Donald Trump will change our own country almost as much as he will change his. We have a feature interview with my friend Ben Weingarten, one of the smartest political commentators in the country. He works with the Federalist and we ll have a full show with him today.
00:02:29.800It was fascinating to see the reaction in Canada to Donald Trump doing two things. Number one,
00:02:35.920lumping us in with Mexico when he made a threat of 25% tariffs if we don't get our border under
00:02:43.620control, both from an illegal migration point of view and from a drug smuggling fentanyl point of
00:02:50.300view. So to be lumped in with Mexico, you saw sort of a haughty self-righteousness. How dare you,
00:02:57.300sir? But you saw something else, which is a terror that Canada had really been in an immature,
00:03:05.220amateur foreign policy space for years, and now suddenly we have to talk about grown-up things,
00:03:11.200and we realize we really don't have a grown-up leader. Our leader during the NATO conference in
00:03:16.880town was busy at a Taylor Swift concert. Well, what does it mean? What does it mean that Trump is already
00:03:22.420cracking the whip around the world, and he's still two months away from being sworn in as president?
00:03:27.960What other things are going on around the world? Well, let's talk to one of our favorite Americans
00:03:32.840about that. I'm talking about Ben Weingarten. He's a journalist at The Federalist and a friend
00:03:37.440of Rebel News. He joins us now via Skype. Ben, great to see you again.
00:03:42.120Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me, Ezra.
00:03:43.920Well, thanks for coming on the show. You know, I think Canada has been in an unreality for a while.
00:03:49.700You know, there was an old saying in the 19th century, I think it was the 19th century,
00:03:54.240that Canada is a fireproof house far away from flammable materials. That's what a Canadian
00:04:01.640diplomat said about 100 plus years ago. And it's true. Like, we've really never had a bad thing
00:04:07.820happen to us because of where we are. We've always been lucky to be next to America. I mean, sure,
00:04:13.460we did have that skirmish in the War of 1812, but everything's been friendly since then.
00:04:17.640And there's a moral hazard there in that Canada can make performative statements about the world
00:04:26.420and not have to back it up with anything because we're safe over here. But that's allowed a
00:04:31.840childishness to creep into our foreign policy, our military policy, and now our domestic policy.
00:04:36.860And I feel like when Donald Trump said, get your border solved in two months, or I'm putting tariffs on
00:04:45.080on the first day, suddenly Canadians had to wake up and say, oh, there's some real life consequences
00:04:51.280here and we can't just virtue signal. That's how I see the whole thing. What does it look like from
00:04:55.840an American's point of view? Well, I think that's right. And, you know, the issues that which impact
00:05:03.620our border, the US border and our sovereignty are the issues that are impacting all of the Western world,
00:05:11.000which is unfettered immigration without regard to assimilation, without regard to the composition
00:05:19.680of who is immigrating, how they're immigrating, et cetera. There are all of these consequences
00:05:24.600to it. And from the US perspective, obviously, to the extent there aren't open borders to our North
00:05:30.920and open borders to our South, we already have a substantial amount of territory to protect and
00:05:37.280defend. And so it makes inordinate sense when the mandate for the incoming Trump administration
00:05:43.780is to restore our borders, to restore sovereignty, to get a handle on immigration, those who are already
00:05:51.080within our borders to eject immediately criminal illegal aliens, those who are working on behalf of
00:05:59.440terrorist groups, transnational criminal organizations, adversarial regimes like the Chinese Communist
00:06:06.100Party, them out first. And obviously, of course, in addition to dealing with the population already
00:06:12.480here, you want to prevent any additional illegal immigration. And so it makes inordinate sense that
00:06:18.600the Trump posture immediately would be, what tools do we have in the toolbox to ensure that surrounding
00:06:24.940countries neutralize and deal with their own immigration issues that they don't spill over into our borders?
00:06:32.180And that, of course, involves the northern border and the integrity of it, as well as the southern
00:06:37.380border. But to your point about Canada living in sort of a blissful existence, I mean, it's the same thing
00:06:44.880for the US in many respects. We're surrounded by oceans. We've been blessed with these nations built on
00:06:52.840values and principles that are timeless, that have allowed us to prosper, to have peaceful, dynamic
00:07:00.060existences. But it can be squandered very quickly with the wrong policies. And I think even there,
00:07:06.460I've seen footage recently of even Trudeau talking about, well, maybe we've gone a little far with the
00:07:11.420illegal immigration. And you may take that as just rhetoric, and it probably is just rhetoric.
