Why did Erin O'Toole fire Pierre Poilievre as his finance critic？
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Summary
Aaron O'Toole fires his finance critic. What could be the reason? Is it jealousy? Or is it something more sinister? Ezra Levenant tries to make sense of it all. And he's not alone.
Transcript
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Hello, my rebels. Today, I try and make sense of Aaron O'Toole firing Pierre Polyev as finance
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critic, and it is a tough one. There is no sense to it. He was the star performer. There's only
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one way it makes sense, and I'm sorry. I just think this is, you know, Occam's razor. The
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simplest answer is probably the right one, or, you know, deduction. When you remove all other
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possibilities, what's left, however implausible, must be the one, and that is this. Aaron O'Toole
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does not like Pierre Polyev being a rival. He doesn't like being outshone by him. I'll
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make my case to you in the podcast ahead, go into some detail. Hey, let me invite you before
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meaningful way to help us. Thanks for that. Okay, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, Aaron O'Toole fires Pierre Polyeves' finance critic. What possible reason could
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there be besides jealousy? It's February 10th, 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
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I've done this quiz with you before. You, who are probably in the top 1% of Canadians in terms
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of news consumption, especially of conservative news consumption? I've asked you to name the
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conservative party's critics in charge of the most important portfolios over the past year.
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So I haven't asked you about amateur sport. I've asked you about the pandemic. Who's the
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conservative critic for vaccines, lockdowns? That would be the health critic, right? Who's
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the foreign affairs critic? Mainly China, the two Michaels, but also America, Iran, whatever.
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Who's the foreign critic? I think free speech stuff is important these days, so the heritage
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minister who gives out the media bailout money and who's now in charge of censorship.
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Can you name them? I literally haven't found a single person who can name them all without
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Googling it. And maybe you can't even, even though I've told you the answers before.
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Because they either aren't allowed to say anything, or they have nothing to say,
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or they say it, but they say it to media who hate them, so it goes nowhere. I have a friend,
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I think I told you, who lives in downtown Calgary, and he did not know that his own MP was the energy
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critic. You'd think you know that given the carbon tax, the Keystone XL crisis, and you know,
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Calgary, but no. Except for Pierre Polyev. Everyone knows him, and it's easy to know why. The guy can talk,
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the guy can think he has something to say. It's conservative. He knows his file inside and out.
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Even the really technical stuff, which is, I'm not going to say I'm surprised by it, but I'm
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impressed with it. He can go toe-to-toe with expert economists, bank experts, tax experts. He knows his
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stuff. That's hard to do. And when it comes to partisan fights, well, he's a winner. Look at this
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battle with Bill Morineau a few months ago. I believe that it is a mere coincidence that you
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repaid over $40,000 of expenses associated with your travel on a WE charity trip, that you just
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repaid it today on the same day you were expected to testify under oath about it. Is that just a
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coincidence, Minister? Mr. Minister? Thank you. Thank you for the question. I think what I want
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to make sure that I communicate is this was a mistake on my behalf. I'm responsible for any
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expenses that I incur on trips being paid for. This was an expense that I was unaware of, that I did not
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know, had not been paid. And when I found out over the course of the last- $41,000 expense? You didn't
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know about a $41,000 expense? How is that even possible? Mr. Minister? Again, Mr. Chair, I just have to
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say that in review of our records, I understood that there was no charge for these travel expenses
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or these expenses at the WE facilities. And once I found that out, I endeavored to repay that. And of
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course, it was a mistake on my part, which I take full responsibility for. I mean, the average Canadian
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living in Red Deer or Halifax that goes on a trip would notice if there was a, say, a $400 expense
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that they didn't pay. Maybe a hotel room for a couple of nights that never got charged them, and
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they paid immediately. But you're telling me that on this obviously very luxurious trip,
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that $41,000 of expenses happened right under your nose, and you didn't know about it until it
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suddenly, through an epiphany, came to your attention the very day you were to testify in a
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parliamentary committee about it. Obviously, there were a lot of forces bearing down on Bill Morneau
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with that WE charity, including media interest and a track record of bad behavior by Morneau. But I think
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it is a fact that Pierre Polyev was the most effective at actually putting tough questions
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directly to the man in committee. He did it, and you tell me, when was the last time that a
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conservative critic saw a liberal cabinet minister thrown out of cabinet, and even thrown out of
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parliament in disgrace like Morneau? No, that is not common. And I think a share of the credit goes
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to Pierre Polyev. He's young. He's smart. I think he speaks French. He has a lovely young family. He
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hasn't screwed up anything publicly. In fact, he was seriously considering running for leader last
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time. He started to tour the country a little bit until he abruptly canceled all that. And I was quite
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disappointed to see that. And I imagine that some scandal was brought to his attention privately,
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and he was told, don't you run. And he probably thought, you know, I don't need that dirt thrown
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at me and my young family. I'll pass. That's just speculation on my part. I have no basis for it.
