Tommy Robinson is running for European Parliament — Here's why he could win
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Summary
Tommy Robinson is running for the European Parliament as an independent candidate, and here's why I think he has a chance to win. And why he should win, given the unusual voting system in place in the EU.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. I've got some news for you today. A rebel alumnus named Tommy Robinson
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is running for public office. He is seeking election as a member of the European Parliament
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to represent Northwest England in Brussels in the EU. Now, this wasn't supposed to happen
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because Brexit, they were supposed to leave, but Brexit didn't happen. So Tommy wants to go in and
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bash up the place. I fully support it. And listen to my monologue and you'll hear how I think he
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can actually do it given the interesting lay of the land and vote counting system. Hey folks,
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before I get to that podcast, please consider supporting The Rebel. And by that, I mean
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for you every day on audio podcast. Without further to do, listen to the news about my friend Tommy.
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You're listening to A Rebel Media Podcast. Tonight, our friend Tommy Robinson runs for the European
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Parliament. And here's why I think he's got a chance to win. It's April 25th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.
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Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know?
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There's 8,500 customers here, and you won't give them an answer.
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The only thing I have to say to the government about why I publish it is because it's my bloody right to do so.
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Tommy Robinson announced his candidacy for public office today. He's running in northwest England.
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That's Manchester and the surrounding areas. He's running to be that region's member of the European
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Parliament. He's running as an independent. But because of the unusual voting system there,
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I think he's got a real chance to win. I'm pretty sure you know Tommy. He used to work for us here
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at The Rebel, and I've talked about him dozens of times. He was a journalist for us for a year or so.
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He really opened my eyes to what's going on in the United Kingdom, especially with regards to mass
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Muslim migration. And at first, I couldn't believe it when I learned that there are literally 23,000
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jihadis on police watch lists in that country, 3,000 of whom are tracked around the clock.
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That's an army of terrorists. And what good does it do just to track them?
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So when they decide to ram pedestrians with a vehicle, police can watch it on a surveillance camera.
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You can say, yeah, we knew that guy was a risk. They're just allowed to roam free in the UK.
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At best, they're just propagandizing for the jihad. I actually bumped into one of these jihadis
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on the street. Abdul Hakim is his name. He had come to stalk Tommy Robinson at his trial last year. He
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was out and about just on the street, free as a lark, a jihadi. He was just talking. But sometimes
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these jihadis do the jihad, like the time right near parliament where a terrorist rammed a bunch
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of pedestrians on one of London's famous bridges. This is an Islamic jihad attack. The man that done
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this would have either been radicalized in a prison or he would have been radicalized on the streets
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of the UK with full knowledge of our government and our security services. They will know who he is.
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Yeah, mate, I have information that shows there was four terrorist attacks last week in France,
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four in France. There was 12 planned last year. Driving your car like this man has done is exactly
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what the Inspire magazine, which is Al-Qaeda's magazine, which was downloaded by 50,000 British
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Muslims last year. 50,000 British Muslims downloaded a terrorist manual in our country. 50,000, not 10,
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not 20, 50,000 people who want to see exactly what you see there. That's what they want.
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So that was Tommy. I hadn't actually met him by that point. I had known about him from afar over
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here in Canada. I'd interviewed him a few times at Sun News Network by satellite or Skype. But I really
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got to know him once he started doing a lot of videos for us. And not just videos, he did campaigns
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too, like we do here in Canada. Like when Tommy fought for Chelsea Wright, who was raped by a gang of
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migrants, but abandoned by police. Or when we helped John Fletcher, you know him, the shopkeeper, who was
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threatened by police that if he didn't take down a little sign on his shop that said don't fund
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terrorism. Well, that was actually a real issue in his hometown. Other convenience stores had been raising
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money for terrorists, not John. But the police actually told him to take that little sign down where they would
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put him out of business. So Tommy stepped in and helped John and helped John's family fight back.
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I visited the UK probably half a dozen times with Tommy. I saw that the caricature about Tommy was false.
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He wasn't a racist. He certainly wasn't an anti-Semite. In fact, everywhere I went, people came up to him
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asking for a photo. So many minorities too, especially from places where they know what radical Islam can do.
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I think every single Sikh or Hindu in the United Kingdom is a Tommy Robinson fan. I've seen it with my own eyes.
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Once I was riding in a minivan on the highway with Tommy, we're going up north, and a car pulled up beside us,
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and the Sikh family in the car recognized Tommy. We're driving 100 kilometers an hour. And they
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started waving at him and taking pictures car to car on the highway. So I saw the love people had for
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him, mainly the poor, the working classes, the forgotten people, working class white folks,
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indigenous Brits. In other words, the UK's deplorables. I learned just the other day that
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only 4% of the MPs in the United Kingdom are from so-called working class background. It really is the
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same as the US Congress. All just rich lawyers and activists, the kind of people who regard
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the United Kingdom as small and embarrassing and love Europe as exotic and cosmopolitan. So they
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love the European Union, their own little mini United Nations. But the EU actually passes binding
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laws that rule in the UK. So that fancy class, the TOFs as they're called, they love mass migration
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because it drives down wages and drives up rents, and they're all landlords. They don't care about
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the rape gangs. It's not going after their girls. You know, these rape gangs in the UK have literally
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raped tens of thousands, probably more than 100,000 working class British girls over the years.
