Juno News - July 20, 2020


The China Virus (Feat. Ezra Levant)


Episode Stats

Length

19 minutes

Words per Minute

168.48682

Word Count

3,245

Sentence Count

242

Hate Speech Sentences

12


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 You're tuned in to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:06.500 Welcome back to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:00:08.920 You know, a lot of the time throughout the coronavirus pandemic,
00:00:11.740 we've been so responsive to the breaking news
00:00:14.980 that we haven't really had a chance to take a step back
00:00:17.760 and look at the big picture
00:00:18.900 and some of the major narratives that we've seen here.
00:00:22.220 Well, a new book does exactly that,
00:00:24.600 looking at some of the domestic and global political narratives
00:00:28.120 that have emerged here and really painting a picture
00:00:30.700 that I think is a very important one.
00:00:33.380 The book must be on to something
00:00:34.760 because there are certain people, including Amazon,
00:00:36.940 that initially didn't want you to be able to buy it.
00:00:39.060 That is China Virus,
00:00:40.720 How Justin Trudeau's Pro-Communist Ideology
00:00:43.080 is Putting Canadians in Danger,
00:00:45.240 written by our friend Rebel Commander Ezra Levant,
00:00:48.640 who joins us on the line now.
00:00:50.380 Ezra, thanks for coming on and congrats on the new book.
00:00:53.780 My pleasure.
00:00:54.500 You know, I was really scared for a bit there
00:00:58.560 because we have published seven books with Amazon before,
00:01:02.680 both as e-books and print books, so 14 titles,
00:01:06.060 and we do really well with them and we do well for them.
00:01:08.940 And we went to upload this book in late April,
00:01:11.920 like two months ago,
00:01:13.300 and they said they rejected it right away.
00:01:15.740 And we said, oh, maybe we entered some,
00:01:17.580 because you do it electronically,
00:01:18.760 maybe we made an error.
00:01:19.740 So we tried again.
00:01:20.780 They rejected it again.
00:01:22.180 We appealed they rejected it.
00:01:23.760 We had lawyers.
00:01:25.440 They rejected it.
00:01:26.380 And they said,
00:01:27.100 they actually gave us,
00:01:27.880 they finally gave us a reason.
00:01:29.800 They said because they only propagate,
00:01:33.600 quote, official, unquote,
00:01:36.380 information about the pandemic.
00:01:38.300 And they thought our book would contradict
00:01:40.600 the United Nations.
00:01:42.320 And we said, look,
00:01:42.920 we're not giving medical advice or anything.
00:01:44.600 We're not giving home remedies.
00:01:46.640 But they held the line.
00:01:48.580 And for two months,
00:01:50.740 Amazon refused to upload the book.
00:01:52.820 They finally relented about a week ago.
00:01:55.240 And the book immediately shot up the bestsellers list.
00:01:57.960 It hit number one on Kindle.
00:02:00.080 It hit number two in the whole country for paperbacks.
00:02:03.920 So obviously people want the other side of the story.
00:02:05.840 I just find it terrifying that Amazon,
00:02:09.060 which has so many books and we rely on for so many things,
00:02:13.460 was literally running interference for the United Nations.
00:02:17.120 Not only,
00:02:17.680 it wasn't even applying Canadian law.
00:02:20.140 Like if they were to say,
00:02:21.080 Ezra,
00:02:21.380 your book is defamatory or hate speech or whatever.
00:02:24.360 Okay.
00:02:24.720 That's the real thing maybe.
00:02:26.180 But they were running errands for the UN.
00:02:28.740 And I think that's part of the problem here.
00:02:30.520 We criticize the UN and the World Health Organization.
00:02:33.480 And as you mentioned,
00:02:34.780 my subtitle is Justin Trudeau's support for pro-communist ideas.
00:02:40.040 I mean,
00:02:40.500 I'm not saying that Trudeau himself is a communist,
00:02:43.040 but he sure seems to love them,
00:02:44.700 whether it's Cuba or China.
