.800 and he does not have the charisma that attracts people to him. His handlers try to keep him away
00:26:06.800 from the press. He ran away literally from our reporters in the spin room after every debate.
00:26:11.440 He never came to the spin room to talk to reporters extemporaneously, only for set-up interviews with
00:26:15.920 MSNBC. He has something fake about him. The Bernie Sanders wing of the Democratic Party has always
00:26:22.080 hated him, and I don't think he strikes many Americans as being authentic. There are people
00:26:29.600 who like him and find him to be very intelligent, very charming, and so forth. He attracted a lot
00:26:35.200 of former Elizabeth Warren supporters. After Elizabeth Warren's candidacy looked like it was
00:26:39.040 going nowhere. So there's a kind of appeal he has, I think, to suburban women and some of the more
00:26:44.880 liberal parts of the gentry, you might say. But he's been completely ineffective as transportation
00:26:51.040 minister. He was AWOL during the cargo crisis and only belatedly explained he had been on paternity
00:26:56.880 leave. So he and his husband decided to have twins in the middle of doing one of the most important
00:27:03.120 jobs in the country. That's something you can choose to do. You understand a married couple
00:27:08.640 in the ordinary course of events might have a pregnancy that's unplanned or unexpected, but
00:27:12.720 they did this deliberately while he is serving in the cabinet. There's no particular rush. Neither
00:27:17.200 of them has a biological clock that's ticking. So they decided to do this. He's all about image.
00:27:23.040 You know, my wife once explained to me the difference between people who manage down,
00:27:27.440 that is, they manage their team, they look for results, they look for achievements,
00:27:30.880 and people who manage up, the people who always try to impress the boss, the people who are always
00:27:34.960 concerned about their next promotion. Pete Buttigieg is very good at managing up. He moves from one job
00:27:39.840 to another without doing any of them particularly well. He likes to be called Mayor Pete, but he was
00:27:44.320 mayor in Indiana. He's just transferred his residence to Michigan. I don't know exactly why. Michigan's sort of a
00:27:49.440 swing state, so maybe he has presidential ambitions in mind. But he's basically a fraud, a phony, a
00:27:54.800 careerist who is not doing a very good job as transportation secretary. We've got a baby formula
00:27:59.840 shortage in this country he's not addressing. We've got massive transportation problems in this
00:28:04.160 country, canceled flights, all kinds of problems on the trains. He's got a lot of money to spend now.
00:28:08.880 They gave him over a billion dollars, excuse me, over a trillion dollars with this infrastructure bill.
00:28:13.040 But, you know, he's just not very good at managing anything. And one thought I think when he was
00:28:19.600 appointed transportation minister or, you know, secretary of transportation, that he was smart
00:28:24.080 enough to learn on the job. I don't know what he's learned except to say a few buzzwords and catchphrases.
00:28:28.640 And this idea that Americans, let's get to the substance now, that Americans are going to switch
00:28:32.000 to electric vehicles. You put the problem exactly right. The price of electric vehicles is staggering.
00:28:38.960 I actually just today was walking down the street in my neighborhood and someone was selling a Tesla
00:28:43.600 at a for sale sign in the window. And it said for sale, $69,000 book value, $62,000. They said,
00:28:51.840 well, we were charging more because we've had some customizations done, et cetera, et cetera.
00:28:57.600 But that's the price for a used Tesla. So people are paying premium prices for used
00:29:03.040 electric vehicles. There is a demand for these things because gas prices are so high.
00:29:06.960 But, you know, the little Subaru that I drive that's paid for, that I've been driving for 10 years,
00:29:12.160 cost me just over $20,000. Now, it costs me more in fuel and maintenance costs than the Tesla would
00:29:17.440 cost me. But I don't have $69,000 lying around to just pay for an electric vehicle. And here's the
00:29:22.800 other problem. While they want everyone to shift to electric vehicles, they're allowing the power
00:29:28.400 generation capacity of our electrical grid to decline and deteriorate. They're shuttering natural gas
00:29:33.680 power plants. They're shuttering coal plants. They're not building new nuclear power plants.
00:29:38.000 And as a result, there are shortages of electricity in California, Texas, New York and other places.