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And the police have covered it up out of fear of being called racist.
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Because more than 80% of the perpetrators are Pakistani Muslim men. That's really what's
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motivated Tommy these past years, the rape of these young girls by Muslim men who regard infidel
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women. And by women, I mean children as young as nine years old, regard them as rapable. I'm sorry
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to speak so bluntly, but that's what it's been about. That's what Tommy was reporting about outside the
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courthouse that day in Leeds. A rape gang of more than two dozen men had raped girls as young as 11 years
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old, hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Tommy simply named the accused men on a video,
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who were all later convicted, by the way. And naming them, he just read off the BBC government
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website their names. But he was arrested, as you can see in this video here, packed off to the police
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station, then sent to court, where he had a trial that took less than 10 minutes long. And he wasn't
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even allowed to speak. And then he was immediately sent to prison for 13 months, where he was soon put
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in solitary confinement, and practically starved, by the way. Look at him when he came
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out, look how thin he was. He had PTSD. He was in a box 23 and a half hours a day. He was in solitary.
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As you know, we crowdfunded Tommy's legal appeal. And we busted him out of there after 10 weeks.
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The Lord Chief Justice of England and Wales himself called Tommy's arrest, his prosecution,
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his conviction and sentencing, called it all improper and illegal. And the reason I tell you all these
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stories together, about the police just watching the 23,000 jihadis who roam the streets, about the
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police cracking down on a shopkeeper who says don't fund terrorism, about police who ignore young
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girls being raped, or in the case of Chelsea, ignore a woman being raped. The reason I tell you about how
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they cracked down on Tommy, arresting him for me really reporting the facts about these things,
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the reason I tell you all these things, is to show you what the system itself is like there now.
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All the 5P professionals, as Daniel Pipes calls them, the police, the prosecutors, the press,
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the politicians, the professors, they're all in on it. The entire establishment. London, the great city,
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is in the middle of a massive crime wave. Knife attacks and acid attacks. That's a thing over there.
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But their Muslim mayor, Sadiq Khan, who used to be a lawyer for terrorists himself, if you can believe
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it, that mayor has different priorities than acid attacks or knives. He has banned ads on the London
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subway station that aren't Sharia compliant, that no bikinis allowed. That's far more important for him
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to crack down on. Oh, and he's put 900 real police on the hate speech beat. Policing Facebook and Twitter
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crimes hurt feelings crimes. 900. So yeah, do you see the problem here? Brits were having enough of
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this. And so in 2016, before the Trump wave hit America, the Brits voted for Brexit to exit the
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European Union. It was really a vote against the gravy train for the fancy people, those elites.
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Really a vote to get back to Britain as its own country, not as a colony of Europeans. Britain with
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its own borders, not open borders, like Angela Merkel was doing to Europe at that time. And just a slap back
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at all the fancy people, all the five Ps, who universally supported remaining in the EU, which of course
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included much of the Conservative Party over there, which only called the Brexit referendum to quiet the leave
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rump in their party. They thought Remain would win the referendum. So they really never meant to carry through
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with it. I mean, everyone knew. Everyone knew that Remain would win. Everyone they knew was going to vote
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to Remain. But the little people on election day have the same number of votes as the big people. They each
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have won. And so on that day, it was the largest vote in UK history. 17.4 million Brits voted to leave,
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and each deplorable had the same vote as the editor of the Sunday Times. And against all the good advice
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from their superiors against all the bizarre threats made by everyone from bank CEOs to airline CEOs to
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health officials of all the calamities that would befall the UK if it removed itself from control
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by the EU, as if the UK was nothing for millennia beforehand, as if the UK was only found and saved by
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France and Germany these last decades. The Remain campaign actually nicknamed the Strategy Project
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Fear, which I think Justin Trudeau has copied here in Canada. But it didn't work. I mean,
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even the British Sandwich Association warned that there would be no more sandwiches if Brexit were
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to vote to leave. But certainly there would be serious problems in terms of some of the fresh
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ingredients we bring in from the European Union and also from overseas, particularly if we have
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problems in the ports and we can't get ingredients through because they're all fresh and don't have
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a very long shelf life. And we've got no chance to stockpiling fresh ingredients. So I think the
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answer from the sandwich industry is going to be that it's going to limit the amount of choice that
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consumers have if we suddenly crash out of Brexit in the way that it's being talked about.
