Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ A regime journalist asks Joe Biden to investigate Elon Musk for treason

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. Today, we're going to interview Ben Weingarten about the fact that they're still

00:00:03.640 not done counting the votes in different states in America. I think that's shocking.

00:00:08.940 But first, I want to talk about an even more shocking thing, a reporter for Mike Bloomberg

00:00:13.540 asking Joe Biden if he thinks Elon Musk should be investigated for a national security risk.

00:00:21.320 I'll show you the videotape. It's incredible.

00:00:24.920 But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus. I mentioned

00:00:27.540 videotape. You got to see the video. The show is really built for video.

00:00:33.220 And we call that Rebel News Plus. For $8 a month, you get all of my podcasts in video form. Plus,

00:00:39.140 we have other shows on a weekly basis by other talent here. $8. It's not a ton of money, but it

00:00:46.180 adds up for us. Because remember, we don't take any money from government. So we rely on you.

00:00:50.980 Please consider going to rebelnewsplus.com. All right. Thanks. Here's today's show.

00:00:57.540 Tonight, a regime journalist asked Joe Biden to investigate Elon Musk for treason.

00:01:16.440 It's November 10th, and this is The Ezra Levant Show.

00:01:19.220 You're fighting for freedom! Shame on you, you censorious bug!

00:01:34.080 Musk is a threat to U.S. national security, and should the U.S. and with the tools you have

00:01:40.180 investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?

00:01:45.540 I think that Elon Musk's

00:01:56.540 cooperation and or

00:02:02.540 technical relationships with other countries

00:02:10.260 is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I'm not suggesting

00:02:20.980 that. I'm suggesting that it's worth being looked at. But that's all I'll say.

00:02:31.020 That's a reporter named Jenny Leonard. She works for a news company called Bloomberg News, which is,

00:02:36.820 of course, named after its owner, Mike Bloomberg, the billionaire oligarch who bought his way into

00:02:42.260 being mayor of New York City and then tried to do the same with the presidency in 2020, but he failed.

00:02:48.340 Watch the video again. I've seen enough press conferences to know when a question is set up,

00:02:52.820 planned, orchestrated, choreographed. Take a look.

00:02:54.820 Musk is a threat to U.S. national security, and should the U.S. and with the tools you have

00:03:01.060 investigate his joint acquisition of Twitter with foreign governments, which include the Saudis?

00:03:06.420 I think that

00:03:13.580 Elon Musk's

00:03:17.420 cooperation and or

00:03:23.420 technical

00:03:27.260 relationships with other countries

00:03:31.140 is

00:03:32.140 is worthy of being looked at. Whether or not he is doing anything inappropriate, I'm not suggesting

00:03:41.860 that. I'm suggesting that it's worth being looked at. But that's all I'll say.

00:03:51.780 So Elon Musk bought Twitter, which is basically the town square for politicians and journalists.

00:03:57.140 And he made a tweet the other day endorsing the Republicans, which was a pretty tepid endorsement,

00:04:04.260 by the way. I don't think it moved a single vote. I think it was just Musk's way of signaling that he was

00:04:09.140 different from the rest of the Silicon Valley left wing mafia. He said to independent minded voters,

00:04:16.180 shared power curbs the worst excesses of both parties. Therefore, I recommend voting for a Republican Congress,

00:04:22.500 given that the presidency is Democratic. Boy, what a radical. But actually, it is radical. Other than Peter Thiel,

00:04:29.700 can you name a single Silicon Valley tycoon who isn't a left wing Democrat?

00:04:35.780 That's Musk's promise to Twitter users that it won't be biased to the left anymore, that it'll take a lighter touch

00:04:41.620 at censoring people, that it won't pander to private interests and hidden hands. I showed you the other day

00:04:47.300 and they had a whole team at Twitter dedicated to making the app compliant with the United Nations

00:04:52.020 political agenda. And they had a special portal for the FBI. Remember, Twitter is the place that banned

00:04:57.540 a sitting U.S. president because of mean tweets, but lets dictators from China and Iran publish their

00:05:02.900 threats with impunity. Musk has said he wants to ease up on the politics and the censorship and the

00:05:08.740 private agendas. Well, that can't be allowed. Now, at the same time, Musk committed a terrible sin in

00:05:14.740 the eyes of the regime. And I mean that in the sense that President Eisenhower did when he coined

00:05:19.620 the phrase the military industrial complex. Musk said that maybe getting into a proxy war with Russia

00:05:25.780 isn't quite risk free. He said, if Russia is faced with the choice of losing Crimea or using battlefield

00:05:33.300 nukes, they will choose the latter. We've already sanctioned, cut off Russia in every possible way. 0.99

00:05:39.540 So what more do they have left to lose? If we nuke Russia back, they will nuke us. And then 1.00

00:05:44.500 we have World War III. Well, how dare you be against nuclear war, sir, you Putin apologist.

00:05:50.900 By the way, Elon Musk, who runs a satellite internet company called Starlink, has provided

00:05:55.780 free internet satellite coverage to Ukraine to keep their internet working despite the disruption of

00:06:01.140 their infrastructure by the Russian invasion. And that's a donation, unlike arms dealers who are

00:06:06.980 charging for their weapon sales. I think Elon Musk is what he appears to be, a chatty public

00:06:13.460 intellectual who likes to brainstorm in public. He's not an enemy. He's actually quite charitable,

00:06:17.140 it seems. And he believes in freedom in an old fashioned way, even though he's in industries that

00:06:21.860 don't. And I think he obviously supports Ukraine. Well, that must be stopped. You can't let Twitter,

00:06:28.580 the marketplace of ideas of the modern age, you can't let it become uncensored and free. Imagine if

00:06:33.220 he lets Trump back on the platform and you can't have people questioning the war in Ukraine,

00:06:37.220 even though I think he really is the most generous person in the world in terms of his outright

00:06:42.340 donation to the Ukrainian cause. Well, we can't have his free thinking. Thus, the choreographed

00:06:47.060 question about investigating him as really a foreign spy, that's the implication. And that question,

00:06:52.340 Musk is a threat to national security, including because of his connection with the Saudis in Twitter.

00:06:59.060 Well, fair enough. I mean, here's a news story about the Saudis investing big time in Twitter. This is from

00:07:04.820 Forbes. The headline is, Billionaire Saudi Prince Al-Walid takes $300 million stake in Twitter.

