Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Canadians receive 'reality check' on immigration with Trump's looming tariff war

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends, trying to wrap my head around what America is doing and how that could affect

00:00:05.160 Canada. Donald Trump will change our own country almost as much as he'll change his. We have a

00:00:10.580 feature interview with my friend Ben Weingarten, one of the smartest political commentators in

00:00:15.640 the country. I love that guy. He works with the Federalists. We'll have a full show with him today

00:00:19.920 and very interesting. I'm sort of excited about it. It's going to be a little bit rough for

00:00:25.940 Canadians who are used to, you know, Trudeau's mushiness. But in some ways, I think it'll

00:00:31.700 improve us. I'll make my case tonight. But first, let me invite you to become a subscriber to what

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00:02:03.380 Tonight, how will Donald Trump transform Canada because of his own American policies? We'll talk

00:02:10.360 to Ben Weingarten. It's November 27th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:02:15.580 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:02:29.800 It was fascinating to see the reaction in Canada to Donald Trump doing two things. Number one,

00:02:35.920 lumping us in with Mexico when he made a threat of 25% tariffs if we don't get our border under

00:02:43.620 control, both from an illegal migration point of view and from a drug smuggling fentanyl point of

00:02:50.300 view. So to be lumped in with Mexico, you saw sort of a haughty self-righteousness. How dare you, 1.00

00:02:57.300 sir? But you saw something else, which is a terror that Canada had really been in an immature,

00:03:05.220 amateur foreign policy space for years, and now suddenly we have to talk about grown-up things,

00:03:11.200 and we realize we really don't have a grown-up leader. Our leader during the NATO conference in

00:03:16.880 town was busy at a Taylor Swift concert. Well, what does it mean? What does it mean that Trump is already

00:03:22.420 cracking the whip around the world, and he's still two months away from being sworn in as president?

00:03:27.960 What other things are going on around the world? Well, let's talk to one of our favorite Americans

00:03:32.840 about that. I'm talking about Ben Weingarten. He's a journalist at The Federalist and a friend

00:03:37.440 of Rebel News. He joins us now via Skype. Ben, great to see you again.

00:03:42.120 Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ezra.

00:03:43.920 Well, thanks for coming on the show. You know, I think Canada has been in an unreality for a while.

00:03:49.700 You know, there was an old saying in the 19th century, I think it was the 19th century,

00:03:54.240 that Canada is a fireproof house far away from flammable materials. That's what a Canadian 0.98

00:04:01.640 diplomat said about 100 plus years ago. And it's true. Like, we've really never had a bad thing

00:04:07.820 happen to us because of where we are. We've always been lucky to be next to America. I mean, sure,

00:04:13.460 we did have that skirmish in the War of 1812, but everything's been friendly since then.

00:04:17.640 And there's a moral hazard there in that Canada can make performative statements about the world

00:04:26.420 and not have to back it up with anything because we're safe over here. But that's allowed a

00:04:31.840 childishness to creep into our foreign policy, our military policy, and now our domestic policy.

00:04:36.860 And I feel like when Donald Trump said, get your border solved in two months, or I'm putting tariffs on

00:04:45.080 on the first day, suddenly Canadians had to wake up and say, oh, there's some real life consequences

00:04:51.280 here and we can't just virtue signal. That's how I see the whole thing. What does it look like from

00:04:55.840 an American's point of view? Well, I think that's right. And, you know, the issues that which impact

00:05:03.620 our border, the US border and our sovereignty are the issues that are impacting all of the Western world,

00:05:11.000 which is unfettered immigration without regard to assimilation, without regard to the composition

00:05:19.680 of who is immigrating, how they're immigrating, et cetera. There are all of these consequences

00:05:24.600 to it. And from the US perspective, obviously, to the extent there aren't open borders to our North

00:05:30.920 and open borders to our South, we already have a substantial amount of territory to protect and

00:05:37.280 defend. And so it makes inordinate sense when the mandate for the incoming Trump administration

00:05:43.780 is to restore our borders, to restore sovereignty, to get a handle on immigration, those who are already 1.00

00:05:51.080 within our borders to eject immediately criminal illegal aliens, those who are working on behalf of 0.99

00:05:59.440 terrorist groups, transnational criminal organizations, adversarial regimes like the Chinese Communist

00:06:06.100 Party, them out first. And obviously, of course, in addition to dealing with the population already 0.99

00:06:12.480 here, you want to prevent any additional illegal immigration. And so it makes inordinate sense that

00:06:18.600 the Trump posture immediately would be, what tools do we have in the toolbox to ensure that surrounding

00:06:24.940 countries neutralize and deal with their own immigration issues that they don't spill over into our borders?