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That was real. That wasn't satire. The sandwich man was saying, if you vote to leave the European
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Union, no more sandwiches for you. He said that, I swear. Yeah, no one bought it. And so no one trusts
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the establishment anymore. I don't even trust the British Sandwich Association anymore. I never will
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again. And so for the past thousand days, it's been a thousand days, the establishment has tried to undo
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the results of that Brexit vote. And can you believe that they did? They just refused to leave
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on the legal deadline, March 29th of this year. They just, they just literally ignored the referendum
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results. The largest vote in UK history, 7.4 million people. The Remainers just ignored, betrayed,
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denied, defied the Democratic result. Imagine if here in Canada, Kathleen Wynne simply refused to step
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aside for Doug Ford or in Alberta, if Rachel Notley just refused to step aside for Jason Kenney or some
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judge somewhere said Donald Trump had to go despite winning the election. That's the level of shocking
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anti-democratic craziness afoot in the UK right now. And so next month, the UK will still be in the
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European Union when it's time to elect their little stable of European MPs. Now there are 750 of these
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MEPs, members of the European Parliament. And 73 out of the 750 come from the UK. So you can see one
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of the problems here. The UK is outvoted on everything before it even starts. But unlike the
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United Nations, it's largely symbolic. The EU's laws are actually binding in the UK. You can see one of
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the problems, can't you? Well, the Brexit referendum was supposed to pull the UK out last month, so there
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wouldn't be any MEPs. But they're still in. And so next month, the election will go forward for these 73
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British MEPs. And it's for one of those seats that Tommy Robinson is running. And I think he could win.
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Now to be candid, I don't think Tommy could win an election as an MP, a member of Parliament. Because
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like in Canada, and like in the United States, that's a first-past-the-post voting system. For UK
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MPs, that is, you simply have to get more votes in your district than anyone else. And I'm not sure
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if Tommy could do that. He has a very strong, passionate base of support. But I don't know if
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it would reach, you know, 35 or 40 percent needed in any given location. Not when the left would be
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completely against him with labor, and many on the right would vote conservative or something else
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like that. And even though Tommy is friends with Gerard Batten, the new leader of the UKIP party,
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Tommy himself has not been permitted to join that party or to run for it.
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And neither has Nigel Farage allowed Tommy to join his new party called the Brexit party.
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Farage just launched that very recently. And it's off to a strong start. Polls show it will likely
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get the most votes in the upcoming MEP elections. And Farage has come back, I think, genuinely
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reluctantly. I think he thought his work was done in 2016 when he pushed Brexit through. And then he
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resigned as leader as UKIP. And he sort of did a victory tour. But now he has to go back in. He
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doesn't have much time for Gerard Batten, his UKIP successor. And he's been clear he doesn't have
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A lot of people concerned that UKIP is being dragged in a direction that even you might feel
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Even me. When I was leader of UKIP, I forbade...
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When I was leader of UKIP, I actually forbade any former members of the EDL or the BMP to even be
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members of the party. Because I wanted us to talk about real issues like immigration, but without
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anybody being able to say we were racist and actually meaning anything. And I think UKIP is now
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tempted, or some people in UKIP are tempted, to let figures like Tommy Robinson into the party.
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And I think that would be a catastrophic mistake.
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Now, I can understand why Nigel Farage has wanted to stay as a one-issue guy. Brexit,
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get the UK out of the EU. I get it. And it has been a successful strategy for him. But there are
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other issues that do need to be addressed in the world as well. And Tommy addresses them,
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or at least one of them very well. And they are uncomfortable issues. And they will immediately
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get you branded far right. That's the phrase in the UK. It says stinging there is being called
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alt-right is in Canada or the United States. Farage himself is often called far right anyways by the
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left. But he has avoided associating with people who are concerned about Islam. I think he is worried
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that will marginalize him just too much. Now, let Nigel be Nigel. I think he has a great fighting
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spirit. And he's a great British character. I mean, take a look at his recent speech.
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I did actually, rather stupidly, for a moment, believe that we'd won. But it became clear pretty
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early on, really, with the so-called negotiation, that our Remainer Parliament, our Remainer Cabinet,
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and indeed our Remainer Prime Minister were going to do their utmost to delay, dilute, and in many
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cases, to actually stop and overturn Brexit. I think it's going to do great. But at the end of
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the day, he's not a working class chav, as they say, from Luton. He doesn't know the world Tommy grew
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up in. He doesn't know the Chelsea Rites of Sunderland, the John Fletchers. He's part of the
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fancy set. He's a former stockbroker. He's a media star who is outstanding on Brexit. But on other matters,
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it's pretty much establishment, and he has no time for Tommy. Now, I look forward to Nigel and the
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Brexit Party. I hope it helps to finally get rid of the worst prime minister in the century, Theresa May.
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Oh, my God. May is worse than Neville Chamberlain. I mean, Chamberlain was obviously disastrously wrong
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in his assessment of Hitler. But other than that, he was a solid man, a leader, a loyal patriot. And I
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don't know if you know this, but after his disgraceful misjudgment of Hitler, he in fact went
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on to serve as a member of Winston Churchill's war cabinet. And from what I've read of history,
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very loyally and effectively very trusted by Churchill. He made one disastrous mistake,
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an enormous mistake, although I don't know if Britain could stop Hitler in any event.
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But the man, I believe, was inherently good, Neville Chamberlain. I cannot say that about this
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serially incompetent deceiver, Theresa May, this disloyal placeholder. She's destroying the
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Conservative Party. And I don't much care. But maybe her party does. And hopefully the coming
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MEP elections will be the catalyst to throw her out. I don't know. But back to Tommy.