00:07:11.860 I'll read a bit. Saudi Prince Al-Walid Bin Talal has added Twitter to his long list of investments,

00:07:18.580 putting $300 million into the social media company. The billionaire investor announced

00:07:23.140 the move in a statement saying the investment followed months of negotiation and due diligence.

00:07:28.260 Our investment in Twitter reaffirms our ability in identifying suitable opportunities

00:07:32.980 to invest in promising high growth businesses with a global impact. Al-Walid said in a statement,

00:07:37.860 it did not indicate the size of the prince's ownership stake in Twitter or the implied value

00:07:42.180 of Twitter given the new investment. Definitely worth investigating.

00:07:46.500 Except can I point out the date of that article? December 19th, 2011.

00:07:53.620 Saudi Arabia has been one of the biggest owners of Twitter for more than a decade. In fact, when Elon Musk

00:07:59.140 first made his bid to buy Twitter and take it private, the Saudis didn't want him. Here's that 1.00

00:08:04.660 same Prince Al-Walid when Elon Musk first offered to buy it. He said, I don't believe that the proposed

00:08:11.540 offer by Elon Musk, $54.20, comes close to the intrinsic value of Twitter given its growth prospects.

00:08:19.140 Being one of the largest and long-term shareholders of Twitter, Kingdom, that's his company, and I reject

00:08:25.700 this offer. And you can see the image appended to that tweet showing that the Saudis had actually

00:08:31.140 upped their stake in Twitter. And by the way, the Saudis used Twitter to spy on its users. 0.61

00:08:37.060 Here's one news story about it in the Guardian. Just a few months ago,

00:08:40.180 ex-Twitter employee found guilty of spying on Saudi dissidents. Ahmed Abu Amo found to have given

00:08:46.260 users personal information to Mohammed bin Salman's aide. So for more than a decade, the Saudis have owned a

00:08:52.020 huge chunk of Twitter and have used it to spy on users. But no problem. Twitter took out the real

00:08:59.300 enemy, Donald Trump. But now that Elon Musk wants free speech and endorses the Republicans, he's a

00:09:04.980 national security risk, especially for his links to Saudi Arabia. And Joe Biden says it's worth the

00:09:10.180 government looking into. And that Bloomberg reporter, eh? What a question. She never thought to ask that

00:09:16.980 question about Saudi Arabia before, even though it's owned a huge chunk of Twitter for a decade.

00:09:23.380 I don't think she's ever asked that question about TikTok, has she? TikTok, which is a huge app,

00:09:28.660 especially for young people, is run by China as spyware on millions of Westerners, or Huawei,

00:09:35.060 the Chinese telecom giant. None of that concerns Bloomberg or Joe Biden. Hey, I wonder if that has

00:09:42.420 anything to do with the Biden family's financial deals with China. This is a story from the Washington

00:09:47.540 Post. Hunter Biden, who is no discernible skill or experience, he landed huge business deals in China

00:09:54.100 and Ukraine and Russia. You know, his laptop, which has been verified as accurate by the mainstream media,

00:10:00.340 talks about all these deals giving 10% to the big guy. Gee, I wonder who that possibly could mean.

00:10:05.540 The whole world knows that Hunter Biden is for sale. He's a story in the BBC. You don't think

00:10:12.660 every Chinese or Ukrainian or Russian oligarch knows the entry point into the US administration?

00:10:18.260 For all the allegations of Donald Trump or his family somehow benefiting financially

00:10:22.260 from his presidency, there was nothing like this. Which perhaps explains why Chinese companies like 1.00

00:10:27.860 TikTok are not subject to investigations, but Elon Musk's Twitter is. Seriously, just today,

00:10:33.380 the White House confirmed it. Take a look at this video. The president yesterday said that it should

00:10:40.020 be, that Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter should be looked into as a potential threat to national

00:10:47.220 security. Can you offer anything about why? And he also said there are many ways to look into that.

00:10:55.300 How would you look into that? Well, you heard the president yesterday and the CFIUS process is the

00:10:59.940 normal process through which transactions that might have a national security nexus

00:11:04.500 get reviewed. And I will defer to the CFIUS process rather than comment on it further from this podium.

00:11:10.900 Yeah. CFIUS stands for the Committee on Foreign Investment in the US. It reviews national security

00:11:18.660 threats emanating from business deals. That's what they're talking about there. Now, CFIUS hasn't

00:11:23.060 investigated Hunter Biden because Hunter Biden is a good Democrat. So why would they? But who was

00:11:29.380 that reporter who asked the setup question? Like I say, she works for an oligarch named Mike Bloomberg. 0.97

00:11:34.660 He has some interesting views on China. Let's just say that. I wonder if it's related to the fact that

00:11:39.460 he's made huge investments in China. Take a listen to him. I'm going to play a full clip. This is just

00:11:45.300 incredible. Mike Bloomberg talking about China. So the United States currently accounts for about 15% of

00:11:51.060 global greenhouse gas emissions. China accounts for roughly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions.

00:11:57.060 How do we, even if we get to net zero, how do you get China, India, and the other countries to be

00:12:03.140 good partners? China is doing a lot. Yes, they're still building a bunch of coal-fired power plants.

00:12:07.060 And they're still burning coal. Yes, they are. But they are now moving plants away from the cities.

00:12:13.300 The Communist Party wants to stay in power in China. And they listen to the public. When the public says,

00:12:19.460 I can't breathe the air, Xi Jinping is not a dictator. He has to satisfy his constituents,

00:12:25.380 so he's not going to survive. He's not a dictator? No, he has to. He has a constituency to

00:12:34.660 answer to. He doesn't have a vote. He doesn't have a democracy. He's not held accountable by voters.

00:12:40.420 If his advisers gave him... Is they check on him just a revolution?

00:12:44.900 You're not going to have a revolution. No government survives without the will of the majority of its

00:12:50.180 people. Okay? It's just, he has to deliver services. The Chinese Communist Party looks at Russia,

00:12:58.500 and they look for where the Communist Party is. And they don't find it anymore. And they don't want

00:13:02.900 that to happen. I mean, the idea that the Chinese government is responsive to sort of a democratic

00:13:07.860 expression of fresh air, clean air. Oh, come on. Of course they are.