00:06:32.180 And that, of course, involves the northern border and the integrity of it, as well as the southern

00:06:37.380 border. But to your point about Canada living in sort of a blissful existence, I mean, it's the same thing

00:06:44.880 for the US in many respects. We're surrounded by oceans. We've been blessed with these nations built on

00:06:52.840 values and principles that are timeless, that have allowed us to prosper, to have peaceful, dynamic

00:07:00.060 existences. But it can be squandered very quickly with the wrong policies. And I think even there,

00:07:06.460 I've seen footage recently of even Trudeau talking about, well, maybe we've gone a little far with the

00:07:11.420 illegal immigration. And you may take that as just rhetoric, and it probably is just rhetoric.

00:07:16.540 But there's a realization across the sort of globalist, internationalist, ruling class

00:07:22.720 in the West, that there's a populist nationalist backlash. And the populist nationalist backlash

00:07:28.360 is that the native citizens are being subordinated to non-citizens. And there's something fundamentally

00:07:36.000 wrong and unfair about that. Countries are not putting their people first. They're not operating

00:07:42.200 from their first principles. And consequently, it threatens the power of the ruling class.

00:07:47.620 That's probably why, in part, we've seen a tyrannical and totalitarian reaction from a lot of

00:07:53.760 ruling class members in good standing in any number of capitals across the West. But the bottom line is

00:08:01.680 that if we are to have representative democracies, then what the people want should go. The people

00:08:08.660 ought to be sovereign. We're not subjects. We are the masters of our leaders. And when that gets flipped

00:08:15.900 on its head, it leads to disastrous outcomes. But broad strokes, what Donald Trump is going to do

00:08:21.520 is put America's national interest first. And this policy of threatening tariffs, one tool in the

00:08:26.400 toolbox, goes hand in hand with the idea of we're going to have mass deportation in U.S. soil as well,

00:08:31.960 because there's a mandate to do it. It's good for the American public. Hopefully, it has a deterrent

00:08:36.880 effect. And hopefully, it leads to self-deportation. And hopefully, it also leads to countries that are near

00:08:41.920 abroad and are further abroad, also managing their own sovereignty as well, because these are global

00:08:48.640 issues, of course, when you're talking about transnational gangs, when you're talking about the Chinese 0.83

00:08:52.940 Communist Party's infiltration, when you're talking about jihadists as well across the West.

00:08:57.480 You know, and by making these demands of Canada in a serious and, frankly, threatening way,

00:09:03.860 it's causing a sobriety here that we haven't had in years. All the things you've talked about.

00:09:09.240 I mean, right now, there is a senior credible allegation in this country by our version of the

00:09:15.680 CIA, called CSIS, that there are 11 members of our parliament who were installed by the Chinese

00:09:22.860 communists and installed because they gained the nomination process and they interfered and they

00:09:29.020 bust in foreign nationals to vote who were temporarily in Canada. Like, it was quite a detailed

00:09:35.940 operation. I don't know if our country's taking those things seriously enough. I don't think so.

00:09:41.420 But when Donald Trump says, guess what? It's time to get serious. And if you don't, we're going to

00:09:47.260 devastate your economy. A 25% tariff on Canadian goods to America would throw our country into a

00:09:52.420 deep recession because we're so integrated. I think Canadian pundits have to understand that's Trump

00:09:58.180 saying, I really, really mean it. It's not an economic war. It's saying, fix these non-economic

00:10:03.580 things, the porous border, the drug sales, or we'll give you a punishment that's economic. Like,

00:10:09.820 I don't think Trump wants the tariffs. I think he wants a proper border. But it's up to Trump to

00:10:17.900 make Canada grown up a little bit. Hey, I want to play a clip for you. In response to Trump's threat of

00:10:24.940 the tariff, Canada's leader of the opposition, he had a tough balancing act. Because on the one hand,

00:10:31.620 he despises Trudeau's policies. But on the other hand, he has to stand up for Canada. And even if

00:10:37.620 he agrees with Trump's substance, he can't be seen to be agreeing with threats against Canada. So he had,

00:10:43.980 it was a very careful path he had to trod. But I think he did it well. He talked about Canada first and

00:10:50.520 fixing those problems for Canada's sake, not because Trump wants it. But he referenced this.