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See, you have to understand the mood over there. From what I can tell, it's not just the same mood we
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saw in Ontario before Doug Ford won, or Alberta before Jason Kenney won, or even America before
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Donald Trump won. No. This isn't really just the moment when the deplorables rose up. See,
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that comparison would have worked back in 2016, when Brexit voters won. That was the moment when
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that comparison fixed. Brexit, Trump, that fits. But I'm trying to convey to you the mood today.
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1,000 days after Brexit passed, but it has not yet been allowed to happen. So imagine 1,000 days
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after Donald Trump was elected, but he was not yet allowed to take office. Imagine 1,000 days
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of weaving and bobbing and deking, 1,000 days of whining and backpedaling by the entire establishment,
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all the 5P professionals. And then on the day it was supposed to happen, March 29th, it did not
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happen. It was betrayed. It was undone. I don't want to be dramatic, but it really, you know, the idea
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was conceived in 2016, but it was aborted on the day it was supposed to be birthed in 2019.
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Imagine the rage amongst those 17.4 million, and even people of goodwill who voted to remain,
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but said, all right, fair is fair. We lost the vote. Let's leave. So this is not just discontent.
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It was discontent back in 2016. But discontent was blocked. Illegally, unconstitutionally,
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undemocratically for sure. So it's not discontent anymore. It's rage now. It's shock. It's utter
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disillusionment with the entire political class, the 5P professionals. Would you ever trust them again?
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And imagine now voting for a member of the European Parliament. Imagine voting in
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a European Union vote that wasn't even supposed to happen because you were supposed to be gone by now.
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Imagine voting to go and be a part of a joke parliament, a joke, but a joke with the power
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to actually rule the UK that was supposed to now be freeing. What would you do if you were a Brit?
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I think if I were a Brit, I would want to find a bull and send him into a China shop, I think.
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Here's a bull in a shop in China. That's not really what you normally mean by a China shop,
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but I thought this was a pretty good video. This was a bull that was about to be butchered,
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turned into meat, but he had other plans, didn't he? That's a hell of a video. That's a real video
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there. Well, who is the bull to send into the European Union's China shop and just bash it up?
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Tommy Robinson, I think. Now, he's not a reckless smasher like that bull is. Tommy has a real
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message. He has a coherent message and an ideology, and he has a track record, and he has a mission.
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But his style, well, here's a dramatic Tommy moment that I think more than a few Brits might be happy
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to see him do, metaphorically speaking, to the European Union. This was when Tommy was in Rome.
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Now, he wasn't working for us then. He was on his own, independent journalism, and he was threatened
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by a migrant who actually threatened to kill Tommy. Watch this.
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Yeah, that's about two seconds. I think Tommy can do that to the EU. I like Nigel Farage, and I think
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he's going to be great in the European Union. I like Tommy even more, and I think he's going to be
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like a blowtorch to the political correctness in there. He's going to smack him, metaphorically.
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But can he really win? Can he win? Well, that's the thing. There are eight members of the European
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Parliament to be selected from the northwest of England. That's around Manchester.
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And it is not a first-past-the-post system. It's sort of a mathematical way of counting votes. The
00:22:09.920
top vote-getter wins, gets one MEP, and then that party's votes are divided by two, and then they check,
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and then the next top vote-getter wins, and then their vote is divided by two for it's the same
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party is divided by three. I'm not going to take you through the whole system. It's actually quite
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ingenious, but long story short, let me tell you how the story ends. You can win and become a member
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of the European Parliament in northwest England with less than 10% of the vote. In the last election,
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in 2014, 1.75 million people voted in that electoral region, and it took 160,000 votes to
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win one of the eight seats. In the previous elections in 2009, 1.65 million people voted in
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northwest England. It took 132,000 votes to win. That's 8%. Can Tommy Robinson get 8% or 9% or 10%
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of the vote in northwest England? Why, I do believe he can. Now, it will be an uphill battle in some
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ways. The entire media class is against him. The entire political class is, too. Nigel Farage won't
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even touch him. The UKIP won't even let him run for them, and the other parties would throw him in
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prison. Labor and the conservatives would throw him in prison if they could. In fact, the conservatives
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already did. Police will likely harass him. It wouldn't shock me if he was charged with some trumped-up
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charge, some stitch-up just to get him off the streets like he was that day in Leeds.
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Now, we here at the Rebel, we support Tommy. We always have. But, of course, we're foreigners
00:23:42.080
in the UK. I'm a Canadian. So, I can't vote. I can't donate. Now, if you're a Brit watching this,
00:23:48.860
you can do both of those things. And I encourage you to go to Tommy's website,
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votetommy.co.uk. That's how they do it over there, .co.uk. But there is one thing that we will be
00:23:59.680
doing as a company. We will be reporting on the campaign fairly. And again, it's a little bit
00:24:05.540
odd that a foreign media outlet has to do that. But as I've shown you a dozen times now, the British
00:24:10.280
media are perhaps the worst in the free world and worse than in many authoritarian regimes. So,
00:24:15.320
we'll be covering the campaign. We'll be covering Tommy. We'll be covering Nigel Farage,
00:24:21.660
both from here, but also by sending reporters over there in the days and weeks ahead. In fact,
00:24:29.120
I'm putting together a big roster of other reporters from Canada and the United States
00:24:33.340
and Australia who will join me in the UK in May. I'll keep you posted about that at
00:24:39.820
realreporters.uk. That's actually a way, if you want to help Tommy, but you're not a Brit. If you're
00:24:45.980
a Brit, you can donate and vote for him. But if you're not, obviously, well, you can chip in to help
00:24:50.420
us do our media coverage. Now, that's not a gift to Tommy. It's a gift to us because we'll use your
00:24:56.900
contribution to pay air for an hotel accommodation for our reporters to cover the campaign. And we'll
00:25:02.060
cover it fairly. That's all we do. We'll cover it like we see it. We don't report to Tommy. We
00:25:05.840
support Tommy, but we report to you, the viewer. Anyways, I'm pretty excited about it. Tommy really
00:25:11.100
is a bull in a china shop. It's something both his friends and enemies would probably both agree on.
