John Bolton - Make Mark Carney Iggy 2.0

00:00:00.000 Hi, it's John and welcome to the channel. 5.35 a.m. Sunday, January 26th with the big blue mug of

00:00:05.980 coffee. I hope you're having a great day today. A little follow-up from yesterday when I said I

00:00:11.720 want Mark Carney to become Michael Ignatieff 2.0. It was in a video where we were talking about

00:00:17.820 Justin Trudeau being 2.0. Fascinating. So many people were saying that yesterday online. There's

00:00:23.540 actually a story in the National Post today similar to that. Fascinating as well that I had

00:00:29.480 a clip from Dan McTague from Canadians for Affordable Energy on yesterday bashing Mark

00:00:34.640 Carney and people seem to have Dan McTague on yesterday doing the same thing. Maybe I'm a

00:00:40.500 trendsetter. Maybe it was just a coincidence. Who knows? But good to have McTague on because he's

00:00:45.340 certainly a good guess. Now, who is Michael Ignatieff and how is he similar to Mark Carney? Well, it's

00:00:50.180 really quite fascinating that these two guys have some parallel. Now, Ignatieff was actually elected

00:00:56.340 as an MP back in 2006 for the riding of Etobicoke

00:01:01.500 Lakeshore. Ran to become the leader of the Liberal Party but lost to Stéphane Dion. Dion stepped down

00:01:08.240 late 2008. He became the interim leader and then with 97% of the vote on May 2nd, 2009,

00:01:14.380 Michael Ignatieff was chosen as the leader of the Liberal Party. Exactly two years to the day later,

00:01:20.620 he got trounced by Stephen Harper in the election, winning only 34 seats with the Liberal Party,

00:01:24.880 their biggest defeat in history up to this point. It could be worse this time and he quit as the

00:01:32.180 Liberal leader the next day. Now, Michael Ignatieff, very educated man, much like Mark Carney. Lots of

00:01:37.780 letters behind his name is Michael Ignatieff. Again, a parallel with Mark Carney here and if you look at

00:01:43.280 his education that you see right here, University of Toronto, Oxford and Harvard University with a PhD.

00:01:49.980 But people were talking about Michael Ignatieff at the time, much like they're talking about Mark Carney

00:01:55.080 as a savior of the Liberal Party in deep, deep trouble. And the parallels are quite fascinating

00:02:00.180 here. If you look at this article from the CBC going back many years ago, they talk about him

00:02:07.120 being greeted with breathless profiles in national publications. As Canadian journalist and biographer

00:02:13.420 John Gray wrote for cbcnews.ca in the run-up to the 2006 Liberal leadership, Ignatieff was not only

00:02:20.640 the preferred candidate of the Liberal establishment, but someone they thought of as the new Trudeau.

00:02:27.080 Isn't that amazing? The new Trudeau. And here we are replacing another Trudeau a little over a decade

00:02:33.200 later. It's really quite amazing. Whatever the candidate may have thought, his supporters wanted

00:02:38.620 to believe that Ignatieff was the dashing outsider who would rescue the Liberal Party in its hour of

00:02:43.860 need, much like Mark Carney is right now. From the CBC, it did not take Ignatieff's opponents long,

00:02:50.440 for example, to discover his past speeches. Much like Mark Carney, everything he has said is on record.

00:02:57.300 And journalism, in which he assiduously identified himself as an American. He talked and wrote

00:03:03.080 of we, us, our way of life, our constitution, and our leaders. He even went so far as to say being

00:03:10.060 an American is not easy. Ignatieff spent all of his time outside of the United States. He was a

00:03:15.260 presenter on CBC, and then he went to the United States and became a professor at Harvard. Now,

00:03:21.500 what are they doing with Mark Carney? The Conservatives are already trying to cash in on something he said

00:03:26.900 about being a European, and they've used it in one of their attack ads. Mark Carney is back from

00:03:32.580 Europe. Speaking as a European. Carney hasn't spent much time in Canada at all. He's trying to portray

00:03:38.260 himself as an outsider, but he's an insider in a big way, as many people have written. He was made a special

00:03:44.060 advisor on the economy for Trudeau back in September, I believe it was, of last year. Trudeau's been trying

00:03:49.720 to recruit him into the party for a very long time, and he's been pulling the strings from behind the

00:03:53.520 scenes for sure. And then the thing that I've been saying about Carney is the fact that he probably has that

00:03:59.900 one advantage over a lot of the other people in the party. You're Chrystia Freeland's and the rest of

00:04:04.420 the people. All of the liberals are actually running. The people who have been elected have the baggage

00:04:08.660 of being a liberal. They have the baggage of the poor economy. They have the baggage of being connected

00:04:13.340 with Justin Trudeau. And boy, there's a parallel there with Michael Ignatieff. Going back to the CBC

00:04:18.360 story, as the Globe and Mail's Jeffrey Simpson wrote of Ignatieff's initial leadership bid,

00:04:23.700 he has the fewest Canadian scars by virtue of having fought the fewest battles in his own country.

00:04:28.440 A fact that in other countries would almost automatically disqualify anyone from serious

00:04:33.220 leadership ambitions, but that in this country, at least inside the weakened liberal party,

00:04:37.960 has apparently become an advantage. There's this as well from the National Observer. Comparisons to

00:04:43.800 Michael Ignatieff, who led the liberals from 2008 to 2011, are far from flattering, but perhaps more

00:04:49.840 than fair. Ignatieff has plenty of expertise and capacity, too. He was also a terrible politician and

00:04:56.320 capable of meeting the moment. He led the liberals to 34 seats in the 2011 election,

00:05:00.880 paving the way for Justin Trudeau to replace him. The liberals, of course, have looked for saviors

00:05:05.840 before, much like they're doing right now with Mark Carney. An article from Yahoo News, this taking

00:05:10.020 us way back to 2012, talking about John Turner, who was supposed to be a savior back in the 80s.