00:29:43.440 In Texas, during a heat wave last week, Tesla told its drivers not to charge their electric vehicles
00:29:50.160 during the afternoon during peak demand. That tells you that these electric vehicles are putting
00:29:55.600 more strain on the grid than the grid can handle. So if Pete Buttigieg was supposed to be all about
00:30:00.240 infrastructure, he's telling people to move to electric cars and he's expressing kind of incredulity
00:30:04.160 that Americans haven't done so already, maybe he needs to understand that the green policies of
00:30:08.880 this administration and the blue states and even conservative states that have decided to add green
00:30:14.080 energy too rapidly, those green policies are making demands on the electricity grid that make it harder
00:30:20.640 to shift to electric vehicles in our consumer fleet. So they have to decide what they want. Do they want
00:30:26.800 an economy that grows? Do they want people to make the transition away from traditional fuels to
00:30:31.440 electric vehicles? If so, they have to be comfortable with using fossil fuels to power the grid. It'll be
00:30:37.040 more efficient than having people put fuel in their cars on their own, but they have to make that
00:30:41.200 choice. They have to actually accept that there's a transitional period and that ultimately it's the
00:30:46.080 price mechanism that's going to enable that transition. Once electric cars are cheaper, once solar
00:30:51.280 energy, wind energy are more efficient and cheaper, then you'll see that transition happen naturally.
00:30:55.760 By forcing it down our throats, they're creating hardship for American consumers. They're asking
00:31:01.440 poor and middle-class, working-class consumers and taxpayers to subsidize the wealthy who get tax
00:31:06.320 credits for these electric vehicles. And it's a recipe for failure. It's a recipe for power failures.
00:31:11.760 It's a recipe for all kinds of hardship that is completely unnecessary. So Pete Buttigieg sits in his
00:31:16.400 little bubble and pontificates, but this guy lives at a remove from reality, as do many of his fellow
00:31:23.360 ministers in the Biden cabinet. You know, you made me think of something I just saw today.
00:31:29.680 The CBC state broadcaster has a financial affairs consumer affairs advisor, and she was asked,
00:31:36.400 well, how do you get ahead with inflation? So what should a young millennial worker do
00:31:43.120 if all of a sudden you can't afford rent and food and groceries and gas in the big city? And here's her
00:31:49.280 advice. Take a quick look. Shelter and hydro in combination should be about 30% of your income.
00:31:56.160 And that is much higher right now, especially in cities like Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, where rents
00:32:01.840 are much higher. One way that you can mitigate that is by speaking to your employer about getting a raise.
00:32:09.040 With inflation, the way that it is going, it is completely reasonable right now, especially in this tight
00:32:14.240 labor market, to go to your employer and say, I need you to bump my wage because it's becoming
00:32:19.680 impossible for me to still survive in the city that I was hired in. And if that doesn't work,
00:32:25.360 looking for another job, especially if you've got skills that are in demand, will often give you the
00:32:29.760 bump that you need in order to afford that apartment and that rent that goes with it.
00:32:34.080 I can hear a whole bunch of people at home going, so my boss will say no.
00:32:37.600 Yeah. And that's a fair point.
00:32:41.280 So there you have it, Joel. Just ask for a raise. And if that doesn't happen, get a job that pays
00:32:47.840 more. I mean, stop being poor, people. It feels like the same advice from Pete Buttigieg or Christia
00:32:54.480 Freeland or the CBC. Just earn more money. Just buy a Tesla. I think it's unhitched from reality,
00:33:02.080 as you said. But there is, I think, one grown up in the Democrats. And his name is Joe Manchin. He's
00:33:07.760 from West Virginia. Did he not pop the balloon on a lot of this stuff by saying, I'm not going along
00:33:13.600 with the Build Back Better Green scheme? What happened there? Because we saw him make a statement
00:33:18.800 and we saw the gnashing of teeth. Is all this trillion dollar infrastructure, Build Back Better
00:33:24.000 Green stuff is actually still proceeding? I thought he sort of ended that.
00:33:27.120 So there are three major spending bills that define the Biden administration. The first
00:33:33.280 was the American Recovery Act, which was Biden's big spending bill when he came into office. That
00:33:38.560 passed with Democrat votes and Biden signed it into law. It was additional COVID relief,
00:33:43.360 two trillion dollars in spending, even though all of the spending passed under the Trump administration
00:33:48.080 hadn't yet been out the door. So it was additional spending on top of what was passed in the latter
00:33:54.160 days of the Trump administration. Then you had the infrastructure bill, 1.2 billion. Excuse me,
00:33:58.800 I've done it again. 1.2 trillion. I have to get used to speaking in trillions. Yeah.
00:34:02.880 1.2 trillion dollars. It was bipartisan. There were some moderate Republicans who went along with it.