00:25:16.380
I guess it depends if you're rooting for the bull or if you're rooting for the china shop. Me,
00:25:20.080
I'm rooting for the bull. As Tommy's election motto says, it's time to send the European Union and the
00:25:26.900
entire 5P professional establishment, it's time to send them a message they'll never forget.
00:25:50.080
But will Canadians expect to pay higher fuel prices with the carbon taxes?
00:25:55.040
I think one of the things we've seen across the country is that the incentives that come from
00:26:01.880
better choices, making choices to be cleaner and greener is exactly what we want.
00:26:08.920
That's Justin Trudeau saying, yeah, we want higher prices at the pump. So you make better behavior,
00:26:16.060
better choices. And by better choices, he means stop driving, stop heating your house so much
00:26:23.060
in the winter, stop cooling it in the summer, just stop living an industrial life. Not for him,
00:26:29.480
of course. He, in fact, jetted out to British Columbia twice in the past week to take in some
00:26:36.180
of those gnarly waves at Tofino. I mentioned British Columbia because, of course, that is where the
00:26:42.160
highest gasoline prices in the nation are right now. The lowest gas prices are about $1.60 a liter.
00:26:49.260
And I have seen, here's the Gas Buddy website, the lowest in Vancouver are $1.59.
00:26:57.760
And that's just a handful of them. $1.60, $1.70 is not rare. And if you prefer the fancier grade of
00:27:04.200
gasoline, and I don't know who could possibly afford that, it's as much as $2 a liter.
00:27:10.940
Joining us now via Skype from Victoria, British Columbia's capital, is our friend Aaron Gunn. He's
00:27:16.380
the spokesman for BC Proud, an independent group which takes no money from the government. That's
00:27:23.820
why we can trust you, Aaron. Like us, no one controls your strings, so you can speak the truth.
00:27:30.820
That's exactly right, Ezra. Thanks for having me.
00:27:33.040
Well, it's a pleasure. You guys fight hard. I remember we had a great conversation with you when
00:27:37.100
the statue of Sir John A. Macdonald was taken down, and you were right on the scene. Tell me your
00:27:42.400
thoughts on the gas prices in BC. Are they, in fact, the highest prices on the continent? That's
00:27:50.820
They are, and it's quite frankly, completely out of control. I'm in Victoria here. It's over $1.60 a
00:27:56.960
liter everywhere, and in Vancouver, it's not uncommon. They've been up to around $1.75 a
00:28:05.180
liter, so it's completely insane, and it's, I mean, people are, ironically, they're cutting
00:28:10.780
back, but they, you know, people can't cut back on driving, so they're going to stop going
00:28:14.420
out to restaurants more. They're going to stop going to movies and things like that, so it's
00:28:20.180
Yeah, I mean, I suppose there's some driving that's elective, but if you're a school bus,
00:28:26.720
that's not something that you can choose to do or don't do. You know, people who say ride
00:28:31.280
a bike, yeah, easy to say, but not if you have a bunch of kids, as an example, not if
00:28:37.540
you're a truck that's hauling food to the grocery store, so now you've got to pay it, and it's
00:28:42.700
just, but as Trudeau said, he wants people to feel the pain. That's that behavioral,
00:28:50.180
behavioral modification. I think that, what do you think of this theory, Aaron? When
00:28:54.340
people, when people are asked, do you want to do something about global warming on the
00:28:58.800
phone by a pollster? They say, oh, yeah, yeah, absolutely, because it's just some virtue
00:29:03.420
signaling test that you pass just by saying, yeah, but when you're at the gas pump paying
00:29:08.040
a buck 70, I can't imagine there's anyone who says, I really like this, because I know
00:29:15.120
I'm changing the weather. Well, the thing is, is it's hurting families, it's hurting individual
00:29:21.520
British Columbians, and it's doing nothing for climate change under any model that anybody's
00:29:25.820
ever proposed. It's having zero impact. You know, British Columbians are paying through
00:29:30.960
their nose for gas, and China's building however many new coal plants every month, so it makes
00:29:37.820
absolutely no difference under any model whatsoever on global warming, so it's, it just doesn't make
00:29:45.640
any sense, and the one thing I will give Trudeau and the Premier here in British Columbia, John
00:29:50.520
Horgan, credit for is promise kept, promise delivered. Gas prices are higher, and people
00:29:54.540
are feeling the pain. Yeah, you know, I was reading Von Palmer in the, I think it was the Vancouver Sun,
00:30:00.400
and he quotes John Horgan. I suppose this quote was everywhere, and Horgan is not blaming the,
00:30:07.520
they have extra special taxes in Vancouver, don't they? It's like Montreal that way. They've got the
00:30:12.460
B.C. carbon tax, like it is a tax reason that it's so high, but I just got to read you John Horgan's
00:30:18.920
explanation. He, this is, this is the Premier of B.C. who's against pipelines, wants to stop the, all the
00:30:25.920
Alberta pipelines, loves the taxes. Here's what he said. I just got to quote this for our viewers.
