EZRA LEVANT | Canada’s worst finance minister is now working for Ukraine — what could go wrong?
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
160.07198
Summary
I think I can prove that Chrystia Freeland was trying to keep it a secret that she was hired by Ukraine while sitting as a Canadian MP. I'll show you the timeline, and explain why it was a mistake.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
Hello, my friends. I think I can prove that Chrystia Freeland was trying to keep it a secret
00:00:05.700
that she was hired by Ukraine while sitting as a Canadian MP. I'll show you the timeline. I just
00:00:12.820
can't get it out of my head. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News
00:00:16.940
Plus. That's the video version of this podcast. I want you to see not only that monologue that I do,
00:00:22.520
but my interview with Alexa Lavoie, where we talk about what she saw on the streets of Miami
00:00:27.220
in Little Caracas, in Little Havana. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com. That's the video version
00:00:33.320
of this podcast. It's eight bucks a month, which may not sound like a lot to you,
00:00:37.640
but it sure adds up for us. Please help us out.
00:00:46.340
Tonight, Canada's worst finance minister is now working for Ukraine. What could go wrong?
00:01:01.180
It's January 6th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
00:01:03.720
You're fighting for freedom. Shame on you, you sensorism bug.
00:01:16.340
It's January 6th today for the Democratic Party of the United States. That's their
00:01:24.460
Pearl Harbor, or as my friend Gavin McInnes calls it, the great meandering as a number of
00:01:31.600
pro-Republican protesters walk through the halls of Congress, but abiding by the velvet ropes. It was
00:01:38.960
quite a thing. I don't know if I would call it a riot. The only person killed that day was Ashley
00:01:44.160
Babbitt, a protester. But an enormous number of people were arrested and kept in solitary
00:01:50.140
confinement for years. It was a significant proportion of the FBI was dedicated to punishing
00:01:56.160
those political trespassers. I'm not for breaking windows, and I'm not for trespassing. Let me make
00:02:01.200
that clear. But that was called by half of the Democratic establishment the worst day in American
00:02:07.180
history since, I don't know, some of them said since Pearl Harbor. Anyways, that's January 6th for you.
00:02:12.780
And I remember when the truckers started to muster in Ottawa four years ago, Justin Trudeau said these
00:02:19.480
are our January 6ers. This is our insurrection. Didn't turn out that way, did it? In fact, it was
00:02:26.140
the beginning of the end for him. Well, that just happens to be the date, and I thought I'd say a few
00:02:31.300
things about that. But today I want to talk about a Canadian scandal. I want to give you a timeline of
00:02:36.960
a scandal. And I think it's actually quite a serious one. Christia Freeland, the former finance minister,
00:02:44.660
former, she had various portfolios under Justin Trudeau. She was offered a job by the country of Ukraine
00:02:52.480
on December 22nd. Vladimir Zelensky, and I assume they're somewhat friends at least,
00:02:59.460
offered her a job as a senior economic advisor December 22nd. She told Mark Carney about it on
00:03:07.360
December 24th, which I suppose is quick enough. But they decided to keep it a secret. And I think I know
00:03:16.320
why. She was hired on December 22nd. She told Mark Carney on December 24th. And they kept it a secret
00:03:23.740
because three days later, on December 27th, Mark Carney and Christia Freeland gave another $2.5
00:03:32.900
billion to Ukraine without revealing her secret job. They didn't tell anybody on purpose.
00:03:42.140
It was Vladimir Zelensky himself who broke the news yesterday. And I think it was accidental. That
00:03:49.120
is, I don't think that Carney or Freeland knew that his office was going to tweet about it. They didn't
00:03:55.980
realize what was going on in Canada, that it was hush hush. It had been a secret. And I think it caught
00:04:01.980
a lot of people off guard. Here's what Zelensky said. He said, today, I appointed Christia Freeland as an
00:04:08.860
advisor on economic development. Translation, getting money from other countries in the world.
00:04:15.700
Christia is highly skilled in these matters and has extensive experience in attracting investment
00:04:21.300
and implementing economic transformations. Does she really? Is she an expert in attracting
00:04:28.740
investment? Can you think of any investment she's ever attracted to Canada? Economic transformations,
00:04:34.640
I suppose, if that means setting us up for a record deficit and not even bringing in a budget,
00:04:40.920
by the way. I think she was Canada's worst finance minister. Economic transformation, that's a very
00:04:46.580
neutral way of saying she wrecked the economy. Let me keep reading the tweet. Right now, Ukraine needs
00:04:51.440
to strengthen its internal resilience, both for the sake of Ukraine's recovery, if diplomacy delivers
00:04:57.480
results as swiftly as possible, and to reinforce our defense, if, because of delays by our partners,
00:05:03.160
it takes longer to bring this war to an end. I don't know what that means by delays by our partners.
