EZRA LEVANT ｜ Why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients secret？
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Summary
A $61 million emergency payment to the media was rushed out by Trudeau and Stephen Gilbo right before the election. Why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients a secret? And why should others go to jail when you're the biggest carbon consumer?
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. News from Black Locks. A $61 million emergency payment to the media was rushed
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out by Trudeau and Stephen Gilboa right before the election. Isn't that incredible? They paid a
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$61 million bribe to reporters, but that's not even the story. The story is they're keeping the
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names of the reporters secret. They made a secret payment to reporters on the eve of the election.
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What do you think about that? I'll tell you what I think. That's a hat. Let me invite you to become
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a subscriber to Rebel News Plus first, though. It's $8 a month. No big deal. Go to rebelnews.com,
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click subscribe. Get the video version of this podcast every day, plus weekly videos from
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Sheila Gunn-Reed, David Menzies, Andrew Chapados, and the satisfaction of knowing you're supporting
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one of the few media outlets in the country that does not take money from Trudeau. All right,
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Tonight, why is Trudeau keeping his list of media subsidy recipients a secret? It's August
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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Well, there's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I'm publishing it is because it's
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Things are upside down these days, a moral inversion. It's a kind of madness. I saw a story about
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someone who freaked out in a store because they were pressured to put a mask on and they didn't
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want to. It's just some random story. I don't know the facts, but I can guess it's the stress.
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It's the shocking, demoralizing stress of not recognizing not only your own country, but your
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own city, your own neighborhood, your own stores you go to, your own friends, your own family,
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your whole world, what it is to be a person anymore. A couple of years ago, I visited Tommy
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Robinson in prison a few times. And as a visitor to a prison, I had to follow rules. It was a very
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strict prison. I had to be inspected and handled and have my privacy violated. And that's just as
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a visitor, obviously. They looked in my mouth. They had dogs sniff me just for a few hours while
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I was a visitor. It was alienating and destabilizing for a few hours. A small taste of what it would be
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like to be a prisoner all the time. But I knew I would be out for sure in an hour or so. So it's
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more of a curiosity and uncomfortable but rare and anomalous experience that I could talk about
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later from comfort and safety. I knew it had an end date, an end time. I feel like that prison
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experience all the time now, and of course, mine was very mild and very short just as a visitor. I
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feel like what I saw and what I experienced in those hours has been extrapolated to the whole world,
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to all of our lives. And we did nothing wrong. And we had no due process. We had no court,
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no parliament, no debate, no vote. And then suddenly we're ruled by people we never heard of
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before. Public health high priests with bizarre demands of us that are instantly law, like some
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mad king issuing edicts. And they seem to change their views about things without explanation or
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logic and expect us to forget that. Like in the novel 1984, where Winston Smith, the hero, would simply
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change an old headline in a newspaper and throw out the original so you never could check what actually
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did happen before. It's madness. It's so psychologically shocking that many weaker
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people have embraced it as a form of Stockholm Syndrome. They can't make sense of it. They know
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they can't defeat it or make it stop. So they cast their lot in with it, like a hostage realizing that
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their only hope is to side with the hostage taker as everything else is doomed. So perhaps joining the
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devil will save you from him. I never watched that anti-Trump show called The Handmaid's Tale. It was meant to be
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a commentary on Trump. The show's creator said so, which is odd because there's a lot of misogyny
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that really is in the world. But I can't think of any that came from Trump during his time as
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president. I see it coming from Iran, for example. I can actually see it coming from radical
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transgender activists, too, if you want to talk about women's rights and women's bases. But not
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from the Christian right. You know that Margaret Atwood, who wrote the original novel some 40-odd years ago,
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she said she was actually basing the concept loosely on the revolution in Iran and its anti-women
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Islamic tenets. But she lacked the courage to criticize Islam, so she made the tyrants American
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conservative Christians. I didn't watch the show, but I saw a few clips of it online here and there.