00:34:08.800 And only about 10 percent, in fact, less than 10 percent, fixes roads and bridges. But there was
00:34:14.720 broader support for some kind of infrastructure spending. We do have infrastructure projects that
00:34:19.440 need to happen. So that was more or less bipartisan. Then there was the Build Back Better plan,
00:34:25.520 which essentially was written by Bernie Sanders. Joe Biden adopted it. 3.5 trillion dollars in
00:34:31.280 additional spending. All of the social spending and all of the pork projects and all of the pie in
00:34:37.360 the sky utopian schemes that Democrats have wanted to pass for centuries. And that was that bill. Many
00:34:44.000 conservative critics said they vastly underestimated the cost of that bill, that 3.5 trillion was
00:34:48.960 really 5 trillion or higher over the 10 year period of the bill. Manchin put a spike in that several
00:34:55.600 months ago. And the Democrats now accuse him of negotiating in bad faith because he said he might
00:35:00.640 be open to a smaller bill. What the Democrats miss is that in the interim, inflation has become the
00:35:05.680 number one issue for Americans. Now, Manchin is from a fossil fuel producing state. He's from a coal state.
00:35:11.520 So he doesn't like the fact that many of the Democrats' plans involve phasing out coal as a power source.
00:35:17.680 But in addition to that, he's got a lot of working class voters in West Virginia who are paying more
00:35:22.720 but earning the same. Or even if they are getting that raise or getting that better job, it's not
00:35:26.640 keeping pace with inflation. The number of Americans who say that they're having trouble affording major
00:35:32.000 or just basic expenses continues to grow up. The proportion continues to grow up. So there are many
00:35:38.080 ordinary Americans who are deeply worried that more government spending is going to mean more
00:35:42.560 inflation. And they're not wrong. The sheer amount of money being shoved out the door by the federal
00:35:47.520 government. And keep in mind, again, we're still seeing some of the spending from the Trump era,
00:35:51.760 from the height of the pandemic, only coming into the market now. So there's still cash flowing out
00:35:56.960 from government. And Joe Biden's proposing to spend more. So Manchin understands this is a major
00:36:02.480 problem for his constituents. He comes from a working class state. He represents the kind of
00:36:07.440 working class voters who have increasingly been voting Republican, both for cultural reasons and
00:36:11.920 for economic reasons. And he was willing to negotiate. Some of those voters do want more social spending.
00:36:17.840 They do want more help from the government. But they're also bitterly opposed to any phasing out of
00:36:23.920 their industries. I mean, Democrats seem to have this idea that when you close the coal mines,
00:36:27.360 those coal miners can all become computer programmers or they can operate call centers
00:36:32.560 from their homes in West Virginia or something like that. I mean, Democrats have no idea how money
00:36:36.960 is made, how jobs are held down by ordinary people. I'm talking about the elected Democrats who have
00:36:41.440 spent their lives in public service. They have no idea how a business is run. They don't know what
00:36:46.320 it's like to get up, go to work and hope you're going to have your job at the end of the day.
00:36:50.080 What's also happened is that until recently, the advice that was given just there in that clip,
00:36:55.840 ask for a raise, get a new job, that actually wasn't terribly bad advice until recently. But
00:37:01.120 with inflation, there have been fears of a recession. And with fears of a recession,
00:37:05.440 a lot of the companies that were hiring very eagerly in the past have started to slow down their
00:37:10.400 hiring. We're not seeing it in the unemployment rate because most people are still employed who want
00:37:15.920 jobs. But I don't think we're going to see the expansion of jobs that was as rapid as it's been
00:37:21.040 in recent months, because I think a lot of employers, a lot of businesses are adopting a
00:37:24.880 wait and see approach because they want to see which way the economy is moving.
00:37:28.320 So it's no longer quite as advantageous a labor market for workers as it was just a few months
00:37:34.400 ago. Things are heading in the wrong direction. It's not that we're doing so badly. And there are
00:37:37.840 a lot of positive things going on in the American economy. But people feel like things are heading
00:37:41.600 in the wrong direction. And all Democrats can talk about is what they want to regulate,
00:37:45.280 what they want to cut off. They're glad people are paying higher prices at the pump,
00:37:48.720 because maybe they'll buy electric vehicles and so forth. We are dealing with an administration
00:37:53.120 and a governing party that is out of touch with reality. And that's the reason they're heading
00:37:57.360 for trouble in November.