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But boy, he slammed on the brakes fast after stomping on the gas fast. And I regret that. And I look at how
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lackluster Aaron O'Toole has been since becoming leader. And I regret Pierre's decision not to run even
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more. And I suspect a lot of conservative party members do too, especially when they see Pierre
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out there just killing it every time in parliament and on social media and taking on issues that
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conservatives care about. He doesn't stray outside his bailiwick of finance, but, you know, he does
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interesting things in that portfolio. I love how he showed that the Great Reset is a real thing
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cooked up by the World Economic Forum, of which, by the way, Chrystia Freeland is actually a director.
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How's that even possible? And Pierre just nailed it.
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I sometimes wonder if the government's not just covering up the Wee scandal here with this endless
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filibuster, but they also don't want any scrutiny of this grand reset the prime minister is now
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talking about, this idea that he's going to renovate Canadian society to fit his Trudopian ambitions.
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This is not a time to re-engineer society to his liking or to his socialist ideology. This is a time
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to get people safely and securely back to work to protect their lives and their livelihoods,
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not a time for government to take advantage of the crisis in order to massively expand its powers at
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the expense of Canadians' freedom. That's what we should be talking about here in the Finance Committee.
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We should just be standing up against government power grabs like this grand reset the prime minister is
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discussing. I'm beginning to wonder if this filibuster is about more than just covering up the Wee scandal,
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but also about covering up the government's grand schemes for social and economic engineering to cover up the
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power grab that he has lusted over since the beginning of this crisis.
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So, frankly, we've lost patience. We want an answer. We want to get on with the job.
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He's great on his file. He's great at fighting for the base. And so, I think I know why Aaron O'Toole
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just sacked him, fired him. The best critic in caucus, really the only critic in caucus, the only
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household name, certainly, the only conservative capable of forcing the media to cover him on his
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own terms. They do so maybe grudgingly. But when Pierre Polio takes a run at things, the media knows
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to listen because it's probably going to be politically interesting. It's probably going to be
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factually accurate. And it's going to be well communicated. And it is, it works. You know,
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the media grumble that he's a conservative, but they give him coverage. They have some respect for him.
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Unlike those other critics you can't name that I keep quizzing you about. And thus, you see Aaron
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O'Toole's position. I think he's jealous. Jealous that Pierre has success where O'Toole himself does not.
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For heaven's sakes, he's the leader. He got what he wanted. He's the boss in the big chair. But
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you can't buy a personality. You can't win a personality in an election. You can't win courage in an election.
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And I got to say, no one really cares what O'Toole says, possibly because he says so little of
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interest. I mean, the one thing I will note that he has said is that he quarrels with Trudeau's
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bungled vaccine procurement, by which I mean O'Toole says he would have done it better.
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Can you tell me anything substantive about which O'Toole and Trudeau have actually fundamentally
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clashed? Doing something better, I don't think, is a fundamental clash. In fact, O'Toole told Pierre
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to cork it on that great reset stuff. O'Toole is an empty space. I think he believes that's a path
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to victory. Just let Trudeau implode and catch power as it falls into your hands. I don't think
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it works that way. I think that was sort of Andrew Scheer's strategy, too. It didn't work.
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I don't think that works anywhere, especially in a country like Canada, where Trudeau has a natural
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base of about 30% in the polls to begin with, no matter what. And the media party is good for
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another 5% or 10%. I mean, they saved him last time when the whole blackface fiasco blew up.
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I don't think there's a second blackface fiasco about to blow up. And O'Toole is doing his best
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to antagonize his own base, including turfing Derek Sloan, a leadership rival on trumped up
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charges. Remember that? A racist named Paul Fromm donated money to Sloan's campaign. But he was
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tricky about it. He used a different name than he's known by. He went by Frederick P. Fromm instead of
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Paul Fromm. And of course, it was a donation to the Conservative Party, too. And of course, nobody knew
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who Frederick P. Fromm was. But O'Toole actually accused Sloan of unforgivable racism and poor
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judgment. Even though Sloan is not a racist, he actually married a woman of color and his kids are
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children of color, if that's the word. He's no racist. And remember, O'Toole's Conservative Party
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headquarters issued the membership. They took a portion of the donation, too. O'Toole said only Sloan
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was to blame for the same trick they fell prey to, and it was a small donation. There was no moral
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turpitude in cashing the check. O'Toole smeared Sloan as a racist. And as Sloan told me, O'Toole
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never even so much as picked up the phone to call him, to talk to him in advance. I mean, that's not
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a leader. Do you remember this clip? That you weren't actually ever called by Aaron O'Toole before he
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announced he was going to seek your termination. Is that true? Yeah, not before and not after.