00:30:30.400
He said, we don't have enough refined product for the traveling public. We need to talk to the gas
00:30:37.460
companies about why they are not refining more product. Yeah, mate, I don't think that's the
00:30:42.380
problem. It's not like, oh my God, there's, we're running out of gasoline, there's a shortage. It's,
00:30:47.440
it's not, it's not because the refineries are not refining gas. It's taxes. It's taxes, and you know
00:30:56.480
what, I'll, I'll tell you something. The politicians like John Horgan are pointing their fingers,
00:31:00.000
they're feeling the heat, they're pointing their fingers everywhere else, and they should be taking
00:31:03.060
a look in the mirror. There's three big reasons why gas prices in B.C. are so high. I mean,
00:31:07.800
they're high across the country, but to put this in perspective, like between Calgary and Vancouver,
00:31:12.540
the price differential is as much as 50 cents a litre, which is insane. And you know, it's the taxes,
00:31:19.280
the highest taxes in North America. It's the lack of supply that could be, that could be fixed with
00:31:25.260
the Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion, which the Trans Mountain Pipeline can actually carry refined
00:31:30.180
products. And then it's also the collapse of the Canadian dollar over the last, last little while,
00:31:36.260
which is mainly because we can't get our oil to market and has hit our currency so hard. So those
00:31:41.620
are all, those are all self-inflicted wounds by our politicians and normal British Columbians and
00:31:46.860
Canadians are feeling, feeling the pinch from that. Yeah. I mean, Horgan wants it both ways. He wants
00:31:52.420
to stop Alberta oil, but then when Alberta says we might cut it off, he says, oh no, you don't.
00:31:57.200
And then he wants to tax oil, but then he's saying, oh, you guys, the refineries, you're making
00:32:01.960
expenses. He's got to pick a lane. I, one thing I learned from Von Palmer today is that it, apparently
00:32:08.620
there's a new bill in the legislature in B.C. Let me just quote a passage from it. This would ban cars
00:32:16.280
by the year 2040, which will be long after John Horgan's gone. But the key provision is it on or
00:32:23.900
after January 1st to 2040. So that's 19 years away. Sorry, that's 20 years away. A person must not make
00:32:32.180
a consumer sale of a light duty motor vehicle that is not a zero emission vehicle. So no gasoline engines
00:32:40.580
allowed whatsoever. And if you sell, if you commit this crime of selling a car with an engine in it,
00:32:46.900
you could be fined up to half a million dollars and six months in prison. If he thinks that people
00:32:53.220
like paying high, you know, buck 60, buck 70 in gas, I think that that's going to be an appetizer to the
00:33:01.220
provincial rage when these guys try and ban cars altogether. Oh, and of course, the funny thing is,
00:33:07.980
he's complaining that there's not another refinery in B.C. Well, who in their right mind would build
00:33:12.800
a refinery under this government? You can't get anything built, number one. Number two, they're
00:33:17.460
talking about banning cars in less than or around 20 years when you need 30 years to get your money
00:33:23.220
back on a $10 billion refinery investment. So it just doesn't make any sense on so many different
00:33:28.660
levels. And it's just kind of it's a trend of this government to pursue ideological solutions
00:33:35.360
instead of, you know, pursuing common sense results. Well, let me ask you this. We've seen provincial
00:33:41.180
elections across Canada flip to the right. I was I wasn't following Prince Edward Island closely, I
00:33:47.580
admit. But when they went conservative, I thought, well, that's interesting. And we saw, well, I mean, Alberta,
00:33:54.560
Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Ontario, Quebec has sort of a conservative government. New Brunswick is
00:33:58.820
interesting to me. Part of that is just, you know, people want to change. Part of that, I think, might be a
00:34:05.720
reaction to Trudeau. I don't know. How is John Horgan doing in the polls? Because I know the environment
00:34:11.180
movement in B.C. is very strong, very well funded. Are severely normal British Columbians starting to get
00:34:17.100
sick of it now? Or are they still with them on all this green stuff? Well, I think the gas prices might
00:34:23.420
kind of be the first. He's kind of had a little, as most politicians do, a honeymoon period through
00:34:27.780
the first two years. And I think gas prices is kind of the first kind of little mini crisis that
00:34:34.300
he's facing right now. He does pull a lot higher than the NDP in general and their policies. So he's
00:34:40.820
more of a likable person. But the policies of the NDP are not very popular here. The cost of living in
00:34:49.060
British Columbia is just completely out of control. The inflation is higher than any other province in the
00:34:53.240
country. There's a whole bunch of other things that's contributing to that, like auto insurance
00:34:57.380
and things like that. And I think kind of like Trudeau, where after maybe it was around year two
00:35:03.300
or year three, that everything kind of started to change. And I think that's going to happen
00:35:10.360
with Oregon here once people have a whole summer filling up at over $1.60, $1.70 a liter.
