EZRA LEVANT ｜ World leaders and sleepers： A sobering assessment of Joe Biden's presidency
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Summary
Ben Weingarten joins Ezra Levant to talk about Joe Biden's trip to China, his deal with Iran, and his plan to derail Donald Trump's presidential campaign. Ezra also talks to Ben about why he thinks Joe Biden is not as bad as he seems.
Transcript
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Hello, my friends, a special full episode interview with Ben Weingarten,
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one of the most depressing guys I know because he's one of the smartest guys I know,
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and he observes things, and he just calls it like he sees it. We're going to talk about Joe Biden
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today. Joe Biden and his visit with Xi Jinping, Joe Biden and his deal with Iran. Joe Biden and
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his plan to derail Donald Trump's candidacy. That's why I'm so depressed. That's ahead,
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but first let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. That's the video version of
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this podcast. I do the show every weekday, and my friend Sheila Gunn-Reed does the show every week,
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and YouTube has demonetized us, so we really rely on you. That's rebelnewsplus.com. All right,
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here's today's podcast. Tonight, from Russia to Israel to Taiwan, the world burns as Joe Biden
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staggers his way through his presidency. It's November 20th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
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He's ready for freedom. Shame on you, you censorious bug.
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I don't know if it's true. I don't know if it's wishful thinking, but I hear a lot of people
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in conservative circles, and I suppose in America that would be in Republican circles, saying
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that if Donald Trump were president, none of this would be happening, and by none of this,
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I mean all of it. I mean the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I mean the Iran-backed terrorist group,
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Hamas, having such an audacious invasion of Israel. They called it the Al-Aqsa flood. I understand that
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4,000 terrorists and actually civilian hangers-on invaded Israel. It was truly tantamount to a war.
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So many crises around the world. I see that Yemeni Houthis released a video of them hijacking
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a civilian cargo ship because it was apparently in some way connected to Israel. The world
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is on fire, and a lot of Republicans wistfully say it wasn't that way under Donald Trump. It was four
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years apiece, no new wars, the ending of old wars. Is that just comforting thoughts by supporters of
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Donald Trump? Is that just Republicans being wistful, or is it true? And is Joe Biden as bad as he seems,
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or are there people in the background sort of puppeteering things? Will America be okay? Well,
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I know one guy who can help us sort through this, and his name is Benjamin Weingarten. He's with the
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Federalist, and my favorite thing about him, he's a columnist at Newsweek magazine, and he's going to
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join us now to tackle these big questions. Ben, great to see you again. Is it too easy for Republicans
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to say, oh, this would never happen under Trump? Would this have happened under Trump?
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Well, we had the real-world experiment in real time, 40 years of peace through strength,
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prudently applied. For example, the assassination of Qasem Soleimani, the strike in Syria on the eve
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of a meeting with Xi Jinping and President Trump. We cultivated relationships with our allies and
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partners. We threatened our adversaries. That led to a world in which America did not start new wars.
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It ended wars. It put the Middle East on what should have been a firmer footing with an Israeli,
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Sunni Arab, bulwark sort of defense condominium against Iran. With China not on the march and
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challenged by America, really for the first time since the opening, going back to Richard Nixon,
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in almost every single dimension, our borders were not overrun. In almost every dimension,
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U.S. national security and foreign policy was well-served. That redounded to the benefit of the
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world. And predictably, the Biden administration, whose personnel are essentially the leftovers of the
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Obama-Biden administration, has executed a policy that is diametrically opposite. And consequently,
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the world is aflame. And the reason I don't say it's just wishful and obviously we can look at
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the four years that we had under Donald Trump, this was all very predictable. I wrote a column at Newsweek,
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several columns on the contrast in the foreign policy of Donald Trump versus what we could expect
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under Joe Biden. And I wrote a column prior to the election pointing out the clear chasms that would
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exist and the clear flip-flopping that would exist on virtually every single significant national
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security and foreign policy issue. It's happened in spades. Most, I guess, salient today is the notion
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that the Trump administration imposed a maximum pressure campaign on Iran. In contrast,
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the Biden administration has imposed a maximum pressure campaign on Israel. That flies in the
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face of the rhetoric of the Biden administration today about how it has Israel's back. But if you
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look at the substance of the policies, it has been all about aiding, abetting, and enabling Iran and its
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proxies and putting the screws to Israel. That created the conditions for this intifada in a single day,
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this worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust. And it potentially may have unleashed jihadist forces
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globally because they've never seen a potentially better time than under a compromised, weak Joe Biden
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overseeing a party where the progressive wing, which in large part is the pro-Hamas and sympathetic to
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the Islamic supremacist wing of the Democrat Party, has the power that it has. So why is the world in such chaos?