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Aaron O'Toole had still not contacted you other than his general remarks on the Zoom call today.
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That's correct. You know, firing people is an unfortunate job that every boss has to do.
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And I think it's a sign of someone's character to at least call someone, if not look at them in the
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eyes when you fire them. Has he sent you an email or a text? I've had no communication with him at all.
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I am very disappointed in that answer. If you're firing a man for good reasons or for bad,
00:14:02.560
you look him in the eye and you tell him. So yeah, yeah. Aaron O'Toole, who ran during the
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leadership campaign against cancel culture. Actually, he specifically said he was an ally of Sloan. I mean,
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not an ally, but he would defend Sloan's right to be in the party. He broke those promises.
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My point being, that's all O'Toole has really done since becoming leader. I mean,
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you tell me what he's done. You tell me what he's stand for. What difference has he made? What fight
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has he fought? I think Aaron O'Toole has put more energy and effort into fighting people within his
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own party than fighting Trudeau and the liberals. And I'd include in that O'Toole's bizarre decision to do
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an email interview with me, which he did and which we published and which I thought
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he looked pretty good in the interview. But when the mean girls of the media party recoiled in horror,
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he immediately disowned us and his own interview that he had done with us. Huh? That's cancel culture
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plus cowardice, plus not being a conservative, plus showing how easily pushed around you are.
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And I say again, what a contrast to Pierre Paul, yeah. So O'Toole fired him. Now they say,
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oh, well, he's on the jobs file. No, mate, he was on the jobs file. That's finance critic.
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I think this is what they call tall poppy syndrome. You ever heard of that? Oh, I can't have someone who
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is better than me. If O'Toole can't be popular and can't be loved, well, then no one can be. Fire
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him. Fire Poliev. I mean, I bet O'Toole would probably kick Pierre Poliev out of caucus if he
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could, like he did with Derek Sloan. Now look at this, look at this. This is an indicator of
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engagement with the party base on Facebook. But I think that's a surrogate for a lot of things,
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because we all get our news so much from Facebook. A lot of conservative party members are on
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Facebook. So this is an analytics page. It shows how many people in the last seven days
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follow each of these Facebook pages, how many people engage with posts on Facebook.
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So follows them or likes them or comments them. It's an indication of public support.
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So Justin Trudeau, as you can see, has 7.8 million Facebook likes. And in the last week,
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851,000 interactions with the public. Fair enough. I mean, he's the prime minister. He has a massive
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public profile, massive budget and staff, and he makes the news. So that's to be expected. Now,
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the conservative party itself has 461,000 followers and 432,000 people engaged with their tweets last
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week. That's pretty good. I mean, that's half as much engagement as Trudeau. But like I just showed
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you, Trudeau has 15 times more followers. So in fact, the conservative party itself isn't doing bad
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in engagement compared to Trudeau. Now, we at Rebel News are next on the chart. We have just under 200,000
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followers. And our engagement is almost the same as the conservative party, 422,000 people. Now,
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I should tell you, we have another quarter million followers on our other two Facebook pages and my
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own personal page. So we're actually bigger, but let's just compare that one main page. But look
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at Pierre Polyev. 184,800 followers. Pretty good. And he's just killing it with engagement.
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785,000 people are liking, commenting, following almost as much as Justin Trudeau himself.
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Michelle Rempel's on there at 345,000 engagements. And engagement is when you interact with people.
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It's a sign of people caring about you. And then in last place on this chart is Aaron O'Toole,
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the party leader with 242,000 engagements. And I don't know if you noticed that other column there,
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number of Facebook posts this past week. That's how much stuff different people are publishing.
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We have the most on this chart. We published 132 items this past week. Makes sense. We're a publisher.
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Pierre Polyev did just 12. And he had massive reach. Michelle Rempel, give her credit. She did just
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two posts. Had a huge reaction just to two posts. Aaron O'Toole, I mean, he's trying to do what he does
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46 times. And no one cares. They just don't care. I think maybe he knows it. Did you see his new
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I'm Aaron O'Toole. If you don't know me, I'm the leader of Canada's Conservatives.
00:18:51.460
Yeah, weird. If you're doing that after having been in politics for years and years, and you're
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maybe just weeks away from an election call, if you're still trying to introduce yourself,
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you're not doing so well, are you, buddy? You know, it's hard being the leader when your followers
00:19:09.080
are stronger than you, have more charisma than you, more personality than you, but get over yourself.
