Tomorrow, The Rebel Media celebrates its fourth anniversary： Looking back — and ahead to the future
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Summary
Four years ago today, Ezra Levant learned that the Sun News Network was going to be shut down by the CRTC. Today, four years later, Ezra is still fighting for the freedom of the press, and fighting for freedom of speech.
Transcript
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Hello, Rebels. You're listening to an audio-only recording of my show, The Ezra LeVant Show.
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It's free as a podcast. Today, I take my time and give you a half-hour monologue. It's a
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recap of four great years of the Rebel. Do you know that we turned four years old? Four
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years old. Someone mentioned to me that's longer than the Sun News Network was on the
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air. Yikes. That's incredible. If you like listening to this podcast, then I think you'd
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like to watch it. I mean, I show video clips. We're in the video business. You just need
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to be a subscriber to premium content. That's what we call it. It's pretty easy peasy. It's
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eight bucks a month. You get access to my show, Sheila Gunnery's show, David Menzies' show.
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If you subscribe to a whole year, you actually get two months free. And if you're a podcast
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listener, just type in podcast as the coupon code when you subscribe and you'll get an
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extra 10% off. So just go to therebel.media slash shows to become a member. And hey, if
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you wouldn't mind leaving a positive review on iTunes or wherever else you listen, that'd
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be great. It's a good way to support us without chipping in a dime. So without further to do,
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Tonight, it's our fourth anniversary tomorrow. Let me share with you some thoughts. It's February
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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
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Four years ago, I read on Twitter that I was out of a job. Someone had leaked the news to a rival news
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channel that the Sun News Network was being shut down. It was a depressing way to learn it, though
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I imagine there was no good way. If I recall, it was a Thursday night, I think, and we all just went
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into the office the next morning to find out if it was true. And it was. And we commiserated and said
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some goodbyes and cleared out our desks. It was pretty sad, but frankly, no one was that surprised we
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had been euthanized by the CRTC. Our owner, Quebecor, hadn't, I mean, I'd put in, what, 50 million
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dollars into Sun News on the expectation that we would be treated the same way by the government
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regulator as the two existing all-news channels in Canada owned by CTV and CBC were.
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But we weren't. And the regulator shut us down again and again, making it impossible for the
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company to survive. I won't get into the details, but it's a reminder that Stephen Harper sometimes
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lacked the killer instinct of his partisan opponents. There's simply no way that Jean
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Quat-Jean or Gerald Butts would have allowed a regulator to kill a liberal-leaning TV news
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channel. Harper just watched as the CRTC killed Sun News in an election year, no less. Trudeau showed
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he was no dummy, immediately giving a massive increase to the CBC. And now he's adding 595 million
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to control the private media too. So yeah, that was all four years ago today. I recall that day,
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that night, like I say, we all knew the end was coming. It was a slow motion death. So I had been
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thinking a bit about the possibilities of life after Sun News. And that day when we were all
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commissary, I invited some of my colleagues to come to my house to see if we could, I don't know,
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hammer out a plan to keep the momentum going online that we had on TV. I knew our audience wasn't huge
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because, of course, the CRTC ensured we were hard to find on the dial, hard to order, in many cases
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simply not available at all. But we had built up a loyal audience over the years and I knew we had to
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catch them quickly to let people know we had a plan. So immediately we put up this video just to let
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people know we were working on it. Sun News Network is off the air. Bang. Gone. That's basically what
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happened. Sun News Network went off the air today. Sun News Network has gone dark. The end of Sun News
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Network. Sun TV faded to dark. With Sun gone, there's a hole in the far right side of the dial.
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Ezra Levant fighting for freedom in Calgary. Good night.
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Well, after spending a day talking about how things could work, we put out our very first video
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from my living room. Here's a few moments of that.
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I want to create something to take the place of the Sun News Network.
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It won't be 12 or 16 hours of video content a day,
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But all the heart, all the independence, all the great conservative ideas.
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I've reached out to a number of my former colleagues to invite them along,
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but we all know that we still care about the things we cared about last week,
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and it was as cold four years ago as it is this week.