00:02:47.640 And I think we're at real risk from China.
00:02:50.260 We don't have a lot of ties with Cuba.
00:02:51.820 People go there for a vacation.
00:02:53.620 But with China,
00:02:54.580 we have tremendous political and economic and diplomatic ties.
00:02:58.360 I think that's the real China virus.
00:03:00.840 Thank God the pandemic is almost over.
00:03:03.060 If you look at the number of people dying,
00:03:05.580 it hasn't been this low since March.
00:03:07.940 I really think the health threat has receded,
00:03:11.100 but it has exposed the political and economic and diplomatic and military
00:03:16.100 and cybersecurity threats of China.
00:03:19.480 That's the China virus.
00:03:21.060 I wanted to ask you about the timing of this,
00:03:23.700 because if this was something that you had initially submitted two months ago,
00:03:27.760 do you think it was premature?
00:03:29.260 Do you think that we were able to see all of the political narratives unfold then
00:03:34.180 that haven't really changed now?
00:03:36.980 Well,
00:03:37.220 I mean,
00:03:37.980 during those two months,
00:03:38.980 I updated it.
00:03:39.860 And when they finally proved it,
00:03:41.980 I mean,
00:03:42.420 you can see there's things in the book that are as late as June.
00:03:46.420 And I went back and I updated some numbers and some things.
00:03:49.440 And there were,
00:03:50.180 I mean,
00:03:50.880 I wasn't just sitting around in those two months,
00:03:53.100 but listen,
00:03:55.380 it was a little unclear for everyone in those first weeks,
00:03:58.840 how bad is the problem?
00:04:01.660 How does the virus spread?
00:04:03.720 Are we all at risk?
00:04:05.140 We just simply didn't know a lot of things.
00:04:07.860 And it was risky to trust China,
00:04:11.320 China,
00:04:11.920 which like the Soviet Union and Chernobyl was more interested in covering up
00:04:16.600 than exposing and asking for help.
00:04:20.360 Also how China dealt with it.
00:04:22.220 China's a brutal authoritarian regime.
00:04:24.720 The idea that they would simply,
00:04:27.540 well,
00:04:27.640 actually in some cases,
00:04:28.740 weld the doors shut to people in quarantine,
00:04:31.900 like turn apartments into prisons.
00:04:33.800 That's how China rolls.
00:04:35.260 So we didn't really know a lot.
00:04:37.080 And here we are on the other end now.
00:04:38.700 And we know,
00:04:39.500 for example,
00:04:39.920 in all of Canada,
00:04:41.560 there has only been a single person under the age of 20 who has died from
00:04:47.020 this disease.
00:04:47.540 And that person had preexisting conditions where had terminal diseases
00:04:51.060 anyway.
00:04:51.480 So this is not a disease that affects children.
00:04:55.040 The annual death toll from the flu and pneumonia is every year between 7,000
00:05:00.900 and 9,000 people in Canada.
00:05:02.740 That's what this virus death toll is.
00:05:04.760 We learned,
00:05:05.720 we've learned a lot about it.
00:05:07.640 And so now some of the government overreactions seem even more absurd,
00:05:11.500 like closing schools when kids don't get sick from it.
00:05:14.440 Or if they get sick,
00:05:15.100 it's very mild.
00:05:15.760 Thank God they all recover.
00:05:16.980 So we've learned a lot about closing borders.
00:05:22.500 The places in Canada that had the least virus outbreaks were the ones that were
00:05:28.300 the least connected to global travel.
00:05:30.960 And one of the things we document in the book is how Trudeau actually never
00:05:33.840 stopped flights from China.
00:05:36.600 They came every day during the peak of the crisis.
00:05:39.480 Over a million Chinese citizens have visas to come to Canada.
00:05:43.140 They were issuing new ones all the time.
00:05:46.220 There were special exemptions for anyone who claimed to be a refugee,
00:05:50.060 even if at Roxham Road,
00:05:51.560 even if they said,
00:05:52.900 even if they had a cough and a fever,
