Rebel News Podcast - Conservative Party’s leadership contest lurches forward — I’ll tell you the Rebel News view

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Today, I go through the Conservative Party of Canada's leadership race.

00:00:05.640 I'll tell it to you in one word. It's pitiful. But if you want to hear 2,000 words, well,

00:00:10.680 I've got a podcast for you. I go through all of the remaining candidates and also talk about the

00:00:16.440 two candidates who were thrown out by the party. And I'll talk about my own thoughts on why it

00:00:21.460 matters whether or not a candidate will even talk to Rebel News. That's all I had. But before I

00:00:26.980 get to that, let me invite you to become a Rebel News Plus subscriber. $8 a month or $80 for a

00:00:32.080 whole year. That's cheaper than Netflix, you know. You get the video version of this podcast, plus also

00:00:36.400 podcast videos from Sheila Gunn-Reed and David Menzies, and the personal satisfaction of knowing

00:00:43.100 that you keep the rebels strong. We don't take a dime from Trudeau, and it shows. All right, here's

00:00:49.160 today's podcast. Tonight, the Conservative Party's leadership contest lurches forward.

00:01:08.760 I'll tell you the Rebel News view. It's May 15th, and you're watching The Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:12.800 Why should others go to jail when you're a biggest carbon consumer I know? There's 8,500

00:01:19.560 customers here, and you won't give them an answer. The only thing I have to say to the government,

00:01:25.160 the wire publisher, is because it's my bloody right to do so.

00:01:33.640 It's May 15th already. We're almost done half the year. The pandemic has stolen so much time,

00:01:38.640 hasn't it? And it will steal so much more than that before it's done. One of the things that

00:01:43.020 derailed, or at least detracted from, is the Conservative Party's leadership contest to succeed

00:01:47.480 Andrew Scheer, who stepped down after a disappointing showing in the October federal election. He said he

00:01:54.040 planned to stay on, but then there were rumblings in the caucus against him. The whole balloon just

00:01:59.620 popped when it was revealed that he had been secretly pocketing donations from the party to cover his

00:02:05.120 own children's private school costs and other personal expenses. It's not so much that he

00:02:09.600 was taking those secret payments from the party. I think all parties have expense accounts for their

00:02:13.560 leaders. It's not just that Scheer, as opposition leader, was already making more than a quarter

00:02:18.380 million bucks a year, plus expenses, plus travel, plus an MP's office in the riding end in Ottawa,

00:02:23.880 plus living expenses, plus, plus, plus. I mean, that made it gross. I think it was that

00:02:28.580 when you're a Conservative and you publicly and loudly and with a straight face condemn Justin

00:02:36.060 Trudeau for secretly enriching himself, whether it's Trudeau putting his two nannies on the public

00:02:42.020 dime, I guess that's not in secret, or Trudeau taking a secret illegal hundred thousand dollar

00:02:46.800 vacation on the Aga Khan's private island or the Bahamas, or secretly spending millions to renovate

00:02:53.220 the lake house, as Trudeau's doing. When you condemn all that excess and grift and graft,

00:03:00.000 and then you're caught doing the same thing all along, there's really nothing left for you to say

00:03:03.480 or do. It's like when a televangelist gets caught having an affair, it just doesn't work anymore.

00:03:09.820 So Andrew Scheer jumped before he was pushed, and he quit. But then, I don't know how it happened,

00:03:14.360 he just flipped around and decided to stay on as leader until whenever, to continue to take his

00:03:20.640 leader's salary top up, to take the official residence store in a way, to take the extra limo,

00:03:25.740 the extra staff, be in charge of choosing the shadow cabinet, promoting or punishing backbench MPs.

00:03:30.320 So it was a resignation for some time in the future, because he's still the leader today.

00:03:36.520 One reason why that's a problem is that it confuses the party's message and branding. Is

00:03:41.200 Scheer gone or not? Is it still his party to shape or not? Is Scheer's trademark communication style

00:03:47.540 boring, passive, deferential, timid? Is that still the nature of the party? Seriously,

00:03:54.400 what conservative of the Pulse would prefer someone like Scheer instead of someone like Pierre Pauliev?

00:04:01.360 How many prisoners received their emergency benefit check, the Honorable Minister?

00:04:06.800 If I may, to go further, I'd like to thank the member for his question. 7.7 million Canadians

00:04:14.080 received emergency benefit. Mr. Paulievre.

00:04:18.260 7 million Canadians are in jail? The question was, how many prisoners have received the benefit

00:04:22.840 check?

00:04:24.360 Monsieur le ministre.

00:04:26.060 Honorable Minister, listen, we can make jokes about what's happening to Canadians, but

00:04:32.520 many of them are suffering with this crisis. Mr. Paulievre.

00:04:37.980 CBC is saying that prisoners are receiving the check. They can't have lost their job. They were

00:04:44.500 already in prison. Simple question. How many prisoners have received the checks?

00:04:49.720 The Honorable Minister.

00:04:51.680 Mr. Chair, I'd like to remind members in this House that we're talking about a very serious

00:04:59.320 situation, and some people are unable to make ends meet. These are emergency measures.

00:05:06.660 Mr. Paulievre.

00:05:07.360 We're doing the work that Canadians expect us to do.

00:05:10.580 ...have received the checks.

00:05:13.400 The Honorable Minister.

00:05:15.020 Mr. Chair, I've already explained to the member, and I'm happy to remind him once

00:05:21.400 again, that this benefit is an emergency one. Mr. Paulievre.

00:05:24.940 The Auditor General says that he's dropping half of his audits because the government refuses

00:05:29.120 to provide him the funding. The government has enough money to send 200,000 fraudulent applicants

00:05:35.040 emergency checks. Why won't the government give the Auditor General the funding he requests?

00:05:40.940 The Honorable Minister.

00:05:42.860 The Honorable Minister. I'd like to thank the member for his question, and I'd like to talk

00:05:47.800 about the role that institutions play in this emergency situation, including the role of

00:05:52.440 the Auditor General, and we're going to continue to support him because he allows us to do things

00:05:56.460 properly. Mr. Paulievre.

00:05:57.920 What does the Auditor General have to do to get the money to do his audits? Does he have

00:06:01.080 to file a bunch of fraudulent applications for an emergency response benefit?

00:06:05.420 I just want to remind the Honorable Members to place their questions through the Chair, not

00:06:09.200 directly to the members, and answer directly.

00:06:12.120 The Honorable Minister.

00:06:13.980 The Honorable Minister. Chair, I know the member, and I know that he doesn't want to give the

00:06:20.760 impression that the Auditor General has to be fraudulent to correctly do his job. Mr. Paulievre.

00:06:28.600 That's why he should get the money he needs to do his job. He was doing twice as many audits

00:06:32.000 under the previous government than he is now, but doesn't have the money to do the audits he

00:06:35.600 needs to keep an eye on this government's extraordinary spending. So yes or no? Will the government give

00:06:41.620 the Auditor General the funding he has requested so that he can get back to doing the same number

00:06:46.680 of audits he did under the much more robust funding of the previous Harper government?

00:06:50.680 Yeah. Thing is, when Scheer is the party leader, though, he gets to be top dog. He gets to eat

00:06:56.520 first when it comes to media coverage. So the contenders for the leadership, well, they have to

00:07:01.620 try and get the scraps when Scheer is done. Same with any MPs, even with Pierre Pauliev. And all the

00:07:06.060 bad judgment Andrew Scheer showed, he's still showing it. I think there's a non-zero chance Trudeau

00:07:11.280 will call an election soon, and Andrew Scheer will have to run again as party leader because

00:07:15.980 the conservative election might not yet be done. So Scheer will lose again. In the 2019 election,

00:07:23.940 we criticized Andrew Scheer, who is indistinguishable from Trudeau on key issues,

00:07:29.400 such as open borders immigration, the theory of man-made global warming, or at least the UN's

00:07:34.020 role in fixing it, and the need to achieve some industrial reductions because some bureaucrats and

00:07:39.560 diplomats meeting in Paris four years ago said we have to. Scheer was a lukewarm proponent of oil and gas.