00:05:15.720 Paul Martin, as well, best known as the finance minister under Jean Chrétien.

00:05:19.260 The prime minister for a short period. And then came Michael Ignatieff, the man some liberals

00:05:25.160 described as the next Pierre Trudeau, and certainly he was not that. Ignatieff, an intellect eloquent

00:05:31.000 and charismatic, and early on drew big crowds across the country after a series of conservative

00:05:35.460 party attack ads leveled against him. However, he led the party to new lows, winning only 34 seats

00:05:40.540 and 19% of the popular vote in 2011. I don't think that Mark Carney is very charismatic at all.

00:05:47.800 I think he's kind of a dud when it comes to that. He's certainly no politician. Ignatieff

00:05:52.320 had time to learn from 2006 when he was first elected as an MP to the time he actually became

00:05:58.580 the leader of the Liberal Party. So he learned how to be a politician. Mark Carney has got

00:06:02.360 none of that. Drawing big crowds across the country, I don't think so. He was actually

00:06:06.600 out on Saturday afternoon with a little get-together with some liberal faithful, swarmed by the media

00:06:13.480 afterwards, and he seemed to run away. You said you're the outsider, but it looks like

00:06:20.000 the party, the party establishment is holding, is lying up behind you.

00:06:25.520 No, no. So the issue of deputies, elected members, ministers, others, Liberals across the country

00:06:34.160 who are making a choice, and are making a choice about the importance of the economy, the importance

00:06:38.880 of coming together, building together. That's a free choice. This is the Liberal Party. We believe

00:06:44.000 in freedom, and we believe in good judgment, and thus far, Liberals are showing.

00:06:48.960 As for Michael Ignatieff, the great savior before the election in 2011, Liberals only won 34 seats,

00:06:55.440 a record low for them at the time, which could, well, that record could fall with Mark Carney

00:07:00.480 being the next leader. It's going to be interesting to see how this plays out. Brian Lilly wrote an

00:07:04.560 article about this last year, May 15, 2024. Ghost of Iggy haunts the Liberals and Mark Carney's ambition.

00:07:12.240 Some Liberals think Mark Carney is the next great savior of the Liberal Party. They should look at

00:07:16.160 what Michael Ignatieff is up to lately. I'll get to that in just a moment. A little bit from

00:07:20.720 Lilly's article here. Some in the Liberal Party thought that the bright, well-read, and well-spoken

00:07:25.440 Ignatieff would make a great Prime Minister one day. Perhaps he would have, but one thing stood in his

00:07:30.560 way. Voters never warmed to him, and you have to wonder if people are going to warm to Mark Carney. He

00:07:36.480 hasn't got a lot of time. Ignatieff was born in Toronto. His father was Canadian diplomat.

00:07:41.920 George Ignatieff and his uncle was George Grant, professor, intellectual, and author of Lament

00:07:46.560 for a Nation. The younger Ignatieff went to all the best schools, had a distinguished academic and

00:07:51.520 media career, most of it abroad, but he simply couldn't connect with voters. When I hear Liberals

00:07:56.720 today pushing the idea that Mark Carney is the savior of the Liberal Party once Justin Trudeau steps down,

00:08:02.960 I think of Ignatieff. And that's exactly what I thought of when I heard Mark Carney was getting the

00:08:07.840 race. I thought back to Mark, to Michael Ignatieff. And so what will happen to Mark Carney? Well, first,

00:08:14.720 what happened to Michael Ignatieff? He just basically disappeared off the face of the earth. He went

00:08:19.600 directly back to the United States and went back to his previous life. And here's what he's doing right

00:08:23.920 now. He was recently the rector and president of Central European University in Budapest, stepped

00:08:29.840 down at the end of July 2021 to stay as professor in the history department. What will Mark Carney do? Well,

00:08:35.760 you know, you have to look at it this way. Carney's really got nothing to lose. He's got everything

00:08:40.320 to win if he could happen to become the prime minister and win the next election, which I think

00:08:45.520 is doubtful. But he's not hungry like pure Paglia. Paglia has been working to this point his whole

00:08:50.480 life and he's got lots of plans for the country. I mean, he became an MP back in 2004 and he's been

00:08:57.440 doing this for 20 years. As far as Mark Carney, what's he going to do? He's just going to leave the

00:09:01.520 country probably go back to doom and gloom predictions about the world and make more money

00:09:06.080 of being a businessman. That's what Mark Carney is going to do. So I think it's interesting that

00:09:11.120 these two men have very interesting parallels, maybe not their political careers, but I think

00:09:15.920 Mark Carney is even more on the back foot because he hasn't even been elected yet. And that's something

00:09:20.320 that needs to be looked into when we have him named the prime minister, which I think is going to

00:09:25.920 happen because he is the outsider. And I don't think the other liberals have a chance, including

00:09:30.160 Chrystia Freeland. Now, one more thing before I go, I've been thinking about Doug Ford is expected to

00:09:36.080 call an election next week. I'm wondering how this is going to take the wind out of the sails

00:09:40.480 of the Liberal Party leadership race if Doug Ford calls an election next week. So it could be a good

00:09:45.840 thing that Ford's doing after a lot of bad things he's been doing when it's talking about tariffs and

00:09:50.960 the United States. Just a question I was thinking about. If you like the video, please give me a

00:09:54.880 thumbs up. Subscribe to the channel. I do appreciate it. And well, I'll see you in the next one.

John Bolton - January 26, 2025

Make Mark Carney Iggy 2.0

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