00:19:15.160
That's the job of the leader, to weld together a team. Stephen Harper wasn't the most dynamic
00:19:21.460
personality in the room, though he could be funny and charming when he wanted to be, but generally,
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he was sort of the boring accountant dad guy. And it worked. And he could tolerate people being
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more peppy or media-centric than him, including Pierre Polyev, by the way, who was a Harper minister.
00:19:37.960
Harper managed to work not just with peppier people, including Jason Kenney, but also his
00:19:42.680
own personal rivals. Jim Prentice, Peter McKay, former leader Stockwell Day, even Belinda Stronick
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for a while. Harper put these people on the front bench, even though they were rivals with each
00:19:54.560
other and with him, because he was the boss. He didn't need to be shy of them. And by the way,
00:20:02.120
I remember this because I was involved in those early days, some 20-plus years ago.
00:20:08.320
Stephen Harper started out his leadership of the Conservative Party. It wasn't even called
00:20:12.440
the Conservative Party back then. He first fused together the Canadian Alliance Party. Remember
00:20:19.140
that? Well, there was a split-his group, if you remember, Deborah Gray, Monty, Solberg,
00:20:23.840
Jay Hill. They had all sulked away in something called the Democratic Representative Caucus
00:20:29.460
for a bit when they rebelled against Stockwell Day. So when Stephen Harper became the new
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leader of the Canadian Alliance, he rebuilt the coalition. He didn't just tolerate rivals.
00:20:41.620
He reached out to them and rebuilt things. He said to the Democratic Representative Caucus,
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you guys, come on back. And then he said to Peter McKay, let's join forces. He built
00:20:52.300
a big coalition, and he won. What has O'Toole done? Well, he hasn't done anything conservative.
00:20:59.620
He attacked Eric Sloan on false pretenses. You'll recall he also attacked rival Jim Carahelios
00:21:05.300
during the leadership race. He's attacked us. I'm not sure why. And now he's sacking his best MP?
00:21:11.260
If only Aaron O'Toole was so brutal towards his enemies as he is towards his friends. If only
00:21:19.620
Aaron O'Toole spent as much effort criticizing Trudeau and the liberals as he does going after
00:21:26.840
conservatives. Hey, maybe it'll work. Maybe the conservative base will be motivated enough
00:21:32.200
to still show up to the polls. And maybe some liberals will really like the cutoff of O'Toole's
00:21:37.460
Jim. Really like his style. And maybe they'll, you know, maybe O'Toole will defeat the media party
00:21:42.060
by, I don't know, really liking them and really being nice to Rosemary Barton and showing those
00:21:49.460
mean girls what he really thinks of independent media like us. I don't know. I guess it's possible,
00:21:54.000
isn't it? I mean, there's no evidence of it working so far, at least on Facebook. And here's the
00:22:01.540
CBC's aggregation of polls. There's no evidence of it working so far in public opinion polls. But
00:22:13.180
The worst part, they change the rules constantly based on whichever they, whatever they deem to
00:22:30.340
be politically correct at any given point in time. These rules and standards are often changed
00:22:34.840
without the knowledge of their users. Moving the goalposts on Floridians and others who use these
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open forums for discourse and as a source for information. When a social media company applies
00:22:45.820
these standards unequally on users, this is discrimination, pure and simple. Can you imagine
00:22:51.960
tolerating this kind of behavior in banking or in health care or in other industries?
00:22:59.180
Well, that's a statement by Ron DeSantis, the Republican governor of Florida, a man who has been
00:23:06.240
getting well-deserved kudos from Republicans for his handling of the lockdown. I like him the way
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he handles the media. And now he wants to handle the big tech companies, and in particular, as you
00:23:20.080
heard there, their political censorship. But how can he, given that the governing law over those affairs
00:23:25.840
is the Communications Decency Act, Section 230 to be particular, that has basically provided a waiver
00:23:34.080
for big tech companies for anything they publish it has made them immune to lawsuits over content or
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how they handle content. Donald Trump talked about Section 230 during his term as president. Alas,
00:23:47.740
he did not take meaningful steps during that term. But now the governor steps forward. Joining us now
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to talk about Ron DeSantis' proposal and whether or not it will make a difference is our friend Alan
00:23:59.260
Bokhari, chief tech correspondent for Breitbart.com. Alan, great to see you again.
00:24:06.360
You know, I love Ron DeSantis more every day. In many ways, he has Trump's fighting spirit and his
00:24:13.280
understanding that the media is not his friend. But he seems blessedly free of some of Trump's flaws.