00:37:58.240 Yeah. You know, I was adding up all the trillions you talked about. Maybe my math is wrong,
00:38:03.600 but I think you outlined between 6.7 and 8.2 trillion dollars worth of spending. I think I
00:38:13.360 was adding that up, right? And there's- Right. Well, it's massive. And you know,
00:38:17.360 not all of that passed. The infrastructure bill passed, the American Recovery Act passed,
00:38:21.040 but the big one, Build Back Better, it hasn't passed. Yeah. Right. I take your point. But had
00:38:26.000 it passed, okay, let's just deal with the ones that did pass. A third of a billion Americans, roughly.
00:38:31.920 So for every trillion dollars, that's $3,000 per man, woman, and child. Like it's just such a staggering
00:38:38.400 number. So if you're at 3.2 trillion, I'm guessing that's what passed. So that's, you know, that's
00:38:46.000 $10,000. Is that right? Did I do my math right? $10,000 per man, woman, and child? Is my math right
00:38:54.560 on that? So for a family of three, that's a $30,000 US, which is real dollars. That's why there's inflation,
00:39:04.800 because you're pumping this money. You're printing this money. I don't know. It's just,
00:39:09.040 it's really shocking. I hope no one tells Biden the number that comes after a billion,
00:39:12.880 trillion. No one tell him quadrillion, because he'll start throwing that.
00:39:17.360 Yeah. I'm worried, but here's what's on my mind here as a Canadian.
00:39:22.720 Donald Trump was amazing for energy. Drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge,
00:39:27.520 drilling in the Gulf of Mexico, fracking, mining. Like he was amazing. America actually hit
00:39:33.840 net energy surplus. Like America became an energy exporter. And I recall when Donald Trump went to
00:39:40.880 Germany and told them, don't be foolish. Don't buy your natural gas from Vladimir Putin. And they
00:39:46.880 smirked at him. Here's a quick look at a video. This is published by a left-wing social media site
00:39:53.120 that was just mocking what a dummy Donald Trump was. And look at the faces of the German diplomats,
00:39:59.760 just clucking their teeth like that. And what an idiot Donald Trump was. Take a look at this just a few years ago.
00:40:10.880 Germany will become totally dependent
00:40:13.040 on Russian energy if it does not immediately change course.
00:40:27.840 Here in the Western Hemisphere, we are committed to maintaining our independence from the
00:40:39.120 encroachment of expansionist foreign powers.
00:40:43.520 Yeah, well, who's laughing now? I mean, I don't think Trump's laughing. I don't think Trump's
00:40:53.600 enjoying the I told you so. No one is. But instead of developing American oil, gas, coal,
00:41:02.000 he's going to Venezuela. He's sending emissaries to Venezuela, an American enemy. He literally goes to
00:41:08.720 Saudi Arabia to fist bump the prince saying, please produce more. He won't open Keystone
00:41:13.840 Excel, which would give 800,000 barrels a day of ethical oil to America. It's just so strange to me.
00:41:20.880 He's trying to get more conflict oil from OPEC and Russia. He won't get more ethical oil.
00:41:26.800 And he's leaving all these jobs. There could be a million more jobs in America if he greenlit
00:41:33.040 the kind of energy plan that Trump had. It's all about appeasing the left wing of his party.
00:41:39.440 And they are ideologically committed to setting an example. I mean, they know that canceling
00:41:44.400 Keystone is not going to have any real effect on climate change, but they want to set the example.
00:41:49.440 You know, there's this idea that if we change the laws in our state or even just change the ordinances
00:41:54.800 in our town, we become a climate friendly town. I mean, whatever little town you're from,
00:41:59.360 whatever suburb, whatever liberal community, you're not going to have any appreciable impact
00:42:03.360 on global climate or anything else. But they want to set the example. It's all gestural politics.
00:42:08.480 So they cancel Keystone, even though it passed every environmental approval under Obama,
00:42:12.240 under Hillary Clinton, Secretary of State at the time at the State Department. I mean,
00:42:16.400 it passed everything, but they canceled it. Donald Trump made America energy independent.
00:42:21.680 And as you rightfully point out, it's had national security implications. We've gone cap in hand
00:42:26.000 to the Saudis to ask them to produce more because we won't do it. Now, there's a subtle racism there,
00:42:30.560 right? I mean, it's okay if these Arabs in a far away land produce the same oil, but we can't produce
00:42:37.760 it. Westerners in our green mansions, we don't want to be sullied by such a dirty business as producing
00:42:47.760 oil. I mean, we're going to park our Teslas in our battery-reinforced garages with our solar roofs,
00:42:55.200 and we're going to feel good about ourselves while we're asking the Saudis to pump more oil.