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We did about 50 videos or so just to show we could do it,
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just to practice, just to show we could do it the next day too.
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My old studio at the Sun had cost more than a million dollars to build,
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It had huge robotic cameras that cost more than a quarter million bucks each,
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The control room had five or six people running it.
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At Sun News, it was about 200 people altogether,
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We knew we had to go ultra low cost to survive.
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The name The Rebel, I'm not quite sure if I'd choose that again,
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We were rebelling against the system that killed Sun News,
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and the fact that the government could decide what's on TV.
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Four years ago, that was before Internet censorship really took off.
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YouTube, Twitter, Facebook were non-political bastions of free speech back then.
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So we were saying we don't need a Stephen Harper to look out for us.
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We rebelled against the system, the technology, the cost,
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since it wasn't geographically limiting like a .ca would be,
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In truth, I don't know of a single other website that has used .media.
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I'm thinking of changing our name to TheRebel.com,
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I suppose the main reason I now wonder about the name
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It's true we are dissident, that we object and oppose,
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or more to the point that we are abnormal or outsiders or the other.
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And worse, it implies that our critics and opponents are the center,
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On so many issues, though, it's simply not true.
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The entire media political establishment, for example,
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Angus Reid polls show that only 5% or 6% of Canadians want more immigration.
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The entire media political industrial complex wants more,
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including, I might add, Andrew Scheer, the conservative leader.
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YouTube, which started to treat us poorly in the months after Trump's election win,
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not just to us, but to all conservative news sites.
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And in fact, they have sent us plaques commemorating our huge milestones,
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been operating the rebel for longer than Sun News was on the air.
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I loved Sun News Network, and I wish it had been allowed to live.
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We have published, we have broadcast more than 11,000 videos,
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Our critics, who despised us merely because we dared to have a conservative point of view,
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well, they've had some hard times themselves, even in recent weeks.
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I guess there's only so much pro-terrorist, pro-transgenderism, pro-Trudeau,
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I remember when we unveiled our business plan in a video
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while I was standing on a very, very cold street in downtown Toronto.
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It's a couple minutes, but I want you to watch.
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And you tell me, did we more or less keep to the plan?
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I was the anchor of The Source on the Sun News Network,
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but the sun has set and thousands of people say they miss us dearly.
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we pledge to create something new called www.therebel.media.
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As the dot media part suggests, it's everything you love.
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Videos, news stories, podcasts, updated around the clock
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and available on your computer screen or even on your cell phone.
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We started right away, literally out of my living room last week.
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But we're already producing national quality TV clips
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and we're reporting stories that nobody else will.
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Produce enough quality news, opinion and activism
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Aim for 50,000 people a day coming by the site for a quick look.
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That sounds huge, but we're growing like crazy,
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and we'll make a few pennies off each of them in display ads.
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and become engaged in our community and buy a membership.
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Members would get special paywall-protected content
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I'm talking about exclusive documentaries, feature interviews,
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special things you could only get from the Sun News Network in the past
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and that you'll only be able to get from us now.
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That's our business plan, but we can't start this business alone.
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In the past week, we've shown you what we can do on a shoestring budget.
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professional cameras, video software, even a studio.
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We're asking everyone who loved the sun and was sad to see it die
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to crowdfund the rebel.media and help it be born.
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So we've set up a crowdfunding page on our website,
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where people who want us to start our business can help us.
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I've listed all of the things we need right on our website at the rebel.media,
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to endowing a chair in investigative journalism for 40,000
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If you want to cover Ottawa seriously, then you've got to be here
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in the foyer of the House of Commons at microphones like these
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This is the only place where the media really holds politicians to account.
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If you give us the tools, we'll finish this job.
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In fact, we get way more than 50,000 viewers a day.
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And then we had our first little tiny office, one of those shared office spaces you can rent.
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Then we moved into an abandoned daycare, if you can believe it,
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where we just set up some used office furniture and just did it.
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You'll recall we crowdfunded a little studio inside that abandoned daycare.
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We stayed there for 18 months or so until we just outgrew the place
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In January of 2017, we moved into our current location, a real office.