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Because this administration has created the opportunity for our worst adversaries, the worst adversaries of
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Western civilization to rise up. And in an election year now coming up, there's the political pressure as well. And the
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political pressure most disturbingly and disastrously from those elements that I mentioned in the Democrat
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Party who are pushing Joe Biden to pursue policies that the vast majority of Americans disagree with
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because he needs the marginal voter in Dearborn, Michigan, or on college campuses across the United
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Hmm. You know, it's funny. We started talking about foreign affairs and other countries and other
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militaries, but we came back to the home front. And, and, you know, there was a TV drama a few years
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back called The Americans. And it was about the, the premise was a young man and a young woman were sent
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over during the Cold War by the Soviet Union. They were taught English perfectly. They were taught English
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pop culture, American pop culture. And they were embedded in the United States, in the Washington,
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D.C. area. They were like a sleeper cell to the public. They held themselves out as, you know,
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Joe and Jane, average American, but they were working for the KGB. It was, it was an exciting,
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uh, fictional, it, like it wasn't superhero movies. You didn't have to have an enormous suspension of
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disbelief to enjoy it. And I can't help but think that we have had sleeper cells in the West,
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who were anti-American and in some cases, anti-Semitic. And I think they were sort of
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holding their tongue in a way during the Trump years. I mean, listen, campuses were always a
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little bit radical and woke-ism, but I think since October 7th, those sleeper cells have dropped
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the pretense and they have gone full, you know, I mean, they say it, intifada revolution. There's,
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it's across the United States. It's even worse in Canada and the United Kingdom.
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They've been granted some sort of moral permission, I think, to go fully anti-Semitic and full
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decolonize, by which they mean tear down America, Canada, and the United Kingdom. So I think it's
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not just foreign leaders who realize they can get away with anything. I think on the home front,
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you, you see people just drop the facade. The sleeper cells aren't just the KGB agents in the 80s,
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it's universities, and I hate to say it, it's large swaths of immigration from countries where
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anti-Semitism is endemic. They had to keep it quiet in recent years, but now no one is scolding
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them. They're in Congress, they're in Parliament. What do you make of all that?
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Well, it's a great point, and I appreciate the Americans analogy, a show that I enjoyed
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as well. And maybe what's most disturbing is there didn't have to be sleepers who were seated in the
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country from the Soviet Union. There are native-born Americans and Canadians and others across the West
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West who have absorbed this worldview. They've imbibed the toxic ideology, really a Marxian
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ideology of the West as the oppressor and the rest of the world as the oppressed, and that we somehow
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are the imperialists and the colonializers, etc. And therefore, we're getting our just comeuppance
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right now, and there needs to be essentially affirmative action for the world's most evil regimes
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and organizations, which, by the way, I think this manifests itself, for example, in let's have
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a resupply of Hamas for X number of days. Let's give them every single advantage when they ought to
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be destroyed, when they have declared war on Israel, by the way, have killed Americans and people from
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many other nations as well. But to your point, it does appear that there's been a safe space in the
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West now created for all the anti-Western forces, and they've never been as overt and open about it
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as they are now. Why is that the case? It may well be that you have cowed Western leaders that we did
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not have, certainly in America, for the last four years. Perhaps most disturbingly of all, from my
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vantage point in America, is that you have the upper rungs of an administration that essentially
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subscribe to the same worldview. That's maybe the most disturbing thing of all. It's not just campus
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radicals. Those campus radicals have matriculated to the heights of political power, to the heights
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of cultural power, certainly corporate power in certain instances as well. But if you look,
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the National Security Council in America, which is the chief national security advisory arm to the
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president, the head of intelligence at NSC here, was a pro-BDS activist in college. We've probably
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talked about Rob Malley in the past before, but Rob Malley was the senior State Department envoy
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to Iran trying to execute an Iran deal 2.0. It appears Rob Malley led an Iranian spy ring. One of the people
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we brought in that spy ring still works in a senior position at the Department of Defense. So more
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disturbing is that the campus radicals have all graduated in or been brought into the heights of
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political power. Obviously, you mentioned, of course, the likes of the squad, and we've talked
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about Ilhan Omar before, and my book on Ilhan Omar, American Ingrid, foretold all of this. It suggested
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that this was the future, if not the presence of the Democrat Party. It certainly played out that way.
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But to your point, when you take already the virulent Jew hatred and anti-Western views that
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prevailed on college campuses, and then you have mass immigration from Islamic countries to the West,
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and all you have to do is look at the polling in those countries to show that the Jew hatred is
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disproportionate in virtually every country in the Middle East and beyond. And we can talk about what
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the roots of the Jew hatred are, and is it based in the Islamic canon or not? It doesn't really matter.