00:42:58.880 I mean, it's a pantomime of liberal hypocrisy, but there you have it. That's what Joe Biden has
00:43:06.000 been reduced to doing. And as a consequence, he's had to throw out all of his previous statements
00:43:11.200 about Saudi Arabia. He's had to swallow his words on human rights. And the only good thing about his
00:43:16.560 recent trip to the Middle East was that he reversed most of his policies. I mean, he threw away most of
00:43:20.800 his campaign promises, no consulate for the Palestinians, no immediate implementation
00:43:24.800 of a two-state solution. I think it was a great trip only because he adopted most of Trump's
00:43:29.440 policies. He starts talking about the Abraham Accords. In the first months of the Biden
00:43:32.800 administration, they didn't even use the words Abraham Accords. They were opposed to using it
00:43:36.400 because it reminded people of Trump. Now they're embracing it. They want to see it
00:43:40.480 continue and so forth. So I think it was a successful trip only because Biden abandoned his campaign
00:43:46.160 promises. But the broader point is we are not moving in the right direction on energy. And there
00:43:51.040 are still people in the Biden administration, in the White House, who are saying, maybe this is all
00:43:55.200 good. Maybe these high fuel prices are good because we want to move Americans off of their wasteful,
00:44:01.120 horrible, gas-guzzling cars and move them onto the electric grid that is failing with their electric
00:44:06.400 vehicles. Yeah. Well, Trudeau talks about that too. He says, make better choices. And because people
00:44:12.880 won't do that voluntarily, he wants the painful price of gasoline to be so high that they're forced
00:44:18.160 to choose between gasoline and groceries. And that makes them make some better choice. I don't know
00:44:23.280 if you saw the news, but some major turbines for the Nord Stream gas pipeline from Russia to Europe,
00:44:32.320 they were being repaired in Montreal. And it was against Canadian sanctions to return those to Russia.
00:44:40.320 But Trudeau literally amended the sanctions to allow these gas turbines to go back to Russia.
00:44:45.920 And I can understand why. Because, I mean, it's not Russia that would be throttled. It would be
00:44:51.040 Germany. If Germany had 40% of its energy cut off, I mean, Germany was begging Trudeau to allow it
00:44:58.320 through. But the one thing Canada actually has leverage over, I mean, there's no Russian oligarchs with
00:45:05.120 sports teams here. There's no Russian oligarchs with villas or yachts here. They don't bank in
00:45:11.120 Toronto. So all his talk about sanctions was for show. The one thing he actually could do,
00:45:17.360 he immediately abandoned. And I think it was actually the right thing to do.
00:45:21.760 But it shows that Trudeau won't do the one thing Canada could do. We're not strong militarily. We're
00:45:28.320 not strong diplomatically. But my God, we've got a lot of oil and gas. But that's the one thing he
00:45:33.360 will not do for Ukraine or Poland or any other European country. He will not increase ethical
00:45:39.520 energy to displace Russian energy. I find it so telling. It's just like Biden in a way.
00:45:44.960 Well, let me add this. There's something else Canada could do, which is to call for negotiations
00:45:52.160 to end the war. I'm very hawkish on foreign policy. But when you're facing off against a nuclear-armed
00:45:57.440 power, the calculations are different. We now see both sides grinding to a stalemate
00:46:02.720 in eastern Ukraine. And by not reaching a negotiated settlement to end this conflict,
00:46:08.560 Biden and the West have prolonged the suffering of the Ukrainian people. They've prolonged this
00:46:13.360 energy crisis. They've prolonged the food shortage. Now is the time to negotiate before winter,
00:46:18.160 before Russia has more leverage with heating oil, with gas. And instead, the guy who promised
00:46:24.400 diplomacy is back when he came into office is just sending more weapons to the Ukrainians,
00:46:29.040 Western weapons that the Ukrainian soldiers are not trained how to use. So we're fueling this
00:46:34.800 conflict. We're pledging more money, more weapons. And to what end? There's just a stalemate there.
00:46:39.200 We're frittering away the precious leverage that Ukraine fought for when they drove back
00:46:44.160 the Russian soldiers out of Kyiv and protected their sovereignty. I think the most important
00:46:50.160 thing that Canada could do is to call for an international peace conference to resolve this
00:46:54.400 in some way that provided adequate security guarantees to Ukraine, allowed Russia to save
00:46:59.200 face and withdraw. And we could get back to the business of producing wheat and exporting fertilizer and
00:47:04.720 doing all the things. People may starve around the world because of the prolonged conflict here.