00:07:16.540But there's a realization across the sort of globalist, internationalist, ruling class
00:07:22.720in the West, that there's a populist nationalist backlash. And the populist nationalist backlash
00:07:28.360is that the native citizens are being subordinated to non-citizens. And there's something fundamentally
00:07:36.000wrong and unfair about that. Countries are not putting their people first. They're not operating
00:07:42.200from their first principles. And consequently, it threatens the power of the ruling class.
00:07:47.620That's probably why, in part, we've seen a tyrannical and totalitarian reaction from a lot of
00:07:53.760ruling class members in good standing in any number of capitals across the West. But the bottom line is
00:08:01.680that if we are to have representative democracies, then what the people want should go. The people
00:08:08.660ought to be sovereign. We're not subjects. We are the masters of our leaders. And when that gets flipped
00:08:15.900on its head, it leads to disastrous outcomes. But broad strokes, what Donald Trump is going to do
00:08:21.520is put America's national interest first. And this policy of threatening tariffs, one tool in the
00:08:26.400toolbox, goes hand in hand with the idea of we're going to have mass deportation in U.S. soil as well,
00:08:31.960because there's a mandate to do it. It's good for the American public. Hopefully, it has a deterrent
00:08:36.880effect. And hopefully, it leads to self-deportation. And hopefully, it also leads to countries that are near
00:08:41.920abroad and are further abroad, also managing their own sovereignty as well, because these are global
00:08:48.640issues, of course, when you're talking about transnational gangs, when you're talking about the Chinese
00:08:52.940Communist Party's infiltration, when you're talking about jihadists as well across the West.
00:08:57.480You know, and by making these demands of Canada in a serious and, frankly, threatening way,
00:09:03.860it's causing a sobriety here that we haven't had in years. All the things you've talked about.
00:09:09.240I mean, right now, there is a senior credible allegation in this country by our version of the
00:09:15.680CIA, called CSIS, that there are 11 members of our parliament who were installed by the Chinese
00:09:22.860communists and installed because they gained the nomination process and they interfered and they
00:09:29.020bust in foreign nationals to vote who were temporarily in Canada. Like, it was quite a detailed
00:09:35.940operation. I don't know if our country's taking those things seriously enough. I don't think so.
00:09:41.420But when Donald Trump says, guess what? It's time to get serious. And if you don't, we're going to
00:09:47.260devastate your economy. A 25% tariff on Canadian goods to America would throw our country into a
00:09:52.420deep recession because we're so integrated. I think Canadian pundits have to understand that's Trump
00:09:58.180saying, I really, really mean it. It's not an economic war. It's saying, fix these non-economic
00:10:03.580things, the porous border, the drug sales, or we'll give you a punishment that's economic. Like,
00:10:09.820I don't think Trump wants the tariffs. I think he wants a proper border. But it's up to Trump to
00:10:17.900make Canada grown up a little bit. Hey, I want to play a clip for you. In response to Trump's threat of
00:10:24.940the tariff, Canada's leader of the opposition, he had a tough balancing act. Because on the one hand,
00:10:31.620he despises Trudeau's policies. But on the other hand, he has to stand up for Canada. And even if
00:10:37.620he agrees with Trump's substance, he can't be seen to be agreeing with threats against Canada. So he had,
00:10:43.980it was a very careful path he had to trod. But I think he did it well. He talked about Canada first and
00:10:50.520fixing those problems for Canada's sake, not because Trump wants it. But he referenced this.
00:10:57.360He said that in Canada, there are 4.9 million people who are here on a temporary basis and have
00:11:08.220to leave by the end of next year. And he said to the government, do you have any plan on how to get
00:11:15.840them out? And the answer was no. And where will they go? Will they go into America? Will America's
00:11:24.020deportees come into Canada? Look at this quick clip. About a week ago, Justin Trudeau admitted that
00:11:29.860he broke our immigration system. And that brings new challenges. His own published documents show
00:11:36.560there are 4.9 million people here temporarily that are supposed to leave by December 31st of next year,
00:11:48.52013 months from now. 4.9 million people. We asked what the plan was to track their departures. And
00:11:56.660yesterday, his immigration minister said, we're just going to take people at their word. He admits
00:12:02.100that there have been two ISIS terrorists allowed into our country. What is the plan to protect our
00:12:09.360security and reinstate sovereignty over who is in our country? And finally, on drugs. I don't want to
00:12:18.980stop drug overdoses to please Donald Trump. I want to stop drug overdoses so that there's not one more
00:12:26.820more than one more. I want to stop drug overdoses. I want to stop drug overdoses. I want to stop it.