00:07:45.900 He certainly didn't go toe-to-toe with any anti-extremists. He actually refused to criticize

00:07:49.800 Trudeau on immigration and literally announced his policy on the fly when being pestered a bit

00:07:54.620 by Rose McBarton and the CBC. I'm serious. He had gone the entire campaign without saying what level

00:07:59.280 of immigration he wanted, and then some CBC hack just pesters him, and he immediately does whatever

00:08:05.260 she tells him to do. But you still didn't give a number, and you would have to set a target as

00:08:08.960 government. That's part of your job, is to set a government level. So if the target right now is

00:08:14.360 350,000 immigrants by 2021, is that about what you're looking at? I think that's reasonable, 0.99

00:08:19.400 yeah. And again, as long as that's coming from facts, from evidence, from a look at the situation

00:08:25.400 and an understanding of where our society has needs, then absolutely. Yeah, not really hard to see how he

00:08:30.900 lost the election. Sir, I just wish he would go already so the party could get on with things.

00:08:35.080 Real talk. Who is a more effective counterweight to Trudeau today? Whether it's on the pandemic or

00:08:41.620 foreign policy towards China or oil and gas or the carbon tax, Andrew Scheer, or a provincial premier

00:08:47.760 named Jason Kenney. Well, enough griping by me. We are now awaiting a new dawn for the party.

00:08:54.520 Except the party doesn't seem to be very focused on him. Almost the opposite. Here's the party's home

00:08:59.100 page. Pretty tough to find any information about the leadership race. There's that one big

00:09:05.040 link there to buy a membership for the leadership. And I clicked on it. And it indeed will let you

00:09:11.020 buy a membership. And I mentioned that because today is the deadline to buy a membership if you

00:09:15.160 want to be able to vote. So do that if you like. But there's nothing else about the race on that

00:09:19.460 page. You just can't find it. None of those main tabs across the top either. Take action about us,

00:09:27.100 news team. Where's the excitement? Got something else going on? You have to go to that little hamburger

00:09:33.820 in the top right. That's the website jargon for those three lines that open up a menu.

00:09:40.980 You have to go there to find it. And then click on it. And then can you still even find it? You have

00:09:45.700 to go there. Leadership 2020. It says if you click on that, and then you get this page in very small,

00:09:52.360 fine print. A boring memo about the race being reconvened. And again, you have to hunt very hard

00:09:58.000 to even find a list of the candidates. And here they are finally. Leslyn Lewis, Peter McKay,

00:10:04.880 Erin O'Toole, and Derek Sloan. I've interviewed two of them, Leslyn Lewis and Derek Sloan. Both

00:10:09.360 Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay told our journalists personally to their face that they would do

00:10:14.400 interviews with us, but they didn't keep their promise. They didn't do an interview in person

00:10:18.300 or even via Skype. Peter McKay in particular was really, really weird about it when our

00:10:23.600 David Menzies talked to him.

00:10:24.720 David, there's no questions. I've just got to see if I can ask you one. There's no questions.

00:10:28.740 No questions.

00:10:29.660 You guys are preventing me from interviewing. I just want to ask one question, not even an interview.

00:10:34.840 There's no media.

00:10:36.060 It's a question on freedom of speech. You're welcome to get a photo. There's no questions.

00:10:40.460 So under Peter McKay, it'll be the same as Andrew Scheer, that the rebel is not allowed to be here?

00:10:46.620 You're here, aren't you? Excuse me.

00:10:48.220 I'm here, but I'm going to ask a question. Yes. Hi, Mr. McKay. How you doing? Just want to ask you,

00:10:53.660 sir, what do you feel about Ezra Levent being interrogated by the elections commissioner?

00:11:00.460 I don't like anybody being interrogated, including right now.

00:11:03.420 Yeah, if you're afraid of David Menzies, who's a really nice guy, no tricks, no gotcha questions,

00:11:10.220 just basic questions. If you're terrified of the Menzoid, there's a small chance you might not be ready 1.00

00:11:15.820 to take on Justin Trudeau and his media party escorts. But back to the four candidates. Why just

00:11:21.820 four? And really, this isn't me giving a critique on the website. We have problems with our own

00:11:27.180 website. Everyone does, I guess. It's got that easy to remember domain name, cpc-leadership2020.ca.

00:11:35.420 That's easy to remember. It's almost like they don't want a leadership race. $300,000 entry fee

00:11:40.140 for candidates, the highest I've ever seen in my life. Andrew Scheer's still taking up all the air

00:11:44.300 time, still taking all the media interviews. And the worst part of it is, any candidates who dare to be

00:11:49.820 edgy, whether you like them or not, whether you agree with them or not, they've been disqualified by

00:11:55.340 some unnamed party bureaucrats in some closed-door hearing. First, it was Richard DiCari, a former

00:12:00.540 advisor to Stephen Harper, who had views on LGBTQ and abortion that these party insiders simply

00:12:06.940 rejected, and so they banned him from running. Hang on, isn't the point of a contest to contest

00:12:12.860 things? As in, let's have opposing ideas, different ideas, put forward by different people,

00:12:18.300 and we'll all make the final decision after a campaign in a vote. Why would some secret insiders

00:12:23.580 say, nope, you can't make your case? If the ideas were so bad, though, why wouldn't they let party

00:12:31.020 voters prove that they were bad ideas by resoundingly rejecting the man and his ideas?

00:12:35.420 How odd that was. It frankly reminded me of how Justin Trudeau just simply bans any pro-life

00:12:41.580 Catholics from running in his party, just bans them. But at least he's the party leader, 1.00

00:12:45.340 and liberals knew what they were getting with him, and they all sort of hate pro-life Catholics

00:12:49.260 over there at the Liberal Party anyways. But why is this happening in the conservatives, and by whom?

00:12:54.940 It doesn't make any sense, but alas, it happened again. First, DiCari, and now Jim Carahelios,

00:13:02.380 longtime conservative party activist in Ontario provincially, especially fighting against the

00:13:07.900 carbon tax, fighting against Patrick Brown's political corruption. Carahelios was simply

00:13:13.420 kicked out of the race, too. I like Jim, and I interviewed him twice, I think. Nice guy. I don't

00:13:18.460 know if he's a party leader type, frankly, as much as an activist gadfly type. Frankly, I'd like to see

00:13:23.420 him working at Rebel News more than running a political party, which by definition requires traits

00:13:28.300 like compromise and team building. I think Jim is a troublemaking activist, which is why I like him.

00:13:33.900 And again, he was sacked, removed from the race, not by party members in a vote,

00:13:38.540 but because he criticized Aaron O'Toole's campaign chairman. How obscure and inside baseball is that?

00:13:46.140 O'Toole's campaign chairman is Waleed Solomon, a lawyer, political fixer, and Muslim activist. Solomon

00:13:51.500 was one of the closest advisors to the disgraced former leader of the Ontario PC party, Patrick

00:13:56.540 Brown. And Solomon has been a proponent of Sharia law-compliant financing in Canada. And Carahelios

00:14:05.100 criticized that rather gently, I think, in a campaign email. Well, Aaron O'Toole complained to that weird

00:14:11.580 secret conservative party committee, the same one that banned to Kerry. And so they banned Carahelios,

00:14:16.940 too. He's in court today fighting that ban, by the way. I wouldn't bet against him winning.

00:14:23.100 My point is, shouldn't party members get to decide all these things? If to Kerry and Carahelios and

00:14:27.580 anyone else said things that should be unsayable, why is the party trying to make this contest as

00:14:32.540 obscure and small and lifeless and boring as possible in everything from the extreme entry

00:14:38.140 fee to the bizarre hidden website to firing candidates in secret meetings? I just don't get it.

00:14:43.420 It's almost, you know, if the thing was being run by an agent of Trudeau, I'm not sure what

00:14:48.220 would be done differently if it were. I will say what bothers me even more than the firing of those

00:14:53.100 candidates is that Aaron O'Toole and presumably Waleed Solomon himself were the complainers who

00:14:57.740 tattled to the party, asking the party to ban their competitor. That is far more troubling to me.

