The state of Rebel News in the pandemic： An update
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 1 minute
Words per Minute
182.48619
Summary
In this episode, I go through the Conservative Party of Canada s leadership race, including the two candidates who were thrown out by the party, and I talk about why it matters whether or not a candidate will even talk to Rebel News.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. Today, I go through the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership race.
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I'll tell it to you in one word. It's pitiful. But if you want to hear 2,000 words, well,
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I've got a podcast for you. I go through all of the remaining candidates and also talk about the
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two candidates who were thrown out by the party. And I'll talk about my own thoughts on why it
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matters whether or not a candidate will even talk to Rebel News. That's all I had. But before I
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get to that, let me invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber. $8 a month or $80 for a
00:00:32.080
whole year. That's cheaper than Netflix, you know. You get the video version of this podcast, plus also
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podcast videos from Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies, and the personal satisfaction of knowing
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that you keep the rebels strong. We don't take a dime from Trudeau, and it shows. All right, here's
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today's podcast. Tonight, the Conservative Party's leadership contest lurches forward.
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I'll tell you the Rebel News view. It's May 15th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know? There's 8,500
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customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the government,
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the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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It's May 15th already. We're almost done half the year. The pandemic has stolen so much time,
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hasn't it? And it will steal so much more than that before it's done. One of the things that
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derailed, or at least detracted from, is the Conservative Party's leadership contest to succeed
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Andrew Scheer, who stepped down after a disappointing showing in the October federal election. He said he
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planned to stay on, but then there were rumblings in the caucus against him. The whole balloon just
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popped when it was revealed that he had been secretly pocketing donations from the party to cover his
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own children's private school costs and other personal expenses. It's not so much that he
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was taking those secret payments from the party. I think all parties have expense accounts for their
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leaders. It's not just that Scheer, as opposition leader, was already making more than a quarter
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million bucks a year, plus expenses, plus travel, plus an MP's office in the riding end in Ottawa,
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plus living expenses, plus, plus, plus. I mean, that made it gross. I think it was that
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when you're a Conservative and you publicly and loudly and with a straight face condemn Justin
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Trudeau for secretly enriching himself, whether it's Trudeau putting his two nannies on the public
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dime, I guess that's not in secret, or Trudeau taking a secret illegal hundred thousand dollar
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vacation on the Aga Khan's private island or the Bahamas, or secretly spending millions to renovate
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the lake house, as Trudeau's doing. When you condemn all that excess and grift and graft,
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and then you're caught doing the same thing all along, there's really nothing left for you to say
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or do. It's like when a televangelist gets caught having an affair, it just doesn't work anymore.
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So Andrew Scheer jumped before he was pushed, and he quit. But then, I don't know how it happened,
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he just flipped around and decided to stay on as leader until whenever, to continue to take his
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leader's salary top up, to take the official residence store in a way, to take the extra limo,
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the extra staff, be in charge of choosing the shadow cabinet, promoting or punishing backbench MPs.
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So it was a resignation for some time in the future, because he's still the leader today.
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One reason why that's a problem is that it confuses the party's message and branding. Is
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Scheer gone or not? Is it still his party to shape or not? Is Scheer's trademark communication style
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boring, passive, deferential, timid? Is that still the nature of the party? Seriously,
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what conservative of the Pulse would prefer someone like Scheer instead of someone like Pierre Pauliev?
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How many prisoners received their emergency benefit check, the Honorable Minister?
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If I may, to go further, I'd like to thank the member for his question. 7.7 million Canadians
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7 million Canadians are in jail? The question was, how many prisoners have received the benefit
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Honorable Minister, listen, we can make jokes about what's happening to Canadians, but
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many of them are suffering with this crisis. Mr. Paulievre.
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CBC is saying that prisoners are receiving the check. They can't have lost their job. They were
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already in prison. Simple question. How many prisoners have received the checks?
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Mr. Chair, I'd like to remind members in this House that we're talking about a very serious
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situation, and some people are unable to make ends meet. These are emergency measures.
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We're doing the work that Canadians expect us to do.
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Mr. Chair, I've already explained to the member, and I'm happy to remind him once
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again, that this benefit is an emergency one. Mr. Paulievre.
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The Auditor General says that he's dropping half of his audits because the government refuses
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to provide him the funding. The government has enough money to send 200,000 fraudulent applicants
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emergency checks. Why won't the government give the Auditor General the funding he requests?
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The Honorable Minister. I'd like to thank the member for his question, and I'd like to talk
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about the role that institutions play in this emergency situation, including the role of
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the Auditor General, and we're going to continue to support him because he allows us to do things
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What does the Auditor General have to do to get the money to do his audits? Does he have
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to file a bunch of fraudulent applications for an emergency response benefit?
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I just want to remind the Honorable Members to place their questions through the Chair, not
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The Honorable Minister. Chair, I know the member, and I know that he doesn't want to give the
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impression that the Auditor General has to be fraudulent to correctly do his job. Mr. Paulievre.
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That's why he should get the money he needs to do his job. He was doing twice as many audits
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under the previous government than he is now, but doesn't have the money to do the audits he
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needs to keep an eye on this government's extraordinary spending. So yes or no? Will the government give
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the Auditor General the funding he has requested so that he can get back to doing the same number
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of audits he did under the much more robust funding of the previous Harper government?
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Yeah. Thing is, when Scheer is the party leader, though, he gets to be top dog. He gets to eat
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first when it comes to media coverage. So the contenders for the leadership, well, they have to
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try and get the scraps when Scheer is done. Same with any MPs, even with Pierre Pauliev. And all the
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bad judgment Andrew Scheer showed, he's still showing it. I think there's a non-zero chance Trudeau
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will call an election soon, and Andrew Scheer will have to run again as party leader because
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the conservative election might not yet be done. So Scheer will lose again. In the 2019 election,
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we criticized Andrew Scheer, who is indistinguishable from Trudeau on key issues,
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such as open borders immigration, the theory of man-made global warming, or at least the UN's
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role in fixing it, and the need to achieve some industrial reductions because some bureaucrats and
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diplomats meeting in Paris four years ago said we have to. Scheer was a lukewarm proponent of oil and gas.
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He certainly didn't go toe-to-toe with any anti-extremists. He actually refused to criticize
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Trudeau on immigration and literally announced his policy on the fly when being pestered a bit
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by Rose McBarton and the CBC. I'm serious. He had gone the entire campaign without saying what level
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of immigration he wanted, and then some CBC hack just pesters him, and he immediately does whatever
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she tells him to do. But you still didn't give a number, and you would have to set a target as
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government. That's part of your job, is to set a government level. So if the target right now is
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350,000 immigrants by 2021, is that about what you're looking at? I think that's reasonable,
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yeah. And again, as long as that's coming from facts, from evidence, from a look at the situation
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and an understanding of where our society has needs, then absolutely. Yeah, not really hard to see how he
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lost the election. Sir, I just wish he would go already so the party could get on with things.
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Real talk. Who is a more effective counterweight to Trudeau today? Whether it's on the pandemic or
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foreign policy towards China or oil and gas or the carbon tax, Andrew Scheer, or a provincial premier
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named Jason Kenney. Well, enough griping by me. We are now awaiting a new dawn for the party.