00:13:10.900 I mean, I'm looking at the people in Hong Kong who are protesting and wondering whether the Chinese

00:13:16.260 government cares what they have to say. Go back and read the press the days when you have big pollution

00:13:19.060 in Beijing, and they're doing something about it. That's ridiculous. The trouble is you can't 0.85

00:13:24.500 overnight move cement plants and power plants just outside the city that are polluting the air,

00:13:30.500 and you have to have their product. So some of it takes time. And there's always in government,

00:13:36.500 even governments that aren't what we would call a democracy, there's lots of stakeholders who have

00:13:41.220 vested interests. And they have an impact. And that's why, if you listen to the young millennials,

00:13:46.500 let's go in and solve the problem overnight. Yeah, that'd be great if you didn't have to fund it

00:13:51.140 and get it through legal things. So Xi Jinping, the dictator of China, is not actually a dictator.

00:13:56.260 And again and again, he says this. It isn't a gaffe. It wasn't a misspeak. He's adamant about it. I

00:14:03.300 mean, he wants more money. He doesn't have enough. And he'll say that Xi Jinping is a great Democrat,

00:14:09.620 a great man of the people, because he's got big investments in China. Huge shout out to that

00:14:14.420 reporter, by the way. Her name is Margaret Hoover, for pressing him on it. Good for her. You don't see

00:14:19.300 a lot of journalism like that. Now, why is this all relevant to us here in Canada?

00:14:22.980 Well, because most things in America are relevant to us, because Twitter and Facebook

00:14:28.820 and the rest of the big tech companies dominate Canada just as much as they dominate the US. And

00:14:33.380 because Justin Trudeau is doing the same thing. Accusing his political opponents of being in

00:14:38.580 league with foreign enemies. They've even accused us here at Rebel News of being Russian spies.

00:14:44.500 What a laugh. I remember when the media and the Democrats said that Donald Trump was the

00:14:49.140 fascist bully who was threatening free speech. No, that was just them projecting. It's Biden who's 0.93

00:14:58.340 taking on all the trappings of a fascist leader. And don't think Trudeau won't either,

00:15:04.260 as his invocation of martial law proves. Stay with us for more with Ben Weingarten.

00:15:17.540 Well, it's been two days since the US midterm elections and the mighty state of Florida,

00:15:26.980 which I have to Google it, but I've got over 20 million souls there. They counted all their votes

00:15:33.380 in about an hour. Same thing in Texas, another very large state. But for some reason, states where

00:15:42.580 Republican insurgents are challenging Democrat incumbents, well, two days into it, and they've

00:15:49.620 only counted half or 70 percent of the ballots. I'm not quite sure why. If developing countries like 1.00

00:15:55.940 Brazil can count an enormous number of votes, Brazil, I think it's the fourth most populous nation in the

00:16:02.100 world. If they can do it in one night, why can't the United States? Is it on purpose? Is it to allow

00:16:08.340 some wiggle room there for some jiggery poker? You're not even allowed to ask such a question.

00:16:14.820 You'll be called an election denier. But it remains undeniable that in places like Nevada and Arizona,

00:16:23.460 where you have Republican challengers that are on the hunt and are very close,

00:16:27.940 it looks like we won't have the result for days or maybe even a week. It's very bizarre to me.

00:16:33.460 But joining us now to help pick things over is our friend Benjamin Weingarten, the deputy editor of

00:16:40.020 Real Clear Investigations, who joins us now by Skype. Ben, great to see you again. I remember when we

00:16:45.140 stayed up very late talking with you on election night 2020, and I remember things were looking very

00:16:52.660 promising. And then suddenly, quirky things started to happen very late at night, and polls were delayed,

00:16:58.980 and poll workers said they were going home, and new tranches of votes were found. And I have that same

00:17:05.380 sinking feeling again when I look at the candidate for governor in Arizona, Kerry Lake. When I look across

00:17:14.100 the map, and there's some parts of America that are still counting, and it just strikes me as

00:17:19.780 as hard to believe. Yeah, there's a bit of deja vu all over again, and I'm probably only marginally

00:17:27.780 less bleary-eyed than I was during that 2020 election night and then the days that followed it. But there's

00:17:34.980 a reason, I think, that history to the present is rhyming in this instance. And that is that many of the

00:17:44.740 voting procedures, the rules and regulations that were temporarily put in under cover of Chinese

00:17:52.500 coronavirus in 2020, oftentimes unduly, in terms of not the legislatures making the laws that then impacted

00:18:00.740 the process, those have gone from temporary and emergency to permanent and normalized. And so, consequently,

00:18:10.740 what you see is that we don't have an election day and night in America anymore. We have elections for

00:18:17.460 weeks. And we don't have in-person voting with identification overseen by election workers with

00:18:27.860 then observers slash challengers there as well, watching the whole process for the vast majority of

00:18:34.500 voters. Instead, we've essentially gone to an increasingly remote voting model. And that is to

00:18:42.980 what election officials attribute these slowdowns to, this collection of votes over a series of days,

00:18:50.340 and these various tranches of votes, and the need to verify them, and all manner of complications

00:18:58.020 essentially layered into the system that we never had for pretty much the entirety of American history.

00:19:04.980 You talk about Florida, the fact that they were able to collect the votes and have results on

00:19:10.660 election night, the way it had pretty much always been here, with the exception of some very, very tight

00:19:15.620 races historically. Florida's population is over 20 million. Arizona and Nevada combined have a population

00:19:23.780 that's about half the size of Florida's. So when you ask the question, essentially, why can't

00:19:31.300 Arizona and Nevada do what Florida does? Well, Florida has gone out and had very restrictive,

00:19:36.740 so-called restrictive, i.e., secure, election integrity-focused, robust election rules and regulations

00:19:44.580 put on the books. Arizona and Nevada have not. And I would argue it's not a matter of can't.

00:19:51.140 It's not an inability to count the votes and have a result on election night. It is a willingness.