00:15:03.020 It's a sign of weakness and whininess, a sign of poor character, I think. For some reason it reminds me,

00:15:07.900 I don't know, you know the worst part of soccer and there are plenty bad parts. You know this thing

00:15:14.540 about soccer? Yeah, that seems to happen all the time. It's not really a good look to whine to the

00:15:20.620 teacher because your political opponent said something mean to you. How about be smart and

00:15:24.860 clever and either turn it around on them in some way or ignore them or, I don't know, practice

00:15:30.700 responding to unfair attacks because you're going to get a lot more of them and a lot tougher ones if

00:15:35.580 you actually become leader. I didn't really care one way or another about Kara Helios' letter. I

00:15:40.380 liked it, fair enough. But I sure am disappointed with the cancel culture of the party now and that

00:15:46.380 Aaron O'Toole thought deplatforming his opponent was better or easier than beating his opponent.

00:15:53.980 That ain't going to be how it works if you become the leader of the party, Aaron. You won't be able to

00:15:57.900 run the mummy to make your younger brother stop pulling your pigtails. You're going to have to learn 0.99

00:16:02.220 how to fight. So yeah, the two most interesting candidates were removed because they were too

00:16:06.860 interesting in ways the party didn't like and they didn't trust party members to throw them out.

00:16:12.140 So who are the four that are left? I've interviewed Leslyn Lewis twice and she's a very nice lady

00:16:16.780 and she destroys stereotypes about the party but going from running a law firm to running a party and

00:16:21.740 then hopefully running a whole country, doing that in one leap is too much. I mean it worked for Donald

00:16:26.140 Trump but he's one in a billion. He, in so many ways, already had been a national figure and had

00:16:31.980 an enormous presence. He was a household name. He's a force of nature and that's the presidential

00:16:37.340 system anyways. Our parliamentary and party system is just different. I just don't think it's going to

00:16:42.860 work and though I like Leslyn Lewis very much, I just don't think she's ready for the roughest,

00:16:47.420 toughest political game in the country. Now she's done very well and it's too late to count

00:16:51.660 anyone out. She's raised a lot of money. Anyone who made the final cut has. Here's what I hope.

00:17:00.620 I hope she runs in a winnable riding as a conservative MP. I hope she wins. I hope she

00:17:06.220 gets smarter and tougher and more experienced as an MP, smoother at answering questions, more practice.

00:17:11.900 Maybe in four years after that, if the conservatives ever win, she'll be ready for cabinet. And maybe

00:17:17.740 four years after that, she's still young. Maybe she will be a formidable and powerful and well-known

00:17:24.060 political force then. So I can't honestly say I think she's ready for the big job but she absolutely

00:17:28.460 should run for a medium job that could turn into a big job. How about Derek Sloan? I like him too

00:17:35.260 and I like that he had some courage to call out Trudeau and the United Nations, the World Health

00:17:39.260 Organization and I like the fact that he was swamped and mobbed by haters and didn't seem to bend the

00:17:44.220 knee. If you missed it, Sloan simply said what I had said and countless other Canadians had said,

00:17:51.020 Dr. Theresa Tam is in a terrible conflict of interest working for both the World Health

00:17:55.340 Organization and for the Government of Canada. You can't do both. Theresa Tam followed the World

00:18:01.100 Health Organization every step along the way. She accused Canadians who were concerned about this

00:18:05.980 virus initially for being racist. She also suggested that travel bans were unnecessary.

00:18:13.020 And as late as January 14th, she suggested that human-to-human transmission of the coronavirus

00:18:18.380 was not happening when very credible evidence suggested that it was. Yeah, that's not racist

00:18:23.420 to say that, of course, but the left and the deplatformers would say it's racist just to shut you up.

00:18:28.220 What disappoints me again so much is that it was conservative MPs and staffers who joined

00:18:34.220 the denunciation of Sloan and they tried to deplatform him. I'm frankly surprised he wasn't

00:18:39.260 kicked out too by this secret committee of the party. I don't think Derek Sloan has the team or

00:18:43.580 the money or the national network or the household name to beat the liberals either. I mean, maybe,

00:18:47.820 and the fact that he didn't immediately fold when a little Twitter mob came against him is a very

00:18:51.820 good sign. That's actually my favorite thing about him. It's the rarest thing. It's a slightly Trumpy

00:18:56.300 thing. He doesn't bend the knee to the leftist mob. So what about the last two? Aaron O'Toole and

00:19:01.580 Peter McKay, both are low energy. Both feel like also rands, retreads, reheated leftovers from last

00:19:08.140 night's dinner. The B list, maybe even the C list. People who would surely not be anyone's first choice.

00:19:14.300 But we have to have someone, right? Peter McKay has been out of politics making money and at a Toronto

00:19:19.180 law firm and raising a family. That sounds like a pretty nice path in life, don't you think? I know

00:19:24.460 politics is in his family blood, but he so clearly lacks the fire he doesn't even care, it feels like.

00:19:30.380 He's not even following the news, it seems to me. His social media campaign is clearly not even

00:19:35.980 being written by him, obviously. It's been quirky and odd, and I'm not talking about how weird it

00:19:39.900 looks. I'm talking about the fact that it has been so content-free. And the odd time McKay,

00:19:45.260 or whoever's writing it, takes a stand on something, he immediately backs down at the first

00:19:50.300 breeze of pushback. That's the lack of courage, I mean, surrendering at the

00:19:54.220 first puff of resistance from the CBC. McKay faced his backlash over a now-deleted tweet

00:20:01.100 that critics say promoted vigilantism. It's the second social media controversy this month

00:20:05.820 for the conservative leadership candidate. Yeah, no, he didn't call for vigilantism. Here's exactly

00:20:10.700 what he said. Glad to see a couple Albertans with a pickup truck can do more for our economy in an 0.74

00:20:15.660 afternoon than Justin Trudeau could do in four years. He was talking about our friends out there who

00:20:21.260 simply and peacefully and quietly and politely cleared off some dangerous junk that was blocking

00:20:27.580 a railroad track when police and politicians in the courts wouldn't. That's not vigilantism. That

00:20:32.700 is literally picking up the garbage at the side of the railway and clearing it away. That's

00:20:36.700 environmentalism Alberta style. Imagine thinking that tweet was edgy, and then imagine them thinking

00:20:43.340 it was too edgy, and then imagine taking it down in shame, thereby admitting it was too much Trump.

00:20:49.740 What would Trump have done? You know what he would have done. He would have doubled down, tripled down,

00:20:52.780 given the CBC a nickname, retweeted some funny internet meme, then he went farther. He would have

00:20:58.380 made the leftist media go into A-T-Z about it, knowing that severely normal Canadians would be cheering

00:21:05.260 for him, knowing that the media would be providing him with free PR, knowing that he would be building

00:21:09.820 his brand in two ways. First, McKay would then be someone who's not afraid of the media. Why wouldn't

00:21:14.460 that be refreshing? And second, someone who was against those blockades, and thus pro-law and order

00:21:19.260 and pro-Alberta. What a missed opportunity. Instead, it was a gaffe. He should have flipped it around and said,

00:21:23.980 that's not a gaffe. That's exactly who I am. Yeah, he's not who that is, though.

00:21:28.860 Get us on the substance of it. It's the weakness. It's the flip-floppiness. That's Andrew Scheer

00:21:34.940 disease. And it's clearly spread throughout the whole party. And Aaron O'Toole, he came in third

00:21:39.420 in the 2017 party leadership race. He got just over 10% in the first ballot. By the time he dropped

00:21:44.780 off, what, 11 or 12 ballots later, whatever, he had just over 21%. So he didn't really light the party

00:21:50.460 on fire back then. But he had a name of sorts and a track record of sorts. I'm a bit concerned about

00:21:55.420 the Waleed Solomon thing, because personnel is policy. And I'm a bit worried about Solomon's

00:21:59.660 influence on O'Toole. But that's not what really worries me about O'Toole. The five-alarm fire for

00:22:07.340 me is that O'Toole, a former military man who has obviously shown courage in his personal life,

00:22:14.780 as in his previous career, he was in the Air Force. He flew search and rescue helicopters.