00:10:57.360 He said that in Canada, there are 4.9 million people who are here on a temporary basis and have

00:11:08.220 to leave by the end of next year. And he said to the government, do you have any plan on how to get

00:11:15.840 them out? And the answer was no. And where will they go? Will they go into America? Will America's 0.89

00:11:24.020 deportees come into Canada? Look at this quick clip. About a week ago, Justin Trudeau admitted that

00:11:29.860 he broke our immigration system. And that brings new challenges. His own published documents show

00:11:36.560 there are 4.9 million people here temporarily that are supposed to leave by December 31st of next year,

00:11:48.520 13 months from now. 4.9 million people. We asked what the plan was to track their departures. And

00:11:56.660 yesterday, his immigration minister said, we're just going to take people at their word. He admits

00:12:02.100 that there have been two ISIS terrorists allowed into our country. What is the plan to protect our

00:12:09.360 security and reinstate sovereignty over who is in our country? And finally, on drugs. I don't want to

00:12:18.980 stop drug overdoses to please Donald Trump. I want to stop drug overdoses so that there's not one more

00:12:26.820 more than one more. I want to stop drug overdoses. I want to stop drug overdoses. I want to stop it.

00:12:31.820 I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it.

00:12:32.820 After 47,000 other Canadians have died. That's more than we lost in the Second World War. A 200 percent

00:12:39.820 annual increase in drug overdose deaths have resulted from Judge Justin Trudeau's radical liberalization

00:12:46.820 of drugs. Justin Trudeau must put partisanship aside. Not just for the sake of Team Canada, but for the sake of our

00:12:55.820 people and fully reverse his liberalization of drugs. Ban them, prosecute those who traffic in them, secure

00:13:04.820 our borders against the illegal importation of fentanyl ingredients, put people in treatment and recovery

00:13:10.820 to bring our loved ones home drug free. That is necessary now more than ever.

00:13:18.820 I think that's the right response. I mean, he's trying to sound like a grown up in a country that is not being grown up.

00:13:24.820 Ben, I found that a shocking statistic. And I like to think I follow Canadian immigration facts pretty closely.

00:13:30.820 4.9 million Canadians, that's more than 10 percent of our population, don't have tenure in this country.

00:13:36.820 I don't know if that's a big problem for America, because I don't know if they're going to be going south anymore.

00:13:42.820 But the number of illegal crossings from the north to the south is skyrocketing.

00:13:48.820 It's not as bad as the Mexican side of things, of course, but it is growing very quickly. 1.00

00:13:52.820 What do you make of that statistic that you just heard?

00:13:56.820 Yeah, it's staggering. You know, I was just looking at the total population size and you're talking to a country that's 40 million people.

00:14:02.820 Just an outrageous, overwhelming number. And, you know, do the people have a voice in that?

00:14:08.820 Was there ever a referendum to say we want to have this high a percentage of folks purportedly temporarily there?

00:14:14.820 And do you really have a country at that point if you're talking about more than 10 percent of your population consisting of these purportedly temporary individuals? 0.59

00:14:24.820 And, you know, those numbers about, OK, two ISIS prosecutions potentially or two ISIS members discovered.

00:14:34.820 How many countless others affiliated with the IRGC or with Hezbollah or with Hamas or with Al Qaeda or any of the other umbrella groups, Shia or Sunni jihadist groups?

00:14:46.820 And what about Chinese nationals or what about agents of influence working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party or Russian agents of influence?

00:14:54.820 I mean, you can run down the list and just the responses from governments across the West, essentially, do not instill any confidence that they have any idea what the populations look like.

00:15:05.820 And, you know, there's a saying about in America how America is an idea.

00:15:09.820 And of course, you know, there are the ideals on which the country is built.

00:15:13.820 There are the values and principles that are baked into the Constitution.

00:15:16.820 But it takes people to bring them to life and to manifest them and to fulfill them.

00:15:21.820 You don't have a country if you don't have the people who adhere to those values and principles at the end of the day.

00:15:27.820 So it's utterly outrageous. But I think this is a symptomatic of progressivism and progressive views that have prevailed across the West.