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Except the party doesn't seem to be very focused on him. Almost the opposite. Here's the party's home
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page. Pretty tough to find any information about the leadership race. There's that one big
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link there to buy a membership for the leadership. And I clicked on it. And it indeed will let you
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buy a membership. And I mentioned that because today is the deadline to buy a membership if you
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want to be able to vote. So do that if you like. But there's nothing else about the race on that
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page. You just can't find it. None of those main tabs across the top either. Take action about us,
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news team. Where's the excitement? Got something else going on? You have to go to that little hamburger
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in the top right. That's the website jargon for those three lines that open up a menu.
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You have to go there to find it. And then click on it. And then can you still even find it? You have
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to go there. Leadership 2020. It says if you click on that, and then you get this page in very small,
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fine print. A boring memo about the race being reconvened. And again, you have to hunt very hard
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to even find a list of the candidates. And here they are finally. Leslyn Lewis, Peter McKay,
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Erin O'Toole, and Derek Sloan. I've interviewed two of them, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan. Both
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Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay told our journalists personally to their face that they would do
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interviews with us, but they didn't keep their promise. They didn't do an interview in person
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or even via Skype. Peter McKay in particular was really, really weird about it when our
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David, there's no questions. I've just got to see if I can ask you one. There's no questions.
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You guys are preventing me from interviewing. I just want to ask one question, not even an interview.
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It's a question on freedom of speech. You're welcome to get a photo. There's no questions.
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So under Peter McKay, it'll be the same as Andrew Scheer, that the rebel is not allowed to be here?
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I'm here, but I'm going to ask a question. Yes. Hi, Mr. McKay. How you doing? Just want to ask you,
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sir, what do you feel about Ezra Levent being interrogated by the elections commissioner?
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I don't like anybody being interrogated, including right now.
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Yeah, if you're afraid of David Menzies, who's a really nice guy, no tricks, no gotcha questions,
00:11:10.220
just basic questions. If you're terrified of the Menzoid, there's a small chance you might not be ready
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to take on Justin Trudeau and his media party escorts. But back to the four candidates. Why just
00:11:21.820
four? And really, this isn't me giving a critique on the website. We have problems with our own
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website. Everyone does, I guess. It's got that easy to remember domain name, cpc-leadership2020.ca.
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That's easy to remember. It's almost like they don't want a leadership race. $300,000 entry fee
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for candidates, the highest I've ever seen in my life. Andrew Scheer's still taking up all the air
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time, still taking all the media interviews. And the worst part of it is, any candidates who dare to be
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edgy, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not, they've been disqualified by
00:11:55.340
some unnamed party bureaucrats in some closed-door hearing. First, it was Richard DiCari, a former
00:12:00.540
advisor to Stephen Harper, who had views on LGBTQ and abortion that these party insiders simply
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rejected, and so they banned him from running. Hang on, isn't the point of a contest to contest
00:12:12.860
things? As in, let's have opposing ideas, different ideas, put forward by different people,
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and we'll all make the final decision after a campaign in a vote. Why would some secret insiders
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say, nope, you can't make your case? If the ideas were so bad, though, why wouldn't they let party
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voters prove that they were bad ideas by resoundingly rejecting the man and his ideas?
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How odd that was. It frankly reminded me of how Justin Trudeau just simply bans any pro-life
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Catholics from running in his party, just bans them. But at least he's the party leader,
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and liberals knew what they were getting with him, and they all sort of hate pro-life Catholics
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over there at the Liberal Party anyways. But why is this happening in the conservatives, and by whom?
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It doesn't make any sense, but alas, it happened again. First, DiCari, and now Jim Carahelios,
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longtime conservative party activist in Ontario provincially, especially fighting against the
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carbon tax, fighting against Patrick Brown's political corruption. Carahelios was simply
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kicked out of the race, too. I like Jim, and I interviewed him twice, I think. Nice guy. I don't
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know if he's a party leader type, frankly, as much as an activist gadfly type. Frankly, I'd like to see
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him working at Rebel News more than running a political party, which by definition requires traits
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like compromise and team building. I think Jim is a troublemaking activist, which is why I like him.
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And again, he was sacked, removed from the race, not by party members in a vote,
00:13:38.540
but because he criticized Aaron O'Toole's campaign chairman. How obscure and inside baseball is that?
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O'Toole's campaign chairman is Waleed Solomon, a lawyer, political fixer, and Muslim activist. Solomon
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was one of the closest advisors to the disgraced former leader of the Ontario PC party, Patrick
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Brown. And Solomon has been a proponent of Sharia law-compliant financing in Canada. And Carahelios
00:14:05.100
criticized that rather gently, I think, in a campaign email. Well, Aaron O'Toole complained to that weird
00:14:11.580
secret conservative party committee, the same one that banned to Kerry. And so they banned Carahelios,
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too. He's in court today fighting that ban, by the way. I wouldn't bet against him winning.
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My point is, shouldn't party members get to decide all these things? If to Kerry and Carahelios and
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anyone else said things that should be unsayable, why is the party trying to make this contest as
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obscure and small and lifeless and boring as possible in everything from the extreme entry
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fee to the bizarre hidden website to firing candidates in secret meetings? I just don't get it.
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It's almost, you know, if the thing was being run by an agent of Trudeau, I'm not sure what
00:14:48.220
would be done differently if it were. I will say what bothers me even more than the firing of those
00:14:53.100
candidates is that Aaron O'Toole and presumably Waleed Solomon himself were the complainers who
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tattled to the party, asking the party to ban their competitor. That is far more troubling to me.
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It's a sign of weakness and whininess, a sign of poor character, I think. For some reason it reminds me,
00:15:07.900
I don't know, you know the worst part of soccer and there are plenty bad parts. You know this thing
00:15:14.540
about soccer? Yeah, that seems to happen all the time. It's not really a good look to whine to the
00:15:20.620
teacher because your political opponent said something mean to you. How about be smart and
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clever and either turn it around on them in some way or ignore them or, I don't know, practice
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responding to unfair attacks because you're going to get a lot more of them and a lot tougher ones if
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you actually become leader. I didn't really care one way or another about Kara Helios' letter. I
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liked it, fair enough. But I sure am disappointed with the cancel culture of the party now and that
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Aaron O'Toole thought deplatforming his opponent was better or easier than beating his opponent.
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That ain't going to be how it works if you become the leader of the party, Aaron. You won't be able to
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run the mummy to make your younger brother stop pulling your pigtails. You're going to have to learn
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how to fight. So yeah, the two most interesting candidates were removed because they were too
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interesting in ways the party didn't like and they didn't trust party members to throw them out.
00:16:12.140
So who are the four that are left? I've interviewed Leslyn Lewis twice and she's a very nice lady
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and she destroys stereotypes about the party but going from running a law firm to running a party and
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then hopefully running a whole country, doing that in one leap is too much. I mean it worked for Donald
00:16:26.140
Trump but he's one in a billion. He, in so many ways, already had been a national figure and had
00:16:31.980
an enormous presence. He was a household name. He's a force of nature and that's the presidential
00:16:37.340
system anyways. Our parliamentary and party system is just different. I just don't think it's going to
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work and though I like Leslyn Lewis very much, I just don't think she's ready for the roughest,
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toughest political game in the country. Now she's done very well and it's too late to count
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anyone out. She's raised a lot of money. Anyone who made the final cut has. Here's what I hope.
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I hope she runs in a winnable riding as a conservative MP. I hope she wins. I hope she
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gets smarter and tougher and more experienced as an MP, smoother at answering questions, more practice.