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And one theme, and I appreciated this, was how the Puritans who ran this diabolical world
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never believed in it themselves and were hypocrites in every way. Everything they banned for ordinary
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people, they indulged in for themselves. Sex, liquor, drugs, banned books, whatever. I think
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that's a commentary on any Puritan society, any authoritarian society, the Communist Party, the
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Soviet Union, the Chinese Communist Party. They don't follow the rules they impose on the little
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people. Saudi billionaire princes love liquor that's banned officially in the country. I mention this
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because in our new tyranny, our new authoritarian world that happened so quickly, that happened
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without a battle, without a vote, without a choice, without a question, it just happened from within.
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But strangely, it happened from within everywhere at the same time. That's odd, isn't it? And it was
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just done. And at first, people signed up for the hygiene revolution. They wore their masks and
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socially distanced, and they followed the rules. But two weeks to flatten the curve, like my very short
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prison visit, you'll be done very soon, just stay with it. Two weeks to flatten the curve,
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it's now almost two years. To do what? The curve is more than flat, and it's over. How did the goal
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move from flatten the curve, which just means stop hospitals from being overwhelmed at once? And
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they never were. How do we move from that to mask rules, to travel quarantines, and COVID jails, to
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forced vaccines, which is where we are now, all without a question, without asking us, without our
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consent? And more and more to see, like in The Handmaid's Tale, like in the Soviet or Islamic
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tyrannies, to see the ruling classes, the elites, break their rules with impunity and laugh about it.
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We all saw the elite of the elite partying with Barack Obama for his 60th birthday. No masks, no social
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distancing. John Kerry, the climate czar, flew in on his private jet. Of course he did. Less cool, less elite,
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less stylish, less impressive, but just as authoritarian, a Canadian cabinet minister, Catherine McKenna, used
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taxpayers' dollars to jet to Nineveh last week. That's quite a flight, to take photo ops of herself.
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But look at that. No masks, no quarantines, no social distancing, even though Nineveh, the territory,
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has special rules for people flying in from the south. A liberal cabinet minister flies in for
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pre-campaign photo ops and breaks the 14-day quarantine and mask rules, and publishes photos of
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herself breaking the rules, just to let you know she's in the ruling class and you're not.
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So here we are, an upside-down world, and they'll tell you that you're crazy, that you're the
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conspiracy theorist, that you shouldn't be asking any questions. You'll be banned if you do.
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It's upside-down. It's that moral inversion. Why do we rely? Who do we rely on to tell us the truth
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about it? We used to rely on reporters. We still have a few good reporters in Canada. Sometimes
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Evan Solomon of CTV asks surprising questions of cabinet ministers. Steve Chase of the Globe and
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Mail is strong on covering China's evil. Don't ever let me say that reporters are 100% corrupt.
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But I'll say that 90% of them don't dare challenge power. They don't dare color outside the lines,
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challenge the powers to be. They're incurious, or they've taught themselves nothing good comes
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from curiosity. It killed the cat. And they're not brave lions. They're more little house cats.
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And what little curiosity or skepticism or sense of speaking truth to power there is, well,
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it's being drummed out of them by plain old cash. Just money. Look at this. Here's Andrew Coyne of the
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National Post at the time, ripping the proposed media bailout. Back in 2019, he wrote this. Of course,
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he took the bailout. So did the Globe and Mail, where he now works. What a laugh to see this
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criticism in the CBC again from a couple years ago. They received $1.5 billion a year from the
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government. They were saying, we don't like the media bailout. Look at this one here. Journalists
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question it. Yeah. Then they all took it. Every journalist in that story took the bailout.
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Here's Bob Cox from the Winnipeg Free Press who lied. Sorry, pardon me, who led the charge for the
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bailout and was first in line at the trough. Cox said, revenue in the Winnipeg Free Press had
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fallen over 30% since mid-March. And he's heard revenue dropping 40% elsewhere in the industry.
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Unless you're a company that relies entirely on readers for your revenue, you're in a lot of
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trouble, he said. Yeah. If your readers don't like you anymore, they don't trust you anymore.