00:20:00.100 And that raises the question of why would you endorse a system that leaves it to we're counting

00:20:05.940 votes and we're finding new tranches, et cetera, and we're 60 or 70 percent through two days after

00:20:11.780 the election, and we don't know when we're going to be able to certify all these ballots. Why is it that

00:20:16.020 we have that system? Democrats and apparently some GOP establishment members who didn't push back

00:20:22.580 against those 2020 standards, apparently they're comfortable with a system that opens itself up to

00:20:29.860 insecure, unsafe, non-secret ballots, or at very minimum, the potentiality for it. And that raises

00:20:35.860 all manner of questions about the confidence of elections. I tweeted something about this before.

00:20:40.100 The further you get from having elections on an election day in a booth, the less confidence

00:20:46.660 you have in the vote. The longer it takes to count the votes after election day, the less confidence

00:20:52.340 you have in the outcomes. And that's not the case that Republicans across this country made,

00:20:57.780 even though it was on the ballot in certain instances. And what you see right now, particularly in

00:21:01.940 Arizona, is the remarkable instance where essentially the chief election officer in the state,

00:21:07.060 Katie Hobbs, is on the ballot and weighing through this process where the votes are being counted,

00:21:14.420 Hobbs versus Wake. And she's going to be responsible for certifying the vote at the end of the day.

00:21:19.700 There's a huge battle about all this across the country. I wrote an in-depth report on this

00:21:24.820 for RealClear investigations that we put out on election day. There's been a huge battle that's going

00:21:28.820 on, but as Republicans and conservatives see it, they are way behind in terms of setting the rules of

00:21:34.740 the game and being involved in the process, the election infrastructure. And when it's dominated

00:21:40.820 or appears to be dominated by one party, that obviously calls into question the outcomes.

00:21:46.180 You know, it's not by accident. More than a decade ago, George Soros and his Open Society Foundations

00:21:53.300 set up an attorney's general project. And their goal was to put attorneys general across America

00:21:58.100 with the very explicit rule of amnesty, amnesty for immigration, amnesty for crimes. And you see

00:22:04.740 those radical Soros attorneys general across the country. This is not a conspiracy theory. This is one

00:22:10.580 of their public projects. They also set up a secretaries of state project. And of course,

00:22:16.340 the secretary of state in Washington, that's what Americans call their foreign minister. But the secretaries

00:22:22.660 of state on the state level, they're not foreign ministers. They're in charge of running things like

00:22:26.180 we've just described, running elections. And it is not a conspiracy theory to say that these are

00:22:32.420 run by operatives. This was the campaign plan of George Soros, who was largely successful. And I

00:22:40.180 don't know. I mean, let me take it in a different context. Let's talk about other contexts, contests,

00:22:47.220 like prosecuting someone for a crime. You have a prosecution and you have a defense, and they both

00:22:52.660 are vying very hard for the positive outcome. And there's a concept in criminal law called the

00:23:00.180 chain of custody of evidence. Like if something is, if some piece of evidence, if a gun, if a bullet,

00:23:06.260 if a knife is seized, you have to know where that, and the debate will turn on that, the prosecution will

00:23:12.820 turn on that. Well, was that gun or fingerprint known every second of the journey from when it

00:23:21.220 was seized to when it appears in court? They call that chain of custody. Or was it allowed to be

00:23:25.940 tampered with? Was someone alone with the evidence? That's enough to get a prosecution of someone thrown

00:23:32.980 out. Well, an election is a kind of trial where millions of voters are the jury. But what happened,

00:23:43.780 I mean, maybe I'm stretching the analogy, but their ballots, really their verdict, that's not

00:23:50.180 subject to the chain of custody. When you say, I've just found thousands more ballots, or they were

00:23:54.820 mailed in, or they weren't dated, but we found them. I suppose it's a different thing that's subject

00:24:00.100 to the chain of custody. But you'd have to be a fool to believe there's no jiggery-pokery. So much 0.99

00:24:04.580 turns on it. So much money, so much power, so much influence turns on it. And if you simply say, well,

00:24:10.100 I don't know when it will be done, and I don't know where we found these, who could possibly

00:24:15.460 credit it as being accurate? I find it appalling that this is happening in a first-world country 0.98

00:24:20.580 like America. I agree with you. And by the way, Jimmy Carter and James Baker put together a

00:24:29.300 bipartisan report on federal election reform back in 2005. And what they said in that report is that

00:24:35.540 absentee ballots have the most potential associated with them for fraud. And it's just a matter of

00:24:41.380 logic. It's not to say that there's been evidence of widespread fraud in the range of tens of thousands

00:24:47.140 or hundreds of thousands of votes, but that's in part because it's really hard to detect fraud. So I

00:24:52.580 don't know that we would even know the size, the scale, the scope of the fraud, absent whistleblowers,

00:24:57.940 or some other means of catching it. But it's just by very nature of the system. If the ballot is being

00:25:03.940 delivered to someone's home, you don't know who they're interacting with. You don't know who's

00:25:07.860 filling it out. You don't know if they're being coerced, persuaded, induced to vote a certain way.

00:25:12.900 And now we have this concept of ballot harvesting that's also been normalized in this country where

00:25:17.220 essentially ballots can be collected en masse in certain states by law and in other states illegally

00:25:22.020 and cast. The ballots can be delivered and then taken and distributed. So there's just all manner

00:25:30.100 of opportunities, the potentiality for fraud. And that undermines confidence in the system,

00:25:36.980 a representative government. And by the way, all of that aside, the fact of the matter is that even

00:25:43.060 layering in whatever margin of fraud we might associate with the races, and I do think that this 1.00

00:25:49.460 system, the further you get away from a system in person voting with photo identification. I mean,

00:25:54.340 heck, I went to a comedy club in New York City two weeks ago, and I needed to show a photo ID,

00:25:58.820 and they were very strict about it. And it's not like I'm a child. I'm pretty sure they knew I was of

00:26:02.340 age. You didn't have to show a photo ID where I vote at my precinct in New Jersey. You say,

00:26:07.220 what's your name? What's your address? Okay, you're in the book, sign your signature here. That's it.

00:26:12.020 The fact that a comedy club arguably has more security associated with it than elections,

00:26:18.020 there's something very wrong there. And it's like that across this country in far too many places.