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Maybe in four years after that, if the conservatives ever win, she'll be ready for cabinet. And maybe
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four years after that, she's still young. Maybe she will be a formidable and powerful and well-known
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political force then. So I can't honestly say I think she's ready for the big job but she absolutely
00:17:28.460
should run for a medium job that could turn into a big job. How about Derek Sloan? I like him too
00:17:35.260
and I like that he had some courage to call out Trudeau and the United Nations, the World Health
00:17:39.260
Organization and I like the fact that he was swamped and mobbed by haters and didn't seem to bend the
00:17:44.220
knee. If you missed it, Sloan simply said what I had said and countless other Canadians had said,
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Dr. Theresa Tam is in a terrible conflict of interest working for both the World Health
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Organization and for the Government of Canada. You can't do both. Theresa Tam followed the World
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Health Organization every step along the way. She accused Canadians who were concerned about this
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virus initially for being racist. She also suggested that travel bans were unnecessary.
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And as late as January 14th, she suggested that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus
00:18:18.380
was not happening when very credible evidence suggested that it was. Yeah, that's not racist
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to say that, of course, but the left and the deplatformers would say it's racist just to shut you up.
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What disappoints me again so much is that it was conservative MPs and staffers who joined
00:18:34.220
the denunciation of Sloan and they tried to deplatform him. I'm frankly surprised he wasn't
00:18:39.260
kicked out too by this secret committee of the party. I don't think Derek Sloan has the team or
00:18:43.580
the money or the national network or the household name to beat the liberals either. I mean, maybe,
00:18:47.820
and the fact that he didn't immediately fold when a little Twitter mob came against him is a very
00:18:51.820
good sign. That's actually my favorite thing about him. It's the rarest thing. It's a slightly Trumpy
00:18:56.300
thing. He doesn't bend the knee to the leftist mob. So what about the last two? Aaron O'Toole and
00:19:01.580
Peter McKay, both are low energy. Both feel like also rands, retreads, reheated leftovers from last
00:19:08.140
night's dinner. The B list, maybe even the C list. People who would surely not be anyone's first choice.
00:19:14.300
But we have to have someone, right? Peter McKay has been out of politics making money and at a Toronto
00:19:19.180
law firm and raising a family. That sounds like a pretty nice path in life, don't you think? I know
00:19:24.460
politics is in his family blood, but he so clearly lacks the fire he doesn't even care, it feels like.
00:19:30.380
He's not even following the news, it seems to me. His social media campaign is clearly not even
00:19:35.980
being written by him, obviously. It's been quirky and odd, and I'm not talking about how weird it
00:19:39.900
looks. I'm talking about the fact that it has been so content-free. And the odd time McKay,
00:19:45.260
or whoever's writing it, takes a stand on something, he immediately backs down at the first
00:19:50.300
breeze of pushback. That's the lack of courage, I mean, surrendering at the
00:19:54.220
first puff of resistance from the CBC. McKay faced his backlash over a now-deleted tweet
00:20:01.100
that critics say promoted vigilantism. It's the second social media controversy this month
00:20:05.820
for the conservative leadership candidate. Yeah, no, he didn't call for vigilantism. Here's exactly
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what he said. Glad to see a couple Albertans with a pickup truck can do more for our economy in an
00:20:15.660
afternoon than Justin Trudeau could do in four years. He was talking about our friends out there who
00:20:21.260
simply and peacefully and quietly and politely cleared off some dangerous junk that was blocking
00:20:27.580
a railroad track when police and politicians in the courts wouldn't. That's not vigilantism. That
00:20:32.700
is literally picking up the garbage at the side of the railway and clearing it away. That's
00:20:36.700
environmentalism Alberta style. Imagine thinking that tweet was edgy, and then imagine them thinking
00:20:43.340
it was too edgy, and then imagine taking it down in shame, thereby admitting it was too much Trump.
00:20:49.740
What would Trump have done? You know what he would have done. He would have doubled down, tripled down,
00:20:52.780
given the CBC a nickname, retweeted some funny internet meme, then he went farther. He would have
00:20:58.380
made the leftist media go into A-T-Z about it, knowing that severely normal Canadians would be cheering
00:21:05.260
for him, knowing that the media would be providing him with free PR, knowing that he would be building
00:21:09.820
his brand in two ways. First, McKay would then be someone who's not afraid of the media. Why wouldn't
00:21:14.460
that be refreshing? And second, someone who was against those blockades, and thus pro-law and order
00:21:19.260
and pro-Alberta. What a missed opportunity. Instead, it was a gaffe. He should have flipped it around and said,
00:21:23.980
that's not a gaffe. That's exactly who I am. Yeah, he's not who that is, though.
00:21:28.860
Get us on the substance of it. It's the weakness. It's the flip-floppiness. That's Andrew Scheer
00:21:34.940
disease. And it's clearly spread throughout the whole party. And Aaron O'Toole, he came in third
00:21:39.420
in the 2017 party leadership race. He got just over 10% in the first ballot. By the time he dropped
00:21:44.780
off, what, 11 or 12 ballots later, whatever, he had just over 21%. So he didn't really light the party
00:21:50.460
on fire back then. But he had a name of sorts and a track record of sorts. I'm a bit concerned about
00:21:55.420
the Waleed Solomon thing, because personnel is policy. And I'm a bit worried about Solomon's
00:21:59.660
influence on O'Toole. But that's not what really worries me about O'Toole. The five-alarm fire for
00:22:07.340
me is that O'Toole, a former military man who has obviously shown courage in his personal life,
00:22:14.780
as in his previous career, he was in the Air Force. He flew search and rescue helicopters.
00:22:19.340
That's courage. He got a law degree. He got into politics. Politics is actually his family business,
00:22:23.820
too. He looks pretty good on paper. It's a bit boring. That's okay. So is Stephen Harper.
00:22:29.340
But since when does a man of character whine to get a rival knocked off the ballot? I tell you,
00:22:36.380
I tell you about that because I focus on that because it shows what he's going to be like,
00:22:40.940
and what he is already like. Now, we've invited him to come on Rebel News to talk with us,
00:22:46.540
as a number of other candidates have already talked with us. But he refuses. That could be Wally
00:22:51.580
Solomon's advice. But the decision is ultimately the candidate's decision. But should a candidate
00:22:57.580
only talk to people he agrees with? Can you not handle different ideas or firm questions from another
00:23:03.900
point of view? I say again, if you can't handle Rebel News, you're not going to be able to handle
00:23:07.820
the Liberal Party plus the Media Party. This isn't vanity for me. I have a hundred things I could talk
00:23:12.220
about on any given day. I don't need the moral approval of some slightly known C-list politician
00:23:17.580
to feel validated. If I'm being 100% candid, I don't think any of these four contestants is
00:23:23.900
ever going to be Prime Minister. I'm sorry to say it. It's not even sour grapes. It's me thinking,
00:23:29.180
what a shame that so-called conservatives have been so conditioned to be scared of engaging with
00:23:33.980
real conservative media or real conservative interest groups. And by the way, here at Rebel News,
00:23:39.420
we're moderate in the whole constellation of conservative grassroots activists in Canada.
00:23:45.500
What a shame that the party is simply writing off a huge swath of its base, whether it's because the
00:23:51.420
party is no longer conservative, could be, or whether the party simply doesn't want the media
00:23:56.860
to say mean things about it. That's probably him. I mean, I remember when Jordan Peterson,
00:24:00.540
our old friend, was interviewed by the CBC after we had helped Jordan Peterson. We promoted his book.
00:24:05.580
We crowdfunded some funding for, I don't know if you remember, a couple of years ago now.