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All used furniture, low-rent part of town in an industrial park.
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But we're still alive and kicking, still trying to keep our costs low
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because we're not going to take any of that Trudeau bailout money.
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I remember deliberately saying, let's not try to grow in the U.S.
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My thinking was they have so many outstanding conservative broadcasters there,
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not just Fox News, but on the radio, like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck
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and great online websites from Drudge to The Blaze to New Upstarts.
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I thought, we'll never compete with Americans in America.
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We talked about Trump because we found him interesting and appealing.
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Americans watched those vids even more than Canadians did.
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And that's one of the wonderful things about being online.
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At the sun, on real TV stations, the world is divided up geographically.
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The sun was only available in Canada and only in certain parts of Canada,
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I would talk to Tommy from time to time on Skype, as you know.
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And one day I just said to him, hey, Tommy, what do you do for a living?
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And if you don't mind me asking, how much do you earn doing it, Tommy?
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I've been to his home that he built for himself.
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But I thought, that man has a higher purpose in life.
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But I will forever feel a small sense of paternity in his media career.
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And even after he left us to go independent, when he was falsely arrested and imprisoned for contempt of court,
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we knew we had to help him for all the reasons we thought he was important in the first place.
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I'm happy to say that although he doesn't work with us still, we're friends.
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And helping to get him out of prison by asking our viewers to help crowdfund his legal defense
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was one of the great public achievements of my life.
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In the UK, we met other characters along the way.
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And Katie Hopkins, who did videos for us for almost a year, including in South Africa,
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where she documented the ethnic cleansing of white farmers.
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Now, like I say, Tommy's a friend, but he's not working with them anymore.
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And when you look back over the four years, for better or worse,
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we've had some very interesting characters pass through our doors.
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Lauren Southern, the crusading journalist who did some exciting things, some gonzo things.
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She went to exotic places like the Calais jungle refugee camp outside of, on the coast of France.
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Even Faith Goldie, who reported for us from across Canada and around the world,
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seen here in Bethlehem, the city where Jesus was born, now dominated by the PLO.
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As you know, we fired Faith and we've said goodbye to a few other talents over the years, too.
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Sometimes it's young talent wanting to spread their wings and fly on their own.
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Some of our journalists were hired right out of school.
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Some are still in school when they work for us.
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What I like about the rebel, and what sometimes drives me crazy,
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is that we hire people who are unusual or unconventional.
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Down under, that was the former leader of the Labour Party of Australia, Mark Latham,
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who later in life became a bit of a blue-collar Trump supporter.
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But all of these people, for better or for worse, they were part of a great project.
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I think it's the democratization of journalism.
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The media is notoriously unstable as an industry, especially political media,
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especially when you set out in advance to be a little bit prickly,
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a little bit challenging, a little bit obstinate.
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When you call yourself the rebel, don't be surprised if some of the people you team up with
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Well, it's been such a refreshing antidote to the sameness,
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the vanilliness, the dreariness of the establishment,
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especially here in Canada, and it's even worse in the UK, by the way.
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I mean, I'm sorry, I just don't care what the little incestuous circle of panelists
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About anything, I mean, take these two, Andrew Coyne and Sean Talibert.
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Andrew Coyne, he's the son of the former Bank of Canada governor,
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whose cousin, Debra Coyne, dated Pierre Trudeau and then ran against Justin Trudeau
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That's about as close to the real-life definition, as incestuous as it gets.
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And just for balance, you know, Sean Talibert, who's surprised,
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You literally couldn't get anyone else on a political panel
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to discuss Justin Trudeau, besides a Trudeau Foundation appointee
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Yeah, no, we need a bit more fresh water in this stale pond of journalism.
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and have them go too far from time to time, sure,
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but then just put on those Ottawa lobbyists with their talking points?
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There's no chance Doug Ford will leave the Ontario Conservatives.
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Same folks who said Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning.
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And judging by the failing mainstream media companies,
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So here we are in 2019, bigger than ever in some ways,
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Now, don't think that means 1.1 million dollars.