00:05:08.840
I am grateful to everyone who is ready to support our state and our engagement with partners. Glory to
00:05:14.680
Ukraine. I don't, I can't think of any investment that Christia Freeland brought to Canada. I know she used a lot of
00:05:22.280
tax dollars to fire hose the money at a lot of automakers, most of whom have pared down their
00:05:28.120
operations in Canada. Anyways, they spent tens of billions of dollars on electric vehicle battery
00:05:34.040
plants, and those have just turned into disasters. I think maybe that's what she means by an economic
00:05:39.660
transformation. I think what she's most remembered for, besides the massive deficit and besides refusing
00:05:48.760
or failing to bring in a budget in her last year, is when she froze and seized bank accounts of her
00:05:56.440
personal enemies without any legal process. And when it was later challenged before the federal court,
00:06:03.000
it was found to be unconstitutional and illegal. Christia Freeland is a bit of a thug
00:06:10.440
who had her enemies debanked until a court overturned it. I think she's useful to Ukraine for one
00:06:18.200
reason only to bring in more cash from Canada. And maybe a secondary reason would be how to deal
00:06:24.840
with people who oppose the regime. Now this issue blew up and I think Freeland thought that she needed
00:06:31.960
to tamp it down because she wrote this obviously hastily drafted tweet. She said, Ukraine is at the
00:06:39.480
forefront of today's global fight for democracy. And I welcome this chance to contribute on an unpaid
00:06:45.720
basis as an economic advisor to President Zelensky. In accepting this voluntary position, she's
00:06:52.760
certainly emphasizing that, isn't she? I will be stepping aside from my role as the prime minister's
00:06:58.120
special representative for the reconstruction of Ukraine. So she hasn't stepped away yet. When she
00:07:03.720
made the $2.5 billion gift, she hadn't stepped away. She's using future sense. I will be stepping aside.
00:07:11.080
In the coming weeks, I will also leave my seat in parliament. Wait, why not now? Why not back on
00:07:19.720
December 24th or December 22nd? I want to thank my constituents for their years of confidence in me.
00:07:27.160
I'm so grateful to have been your representative. She really wants to emphasize it's an unpaid volunteer
00:07:33.400
position. That's not relevant. What's relevant is that she has two masters at once. She's riding two
00:07:41.640
horses at once. Whose side is she on in the negotiation? Canada's or Ukraine's? You have to
00:07:48.600
pick a lane, sister. I understand she actually has left Canada and moved to the UK because she has a
00:07:54.840
third iron in the fire. She apparently is in charge of the Rhodes Scholarship Trust, Cecil Rhodes,
00:08:01.640
the great industrialist of Africa, set up this enormous scholarship fund for Oxford.
00:08:06.840
And I think he would be appalled to know that Chrystia Freeland, a Marxist globalist,
00:08:11.480
is in charge of her. Anyways, I don't think that she really lowered the temperature by saying that
00:08:17.240
she was unpaid. In fact, I think she sort of looked really defensive about that. It's not if she's being
00:08:23.080
paid. It's what she's doing and whose side she's on. You have to pick a country. And especially if those
00:08:29.320
two countries are negotiating or working together, you can't be for both countries. And they both
00:08:34.760
might be noble countries doing a noble thing, but you can't negotiate with yourself. So here's Mark
00:08:40.520
Carney's attempt to mop the whole thing up. He said,
00:08:43.640
Thank you, Chrystia, for your important work as Special Representative for the Reconstruction of
00:08:49.560
Ukraine. By the way, there has been no Reconstruction of Ukraine. There's still a war going on. All that's
00:08:55.480
happened is Chrystia Freeland has helped liberate another $2.5 billion from Canadian taxpayers last
00:09:01.240
week. You are uniquely qualified for this important new role. It is a further credit to Canada's steadfast
00:09:08.120
support for Ukraine that a Canadian is taking on this role at this crucial moment for Ukraine's future.
00:09:13.560
Canada will continue to stand with Ukraine to ensure a just and lasting peace.
00:09:19.480
It's true. Canada has shoveled billions of dollars over there. I'm a little bit worried about that,
00:09:25.800
though. Here's a story from the Carnegie Endowment. It's about Ukraine corruption scandals.
00:09:31.960
Unfortunately, Ukraine is one of the most corrupt countries in the world. So is Russia,
00:09:36.920
by the way. But especially when you put $100 billion with the donations in just three years,
00:09:43.960
that's so much money. That's such a staggering amount of money sloshing around. And liberal
00:09:51.080
newspapers like the New York Times, it's so bad that even they feel like they have to write about
00:09:56.680
it. Corruption surrounding Zelensky himself. If the New York Times is saying that, given how
00:10:02.120
advocates, how strong they are in advocating for Ukraine, you know it must be pretty bad.
00:10:09.640
Here's the point. You cannot have two masters, but Chrystia Freeland always has. She's always had
00:10:15.160
other loyalties, including she's serving for years on the board of the World Economic Forum.