00:24:09.340
So Jordan Peterson, world star, like the hottest book in the English language, global superstar,
00:24:14.700
selling out rock concert-sized venues to give philosophy lectures, and the CBC finally lands an
00:24:20.620
interview. Wow, they could talk to him about anything. The very first question they put to him was,
00:24:26.780
why do you talk to Rebel News? Speaking out against the federal bill, C-16, and gender pronouns and so on,
00:24:33.340
the federal government cut your funding for research. Rebel Media came in and did a crowdfunding
00:24:40.620
project for you, raised about $200,000. After Charlottesville and the riots, the protests there,
00:24:48.780
many people cut ties with Rebel Media, including the conservative leader Andrew Scheer, saying
00:24:54.620
that it could be seen as giving hate groups a platform. You still go on there. So I'm wondering,
00:25:01.180
why do you go on Rebel Media after Charlottesville? Now, Jordan Peterson was surprised by how stupid
00:25:07.740
that question is. But Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay and Andrew Scheer aren't surprised by how stupid
00:25:12.460
that question is. They know all about it. They know that the mean girls in the media party will be
00:25:17.100
mean to them if they dare to talk firmly about railroad blockades, or call for restricted immigration,
00:25:23.820
or stand firm for lawful firearms, or especially if anyone criticizes St. Greta Thunberg. And coming
00:25:29.740
on Rebel News is a way of signaling to the world that you're at least open to those conversations and
00:25:33.980
those issues. That's what worries me the most. It's O'Toole and McKay have signaled to the media
00:25:41.980
political establishment, don't worry about us. We'll be barely conservatives, sorta conservatives. We'll
00:25:48.300
really be blue liberals. We'll be flippable conservatives on anything important. We'll
00:25:53.740
abandon our values with the first whiff of gunpowder like McKay did on the blockades tweet.
00:25:58.620
They're saying they're more comfortable with Rosemary Barton, the CBC host and nuisance plaintiff who
00:26:03.500
literally sued the conservative party in the middle of the last election campaign. She was recovering.
00:26:08.620
She was the debate moderator suing the conservatives. And that's fine for the conservatives. Imagine going
00:26:14.300
along with that. But you won't talk to a rebel. Unbelievable. That tells you everything you need
00:26:19.020
to know. So she's polite company in conservative party circles, but a truly conservative media outlet
00:26:24.940
with 1.3 million subscribers and a huge Canadian following. Well, that's just too crazy. Yeah, no,
00:26:31.020
it's a rebel litmus test. If you're not comfortable even saying hello to me or Sheila Gunn-Reed or David
00:26:37.020
Menzies or Kian Bexte on camera, but you're dying to get on Rosemary Barton's Christmas card list,
00:26:42.460
you just might be doing conservatism wrong. I should note that both Letson Lewis and Derek
00:26:48.220
Sloan have positively talked about their belief in free speech and about rebel news, and I very much
00:26:53.100
appreciate that. I just wish that they had more horsepower and could win and take back the country.
00:26:59.100
I just wish it was, but I don't think it is. That wishy-washiness didn't really work out for Andrew
00:27:05.020
Scheer. And I don't think it'll work out for the equally uninspiring successor, if it's McKay
00:27:10.780
or O'Toole. I hope I'm wrong on all this stuff, but don't bet on it.
00:27:15.900
In the meantime, yeah, go join the conservative party if you can find their website and go vote
00:27:19.820
for the least worst candidate. Good luck if you're still allowed to by the secret committee. And we'll
00:27:25.820
keep doing our best here at Rebel News. Our best to keep the fires burning for true conservatism,
00:27:33.580
to talk about issues and conservative ideas that the party doesn't. We'll be active where the party
00:27:41.660
is and we'll stand up for civil liberties during this time of the virus. That's another example of
00:27:45.420
a missed political opportunity for these candidates, don't you think? So yeah, of course I hope
00:27:51.340
Justin Trudeau loses the next election. Of course I hope a conservative wins. But hope ain't gonna do it
00:27:57.660
alone. It's not enough. And I'm not sure that this party will do enough either. Stay with me for more.
00:28:16.460
Welcome back. Well, I was sending a message to my friend Joel Pollack, the senior editor at large of
00:28:21.660
breitbart.com. I was just talking about some Canadian news that I like to share and he wrote back
00:28:26.940
about the news of the day in the United States saying, this is nuclear. And I had never heard
00:28:32.940
Joel say something like that before. I said, you gotta come on the rebel and tell our viewers what
00:28:37.900
you mean. It was Rick Grinnell, Donald Trump's interim director of national intelligence, releasing
00:28:44.780
a trove of once confidential and classified documents. The power to declassify rests
00:28:51.660
within the president's power. And he simply chose to do it this week. Joining us now live from sunny
00:28:59.900
Los Angeles is our friend Joel Pollack. Joel, first of all, before I get into the news,
00:29:04.780
tell me a little bit about being outdoors in LA. I heard that the city is ordering a lockdown for
00:29:13.020
Joel Pollack. Yes. Mayor Eric Garcetti and the leaders of Los Angeles County are extending the
00:29:21.820
stay at home order for three months, which would mean until the end of July, essentially most of
00:29:28.780
the summer. And they've relaxed some rules because the state of California is in what our governor,
00:29:36.140
Gavin Newsom calls phase two, which means retail stores can open for curbside pickup and they're going
00:29:41.580
to start opening some malls for curbside shopping. They're going to even open some museums. So Los
00:29:48.540
Angeles has to go along with that. But Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been pessimistic throughout
00:29:53.340
and who has really been telling us that things are only going to get worse the entire time,
00:29:58.780
he's almost like the exact opposite of President Trump. You know, Trump's always talking about
00:30:02.780
optimism and we're going to get through this better than before. Eric Garcetti is always telling us it's
00:30:07.340
going to be death. It's going to be awful. People are going to lose their jobs. This is the worst
00:30:11.100
it's ever been. And it's going to get worse. But the socialist revolution that looms beyond the
00:30:15.660
horizon will be our great salvation. That's kind of where he has to go with all this. You have to
00:30:20.220
have things get terrible before they can be salvaged by the great socialist utopia that is to come.
00:30:27.420
But Garcetti's basically been trying to get people to obey more and more restrictive rules. So as of
00:30:34.300
Wednesday evening, everyone in Los Angeles who leaves their property is supposed to wear a
00:30:39.020
face mask outdoors, even. This is sort of ridiculous. The scientific evidence we have
00:30:44.620
suggests that it's very hard to transmit the coronavirus outdoors, especially in warm weather
00:30:50.060
with a lot of ultraviolet light like we get in L.A. We get a very strong sunlight here. So it's very
00:30:56.140
unlikely to get this thing outdoors, especially if you're just passing people by in the street,
00:31:01.580
you're more likely to get it indoors. But nevertheless, they want us to wear face masks
00:31:04.860
outdoors. Meanwhile, the regulations on the county level and on the state level sometimes move in the
00:31:10.140
opposite direction. So on Wednesday morning, the very morning, Garcetti extended this face mask order.
00:31:15.820
They opened all the beaches in L.A. County, which had been closed since the start of the pandemic.