00:26:23.780 Now, all that said, I think there's another aspect of this election worth talking about,

00:26:28.900 and Democrat dominance of the machine is a vital aspect of it. Their get out the vote operation

00:26:34.180 is dominant. A Biden administration executive order that has been too little focused upon,

00:26:39.140 which called for every government agency to put resources in to registering and getting voters to

00:26:46.180 participate, potentially partnering with third-party groups purportedly nonpartisan. But as we know from

00:26:53.300 the Zuckerberg case, not the case in 2020 where you had private dollars to the tune of hundreds of

00:26:58.660 millions funding election administration and oversight and management, often in concert with

00:27:04.980 these third-party, putatively nonpartisan, but generally progressive groups who may have had the same

00:27:09.540 thing again en masse in this election. But the fact of the matter is, look, you had someone like

00:27:15.060 John Fetterman in Pennsylvania who literally was beyond compromise. So first we had Joe Biden,

00:27:20.980 now we have John Fetterman. It was exposed to the light of day that he couldn't form a coherent

00:27:25.860 sentence in a debate. That debate happened two weeks before the election when hundreds of thousands

00:27:31.140 of early votes had already been cast. But nevertheless, what does it say that Democrats can run someone

00:27:37.780 who's wholly compromised and literally not there, really, mentally capable of doing the job of a

00:27:44.580 senator, which is reading, thinking, persuading, debating, arguing, making a case for something?

00:27:50.740 And he still won. And I make it even bigger. Look, in this country, everything is directionally poor.

00:27:57.380 You had polls showing that 75 percent of people were very angry about or at least

00:28:01.540 unhappy with the performance of Joe Biden and the Democrat Party more broadly by proxy here.

00:28:08.500 You have people who are, we are poorer, we are less secure, and still Democrats turned out tens of

00:28:14.660 millions of people. They crushed people's jobs. They stunted the learning of their children. They

00:28:20.900 crippled us via gas prices. They imposed all the tyrannical COVID-ian 1.00

00:28:25.860 acts, decrees upon us. The list goes on and on. They still churned out tens of millions of people.

00:28:32.020 And I think in one side of things, you have to credit Democrats for that. That is how

00:28:36.900 disciplined and how much of a machine they've built and how well they've conditioned people

00:28:41.460 who are Democrats to vote Democrat. By the same token, the fact that Republicans,

00:28:46.500 we don't know what their message was, is a massive indictment. I said to friends of mine and family

00:28:53.700 before the election, you know, voters out there overwhelmingly rank inflation and the economy as

00:28:58.660 kind of their number one concern. Understandably so. I could not tell any of them what the Republican

00:29:04.260 message is on, here's what we're going to do to make your life better in the face of this inflation,

00:29:09.540 or to counter the policies the other side. So there are multiple levels here of failure. And I think

00:29:16.020 on the Democrat side, success, the one shining beacon of success in the Republican side beyond

00:29:21.220 knocking off the DCCC chair in New York, and I'd say the impressive performance of Lee Zeldin and for

00:29:28.500 governor in New York and others in New York, as well as J.D. Vance, for example, winning in Ohio,

00:29:34.340 and we'll see what happens with the Senate and gubernatorial races, Nevada, Arizona, etc.,

00:29:38.500 is obviously Florida, where Florida had a red wave of red waves. It was a massive win,

00:29:45.780 obviously, for Governor DeSantis and then all the way down ticket as well. But then also a red wave

00:29:51.140 relative to a country that did not have a red wave. And I think that stands as an example of the right 0.59

00:29:58.500 message, the right messenger. And not only that, but the proof was in the pudding of the fact that

00:30:03.700 Florida stood as a magnet for conservatives. And in fact, many of these states, including New York,

00:30:09.140 for example, you could say that potentially Lee Zeldin was the victim of Governor DeSantis' success,

00:30:14.340 with the New York transplants leaving New York, going down to Florida, and turning Florida into

00:30:19.540 a bright red state. You know, that's a great point. Florida had the largest in-migration from other U.S.

00:30:27.140 states in the Union. And California and New York had very high out-migration. And who would move

00:30:36.420 from a deep blue state, who would move from L.A. or New York to Florida? Well, maybe it would be a

00:30:42.740 Democrat, maybe, probably. I mean, listen, it's not a political strike that determines if you're happy

00:30:48.100 with the lockdown. But probably freedom-minded people went to the freedom refuge. And so you're

00:30:54.740 right. Maybe some of that DeSantis win, like he won by I think a million and a half vote margin or

00:31:01.300 something. You take a million of that and sprinkle it around America, you probably tip a few places

00:31:08.740 from blue to red. You're right. DeSantis was so successful. And it was amazing to me to see that not

00:31:16.100 only did he dominate Cuban Americans, but other Latinos, he won, I think, 55% of the Puerto Rican

00:31:22.740 vote, which I traditionally think of as Democrat voters. And I have to say that the combination of

00:31:32.580 his success, not just ideologically and in using the instruments of power, like I love watching him

00:31:39.460 fight with Disney, a fight that I would have thought was impossible. He just did it. And then not only is he

00:31:45.220 strong ideologically, but he's a winner. And Donald Trump's central brand as president and in the

00:31:52.820 private sector was I'm a winner. I can do things. I can get it done. I can build this. I can fix the

00:31:58.580 Central Park skating rink. I can have a hit TV show with top ratings. I host the funnest things like the

00:32:06.100 Miss America. Like I'm a winner, winner, winner, winner. I can win these trade deals. And he was a winner.

00:32:10.820 winner. And I think that offset the things about Trump that were sometimes irritating to people or

00:32:19.780 caused his allies to sort of cringe. Well, the guy was a winner. But the winner this week was Ron

00:32:26.780 DeSantis. And some of the Trump endorsed candidates did not win. I think that some of the Donald Trump

00:32:32.960 magnetism is gone. I like the guy. Don't get me wrong. I think he was a great president. I wish he

00:32:37.240 was reelected in 2020. But I think the case for DeSantis is stronger than ever. Look at that winner

00:32:42.020 win. Yeah, certainly there are many of those who are, I mean, almost timed to whatever the final

00:32:52.060 point in election night was before people tuned in, declaring Ron DeSantis essentially the odds-on

00:32:57.680 favorite for the nomination and wanting to discard Trump. My personal view is that Donald Trump should

00:33:07.060 never be underestimated. Both of these figures bring tremendous capabilities to the table. Donald

00:33:15.260 Trump put on the map places and peoples that were never on the map. Including DeSantis, by the way.