00:05:55.720 they were specifically by executive order of Trudeau allowed to come in.
00:06:01.740 So there's a lot of strange things in there.
00:06:03.620 I'm sorry,
00:06:04.100 I'm getting a little bit off target,
00:06:05.660 but yes,
00:06:06.940 we did learn things over the course of the last four months.
00:06:10.160 It's been,
00:06:10.720 I think,
00:06:11.340 113 days today since Ontario went into a two week emergency mode.
00:06:16.760 Remember that?
00:06:17.820 Two weeks to flatten the curve.
00:06:19.160 Well,
00:06:19.280 we're on day 113 of that.
00:06:21.180 Well,
00:06:21.460 it's funny you mentioned that because I remember when,
00:06:24.220 uh,
00:06:24.600 that when 9-11 happened and,
00:06:26.880 you know,
00:06:27.040 a lot of the,
00:06:27.600 the left response to it afterwards,
00:06:30.480 there was that famous footage.
00:06:32.080 I think Michael Moore had popularized it of,
00:06:34.620 you know,
00:06:34.860 George Bush just sitting in the classroom doing nothing as the time passed from
00:06:40.300 when he was notified.
00:06:41.080 And,
00:06:41.420 and,
00:06:41.660 uh,
00:06:42.080 you know,
00:06:42.320 it's funny that,
00:06:42.960 you know,
00:06:43.400 Justin Trudeau sat on vacation for days and days and days and did nothing.
00:06:48.660 And there was very little criticism from the mainstream media in that.
00:06:52.920 And you actually had laid this out very early in the book.
00:06:55.940 Uh,
00:06:56.160 you know,
00:06:56.380 even when Ontario public health officials had sort of alerted themselves and,
00:07:00.600 and leapt into gear federally,
00:07:02.080 there was no response whatsoever.
00:07:03.960 And what I find so interesting is that we've seen almost an inverse reaction
00:07:09.740 from the federal government where earlier on when a swift response was
00:07:13.640 needed because we didn't know what we were dealing with,
00:07:15.800 there was none.
00:07:17.240 And now that things have leveled out,
00:07:18.820 now that things have become a bit more measured and we have more information,
00:07:22.140 we have more data,
00:07:23.260 the federal government is continuing to ramp up its response on,
00:07:26.360 on domestic domestically.
00:07:28.820 Yeah.
00:07:29.580 Uh,
00:07:29.900 it doesn't make any sense.
00:07:31.280 I mean,
00:07:31.520 right now in the city of Toronto,
00:07:33.080 for example,
00:07:33.960 masks are mandatory in public places.
00:07:37.420 All right.
00:07:37.600 Well,
00:07:37.720 where was that?
00:07:38.460 Where was that in March and April?
00:07:40.620 You're,
00:07:40.940 uh,
00:07:41.380 you're correct to point out,
00:07:43.320 um,
00:07:44.020 that when I remember that first case in Ontario,
00:07:47.260 because it's not often that you have sort of a panicky press conference on a weekend
00:07:52.740 by government officials.
00:07:54.480 They normally don't do that.
00:07:56.020 So they were taking it seriously.
00:07:58.080 The virus had arrived in Toronto.
00:07:59.880 Um,
00:08:00.240 a guy flew in from China,
00:08:02.420 was sick on the plane.
00:08:03.360 There was a manhunt for the other 30 people near him on the plane.
00:08:06.160 It was really panicky.
00:08:07.260 The next day,
00:08:08.160 all the newspapers were panicky.
00:08:09.640 Um,
00:08:11.560 Trudeau was taking a personal day.
00:08:13.940 I went back and I,
00:08:14.900 I added up how many days Trudeau was away from Canada since he became PM.
00:08:20.660 He loves to travel.
00:08:21.820 He loves to take personal days.
00:08:23.340 He takes long,
00:08:24.280 long vacations.
00:08:25.740 He had a 17 day vacation in Costa Rica.
00:08:29.380 Seven.
00:08:29.720 What was the last time you had a 17 day vacation?
00:08:32.420 Then he got back to Canada.
00:08:33.640 The virus broke.
00:08:35.460 And,
00:08:35.880 uh,
00:08:36.440 a week and a half later,
00:08:37.220 he left on another junket to Africa,
00:08:39.940 where he was going to hand out foreign aid to try and get a UN vote.