00:31:20.060
Now, it happened to be a very good surfing day. So I counted about 60 surfers
00:31:25.100
near the beach by our neighborhood here. And the surf was really good. It was about as good as I've
00:31:31.740
ever seen it on a day with sunshine. You know, you get high waves during a storm and some people will
00:31:35.820
go out there then. But this was a perfectly beautiful bright blue spring day and the waves
00:31:40.300
were very high. You don't normally get surf that good up in L.A. County. Mostly that's down in Orange
00:31:44.460
County or San Diego. So the surfers were out in droves. It was pretty amazing. Also, a pot of dolphins
00:31:50.460
swam by. So the beaches are starting to open for recreation. You can do anything sport related on
00:31:55.900
the beach except volleyball. They don't want people playing volleyball because it involves people
00:31:59.180
standing around in close proximity to one another or something like that. But it's all a confusion.
00:32:04.940
And I think people are going to start to disobey some of these rules just because they're so
00:32:09.740
ridiculous and because people just want to go on with their lives. People are starting to take matters
00:32:14.380
in their own hands. The surfers, for example, never really went away. If you went out in the early
00:32:18.780
morning down to the beach, which also you weren't supposed to do because the beaches were close,
00:32:22.300
the surfers were there. There were about 10 or 12 of them instead of 50 or 60. But the surfers
00:32:28.540
just decided to go before the police showed up. As long as you were off the beach by about 830 or 9
00:32:33.100
o'clock, you didn't get in trouble. So people are going to find little ways to do their own thing,
00:32:38.300
what they have to do to be happy, what they have to do to survive.
00:32:41.580
Yeah, I just find a hectoring politician who's always doom and gloom when, by the way,
00:32:47.580
the stats for most of the country, including for New York City, by the way,
00:32:52.380
I mean, the curve has been flattened. So increasing rhetoric about doom and gloom
00:32:58.060
when the caseload and the death rate and the hospitalization rate is falling.
00:33:01.900
I think between it's like telling people don't believe your lying eyes.
00:33:06.220
I just don't think hectoring politicians are going to win out over
00:33:09.980
moms wanting to take their kids to the playground, you know, people wanting to get out of there cooped up.
00:33:15.820
I just don't believe that a fairly lawless city like L.A. is going to have any luck going
00:33:21.660
beyond what it currently patrols. I follow the New York police union on Twitter,
00:33:29.260
and they are adamant that their police just simply will not enforce these goofy social distancing
00:33:36.780
rules. They say they either have their hands full with real crime crimes already,
00:33:40.780
especially since the prisons have been released. How will the LAPD react? Do you think they will
00:33:49.020
do the foolish orders of Mayor Garcetti? Or will they say, nah, boss, we'll stick to the crime. You
00:33:54.220
can have, you know, your political ticket givers take care of the social distancing.
00:33:59.180
I don't think LAPD is going to be too active. I mean, there's also the question of influential
00:34:06.380
lobbying groups in the city. So, for example, you can probably hear a lawnmower in the background
00:34:10.700
here. One industry that never shut down in L.A. during the pandemic, even when the stay at home
00:34:17.100
orders were at their most strict was landscaping, landscaping and gardening. People just kept coming
00:34:22.700
to work. People kept showing up at homes. Some days, the only cars you'd see on the street were the
00:34:27.340
pickup trucks loaded with lawnmowers and other gardening equipment. And that's because that's
00:34:32.380
just a massive industry among the Hispanic community here. And Garcetti was not going to
00:34:38.220
get away with telling those folks to stay home. Now, in Michigan, the Democratic governor there,
00:34:44.140
Governor Gretchen Whitmer, did tell landscapers and gardeners to stay home. And they enforced that
00:34:50.060
pretty rigidly. You would not get away with that here, where the Latino population is so important
00:34:55.580
to the electorate. Likewise, with the construction industry, construction workers basically stayed on
00:35:01.660
the job here. There are a couple of houses going up near me. And those guys kept coming to work. As
00:35:07.420
long as the people who own the property had money to pay them, those industries kept going. Those
00:35:12.300
workers kept showing up to work. And Garcetti was not going to be able to shut them down. So I think
00:35:17.180
what you're going to see is more and more pushback from influential industries, from business
00:35:22.620
associations, from some labor unions, people are just going to say, we've had enough of this.
00:35:27.660
And we're going to take the risk. We've learned how to manage the risk. We'll do the face masks.
00:35:32.460
We'll do the social distancing. We'll keep older relatives at home, or we will be more careful
00:35:38.220
about people with preexisting conditions. But they're not going to be able to enforce that kind
00:35:43.180
of rigid regulation for much longer. Yeah. Well, listen, thanks for letting us catch up on that
00:35:48.140
stuff. It's just nice to see you out in LA. I'm sort of jealous up here. We had snow a
00:35:52.620
couple of days ago in Toronto, if you can believe it. Let me get back to the reason we really called
00:35:57.180
you. And I know I've burned up half our time just talking about LA, but it's so interesting to me.
00:36:02.860
When I reached out to you just on some silly Canadian news, you wrote back and said, this is
00:36:06.700
nuclear. And I think you were talking about the publication of previously classified information
00:36:13.740
that was used in the witch hunts to find the Russians that were in collusion with the Trump
00:36:19.500
campaign. In particular, the spying committed by the Obama administration on the Trump campaign,
00:36:26.300
including General Michael Flynn. Is that what you were referring to when you said this is nuclear?
00:36:33.500
Yes. On Wednesday, acting director of national intelligence, Rick Grinnell,
00:36:37.420
who I've known for a very long time, actually, released a declassified list of the names of
00:36:45.020
Obama administration officials who had unmasked General Michael Flynn's name in the last days of
00:36:52.060
that administration. And the list was rather long. It was about 39 people, some of whom were
00:36:57.900
intelligence officials. And that's the kind of thing they do to try to figure out what's going on. But
00:37:01.660
some of them were political appointees. Some of them were people who had no connection to
00:37:08.540
the question of relations with Russia whatsoever. The ambassador to Italy, for example, was one of
00:37:14.060
those who had requested that Flynn's name be released. Now, it's a little fuzzy as to what exactly
00:37:19.500
they requested because they all received some kind of intelligence documents and the names of the
00:37:23.820
Americans are hidden. And then the unmasking process is when you ask them to reveal what the name is,
00:37:30.460
what the hidden name is, who the identity of the person is in this wireless surveillance transcript.
00:37:37.180
They didn't ask for Flynn precisely, but they asked for this name, who I'm led to believe
00:37:45.100
could only have been Michael Flynn. In other words, they knew they were asking about Flynn.
00:37:49.180
They were asking about him in early and mid-December, which is long before he was having
00:37:54.540
conversations with the Russian ambassador that eventually got him in trouble. Not that there was
00:37:58.620
anything illegal about those conversations, but he was accused later of lying to the FBI about the
00:38:04.060
content of those conversations. It's not clear that he lied to the FBI, but he pleaded guilty as part of
00:38:08.860
a plea bargain. It seems because the FBI threatened to indict or the Department of Justice threatened to
00:38:15.660
indict his son. They put a lot of pressure on him and he acquiesced. Now he's trying to change his plea and
00:38:23.100
the Department of Justice wants to drop the case. But Grinnell basically has named and shamed the
00:38:27.260
Obama administration officials who were involved in this unmasking effort, including Samantha Power,
00:38:33.100
the ambassador to the United Nations. And Trey Gowdy, former representative Trey Gowdy,
00:38:39.820
when he questioned her in a now declassified hearing at the House Intelligence Committee,
00:38:45.580
informed her that she was the biggest unmasker of U.S. persons in the history of the country,
00:38:51.420
that nobody has ever unmasked as many names or nobody has ever made as many unmasking requests as
00:38:57.340
Samantha Power. She seemed kind of confused by it all. She claimed that she wasn't responsible for all
00:39:02.620
those unmasking requests. But she's also one of the most partisan members of the Obama inner circle. So partisan,
00:39:09.180
in fact, I don't know if you remember this, but during the 2008 primary, they had to drop her from
00:39:14.700
the Obama campaign because she called Hillary Clinton a monster. And that's how fiercely she
00:39:20.940
fights for Obama. So she was very active or her office was very active in unmasking names. And she
00:39:28.700
asked for Flynn's name to be unmasked several times. So it's all very interesting. We still don't
00:39:33.420
know who leaked Flynn's name to the Washington Post. That's the only actual crime here that we know of
00:39:39.980
because it's illegal to leak classified information to the media. And his name, while unmasked, was still
00:39:44.860
classified. We don't know who did that, but I think we may find out. I also note that Joe Biden,
00:39:52.300
if I'm not mistaken, was on the list of people who saw the CNN. That was the biggest brand new piece
00:39:59.580
of information was that Joe Biden was the last person on the list in chronological order.