00:35:15.700
Yeah. And, you know, I think Jody Wilson-Raybould, I think B.C., I could be wrong here, sort of see
00:35:21.740
her as the hometown champion. And I, look, I'm not there on the ground like you are. But I think
00:35:27.620
that that hasn't helped Trudeau on the ground in B.C. at all, because she, you know, whatever you
00:35:32.600
think of her ideology, she comes across as a pretty straight shooter. And I think, you know,
00:35:37.340
you add the gas prices and that, that's not looking good for the liberals. Let me ask you one last
00:35:41.260
thing. I mean, I spent some time in Vancouver and on the island. And Vancouver is so close to the U.S.
00:35:47.580
border. But there's actually towns and cities all the way to the border. You've got Surrey,
00:35:52.780
you've got White Rock. That's just, it's, it's so close to the border. And it's a pretty good border
00:35:59.380
crossing. And if you have the Nexus Pass, you just fly right through. And I once went to the little
00:36:04.560
town of Bellingham, Washington, which is closer to the border than Vancouver is to the border. So
00:36:13.180
all these British Columbians from White Rock, South Surrey, they just drive 45 minutes down
00:36:18.080
to Bellingham. They go to the Costco there. They fill up their tank with gas at what, half the
00:36:25.440
price? While they're down there, they get milk and cheese and other things that are not part of the
00:36:30.120
dairy cartel. When I was in that Bellingham Costco a couple of years back, 90% of the license plates
00:36:36.520
were Canadian. It's like it was a place where Canadians ran away from John Horgan's taxes. Horgan
00:36:42.180
wasn't the premier back then. But I think that a lot of Canadians are literally going to a foreign
00:36:48.460
country to get gas and milk, by the way, to escape this carbon tax. What do you make of that crazy
00:36:54.640
phenomenon? Oh, it's insane. And the funny thing is, is some commentators have said the BC carbon tax
00:37:01.120
have helped lower gasoline consumption in British Columbia over the past 10 years. But that's not
00:37:07.340
taking into account all the people that are living across the border that just don't fill up in Canada
00:37:11.420
anymore. They'll go down to the, make their weekly trip down to the States and fill up on gas. And
00:37:16.140
then, like you said, milk, cheese, and a variety of other goods that are less expensive. So, I mean,
00:37:21.440
when you can save 30, 40 cents a liter by just driving 15 minutes away and then also get a discount
00:37:27.920
on other things, why wouldn't you? You'd be stupid not to. Yeah. It's pretty sad. I hope that BC
00:37:34.540
joins this trend of reaction to the hard left. But BC's got a mind of its own. It really is a
00:37:41.600
distinct society as much as Quebec, Newfoundland, or Alberta is. Aaron, I sure like talking to you,
00:37:47.400
and I think we should talk to you more. Can you tell our viewers where we can get more Aaron Gunn
00:37:51.720
and where we can get more BC Proud? Do you have a website or is it mainly your Facebook page?
00:37:57.460
We do have a website, but Facebook is where you're going to find all the content. You go to
00:38:01.480
facebook.com slash bcproud or facebook.com slash aarongunn.ca, and you can pretty much see all
00:38:08.320
our original videos and graphics and all that good stuff. All right. Well, BC Proud, that's the easy
00:38:12.980
one for me to remember. And we love what you're doing out there. I know it's 100 to 1. You're fighting
00:38:18.660
the odds, but if I know you, you're going to win it. So thanks for being one of the good guys.
00:38:23.860
Thanks for having me, Ezra. All right. What a pleasure. Well, there you have it. Aaron Gunn,
00:38:27.540
the spokesman for BC Proud. You can find them at facebook.com slash bcproud. Stay with us. More
00:38:34.580
On my monologue yesterday about Justin Trudeau's plan for a new plastic tax, Hyacinth writes,
00:38:51.240
with all these new taxes that the liberals keep dreaming up, I have one question. What will the
00:38:55.220
new taxes be wasted on? So far, billions have been wasted and the vast majority of it is not
00:39:00.100
being spent on Canadians. Well, if you knew how big the budget was, you would know that in fact,
00:39:04.420
the vast majority of it has been wasted on Canadians, but that still leaves billions that
00:39:08.860
he throws around the world for a moment's worth of PR. I think he truly wants to be some sort of
00:39:13.600
globalist mascot, like his dad sort of was, but at least his dad was interested in domestic things
00:39:19.480
too, not Trudeau. He just wants to be sort of a glad, handy guy. He prefers being out of Ottawa to
00:39:24.920
in Ottawa. He prefers being out of Canada to in Canada. I think he's taken 41 foreign trips
00:39:30.580
since he's been prime minister. I'd have to check that. I think I read that in The Globe the other
00:39:34.400
day. He just doesn't like doing work. He loves going to India for an eight day trip,
00:39:39.280
one day of work, seven days of vacation. So yeah, he does spend billions overseas,
00:39:44.240
but it's not the majority. Harley writes, we could use all the plastic we have in road asphalt. I saw
00:39:50.640
a documentary on the test section of highway. The mix actually performed better than standard asphalt.