00:47:09.360 I mean, I don't understand why there isn't more pressure for a diplomatic solution. It's mind-boggling.
00:47:14.720 I think it's because the media are asleep at the switch. But again, I'm a very hawkish person. I think
00:47:19.280 Israel should bomb the Iranian nuclear facilities. I'm very much in favor of preemptive action against
00:47:24.320 terrorism and so forth. I'm very hawkish. I've even supported democratic presidents when they've ordered
00:47:29.840 American soldiers or resources into combat for various reasons of national interest. So I don't
00:47:36.640 change my views based on administration. But this is a different circumstance. We are not
00:47:41.200 able to escalate to the point where we would want a nuclear confrontation with Russia. So as long as
00:47:47.680 Putin knows we're not going to go that far, he can just keep fighting until he wears us out,
00:47:51.520 which is what he's doing. And he's worn out the Ukrainian military. They're losing ground every day.
00:47:56.400 I don't know why we're not immediately calling for a peace conference to stop this,
00:48:00.320 stop the economic damage, the humanitarian damage that this is doing, not just there,
00:48:04.080 but around the world. So maybe Canada could speak up and tell Joe, hey, you know what?
00:48:08.560 We as Canadians are maybe a little bit better liked around the world than Americans are. Maybe
00:48:13.440 we'll host the peace conference. We'll do something. But this war is going to cause incredible
00:48:19.200 hardship unless it's brought to an end.
00:48:20.640 I don't know if you know this, but Trudeau's deputy is named Chrystia Freeland. And she's a
00:48:27.040 Ukrainian nationalist, which is fine. She has a home in Kyiv and visits regularly. I think she's
00:48:34.560 been a driving force in a Ukrainian nationalist foreign policy. And I, frankly, I don't know if
00:48:40.560 I've told my viewers, my great grandfather came from Ukraine. I mean, I have nothing against Ukrainians.
00:48:45.280 I think the invasion is improper and illegal and imperialist and deadly. But my God,
00:48:59.120 I mean, Justin Trudeau has more phone calls with Vladimir Zelensky than he does with Canadian
00:49:05.200 premiers than he does with the Canadian opposition leader. I mean, it's very strange.
00:49:08.880 Yeah. I think the West has allowed Zelensky to develop a set of false expectations. And I think
00:49:15.760 the right thing to do is to sit down with Vladimir Putin. And even if it means giving up some portion
00:49:20.960 of that Eastern territory, Ukraine, up until recently, you could say Ukraine had won the war.
00:49:27.040 They had defended their sovereignty. They had repulsed a Russian attack, a lightning attack,
00:49:30.960 a blitzkrieg attack on Kyiv when everybody thought, including the Biden administration,
00:49:34.800 they thought it was going to be over in 48 hours. Ukrainians fought valiantly, et cetera.
00:49:39.680 Now it's a stalemate. Ukraine is steadily losing its military advantage in the Eastern provinces.
00:49:46.800 If Russia takes those by force, it will then be in a position to push once again into the rest of
00:49:52.960 Ukraine. And this time it'll meet an exhausted Ukrainian military without the weapons and supplies
00:49:59.840 it needs. We are running out of supplies to give them. Some of the things we've given them,
00:50:03.440 like Javelin missiles, are no longer manufactured by the companies that made them. The defense
00:50:07.360 contractors in the United States haven't made them for years. So we are running into a serious
00:50:13.600 problem. Plus, winter is coming in. Russia is going to have leverage over Europe. The winter wheat crop
00:50:18.560 is the most important wheat crop in global food supply. It's not going to get planted or harvested
00:50:24.080 properly. There are fertilizer products that are not being shipped to the rest of the world. Africa
00:50:29.680 may see millions of people starve because of the lack of fertilizers. We are already seeing what
00:50:34.160 happens in Sri Lanka when you don't have fertilizer. They went organic last year and people started
00:50:39.040 starving, which is why the government was overthrown. We are sitting on top of a major crisis and nobody is
00:50:44.640 calling for an end to the war. I'm not saying appease Vladimir Putin. I'm saying come to some sort of
00:50:49.280 reasonable agreement where he gets something that allows him to save face. Ukrainians have their sovereignty
00:50:54.960 protected and move on. There's no reason to push toward what the West seems to regard as some kind
00:51:01.520 of victory. They use this word, but they don't know what it means. I mean, I used to criticize Obama and
00:51:05.840 the Democrats for not seeking victory in Iraq, victory in Afghanistan. But at least we have some
00:51:09.760 idea what that would look like. We have no idea what it means in Ukraine. And we also don't know that
00:51:14.640 Vladimir Putin wouldn't do something much more drastic in response to a perceived Western victory in
00:51:22.880 Ukraine. I mean, he's not going to leave with his tail between his legs. You know, if he starts
00:51:26.560 losing badly in Eastern Ukraine, there's no telling what he might do. He's already been
00:51:30.320 unpredictable and vicious in this war. So I think there's got to be pressure for a diplomatic solution.