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who have interacted with our site over the years,
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chipping in a bit to help us crowdfund projects
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Like the one against the carbon tax a couple years back,
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where we lit the match that's turned into a blazing forest fire.
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that you are going to love, love, love, I promise you.
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I think that's almost been worth the whole four years right there, wouldn't you say?
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It's not boasting when I say our viewers love us.
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It's an observation because if it weren't true, our crowdfunding would dry up.
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The thing about the Internet is we have to prove our value to our viewers every single day.
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And we know immediately if we're failing, if we can see that people just don't watch our videos,
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or if we ask people to chip in for something and they don't.
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For example, I love our coverage this past year.
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We have a freelancer, Annika Rothstein, who's down there.
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Our viewers actually aren't that interested in Venezuela.
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We did not crowdfund enough to cover our costs.
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I thought it was a great experiment in citizen journalism.
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I'm proud of the work. I thought Annika did a great job.
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But at the end of the day, I work for our viewers, and we'll do more of what you do want us to do.
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By the way, if you're interested in how that works, we've described it all,
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including our crowdfunding budget, at the rebel.media slash trust.
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We've put our crowdfunding financials right there, and we explain how we raise our money,
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You'll see that paying for lawyers is a massive expense.
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We're always under attack from some censor, whether it's a Muslim extremist suing us,
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or Rachel Notley trying to shut us down with the elections commissioner or whatever she's up to.
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because going back to the days of operating out of that abandoned daycare,
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I know we keep it lean, from our low-cost cameras to our economy-class travel
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to our use of Skype instead of expansive satellite connections.
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Check it out if you're interested, rebel.media slash trust.
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Sure, we've had our ups or downs, but as Frank Sinatra said,
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You know, I've had a few, but too few to mention.
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As we mark our fourth anniversary and enter our fifth year,
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we do so stronger than we ever have been before,
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With Trudeau paying off the mainstream media with his slush fund,
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and with social media companies censoring conservatives,
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our rebel voice is needed in Canada, and I think around the world, too.
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Maybe the rebel is a good name, after all, because we're still not done fighting.
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I'm sure I've left out some names of people I ought to have thanked.
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Over the four years, we've had dozens of people work with us,
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some full-time, some part-time, some freelancers,
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and some people even just doing one or two videos.
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When we started, we really had no examples to follow, no role models,
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no one who had done this before, at least not in this way.
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And surely, just as I have personally received credit
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let me therefore take any blame for any mistakes
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But maybe from those mistakes, a little bit of wisdom has come.
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Thank you to our on-air talents who are routinely abused in public,
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either through mere slander or, unfortunately, actual physical attacks on us,
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And I hope we will continue to serve you for years to come.
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I promise you, we will keep fighting for freedom.
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So today, on an island in the middle of the mighty Mississippi,
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at a time when we must heal the heart of our democracy
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I stand before you as the granddaughter of an iron ore miner,
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as the daughter of a teacher and a newspaper man,
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as the first woman elected to the United States Senate from the state of Minnesota
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to announce my candidacy for president of the United States.
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Well, that is a senator that I, I got to be honest,
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even though she's been in the Senate for a dozen years.
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Her name is Amy Klobuchar, if I'm saying that right.
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It's a little weird, though, to be in the snow talking about global warming,
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a point not missed by President Donald Trump, who tweeted this.
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Amy Klobuchar announced that she's running for president,
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By the end of her speech, she looked like a snowman woman.
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I think this is going to be a great, great season for politics,
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just like you had, what, 15, 16, 17 Republicans
00:32:14.220
I think you're going to have the most interesting characters,
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live from Washington, D.C., is our friend Pardes Saleh,
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who has written about Senator Klobuchar in MediaEye.
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Would you agree with, you've got a couple of news stories
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you've written about, and I want to get to them,
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that this senator is going to have an interesting time,
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going to be part of a few debates, get her name out there.
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But the likelihood that she will get past the first few primaries
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or caucuses is pretty much as low as the temperature that day in Minnesota.
00:33:01.080
Yeah, I mean, you mentioned that you'd never heard of her.