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That's a sign that maybe you're doing things wrong. How about listen to your readers and respect
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them instead of just asking Trudeau for a bailout because your own readers don't like you anymore.
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Well, here we are two years later and it's the eve of the next election where a key issue is
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Trudeau's banned, planned censorship of the internet. I say it's a key issue because it is for me, but
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the Conservative Party of Canada hasn't mentioned it once. Neither Aaron O'Toole nor his spokesman
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on the issue, Alain Reyes. Come to think of it, I haven't heard O'Toole oppose a vaccine passport
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either. Have you? Or come to think of it, the lockdowns. Have you? In fact, O'Toole sounds more
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terrified of the virus than anyone else these days. Canadians are worried about a fourth wave of COVID-19.
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The dangerous Delta variant is here and we have to be ready. Now is not the time for an election. We can
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all wait and go to the polls when it's safe. We need to focus on health and well-being, securing our
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economic future and fighting COVID-19 together. My wife and I had COVID. Like many families, we want to
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get past this pandemic. But let's pull together for one more fight. Let's beat COVID-19 and have an
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Yeah, not sure what O'Toole thinks the key issue in this campaign is at all.
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But Trudeau's taking no chances. He's bribing the media again right before the election.
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But this time he's making it secret. Not even kidding. Take a look at this from Blacklock's reporter.
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Now the subsidies are secret. Heritage Minister Stephen Gilboa's department refuses to name
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publishers awarded nearly $61 million in pre-election emergency relief. The grants were
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to ensure readers receive timely information they require from the government. Gilboa wrote
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in a letter to MPs, quote, these measures demonstrate the government's commitment to both
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a robust, diverse and sustainable news ecosystem and ensuring Canadians can receive the timely
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information they require from the government. Gilboa wrote in a July 21 letter to
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the Commons Heritage Committee. The letter did not elaborate on links between subsidies and
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coverage of cabinet announcements. Did you get that? If Trudeau didn't pay reporters a $61 million
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payout, they might not report on what the government's doing. So it's an emergency. Better get them that
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money quick before the election or they might not cover the news. Really? Do you mean they might not
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report friendly enough? Is that what you meant to say? Or they might not report pro-liberal enough?
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Is that what you meant to say? You really think that reporters who are working right now, writing
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stories for the news right now, you really think they wouldn't cover this election, cover the news
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right now, unless you gave them a $61 million bonus right now before the election? Is that what you're
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saying? But here's the most interesting part. Staff would not answer repeated requests for names of
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publishers and the amounts they received under the ad hoc program called Emergency Support for Cultural
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Industries. Why is it secret? Well, because we're in upside down times. In the before times, the media
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rooted out government secrets. Today, media bailouts by government are the secret. So why would the media
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expose themselves? In the past, corrupt businessmen would secretly pay politicians to get their way.
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Now, politicians secretly pay money to corrupt businessmen to get their way because those
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businessmen are the owners of the mainstream media. It's the government paying the bribes now. That's
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upside down. This article in Black's Locks does name some names, no newspapers, but a list of magazines
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that took other cash. It includes children's magazines like Chickadee, which got $1.35 million.
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I wonder how that will politicize that children's mag. I bet it will. It's quite something. Pacific
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Yachting Magazine got $250,000. I have to say it like that. Because if you got a yacht, you probably need
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working men and women to subsidize your yachting magazine. I'm serious. The gossip rag, Frank Magazine,
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got $110,000. Let me guess. Fewer gossip items about Trudeau, more about his opponents. Just going
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to guess. $1.5 million to the publisher of Reader's Digest. $1.2 million to McLean's Magazine. $1 million
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to Chatelaine. $570,000 to Toronto Life. That explains a lot, doesn't it? But that's chicken feed
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compared to $61 million in emergency pre-election spending to reporters covering the election. You
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know, in the past, this would be a scandal and a dozen journalists would have dug into this story,
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but they're the ones who are being hidden here. The only way we found out about this was through
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Black Locks Reporter, one of the few companies that's not on the take. We're in upside down times,
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aren't we? Stay with us for more. Hey, welcome back. I thought my prediction was pretty solid
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last week when I said Andrew Cuomo will brazen it out. He will not resign. I mean, look around.