00:15:37.820 And on that last point about the drugs, it's also worth noting, of course, that one of the key points of origin, really, when you look at the supply chain, so to speak, in the production and delivery of fentanyl is, of course, communist China.

00:15:48.820 And so you can call this a new opium war, essentially, that the Communist Chinese Party is engaged in against the rest of the Western world, leading to hundreds of thousands of deaths across the West on these opiates.

00:16:03.820 And then you have progressive leaders who take a lax perspective.

00:16:08.820 And they basically want people to be able to ingest drugs in a safe fashion, as opposed to saving people's lives.

00:16:14.820 So they're basically doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party at the end of the day, utterly outrageous.

00:16:19.820 And it just speaks to the delusional views and ultimately the disastrous views held by far too many in the Western ruling class elite.

00:16:28.820 Yeah, I mean, Trudeau has really emphasized the legalization of hard drugs.

00:16:33.820 And I recently had the experience of going to San Francisco's Tenderloin District, which is one of the worst drug infested neighborhoods.

00:16:43.820 And it was astonishing.

00:16:46.820 I went with Avi Amini as part of his RV trip across America.

00:16:51.820 Here's just a very quick clip of that.

00:16:53.820 Like, it was bad. Take a look at this.

00:16:55.820 Is this city safe?

00:16:56.820 No, no. This is the most horrible place you could be in in San Francisco right now.

00:17:03.820 Because it's like gunfire yelling and screaming every day.

00:17:07.820 Everybody come out with the machetes, with the guns, AR, everything.

00:17:12.820 And that's why you think we should come out at night?

00:17:14.820 Yeah, to expose all this.

00:17:16.820 Yeah, walking zombies around here. That's about it.

00:17:20.820 Is it easy to police this city?

00:17:21.820 Oh, no, absolutely not. We're 600 short.

00:17:24.820 Yeah, that's a lot of people.

00:17:26.820 You say you're 600 cops short in the city.

00:17:28.820 How does that manifest itself?

00:17:31.820 Like, give me an example of a problem that causes.

00:17:33.820 There's not enough police on the street.

00:17:35.820 So, delayed calls for service, officer safety issues because there's not enough people to back you.

00:17:43.820 As of right now, I hang out on the street. I'm trying to get a job. I just got out of jail, actually.

00:17:49.820 And where do you sleep?

00:17:51.820 Really? I just stay up all night. As of right now, until I get my stuff stolen.

00:17:55.820 Yeah.

00:17:56.820 The moment you fall asleep out here, your stuff goes missing right away.

00:17:59.820 How is it living in this area?

00:18:01.820 Oh, man.

00:18:03.820 It's not safe.

00:18:06.820 And you can just walk around here by yourself.

00:18:10.820 Maybe you can do that, but then you never know what's going to happen.

00:18:14.820 These people are crazy, you know?

00:18:16.820 Everything dead. Everything closed down.

00:18:19.820 Can't do nothing. Can't eat. Can't shop.

00:18:21.820 All these restaurants got rats and roaches down here. I don't eat s*** down here.

00:18:26.820 They're robbing old people, even my mom and my sister, in front of our own house.

00:18:34.820 Democrats say they banned guns and it's safe now. Is it not safe now?

00:18:38.820 I don't know. I don't believe whatever they say.

00:18:41.820 I think it's a problem that so many people are on drugs. They're on drugs.

00:18:45.820 Why are so many people on drugs here?

00:18:47.820 Fidinol. It's killing people. And they do it like it's water. It's Fidinol.

00:18:52.820 They need to get rid of that s***. They need to get rid of a lot of things.

00:18:54.820 You see people having Fidinol, bending over. It's horrible.

00:18:59.820 I was smoking a cigarette. I was smoking a cigarette, walking down the street.

00:19:03.820 Somebody blew Fidinol in my face and I almost died from that.

00:19:07.820 Just like the snuggling of that s*** almost killed me. It didn't bring me back to life. 1.00

00:19:11.820 What substances are you on? Are you trying to get off them?

00:19:14.820 Yeah, I'm on Fentanyl. I have some boxing for it. I'll try to weed myself off of it with.

00:19:19.820 How long you been on Fentanyl?

00:19:21.820 About two and a half, three years.

00:19:23.820 But Ben, I gotta tell you, the whole time I was in San Francisco, I was thinking,

00:19:27.820 yeah, this is bad, but this is nothing compared to Vancouver's East Hastings Street.