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We don't have to have that academic argument. The fact of the matter is, disproportionately,
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among, in the Muslim world, there is Jew hatred. And if you are going to import wide swaths of the
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Muslim world, while you would hope that a decent percentage of those people would be those trying
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to flee the maladies and the pathologies of that world, of course, enemies are going to take advantage
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of our liberalism when it comes to immigration, and people are going to come over with the beliefs
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that they held there. There's a reason why the Middle East looks the way the Middle East does,
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and there's a reason that Switzerland looks the way Switzerland does, or Mexico looks the way it
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does. Different peoples are different. We hold deep and dear different ideas. We're animated by
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different drives. And so, consequently, you add it all up, and it's a very poisonous and toxic mix
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here in the West. The US, and probably to an extent as well, Canada, we're blessed by our geography
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that we haven't necessarily had as big mass immigration from the Islamic world as you've
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had wars throughout the Middle East. But certainly, Western Europe is not the Western Europe that it
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was. It is a different place today. And in some cases, the irony here is that we hear about
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occupation, occupation. Well, in some ways, it's the West that's really increasingly occupied.
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Yeah. Well, I mean, if you look at the map of Islam itself, by decade, by century, Islam is a
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colonizing... I mean, it's a religion. It's a political way of life, but it's also a military
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doctrine. The Koran is a military document, as well as other things. Let me just ask you one question.
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You mentioned Joe Biden. In some ways, he said the right things. I remember his first visit to Israel
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shortly after the October 7th attacks, and I was extremely nervous because you could see he was
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wobbly and sleepy and who knows how much... But he managed to get through it without saying something
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disastrous, I think. On the one hand, I look at the two aircraft carrier groups in the region,
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and I think, okay, that's to make sure Turkey or Iran don't start something, I guess. But I also
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thought, well, maybe that's there to keep Israel tamped down. I don't know. Can you help me understand?
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You say that Joe Biden has said one thing and done another thing. What has Joe Biden done that has
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been... I mean, other than his support for Iran, I understand they released billions of dollars more
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for Iran, actually, in recent weeks. What has Joe Biden done that has undermined Israel? Because at least
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rhetorically, there have been some moments that I thought, well, that's better than I thought it
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would be. What has he done to undermine Israel in actions? Yeah, so I've long suggested that
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there is something of a bear hug going on, which was something that Barack Obama tried to do. He said,
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well, we have military relations with Israel, and we're going to provide Israel aid, and we're going to
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basically suffocate Israel with that aid to force it into accepting an Iran deal. We're going to leak
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information to undermine Israel's military operations to try and neutralize Iran, but we're going to cover
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it up by saying, we're best friends, and we have massive aid, and the Iron Dome, you can see, has a
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testament to it, etc. There's a similar ruse that's being played with Joe Biden. As you note, the rhetoric at
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times suggests stalwart support. On the other hand, there was a $14 billion military aid bill,
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which Republicans passed through the House, to de-link spending associated with the war in Israel,
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military spending, from Ukrainian spending and a whole amalgam of other appropriations. Biden said he
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would veto it outright. The Republicans were being political by trying to do this, $14 billion, which
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would be taken away from IRS agents harassing Americans, essentially. Democrats shot it down in
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the Senate, wouldn't vote on it. Joe Biden won't even have a chance to veto it. But if you want to
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talk broad strokes, here are the real distinctive items, in my view. I agree, by the way, that carriers
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being brought in is actually made to deter Israel, not to deter Iran and other powers in the region. By the
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way, you can see that because Iran and its proxies have executed dozens of attacks on U.S. military
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facilities and personnel in the region, with barely a response from this administration. But the micromanaging
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of Israel's response is really the proof in the pudding, as I see it. The Biden administration has really,
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from the start, whispered about ceasefires, continues to try and push so-called ceasefires,
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and for Israel to permit, quote-unquote, humanitarian aid, which in reality, of course,
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means resupplying and refueling Hamas, providing it cover and time to recuperate, to strengthen,
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so that it can withstand Israel's attack. Let's not forget, Israel was not allowed, not permitted,
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essentially by the U.S., to engage in any sort of ground offensive. For weeks, it gave Hamas time
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to prepare. The Biden administration has said explicitly, Israel, you are not to ultimately
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annex parts of or otherwise control Gaza. There needs to be an international force the day after
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the war ends. The Biden administration has been very tough on Israel in terms of,
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you ought not to strike Hezbollah or other Iranian proxies in the region outside of Gaza.