00:08:43.900 So in the period of time when the virus was arriving in Canada and starting to spread,
00:08:49.020 when the airport,
00:08:50.180 and Trump,
00:08:50.820 by the way,
00:08:51.280 six days later,
00:08:52.040 Trump restricted flights from China.
00:08:54.140 Trudeau waited six more weeks because he was busy flying around.
00:08:58.300 He,
00:08:58.780 he didn't want to make any tough decisions.
00:09:01.120 He wasn't engaged in the news.
00:09:03.400 Trudeau took more days off,
00:09:05.600 more foreign trips,
00:09:06.920 more vacations in the period of the virus arriving in Canada than at any other time in his five and a half years as prime minister.
00:09:14.740 Yeah.
00:09:14.880 He was still campaigning for that UN Security Council seat.
00:09:18.980 Yeah.
00:09:19.200 And by the way,
00:09:20.020 it was,
00:09:20.600 uh,
00:09:21.300 it was on that trip where he announced,
00:09:23.120 uh,
00:09:24.140 on that campaign trip where he announced he was giving our,
00:09:27.600 our personal protective equipment stockpile to China.
00:09:31.960 So he,
00:09:32.920 he was thinking about the virus,
00:09:34.660 but how can I give money to foreign countries?
00:09:38.200 How can I,
00:09:38.920 how can I give Chinese made protective gear back to China?
00:09:42.880 He wasn't thinking about Canada and it's so,
00:09:45.340 so straight.
00:09:46.340 And you know,
00:09:47.060 there's one more thing.
00:09:47.680 There's a lot of things I cover in the book and I hope we can talk about his ties to the Chinese Communist Party.
00:09:52.700 Cause that's actually what I mean by China virus.
00:09:55.160 But it's,
00:09:56.040 it's so odd how lackadaisical he is.
00:10:00.040 He's been self hiding.
00:10:01.480 I call it in Rito cottage.
00:10:03.860 He just,
00:10:04.420 the other day announced he's not going to meet Trump and the Mexican president.
00:10:08.100 They're having a face to face.
00:10:09.500 Trudeau won't go.
00:10:10.440 He just won't.
00:10:11.660 He's,
00:10:11.940 he's become a hermit,
00:10:13.500 you know,
00:10:13.800 a recluse.
00:10:14.760 Really?
00:10:15.220 The only time he left is to do the black lives matter,
00:10:18.040 take a knee on parliament Hill.
00:10:19.600 He's the only world leader who's in hiding.
00:10:22.480 I mean,
00:10:23.200 he has no medical risk.
00:10:25.320 He hasn't been diagnosed with anything.
00:10:27.380 A few months ago,
00:10:28.280 his wife had the virus,
00:10:29.960 but that was months ago.
00:10:31.600 He doesn't even live with her anymore.
00:10:34.300 I think he's mentally checked out and he's,
00:10:37.360 he's childish in the middle of this whole thing.
00:10:40.100 When we're all in lockdown,
00:10:42.420 he celebrates earth hour.
00:10:45.800 And he says,
00:10:46.760 Hey everybody,
00:10:47.280 turn off your lights and your power.
00:10:49.560 Yeah.
00:10:49.780 We've been under house arrest mate.
00:10:52.140 We've been living the earth hour lifestyle.
00:10:54.600 Yeah.
00:10:55.520 Shutting down the economy.
00:10:57.020 Like he's a,
00:10:57.680 he's a child in a,
00:10:59.580 in an age where we need men and it's not changing.
00:11:03.280 I,
00:11:04.100 and the media is so submissive.
00:11:06.580 I've never seen anything like,
00:11:07.640 do you think if Donald Trump just went back to Trump tower in New York city and
00:11:12.380 ordered DoorDash all the time and came out once a day for some blah,
00:11:15.780 blah,
00:11:15.980 blah.
00:11:16.440 Do you think the media in America would accept that?
00:11:18.640 If,
00:11:18.800 if Boris Johnson just went to his country home and just hid out for 113 days,
00:11:26.700 do you think the fleet street tabloids would be fine with that?
00:11:30.580 It's insane.
00:11:32.060 And it's a combination of a lazy disinterested prime minister who has deep ties to China and
00:11:39.700 the Chinese communist party.
00:11:41.020 And that's a recipe for disaster,
00:11:43.740 not just a health disaster,