00:19:34.820 And even in Toronto, there's tent communities under underpasses.

00:19:40.820 That used to be purely an American phenomenon.

00:19:43.820 We held ourselves, we thought we were superior to that.

00:19:47.820 We thought, oh, that's American poverty.

00:19:49.820 And it's not just in big cities in Canada.

00:19:51.820 It's in medium sized cities and even towns now.

00:19:55.820 I don't know, it's just astonishing.

00:19:58.820 And what's incredible to me as I'm trying to grapple with this,

00:20:02.820 is Trump isn't president yet and not for two more months.

00:20:05.820 But simply by speaking with a combination of command and I would say threat,

00:20:14.820 he's already causing the world to change and react.

00:20:17.820 Mexico has already said they will.

00:20:19.820 I think at the end of the day, Canadian business will say to Justin Trudeau,

00:20:24.820 stop this border shenanigans or you will kill the auto industry.

00:20:29.820 You will kill the banking industry.

00:20:31.820 You will kill cross-border trade.

00:20:33.820 So I think that Trump is basically in his rough way,

00:20:38.820 achieving a policy outcome from Americans that is happy.

00:20:42.820 And I don't like Canada being threatened, so to speak.

00:20:47.820 But I think the outcome that will happen here is that Canada smartens up

00:20:50.820 on immigration and drugs.

00:20:51.820 How's that not a win for Canada?

00:20:53.820 I just think it is, Ben.

00:20:56.820 Absolutely right.

00:20:57.820 And it is worth noting that in America in the 2024 election cycle,

00:21:02.820 we did see a repudiation in any number of blue jurisdictions

00:21:06.820 of the kinds of policies that to your point have led to the likes of the

00:21:10.820 Tenderloin District in San Francisco being completely antisocial and broken down.

00:21:15.820 So there is a pendulum swinging back.

00:21:18.820 Obviously, it's personified in Donald Trump,

00:21:20.820 but it also goes down to state and local level elections as well.

00:21:24.820 But I think to your point, and he said this himself, I believe,

00:21:28.820 that is the former president, now the incoming president,

00:21:31.820 that his position with respect to the threats of tariffs ultimately, for example,

00:21:36.820 in the economic focus, are about using tariffs as a lever to ultimately get back to genuine free trade,

00:21:44.820 to get every side to drop their tariffs.

00:21:46.820 So it is a tactic.

00:21:48.820 It's not about a love of them for the sake of the tariffs,

00:21:52.820 but as a tool in the toolbox to get to a desired outcome that ultimately is going to be better for every party,

00:21:58.820 which, you know, in the case of economics and talking about European countries, for example,

00:22:02.820 would be everyone dropping their barriers to trade.

00:22:04.820 So I think there's a realization of that on the economic side.

00:22:07.820 And then to your point here, this is really about using an economic lever to drive non-economic changes.

00:22:14.820 To your point, security changes, sovereignty changes,

00:22:17.820 changes relating to the infiltration of drugs, the influx of drugs into the U.S.

00:22:21.820 So from the North and the South, it's not a bad faith effort.

00:22:25.820 It's a good faith effort.

00:22:27.820 And it's what are the tools in the toolbox?

00:22:29.820 And obviously, tariffs were a prominent part of U.S. policy for well over a century.

00:22:36.820 And it's really been a phenomenon on the last, call it 50 to 75 years in the U.S.,

00:22:41.820 where there's been less of a focus on them as a potential tool.

00:22:44.820 But it makes inordinate sense.

00:22:45.820 If you're going to put your country first, you're going to use every tool in the toolbox,

00:22:49.820 every arrow you have in the quiver to try and effectuate the changes that you want.

00:22:54.820 And to your point, this is going to be a win-win on both sides.

00:22:57.820 But this is just one bargaining tool.

00:22:59.820 But it's made by a credible leader.

00:23:02.820 And that is the real difference at the end of the day,

00:23:04.820 is that foreign leaders know that Donald Trump means business.

00:23:07.820 Yes, this may be a negotiating tactic, but he's willing to go all the way.

00:23:10.820 And that's obviously imperative in any negotiation.

00:23:13.820 Yeah, I mean, literally the week Trump won the election,

00:23:16.820 the Houthi terrorist group in Yemen announced it was going to stop hijacking freighters in the Red Sea.