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The Democrat governor of Virginia was caught in blackface, or was it a Klan outfit, or both,
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and he just said, no, I'm not resigning. What are you going to do about it? The media huffed and
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puffed for a day or so, and he's still governor. I mean, look at Bill Clinton, incredibly accused of
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rape. But put that aside, he was on Jeffrey Epstein's plane to Lolita Island. Jeffrey Epstein, the pedophile
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procurer. He's still a grand old man of the Democrat Party. I thought for sure Andrew Cuomo would survive.
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But alas, shortly after I said that, he announced he was going to resign when even Joe Biden, the
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president, started to raise an eyebrow. How is it that he didn't survive? What did the media who defended
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him for so long say about it? Joining us to talk about these things is Drew Holden,
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a freelance columnist, including in places like the Washington Post and New York Times and the
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former congressional staff. We're great to meet you, Drew. It's nice to meet you. I follow you on
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Twitter. Tell us a little bit about yourself before we talk about Andrew Cuomo. Where did you come from?
00:15:44.000
I follow you on Twitter. I find it very interesting. How would you describe yourself to our viewers?
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Yeah, I appreciate that, Ezra, and happy to hear that you enjoy it. I, you know, I've been doing this thing
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now for maybe about a year and a half where I've been trying to chronicle the things that people
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generally, but particularly Democrats and folks in the media, say that just isn't true, right?
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Other things that we knew at the time weren't true or things that are hypocritical or maybe look
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on serious in retrospect. As you mentioned, I used to work in Congress. I've been doing some freelance
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writing since then, and it's picked up a little bit of steam, right? I think folks are,
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there wasn't really anyone who was kind of going back and digging up the old takes. The media has this ability
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since they're kind of, they're the fact checkers. They're the first draft of history, right? And so
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they have this ability, I think, to kind of say whatever they'd like. The news moves on and no one
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kind of digs and picks up the pieces of where things were. And so I've been putting those things
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out there. I've been doing it in columns. I've been doing it on Twitter with some threads. And yeah, I mean,
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I think folks are interested to know what was said back then. And I basically have a ton of receipts
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kicking around on my phone and on my computer that are bad takes or takes that I think will
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eventually go bad. And unfortunately, everything that happened with Cuomo is a kind of a masterclass
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in how to talk about someone when he's flying high. That looks really bad when a lot of the truth that
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we probably should have known in advance starts to come to light. Yeah. Well, I think there's a
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difference because occasionally Republicans are stars for a moment. They're having a great week,
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great month. And I don't see the same erotic affection as, and I say erotic on purpose. I mean,
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the phrase Cuomo sexual, how ironic that is in retrospect. You had main, you have serious
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journalists from, from serious news outlets talking in romantic terms about Cuomo. You had
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lesser serious journalists like Trevor Noah of late night TV, calling himself a Cuomo sexual,
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talking about Tinder. But even if the language wasn't erotic, they gave this guy an Emmy for
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crying out loud. No Republican, even on his best day, gets this kind of slavish treatment. It seems
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pretty obviously one sided to me. What do you think? Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think some of
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it with Cuomo, it really was outlandish, right? And that obviously he has since come under a lot
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of scrutiny and a lot of criticism, even from voices within his own party about the way he
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handled coronavirus. But I think when the sexual harassment allegations started to come up,
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you look back at some of this language and you're right. I mean, the LA Times had a serious,
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earnest piece about Cuomo himself embracing the term Cuomo sexual, that he thought it was great and
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valuable and good. It wasn't just late night hosts who were bantering this kind of language around.