00:24:21.240
Every person has strengths and flaws. But I think Ron DeSantis carries the best of Trumpism
00:24:26.840
with him with him. I'm very excited about him as a governor. What do you think of the man before we
00:24:31.860
get to the Section 230 issue? I think I agree with that assessment. I mean, he's, as you say,
00:24:38.600
he knows how to handle the media. And he's leading the way on perhaps the biggest issue to the populist
00:24:47.320
right, which is big tech. And I think, you know, these proposals he's come out with, he's come
00:24:54.200
out with the massive raft of proposals, probably the most aggressive set of regulations that he
00:25:01.760
plans to compare us in big tech that we've seen in any Republican governor. You know, it might have
00:25:07.400
some difficulty in the courts, especially with Section 230 still on the books. But this kind of
00:25:13.700
might be a model, I think, for a Republican regulation of big tech going forward.
00:25:20.320
Well, and that's the thing. I'm not as familiar with American jurisdiction. I mean, in Canada,
00:25:25.660
we have a clear distinction between what the feds can do and what the provinces can do. And this would
00:25:32.240
squarely be a matter for the federal government in Canada. But the United States tilts more towards
00:25:39.040
the states. And individual states can have quite a bit of power, as California shows
00:25:43.360
in its regulatory regime. Can you tell me some of the things that Ron DeSantis proposes to do
00:25:48.520
at the state level? First, tell me what they are. And then if you want to tell me if you think that
00:25:53.120
they have sticking power. So he's proposing several things. He's proposing a $100,000 a day fine on any
00:26:01.060
tech platform that censors a political candidate or an elected official. And, you know, it doesn't sound
00:26:07.680
like a lot of your tech company, but it adds up, you know, over 30 days of $3 million. He's also
00:26:13.500
proposing a private right of action for Floridian citizens who are censored by big tech platforms,
00:26:19.060
unfairly. He's planning to impose even more fines on tech companies that use their algorithms to favor
00:26:26.480
certain candidates or certain political causes ahead of elections. That's very important. And he's
00:26:33.120
also going to empower the Attorney General of Florida to bring suits against the tech companies
00:26:37.340
based on the Florida's unfair and deceptive trade practices. So a whole lot of proposals there
00:26:45.200
that would present a significant problem for the tech companies if they aren't shot down
00:26:50.660
by the federal courts. And that's probably the issue he's going to deal with. But it's good to make a
00:26:58.360
start. We're going to start the fight. And we'll just have to see how that develops when the Section
00:27:03.280
230 ends up superseding it. I'm not a really a legal expert, so I can't say with any confidence how
00:27:09.580
that'll turn out. But it's good that the fight has started. Now, of course, I suggested that
00:27:15.560
DeSantis is in the mold of Trump in his worldview, in his style. Are there any other governors who seem
00:27:23.500
to be sympathetic to this approach who might copy it? I can imagine if you had a few states, Texas,
00:27:30.820
Florida, some big Republican states? And of course, the Republicans have the majority of states
00:27:35.220
numerically. They control state houses. Do you think this might spread? And do you think any Democrats
00:27:41.780
might get behind it? Well, oh, I doubt any Democrats will get behind it if the focus is on censorship.
00:27:47.920
They are doing some interesting things on competition, but they want to increasingly,
00:27:54.100
they're trying to tie their enforcement actions that they're proposing to detect conditions on
00:27:59.000
cracking down on misinformation or hate speech, so censoring even more. As far as the other Republican
00:28:05.140
states go, the other man to watch at the moment is Texas Attorney General, Ken Paxton. He's leading
00:28:11.180
multi-state lawsuits against Google and the other tech giants, targeting their monopoly power. And he also
00:28:17.720
really understands the censorship issue as well. So that's another one to watch. I will say,
00:28:24.700
if Republican, you're absolutely right, if Republican states got together and acted as a unit on this
00:28:29.580
issue, they could do some real damage to the tech companies. One interesting proposal I've
00:28:34.040
recently been thinking about is the amount of state government agencies that rely on these tech
00:28:42.120
platforms to put out their messages, to alert the public about what's going on, and also public Wi-Fi.
00:28:51.320
So airports and schools, these are controlled by state governments in many cases. So if all of these
00:28:56.860
state governments got together and say, well, look, if tech companies discriminate on the basis of
00:29:01.860
viewpoint and they censor political candidates, if they censor the president, then we're not going to
00:29:06.160
allow them on public Wi-Fi until they change their policies. Or we're not going to allow our agencies to use these
00:29:13.640
platforms to put out their announcements. They're going to have to use different platforms. And that wouldn't be a
00:29:18.400
crippling blow to tech companies, but it would do real damage to them, impose consequences on them. And it would create an
00:29:24.800
incentive for new companies to, it would create a market for new companies to, to cater to those, you know,
00:29:31.680
Republican agencies that would be looking, those Republican controlled agencies that would be looking to put out their
00:29:37.280
announcements on platforms that aren't Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube.