00:51:36.000 Yeah. I think Trudeau and Biden are willing to fight to the last Ukrainian on this. I'm just not
00:51:40.960 sure how that serves Ukraine. Well, Joel, listen, it's great to catch up with you. We covered so much ground
00:51:45.440 and I find it interesting to hear your take on Ukraine. It is not being pro-Putin to say this war
00:51:54.960 should end. That's an absurd thought that I hear too much. Anyone who says maybe we shouldn't
00:52:03.440 prolong the war, maybe we shouldn't escalate the war. Oh, that's just a Putin shield. I don't think it
00:52:10.160 is. And I, it's a very strange thing. And I think a lot of Republicans have war mania too. It really
00:52:16.640 felt like what Eisenhower described as the military industrial complex, the speed at which
00:52:22.160 a $40 billion military package was shoved out of Congress with no oversight. I found that shocking.
00:52:29.440 I don't know. I hope things make sense. It's great to catch up with you. I'm sure we'll talk again soon
00:52:34.720 and we'll keep following your stuff in Breitbart. Thanks for being here today. Thanks so much, Ezra.
00:52:38.880 All right. There you have it. Joel Pollack, one of my favorite guys,
00:52:41.760 senior editor at large at Breitbart.com. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:52:57.200 Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. Peter six of nine says,
00:53:00.960 yet with this going on, oil companies are still hiring at corporate level,
00:53:05.440 people who actively support this and donate money to political charities that attack them.
00:53:11.920 You know, you're talking about green extremism, cap and trade, Stephen Gilboa. It's true. I remember
00:53:18.160 when I wrote the book ethical oil about 10 years ago, and I was often invited to speak at oil companies,
00:53:23.120 often at like day long staff retreats. And I would be on the speaking list, but I would see the list.
00:53:30.000 And there were environmental extremists on the list. I remember appearing once.
00:53:34.320 And the head of the Pembina Institute was right there before me. He's a leading anti oil sands
00:53:40.400 activist. He was being paid big money by the oil companies to come to the oil companies and speak to
00:53:48.480 their staff against the oil sands in Calgary. True story. Pass me the hummus says we're going down
00:53:56.240 Sri Lanka's path. The World Economic Forum promised them riches after they went 100% organic.
00:54:03.680 That's what Joel Pollack was talking to us about. You know, these utopians with their schemes that
00:54:09.360 sound great at Ted talks and universities, you think they've ever planted and grown any food in their
00:54:15.920 lives. It's incredible that Sri Lanka of all places let that happen. Great White Pine says,
00:54:24.320 the only reason our population is growing is due to immigration. Our reproduction rate is 1.6.
00:54:31.120 I think that's right. And I think that's a problem. I think the pandemic and the lockdowns and the fear
00:54:39.840 made all those things worse. But there are ways to encourage families to have kids again.
00:54:45.280 It's probably not going to happen, though, if the housing in your country is so expensive
00:54:49.680 that no one can move out. No one can get married and start their own family
00:54:53.440 until they're in their 30s, as opposed to when it used to happen. People used to get married in their
00:54:58.160 early 20s. That's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World
00:55:04.240 Headquarters to you at home. Good night. Keep fighting for freedom. Adam Sos here for Rebel News
00:55:09.760 at City Hall in Calgary, Alberta, where Calgary Mayor Gioti Gondek and her largely lackey City Council
00:55:16.560 have seemingly completely lost the plot. Their plan to make Calgary a net zero city by 2050 is impractical
00:55:25.440 and plausible and, in fact, largely undesirable even in concept for many in the heart of oil
00:55:31.920 country here. But when you find out how much they're planning to spend in pursuit of their pipe dreams,
00:55:37.600 you'll truly wonder about their psychological stability and well-being. That is, if you weren't
00:55:42.560 already questioning their connection to reality after they declared a climate emergency in Calgary
00:55:47.440 back in November of 2021. Gondek plans to spend $87 billion on this climate initiative. That's right,
00:55:57.040 $87 billion, not million. There are dollars that will need to be spent if we don't get smarter about
00:56:04.960 emissions and electrification. That's indicated in the report as well. And frankly, what we're trying
00:56:10.640 to do is keep up with oil sands companies and energy producers who have long had plans
00:56:17.120 for pathways to net zero. We're just trying to do our part. In other words, she plans to spend $62,000
00:56:23.920 for every man, woman and child in Calgary on this unhinged climate initiative. An initiative of this
00:56:30.160 hubristic magnitude would be right at home in Mao Zedong's China, a China which in the 1950s
00:56:36.320 launched their Great Leap Forward, a plan to modernize the country. And despite the fact that, well,
00:56:41.600 the technology wasn't quite ready and the people weren't quite buying in, they went full
00:56:46.800 force with this campaign, this initiative. As a result, as many as 55 million people died.