00:22:19.340 That's courage. He got a law degree. He got into politics. Politics is actually his family business,

00:22:23.820 too. He looks pretty good on paper. It's a bit boring. That's okay. So is Stephen Harper.

00:22:29.340 But since when does a man of character whine to get a rival knocked off the ballot? I tell you,

00:22:36.380 I tell you about that because I focus on that because it shows what he's going to be like,

00:22:40.940 and what he is already like. Now, we've invited him to come on Rebel News to talk with us,

00:22:46.540 as a number of other candidates have already talked with us. But he refuses. That could be Wally

00:22:51.580 Solomon's advice. But the decision is ultimately the candidate's decision. But should a candidate

00:22:57.580 only talk to people he agrees with? Can you not handle different ideas or firm questions from another

00:23:03.900 point of view? I say again, if you can't handle Rebel News, you're not going to be able to handle

00:23:07.820 the Liberal Party plus the Media Party. This isn't vanity for me. I have a hundred things I could talk

00:23:12.220 about on any given day. I don't need the moral approval of some slightly known C-list politician

00:23:17.580 to feel validated. If I'm being 100% candid, I don't think any of these four contestants is

00:23:23.900 ever going to be Prime Minister. I'm sorry to say it. It's not even sour grapes. It's me thinking,

00:23:29.180 what a shame that so-called conservatives have been so conditioned to be scared of engaging with

00:23:33.980 real conservative media or real conservative interest groups. And by the way, here at Rebel News,

00:23:39.420 we're moderate in the whole constellation of conservative grassroots activists in Canada.

00:23:45.500 What a shame that the party is simply writing off a huge swath of its base, whether it's because the

00:23:51.420 party is no longer conservative, could be, or whether the party simply doesn't want the media

00:23:56.860 to say mean things about it. That's probably him. I mean, I remember when Jordan Peterson,

00:24:00.540 our old friend, was interviewed by the CBC after we had helped Jordan Peterson. We promoted his book.

00:24:05.580 We crowdfunded some funding for, I don't know if you remember, a couple of years ago now.

00:24:09.340 So Jordan Peterson, world star, like the hottest book in the English language, global superstar,

00:24:14.700 selling out rock concert-sized venues to give philosophy lectures, and the CBC finally lands an

00:24:20.620 interview. Wow, they could talk to him about anything. The very first question they put to him was,

00:24:26.780 why do you talk to Rebel News? Speaking out against the federal bill, C-16, and gender pronouns and so on,

00:24:33.340 the federal government cut your funding for research. Rebel Media came in and did a crowdfunding

00:24:40.620 project for you, raised about $200,000. After Charlottesville and the riots, the protests there,

00:24:48.780 many people cut ties with Rebel Media, including the conservative leader Andrew Scheer, saying

00:24:54.620 that it could be seen as giving hate groups a platform. You still go on there. So I'm wondering,

00:25:01.180 why do you go on Rebel Media after Charlottesville? Now, Jordan Peterson was surprised by how stupid

00:25:07.740 that question is. But Erin O'Toole and Peter McKay and Andrew Scheer aren't surprised by how stupid

00:25:12.460 that question is. They know all about it. They know that the mean girls in the media party will be 1.00

00:25:17.100 mean to them if they dare to talk firmly about railroad blockades, or call for restricted immigration,

00:25:23.820 or stand firm for lawful firearms, or especially if anyone criticizes St. Greta Thunberg. And coming

00:25:29.740 on Rebel News is a way of signaling to the world that you're at least open to those conversations and

00:25:33.980 those issues. That's what worries me the most. It's O'Toole and McKay have signaled to the media

00:25:41.980 political establishment, don't worry about us. We'll be barely conservatives, sorta conservatives. We'll

00:25:48.300 really be blue liberals. We'll be flippable conservatives on anything important. We'll

00:25:53.740 abandon our values with the first whiff of gunpowder like McKay did on the blockades tweet.

00:25:58.620 They're saying they're more comfortable with Rosemary Barton, the CBC host and nuisance plaintiff who

00:26:03.500 literally sued the conservative party in the middle of the last election campaign. She was recovering.

00:26:08.620 She was the debate moderator suing the conservatives. And that's fine for the conservatives. Imagine going

00:26:14.300 along with that. But you won't talk to a rebel. Unbelievable. That tells you everything you need

00:26:19.020 to know. So she's polite company in conservative party circles, but a truly conservative media outlet

00:26:24.940 with 1.3 million subscribers and a huge Canadian following. Well, that's just too crazy. Yeah, no,

00:26:31.020 it's a rebel litmus test. If you're not comfortable even saying hello to me or Sheila Gunn-Reed or David

00:26:37.020 Menzies or Kian Bexte on camera, but you're dying to get on Rosemary Barton's Christmas card list,

00:26:42.460 you just might be doing conservatism wrong. I should note that both Letson Lewis and Derek

00:26:48.220 Sloan have positively talked about their belief in free speech and about rebel news, and I very much

00:26:53.100 appreciate that. I just wish that they had more horsepower and could win and take back the country.

00:26:59.100 I just wish it was, but I don't think it is. That wishy-washiness didn't really work out for Andrew

00:27:05.020 Scheer. And I don't think it'll work out for the equally uninspiring successor, if it's McKay

00:27:10.780 or O'Toole. I hope I'm wrong on all this stuff, but don't bet on it.

00:27:15.900 In the meantime, yeah, go join the conservative party if you can find their website and go vote

00:27:19.820 for the least worst candidate. Good luck if you're still allowed to by the secret committee. And we'll

00:27:25.820 keep doing our best here at Rebel News. Our best to keep the fires burning for true conservatism,

00:27:33.580 to talk about issues and conservative ideas that the party doesn't. We'll be active where the party

00:27:41.660 is and we'll stand up for civil liberties during this time of the virus. That's another example of

00:27:45.420 a missed political opportunity for these candidates, don't you think? So yeah, of course I hope

00:27:51.340 Justin Trudeau loses the next election. Of course I hope a conservative wins. But hope ain't gonna do it

00:27:57.660 alone. It's not enough. And I'm not sure that this party will do enough either. Stay with me for more.

00:28:16.460 Welcome back. Well, I was sending a message to my friend Joel Pollack, the senior editor at large of

00:28:21.660 breitbart.com. I was just talking about some Canadian news that I like to share and he wrote back

00:28:26.940 about the news of the day in the United States saying, this is nuclear. And I had never heard

00:28:32.940 Joel say something like that before. I said, you gotta come on the rebel and tell our viewers what

00:28:37.900 you mean. It was Rick Grinnell, Donald Trump's interim director of national intelligence, releasing

00:28:44.780 a trove of once confidential and classified documents. The power to declassify rests

00:28:51.660 within the president's power. And he simply chose to do it this week. Joining us now live from sunny

00:28:59.900 Los Angeles is our friend Joel Pollack. Joel, first of all, before I get into the news,

00:29:04.780 tell me a little bit about being outdoors in LA. I heard that the city is ordering a lockdown for

00:29:11.260 months to come. What's the deal?

00:29:13.020 Joel Pollack. Yes. Mayor Eric Garcetti and the leaders of Los Angeles County are extending the

00:29:21.820 stay at home order for three months, which would mean until the end of July, essentially most of

00:29:28.780 the summer. And they've relaxed some rules because the state of California is in what our governor,

00:29:36.140 Gavin Newsom calls phase two, which means retail stores can open for curbside pickup and they're going

00:29:41.580 to start opening some malls for curbside shopping. They're going to even open some museums. So Los

00:29:48.540 Angeles has to go along with that. But Mayor Eric Garcetti, who has been pessimistic throughout

00:29:53.340 and who has really been telling us that things are only going to get worse the entire time,

00:29:58.780 he's almost like the exact opposite of President Trump. You know, Trump's always talking about

00:30:02.780 optimism and we're going to get through this better than before. Eric Garcetti is always telling us it's

00:30:07.340 going to be death. It's going to be awful. People are going to lose their jobs. This is the worst

00:30:11.100 it's ever been. And it's going to get worse. But the socialist revolution that looms beyond the

00:30:15.660 horizon will be our great salvation. That's kind of where he has to go with all this. You have to

00:30:20.220 have things get terrible before they can be salvaged by the great socialist utopia that is to come.