00:23:22.820 There's only one reason they chose that date, because they knew Trump was coming,

00:23:26.820 and they didn't want to be-

00:23:27.820 NATO leaders talking about upping their commitments.

00:23:29.820 All around the world, you've seen immediately just the change in leader,

00:23:33.820 the incoming change alone has caused a sea change.

00:23:36.820 And they disrespect the leaders, but through the disrespect, they had disrespected America for four years.

00:23:43.820 And it's like that meme that Trump always-

00:23:46.820 I see a lot of a very sober-minded Trump, and the words are,

00:23:51.820 they're not coming for me, they're coming for you, but I'm in the way.

00:23:54.820 There's some essential truth in that, is that Trump is the pointy edge of the spear,

00:23:59.820 but it's Americans who will get the benefit of economic or national security benefit.

00:24:06.820 And what drives me nuts is how Canadians are saying Trump wants this lunatic economic policy of tariffs.

00:24:13.820 No, he doesn't. It's the prod to get what he really wants.

00:24:18.820 It reminds me how I see some pundits saying,

00:24:21.820 Trump will disarm NATO, Trump will destroy NATO,

00:24:25.820 because Trump says if you don't increase your spending, we're out of here.

00:24:30.820 Well, of course Trump wants them to increase their spending.

00:24:34.820 It's again a tactic, a lever, you could say it's a threat.

00:24:37.820 And by the way, the old NATO boss loved it,

00:24:41.820 because Trump was scaring the NATO members into giving more,

00:24:45.820 because he was threatening to leave if they didn't.

00:24:47.820 To say, oh, Trump wants to destroy NATO.

00:24:50.820 No, he's making a credible threat that the other leaders respond to it.

00:24:56.820 And that's the thing, Ben.

00:24:57.820 NATO had their summit in Montreal last week,

00:25:00.820 which is a disgrace because Canada doesn't deserve it.

00:25:03.820 We're, I think, literally the last place in terms of our percentage of GDP towards the military.

00:25:10.820 And Trudeau couldn't even manage to hold the summit without having riots in the street by Islamists,

00:25:18.820 by announcing he stood with Hamas and the International Criminal Court against Western allies.

00:25:26.820 Like, I don't think Canada had earned that NATO summit.

00:25:30.820 We're such a disgrace on the military side.

00:25:32.820 But even when it fell into our lap, Trudeau really didn't care about it.

00:25:37.820 He was at the Taylor Swift concert.

00:25:39.820 It was a bit of an embarrassment.

00:25:40.820 Did anyone in America even follow that?

00:25:42.820 I saw it on social media.

00:25:45.820 You could find it on X.

00:25:47.820 And of course, the powers that be here obviously want to cripple X, wanted to destroy Elon Musk.

00:25:53.820 And he found himself or his businesses investigated.

00:25:56.820 But I think I saw almost a dozen different agencies in the U.S.

00:26:02.820 But to that point, it was the split screen there of enjoying a concert, rioters out in the streets.

00:26:10.820 Again, the antisocial behavior on behalf of or executed by people who want to destroy our civilization and the values and principles and the people who have made Canada a great nation.

00:26:22.820 Again, I think this is just illustrative of the madness that has prevailed over far too much of the West.

00:26:28.820 And to your point, the sobriety that is coming very quickly when you have a populist nationalist leader leading America who says enough is enough.

00:26:37.820 And by the way, it's not just about making other countries pay their fair share to defend themselves and their people and combating free riding.

00:26:48.820 It's about having actual allies and partners, not client states who are reliant on America for everything and ultimately don't serve either side.

00:26:59.820 And that's a big change.

00:27:00.820 You know, I would argue that the Obama-Biden-Harris sort of view has actually been to try to create controllable client states, not allies and partners, preferring multilateral venues over bilateral negotiations.

00:27:15.820 And that's a massive change that you're going to see as well as much more focus on bilateral relationships, burden sharing, everyone contributing equally to shared ends.

00:27:26.820 Otherwise, it just simply doesn't make sense.

00:27:28.820 What country would say that we're going to foot the bill disproportionately for institutions or PACs that end up disproportionately undermining that country?

00:27:38.820 It's just asinine.

00:27:39.820 No citizenry would want that from their leaders.

00:27:41.820 Yeah.