00:29:40.800
You know, that's a great point. I mean, I often wonder why in our city, we're based here in Toronto, and why the media is so
00:29:49.320
submissive towards the mayor? And I think one of the most obvious answers is because the city hall is one of the largest
00:29:57.100
advertisers in, in Toronto. So if you tick off the mayor, he might cancel a million dollars worth of ads to your
00:30:05.280
newspaper chain. And he'll also give scoops and leaks to your competitor. But I think that the power of the purse is
00:30:11.560
important. It makes me think of that new executive order that Joe Biden signed to push
00:30:16.780
transgenderism into sport and other places. Usually, I think it's called Title IX. Basically, he's saying, if you're a
00:30:24.240
school, a college, an Olympics team that gets any funding from the feds, you got to go full trans, or you're going to be
00:30:31.620
cut off. I think, I think it's, it's not so much that he has the legal jurisdiction. He's just saying, if you want my
00:30:38.040
money, you got to do it, I think that if you cut off all advertising, all access to state buildings and
00:30:46.220
assets and infrastructure and Wi Fi, you could block Facebook, YouTube, Google, in an enormous number of
00:30:54.400
places, not a private home, but in a lot of other places, just through the power of the purse. I never
00:30:59.620
thought of that. That's absolutely right. And you know, the Biden administration is showing
00:31:04.080
Republicans how to really use executive power. So many executive orders just in the first month
00:31:10.360
of the Biden administration. So Republican governors need to start doing what Republicans aren't really
00:31:16.700
used to doing, which is weaponizing executive government. And, and I mean, what if you had all
00:31:24.420
of these, like I said, if you had all these federal agencies or alternative platforms, that would have
00:31:28.000
knock on effects for the journalists, whether the left wing or right wing would have to go to these
00:31:31.540
alternative platforms as well to get the latest news. So it could cause a nice chain reaction.
00:31:37.820
Yeah. And you get the big Republican states, I mean, Texas and Florida being the obvious examples.
00:31:43.100
That's a lot of people. That's tens of millions of people. And, and there's a lot of media in those
00:31:49.160
two states too. Let me shift gears a little bit. I asked you what other states would be interested in,
00:31:54.220
and you, I think, correctly said it would be Republicans. But I see in your article, and I,
00:32:01.720
I tell you, I learned so much from your Breitbart story. So let me just read the headline of a new one.
00:32:09.580
Senate antitrust reform bill targets big text monopoly power. And when I read that, I thought, well,
00:32:16.760
hang on, the Republicans don't control the U.S. Senate anymore, which I find terrifying.
00:32:20.500
But this is a bill that Democrats support. Am I right? That's right. It has real bipartisan support.
00:32:27.460
And it doesn't really address the censorship issue because it's, you know, the Democrats are on board
00:32:33.040
with it. But it doesn't, you know, as far as I can tell, it doesn't tell the tech companies, well,
00:32:37.900
they have to censor misinformation, they have to censor hate speech as well. So that makes it a little
00:32:42.140
bit better than some of the other Democrat proposals we've seen, like the one from the New York
00:32:46.820
Attorney General, and some of the stuff that Biden's been talking about. What it does do,
00:32:52.280
which is interesting, is target big tech's exclusionary practices, anti-competitive practices.
00:32:58.160
So this is the way in which companies like Google and Apple and Facebook cut deals to crowd out
00:33:05.920
competitors. So one good example of this is how Google paid Apple over a billion dollars, I think,
00:33:12.000
to make Google search the default search on Apple smartphones. And obviously, competitors to Google,
00:33:18.740
smaller search engines don't have that kind of money, which allows Google to really dominate the
00:33:23.160
marketplace. Because obviously, Google and Apple, they control 99% or more of smartphone operating
00:33:29.200
systems worldwide. That's the entire smartphone market. So by targeting our practices like that,
00:33:35.240
this bill could make it, well, it doesn't target political bias directly, it could make things easier
00:33:40.600
for competing search engines that aren't as politically co-opted as Google to start gaining
00:33:47.340
I mean, that's a small example. I mean, listen, a billion dollars or whatever is not small,
00:33:52.500
but in the scope of things, it is small. Let me ask you, I mean, the last big populist president,
00:34:01.520
I mean, I don't know my American history that well, but I would say it's Teddy Roosevelt. And he was a
00:34:06.180
trust buster. He went against the top-hatted Rockefellers and the big robber barons, as they were called,
00:34:13.340
the railway, steel, coal, that kind of thing. And they were almost caricatures. I mean,
00:34:20.420
to look at old man Rockefeller with his top hat and whatnot, they were easy to hate, is what I'm
00:34:28.220
saying. Maybe that's just how history portrays it. But where's the populist fury against the tech
00:34:35.820
companies now? Is it there? And I know Tulsi Gabbard, who ran for the Democrat presidential
00:34:42.280
primary briefly, she's part of that populist spirit. I'm not sure if the Sanders people love
00:34:47.500
tech companies, but I see that the left has merged with the tech companies. People who used to be for
00:34:54.940
the little guy, people who used to rail against the rich, the billionaires, the oligarchs, the plutocrats,
00:35:01.560
the people who should be hating this generation's John D. Rockefellers, they love Zuckerberg and
00:35:10.920
Bezos. If not personally, they just love the cash and the power.
