00:01:53.000Then we've got Royal Otis, who's a duo from Sydney, Australia, who are great.
00:02:00.000And they've got this little punky, poppy tune called Oysters In My Pocket, which probably means something really sexual in Australia, but I don't know what it is.
00:02:10.000And then Brendan Kelly, who plays bass for the Lawrence Arms and hangs out with the guys in Smoke or Fire, was one of my favorite bands, his tune Doing Crimes.
00:06:55.000And this week, too, when President-elect Trump made his idiotic promise to slap a 25% tariff on everything Canada exports in the United States,
00:07:07.000Polyev did not do what some other conservatives have done.
00:07:11.000He didn't attack his own country and say that Trump was justified.
00:12:33.160The ruble collapses in 98, and Putin uses that as a runway to take power.
00:12:37.660It takes over a collapsed economy, goes back to sort of a Soviet Union, like discipline, normal, as they say in Russian, like a normalcy of authoritarian capitalist intent.
00:12:51.420So let's assume that we're in the same position now.
00:12:55.020Russia, who could have been supported by BRICS, the theoretically alternate currency group of India and Brazil and South Africa and China, and none of them are backing him.
00:13:08.440Because they're all worried about Trump, who certainly seems to be behaving like he's actually the president of the United States.
00:14:19.840I know that as a result of that collapse, pressure from the United States, Zelensky, in charge of Ukraine, all of a sudden has come to the table and said,
00:14:30.180I will come to the table, arm assist, or maybe a ceasefire at the end of the war.
00:14:35.800I'm prepared to give up all the territory we've lost.
00:14:39.880As long as NATO comes in here, he is daring us to enter the war because he's lost.
00:14:46.700And that seems counterintuitive because Russia just collapsed financially.
00:14:55.080And yet, then Trump, and this is important, it's a short point, Trump picks General Kellogg, a guy who has a 10-year record of saying Ukraine will not give up a single centimeter of its territory, its sovereignty, it can do whatever it wants.
00:15:11.840Trump picks the biggest hawk for Ukraine.
00:15:16.560It's impossible to read what's going on right now.
00:15:18.720And I was happy about that, and I told you I was happy.
00:15:21.800I mean, you know, Trump does head fakes on people all the time.
00:15:25.340God knows the tariff thing might be that, but it looked like a positive dilemma.
00:15:30.260Okay, so Putin's in trouble economically.
00:15:33.640His war may be in difficulty in Ukraine.
00:15:38.240Tell us what is happening, because typically those of us in the West receive very little good reporting about what takes place in the Arab world.
00:15:47.880It looks to me like Syria, with its benefactors in Iran and Russia, is in deep trouble.
00:15:57.460The butcher of Baghdad is hiding in a hotel in Moscow, along with all of his family and his extended family.
00:19:15.800The exegesis the Trudeau people offered was, we went down to explain to them that while prices will go up for us, they will also go up for you.
00:21:04.000I've got to tell you, the list of candidates makes Vladimir Putin look like a compassionate, secular humanist with a great vision for humanity.
00:21:15.260Well, on that comforting note, anyway, John, thank you.
00:21:21.840International affairs is a big, big deal this week.
00:21:25.220And we're very grateful that we've got you to analyze it for us.
00:28:14.720All the liberal Trudeau folks are going to be talking all weekend about what a bad week Pierre Pauly has had.
00:28:20.100And just wait for the next poll, which is what they do.
00:28:23.080And every time, you know, it spreads once in a while among the Truanons, the most believing of all the cults, that Pauly has just had a horrible week.
00:28:33.860And every time they do that, he goes up or the liberals go down.
00:29:29.120And so retailers are talking about how nasty this is because they've got to go in and recode their programs that, you know, because everyone is...
00:29:39.660You know, who's sitting there with an old school ching-ching, ching-ching cash register?
00:29:45.000So you've got to reprogram it for two months at the busiest time of year.
00:29:48.820Then you have to reprogram again in two months on February 14th when this ends.
00:29:54.780And then on April 1st, as we talked about before, the carbon tax goes up.
00:29:58.900And so does the beer and wine tax by 2%.
00:30:01.980So the $50 case of beer that would have normally cost you $56 because the HST was on it here in Ontario.
00:30:38.740Well, what about his strategy of just basically saying nothing on the Trump tariffs and presumably hope that nobody notices what's happening?
00:30:48.480Like, it looks like the premiers are pretty mad at the prime minister for not having a plan.
00:31:39.980Even before the meeting, they announced we're sending the SQ down because he's worried about another Rocksham Road because of Trump's deportation thing.
00:31:59.780And I think Trudeau was hoping to be able to use Trump's threat of 25% tariffs as some kind of political wedge to try and figure out, okay, can I get votes out of this?
00:32:15.120But I think most Canadians see this for what it is.
00:32:18.720He's using this threat to try and get a result on immigration, which is an issue that Canadians are really angry about right now, an issue that we never used to talk about is now a domestic issue.
00:32:34.200And so my view of the Trump tariff threat is that he doesn't want to put tariffs on.
00:32:41.100And 82% increase in illegal immigrants going across the border from Canada to the U.S., still smaller than Mexico, but we've gone from 1% to 9% of the problem.
00:32:53.020We are 87% of the people that get caught going across the border on terror watch lists.
00:33:02.340And Ross McKittrick, who's a professor at the University of Guelph, he posted the other day and replied to me.
00:33:09.620He said, we've got to figure out what's going on with fentanyl because we all think it's a Mexican problem.
00:33:14.920He was down at an event at the Wilson Center in Washington, and he said to a former, someone he's known a long time, the State Department, the current State Department,
00:33:28.180how do you guys view the fentanyl issue?
00:33:31.120Is it primarily a Mexican problem or a China problem?
00:35:02.080We've got 43,000 Indian nationals arriving in Canada on student and temporary work visas and then going across to the U.S. and declaring asylum.
00:35:11.840I think the U.S. wants us to clean up our visa system and who we're letting into the country so that we're not a backdoor gateway into the U.S.
00:35:22.260And we clearly have a problem with extremism.
00:35:25.640You just take a look at what's happening in the streets of Montreal or Toronto on a regular basis.
00:35:30.260So, look, we should spend time on fixing the problem and then we don't have to even think about retaliatory tariffs.
00:35:40.260And I heard some of the Trudeau cabinet ministers like Freeland talk about, well, I mean, what we have to do is explain to them how much we trade with them.
00:35:48.880And I thought, that's like when your wife is angry at you for leaving your socks on the couch.
00:35:55.100And she said, look, stop leaving your socks on the couch.
00:35:58.140And you say, honey, haven't you seen how clean the garage is?
00:36:02.880But your socks are still on the couch.
00:39:35.080So, to me, those are the three outposts of democracy.
00:39:39.200It's exactly like you said a minute ago.
00:39:41.500So, as soon as democracy, as soon as the West lets one of those go on the front edge of this war against, you know, dictators and autocrats, Israel, Ukraine, and Taiwan, we're in big, big trouble.