00:27:42.820 Then you mentioned free speech and then platform X or Twitter, as I still call it, was how you saw the juxtaposition of the riots versus our carefree prime minister, you know, dancing like a teenage girl.

00:27:55.820 By the way, I'm not opposed to a guy going to a concert with his teenage daughter.

00:27:59.820 What was so bizarre to me is how Trudeau went around to talk to other teenage girls and trade what they call friendship bracelets.

00:28:07.820 I thought this is a deeply unserious man in serious times.

00:28:11.820 And I can hardly wait till he's replaced by Pierre Polyev, the conservative leader we showed earlier.

00:28:16.820 I think it'll be a productive fit, Polyev and Trump.

00:28:19.820 You know, unfortunately, we were mismatched.

00:28:21.820 We had the very serious Stephen Harper, who is a real conservative, matched with Obama.

00:28:26.820 Now, they managed to keep it together and actually be somewhat productive.

00:28:29.820 Then you had Trudeau and Trump together.

00:28:32.820 And then the last four years, you have Trump and Biden.

00:28:35.820 But that did no favors to Canada, by the way.

00:28:38.820 I think that having Polyev and Trump together, I think both countries will be much stronger.

00:28:43.820 I think the two men will have a lot to talk about, including oil.

00:28:46.820 I'm very excited that the Keystone pipeline is going to be greenlit on day one, according to Trump.

00:28:51.820 That'll that'll help both countries tremendously.

00:28:54.820 But back to free speech.

00:28:57.820 Elon Musk bet the farm on this.

00:28:59.820 I mean, you could see enemies of Musk saying if Biden win.

00:29:04.820 So if Kamala Harris wins, we have to cancel contracts with Elon Musk's companies.

00:29:10.820 You could see they were already, as you say, investigating him through everything from the SEC to the Coastal Commission or whatever.

00:29:17.820 So Elon Musk bet the farm and he won for himself, but also for anyone who cares about free speech.

00:29:24.820 But look at this around the world.

00:29:26.820 The attacks on X, the platform.

00:29:30.820 The European Commission writing a letter saying you'd better follow these rules.

00:29:36.820 The United Kingdom demanding that Elon Musk come and answer for the use of Twitter in some riots.

00:29:43.820 Like in Brazil, Lula seizing assets for Starlink because of a quarrel with Twitter.

00:29:51.820 Like all these censorship countries around the world who were gunning for Musk.

00:29:56.820 Well, now Musk is sort of like Batman and Robin or Batman and Superman with Trump.

00:30:01.820 And here in Canada, let me ask you this question.

00:30:03.820 Here in Canada, Justin Trudeau has introduced something called the Online Harms Act that would have massive fines for companies like Twitter.

00:30:12.820 That would have massive censorship.

00:30:15.820 And Trudeau was going like a freight train, just like Keir Starmer in the UK, just like all the Social Democrat countries in Europe.

00:30:23.820 But now America, with Musk as co-pilot, is saying, no, free speech matters again.

00:30:29.820 How do you think America will treat, what will it do to so-called allies who want to fight with Elon Musk and censor the American company called Twitter?

00:30:41.820 What will Trump, with maybe Musk talking in his ear, do or say about would-be censors like Justin Trudeau and Keir Starmer?

00:30:52.820 Yeah, well, first, to your point, there's legislation, there's regulations out there in the EU.

00:31:00.820 For example, the Digital Services Act we see in Australia, we see in the UK, and now I think you're talking as well to Canada and elsewhere.

00:31:09.820 These crippling fines that can be put forth essentially if you don't adhere to the anti-free speech content moderation standards that these regimes want.

00:31:19.820 And this is a backdoor way from the American perspective for those of us who are fighting in the censorship industrial complex.

00:31:26.820 We see this as a backdoor way to curtail American speech by destroying the business models of these platforms or forcing them to adhere to policies that are going to stifle American speech on a whole slew of clearly protected buckets of rhetoric.

00:31:44.820 We did not have a situation before where you actually had a U.S. government that was going to be championing free speech on these platforms.

00:31:51.820 I wrote a piece about a month plus ago for RealClear Investigations about this sort of global boomerang backdoor assault on American speech by attacking the platforms over content moderation standards, also trying to destroy their business models by getting advertisers to boycott them and beyond.

00:32:10.820 There's evidence to suggest, well, first of all, clearly that institutions, NGOs, for example, that the American government has either coordinated with or in some instances funded are behind some of these global anti-free speech efforts.