00:10:21.720
You'll recall that before she was elected to parliament, she was George Soros' authorized biographer,
00:10:27.480
and she became Soros' man on the inside of the Canadian government. You might recall that she
00:10:33.000
set up the first meeting between Justin Trudeau and George Soros at the 2016 Davos World Economic Forum
00:10:39.880
meeting. She's always been working for the World Economic Forum and George Soros. It's no surprise
00:10:45.080
to me that she's abandoning Canada. Freeland was always too close to this Ukraine issue, I think.
00:10:51.960
I mean, I understand she's ethnically Ukrainian, and frankly, I don't know if you know this about me,
00:10:56.600
but I'm originally from Ukraine four generations ago in my family, too. I'm not hostile to Ukraine at
00:11:02.920
all. But her advocacy felt personal, not national or public. She bought a condo in Kyiv a few years
00:11:10.840
ago. It just felt like this was a personal project, and she probably lost her bearings a bit. Let's be
00:11:16.440
honest. She's not an economist. She has no training as an economist. She's not a banker. She is actually
00:11:23.960
terrible at managing her own finances. When she moved back to Canada, she had to borrow money from
00:11:28.760
her parents to buy a house. She was in her forties. I'm not making fun of people who can't afford a
00:11:33.080
house. I'm just saying to call this woman a master investor economist banker is not true. She has one
00:11:39.000
skill to get money from Canadian taxpayers to Ukraine. Vladimir Zelensky has identified that's
00:11:45.640
a very valuable skill from Zelensky's point of view. But it's illegal for a former cabinet minister
00:11:52.520
to lobby her government, especially if her job in Canada was the Ukraine file, which it has been under
00:12:02.280
Mark Carney, to now lobby Canada for funds. That's actually against the law. There's a cooling off period.
00:12:09.160
Before lobbying, she didn't even wait until she was done work for Canada. I mean, that cooling off
00:12:13.880
period starts when you leave the Canadian government. It didn't even contemplate someone being a foreign
00:12:18.120
lobbyist while working for Canada at the same time. And then there's that minor matter that her own
00:12:24.680
constituents have no MP and they were kept in the dark. Don't you think it's gross? She disclosed to Mark
00:12:29.960
Carney that she had this new job in December, but they kept it a secret from her own writing. You know,
00:12:37.880
Carney likes that because he's trying to reverse engineer a majority government. So she,
00:12:42.840
he doesn't want Chrystia Freeland to leave. I think that they would have kept this secret
00:12:47.080
a lot longer if they could have gotten away with it. This whole thing is so gross and it's so
00:12:52.040
Canadian as a scandal. It's so liberal party corrupt, isn't it? You know, we're doing something
00:12:57.240
about a rebel news. We got a petition and last I checked, we had 8,600 people who signed saying
00:13:03.080
that Chrystia Freeland must be fired. And we're deploying our billboard truck with in, I don't
00:13:09.160
know if you know this, but her riding, which is called University Rosedale is not too far away from
00:13:13.800
our office. We're going to have the truck going around her riding, pointing out that she has actually,
00:13:19.160
it's an absentee MP doesn't even work for Canada anymore. She works for a foreign nation. If you
00:13:25.000
want to sign our petition, go to firefreeland.com. It's just a disgrace though. I wonder how long
00:13:32.200
she'll be able to stick around in parliament. If I had to guess with the CBC's help, she'll stick
00:13:38.840
around as long as she likes. Stay with us more ahead. Well, Saturday morning, I woke up early
00:13:53.800
to the news that Donald Trump had ordered the US military to do a daring raid to go straight into
00:14:00.360
the heart of Caracas, the capital city of Venezuela, right into the heavily fortified presidential
00:14:07.000
palace, go right in and scoop up, raid, snatch. Trump's enemies would say abduct or even kidnap
00:14:16.520
the tyrant dictator of Venezuela, a man named Nicolas Maduro and his wife,
00:14:22.040
and to bring them back to America to face criminal charges for drug trafficking. Understand that they
00:14:28.920
went in not to conquer or to defeat or to invade, but to grab the guy who called himself president.
00:14:36.440
Now that was a point of contention right there because of course the United States, both under
00:14:40.760
Republicans and Democrats, Canada, the European Union, and most countries around the world
00:14:46.040
had concluded that no, Nicolas Maduro was not in fact the president. He was a usurper. He was
00:14:53.000
a false president who lost the election, but simply refused to leave the palace.
00:14:58.440
The country remains under the governance of Maduro's cadres. His deputy was sworn in as his successor,
00:15:10.120
and Maduro's own son was there to market. The Iranian, Chinese, and Russian diplomats
00:15:16.840
were among the first to congratulate his successor. It was not a regime change yet that might happen.