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Also, the Biden administration continues to talk about the imperative for a two-state solution,
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which should be a laughable and a laughably offensive proposition. After you're talking about
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the worst slaughter of Jews since the Holocaust, then you want to give the Palestinian authority
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control over Gaza, a Palestinian authority, by the way, which itself has excused the attacks,
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and denies, essentially, the attacks that Hamas committed. And then, if you look at the
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polling of Palestinian Arabs, overwhelmingly, three-quarters plus were overjoyed by Hamas's
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disgusting raping, jihadism, massacring of people, etc., hostage-taking, etc. So, you add these
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points up, the micromanaging of the effort, the seeking to restrain Israel and force it to comport
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itself the way the U.S. wants. Constantly invoking the fact that Israel has to abide by the laws of
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war. We're talking about a force that provides its enemies with more protections, the civilians
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around enemies, with more protections than any fighting force probably in the history of mankind,
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and has done so, by the way, in Gaza in trying to allow the Palestinian Arabs to leave northern
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Gaza and go south before the offensive really took off. In every single dimension, there's been
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pressure. Last but not least, and obviously, we can talk about the fact that the U.S. continues to
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cultivate these friendly relations with Qatar when Qatar is harboring Hamas's leaders. We can talk
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about the unfreezing of the billions of dollars to Iran. We can talk about the Biden administrations
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delinking explicitly of Iran from Hamas's attacks, essentially serving as mouthpieces for Iran,
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protecting it, and its public relations image. Beyond all that, there's a whispering campaign,
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and it's come out, of course, in major publications, major U.S. publications, of the Biden administration
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talking about how they're really looking towards the next Israeli leader to execute this effort. And
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maybe Bibi isn't long for this effort. In the middle of wartime, after an existential crisis,
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you're going to have a whispering campaign where you're going to try to shove aside Benjamin
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Nanyahu, the wartime leader there. Is that something that an ally and a friend does?
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Then we could talk on the home front about the fact that the Biden administration,
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when you have the biggest rise in anti-Semitism, in Jew hatred that we've seen probably in modern era
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in America, and what's the focus of the administration? They call for a working group or something even more
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formal than that on Islamophobia. That's the real issue at hand in America. So you put all of these
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pieces together. Last but not least, just before we came to record this, over the weekend, the Biden
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administration put out a memo to its cabinet talking about how they would like to impose sanctions on
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quote-unquote settlers in the West Bank, i.e. Judea and Samaria. Part of those sanctions on quote-unquote
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the violent Israeli extremists there is that sanctions can be slapped on you and no visa
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permitted for an individual to the extent they are an impediment essentially to a quote-unquote
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two-state solution. So if you're an Israeli wrong thinker now, essentially the Biden administration
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wants to criminalize your wrong think. Add all of these pieces up and the notion that this
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administration has Israel's back falls by the wayside. We will see what kinds of strings become
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attached when it comes to weapons sales and other military support as Israel's operation goes on,
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but there's already been word that there are serious strings attached. All of this points to
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not a friend, but someone seeking to restrain Israel to maintain the status quo of making Iran the strong
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course in the Middle East to the detriment of the Western world. Yeah, it's so bizarre. I don't
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understand it. So you've disabused me of the notion that things are better than they appear. I suppose
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perhaps I'm too focused on public statements. I mean, or gestures. I mean, at least Biden went there.
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So did Rishi Sunak of the UK, Emmanuel Macron of France, Georgia Maloney of Italy, Germany's
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Chancellor Scholz. I noticed that Canada's Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has not gone to Israel.
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He, I think he's gone the furthest of any G7 leader to actually parrot Hamas talking points.
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But I suppose on the plus side, no one cares about Justin Trudeau anymore. Here he is the other day
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meeting with Gavin Newsom, two men who are trying to out-peacock each other. I could imagine a quarrel if
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there was only one hand mirror between the two of them. It would just be like such a scratching
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fight. Take a look at the two of them when they sat down together. And I don't know if you know
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this, Ben, but Justin Trudeau is a bit of a hollow man. But he had this shtick, this gag. When he was
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first elected, he would wear socks with different pictures on them, like sort of funny socks, Star Wars
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socks. He has some halal Islam socks or something that the Muslim cabinet minister gave him. So
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apparently, like when he first met Gavin Newsom years and years ago, he made a sock joke. And
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apparently Gavin Newsom's staff sent him some California socks because they thought, oh, okay,
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this guy's into funny socks. So here he is. He's in office eight years. The sock thing is a little bit
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tired. But he sits down with Gavin Newsom. And the first thing out of his mouth is showing off his
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socks. And Gavin Newsom, who's the who's a clothes horse, a hair gel aficionado and a mirror lover,
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too, even he thought it's getting a bit old. Here, take a look at this back and forth.
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It's good to see you. Good to see you. When did you get in, by the way? I got in a few hours ago.
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Yeah. Literally. Yeah. I was in Vancouver last night. Well, let me be the first to welcome you. You
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are the first to welcome me. What a pleasure to be back. It's always so good to see you. We got a lot
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to talk about. Obviously, I'm just being in the Golden Gate. I think you gave me these socks last night.
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Unbelievable. So, you know, maybe, maybe someone did. You're still doing those socks. Well, you know what?
00:24:44.480
Have you ever been caught with black socks on? I mean, is that just too embarrassing?
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Listen, so much, so much to talk about on climate. That's Justin Trudeau. Like he's,
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he's a hollow man. He's an empty suit. And, and his jokes from 2015 and 16 are a little bit stale.
