Juno News - The China Virus (Feat. Ezra Levant)

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, 0.92

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. 0.62

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, 0.97

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. 0.97

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, 1.00

00:04:11.320 China,

00:04:11.920 which like the Soviet Union and Chernobyl was more interested in covering up 0.59

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. 0.50

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? 0.96

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, 0.99

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. 0.88

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. 0.94

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. 0.98

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.

Juno News - July 20, 2020

The China Virus (Feat. Ezra Levant)

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