00:12:31.820I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it. I want to stop it.
00:12:32.820After 47,000 other Canadians have died. That's more than we lost in the Second World War. A 200 percent
00:12:39.820annual increase in drug overdose deaths have resulted from Judge Justin Trudeau's radical liberalization
00:12:46.820of drugs. Justin Trudeau must put partisanship aside. Not just for the sake of Team Canada, but for the sake of our
00:12:55.820people and fully reverse his liberalization of drugs. Ban them, prosecute those who traffic in them, secure
00:13:04.820our borders against the illegal importation of fentanyl ingredients, put people in treatment and recovery
00:13:10.820to bring our loved ones home drug free. That is necessary now more than ever.
00:13:18.820I 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.
00:13:24.820Ben, I found that a shocking statistic. And I like to think I follow Canadian immigration facts pretty closely.
00:13:30.8204.9 million Canadians, that's more than 10 percent of our population, don't have tenure in this country.
00:13:36.820I 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.
00:13:42.820But the number of illegal crossings from the north to the south is skyrocketing.
00:13:48.820It's not as bad as the Mexican side of things, of course, but it is growing very quickly.
00:13:52.820What do you make of that statistic that you just heard?
00:13:56.820Yeah, 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.
00:14:02.820Just an outrageous, overwhelming number. And, you know, do the people have a voice in that?
00:14:08.820Was there ever a referendum to say we want to have this high a percentage of folks purportedly temporarily there?
00:14:14.820And 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?
00:14:24.820And, you know, those numbers about, OK, two ISIS prosecutions potentially or two ISIS members discovered.
00:14:34.820How 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?
00:14:46.820And what about Chinese nationals or what about agents of influence working on behalf of the Chinese Communist Party or Russian agents of influence?
00:14:54.820I 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.
00:15:05.820And, you know, there's a saying about in America how America is an idea.
00:15:09.820And of course, you know, there are the ideals on which the country is built.
00:15:13.820There are the values and principles that are baked into the Constitution.
00:15:16.820But it takes people to bring them to life and to manifest them and to fulfill them.
00:15:21.820You 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.
00:15:27.820So it's utterly outrageous. But I think this is a symptomatic of progressivism and progressive views that have prevailed across the West.
00:15:37.820And 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.
00:15:48.820And 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.
00:16:03.820And then you have progressive leaders who take a lax perspective.
00:16:08.820And they basically want people to be able to ingest drugs in a safe fashion, as opposed to saving people's lives.
00:16:14.820So they're basically doing the bidding of the Chinese Communist Party at the end of the day, utterly outrageous.
00:16:19.820And it just speaks to the delusional views and ultimately the disastrous views held by far too many in the Western ruling class elite.
00:16:28.820Yeah, I mean, Trudeau has really emphasized the legalization of hard drugs.
00:16:33.820And I recently had the experience of going to San Francisco's Tenderloin District, which is one of the worst drug infested neighborhoods.
00:25:47.820And of course, the powers that be here obviously want to cripple X, wanted to destroy Elon Musk.
00:25:53.820And he found himself or his businesses investigated.
00:25:56.820But I think I saw almost a dozen different agencies in the U.S.
00:26:02.820But to that point, it was the split screen there of enjoying a concert, rioters out in the streets.
00:26:10.820Again, 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.
00:26:22.820Again, I think this is just illustrative of the madness that has prevailed over far too much of the West.
00:26:28.820And to your point, the sobriety that is coming very quickly when you have a populist nationalist leader leading America who says enough is enough.
00:26:37.820And 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.
00:26:48.820It's about having actual allies and partners, not client states who are reliant on America for everything and ultimately don't serve either side.
00:27:00.820You 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.
00:27:15.820And 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.
00:27:26.820Otherwise, it just simply doesn't make sense.
00:27:28.820What country would say that we're going to foot the bill disproportionately for institutions or PACs that end up disproportionately undermining that country?
00:27:42.820Then 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.
00:27:55.820By the way, I'm not opposed to a guy going to a concert with his teenage daughter.
00:27:59.820What was so bizarre to me is how Trudeau went around to talk to other teenage girls and trade what they call friendship bracelets.
00:28:07.820I thought this is a deeply unserious man in serious times.
00:28:11.820And I can hardly wait till he's replaced by Pierre Polyev, the conservative leader we showed earlier.