00:40:04.540
He was the last person to ask for the unmasking. And he did it on an interesting day. He did it on
00:40:10.220
January 12th, 2017, which is, first of all, barely more than a week
00:40:16.300
left in the Obama administration. So Biden had nothing to do at work, really. There's no real
00:40:21.660
reason for him to ask for anything to be unmasked. It's also the day when the Washington Post first
00:40:27.260
revealed that Mike Flynn was having conversations with the Russian ambassador.
00:40:31.340
So it looks like Biden may have, out of curiosity, tried to figure out the story.
00:40:36.460
But we don't know what he knew and we don't know when he knew it because he was sitting in with Obama
00:40:40.460
on January 5th on this big meeting that Obama had with all the intelligence and law enforcement chiefs
00:40:46.060
where they planned out who was going to approach Trump and what they were going to find out, what
00:40:49.580
they were going to say. So there's a lot that we have to uncover. What we do know is that Joe Biden
00:40:54.300
was not completely truthful with the public when he was asked earlier this week by George
00:41:00.620
Stephanopoulos on ABC News, Good Morning America, he was asked about whether he knew about the Flynn
00:41:07.180
investigation. And he said he didn't know anything. Then Stephanopoulos said, but you were there at this
00:41:11.660
January 5th meeting. Then Biden backtracked and said, oh, yeah, well, I knew there was an investigation,
00:41:16.140
but I didn't know more than that. Well, now we know he knew more because he asked for Flynn's name to be
00:41:20.700
unmasked. So he certainly knew that Flynn was captured on these surveillance transcripts of the
00:41:27.100
Russian ambassador. And we don't know what else Joe Biden knew. Of course, he could claim now that he
00:41:32.380
doesn't remember. And that would be a credible excuse at the moment, because as Julian Castro said during
00:41:38.620
one of the debates, Joe Biden can barely remember what happened two minutes ago. So not being able to
00:41:43.900
remember would be a plausible excuse. Here's a quick clip of that George Stephanopoulos and Joe
00:41:49.580
Biden moment. This is slightly emphasized by the Trump campaign. They they zoom in on his earpiece.
00:41:56.380
Take a quick look at this. It was quite painful to watch. I do want to ask you about Michael Flynn.
00:42:02.060
The president said yesterday that that move is justified because President Obama targeted Flynn.
00:42:06.460
He called it, quote, the biggest political crime in U.S. history. Your former Senate colleague,
00:42:11.340
Charles Grassley, has added that Flynn was entrapped. So what did you know about those moves
00:42:15.980
to investigate Michael Flynn? And was there anything improper done?
00:42:20.780
I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn, number one. Number two,
00:42:25.260
I do want to press that. You say you didn't know anything about it, but you were reported to be at
00:42:28.620
a January 5th, 2017 meeting where you and the president were briefed on the FBI's plan to question
00:42:36.300
Michael Flynn. I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted.
00:42:40.940
OK, I'm sorry. I was aware that there was that they asked for an investigation. But that's all
00:42:47.660
I know about it. I don't know the detail of where we are right now. Focus on what's in front of us.
00:42:53.900
You have plenty of time to investigate this issue. I think there's nothing there.
00:42:57.980
There. Well, Joe, let me ask you this, because in my life and I'm getting old, I'm probably 10 years old
00:43:04.540
new. I've had a lot of these moments that I thought this is nuclear. This is it. This is the big moment.
00:43:10.060
This is the reveal. This is proof of everything. And I'm so excited. And I, you know, I tell everyone
00:43:16.460
and I show everyone and I publish things and nothing because the other side doesn't care. I mean,
00:43:25.980
for example, when there's a Me Too allegation against a Democrat, well, they didn't actually
00:43:31.660
care. That's just a weapon they use against conservatives or so many of the gotchas are
00:43:36.540
the reveal. So this is shocking to you and me because we believe that no U.S. president
00:43:43.820
administration should spy on its rivals. That sounds like something Putin would do. You and I believe in
00:43:50.140
the rule of law and not abusing spy technology. But I don't think the other side does. And I don't
00:44:01.020
think the media who were part of selling this collusion myth, I don't think they actually care
00:44:08.300
either. They were all angry at Richard Nixon for his break in just because it was Nixon. They weren't
00:44:14.540
particularly angry at Hillary Clinton when she committed crimes. So I'm revved up by what you
00:44:20.460
call nuclear. But I don't think any Democrat is feeling one shade of embarrassment. And I don't
00:44:27.660
think the media are going to run with it. I already see the media defending it.
00:44:32.940
Yes, the Democrats in the media haven't really admitted that this is a problem yet.
00:44:39.420
However, they're on the defensive. And it's becoming tougher and tougher for them because
00:44:47.260
more and more information is coming out. You mentioned the Me Too story with Tara Reid
00:44:52.220
accusing Joe Biden of sexual assault. There's more information coming out about that. And the
00:44:57.340
Democrats do not control that flow of information. Likewise with Michael Flynn. There's more information
00:45:03.500
that's going to come out about what the Obama administration did. There's more that has to be
00:45:09.100
declassified and more transcripts, for example, that Adam Schiff is sitting on that Richard Grinnell
00:45:15.980
could simply move on. So we're going to see more and more information come out. The Democrats are
00:45:22.380
losing control of the flow of information. It certainly is energizing Trump's supporters who now
00:45:29.260
feel like they're on the offensive. And eventually Democrats are going to sound somewhat tired as they
00:45:35.900
continue to trot out defenses that get shot down again and again and again. I think they're worried,
00:45:42.620
not necessarily because they are taking this seriously, which they aren't, but just because
00:45:47.260
they've lost control of the narrative. They want this to be about Trump just using a diversion to
00:45:53.900
distract from coronavirus or whatever. But coronavirus is also a changing story. It's now about the economy.
00:46:00.620
It's not about the virus anymore. And Democrats don't control that either because people aren't
00:46:06.380
listening to their mayors. People aren't listening to their governors. And it's the smarter Democrats
00:46:11.980
like Jared Polis in Colorado who are doing what Republicans are doing. That is to say, finding a way
00:46:18.540
to reopen their economy. The national Democrats are simply focused on keeping everything shut down as
00:46:24.140
long as possible. It appears as though they want to maximize the economic damage. They want to maximize the
00:46:29.100
political damage to Trump. But they're not in control anymore. So the Democrats are fighting
00:46:35.180
from terrain that is, let's say, low. They don't have the high ground anymore. And slippery. They
00:46:41.580
don't have good footing anymore. And Republicans basically are seizing the high ground again in this
00:46:46.540
in this debate, in this series of debates. And I think Democrats are going to start to suffer from a
00:46:53.420
One last comment. I know we've kept you a long time. Boy, it looks nice where you are, by the way.