00:11:45.080 but an economic and political and diplomatic and security disaster.
00:11:49.340 Let's turn to that ideological component there because the government's position on China,
00:11:56.060 which you articulate very well in the book.
00:11:58.100 And I know you've been covering it as we have here at True North along the course of this pandemic.
00:12:03.100 It has been very dangerous from Patty Haidu to Francois-Philippe Champagne to Justin Trudeau himself.
00:12:08.580 And when it comes to Canada's relationship with China, which has really been,
00:12:13.160 I think,
00:12:13.800 one of the most revealing and illuminating things throughout this pandemic,
00:12:17.960 I would say in a lot of cases,
00:12:20.560 I would put it as weakness.
00:12:22.580 Now, you're saying there's an underlying ideological support for China there
00:12:27.560 that's not just a weakness or limp-wristed approach to foreign policy,
00:12:32.220 but a specific China issue.
00:12:35.440 I think so.
00:12:36.400 And I start by talking about Justin Trudeau's dad, Pierre Trudeau.
00:12:40.300 And remember, Pierre Trudeau, there was no tyrant he didn't love.
00:12:44.480 He went to Cuba and canoed with Castro.
00:12:47.700 He visited Castro repeatedly.
00:12:49.160 He went to the Soviet Union and said Soviet Siberia was the land of the future.
00:12:56.680 Like, seriously.
00:12:58.560 Pierre Trudeau went to China even before he was prime minister to celebrate Mao's revolution.
00:13:08.020 So Pierre Trudeau was very pro-communist, not just pro-China.
00:13:13.040 Anyone can love China, the people, the culture, the history, the art, the architecture,
00:13:19.160 the food, even the language is fascinating.
00:13:22.060 There's so many wonderful things about China.
00:13:24.060 It's like a world unto itself.
00:13:26.220 I understand how someone could admire China.
00:13:28.600 But remember when he was asked that day at that liberal fundraiser,
00:13:31.740 what country do you admire most?
00:13:33.860 He said China, but he didn't say all the things I just listed that are wonderful about China.
00:13:39.020 He said the most odious thing about it, which is, quote, it's basic dictatorship.
00:13:45.980 And so he's had that in him.
00:13:47.640 And in the book, I quote his brother, Alexandra, otherwise known as Sasha Trudeau.
00:13:53.460 So his brother, Sasha, who was his foreign policy advisor during his leadership campaign,
00:13:59.540 I should remind you.
00:14:00.480 So he's not just a brother.
00:14:01.920 He's a policy advisor who, by the way, did propaganda films for the Islamic Republic of Iran.
00:14:10.600 So again, his brother, there's no one, there's no tyrant his brother didn't love.
00:14:14.060 His brother wrote an insane obituary for Fidel Castro and the Toronto Star.
00:14:17.940 It was creepy.
00:14:18.420 Well, then there's Trudeau's own, you know, laudatory statement of Fidel Castro.
00:14:23.460 Oh, yeah.
00:14:24.220 But let me tell you one quick thing about Sasha Trudeau.
00:14:28.180 So he was writing a little preface to a book or something about China.
00:14:35.420 And then he said, and he said this in an interview.
00:14:38.400 He said, well, it just grew into a chapter and then it grew into a book.
00:14:41.520 And he had this book about China called Barbarians or the New Barbarians.
00:14:50.480 He was saying that Westerners are the barbarians.
00:14:54.440 China is the civilized society.
00:14:57.840 And he published this book.
00:15:00.920 Any publisher in the world would publish a book by a Trudeau for vanity reasons, for sales reasons.
00:15:07.340 Any Canadian publisher would publish it in a second.
00:15:10.340 But he deliberately chose to have his book about China published by the Chinese government, the Chinese dictatorship.
00:15:20.300 And it's obvious why.
00:15:23.160 He loves working with dictatorships like he did with the Islamic Republic of Iran.
00:15:28.060 He is a pro-China propagandist.
00:15:30.520 The whole book was an apology for communist China.