00:28:16.820I think it'll be a productive fit, Polyev and Trump.
00:28:19.820You know, unfortunately, we were mismatched.
00:28:21.820We had the very serious Stephen Harper, who is a real conservative, matched with Obama.
00:28:26.820Now, they managed to keep it together and actually be somewhat productive.
00:28:29.820Then you had Trudeau and Trump together.
00:28:32.820And then the last four years, you have Trump and Biden.
00:28:35.820But that did no favors to Canada, by the way.
00:28:38.820I think that having Polyev and Trump together, I think both countries will be much stronger.
00:28:43.820I think the two men will have a lot to talk about, including oil.
00:28:46.820I'm very excited that the Keystone pipeline is going to be greenlit on day one, according to Trump.
00:28:51.820That'll that'll help both countries tremendously.
00:29:30.820The European Commission writing a letter saying you'd better follow these rules.
00:29:36.820The United Kingdom demanding that Elon Musk come and answer for the use of Twitter in some riots.
00:29:43.820Like in Brazil, Lula seizing assets for Starlink because of a quarrel with Twitter.
00:29:51.820Like all these censorship countries around the world who were gunning for Musk.
00:29:56.820Well, now Musk is sort of like Batman and Robin or Batman and Superman with Trump.
00:30:01.820And here in Canada, let me ask you this question.
00:30:03.820Here in Canada, Justin Trudeau has introduced something called the Online Harms Act that would have massive fines for companies like Twitter.
00:30:15.820And Trudeau was going like a freight train, just like Keir Starmer in the UK, just like all the Social Democrat countries in Europe.
00:30:23.820But now America, with Musk as co-pilot, is saying, no, free speech matters again.
00:30:29.820How 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?
00:30:41.820What will Trump, with maybe Musk talking in his ear, do or say about would-be censors like Justin Trudeau and Keir Starmer?
00:30:52.820Yeah, well, first, to your point, there's legislation, there's regulations out there in the EU.
00:31:00.820For 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.
00:31:09.820These 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.
00:31:19.820And this is a backdoor way from the American perspective for those of us who are fighting in the censorship industrial complex.
00:31:26.820We 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.
00:31:44.820We 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.
00:31:51.820I 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.
00:32:10.820There'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.
00:32:25.820And then, of course, it boomerangs back on us.
00:32:29.820You'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.
00:32:40.820And essentially, he said, we're taking the federal government out of this business.
00:32:43.820If 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.
00:33:06.060And consequently, we need to censor you via these platforms.
00:33:09.420When you dry up the government money behind the censorship industrial complex, it makes it infinitely harder for it to operate.
00:33:16.860So that is one way in which I think you're going to see a sea change here.
00:33:20.620But 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.
00:33:31.340And 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.
00:33:44.980As he said, he probably would have been arrested had Donald Trump not won.
00:33:50.240Certainly, they would have tried to break and bankrupt him.
00:33:53.020I 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.
00:34:08.820And we could very quickly go through a thought exercise and imagine all the different levers that can be used.
00:34:14.020But there's basically been no resistance to date.
00:34:16.120I 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?
00:34:29.040And essentially, I got a boilerplate response.
00:34:31.100There'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.
00:34:44.020We don't have America without our First Amendment rights.
00:34:46.840And the U.S. government is going to be out of the business of violating those rights.
00:34:50.100And there's no way it's going to stand for foreign governments attacking Americans' rights through attacks on these platforms either.
00:34:57.320You 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.
00:35:11.660I don't know if you ever heard that story, Ben, but we found out that the U.S. Navy was spying on it.
00:35:20.160You know, I'm worried about the People's Liberation Army Navy.
00:35:23.120I just thought it was absolutely appalling.
00:35:25.220And it was in the name of, like, what you say, disinformation.
00:35:28.420And, I mean, we couldn't be more pro-American as Canadians.
00:35:33.360Listen, it's great to catch up with you.
00:35:34.640I know you've got to run, and maybe another time we'll talk about the Department of Government Efficiency, DOGE, as Musk calls it.
00:35:42.120I think that's going to be part of it, too.
00:35:43.680You talked about defunding the instruments of censorship.
00:35:47.120I 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.
00:36:00.780I know you've got to run. Thanks for spending so much time with us today, Ben.
00:36:04.580Thanks for having me, Ezra. Always a pleasure.
00:36:06.080All right. Thanks for that. There you have it, Ben Weingarten from The Federalist.