00:15:24.440
It was very complex. It's very difficult. And there's so many things happening behind the scenes
00:15:31.080
we simply don't know about. It's also a situation that we can't send reporters in. There's no way
00:15:37.720
that we would risk sending reporters into Caracas. By the way, it's one of the most dangerous cities in
00:15:42.360
the world from a simply crime point of view, let alone political crimes. And one of the things we
00:15:47.960
learned after the snatch raid of Maduro was that his security was completely made up of Cubans,
00:15:56.440
which is very odd. Venezuela has men who can have firearms. But of course, there's two reasons
00:16:02.040
to have Cuban bodyguards if you're a Venezuelan president. The first one is you might not be able
00:16:06.920
to trust Venezuelans because they might think we've got to get rid of this tyrant. And a Venezuelan might
00:16:13.240
have a greater emotional connection to Venezuela rather than to a usurper dictator. The second
00:16:19.400
reason is a Cuban reason, because while you're protecting Maduro, you're also have him on a leash.
00:16:27.000
You are also telling him what to do. He's your puppet. And for decades, Cuba has provided the muscle
00:16:33.400
in Venezuela. Armed militias called collectivos would go around and do the dirty work of the regime.
00:16:39.400
Cuba has deep interests in Venezuela, especially oil. Very, very interesting times. I think a moment
00:16:45.960
will come when Venezuela will be free and we will send rebel reporters to Caracas to talk to the
00:16:51.400
people. That time is not yet. But what we did do, as you saw, is immediately send down Alexa Lavoie,
00:16:59.320
our reporter based in Montreal, and Efrain Oswaldo Flores Monsanto, sometimes known as Efron,
00:17:06.040
who is our head of video. And those two went straight down to Miami and both of them know Spanish.
00:17:13.960
And they were able to talk to the Venezuelan community, the exile community in Miami. We've
00:17:19.160
been running reports since Saturday on the subject. I'm delighted to be joined now by Alexa Lavoie,
00:17:25.640
who is now safely returned to the snows of Montreal. Alexa, great to see you again. Thank you for going down
00:17:31.880
to Miami. Of course, it looked like a nice break from winter, but you were there to work.
00:17:38.360
Yeah, it was short and sweet. And what we did, we went straight in the heart of the Venezuelan
00:17:46.520
community exile in the wrong. So I didn't even see the sea. I didn't see the water, nothing.
00:17:54.360
I'm just joking around because, of course, I was in Toronto freezing my tush. But there were so many
00:18:01.640
heartwarming and heartbreaking interviews you did. Tell us your impressions. You interviewed probably
00:18:10.040
a dozen people. More than that, you were just surrounded by hundreds of people. Who were they?
00:18:15.720
What was their mood? Were they hopeful? I mean, Venezuela is not yet free. The tyrant is in handcuffs,
00:18:22.680
but a new tyrant has sprung up sort of like a many headed hydra where you cut off one head
00:18:29.000
and two heads reappear. So they're not quite free yet. But tell me how they felt. Were they
00:18:35.240
excited? Were they hopeful? Were they exultant? Were they worried? What was the feeling?
00:18:40.120
During two days, we saw a celebration. What I heard so far is that early morning on Saturday,
00:18:52.600
as soon as they heard the news, they took the street to celebrate. They celebrated all day long. And
00:19:00.760
that celebration continued on Sunday. And everybody are unanimous. They are so happy. They are happy to
00:19:12.120
see what is going on. And what they say is like they voted for this. They wanted this to happen.
00:19:19.400
Because mainly we see leftists and Democrats saying that, oh, it was a violation of federal and
00:19:25.720
international law. And also we see the leftists saying, oh, this is a selfish act. They just wanted
00:19:32.120
to have the oil. But everybody on the ground, what they say, we never touched our oil anyway. It was
00:19:41.880
either China or Russia or other foreign country who wanted our oil and we never touched any penny from
00:19:50.760
that. So if we receive freedom in exchange, we will take it and we will be more than happy
00:20:00.760
Trump was the only one who helped us. And well, if we have to recognize him, we have to thank him
00:20:07.640
too, because he took us into account. There are other countries that live in
00:20:11.640
dictatorship and they still haven't been able to leave. They gave us the opportunity and we have to
00:20:15.800
take advantage of it. Venezuela has many intellectual resources. There are many professionals,
00:20:20.360
doctors, engineers, architects, who are outside of the country. And that is going to be part of what we are going to
00:20:26.520
reconstruct the country. This is untrue when people are saying, oh, you know, like it's a selfish act
00:20:32.200
because it's not only for oil, it's also for foreign influence. As you mentioned, um, the land of
00:20:42.040
China, Russia, Hamas, Ebola, who is, uh, touching the ground in America. But the thing is people have
00:20:51.000
still some family over there. They are worried about them. Uh, some of them flee their country under
00:20:59.400
Chavez or Maduro. And most of them, it's because they were critic of the regime. And there were some
00:21:08.680
people who actually refused to collaborate with Chavez when he wanted to spy on either employee or on
00:21:19.480
the population. So because of that, they had to flee because, uh, if they didn't flee, they will be
00:21:26.120
in jail as at the moment. What I've been told so far, more than 800 political prisoners are still in
00:21:34.920
Venezuela. Actually, uh, we were living pretty good in Venezuela, uh, many years ago. We have been here,
00:21:41.080
what, 20 years. And, uh, we were doing good until Chavez came. And then, uh, the army in particularly,
00:21:50.840
I worked for the oil industry and they came after me. So I had to leave the country. And after a couple
00:21:57.480
of years, I had to bring all my family. That's the reason. Otherwise, I didn't have any other reason.