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But I just wanted to show the two of them together, because I think that Gavin Newsom
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as president would be very similar to Justin Trudeau. Nothing but messaging disastrous all
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around. And a friend of China. Help me understand what's going on with Gavin Newsom. He went to China.
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He had a, a one-on-one meeting with Xi Jinping. That's got to be arranged with the assistance of
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the State Department. And then Xi Jinping and Joe Biden get together. Tell me, I want to talk more
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about Gavin Newsom in a minute, but tell me about what looks like a, a, a warm spring this fall
00:25:43.600
for the Chinese dictatorship in the eyes of Joe Biden. What's going on with Xi Jinping? Uh, there,
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don't mind me on my Gavin McInnes and Trudeau socks story. I just wanted to wedge that in there.
00:25:53.280
But, but what's going on with, with Xi Jinping? Is he being welcomed back into America's good books or
00:25:58.720
something? Well, it certainly appears that way. The Gavin Newsom trip to China, and then of course,
00:26:06.880
Xi Jinping coming to the Bay Area, uh, Gavin Newsom's territory, the, the China trip itself to me
00:26:15.200
smacks of a shadow campaign. And the fact that Gavin Newsom also met with Prime Minister Trudeau,
00:26:22.000
I think is further indicative of the fact that beyond, you know, he would argue, well, look,
00:26:26.400
California is a massive state. It's a powerful state. So of course I'm going to meet with heads
00:26:31.440
of other nations. The reality is that Gavin Newsom is positioning himself as one of the
00:26:37.920
alternates to Joe Biden. I also think Governor Gretchen Whitmer thinks of herself probably
00:26:43.680
as another potential fill-in. I've long held that I believe that a compromised, cognitively
00:26:51.680
compromised as well. Joe Biden is potentially not long for this race. It doesn't mean that this
00:26:59.440
switcheroo is going to happen necessarily now. I've seen those reports and indicating that in the
00:27:07.200
DNC's rules, essentially, that in smoke filled rooms, effectively the party can replace the leader.
00:27:15.200
Should he step aside? You could have a brokered Democrat convention. Certainly wouldn't put it
00:27:22.160
past it. The Democrats to do that. Who the figure is, we'll have to see. There's some identity politics
00:27:27.520
issues to be worked out. How are they going to sidestep Kamala Harris, for example, another California
00:27:34.000
figure there? That's ought to be worked out and we'll see what happens with the palace intrigue in
00:27:38.560
the months ahead. But as for China, Xi Jinping himself, by all accounts, communist China's economy
00:27:46.080
is struggling. They have real issues. So naturally, what are America's leaders doing? Well, they're
00:27:52.400
trying to potentially provide China a lifeboat. You had many members of major corporations come and speak
00:28:00.000
with Xi Jinping and impress upon him that American business leaders are souring on China. We need to
00:28:05.440
reopen this relationship. Business leaders have always been the preeminent agents of influence,
00:28:10.720
essentially, and mouthpieces for the Chinese Communist Party. It's how they impact U.S. policy,
00:28:17.040
in large part historically. The Biden administration desperately, it seems, wants to reopen relations
00:28:24.960
with communist China and try to find different areas in which we can somehow work together because we
00:28:31.200
need to cool down the temperature is the rationale. And so, of course, ironically, the green agenda is
00:28:39.680
probably the most important agenda from the Biden administration's perspective next to, I guess, reopening
00:28:45.520
military to military communications as if those communications won't be exploited by communist China. The
00:28:51.280
first sort of leg of this new romance between Xi and Biden was this so-called fentanyl deal, whereby
00:28:58.960
supposedly China, which I would argue is engaged in a new opium war, essentially chemical or biological
00:29:05.760
warfare against the West by being the key producer of the chemicals behind fentanyl then actually created
00:29:16.160
in Mexico and exported to the U.S. and elsewhere. China says it's going to clamp down on these
00:29:23.840
essentially death factories that have been killing tens of thousands of Americans a year. In effect,
00:29:31.040
it's going to shut down those companies, the factories in exchange for the U.S. pulling off of a commerce
00:29:37.520
department blacklist, an entity of China's domestic national security and intelligence apparatus,
00:29:45.120
which had been blacklisted for its complicity allegedly in Xinjiang Uyghur repression. So this is a gulag
00:29:55.280
focused entity of the Chinese Communist Party. And so turning off the killing machines, this national
00:30:02.080
security apparatus entity gets the benefit of being able to import U.S. technologies once again is
00:30:07.600
reportedly the deal that shows you that blackmail and extortion works if you're communist China.