00:15:32.820 And he specifically said he gave this book to his brother, Justin, right before Justin Trudeau went to China on the first visit.
00:15:41.740 And obviously, it's solidifying the Trudeau family view that China and its dictatorship is noble.
00:15:50.260 In fact, in some ways, more noble than we are.
00:15:53.200 So it's pervasive in his family and in his senior staff.
00:15:59.080 In my book, I argue that Peter Harder, who was the head of a major China lobby group in Canada, he was put in the Senate by Trudeau.
00:16:09.160 But more important than that, he was in charge of the transition from Stephen Harper to the Trudeau government after Trudeau won in 2015.
00:16:17.920 Harder was in charge of the transition team, which means he was really the boss for hiring hundreds and hundreds of appointees.
00:16:26.660 So you could say it was the most important job, because other than choosing the cabinet, you're choosing every single official, every top official.
00:16:37.220 So he put in pro-China activists, salted throughout the entire government.
00:16:43.900 And it's just assumed that if you are a Trudeau liberal, of course you're pro-China.
00:16:50.600 And the Chinese government knows this.
00:16:54.280 Like, John McCallum took $73,000 worth of free gifts from the government of China.
00:17:00.360 He disclosed them to the ethics commissioner.
00:17:02.740 I'm not saying they were illegal.
00:17:04.940 But why would China give $73,000 worth of gifts to someone unless they thought, that guy's an asset?
00:17:11.280 Well, yeah, and McCallum's downfall was, I think, being too open about his view of China.
00:17:15.240 Yeah, and Huawei, the massive tech company, a rival to Google security threat, wants to build 5G networks in Canada.
00:17:28.040 They're not allowed under Canadian law to donate to the Liberal Party.
00:17:31.880 So they just back up the Brinks truck and dump money into Canada 2020, which is Trudeau's sort of in-house think tank affiliated with the Liberal Party run by Trudeau's lifelong friend.
00:17:43.000 So there's so much cash being dumped on Trudeau by the Chinese communists.
00:17:50.740 They're pragmatic people.
00:17:52.700 Why would they do that?
00:17:53.660 They're doing that because they have, to use the phrase, a Manchurian candidate.
00:17:59.020 They have someone who, like even today, big screaming headlines in the Toronto Star, China is threatening retaliation against us.
00:18:08.420 Yeah, I saw that.
00:18:10.020 And Trudeau's just fine with it.
00:18:11.280 Yeah, and you know what?
00:18:13.560 For all of the Canadian mainstream media was, you know, carrying U.S. congressional hearings live and talking about Trump and Russia, Trump and Russia, Trump and Russia.
00:18:22.000 There's very little coverage of the mainstream Canadian media when it comes to Trudeau and China.
00:18:27.360 So I think it's an important book, China Virus, How Justin Trudeau's Pro-Communist Ideology is Putting Canadians in Danger.
00:18:34.140 Author Ezra Levant of The Rebel joining us now.
00:18:36.960 Ezra, where can people pick up a copy?
00:18:39.620 Well, thank you for asking.
00:18:40.960 You can get it on Amazon or we have a little website called ChinaVirusBook.com with the Amazon links there.
00:18:48.780 Pretty easy to find.
00:18:49.680 It's on the bestseller list, I'm pleased to say, which tells me people want to hear the other side of the story.
00:18:54.340 They want to hear these other things.
00:18:55.600 And I'm grateful to you for giving me a bit of a platform that Amazon denied me for two months.
00:18:59.980 And you've got a five-star rating on Amazon already.
00:19:02.200 So let's hope we can keep you on that bestseller list.
00:19:04.700 Ezra, always a pleasure.
00:19:05.660 Thanks for coming on.
00:19:07.020 Thanks, my friend.
00:19:07.640 Bye-bye.
00:19:07.880 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.
00:19:10.440 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.