00:30:27.420 But Garcetti's basically been trying to get people to obey more and more restrictive rules. So as of

00:30:34.300 Wednesday evening, everyone in Los Angeles who leaves their property is supposed to wear a

00:30:39.020 face mask outdoors, even. This is sort of ridiculous. The scientific evidence we have

00:30:44.620 suggests that it's very hard to transmit the coronavirus outdoors, especially in warm weather

00:30:50.060 with a lot of ultraviolet light like we get in L.A. We get a very strong sunlight here. So it's very

00:30:56.140 unlikely to get this thing outdoors, especially if you're just passing people by in the street,

00:31:01.580 you're more likely to get it indoors. But nevertheless, they want us to wear face masks

00:31:04.860 outdoors. Meanwhile, the regulations on the county level and on the state level sometimes move in the

00:31:10.140 opposite direction. So on Wednesday morning, the very morning, Garcetti extended this face mask order.

00:31:15.820 They opened all the beaches in L.A. County, which had been closed since the start of the pandemic.

00:31:20.060 Now, it happened to be a very good surfing day. So I counted about 60 surfers

00:31:25.100 near the beach by our neighborhood here. And the surf was really good. It was about as good as I've

00:31:31.740 ever seen it on a day with sunshine. You know, you get high waves during a storm and some people will

00:31:35.820 go out there then. But this was a perfectly beautiful bright blue spring day and the waves

00:31:40.300 were very high. You don't normally get surf that good up in L.A. County. Mostly that's down in Orange

00:31:44.460 County or San Diego. So the surfers were out in droves. It was pretty amazing. Also, a pot of dolphins

00:31:50.460 swam by. So the beaches are starting to open for recreation. You can do anything sport related on

00:31:55.900 the beach except volleyball. They don't want people playing volleyball because it involves people 0.53

00:31:59.180 standing around in close proximity to one another or something like that. But it's all a confusion.

00:32:04.940 And I think people are going to start to disobey some of these rules just because they're so

00:32:09.740 ridiculous and because people just want to go on with their lives. People are starting to take matters

00:32:14.380 in their own hands. The surfers, for example, never really went away. If you went out in the early

00:32:18.780 morning down to the beach, which also you weren't supposed to do because the beaches were close,

00:32:22.300 the surfers were there. There were about 10 or 12 of them instead of 50 or 60. But the surfers

00:32:28.540 just decided to go before the police showed up. As long as you were off the beach by about 830 or 9

00:32:33.100 o'clock, you didn't get in trouble. So people are going to find little ways to do their own thing,

00:32:38.300 what they have to do to be happy, what they have to do to survive.

00:32:41.580 Yeah, I just find a hectoring politician who's always doom and gloom when, by the way,

00:32:47.580 the stats for most of the country, including for New York City, by the way,

00:32:52.380 I mean, the curve has been flattened. So increasing rhetoric about doom and gloom

00:32:58.060 when the caseload and the death rate and the hospitalization rate is falling.

00:33:01.900 I think between it's like telling people don't believe your lying eyes.

00:33:06.220 I just don't think hectoring politicians are going to win out over

00:33:09.980 moms wanting to take their kids to the playground, you know, people wanting to get out of there cooped up. 0.91

00:33:15.820 I just don't believe that a fairly lawless city like L.A. is going to have any luck going

00:33:21.660 beyond what it currently patrols. I follow the New York police union on Twitter,

00:33:29.260 and they are adamant that their police just simply will not enforce these goofy social distancing

00:33:36.780 rules. They say they either have their hands full with real crime crimes already,

00:33:40.780 especially since the prisons have been released. How will the LAPD react? Do you think they will

00:33:49.020 do the foolish orders of Mayor Garcetti? Or will they say, nah, boss, we'll stick to the crime. You

00:33:54.220 can have, you know, your political ticket givers take care of the social distancing. 0.69

00:33:59.180 I don't think LAPD is going to be too active. I mean, there's also the question of influential

00:34:06.380 lobbying groups in the city. So, for example, you can probably hear a lawnmower in the background

00:34:10.700 here. One industry that never shut down in L.A. during the pandemic, even when the stay at home

00:34:17.100 orders were at their most strict was landscaping, landscaping and gardening. People just kept coming

00:34:22.700 to work. People kept showing up at homes. Some days, the only cars you'd see on the street were the

00:34:27.340 pickup trucks loaded with lawnmowers and other gardening equipment. And that's because that's

00:34:32.380 just a massive industry among the Hispanic community here. And Garcetti was not going to

00:34:38.220 get away with telling those folks to stay home. Now, in Michigan, the Democratic governor there,

00:34:44.140 Governor Gretchen Whitmer, did tell landscapers and gardeners to stay home. And they enforced that 0.95

00:34:50.060 pretty rigidly. You would not get away with that here, where the Latino population is so important 0.99

00:34:55.580 to the electorate. Likewise, with the construction industry, construction workers basically stayed on

00:35:01.660 the job here. There are a couple of houses going up near me. And those guys kept coming to work. As

00:35:07.420 long as the people who own the property had money to pay them, those industries kept going. Those

00:35:12.300 workers kept showing up to work. And Garcetti was not going to be able to shut them down. So I think

00:35:17.180 what you're going to see is more and more pushback from influential industries, from business

00:35:22.620 associations, from some labor unions, people are just going to say, we've had enough of this.

00:35:27.660 And we're going to take the risk. We've learned how to manage the risk. We'll do the face masks.

00:35:32.460 We'll do the social distancing. We'll keep older relatives at home, or we will be more careful

00:35:38.220 about people with preexisting conditions. But they're not going to be able to enforce that kind 0.78

00:35:43.180 of rigid regulation for much longer. Yeah. Well, listen, thanks for letting us catch up on that

00:35:48.140 stuff. It's just nice to see you out in LA. I'm sort of jealous up here. We had snow a

00:35:52.620 couple of days ago in Toronto, if you can believe it. Let me get back to the reason we really called

00:35:57.180 you. And I know I've burned up half our time just talking about LA, but it's so interesting to me.

00:36:02.860 When I reached out to you just on some silly Canadian news, you wrote back and said, this is

00:36:06.700 nuclear. And I think you were talking about the publication of previously classified information

00:36:13.740 that was used in the witch hunts to find the Russians that were in collusion with the Trump

00:36:19.500 campaign. In particular, the spying committed by the Obama administration on the Trump campaign,

00:36:26.300 including General Michael Flynn. Is that what you were referring to when you said this is nuclear?

00:36:33.500 Yes. On Wednesday, acting director of national intelligence, Rick Grinnell,

00:36:37.420 who I've known for a very long time, actually, released a declassified list of the names of

00:36:45.020 Obama administration officials who had unmasked General Michael Flynn's name in the last days of

00:36:52.060 that administration. And the list was rather long. It was about 39 people, some of whom were

00:36:57.900 intelligence officials. And that's the kind of thing they do to try to figure out what's going on. But

00:37:01.660 some of them were political appointees. Some of them were people who had no connection to

00:37:08.540 the question of relations with Russia whatsoever. The ambassador to Italy, for example, was one of

00:37:14.060 those who had requested that Flynn's name be released. Now, it's a little fuzzy as to what exactly

00:37:19.500 they requested because they all received some kind of intelligence documents and the names of the

00:37:23.820 Americans are hidden. And then the unmasking process is when you ask them to reveal what the name is, 0.92

00:37:30.460 what the hidden name is, who the identity of the person is in this wireless surveillance transcript.

00:37:37.180 They didn't ask for Flynn precisely, but they asked for this name, who I'm led to believe

00:37:45.100 could only have been Michael Flynn. In other words, they knew they were asking about Flynn.