00:30:15.200
And this is being presented as the first step in a thaw in relations and that this is imperative
00:30:22.560
to end the rockiness between the two powers from the U.S. perspective and I guess
00:30:26.880
forestall an invasion of Taiwan. But there's zero sign that Xi Jinping will not invade Taiwan. There's every
00:30:33.280
sign that, as always, China will use the West's burning desire to want to negotiate and come to
00:30:39.280
some deals to exploit them, lie, cheat and steal in connection with those deals, and ultimately
00:30:44.640
ruthlessly pursue its perceived interests. That is where we stand right now. Maybe there's also an
00:30:51.520
election year element to this of Joe Biden realizes how weak he looks on communist China. So he's looking
00:30:57.360
for some kind of out here, but I don't think it's going to be met. And instead, unfortunately,
00:31:01.760
you're going to have China likely trying to play a much bigger role, for example, in the Middle East
00:31:06.880
and with Iran as well, and maybe try to serve as a quote unquote mediator. So all of this will be
00:31:13.120
disastrous for the West. And again, you know, if you're in Taiwan, I have to think you're praying
00:31:18.800
that there's no invasion over the next year. But there are many signals to indicate to me that there might
00:31:25.280
never be a better time from the CCP's perspective to do something really provocative and seize
00:31:31.440
Taiwan, which has always been, I think, Xi Jinping's desired crowning achievement.
00:31:37.840
Yeah. You know, there's a lot of things you've said there. I mean, I think that
00:31:43.120
Joe Biden, and in particular, when he was vice president and Obama was president,
00:31:47.600
I really think that they were the worst international negotiators in American history.
00:31:52.480
I mean, I, I, they just, the deals that they signed, the things they gave away to Iran and
00:31:58.880
China were astonishing. And to have them replaced by literally the man who wrote the art of the deal,
00:32:05.840
Donald Trump, who it was in one of the most challenging and difficult businesses in America,
00:32:10.480
New York real estate, uh, taking over distressed companies and flipping them around. I mean, he,
00:32:16.720
and you had to deal with the unions and, and regulators and bureaucrats and like, like a very
00:32:23.440
complex thing. He, he understood how to make a deal. And the way you're describing the deal that
00:32:30.400
Biden just cut with, uh, China and the deal Biden is forcing Israel to do with Iran and Hamas, it's,
00:32:37.840
it's just so heartbreaking. And it's incredible how the world reads, takes the measure of a man in the
00:32:44.560
country behind them. I think you're right. The United States is so overly, so obviously overstretched
00:32:50.880
with its commitment to Ukraine, whatever its commitment is to the Middle East right now.
00:32:57.040
I don't even understand why, I mean, America can't do a two front war, let alone a three front war.
00:33:02.240
I think absolutely. And, and what the scariest thing about the negotiation is, I think if China were to
00:33:09.680
invade Taiwan just on its own right now, I think it would militarily succeed, I regret to say. I don't
00:33:17.520
think America would trigger World War Three over it, but I think China would have an enormous
00:33:24.720
consequence to it economically, commercially, financially, reputationally, tourism, uh, social
00:33:32.160
exchange. There would be a soft power disaster for China, I think. Um, I think made in China would,
00:33:39.760
I think there would be a consumer revolt. There would be a, like those industrialists you mentioned
00:33:44.080
before who all do business in China, Apple, which has enormous, uh, manufacturing in China. I think
00:33:49.680
there would be a shock in many ways, except, except, except, except if Biden gave them a form of, um,
00:34:00.160
absolution in advance. If Biden said to China, well, we're gonna, we're not, we're gonna,
00:34:06.960
we'll telegraph to you now that we're gonna go easy on you and we'll find a way to make sure it's
00:34:11.440
fine. You could have a two systems, one country situation like Hong Kong was. Like you just,
00:34:16.960
I can just feel into my bones now that I think maybe the one thing that was holding China back
00:34:23.680
wasn't a military reason, but was, it would lose its place in the, in the pantheon of nations. It
00:34:30.240
would lose its place as a first rank superpower that is, that's getting its respect through the
00:34:35.200
Olympics, through trade deals, through, because it would be seen as a belligerent rogue violent place.
00:34:41.200
But if Biden pre-excuses them, if Biden says, no, no, we, we'll smooth it over, don't you worry about it,
00:34:48.720
that maybe removes the last obstacle to China invading Taiwan. I don't know, I'm just freelancing
00:34:54.320
here. But, but I think that with Biden's approval, Taiwan would be absorbed and China would win it.
00:35:01.600
I think that that would certainly be an accelerant to the extent the Biden administration gives any
00:35:06.800
signals direct or indirect that such an accommodation so-called would be acceptable.
00:35:14.400
However, I will say I am skeptical about the West response, even absent any sort of green light,
00:35:22.240
tacit or overt and strong. I mean, I've done the thought experiment before of, for example, after the
00:35:30.080
Russian invasion of Ukraine, if you drove around elite enclaves in America, everyone had their
00:35:36.560
Ukraine flags out. Many of them probably couldn't even identify where it lands on a map, but they
00:35:42.160
had their flags out and they changed their social media profile, bios, et cetera. You certainly don't
00:35:48.960
see that today when it comes to Israel, with the exception of maybe a small percentage of our elites
00:35:54.160
here in the West. Would that happen with an invasion of Taiwan or would we in the West be cowed?