00:22:04.760
What was the main reason why they came after him?
00:22:06.840
I was a manager in one of the oil industry companies. I was the IT manager. And they wanted
00:22:15.400
me to allow them to listen to all of the fun conversation. And I said, no, you're not going
00:22:20.600
to do that while I'm the manager. I'm not going to allow you to do that. And that's, you know,
00:22:26.280
brought a lot of problem to me. And after a couple of years, I had to leave. They came after me
00:22:31.800
because I didn't allow them. Yeah. They, they, you know, that's communists. They don't, they don't
00:22:38.760
care. And I told them, you're not going to listen to the conversation. The people that I know,
00:22:44.200
I know the people here, I know how honest they are. I'm not going to allow you to listen to private
00:22:49.240
conversations, but to find out, oh, you know, there's nothing here. No, that's not going to happen.
00:22:54.200
You have to, to come to some other way, but not through me. And that's, that's why, I mean,
00:23:00.280
they went after everybody. That's what they've been doing for the last 26 years.
00:23:05.880
So what is the option? You are in the street, you don't critique the regime and you starve and you
00:23:12.840
might be killed by the armed force. So everybody's pleased and they thanks Donald Trump for what he
00:23:22.120
did. And when the mainstream media is saying otherwise, it's actually untrue. It's, it's just
00:23:28.920
lie. You know, the French language version of the CBC called Radio Canada had an atrocious tweet.
00:23:35.960
Uh, on France, it, it said that Maduro was a man of the people. And it reminds me of the super gross,
00:23:45.080
uh, you know, um, obituaries that, that we had from the CBC and from Justin Trudeau when Fidel Castro
00:23:54.040
died and that man of the people you put that and you put other comments like that Zoran Mandami,
00:24:00.040
uh, uh, had criticized Trump's move, calling it illegal. You put these things to the Venezuelans.
00:24:07.160
Um, they must've been furious that liberals in Montreal who had never set foot in Venezuela
00:24:14.360
called this tyrant, a man of the people when he had 800 political prisoners. How did they react to
00:24:20.200
that? I mean, I guess it's not just Canadians and this New York mayor, a lot of leftists,
00:24:25.880
they sort of loved Venezuela because it was anti-American.
00:24:31.720
The people reacted as, did those people live on their dictatorship? Did those people actually
00:24:38.920
live in Venezuela, Cuba or other dictatorship country? So they cannot say anything if they
00:24:46.040
didn't actually experience what it is to search for food, to sometimes have no electricity,
00:24:53.240
to have no freedom of speech or no freedom of opinion. Um, so those people who are on the street,
00:25:02.680
are they pay? Are they friend of the regime? Or are they just ignorant? Because you know,
00:25:09.960
sometimes a virtue signaling is, uh, something that the leftists like to do, but in the same time,
00:25:17.960
what we are seeing right now, they side with the oppressor instead of siding with the oppressed.
00:25:25.160
So the reason we're here, it's representing all political prisoners in our country, Venezuela,
00:25:29.560
who have been tortured. And right now they're, as you can see, there are more than 300 political
00:25:35.720
prisoners, which we don't, we don't have communication with them. Now you interviewed a lot of
00:25:40.440
people and, and I haven't seen all of your interviews yet. Some of them I really liked,
00:25:44.600
like there was this beautiful young girl almost looked like a model and she was talking passionately
00:25:49.640
about freedom and I couldn't help but think, and I know it's not about looks, looks aren't everything,
00:25:55.160
but it made me think of when I was at, um, Columbia University in downtown New York and I went to their
00:26:02.200
encampment, their pro Hamas encampment. And it was sort of crazy. Um, the people with, you know,
00:26:09.400
every transgender activist was there, people with every color hair and piercings and like,
00:26:14.040
it was really radical and people were displaying themselves in radical ways. And, and it just felt
00:26:20.840
like a real con, and by the way, I'm not against people having the freedom to style themselves in
00:26:26.280
any way, but it was such a contrast with this young, beautiful woman who was talking to you about freedom,
00:26:33.000
as opposed to these anti-social people at Columbia who were anti-America, anti-freedom, and of course,
00:26:39.800
anti-Israel, anti-Semitic. I just want to play that one clip. And I thought to myself, that's in,
00:26:44.840
you know, to have a beautiful young woman so inspired by about freedom, that is appealing.