00:46:57.660
You know, Bill Maher, the comedian on HBO, made a quip more than a year ago that he wished for a
00:47:07.580
recession because that, he thought, would get rid of Trump. And he's probably right on that. Now,
00:47:13.340
that's a comedian making an irresponsible comment, trying to make a dramatic point. I think if he were
00:47:20.940
actually in a position of power, he probably would not say that honestly. That's just a lippy provocateur.
00:47:29.900
But I think that that's sort of the model being taken by Democrats across the board. You mentioned
00:47:35.820
one exception in Colorado. But whether it's Democrats in public health, Democrats in Washington, or maybe
00:47:42.140
even the mayor of L.A., if they can destroy Trump's strong suit, which was a booming economy, low
00:47:48.540
unemployment, everyone doing well. I actually think that Bill Maher comment, a recession would stop
00:47:55.900
Trump. I actually think the Democrats are siding with the virus and siding with the recession. I know
00:48:03.580
that sounds insane, but I think that's what they're doing. Well, they are doing that for two reasons,
00:48:11.340
one legitimate, one illegitimate. I think that there are more Democrats who legitimately fear that opening
00:48:17.820
up the economy too quickly could lead to a second wave of infections, and they're worried about that.
00:48:24.220
Democrats by nature are risk averse, more so than Republicans. It's also, it's a cultural difference
00:48:29.260
between the parties. There was a CNN poll that came out this week that showed, and I'm only off
00:48:37.020
very slightly on the numbers here, but basically three out of four Democrats expect things to get
00:48:42.380
worse, and one out of four Democrats expects things to get better. It's exactly the opposite
00:48:46.860
with Republicans. Three out of four Republicans expect things to get better, and one out of four
00:48:51.740
expects things to get worse. Republicans, conservatives in general, are more comfortable with the idea of
00:48:57.260
managing risk. Democrats want the risks managed for them, and they want the state, they want government
00:49:06.220
to eliminate those risks. I don't agree with that perspective, but I think it is a sincere perspective,
00:49:12.540
and so people are worried that we're going to come out of this thing and plunge right back in again.
00:49:18.060
However, there are Democrats who simply want to maximize the economic damage, who are thinking as
00:49:23.900
Bill Maher was thinking, I don't think it's going to work, and here's why. If this had been a mild recession,
00:49:30.300
if this had been a recession confined to the United States, then I think you could point the finger at
00:49:37.100
Trump, and there would be policies you might be able to find somewhere you could blame. He's the guy in
00:49:42.220
charge anyway, so he gets blamed for whatever happens on his watch, but because this is a virus that has affected the
00:49:47.740
entire world, and because this is not a recession, but simply a pandemic, a shock to the economy so deep,
00:49:55.900
it's unlike anything we've ever experienced before, it almost has no effect on Trump. I won't say it helps
00:50:02.780
him, but it gives him an opportunity to show his managerial skills. During the election in 2016, Democrats
00:50:11.900
enjoyed pointing out all of Trump's bankruptcies, and they said this guy's been a failure in business.
00:50:16.300
They don't understand what bankruptcy does. Bankruptcy allows you to rearrange things,
00:50:21.340
come back better than ever, and the fact that Trump's been through bankruptcy and succeeded
00:50:26.700
is actually an excellent training for restarting an economy after a sudden shock, and he's done
00:50:32.300
exceptionally well by global standards in terms of the economic interventions, as well as in terms of
00:50:38.060
the innovations and the changes government has made. You can argue that we weren't prepared enough for the
00:50:43.580
pandemic, but you also have to acknowledge that nobody was prepared, at least not in the West.
00:50:49.180
Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, they had been through Middle East Respiratory Syndrome five
00:50:53.100
years ago, they were better prepared, but there's no state or mayor, no city, no state, no Democrat who
00:51:00.380
was prepared. In fact, two Democrats in particular, Bill de Blasio in New York City and Gavin Newsom and
00:51:07.020
Jerry Brown, his predecessor in California, actually destroyed the stockpiles, got rid of the stockpiles
00:51:14.460
that Republicans had built up beforehand precisely to deal with pandemics. It turns out that
00:51:20.780
Arnold Schwarzenegger, of all people, and Michael Bloomberg in New York, Schwarzenegger in California,
00:51:26.140
Bloomberg in New York, had prepared for a pandemic after the SARS scare in the early 2000s,
00:51:33.020
and Jerry Brown in California, Gavin Newsom in California, the two Democrats, and Bill de Blasio,
00:51:38.620
the Democrat in New York, they just let those stockpiles fall apart, they sold off the respirators
00:51:43.660
or ventilators, they got rid of the masks, they used up everything that was there, and they never
00:51:48.620
replenished it. And every Democrat basically was unprepared, as unprepared, if not more unprepared,
00:51:55.980
than Trump. I mean, Trump, at least to his credit, enacted some pandemic precautionary measures last
00:52:01.900
year before we even knew about coronavirus. He had executive orders. Of course, they were looking
00:52:05.820
then at influenza. They weren't looking at a SARS-type coronavirus pandemic. So, you know,
00:52:12.140
Dwight Eisenhower said, the reason they call it an emergency is it's because the one thing you weren't
00:52:17.260
prepared for. But be that as it may, Trump did react with the travel ban on China and immediately
00:52:24.940
got American industry going, got things going in a way that we've never seen before in the United
00:52:30.140
States or really anywhere. We have this dramatic increase in testing capability. We've had
00:52:35.020
innovations. We are now, as Trump says, the king of ventilators because we've produced them so quickly.
00:52:39.340
We're exporting them to other parts of the world. So Trump's response has been absolutely phenomenal.
00:52:45.820
So it's given him, this pandemic has given him a chance to show how he manages, and it turns out he
00:52:50.620
manages very well. And to the extent that we weren't ready for this, that's because Trump was following
00:52:55.100
the advice of the scientists because the scientists were saying as late as March that you can still go
00:53:00.060
to campaign events and you can still take cruises. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Democrat hero,
00:53:04.220
said on March 9th that people who have no other risk factors should feel fine going on a cruise.
00:53:09.100
That was in March 9th. That was two days before Trump went on the airwaves from the Oval Office and
00:53:14.300
told everyone we're shutting down the country. So I think Trump has actually done very well.
00:53:20.060
His approval rating in some polls is as high as it's ever been. Democrats are panicking and they're
00:53:26.940
starting to realize they're on the wrong side of this reopening question. That by trying to keep
00:53:31.500
people at home, they're incurring the wrath, not just of Republicans and conservatives, but their own
00:53:37.100
voters. People are tired of it. Democrats also have to pay the bills. And Trump's been very generous.
00:53:43.980
They've had forgiveness for rents, for mortgages, stimulus payments, PPP loans for small business.
00:53:52.540
There's been all of this intervention by the Fed and by the government and Trump's led all of it.