00:36:02.080
I'm not sure at this point. The fact that you had CEO after CEO out in California kissing the ring,
00:36:08.400
essentially, to sit at a dinner with Xi Jinping, to me speaks volumes. So I hope you're right. I hope
00:36:14.960
that if China did try such an operation, that it would make the Chinese Communist Party an absolute pariah,
00:36:22.400
that there would be total decoupling. I certainly agree that from a strategic perspective,
00:36:26.960
this is the calculus that communist China is weighing. If China thinks it has military
00:36:33.280
superiority to execute such an attack successfully, what does the world look like the day after and
00:36:40.320
do they end up weaker than they would otherwise be? But I'm sure they're also looking at the war
00:36:45.360
weariness in the West. They're looking at our elites. They're looking at, as you note, an overstretched
00:36:52.080
U.S. government that doesn't have its priorities right, that in many of these instances appears to
00:36:56.720
be on the side of the adversaries. And Xi Jinping's not getting any younger. And to me, my view has
00:37:03.440
always been that this has sort of been his ultimate legacy move. And so the question is, when would he do
00:37:11.280
it if not now? And that's a question that I think the world ought to be considering very closely.
00:37:18.640
Let's not forget, by the way, of course, that Russia is the junior partner to China as the senior
00:37:24.640
partner in a strategic relationship. China and Iran, and obviously Russia as well, are also incredibly
00:37:31.200
closely linked. China has relations, I believe a strategic partnership as well, with the Palestinian
00:37:38.640
authority. So they are involved here in all of these other proxy engagements. Essentially,
00:37:45.520
they have their quote unquote equities in them and they are causing the West great harm,
00:37:52.800
great costs in blood and treasure. And despite whatever issues China has economically,
00:37:59.440
despite whatever fallout, and there was significant fallout from the pandemic that they foisted on the
00:38:06.240
world, still, you have to ask yourself, if not now, when from the Chinese Communist Party perspective?
00:38:12.320
And maybe that's, maybe that's alarmist. Maybe that's too aggressive a view. But I think we ought
00:38:18.240
to be preparing for worst case scenario and hoping to achieve the best rather than expecting the best
00:38:23.760
and then having catastrophe befall us. Well, let me end as I began, which is
00:38:30.320
this hope that I feel, or not hope is the wrong word, this feeling that had Trump been around,
00:38:37.920
America's enemies would not have taken liberties. They would, they would have been afraid.
00:38:41.840
The very things that upset the liberal media elite, his whimsicalness, his meanness, the fact that he was
00:38:48.240
such a bully, the fact that he was somehow unpredictable, the fact that he would lash out,
00:38:52.800
the fact that he took insults and disrespect personally, all of those personality traits that
00:38:59.280
made him impolite company to the New Yorker, or the Atlantic, were precisely what got through to
00:39:05.200
Vladimir Putin, Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, and the Ayatollahs. The very things that, that made polite company
00:39:14.960
despise him in New York and L.A. is what made him stop the hostility, not stop the, check the hostility
00:39:22.800
around the world. And we are less than one year away from the U.S. elections. Less than a year,
00:39:28.080
it's incredible how fast time flies. And Donald Trump, according to the last poll I saw, would win
00:39:35.360
in an election today, would win in a two-way race against Joe Biden, and would win in a three-way race if
00:39:41.360
Biden and RFK Jr. are on the ballot. And I mean, listen, they're not done with him yet. He, for all
00:39:48.800
we know, he might be campaigning from jail with the number of lawfare prosecutions against him, and
00:39:55.600
there's, there's many of them. Do you think Donald Trump will be on the ballot in 2024? Sometimes I think
00:40:04.480
that they might even assassinate him, and that's not a conspiracy theory, that's just me looking at the
00:40:08.800
enormous lengths they're going to to stop him by any other means they can. It's not unthinkable. I
00:40:14.480
mean, American presidents, it may never happen again, but it has happened. American presidents
00:40:18.880
have been assassinated, and there have been attempts on others. And I don't want to put too much faith
00:40:25.680
in one man, but I think that Donald Trump was an indispensable man as president. He was a man
00:40:33.360
who achieved historic things, even if the Nobel Peace Prize Committee doesn't recognize it.