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And I just, I can't even in, you know, plumbing the depths of history, I can't find examples
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of where anything close to that comes up for Republicans. There are certainly Republicans
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who are cheered among the Republican base, right? We saw this with Trump, I think in terms that were
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certainly pretty outlandish from time to time. But to have these reputable news outlets talking with
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just such glowing, unbelievable affection about someone who their primary job, right? This is one of the
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most powerful men in America that they're covering. Their primary job is to be an accountability
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mechanism. And rather than even pretending to try and be an accountability mechanism for this guy,
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it's the sort of things that I'm sure his own press team would have been embarrassed to put out there.
00:19:11.440
Yeah. You know, you mentioned a couple of things that I think are important. The first is
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Cuomo made a move early in coronavirus to send people with the virus into long-term care homes,
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nursing homes, that absolutely and inextricably led to the death of thousands of people.
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And that was not a secret. That was known. It was public information for a year.
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That was never picked up. I mean, look at the war on Ron DeSantis now.
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So it, I think that people knew there were weaknesses in Andrew Cuomo. I even think that his
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approach to women hitting on them all the time. I think that was an open secret in Albany,
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just like with Harvey Weinstein. Everyone knew that he was handsy and gropey and that he had the casting
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couch. I don't think these things were secret. I think it's just the Democrat powers that be decided
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they could no longer be a dam holding back this river because they weren't, these weren't sudden
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revelations, were they? No, they weren't at all. And so to break them out a little bit,
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you know, I'm reminded of an interview that are, I guess, a press pool that Cuomo did back in 2017.
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This is right when the Me Too movement is starting to gather steam. All of the allegations of Weinstein
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have just come out. And a female reporter asks if Cuomo is going to do anything to try and clean up
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Albany, to try and clean up these, Albany or New York City, right? These men who hold positions of power
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are in government and beyond who are abusing women. And he said to her that her question was
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an insult to women. And this is 2017, right? And then I think that the real kicker for me,
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though, the thing that really gets me is shortly thereafter, a lot of Democrats started to return
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money that had been given by Harvey Weinstein, right? He's this big Democrat bundler. He's raised
00:21:00.560
a lot of money for a lot of candidates running for president all the way on down. And the last
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national level figure to return that money is Andrew Cuomo. He had received $110,000 from Harvey
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Weinstein and Harvey Weinstein's company. And he balked when originally the allegations came out. He said,
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No, I'm keeping the money. He was the last one with any kind of national profile to give back that
00:21:22.800
money. And so you would think, right, these stories we've known, we've known about Cuomo's personal
00:21:27.920
antics. We've known about how awful of an office environment he's run for years, right? This is an open
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secret. And people, when everything was breaking out with the coronavirus, this was part of the
00:21:36.800
coverage, right? The Washington Post had a story about how Cuomo's kind of domineering personality
00:21:42.320
is finally coming to benefit the people of New York. NPR had a piece that said that his micromanagement
00:21:50.160
and his open hostility to some of his employees, these are actually really good things in a moment of
00:21:54.720
crisis. Everyone knew who Andrew Cuomo was. We might be able to dither a little bit about the
00:21:59.520
specifics. But I don't think any of these revelations are out of, you know, out of being in line with his
00:22:04.640
character. Yeah. What's interesting is how he co-opted so many feminist advocates, like the leader of the
00:22:10.240
Time's Up Me Too movement, actually came to his aid. I mean, they knew who he was, and they went into defense
00:22:19.280
mode for him knowing who he was. I'm not accusing him of rape. I mean, his defense was, I've always been
00:22:26.640
handsy, everybody knows. But the fact that the absolute social arbiters of what you can and can't
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do to women, the most puritan, don't touch me two times up folks, they went to battle for him to
00:22:41.520
discredit his accusers. That says more than anything, I think. I think so, too. And you make a really
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important point there. It wasn't just that they came to Cuomo's defense and said, ah, you know, this guy,
00:22:51.840
he's touchy, he's Italian, I think was some of the defense. Anna Navarro from CNN, when these
00:22:57.680
allegations first surfaced, had said, you know, I've met him many times. And like many people in
00:23:01.900
Miami, he greets you with a hug and a kiss. There was some of that defense. But I think what's really
00:23:05.840
egregious about the Time's Up defense was they went out of their way to work with Andrew Cuomo and his
00:23:11.240
team to smear his accusers, to drag her name through the mud, to discredit her, right? The Cuomo team
00:23:16.760
leaked her personnel file, both to members of the media and to the team at Time's Up, and said,
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have at it. I mean, it's picturesque of the sorts of things that these organizations, they purport to
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be fighting against. And yet they were guarding the ramparts for a guy like Cuomo after he had been
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credibly accused and using all of the tactics of all of the people they're saying that they've been
00:23:39.040
fighting against all this time from Harvey Weinstein on down. I got one last question for you, Drew.