00:35:15.700
Well, I think the people in charge of the Democrat party right now, Pelosi, Biden, all these people,
00:35:20.600
they're clearly neoliberals. They're not really left-wingers in any traditional understanding of
00:35:26.400
the world. They're corporatists. And their very clear agenda right now is merging the power of the
00:35:32.380
federal government with the power of these tech companies, leaning on them to censor their political
00:35:37.020
opposition. So a very sort of authoritarian, corporatist style of government. And quite similar
00:35:43.440
to China, as I've said in the past. China uses public-private partnerships to control what private
00:35:49.160
companies do and control their own people. As far as the populist left goes, I don't think they have a
00:35:54.520
great deal of love for the tech companies either. We've even seen a few far-left communities getting
00:35:59.420
censored. For example, Reddit banned a really big left-wing subreddit last summer. The Chaco
00:36:05.160
Trap House subreddit was a subreddit for a very popular podcast. And a lot of Jeff Bezos recently
00:36:13.820
stepped down from Amazon. It's really been a hate figure for grassroots, populist left-wingers,
00:36:18.680
if you look at the sort of things they say on social media.
00:36:20.980
But those guys don't really control, one, they don't control the Democratic Party. And two,
00:36:27.480
even though a few of their people have been censored, I would say they still support things
00:36:32.140
like crackdowns on hate speech for the most part, enforcing gender pronouns on people. The
00:36:38.380
populist left believes in that too. So unless they start really suffering from censorship in the same
00:36:44.800
way that the right has been suffering from censorship, I don't think that'll be a priority. It's more a
00:36:49.220
back for the rich kind of thing. Well, let me just ask one last question to you, because you made me
00:36:53.780
think of something. I know that Facebook's been fighting with Australia over different things,
00:36:58.720
over money, really. And Facebook's threatened to sort of leave Australia and ban Australia.
00:37:05.180
And I know I'm oversimplifying. But it reminds me of when Twitter was getting into fights with other
00:37:10.860
countries. When Twitter started censoring Donald Trump, other countries said, whoa,
00:37:15.680
if they can censor Trump, they can censor us. I know Uganda. Twitter was messing around in their
00:37:21.620
elections. I think it was Uganda. And they just said, all right, Twitter, you're banned from Uganda.
00:37:27.600
And Twitter said, what? Free speech. This was moments after censoring Trump. I know Angela Merkel,
00:37:33.240
I know Mexico's president, also expressed concern with it. And I see even in the last 48 hours,
00:37:40.960
Twitter getting involved in the farmers' protests in India have earned the ire of the Indian government.
00:37:51.900
And I wonder if some of the changes to tech's monopoly status will come not from any American
00:37:59.260
political spirit, but from other countries saying we don't want to be dominated by Americans left-wing
00:38:05.880
or right-wing. India should have its own Twitter app. Let's ban Twitter because they're meddlers.
00:38:12.600
Uganda, maybe you're not going to have a Uganda version of Twitter, but maybe you'll have an
00:38:17.420
Indian version of Twitter that catches on. They're a tech powerhouse. I guess what I'm saying is,
00:38:22.040
if America isn't quite as freedom-loving and trust-busting as it ought to be, maybe America
00:38:28.760
might be saved in part by other countries that have a sense of national pride like India.
00:38:33.020
Yeah, I think this is going to be one of the big trends we're going to see in the coming years.
00:38:37.860
This idea of digital sovereignty, I think, will really gain momentum. Do you want these American,
00:38:43.660
if you're a foreign country, whether you're a European democracy or a tin-potted leadership in
00:38:49.080
Africa, you don't want a bunch of American companies coming to interfere in your politics.