00:26:50.920
I don't know. And I don't just think it's because I'm a man. I just think, um, everyone of every
00:26:57.480
background, of every race, of both sexes, of every nation, I think they want to be free. And I think
00:27:03.080
they want their home to be a safe place. And this woman seemed to crystallize it. Here's that
00:27:08.440
interview that I really liked. The happiness all of our Venezuelan people have inside,
00:27:13.800
and have been wanting to celebrate for all these 24 years. Definitely, I think it's something we
00:27:20.600
not only have to celebrate, but thank our President Trump, because if it wasn't for him,
00:27:26.040
nothing would be possible. But yeah, I'm super grateful and thankful we're all here celebrating
00:27:32.120
and united. I thought she was great. But who was your favorite interview? You talked to the mayor.
00:27:37.720
In fact, I heard you just bumped into the mayor by coincidence. Tell me a little bit about that.
00:27:43.320
And she's a daughter of, I think, refugees from Cuba, if I'm not mistaken.
00:27:47.880
Yeah, so we were marching into the crowd. And we realized that the woman in question was wearing
00:27:58.280
the mayor shirt. And so I asked nicely if she was a mayor. And she said yes. And I say,
00:28:06.600
do you mind if I ask you a couple of questions? And really friendly, she said yes. Like,
00:28:13.640
there were no like, okay, I'm just going to check with my, you know, media relation or anything.
00:28:20.040
She just agreed that it was just something. So you see that they are there for their people.
00:28:26.280
They are there for showing their support. And it's what I really appreciate. And she's obviously,
00:28:33.320
she's born in the US, but her family is from Cuba and had to flee to Cuba. And she kind of recounted a
00:28:46.120
little bit her story. And as well, she, she hope the same thing happening in Cuba, because Cuba has been
00:28:55.960
in this situation longer. But it's really more complex than Venezuela. And also because Cuba has been
00:29:08.520
the school for dictatorship, Chavez and other dictator. I've learned a lot from Cuba.
00:29:16.440
Right. That's terrifying. Here, let's play just a moment of that interview. Again, I found this woman
00:29:22.120
very appealing, very compelling. I just felt that she spoke from the heart. And it was sort of a
00:29:28.520
family feeling. That's how it felt. It almost felt like people were there from an extended family.
00:29:34.440
And some of them were family members, of course, with each other. Here's just an extract of your
00:29:38.360
mayor of your interview with the mayor of Doral, which is a suburb of Miami. Take a look.
00:29:43.640
And what is the next for Cuba? Because there's so many Cubans that went out in the streets,
00:29:49.000
has hope. Do you think Cuba is next? I do. I think that, first of all,
00:29:53.000
we're living vicariously through the Venezuelan people, because we wanted this for our country
00:29:56.840
for so long. And it's been 70 years of oppression in Cuba. I was actually born here. I'm a first
00:30:03.560
generation American from my family. But I've heard the stories that my grandparents have told for years.
00:30:09.720
They left, you know, 65 years ago and have never been able to go back. You know, they lost family
00:30:15.400
members they never got to say goodbye to. It's very sad to think about those things.
00:30:20.200
I do believe Cuba could be next in a very different way. I don't think there's going to be military
00:30:23.960
action or anything like that. But I think that the restructuring of Venezuela is going to dry up
00:30:28.760
the economic resources that were being fed to Cuba by the Venezuelan government. And that is going to
00:30:35.400
make that last leg fall. And I think it will allow pressures to be put for a real change and for a real
00:30:41.240
democratic election so that the people of Cuba can also have an opportunity to rebuild.
00:30:47.480
This is the weakest the Cuban government has ever been. And it's because the Venezuelan
00:30:53.560
resources have dried up to give to Cuba. So we do have to take advantage of this moment.
00:30:59.400
And Trump made it very clear that this was the opportunity to do that as well. They weren't going
00:31:04.360
to stay behind. I don't think much many dictators are going to be able to continue through the last
00:31:13.240
three years of Trump, you know, in those situations. And again, I think that especially in the western
00:31:20.360
hemisphere that has been ignored for so long, the priority has been shifted because it does affect
00:31:25.720
our national security. They've allowed new players to come into their into this region that are not
00:31:31.960
friends of the United States. And and I think that the president and our state, our secretary of state
00:31:38.120
who understands this issue very, very well, have their eyes on them. Well, listen, there's still a lot
00:31:43.960
so much to be done. I was reading in The New York Times that the winner of the last election, in fact,
00:31:51.160
one of whom won the Nobel Peace Prize last year, that the Trump administration is worried that they
00:31:57.320
don't have the authority and, you know, leadership to simply just take over the government. And thus,
00:32:05.000
Trump is still dealing with the tyrannical regime. I mean, it's a very complex thing.