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And I, you know, I live here and I'm surrounded by everything.
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The first thing that I saw when I looked online
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her former employee, her former staffer is just like ripping her.
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And this has been actually going on for a while.
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A year ago, Politico reported that she was listed
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And she also has the highest, one of the highest turnover rates,
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And then now that she's announced her candidacy for president,
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she's now a whole wave of new people are coming up and saying how bad she is,
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her old staffers, and saying what she did to them, you know,
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You know, Donald Trump, I mean, he was famous for a very long time.
00:34:08.940
It sounds like when she fired someone, that wasn't enough.
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Let me quote from one of your very interesting stories here on Mediaite.
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Klobuchar reportedly called new employers of her departing staffers
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But to fire someone and then try and get them fired from their next job,
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she feels betrayed if somebody wants to leave her office.
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So she would call their future employers to make sure they didn't get the job.
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I mean, that's almost a Hillary Clinton level vendetta.
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I mean, if you're going to try and dethrone Trump,
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She seemed very nice as the snow woman, man, lady, whatever Trump called her.
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I mean, Minnesota's not a particularly big state.
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And so I think that's where she gets a lot of her supporters.
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Donald Trump is someone who, even though he's known for being like a hardcore boss,
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He was like, you know, he was on The Apprentice.
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He had a whole bunch of other things that made him famous.
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But, you know, nobody knows who Amy Klobuchar is.
00:36:00.440
Yeah, I took about five minutes just to make sure I was pronouncing her name right
00:36:05.940
because I certainly wouldn't want to disrespect her.
00:36:09.580
You wrote another article, and I just, I've been trying to wrap my head around this next one, Pardes.
00:36:18.280
It says, Veep Rider, that's a show about a female politician, Democrat.
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Veep Rider confirms rumor about staffers shaving Amy Klobuchar's legs.
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Now, Pardes, this is very difficult territory for me because there's certain things I think boys should never know about.
00:36:46.820
I think there's certain things that should be mysterious and guys just shouldn't know.
00:36:52.080
And the idea, well, you know what, why don't I just sort of go get myself a coffee or something
00:36:56.720
while you talk to the lady viewers about what the rumor is
00:37:00.420
because I don't even think boys are supposed to talk about this stuff.
00:37:05.400
Now, again, this might be disgruntled former staffers.
00:37:08.000
It sounds like there's a lot of them out there.
00:37:09.740
But apparently, Senator Klobuchar asked one of her staff to shave her legs.
00:37:20.820
Yeah, it seems like it, based on what the writers from Veep are saying.
00:37:24.980
It sounds like they found out when they took a trip to Washington, D.C.
00:37:29.140
in order to find out more about how things work for the show.
00:37:33.860
Multiple people who, on Capitol Hill, told the writers that Amy Klobuchar had staffers shave her legs for her.
00:37:43.880
Now, Klobuchar's spokesperson is saying that's not true.
00:37:47.400
So it could actually be made up, but it seems like multiple people have been spreading this rumor, if it's true or not.
00:38:02.360
And I was reading online in your story and elsewhere that it's not debated that she had staffers do other weird errands or personal errands.
00:38:17.340
And listen, if you have a personal assistant, I get it.
00:38:21.920
You're flying between Minnesota and Washington, D.C.
00:38:24.320
You have two households, plus you have a family, plus you don't have time to get your dry cleaning.
00:38:28.960
You don't have time to do stuff that mere mortals do.
00:38:31.380
So I can understand having a personal assistant for some things, but it looks like she had political staff doing personal favor errands,
00:38:43.860
like picking up dry cleaning, packing suitcases for travel, cleaning and washing her dishes at house, at her house.
00:38:57.560
Maybe this leg-shaving rumor, if you're asking a Senate staffer to wash your dishes, maybe you'd say, clip my toenails too.
00:39:12.120
It sounds pretty believable, and it doesn't sound like she's willing to back down and say, yes, you know, this is me or whatever.
00:39:22.900
She sounds a little bit, a tiny bit defensive on this issue, so it could be true.
00:39:38.820
Well, this is extremely weird, which bodes well for all of us, I think.