00:23:43.780
It's nice to talk with you. And I really recommend your Twitter feed to folks watching. It's
00:23:48.500
Drew Holden 360. Is that where you are on Twitter? That's right, sir. Yep. All my writing finds its
00:23:53.980
way there. It's a great feed to follow for those who like, especially American political, cultural
00:23:59.560
commentary. I have the same feeling about free speech activists on the left as with anti-misogyny
00:24:08.080
activists on the left. The left really made a name for itself, you know, in Berkeley and in the
00:24:13.160
60s and 70s as the free speech people. But now that there is censorship of conservatives,
00:24:20.020
whether it's big tech or activists like Rand Paul, the U.S. senator had his YouTube account
00:24:25.320
suspended the other day. The left is silent. And again, with the Me Too feminist movement,
00:24:32.420
the left is silent or even helping Cuomo. And I don't know. Did the left ever really believe
00:24:40.440
in those things? Or was it just a tactical tool to put Republicans on the back foot? I'd like to think
00:24:46.700
that some liberals actually hold those values dear. But it seems to me that it's really just a trick or
00:24:54.080
a tool to use in a particular transaction against Republicans. You know, I think I want to have that
00:25:01.280
same hope that you do. I want to be able to say that, yes, there are earnest and committed
00:25:05.740
traditional liberals who are still fighting these sorts of fights. There certainly are some of them.
00:25:10.160
But when you look at the institution of the Democratic Party, and then particularly in the
00:25:13.660
American press, right, that the corporate media, you do see this real rush and drive to censorship.
00:25:19.160
I mean, I think that probably the most egregious example that I can remember is the story about
00:25:24.000
Hunter Biden's laptop, right? Originally, we're told there are all these kind of NATSEC folks who come
00:25:28.780
out of the woodwork to say, it's Russian disinformation. Don't touch it. Don't touch it.
00:25:32.160
And it becomes kind of a media rights issue, right? The post is saying, no, no, we verified this. This
00:25:35.740
is important information. We need to get it out there to people. And you saw and then they get
00:25:39.980
taken off of Twitter, they get taken off of Facebook, can't even share the link on DMs and
00:25:44.160
Twitter. And rather than guard this, this sacred notion of the press and their ability to reach
00:25:49.020
the people, the rest of corporate media attacked the post, right? There's an NPR piece. NPR didn't
00:25:55.700
cover it. And I get a bunch of questions about why they weren't talking about Hunter Biden's laptop.
00:25:59.340
Their PR office actually put out an article about why they didn't want to be telling information
00:26:06.160
that wasn't actual news, that weren't real stories to their listeners and to their viewers.
00:26:10.420
They had a piece explaining why they were engaging in censorship. I mean, it really does boggle the
00:26:14.980
mind, I think, when you think about the ideals of free speech. And unfortunately, I think what
00:26:19.420
we've seen in the last couple of years, certainly in the 2020 election, it's a huge cudgel. It's a
00:26:24.180
really, really effective weapon to be able to take and use against your enemies. And unfortunately,
00:26:29.160
I think a lot of the powerful voices on the left are waking up to that.
00:26:32.240
Yeah. Drew Holden, great to talk with you. Thanks for your time.
00:26:37.140
Right on. There you have it. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:26:38.980
Hey, welcome back on my show last night. Josie writes, I'm so grateful for all Rebel News has
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00:27:03.540
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today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night