00:38:54.160
And I think the State Department and various arms of the U.S. foreign policy establishment
00:38:59.780
are going to be very concerned by this because for the longest time they've seen Silicon Valley
00:39:05.180
and these tech platforms as a means of extending their influence even further abroad. So if all
00:39:12.080
these companies are going to start pushing back against Silicon Valley, kicking them out of the
00:39:15.280
country or regulating them, it's going to really lessen that influence. That's certainly something
00:39:20.460
to watch, especially the European governments, I think, because I think that especially took Silicon
00:39:25.700
Valley and the U.S. foreign policy establishment by surprise that Europe is so determined to not be
00:39:35.440
You know, years ago, I had a quarrel with Chiquita Banana. Don't ask, Alan, it's a long story. But I
00:39:42.100
studied a little bit about the history of that company. Of course, it was called the United Fruit
00:39:45.880
Company. And it had its own CIA nickname, Unifruit, like codename. It was such a political force. And that's
00:39:55.400
where the phrase Banana Republic came from, where this fruit company was so powerful and it had a
00:40:02.680
corrupting influence on politics, on police, on commerce. And the phrase Banana Republic
00:40:09.780
was based on how abusive and corrupting this American-controlled CIA asset company. I know this
00:40:18.700
sounds like crazy James Bond stuff, but it actually is the history of that company. And to this day,
00:40:23.840
they still get involved in strange deals with terrorists in South America and elsewhere.
00:40:29.320
And you can see where that animosity would come from, whether you're left-wing or right-wing. If
00:40:34.980
you're in Costa Rica or whatever, whatever the country would be, or Ecuador, you would hate the fact
00:40:41.780
that some foreign company is making the rules for you. I mean, that would get anyone united with their
00:40:49.680
fellow countrymen. And now I think the banana republicization of politics isn't done through
00:40:56.440
fruit companies and guns. It's through throttling speech and imposing Silicon Valley's tastes
00:41:03.560
on countries that are a gazillion miles away. I think that the new united fruit companies of the
00:41:10.160
world are these meddlesome blowhards in Silicon Valley. And I don't think they even know it yet.
00:41:15.880
Last word to you, Alan. Oh, yeah. Well, yes. I mean, we need to start thinking of companies as
00:41:21.580
being potentially more powerful than governments. We're in that kind of historical era. And it has
00:41:25.460
happened before. Just look at British and Canadian history. Canadian history of the Hudson's Bay
00:41:29.600
Company, probably integral in creating the nation of Canada, even more so than the British government.
00:41:35.360
And obviously, the British East India Company conquered an entire subcontinent. So, and these companies,
00:41:42.600
these tech companies, as you say, they're not fruit companies. They control a product that is far more
00:41:47.060
insidious and has far more potential to, you know, silently influence the products of a country
00:41:52.640
than any banana company, not to mention their enormous wealth and political connections.
00:41:59.380
Alan, I love talking with you. Another day we'll talk about Chiquita Banana. But for today,
00:42:05.340
thank you for this. I would recommend, as I always do, that not only that you follow Alan at
00:42:11.220
Breitbart.com, his tech stories, but that you follow him on Twitter also. And we'll put his
00:42:15.800
Twitter handle on the screen for folks to watch. Alan, great to see you. Thanks for your time.
00:42:22.240
Right on. There you have it. Stay with us. More ahead.
00:42:24.380
Hey, welcome back on my show last night. Graz writes, can I still get one of those shirts?
00:42:41.540
Well, Graz, it wasn't a rebel shirt. It was a shirt made or attempted to be made by some staff at the
00:42:47.540
Canadian Embassy in Beijing. Sounds like the shirt never actually got made, but the Chinese spies who
00:42:53.100
track everything they do caught it and made a fuss about it. So I don't think you could get them
00:42:58.620
originally. It was just an internal thing. I don't think they were actually ever made,
00:43:02.820
but I suppose you could make one for yourself as long as it's not made in China, right?
00:43:08.240
Some guy writes, I apologize to Canada. Apologize to China for such a stupid thing.
00:43:14.300
Yeah, I don't know why we're apologizing to literal kidnappers.
00:43:18.720
It was against all of our legal norms and international norms to seize two Canadian citizens
00:43:25.840
really as hostages. And we're apologizing to them. I think it's 793 days now that the two Michaels have
00:43:36.740
Phil writes, how about an apology from the Chinese communists for holding two Canadians in jail for
00:43:44.500
over two years? Yeah, it's really since December 2018, if you can imagine. So it is over two years.
00:43:53.520
I'm very frustrated, Biden, as I showed you. It seems to be getting worse. And with Joe Biden
00:43:58.040
jumping on the Chinese Communist Party train, I think it's going to get worse.
00:44:02.400
Well, that's our show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World
00:44:06.960
headquarters to you at home, good night. Keep fighting for freedom.