00:32:11.160
How do you affect regime change on a large country with a with a powerful executive? Like I say,
00:32:18.680
they just took that one guy out. So all the henchmen, all the secret police, all the torture,
00:32:24.920
all the all the bad things are still in place. And Trump is trying to negotiate a regime change,
00:32:33.000
which I don't know if it's ever been done. I suppose it has been done before. But to do it
00:32:38.600
without a massive occupation on the ground, like I I was recently watching a show about the surrender
00:32:45.880
of Japan and the great military general Douglas MacArthur, who became sort of the governor of Japan
00:32:53.560
and worked with the emperor and rebuilt Japan, it was run by Americans run by a general. But there
00:33:00.120
were thousands of American soldiers on the ground. Trump doesn't want that. Trump doesn't want to
00:33:05.560
put 100,000 soldiers in Venezuela. He wants to have a regime change to move towards a liberal democracy
00:33:13.480
without that. I don't know if it's possible to do it, but I'm certainly rooting for him. And I guess a lot
00:33:18.920
of people in Miami are too. Because first of all, there's still terrorists. There's still a lot of gangs,
00:33:26.680
as Trendy Aragua. There's still the Maduro regime in place. There's The Sun. There's so many people
00:33:36.520
that we need to comply to Trump's demand. I don't know how you do that with so many different groups,
00:33:45.560
so different gangs. But that remains to see. But everybody on the ground, it's unanimous. They all won
00:33:54.520
Marina Manchado as the next leader of Venezuela. Because as they say, she won the last election,
00:34:07.320
but she had to leave Venezuela. And it's not safe for her to come back since the regime is still there.
00:34:14.920
Right. Well, it's a diplomatic challenge, but Trump has been known to solve extremely difficult
00:34:21.800
challenges. I point to the Abraham Accords, where Israel, in an agreement negotiated by Trump and his
00:34:28.680
staff, there's five or six countries now, Arab Muslim countries with a peace treaty with Israel,
00:34:34.440
which was thought to be unthinkable. So I think if anyone can do it, Trump can do it. And that was
00:34:40.520
a theme also. Well, listen, thanks again for going down on such short notice. I remember calling you
00:34:45.320
up on Saturday and say, get ready, go to the airport. And you did right away. Thank you for
00:34:49.880
doing that on behalf of Rebel News viewers. And folks, if you want to help chip in to cover the
00:34:54.520
costs, I have to say it was a little bit more expensive than we thought it would be buying last
00:34:58.120
minute tickets. I have to tell you, everyone in Miami, that seems to be quite a vacation hotspot
00:35:04.600
for Torontonians. So those flights were a little more expensive than we would have liked.
00:35:08.040
If you can help us cover that, please go to VenezuelaIsFree.com. And we're going to keep
00:35:12.840
an eye on the story because we, you know, how I end my show every day, I said, keep fighting for
00:35:16.760
freedom. Well, here's Venezolanos and Cubanos fighting for freedom with all their hearts. And
00:35:22.760
I'm really glad that you were there. And through you, I really felt the emotional warmth of these
00:35:28.200
people and their hope. And boy, I hope the story ends well. Thanks again, Alexa. We'll keep an eye on
00:35:33.880
this story. And I just want to mention quickly my flight for going to Miami. I was sitting next to a
00:35:42.440
family from Colombia and they were so happy. They were so happy. And them too, they hope that this will
00:35:51.880
impact Colombia. So let's see what the future will hold. But thanks for sending me over there because I think it was
00:36:05.000
something really revealing. Revealing. Well, you were a great ambassador for Rebel News and you made so many
00:36:11.880
friends, including a mayor, a city councilor. You talk to everybody and those will be good contacts
00:36:17.720
if we go back on the story in the future. Take care of my friend. Thank you very much.
00:36:21.480
Thank you. All right. There you have it. Alexa Lavoie, who went down with Efrain Monsanto
00:36:26.680
to cover the story. I'm glad we have people who had the ability to communicate. I mean, obviously,
00:36:30.840
a lot of these folks spoke English, but also in Spanish where required. Stay with us. Your letters to me next.
00:36:41.880
Hey, welcome back. Your letters to me. The first one is from Brett who says, what comes next? Invade
00:36:51.960
Canada and make Canada great again? Invade Greenland? Take a lunch break? Save the world? Well,
00:36:59.800
Donald Trump is certainly feeling his oats. I mean, he's stretching his arms and his legs.
00:37:04.600
It was a pretty awesome military maneuver. And remember, the United States has had a foreign
00:37:09.800
policy doctrine called the Monroe Doctrine for two centuries, which basically says no foreign powers
00:37:16.200
allowed in the Western Hemisphere. And he referred to the Western Hemisphere as our hemisphere.
00:37:23.000
And I'm sure other people didn't like that. I mean, we would be saying, hey, we're here too.
00:37:27.560
Yeah. But in terms of great powers, there's only one great power in the hemisphere in America.