00:37:49.180 They were asking about him in early and mid-December, which is long before he was having

00:37:54.540 conversations with the Russian ambassador that eventually got him in trouble. Not that there was

00:37:58.620 anything illegal about those conversations, but he was accused later of lying to the FBI about the

00:38:04.060 content of those conversations. It's not clear that he lied to the FBI, but he pleaded guilty as part of

00:38:08.860 a plea bargain. It seems because the FBI threatened to indict or the Department of Justice threatened to

00:38:15.660 indict his son. They put a lot of pressure on him and he acquiesced. Now he's trying to change his plea and

00:38:23.100 the Department of Justice wants to drop the case. But Grinnell basically has named and shamed the

00:38:27.260 Obama administration officials who were involved in this unmasking effort, including Samantha Power,

00:38:33.100 the ambassador to the United Nations. And Trey Gowdy, former representative Trey Gowdy,

00:38:39.820 when he questioned her in a now declassified hearing at the House Intelligence Committee,

00:38:45.580 informed her that she was the biggest unmasker of U.S. persons in the history of the country,

00:38:51.420 that nobody has ever unmasked as many names or nobody has ever made as many unmasking requests as

00:38:57.340 Samantha Power. She seemed kind of confused by it all. She claimed that she wasn't responsible for all

00:39:02.620 those unmasking requests. But she's also one of the most partisan members of the Obama inner circle. So partisan,

00:39:09.180 in fact, I don't know if you remember this, but during the 2008 primary, they had to drop her from

00:39:14.700 the Obama campaign because she called Hillary Clinton a monster. And that's how fiercely she 1.00

00:39:20.940 fights for Obama. So she was very active or her office was very active in unmasking names. And she

00:39:28.700 asked for Flynn's name to be unmasked several times. So it's all very interesting. We still don't

00:39:33.420 know who leaked Flynn's name to the Washington Post. That's the only actual crime here that we know of

00:39:39.980 because it's illegal to leak classified information to the media. And his name, while unmasked, was still

00:39:44.860 classified. We don't know who did that, but I think we may find out. I also note that Joe Biden,

00:39:52.300 if I'm not mistaken, was on the list of people who saw the CNN. That was the biggest brand new piece

00:39:59.580 of information was that Joe Biden was the last person on the list in chronological order.

00:40:04.540 He was the last person to ask for the unmasking. And he did it on an interesting day. He did it on

00:40:10.220 January 12th, 2017, which is, first of all, barely more than a week

00:40:16.300 left in the Obama administration. So Biden had nothing to do at work, really. There's no real

00:40:21.660 reason for him to ask for anything to be unmasked. It's also the day when the Washington Post first

00:40:27.260 revealed that Mike Flynn was having conversations with the Russian ambassador.

00:40:31.340 So it looks like Biden may have, out of curiosity, tried to figure out the story.

00:40:36.460 But we don't know what he knew and we don't know when he knew it because he was sitting in with Obama

00:40:40.460 on January 5th on this big meeting that Obama had with all the intelligence and law enforcement chiefs

00:40:46.060 where they planned out who was going to approach Trump and what they were going to find out, what

00:40:49.580 they were going to say. So there's a lot that we have to uncover. What we do know is that Joe Biden

00:40:54.300 was not completely truthful with the public when he was asked earlier this week by George

00:41:00.620 Stephanopoulos on ABC News, Good Morning America, he was asked about whether he knew about the Flynn

00:41:07.180 investigation. And he said he didn't know anything. Then Stephanopoulos said, but you were there at this

00:41:11.660 January 5th meeting. Then Biden backtracked and said, oh, yeah, well, I knew there was an investigation,

00:41:16.140 but I didn't know more than that. Well, now we know he knew more because he asked for Flynn's name to be

00:41:20.700 unmasked. So he certainly knew that Flynn was captured on these surveillance transcripts of the

00:41:27.100 Russian ambassador. And we don't know what else Joe Biden knew. Of course, he could claim now that he

00:41:32.380 doesn't remember. And that would be a credible excuse at the moment, because as Julian Castro said during

00:41:38.620 one of the debates, Joe Biden can barely remember what happened two minutes ago. So not being able to

00:41:43.900 remember would be a plausible excuse. Here's a quick clip of that George Stephanopoulos and Joe

00:41:49.580 Biden moment. This is slightly emphasized by the Trump campaign. They they zoom in on his earpiece.

00:41:56.380 Take a quick look at this. It was quite painful to watch. I do want to ask you about Michael Flynn.

00:42:02.060 The president said yesterday that that move is justified because President Obama targeted Flynn.

00:42:06.460 He called it, quote, the biggest political crime in U.S. history. Your former Senate colleague,

00:42:11.340 Charles Grassley, has added that Flynn was entrapped. So what did you know about those moves

00:42:15.980 to investigate Michael Flynn? And was there anything improper done?

00:42:20.780 I know nothing about those moves to investigate Michael Flynn, number one. Number two,

00:42:25.260 I do want to press that. You say you didn't know anything about it, but you were reported to be at

00:42:28.620 a January 5th, 2017 meeting where you and the president were briefed on the FBI's plan to question

00:42:36.300 Michael Flynn. I thought you asked me whether or not I had anything to do with him being prosecuted.

00:42:40.940 OK, I'm sorry. I was aware that there was that they asked for an investigation. But that's all

00:42:47.660 I know about it. I don't know the detail of where we are right now. Focus on what's in front of us.

00:42:53.900 You have plenty of time to investigate this issue. I think there's nothing there.

00:42:57.980 There. Well, Joe, let me ask you this, because in my life and I'm getting old, I'm probably 10 years old

00:43:04.540 new. I've had a lot of these moments that I thought this is nuclear. This is it. This is the big moment.

00:43:10.060 This is the reveal. This is proof of everything. And I'm so excited. And I, you know, I tell everyone

00:43:16.460 and I show everyone and I publish things and nothing because the other side doesn't care. I mean,

00:43:25.980 for example, when there's a Me Too allegation against a Democrat, well, they didn't actually

00:43:31.660 care. That's just a weapon they use against conservatives or so many of the gotchas are

00:43:36.540 the reveal. So this is shocking to you and me because we believe that no U.S. president

00:43:43.820 administration should spy on its rivals. That sounds like something Putin would do. You and I believe in

00:43:50.140 the rule of law and not abusing spy technology. But I don't think the other side does. And I don't

00:44:01.020 think the media who were part of selling this collusion myth, I don't think they actually care

00:44:08.300 either. They were all angry at Richard Nixon for his break in just because it was Nixon. They weren't

00:44:14.540 particularly angry at Hillary Clinton when she committed crimes. So I'm revved up by what you

00:44:20.460 call nuclear. But I don't think any Democrat is feeling one shade of embarrassment. And I don't

00:44:27.660 think the media are going to run with it. I already see the media defending it.

00:44:32.940 Yes, the Democrats in the media haven't really admitted that this is a problem yet.

00:44:39.420 However, they're on the defensive. And it's becoming tougher and tougher for them because

00:44:47.260 more and more information is coming out. You mentioned the Me Too story with Tara Reid

00:44:52.220 accusing Joe Biden of sexual assault. There's more information coming out about that. And the

00:44:57.340 Democrats do not control that flow of information. Likewise with Michael Flynn. There's more information

00:45:03.500 that's going to come out about what the Obama administration did. There's more that has to be

00:45:09.100 declassified and more transcripts, for example, that Adam Schiff is sitting on that Richard Grinnell

00:45:15.980 could simply move on. So we're going to see more and more information come out. The Democrats are

00:45:22.380 losing control of the flow of information. It certainly is energizing Trump's supporters who now

00:45:29.260 feel like they're on the offensive. And eventually Democrats are going to sound somewhat tired as they

00:45:35.900 continue to trot out defenses that get shot down again and again and again. I think they're worried,

00:45:42.620 not necessarily because they are taking this seriously, which they aren't, but just because

00:45:47.260 they've lost control of the narrative. They want this to be about Trump just using a diversion to

00:45:53.900 distract from coronavirus or whatever. But coronavirus is also a changing story. It's now about the economy.