00:56:54.000 Now, I don't want to be dramatic. I'm not suggesting that if the government spends $87 billion
00:56:58.560 on this initiative, we're going to lose our homes, starve and very likely descend into an unprecedented
00:57:04.160 era of totalitarian governing. But then again, neither were the Chinese. We all care about the
00:57:10.240 environment, but at what cost? So this is a pretty ambitious plan, $87, $88 billion. What is that going to
00:57:16.720 cost the average Calgarian? At face value, this just doesn't make a lick of sense.
00:57:22.000 People are losing their livelihoods, their supply chain issues. And in fact, we are seeing costs and
00:57:29.040 inflation skyrocketing to unprecedented levels, largely because of government spending initiatives
00:57:34.640 like this one. But these politicians simply don't care. They don't give a lick about your average
00:57:39.920 working class Joe or the family that's just trying to get by. They are tipping their hats to their
00:57:45.600 handlers. This is very much the stuff of World Economic Forum dreams and working class nightmares.
00:57:51.840 Beyond the initial sticker shock of the price associated with this project, we also have to
00:57:58.080 realize that the technology required to make net zero possible simply doesn't exist yet. We will be spending
00:58:04.640 billions of dollars on technology that is effectively prototypes and will be laughed at within a decade
00:58:10.560 as absolute relics. This is not a solution moving forward. When that technology does become viable,
00:58:17.760 make no mistake, it will run away with the free market. If there can be renewable, affordable, sustainable
00:58:23.600 energy, it will win on the open market. It is categorically evident, much as we saw in China, that the
00:58:29.120 technology simply isn't there yet. Until the technology reaches a point where it is viable,
00:58:34.720 we need to stop this climate hysteria. We need to realize that we need Alberta oil and gas. Most of
00:58:40.960 these climate initiatives do nothing but line the pockets of politicians and their friends. And that
00:58:46.160 really is the rub of it. That's what this is all about. All you need to do is follow the money. And mark
00:58:50.960 my words, when these contracts for the $87 billion in spending go out, you can just watch the money and
00:58:57.040 watch where it goes. It's going to go to China. It's going to go to perhaps Saudi Arabia. It's going
00:59:01.920 to go to California and some of these other states that play ball on progressive ideologies. That is
00:59:07.840 what you're going to see. It'll certainly go east and to companies around Ottawa. But I highly doubt
00:59:12.640 we'll be seeing much, if any, of that business right here at home, right here where we need it. These
00:59:17.920 politicians want to turn Alberta into a have-not province because, frankly, Alberta pushes back a little
00:59:23.840 bit and they can't stand it. They want us to own nothing, not even the $87 billion in tech we're
00:59:30.160 about to buy. And they want us to be happy about it. We've entered a troubling era of politics. And that
00:59:36.240 is one where politicians are not accountable and they are unbridled in their spending. It has gotten so
00:59:41.040 bad that it's inevitable at this point, thanks to the efforts of people like Justin Trudeau and unpopular
00:59:45.920 mayors like Jyoti Gondek, that generations will be saddled with debt. And we will endure economic and
00:59:53.440 collective instability because of the actions of these people. This $87 billion eco spending spree
01:00:02.160 is just a principal example of that. But there are countless others right across this country. And
01:00:07.280 that is because these people are would-be tyrants. Thankfully, we have the remaining crumbling vestiges of
01:00:13.920 the once great democracy of Canada still holding them in check to some extent. But who knows how
01:00:19.120 long that will last? And with initiatives like this, like this $87 billion spending spree, how far are
01:00:26.480 these politicians from a total lack of accountability that are already very far from being in touch with
01:00:32.320 your average Joes and with the economic realities faced by most of us in this world today? As always,
01:00:38.800 I want to thank you all so much for tuning in. For Rebel News, I'm Adam Sos.