00:39:56.020
You know, I'll take your word for it. Asphalt, of course, is another hydrocarbon. It's one of the
00:40:00.780
many miracles that we get by using things inside the earth and not just, you know, plants or whatever.
00:40:08.740
My understanding, which is rather shallow, but which was strengthened by reading that report
00:40:13.760
yesterday, is that it usually just doesn't pay to recycle plastic. It just takes, like, here's my
00:40:18.900
point. If it takes a certain amount of energy to make plastic, and it takes more energy to recycle
00:40:27.080
plastic, how's that helping the earth? On my interview with Kian Bexty, Paul writes,
00:40:34.780
one province after another has fallen. Trudeau has soured the liberal brand. If I were one of the few
00:40:39.240
liberal provinces left, I'd be distancing myself as much as possible from my federal counterparts.
00:40:43.840
Yeah, well, I think there's only two liberal provinces left, and they're in the Atlantic.
00:40:50.360
I mean, I suppose they could distance themselves from Trudeau. I don't even know how they would do
00:40:54.380
that. What's interesting to me, and we talked about this with Aaron Gunn, is can we liberate British
00:41:00.300
Columbia? I wonder. Hal writes, your message to Canadians is of the greatest importance. It needs
00:41:06.860
to get out to all the world, especially Canada. At my request of every premium subscriber, would they
00:41:13.020
mind if the rebel was not behind a paywall? I think it's a truncated version of your letter,
00:41:20.220
and I think I wrote back to you directly. But my answer, and I'll share it with the rest of the
00:41:24.460
viewers, is, first of all, I'm flattered that you think more people ought to hear my message. And
00:41:29.160
obviously, I would love that, too. But we also have the pay the bills. And look, not everybody who
00:41:33.960
pays eight bucks a month renews. So that tells me that not everyone is just, here, here, take the money.
00:41:40.200
Because we actually need the premium subscription dough to pay the bills. It's what pays the bills
00:41:45.580
for all the other stuff, because YouTube has demonetized us. So I'm sure there would be some
00:41:49.640
amazing super supporters like you, who would chip in eight bucks a month anyways, just gratuitously.
00:41:55.120
And thank you, I know you would. But I just would be terrified that our support, our actual financial
00:42:02.980
support would fall in half. And people would say, oh, I don't need to pay. Why am I paying eight
00:42:07.940
bucks a month? I get it for free anyways. I just think it's the only sort of guaranteed money we
00:42:13.280
have, because if people pay an $80 annual subscription, well, now we know we have it for a
00:42:17.800
year. We don't have to keep crowdfunding it. So I just, you know, the only answer to doing videos
00:42:24.100
like this, when I look around, when I look at CRTV in the United States, when I look at Ben Shapiro,
00:42:29.160
the Daily Wire, when I look at all the other similar competitors, they either have an extremely
00:42:35.600
wealthy patron, as CRTV has, as Breitbart.com had in the Mercer family, as Daily Wire has in
00:42:42.540
their billionaire, or they're government funded in some way. Or they're not demonetized, like the
00:42:49.720
Young Turks on the left, they're not demonetized. Since those other options are either not available
00:42:54.300
to us, or we would never, we wouldn't survive, like there's no way we could take government money.
00:42:58.640
I actually believe that if I said, hey, Justin Trudeau, give me $2 million a year, and you can
00:43:05.320
have editorial control here, which is basically the deal, I bet he'd probably take it just to shut
00:43:09.640
us up. But then we're not the rebel anymore, and I'm not me anymore. So I think the only method left
00:43:15.020
to us is crowdfunding and subscriptions and the trickle of ads that YouTube lets through. If there's
00:43:20.560
another fancy way out there, let me know. And if there's a patron out there who would be hands-off,
00:43:25.180
let me know. But I don't even know if such a thing exists. Bob writes, twice in as many days,
00:43:31.680
you have said that Andrew Scheer has said nothing about this axing the CBC. When he was a candidate
00:43:35.960
for leader, he said that if he were to become PM, he would ax the news division, which I'm assuming
00:43:40.760
would be the punditry as well. You know what, I take your word for it. I don't remember him saying that.
00:43:49.100
And maybe it's because he's never repeated it since his leadership vote. You know, he's changed quite a few
00:43:53.580
things since his leadership. And I just don't think he has the courage to follow through with
00:43:58.900
that. I'm sorry. I grant you that he probably put it in some talking point three years ago,
00:44:04.020
but I haven't heard a peep about it since. I'm just not going to give a lot of credence to it.
00:44:08.360
He certainly acts like he bends the knee to them. And I say again, if Stephen Harper,
00:44:12.120
who was quite strong-willed, didn't defund the CBC, I don't believe Andrew Scheer,
00:44:17.000
who I see is much more compliant. I just don't think he's going to. I mean, listen,
00:44:20.500
do I hope I'm wrong? I hope I'm wrong. I don't think I'm wrong. Well, folks,
00:44:25.740
that's the show for today until tomorrow. On behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,