00:46:00.620 It's not about the virus anymore. And Democrats don't control that either because people aren't

00:46:06.380 listening to their mayors. People aren't listening to their governors. And it's the smarter Democrats

00:46:11.980 like Jared Polis in Colorado who are doing what Republicans are doing. That is to say, finding a way

00:46:18.540 to reopen their economy. The national Democrats are simply focused on keeping everything shut down as

00:46:24.140 long as possible. It appears as though they want to maximize the economic damage. They want to maximize the

00:46:29.100 political damage to Trump. But they're not in control anymore. So the Democrats are fighting

00:46:35.180 from terrain that is, let's say, low. They don't have the high ground anymore. And slippery. They

00:46:41.580 don't have good footing anymore. And Republicans basically are seizing the high ground again in this

00:46:46.540 in this debate, in this series of debates. And I think Democrats are going to start to suffer from a

00:46:50.940 little bit of fatigue.

00:46:53.420 One last comment. I know we've kept you a long time. Boy, it looks nice where you are, by the way.

00:46:57.660 You know, Bill Maher, the comedian on HBO, made a quip more than a year ago that he wished for a

00:47:07.580 recession because that, he thought, would get rid of Trump. And he's probably right on that. Now,

00:47:13.340 that's a comedian making an irresponsible comment, trying to make a dramatic point. I think if he were

00:47:20.940 actually in a position of power, he probably would not say that honestly. That's just a lippy provocateur.

00:47:29.900 But I think that that's sort of the model being taken by Democrats across the board. You mentioned

00:47:35.820 one exception in Colorado. But whether it's Democrats in public health, Democrats in Washington, or maybe

00:47:42.140 even the mayor of L.A., if they can destroy Trump's strong suit, which was a booming economy, low

00:47:48.540 unemployment, everyone doing well. I actually think that Bill Maher comment, a recession would stop

00:47:55.900 Trump. I actually think the Democrats are siding with the virus and siding with the recession. I know

00:48:03.580 that sounds insane, but I think that's what they're doing. Well, they are doing that for two reasons,

00:48:11.340 one legitimate, one illegitimate. I think that there are more Democrats who legitimately fear that opening

00:48:17.820 up the economy too quickly could lead to a second wave of infections, and they're worried about that.

00:48:24.220 Democrats by nature are risk averse, more so than Republicans. It's also, it's a cultural difference

00:48:29.260 between the parties. There was a CNN poll that came out this week that showed, and I'm only off

00:48:37.020 very slightly on the numbers here, but basically three out of four Democrats expect things to get

00:48:42.380 worse, and one out of four Democrats expects things to get better. It's exactly the opposite

00:48:46.860 with Republicans. Three out of four Republicans expect things to get better, and one out of four

00:48:51.740 expects things to get worse. Republicans, conservatives in general, are more comfortable with the idea of

00:48:57.260 managing risk. Democrats want the risks managed for them, and they want the state, they want government

00:49:06.220 to eliminate those risks. I don't agree with that perspective, but I think it is a sincere perspective,

00:49:12.540 and so people are worried that we're going to come out of this thing and plunge right back in again.

00:49:18.060 However, there are Democrats who simply want to maximize the economic damage, who are thinking as

00:49:23.900 Bill Maher was thinking, I don't think it's going to work, and here's why. If this had been a mild recession,

00:49:30.300 if this had been a recession confined to the United States, then I think you could point the finger at

00:49:37.100 Trump, and there would be policies you might be able to find somewhere you could blame. He's the guy in

00:49:42.220 charge anyway, so he gets blamed for whatever happens on his watch, but because this is a virus that has affected the

00:49:47.740 entire world, and because this is not a recession, but simply a pandemic, a shock to the economy so deep,

00:49:55.900 it's unlike anything we've ever experienced before, it almost has no effect on Trump. I won't say it helps

00:50:02.780 him, but it gives him an opportunity to show his managerial skills. During the election in 2016, Democrats

00:50:11.900 enjoyed pointing out all of Trump's bankruptcies, and they said this guy's been a failure in business.

00:50:16.300 They don't understand what bankruptcy does. Bankruptcy allows you to rearrange things,

00:50:21.340 come back better than ever, and the fact that Trump's been through bankruptcy and succeeded

00:50:26.700 is actually an excellent training for restarting an economy after a sudden shock, and he's done

00:50:32.300 exceptionally well by global standards in terms of the economic interventions, as well as in terms of

00:50:38.060 the innovations and the changes government has made. You can argue that we weren't prepared enough for the

00:50:43.580 pandemic, but you also have to acknowledge that nobody was prepared, at least not in the West.

00:50:49.180 Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore, they had been through Middle East Respiratory Syndrome five

00:50:53.100 years ago, they were better prepared, but there's no state or mayor, no city, no state, no Democrat who

00:51:00.380 was prepared. In fact, two Democrats in particular, Bill de Blasio in New York City and Gavin Newsom and

00:51:07.020 Jerry Brown, his predecessor in California, actually destroyed the stockpiles, got rid of the stockpiles

00:51:14.460 that Republicans had built up beforehand precisely to deal with pandemics. It turns out that

00:51:20.780 Arnold Schwarzenegger, of all people, and Michael Bloomberg in New York, Schwarzenegger in California,

00:51:26.140 Bloomberg in New York, had prepared for a pandemic after the SARS scare in the early 2000s,

00:51:33.020 and Jerry Brown in California, Gavin Newsom in California, the two Democrats, and Bill de Blasio,

00:51:38.620 the Democrat in New York, they just let those stockpiles fall apart, they sold off the respirators

00:51:43.660 or ventilators, they got rid of the masks, they used up everything that was there, and they never

00:51:48.620 replenished it. And every Democrat basically was unprepared, as unprepared, if not more unprepared,

00:51:55.980 than Trump. I mean, Trump, at least to his credit, enacted some pandemic precautionary measures last

00:52:01.900 year before we even knew about coronavirus. He had executive orders. Of course, they were looking

00:52:05.820 then at influenza. They weren't looking at a SARS-type coronavirus pandemic. So, you know,

00:52:12.140 Dwight Eisenhower said, the reason they call it an emergency is it's because the one thing you weren't

00:52:17.260 prepared for. But be that as it may, Trump did react with the travel ban on China and immediately

00:52:24.940 got American industry going, got things going in a way that we've never seen before in the United

00:52:30.140 States or really anywhere. We have this dramatic increase in testing capability. We've had

00:52:35.020 innovations. We are now, as Trump says, the king of ventilators because we've produced them so quickly.

00:52:39.340 We're exporting them to other parts of the world. So Trump's response has been absolutely phenomenal.

00:52:45.820 So it's given him, this pandemic has given him a chance to show how he manages, and it turns out he

00:52:50.620 manages very well. And to the extent that we weren't ready for this, that's because Trump was following

00:52:55.100 the advice of the scientists because the scientists were saying as late as March that you can still go

00:53:00.060 to campaign events and you can still take cruises. Dr. Anthony Fauci, the Democrat hero,

00:53:04.220 said on March 9th that people who have no other risk factors should feel fine going on a cruise.

00:53:09.100 That was in March 9th. That was two days before Trump went on the airwaves from the Oval Office and

00:53:14.300 told everyone we're shutting down the country. So I think Trump has actually done very well.

00:53:20.060 His approval rating in some polls is as high as it's ever been. Democrats are panicking and they're

00:53:26.940 starting to realize they're on the wrong side of this reopening question. That by trying to keep

00:53:31.500 people at home, they're incurring the wrath, not just of Republicans and conservatives, but their own

00:53:37.100 voters. People are tired of it. Democrats also have to pay the bills. And Trump's been very generous.

00:53:43.980 They've had forgiveness for rents, for mortgages, stimulus payments, PPP loans for small business.

00:53:52.540 There's been all of this intervention by the Fed and by the government and Trump's led all of it.