00:33:23.200 Yeah, of course. A huge ally of DeSantis and endorsed him for governor in Florida. I think that the demise

00:33:29.980 of Donald Trump and the rise of DeSantis that's being argued, I think we have to let the process play out

00:33:36.720 and we have to let both of them make their cases to the American people. Sort of the conventional wisdom

00:33:41.880 around DeSantis essentially is that he's Trump, but younger, without the baggage, hyper-competent,

00:33:48.920 and he can bring sort of all Trump's positives to the table and none of Trump's negatives to the tables.

00:33:53.240 On the other hand, Donald Trump, again, is someone who did lead a movement, who put places on the map

00:33:59.760 that had never been on the map in recent memory, certainly, for Republicans, and who has an intense

00:34:06.880 fan base and a large fan base that's unmatched, certainly in my lifetime, and maybe in the political

00:34:12.820 history of America. And that shouldn't be discounted. Still in polls prior to midterm election night,

00:34:20.900 Trump had a significant advantage over DeSantis. But obviously, this was a huge, resounding victory

00:34:25.940 for DeSantis. And this helps in building the case that he is essentially, he is the next Trump. He is

00:34:33.400 the person to inherit that mantle. I just think, I think it's way too early to call it one way or the

00:34:39.960 other. But absolutely, he's done an exceptional job in using executive power to put forth a policy

00:34:48.220 program that's broadly appealing. And that's one of the reasons why the left hates him so much. And if he

00:34:54.280 continues to do well, he'll be subjected to even more intense attacks, the likes of which we haven't

00:34:59.620 seen before. And it's going to be fascinating to see this dynamic play out. In fact, we're going to see a

00:35:04.400 proxy battle, presumably, between these two figures, when it comes to the runoff election in Georgia on

00:35:10.740 December 6th, where there's going to be calls for DeSantis to go to Georgia on Herschel Walker's behalf in

00:35:16.160 the Senate contest against Raphael Warnock. And there's going to be calls for Donald Trump to go

00:35:20.380 down there as well. It's going to be fascinating to see how it plays out. It gives me pause. The

00:35:25.100 establishment members who are out there saying it's DeSantis' time now, I don't think he can,

00:35:30.760 he will be co-opted by that establishment. But there are people out there who have hated Donald

00:35:35.260 Trump's guts forever. And they look for any excuse they can possibly use to say, now we have to discard

00:35:40.200 him. He's awful. He's the worst. It's time to move on. That, you know, it concerns me that they're 0.99

00:35:45.800 circling around here. But that said, I think these are two formidable figures in their own

00:35:50.820 right, each with remarkable track records of accomplishment and achievement. And it's going

00:35:57.100 to be fascinating. It's going to be historic to see how this plays out, to the extent there is a

00:36:01.180 struggle, essentially, for the soul of the Republican Party between these two men.

00:36:04.920 Well, I'm a fan of both, and it is a tough dilemma. I want to ask you about Joe Biden. I think that

00:36:12.280 the Democrats were putting on a brave face of unity until the midterms were done. Very few

00:36:18.480 local candidates invited Biden to campaign for them. I mean, he wasn't exactly a charismatic figure.

00:36:25.120 Even during his own campaign, he really didn't draw crowds. Now that the midterms are over,

00:36:31.320 do you think the knives will come out to replace him? Even for those who like Joe Biden, and I don't

00:36:37.320 know who such a person would be, just in terms of energy level and cognitive decline, the prospect

00:36:45.800 of him running again in two years for a four-year term, I mean, it's so unlikely. And you've got to

00:36:57.020 think that, I don't know, maybe Gavin Newsom wants to take a crack at it. Kamala Harris, I think, is just

00:37:01.240 an awful person, but she probably wants her chance. I don't know. There's got to be others

00:37:06.440 champing at the bit. Maybe Beto thinks he'll have better success nationally. Do you think that

00:37:12.040 the keepers of the Democratic Party, which are probably the New York Times and a few other

00:37:17.860 institutions like that, do you think they're going to say, all right, Biden, time to have a graceful

00:37:22.240 exit? I remember my friend Joel Pollack said to me he did not think that Biden would run again in 2024.

00:37:28.420 Do you share the same view? Well, first, let me just say, I think Republicans everywhere would

00:37:33.040 be cheering from the rooftops if Robert Francis O'Rourke, if the Democrats waste tens of millions

00:37:38.140 of dollars on him yet again, or Stacey Abrams, for that matter. You rightly note that there was

00:37:46.180 more than a whispering campaign of organs like the New York Times and the Washington Post before the

00:37:51.860 election, essentially calling Joe Biden a liar, pointing out, which we've known for decades, but they

00:37:58.320 were actually saying it out loud. They were talking about, you know, his myriad weaknesses and so-called

00:38:04.140 gaffes, which are really him not being cognitively sound, self-evidently, I think. But then he sort of

00:38:13.820 got the last laugh on election night because there wasn't this shellacking in spite of the widespread

00:38:18.160 disappointment with him as president. He himself said, or at least aides around him have leaked,

00:38:24.000 that he plans to run in 2024. He was asked essentially by reporters, handpicked, I believe,

00:38:30.820 and telegraphed, what do you, do you plan to change on anything going forward, given where the polls

00:38:37.840 were going into this race? And he essentially said, no, now that the people are learning about my agenda,

00:38:43.820 it's going to be even more popular. So he continues to put up a brave face and say essentially that I'm

00:38:50.000 full speed ahead, whatever speed the head is, and running. I can't imagine that, to your point,

00:38:56.520 and Newsom et al won't be running against him in 2024. I'm not sure what the benefit is for him to run

00:39:03.320 in 2024. He's made the case essentially before that if it's Trump, then he poses the best chance of anyone

00:39:08.660 among the Democrats. I don't know if that's true. So my thought had always been that, especially if there had been

00:39:15.500 a huge shellacking for Democrats this time around, that he would have been pushed out before 2024.

00:39:21.080 Now, he would probably make the case, how could you do that? Look, my agenda didn't kill us,

00:39:26.760 essentially, in a historically awful environment. And when the precedent for midterms is that the

00:39:33.500 incumbent party gets crushed. So I now am less convinced, I guess, that he won't be running.