00:53:58.940
So Democrats are now dealing not with Herbert Hoover, but with FDR. And it's harder to beat FDR. You know,
00:54:06.380
we didn't get out of the Great Depression until the Second World War, but FDR kept getting reelected
00:54:11.820
because he was seen as doing something. He was seen as trying. Now, this is a more divided time
00:54:17.340
and the media tries to keep people hating Trump, but Trump is active. He's doing things. He is seen
00:54:24.060
at least to be trying. He's not doing the typical, if you might say that, Republican. He's not a
00:54:29.260
stereotypical Republican, less government, let people survive on their own. I mean, that's the stereotype,
00:54:36.460
obviously. It's not the reality. He is using less of the federal government, but he's empowered the state
00:54:41.020
governments, the local governments. And he's brought private industry together in this national
00:54:45.180
effort in a way no one's done before. So Trump has turned himself in a sense into the Republican FDR.
00:54:51.340
Democrats are hoping to run against Herbert Hoover. We'll see how it looks in the fall.
00:54:55.100
But I think the Democrats are actually in a tough spot here. Some of them want the economic damage
00:55:00.540
to be worse. They're blaming Trump, but somehow it's not working just yet. Maybe people are just not
00:55:05.420
focused on politics yet. People are still focused on the virus and bread and butter issues.
00:55:09.740
We may see more of a politicization of this thing as it recedes into the past.
00:55:14.140
But for now, I think Trump's got a fighting chance of winning in November.
00:55:17.420
Amazing. Well, Joel, I learned so much from you, as I always do. Thank you for joining us
00:55:22.460
from your lovely outdoor in L.A. I tell you, if I was in L.A., I would not be listening
00:55:27.900
to some Democrat mayor telling me not to go out or have fun either. Take care, my friend,
00:55:32.780
and have a great weekend and stay safe. Thank you, you too. All right. There you have it,
00:55:37.180
Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, joining us from the sunny outdoors
00:55:45.660
Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about questions I have about the pandemic. Sherry
00:55:58.620
writes, something feels very wrong about this pandemic. The results were not anywhere near
00:56:02.620
as bad as we were told, yet the authorities are very reluctant to end it. We should be celebrating
00:56:07.260
and reopening, getting our lives back to normal. Yet there is no sense of this. It is concerning.
00:56:12.940
Yeah, I mean, I understand the idea of being cautious. It's why you buy insurance. You just
00:56:20.060
don't know. You've got to prepare for the worst. I get it. And we simply didn't know in early days
00:56:25.260
how bad this was, because China lies about statistics. It was sort of like China's Chernobyl.
00:56:29.260
How bad is it? But now we see it's not that bad. Not one single person under 20 in Canada
00:56:35.580
has died from it. So at the very least, let the kids go back to school. Let the waiters and
00:56:39.580
waitresses go back to work. I think people love the power of saying, you can't work, you can.
00:56:46.140
I'll be your great giver. I'll give you 500 bucks a week from the government. I'll say,
00:56:50.940
you can work. I say, you're arrested. I think that appeals to all the wrong instincts in politicians.
00:56:57.500
On my interview with Aaron Rosenberg about an update on LetUsReport.com, Ron writes,
00:57:02.140
I found your decision to offer your legal research to a left-wing Alberta organization
00:57:06.140
immensely gratifying, even if they were ingrates. The principle of defending freedom of speech for
00:57:10.780
all is what sets the news apart from the stenographic legacy in media. Yeah, I mean,
00:57:15.900
it wasn't a big deal. We had the research. And I just said to our admin lawyers, pass it over.
00:57:21.580
Because, well, there's a selfish reason there too. Because if we can build up a jurisprudence,
00:57:27.100
build up a case law, case after case after case, of more journalists getting in rather than fewer,
00:57:34.220
that benefits us in the long term. I don't want to be the only force in Canada fighting for a free
00:57:38.460
press. But it was a decision, because I know they hate us. And they were so mean to us. It was
00:57:46.380
shocking, but not surprising. Contrast that to when we went to court in the federal court in October,
00:57:53.340
try and get it in the leaders' debates. We had no help from any other media other than our friends
00:57:58.700
at True North. God bless them. And in fact, there was one blog there, Canada Land, that was live
00:58:04.940
tweeting from the courthouse. And they were negative. They were hoping we'd be kept out.
00:58:08.860
So yeah, there is no spirit of free press and free speech in the media party. It's a cartel.
00:58:14.220
They're all in it together. They're all on the take from Trudeau. And they're all liberals.
00:58:17.820
It's too bad. There used to be a time liberals cared about free speech. That hasn't really been
00:58:26.140
Oy vey, Rosenberg looks a lot like Ezra's younger brother. You know, I thought that was a funny email
00:58:31.340
when I got it. And I looked at it. And maybe there's a little bit to it. I think the glasses
00:58:35.420
help in sort of a general Yiddish look. I thought it was funny. On my interview with a conservative
00:58:40.620
leadership candidate, Dr. Leslie Lewis-Barry writes,
00:58:42.940
You seem rather proud that a candidate for the conservative party leadership would appear twice
00:58:47.020
in your program. Yes, she is attractive and refreshing, but she does not stand a chance
00:58:51.180
of being anything more than a candidate. You should not be interviewing her,
00:58:53.820
nor admiring her any further. She's nice, but it's over. Stop it today and now.
00:58:58.620
Ah! Well, Barry, I mean, it's pretty tough of you.
00:59:05.100
We invited all the leadership candidates to talk to us. Derek Sloan did twice,
00:59:09.580
once with me and once with Kean. Leslie Lewis did twice. And Jim Carahelios did twice. So we talked
00:59:15.020
to each of those candidates twice. I can't remember if anyone on our team talked to DeCary,
00:59:19.660
but he was never certified. And we asked Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay many times to come on.
00:59:26.460
I personally called their campaign staff, who I know who are friends of mine, friends of the rebel.
00:59:31.260
And they just wouldn't come on. So it's not so much that I'm in love with those three
00:59:35.980
candidates that we did interview. It said, I'm grateful anyone comes on the show and has a parley
00:59:40.060
with us and shows, more importantly, that they're not beholden to the censorship,
00:59:45.100
deplatforming mindset of the rest of the media party. That's what bugs me about McKay and O'Toole.
00:59:50.300
McKay is obviously too liberal to me. And O'Toole just seems boring and doesn't have the charisma to
00:59:55.580
win. Those are personal views. Who cares? It's not really important. It's just my view. What bugs me
01:00:00.620
about the decision not to come on the rebel is not some vanity. It's that it shows they're terrified
01:00:05.980
of what the mean girls, the media party will say about them. I mean, frankly, if I was them,
01:00:10.940
you want a home run, come on my show and fight me. Not physically, but poke at me. Ezra, you were
01:00:17.500
wrong. It would be weird, but you want to be a hero to the left, come on my show and debate me and
01:00:22.860
wrangle with me or something. But don't let the mean girls say who you can and can't talk with,
01:00:27.900
because that's just, I mean, it's the perfect encapsulation is what I talked about in my
01:00:32.620
monologue today. Peter McKay makes a pretty bland tweet supporting the good Alberta boys who
01:00:37.900
carried the garbage off the railroad track. He just says, look at these guys clearing the
01:00:42.460
railroad track. Vigilante, you like crime. Like, you want vengeance. And he, instead of just laughing
01:00:50.940
that off, he listens to them, is persuaded by them, deletes the tweet. I don't know if he apologized.
01:00:58.620
Like, that's, even if he was wrong, show some spine. I'm terrified that a man with a jellyfish
01:01:07.100
of a spine like that will win. Who cares what he thinks of me or the rebel? He just, he's like a
01:01:12.460
seat cushion that bears the impression of whoever last sat on him. Oh my God. God help us all.
01:01:17.820
That's the show for today. We'll have a show on Monday and we'll have videos over the weekend.
01:01:22.300
Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,