00:39:44.580
I think it bodes well for getting Senator Klobuchar press coverage that I don't think she could otherwise earn.
00:39:50.200
Maybe she's just saying, I'm just going to out, this is a big reality show.
00:39:53.320
I'm going to be more dramatic and outrageous than anyone else.
00:39:55.580
That's how Trump did it, so I'm going to be the leg-shaving lady.
00:39:58.480
And that's just, you know what, that's my cross to bear, but it's going to get me to the top of the pack.
00:40:02.100
In fact, I think it bodes well for political journalists who want something more interesting to talk about than her speeches.
00:40:12.320
She should say, yes, I'm a leg-shaving lady, and make it sound cool in some way.
00:40:22.540
I mean, there's a lot of talent out there, but right now I'm leaning towards Klobuchar.
00:40:30.320
And it's not just because I invested a full five minutes in learning how to pronounce her name.
00:40:37.580
I don't know if I'll ever be able to use that knowledge, but it's good to see that Donald Trump is not the only reality TV star who wants to be president.
00:40:50.180
And, well, if you watch Veep, maybe you'll be able to put it to good use.
00:40:54.160
You'll see the joke and you'll know where it's from.
00:40:59.340
We love what you're doing, and we'd love to catch up with you once a week for the quirkier side or the lighter side of Washington.
00:41:06.720
I remember our last discussion was about Virginia.
00:41:09.340
Give me a 30-second update on that weird Democrat racist governor.
00:41:14.100
I call him racist because he dressed up in blackface.
00:41:16.740
His nickname in college was Coon Man, which is a derivative of a racial story.
00:41:22.920
He hasn't stepped down yet, and really, it doesn't look like he's going to, is he?
00:41:27.040
No, it looks like, you know, this is going to, he can't find another job after this.
00:41:32.840
This is his last chance at staying in office and trying to maybe change his reputation.
00:41:40.800
His staffers are assigning him, like, you know, Black History Month readings to, so that he can learn better what to say, what not to say.
00:41:50.620
So, it looks like he plans to stay, and everyone plans on keeping him at this point.
00:41:57.840
Well, maybe he can get Rachel Dolezal to give him some tips on how to be sensitive.
00:42:41.660
Well, Billy, that's the worst case scenario, and that's what we're going to do our best to fight against.
00:42:46.540
And I will give credit to Bob Fyfe, Stephen Chase, and Sean Fine of The Globe and Mail.
00:42:50.380
They're the ones who started this fuss, and I don't think they're going to go quietly.
00:42:53.520
But by gosh, the Toronto Star, the CBC, and a lot of the other media are trying to bury it.
00:43:00.460
I want to hear about the SNC-Lavalin story every day.
00:43:03.700
I don't want to give Justin and his fellow scum-sucking bottom feeders a moment's rest.
00:43:17.440
And when we have Trudeau on the run on something, we don't want to let up.
00:43:25.280
the questions Kian asked were not inappropriate.
00:43:29.900
Well, if you watch Kian's video, and I encourage you to watch the whole thing,
00:43:33.320
he very clearly articulates what kinds of things he did not report from the divorce case.
00:43:40.340
I've gone through the files myself that are irrelevant to the public and are private and personal.
00:43:46.260
We only touched on the things that go to the public interest.
00:43:51.960
I want to thank you for making the audio podcast available recently.
00:43:55.060
I'm already a subscriber, but I usually don't have time to watch the videos.
00:43:58.300
Podcast listening fits into my workday, so now I have better access to the content,
00:44:01.380
and I will continue to subscribe to Rebel Media.
00:44:08.920
I don't have that kind of downtime, but I take your point.
00:44:11.960
If you're driving in your car, if you're on a bus,
00:44:14.580
if you're sort of doing something where you can listen in the background without it distracting you,
00:44:21.840
Or maybe if you just want to listen to it like people listen to the old-timey radio.
00:44:24.840
So I'm not really deep in the world of podcasting, but I'm glad you like it,
00:44:30.160
So thanks for spreading the good word about it.
00:44:34.260
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,