00:40:38.080
By God, that guy made peace between Israel and half a dozen Arab states, and Saudi Arabia was,
00:40:43.600
was going to be next. Do you think Donald Trump will be on the ballot? Do you think they will let
00:40:48.560
him win? I do believe he will be on the ballot. The rhetoric and the actions from the left suggest,
00:40:56.480
obviously, they will do anything and everything they can to eliminate him from the ballot. And that
00:41:01.600
word eliminate, by the way, that was a word used by Congressman Dan Goldman from New York,
00:41:06.800
a prominent Democrat who was, I believe, the chief lawyer, chief counsel in the first impeachment
00:41:12.400
effort of Donald Trump. He's now a Democrat congressman from New York. He said that Trump
00:41:18.080
had to be eliminated. But his rhetoric is really getting dangerous, more and more dangerous. And
00:41:24.320
we saw what happened on January 6th when he uses inflammatory rhetoric. Now, and his recent true social
00:41:31.280
post is incredibly, incredibly scary for anyone that might be trying to work in government. And
00:41:42.160
it is just unquestionable at this point that that man cannot see public office again. He is not only
00:41:50.480
unfit, he is destructive to our democracy. And he has to be, he has to be eliminated.
00:41:57.760
There is an effort to get Trump off the ballot and ineligible to run. So far, those efforts have
00:42:03.760
failed in the courts, thankfully. However, as you note, he's literally being gagged in courts of law.
00:42:11.040
They are trying to eviscerate his business empire and obviously the financing that comes from that.
00:42:18.560
They ultimately want him to be convicted in one or several cases or at minimum be dealing with the
00:42:23.680
headaches, the time constraints, the resources, and the massive diversion essentially of energy and
00:42:31.440
effort to combating the law fair instead of campaigning. Could he be campaigning from a jail
00:42:37.920
cell? Certainly not out of the question at all. Do they want to convict him before the election?
00:42:43.840
Absolutely they do. Then does that hit an appeals process? How long does the appeals process take?
00:42:49.280
Does it end up at the Supreme Court? What is the pressure like on the Supreme Court? I've long
00:42:54.080
theorized that this was actually the strategy. Savage him with a law fair effort. At the same time,
00:43:00.000
seek to de-legitimize and impose maximum pressure on the Supreme Court so that a case comes before the
00:43:06.400
Supreme Court where by all rights, Donald Trump should be absolved of any wrongdoing, malfeasance,
00:43:13.200
but the court itself will be pressured into either one or several members recusing or members otherwise
00:43:20.320
going wobbly or sending it back to a lower court and that leading to a catastrophe for the rule of
00:43:27.120
law in this country and a nuclear bomb essentially to our political system as well. Who knows what kind
00:43:36.400
of chaos is going to come over the next year? I can only imagine that there are going to be unimaginable
00:43:41.600
things, stratagems employed to try and destroy Donald Trump. About winning the election or how
00:43:48.400
the election goes, I won't make any predictions on it except to say that Democrats have done everything
00:43:54.000
possible they can to undermine the integrity of the election system and create the conditions that
00:44:01.040
they are best prepared to maximally exploit. And I'm not confident that on the Republican side,
00:44:06.880
there's the same legal apparatus ready, there's the same ballot harvesting. When an election becomes
00:44:13.280
about collecting the most ballots, not winning the most votes, that favors the Democrats. Democrats are
00:44:19.120
made to win a machine election like that. So it's in God's hands how this ultimately plays out. I do think
00:44:27.280
there will be every effort to try and destroy Donald Trump. I do believe he will be on the ballot and
00:44:32.400
hopefully the American people are able to speak freely. And I should also add, of course,
00:44:36.720
that I imagine the censorship regime is going to ratchet up between now and election day as well,
00:44:41.360
beyond the gag order on Donald Trump himself. So all bets are off in terms of how this plays out,
00:44:46.640
but we've never seen the kind of assault that is going to befall and has already started, obviously,
00:44:52.640
to befall Trump. But that's really a proxy for the ruling elites' desire to do anything and everything
00:44:59.520
possible to crush their political opposition in the name of defending, quote-unquote, our democracy.
00:45:08.480
Ben, you always depress me because you have a clear vision of the facts. And I'm sure I quote
00:45:15.600
this poem every time you're on because I think of it every time. It's W.B. Yates' The Second Coming.
00:45:21.520
He said, the best lack all conviction while the worst are full of passionate intensity. And that,
00:45:30.000
I fear, is the state of the world right now. But we'll know soon enough as we enter the final
00:45:37.360
stretch in the American election and, God willing, an election soon in Canada too, where the prospects,
00:45:43.040
according to the polls, are actually more favorable. But of course,
00:45:46.400
our media party gets up to dirty tricks too. Ben, great to see you again. Thank you so much for
00:45:50.800
your time and wisdom. And keep fighting for freedom. I know you always do.
00:45:55.440
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.
00:45:57.040
All right. There you have it. Ben Weingarten from newsweek.com, as well as The Federalist.
00:46:03.040
That's our show for today. Thank you so much for joining us. Until tomorrow,
00:46:06.720
on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night.