00:32:25.820 And then, of course, it boomerangs back on us.

00:32:29.820 You're going to have a sea change in the way of the fact that, first of all, Donald Trump himself, in a video that surfaced recently, but it's from 2022, I think maybe December of 2022, he put forth sort of his free speech agenda.

00:32:40.820 And essentially, he said, we're taking the federal government out of this business.

00:32:43.820 If you dry up the federal funds that go to both domestic and international organizations that are the ones pushing for and promulgating these rules, regulations and laws, and also underwriting the NGOs that create the reports and the research that is used to say, look, there's a pandemic of dangerous mystics and malinformation.

00:33:06.060 And consequently, we need to censor you via these platforms.

00:33:09.420 When you dry up the government money behind the censorship industrial complex, it makes it infinitely harder for it to operate.

00:33:16.860 So that is one way in which I think you're going to see a sea change here.

00:33:20.620 But obviously, to your point, you have Trump essentially a one man victim, first of all, of the censorship industrial complex, the platforms from all these entities.

00:33:31.340 And then you have standing next to him, Elon Musk, who they tried to destroy and make a 40 billion plus dollar investment, go down to zero, who really literally put his money where his mouth was in defending free speech and bet it all, put all of his chips into the table.

00:33:44.980 As he said, he probably would have been arrested had Donald Trump not won.

00:33:50.240 Certainly, they would have tried to break and bankrupt him.

00:33:53.020 I think you're going to see an infinitely more aggressive U.S. government when it comes to using soft power where necessary as a lever to get other countries to take down these attacks on free speech, defending and supporting platforms.

00:34:08.820 And we could very quickly go through a thought exercise and imagine all the different levers that can be used.

00:34:14.020 But there's basically been no resistance to date.

00:34:16.120 I asked Biden administration officials, for example, the State Department, what are you doing to defend free speech against attacks from afar, global attacks on these platforms by way of these rules, regulations and laws?

00:34:29.040 And essentially, I got a boilerplate response.

00:34:31.100 There's no way you're going to get that from a Trump administration because the Trump administration understands that fostering a dynamic, vibrant marketplace of ideals is essential to having a free country.

00:34:44.020 We don't have America without our First Amendment rights.

00:34:46.840 And the U.S. government is going to be out of the business of violating those rights.

00:34:50.100 And there's no way it's going to stand for foreign governments attacking Americans' rights through attacks on these platforms either.

00:34:57.320 You know, you made me remember that the U.S. Naval Intelligence hired a military contractor at the University of Arkansas, Little Rock, to do sort of an open source spying paper on Rebel News.

00:35:11.660 I don't know if you ever heard that story, Ben, but we found out that the U.S. Navy was spying on it.

00:35:18.000 By the way, I'm pro-Navy.

00:35:20.160 You know, I'm worried about the People's Liberation Army Navy.

00:35:23.120 I just thought it was absolutely appalling.

00:35:25.220 And it was in the name of, like, what you say, disinformation.

00:35:28.420 And, I mean, we couldn't be more pro-American as Canadians.

00:35:33.360 Listen, it's great to catch up with you.

00:35:34.640 I know you've got to run, and maybe another time we'll talk about the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, as Musk calls it.

00:35:42.120 I think that's going to be part of it, too.

00:35:43.680 You talked about defunding the instruments of censorship.

00:35:47.120 I think that really hacking away with large chunks at the permanent bureaucracy, defunding, disrupting, even abolishing agencies, may in some ways be the longest-lasting legacy of Trump.

00:36:00.780 I know you've got to run. Thanks for spending so much time with us today, Ben.

00:36:04.580 Thanks for having me, Ezra. Always a pleasure.

00:36:06.080 All right. Thanks for that. There you have it, Ben Weingarten from The Federalist.

00:36:10.220 That's our show for today.

00:36:11.940 Until next time, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters, to you at home, goodbye, and keep fighting for freedom.

00:36:19.180 We'll be right back.

00:36:22.460 We'll be right back.

00:36:25.980 We'll be right back.

00:36:28.780 We'll be right back.

00:36:34.300 We'll be right back.

00:36:41.020 We'll be right back.

Rebel News Podcast - November 28, 2024

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Canadians receive 'reality check' on immigration with Trump's looming tariff war

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