00:39:41.700 That said, I could easily see him losing a primary if he is to be, if he is to throw his hat into that

00:39:48.500 race in 2024. I just don't see how Democrats could possibly feel confident with him at the helm.

00:39:54.660 But then again, all that said, imitation is the highest form of flattery. And you talked about

00:39:58.760 the fact that he literally ran a basement campaign in 2020. And other Democrats mimic that. John Fetterman

00:40:06.400 mimicked that this time around. Katie Hobbs refused to debate Carrie Lake the entire time. So that seemed 1.00

00:40:12.380 to work. So if nothing else, Democrats have emulated him to some extent. And progressives evidently view

00:40:18.600 him as a useful vassal for putting forth their agenda with, I guess, a purportedly moderate old 0.58

00:40:26.860 white male face to it. And I think they think it appears that that's effective. Now, all that said, 0.89

00:40:34.000 I expect things to markedly decline by any number of measures over the next two years. And that's

00:40:38.480 going to that's going to impact things as well. And I don't think that the American people by any

00:40:41.920 stretch resoundingly voted for high crime and being poorer in this election. So those trends continue.

00:40:48.780 And we'll see if there are Republicans who actually run with a compelling vision to combat that

00:40:52.820 going into 2024. Give me 30 seconds. Do you think Hillary Clinton wants to take another crack at 1.00

00:40:58.040 things? I absolutely do. She is she's she is out there. She cut a video right before the election 0.92

00:41:05.180 for the progressive group Indivisible talking about how Republicans are already poised to try to steal

00:41:10.380 the elections in 2024. Why would she be out there right now? Why would Democrats would not want her 0.98

00:41:16.120 out there right now? I think is the face of the party that she is. I think tells you all that you

00:41:20.940 need to know about Hillary's never ending aspirations for power. Well, imagine that Trump versus Hillary 1.00

00:41:25.840 second battle. Ben Weingarten, great to see you again. Thanks very much for bringing your smarts,

00:41:30.660 as you always do. What a pleasure to catch up with you. If you don't know Ben, you got to.

00:41:34.100 He's the deputy editor at Real Clear Investigations and the author of important books. Ben,

00:41:38.820 great to see you again. Thanks for your time. Thanks for having me.

00:41:41.100 Hey, welcome back. Your letters. Brenda Witt says, how are a million votes not being counted?

00:41:57.620 Tabulators conveniently not working. No paper. Voters turned away. One candidate won when he died

00:42:02.980 last month. Bags of ballots found in sewers. Voter fraud. Many strange things being investigated.

00:42:08.260 It is nuts. I mean, just have a piece of paper, have a pencil. And how do you add up tens of

00:42:16.400 millions of votes? Well, you don't have one person add them all up. It's in every state,

00:42:20.760 in every county, in every polling location. You probably, in a district, you could have 200

00:42:25.680 little areas where they're adding up 1,000 votes. You can count a pile of 1,000 votes in the course of

00:42:34.360 an hour or two. What's this whole business of taking weeks? Marco Darko says, Ezra, as an American,

00:42:41.740 I always enjoy your take and appreciate it very much listening to your point of view. I just found

00:42:45.220 your channel yesterday and subscribed. All of you at Rebel News do a fantastic job. Thanks again. Well,

00:42:49.360 that is very friendly. I appreciate that. We do have a couple of American reporters. We've got

00:42:53.400 Jeremy Lafredo in New York and Katie Davis Court in Seattle. But listen, we're very interested in

00:42:57.740 America because it affects what happens in Canada a lot too. Richard Short says,

00:43:03.400 Bernier is the only one who has had the courage to speak the truth, even though everyone knows it

00:43:07.360 and is silent. Well, I give Maxime Bernier that. During the worst of the pandemic and the lockdowns,

00:43:12.560 when Aaron O'Toole of the Conservatives was silent, when all the provincial premiers were gung-ho with

00:43:17.620 the lockdowns, Maxime Bernier spoke out. So you've got to give him that. And he's speaking at the Rebel

00:43:22.000 Live conferences in Toronto and Calgary. If you don't know about that, go to rebelnewslive.com,

00:43:27.320 rebelnewslive.com. We've got these great conventions coming up where we have about 15

00:43:31.860 speakers, each for about 20 minutes, just giving her all day. Keynote speakers include Tamera Leach, 0.96

00:43:38.660 the trucker hero. So that's coming up November 19th in Toronto, November 26th in Calgary. Go to

00:43:45.020 rebelnewslive.com. All right, that's the show for today. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here

00:43:50.040 at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, good night and keep fighting for freedom.

00:43:53.980 Apparently taking a strong stance and invoking the notwithstanding clause and declaring a strike

00:44:00.520 illegal, that has all gone by the wayside in a matter of just 72 hours. It's not on brand anymore,

00:44:09.180 as Doug Ford would say. And you know, when it comes to being on brand, I think we have seen with the

00:44:14.860 passage of these last few days, what brand Doug Ford represents. That's right, Doug, stick this in your

00:44:25.260 cherry cheesecake. David Menzies for Rebel News here at Queen's Park in Toronto. And so it is that the

00:44:35.460 government's war with CUPE, the Canadian Union of Public Employees, ends not with a bang, but with a

00:44:42.720 whimper. You see, folks, on Monday, Doug Ford, well, he bent the knee. You know, folks, I just, I don't want

00:44:51.420 to fight. I just want the kids in school. That's what I want to do. You know, I'm past the stage of

00:44:57.900 fighting and it's not worth it. People don't want it. Parents don't want it. We thought when he invoked

00:45:04.460 the notwithstanding clause, this was going to be Doug Ford's 1981 Ronald Reagan moment. You remember

00:45:12.120 back in 81, Ronald Reagan told more than 11,000 air traffic controllers that if you don't get back

00:45:18.860 to work from your strike, you're fired. We cannot compare labor management relations in the private

00:45:24.800 sector with government. Government cannot close down the assembly line. It has to provide without

00:45:31.620 interruption the protective services which are government's reason for being. It was in recognition

00:45:37.120 of this that the Congress passed a law forbidding strikes by government employees against the public

00:45:43.760 safety. Let me read the solemn oath taken by each of these employees in a sworn affidavit when they

00:45:52.160 accepted their jobs. I am not participating in any strike against the government of the United States

00:45:58.960 or any agency thereof, and I will not so participate while an employee of the government of the United

00:46:06.580 States or any agency thereof. It is for this reason that I must tell those who fail to report for duty

00:46:14.540 this morning, they are in violation of the law, and if they do not report for work within 48 hours,

00:46:22.280 they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated. Well, they thought Reagan was bluffing.