00:37:32.120
Here's Bob Ray just squawking about this the other day. Bob Ray, who prefers the talk shop
00:37:38.360
of the U.N. But when push comes to shove, talk and paper doesn't stop. You know, it's like the game
00:37:45.880
rock, paper, scissors. Rock defeats scissors, scissors defeats paper. If you're in the real world,
00:37:51.960
you can have Bob Ray yap, yap, yap, yapping at the U.N. Or you could have the Iwo Jima, the U.S. naval
00:37:58.280
vessel and 150 aircraft that got Nicolas Maduro. Only one of those things is real when push comes to shove.
00:38:05.640
The State Department put this out on social media today saying this is our hemisphere.
00:38:11.480
So you see that. I mean, that is not just our country, our self-interest. It is the whole
00:38:16.040
geographic region spanning multiple continents. Yeah. But with great respect to the State
00:38:21.000
Department, David, this is our hemisphere. I could put out a little thing on YouTube saying this is my
00:38:28.920
hemisphere. This is our hemisphere. What the hell is this? You can't you can't unilaterally declare
00:38:37.320
that you have unique jurisdiction over an entire half of the world and all the people who live in
00:38:44.040
that half of the world just have to put up or shut up. And that's not how the world works.
00:38:50.520
Yeah. Bob Ray liked it when he could tie up the mighty American giant just with words. But that's not how
00:38:56.600
the real world is. That's certainly not how Russia and China and Iran play. They're not waiting
00:39:02.200
for the rules-based international order. They're just doing things. And I think Trump
00:39:07.080
is in the mood to do things too. You may not be joking when you talk about Greenland.
00:39:11.960
Pablo Picasso says, in terms of actual combat effectiveness and global strike capability,
00:39:16.840
a conservative estimate is that the U.S. military is two to three times more powerful than Russia,
00:39:21.240
China, India, South Korea, and the United Kingdom combined. I'd be willing to bet 99%
00:39:25.800
of the people in the world would be shocked by this fact. Well, I don't know if they'd be shocked
00:39:29.640
by it. I mean, I think most countries have really demilitarized and they've relied on
00:39:34.760
the United States to defend them. And I put it to you that Canada is a perfect example. I remember when
00:39:40.920
the Chinese spy balloon came over from China, it went through Canada first and we didn't take it down.
00:39:46.840
I don't know if we even had the ability to. I remember when there was a hostile plane detected
00:39:52.040
in the Vancouver airport, or maybe it was Victoria, and the Air Force jet that was scrambled to intercept
00:39:57.400
it was not from the Canadian Forces base in Comox. It was an American jet coming up from,
00:40:04.200
I think it was Washington state. So we are already under America's defensive ages. We literally could
00:40:11.560
not defend ourselves. Trump was on Air Force One the other day joking about Dane Denmark protecting
00:40:18.280
Greenland. And he said, Oh, they're increasing their support. They've added a dog sled. Here's Trump
00:40:25.240
saying that. I will say this about Greenland. We need Greenland from a national security situation.
00:40:32.520
It's so strategic. Right now, Greenland is covered with Russian and Chinese ships all over the place.
00:40:39.560
We need Greenland from the standpoint of national security. And Denmark is not going to be able to
00:40:45.560
do it. I can tell you. You know what Denmark did recently to boost up security in Greenland? They
00:40:53.240
added one more dog sled. It's true. They thought that was a great move. You know, it's actually true.
00:41:00.120
There are more U.S. servicemen in Greenland now than there are Danes. Trump is serious about foreign
00:41:07.160
policy. He really is focused on it. I wouldn't say to the detriment of domestic policy. Look at how hard
00:41:12.520
he's going on immigration and other things. I think Trump is trying to do everything on his to-do list,
00:41:19.240
a 100-year to-do list. He's trying to do it in four years. It's incredible to watch
00:41:23.160
and it's making some people uncomfortable. Next letter from Andreas Vogeli who says, Okay,
00:41:29.800
so Maduro is actually lawfully elected and he is not hated by the people. Rebel News is dropping one
00:41:35.480
lie bomb after another. It's so sick. Well, Andreas, I'm going to disagree with you on both of your points.
00:41:42.040
He was not lawfully elected. And it's not just my opinion. That's the opinion of pretty much every
00:41:49.480
international observer. It's the opinion of the United States, both Republicans and the Democrats.
00:41:54.440
It's the opinion of the European Union. I think really the only countries who like
00:42:00.440
Nicolas Maduro are the other dictatorships, China, Russia and Iran. I think he is hated by the people.
00:42:08.680
I think millions of Venezuelans have fled the country, some out of terror and some just out of
00:42:14.600
poverty and starvation, frankly. I think the fact that they have to have abusive Cuban
00:42:21.880
colectivos, these Cuban militias holding down the people is because Venezuelans would not participate.
00:42:28.760
Venezuela is colonized by Cuba, Iran, China and Russia. Anyways, I disagree with you,
00:42:37.240
but we'll find out soon enough. This is a very interesting situation and I'm glad we had people
00:42:41.080
down in Miami. Well, that's our show for the day. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at
00:42:46.360
Rebel World Headquarters, see you at home. Good night and keep fighting for freedom.