00:53:58.940 So Democrats are now dealing not with Herbert Hoover, but with FDR. And it's harder to beat FDR. You know,

00:54:06.380 we didn't get out of the Great Depression until the Second World War, but FDR kept getting reelected

00:54:11.820 because he was seen as doing something. He was seen as trying. Now, this is a more divided time

00:54:17.340 and the media tries to keep people hating Trump, but Trump is active. He's doing things. He is seen

00:54:24.060 at least to be trying. He's not doing the typical, if you might say that, Republican. He's not a

00:54:29.260 stereotypical Republican, less government, let people survive on their own. I mean, that's the stereotype,

00:54:36.460 obviously. It's not the reality. He is using less of the federal government, but he's empowered the state

00:54:41.020 governments, the local governments. And he's brought private industry together in this national

00:54:45.180 effort in a way no one's done before. So Trump has turned himself in a sense into the Republican FDR.

00:54:51.340 Democrats are hoping to run against Herbert Hoover. We'll see how it looks in the fall.

00:54:55.100 But I think the Democrats are actually in a tough spot here. Some of them want the economic damage

00:55:00.540 to be worse. They're blaming Trump, but somehow it's not working just yet. Maybe people are just not

00:55:05.420 focused on politics yet. People are still focused on the virus and bread and butter issues.

00:55:09.740 We may see more of a politicization of this thing as it recedes into the past.

00:55:14.140 But for now, I think Trump's got a fighting chance of winning in November.

00:55:17.420 Amazing. Well, Joel, I learned so much from you, as I always do. Thank you for joining us

00:55:22.460 from your lovely outdoor in L.A. I tell you, if I was in L.A., I would not be listening

00:55:27.900 to some Democrat mayor telling me not to go out or have fun either. Take care, my friend,

00:55:32.780 and have a great weekend and stay safe. Thank you, you too. All right. There you have it,

00:55:37.180 Joel Pollack, senior editor-at-large at Breitbart.com, joining us from the sunny outdoors

00:55:42.700 in Los Angeles, California. Stay with us.

00:55:45.660 Hey, welcome back on my monologue yesterday about questions I have about the pandemic. Sherry

00:55:58.620 writes, something feels very wrong about this pandemic. The results were not anywhere near

00:56:02.620 as bad as we were told, yet the authorities are very reluctant to end it. We should be celebrating

00:56:07.260 and reopening, getting our lives back to normal. Yet there is no sense of this. It is concerning.

00:56:12.940 Yeah, I mean, I understand the idea of being cautious. It's why you buy insurance. You just

00:56:20.060 don't know. You've got to prepare for the worst. I get it. And we simply didn't know in early days

00:56:25.260 how bad this was, because China lies about statistics. It was sort of like China's Chernobyl. 0.99

00:56:29.260 How bad is it? But now we see it's not that bad. Not one single person under 20 in Canada

00:56:35.580 has died from it. So at the very least, let the kids go back to school. Let the waiters and

00:56:39.580 waitresses go back to work. I think people love the power of saying, you can't work, you can. 1.00

00:56:46.140 I'll be your great giver. I'll give you 500 bucks a week from the government. I'll say,

00:56:50.940 you can work. I say, you're arrested. I think that appeals to all the wrong instincts in politicians.

00:56:57.500 On my interview with Aaron Rosenberg about an update on LetUsReport.com, Ron writes,

00:57:02.140 I found your decision to offer your legal research to a left-wing Alberta organization

00:57:06.140 immensely gratifying, even if they were ingrates. The principle of defending freedom of speech for

00:57:10.780 all is what sets the news apart from the stenographic legacy in media. Yeah, I mean,

00:57:15.900 it wasn't a big deal. We had the research. And I just said to our admin lawyers, pass it over.

00:57:21.580 Because, well, there's a selfish reason there too. Because if we can build up a jurisprudence,

00:57:27.100 build up a case law, case after case after case, of more journalists getting in rather than fewer,

00:57:34.220 that benefits us in the long term. I don't want to be the only force in Canada fighting for a free

00:57:38.460 press. But it was a decision, because I know they hate us. And they were so mean to us. It was

00:57:46.380 shocking, but not surprising. Contrast that to when we went to court in the federal court in October,

00:57:53.340 try and get it in the leaders' debates. We had no help from any other media other than our friends

00:57:58.700 at True North. God bless them. And in fact, there was one blog there, Canada Land, that was live

00:58:04.940 tweeting from the courthouse. And they were negative. They were hoping we'd be kept out.

00:58:08.860 So yeah, there is no spirit of free press and free speech in the media party. It's a cartel.

00:58:14.220 They're all in it together. They're all on the take from Trudeau. And they're all liberals.

00:58:17.820 It's too bad. There used to be a time liberals cared about free speech. That hasn't really been

00:58:22.060 the case in 20 years. Tyler writes,

00:58:26.140 Oy vey, Rosenberg looks a lot like Ezra's younger brother. You know, I thought that was a funny email

00:58:31.340 when I got it. And I looked at it. And maybe there's a little bit to it. I think the glasses

00:58:35.420 help in sort of a general Yiddish look. I thought it was funny. On my interview with a conservative

00:58:40.620 leadership candidate, Dr. Leslie Lewis-Barry writes,

00:58:42.940 You seem rather proud that a candidate for the conservative party leadership would appear twice

00:58:47.020 in your program. Yes, she is attractive and refreshing, but she does not stand a chance 0.99

00:58:51.180 of being anything more than a candidate. You should not be interviewing her,

00:58:53.820 nor admiring her any further. She's nice, but it's over. Stop it today and now.

00:58:58.620 Ah! Well, Barry, I mean, it's pretty tough of you.

00:59:05.100 We invited all the leadership candidates to talk to us. Derek Sloan did twice,

00:59:09.580 once with me and once with Kean. Leslie Lewis did twice. And Jim Carahelios did twice. So we talked

00:59:15.020 to each of those candidates twice. I can't remember if anyone on our team talked to DeCary,

00:59:19.660 but he was never certified. And we asked Aaron O'Toole and Peter McKay many times to come on.

00:59:26.460 I personally called their campaign staff, who I know who are friends of mine, friends of the rebel.

00:59:31.260 And they just wouldn't come on. So it's not so much that I'm in love with those three

00:59:35.980 candidates that we did interview. It said, I'm grateful anyone comes on the show and has a parley

00:59:40.060 with us and shows, more importantly, that they're not beholden to the censorship,

00:59:45.100 deplatforming mindset of the rest of the media party. That's what bugs me about McKay and O'Toole.

00:59:50.300 McKay is obviously too liberal to me. And O'Toole just seems boring and doesn't have the charisma to

00:59:55.580 win. Those are personal views. Who cares? It's not really important. It's just my view. What bugs me

01:00:00.620 about the decision not to come on the rebel is not some vanity. It's that it shows they're terrified

01:00:05.980 of what the mean girls, the media party will say about them. I mean, frankly, if I was them,

01:00:10.940 you want a home run, come on my show and fight me. Not physically, but poke at me. Ezra, you were

01:00:17.500 wrong. It would be weird, but you want to be a hero to the left, come on my show and debate me and

01:00:22.860 wrangle with me or something. But don't let the mean girls say who you can and can't talk with, 1.00

01:00:27.900 because that's just, I mean, it's the perfect encapsulation is what I talked about in my

01:00:32.620 monologue today. Peter McKay makes a pretty bland tweet supporting the good Alberta boys who

01:00:37.900 carried the garbage off the railroad track. He just says, look at these guys clearing the

01:00:42.460 railroad track. Vigilante, you like crime. Like, you want vengeance. And he, instead of just laughing

01:00:50.940 that off, he listens to them, is persuaded by them, deletes the tweet. I don't know if he apologized.

01:00:58.620 Like, that's, even if he was wrong, show some spine. I'm terrified that a man with a jellyfish

01:01:07.100 of a spine like that will win. Who cares what he thinks of me or the rebel? He just, he's like a

01:01:12.460 seat cushion that bears the impression of whoever last sat on him. Oh my God. God help us all.

01:01:17.820 That's the show for today. We'll have a show on Monday and we'll have videos over the weekend.

01:01:22.300 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home,

01:01:26.140 good night. Keep fighting for freedom.

Rebel News Podcast - May 16, 2020

Conservative Party’s leadership contest lurches forward — I’ll tell you the Rebel News view

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