00:46:27.680 He wasn't. He fired them. And sure, for that summer, there was all kinds of delays at airports, but

00:46:34.420 eventually new air traffic controllers were hired. But imagine that from the moment the notwithstanding

00:46:40.880 clause was invoked on Friday, something changed by Monday. And on Monday, that's when Ford announced

00:46:49.320 he didn't want to fight anymore. Those were his words, folks, that he was bending the knee,

00:46:55.480 that he wanted QP to end their strike, and in return the government would revoke the notwithstanding

00:47:04.440 clause. And it's an outrage because who speaks for Ontarians? And by the way, just take a look

00:47:13.040 at the people that Doug Ford is acquiescing to. Cameraman Lincoln, Jay and I came to Queen's Park on

00:47:20.960 Friday when there was a big illegal strike on the grounds. Just check out some of the comments

00:47:26.040 those QP scholars had to say.

00:47:32.780 Why do you say that? Why do you say that?

00:47:35.860 Because you're a right-wing troll. 1.00

00:47:38.920 You're a right-wing troll. 0.99

00:47:42.880 Hi, sir. I'm just trying to make sense of your side. 0.98

00:47:46.180 Oh, really? You don't talk to fascists? Who would the fascists be here?

00:47:49.340 You, rebel dude.

00:47:55.080 QP, that's the plant-eating dinosaur, right?

00:47:58.260 Yeah. You know they're far right.

00:48:00.260 Oh, what does far right mean, sir?

00:48:02.060 It's all, but turn the map upside down, and which way is up?

00:48:06.220 Okay, just letting you know.

00:48:07.700 There's been an intervention by Mr. Dressup.

00:48:09.880 You're signed here. What is eco-socialism?

00:48:11.760 To your scab reactionary fascistic media, so get lost.

00:48:15.400 How am I a scab by doing journalism on the lawns of Queen's Park, sir?

00:48:19.340 Yeah. That's it. We're done.

00:48:21.460 Hey, how's it going? 0.99

00:48:22.120 I said, f***. 0.99

00:48:23.300 Oh, that's not very ladylike. 0.99

00:48:25.180 Not to this guy.

00:48:26.500 You can have nothing. Go away.

00:48:28.800 Oh, that's not very communist of you.

00:48:31.260 I thought it's all about sharing the wealth.

00:48:33.160 Just go away. 0.98

00:48:34.280 Okay, then.

00:48:35.040 Can you say sounds without using preventative? 1.00

00:48:37.980 Yeah, f*** you, you're right-wing a f***. 1.00

00:48:41.060 I don't think he understood the question. 1.00

00:48:43.340 Yeah, I did. 1.00

00:48:44.020 Are you f***ing you? 1.00

00:48:45.960 F*** you. 1.00

00:48:47.240 Why? Why are you like that? 1.00

00:48:49.340 I'm f***ing you. 1.00

00:48:51.460 I'm getting it. 0.99

00:48:52.740 Yeah, so in my book, that might have been the greatest advertisement for homeschooling ever broadcast.

00:49:00.800 And yet, here we are, just 72 hours later, and Doug Ford has called it quit.

00:49:08.040 So what was it?

00:49:09.040 Was it public perception, perhaps?

00:49:11.220 Was he getting some blowback?

00:49:12.780 And that made him quit the war against CUPI?

00:49:17.880 Or, do you think, folks, it was his new best boyfriend, I'm talking Prime Minister Justin Trudeau,

00:49:25.160 who Doug Ford stands shoulder to shoulder with.

00:49:28.240 Was it Doug Ford, was it rather Prime Minister Trudeau, yeah, I know, it's hard to tell them apart these days.

00:49:34.620 Was it Prime Minister Trudeau admonishing Doug Ford for invoking the notwithstanding clause,

00:49:42.300 even though, of course, the Prime Minister invoked his heaviest hammer in the toolbox,

00:49:47.420 that being the Emergencies Act back in February when it came to dismantling the freedom convoy?

00:49:54.260 I think it is.

00:49:55.380 I think Doug Ford thrives on getting the approval of his new best friend,

00:50:02.240 and that is what made him revoke the notwithstanding clause.

00:50:07.820 And when asked in a press conference how the strike was going to get resolved,

00:50:12.500 because CUPI still want more pay, of course, and it's always for the kids, mind you,

00:50:20.260 Doug Ford said he wasn't privy to give that information.

00:50:27.160 Imagine if the province was a publicly traded corporation, folks, and there was some crisis.

00:50:33.260 Could you imagine the board of directors telling its shareholders,

00:50:36.300 no, we can't tell you anything about what's going on behind the scenes, that's private.

00:50:42.240 No, it's not.

00:50:42.960 This is a public issue.

00:50:44.380 It's a public union.

00:50:46.300 These are public schools.

00:50:47.400 The Ford PCs should be transparent.

00:50:51.440 But apparently taking a strong stance and invoking the notwithstanding clause

00:50:56.720 and declaring a strike illegal, that has all gone by the wayside in a matter of just 72 hours.

00:51:04.040 It's not on brand anymore, as Doug Ford would say.

00:51:08.680 And, you know, when it comes to being on brand,

00:51:11.180 I think we have seen with the passage of these last few days

00:51:13.940 what brand Doug Ford represents.

00:51:20.080 That's right, Doug.

00:51:21.540 Stick this in your cherry cheesecake.

00:51:24.940 For Rebel News, I'm David the Menzoid Menzies. 0.60

00:51:27.880 A Goldphy. 0.92

00:51:39.640 .

00:51:41.120 .

00:51:41.200 .

00:51:41.600 .

00:51:42.220 .

00:51:45.720 .

00:51:47.460 .

00:51:47.920 .

00:51:48.380 .

00:51:49.200 .

Rebel News Podcast - November 11, 2022

EZRA LEVANT ｜ A regime journalist asks Joe Biden to investigate Elon Musk for treason

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