Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Elon Musk rescues stranded astronauts, so Antifa thugs torch... Teslas？!

00:00:00.000 Hello, my friends. Boy, we're going to talk about Tesla and Elon Musk today.

00:00:04.740 Did you see how his SpaceX rescued those two astronauts that were stranded in space?

00:00:09.800 Sort of amazing. Compare that to the left's response, torching Tesla dealerships.

00:00:15.320 We'll show you some footage, and then we'll talk to our friend Alan Bokhari,

00:00:18.880 who has the latest inside scoop on censorship in the world of big tech.

00:00:25.560 That's ahead. But first, let me invite you to get what we call Rebel News Plus.

00:00:31.180 It's a video version of this podcast. For $8 a month, get all our video content

00:00:36.980 and the satisfaction of keeping Rebel News strong.

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00:00:51.220 You're listening to a Rebel News Podcast.

00:00:55.040 Tonight, Elon Musk rescues stranded astronauts, while Antifa thugs torch his Tesla stores.

00:01:08.200 It's March 19th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:10.320 You're fighting for freedom! 0.98

00:01:13.520 Shame on you, you censorious thug! 0.99

00:01:25.040 Hey, did you see the news of NASA? Why were those astronauts stuck up in space for so long? 0.99

00:01:32.200 Two NASA astronauts, Barry Wilmore and Sunita Williams, they were shot into space on a Boeing rocket,

00:01:40.120 and they docked at the space station, but there was a problem with the Boeing spaceship,

00:01:46.120 and it was determined to be too dangerous to take the crew back down.

00:01:49.300 So it was supposed to be an eight-day visit to space, went on for many months, I think around 280 days by the time it was done.

00:01:58.640 So why didn't NASA, under Joe Biden, send a rocket to rescue them?

00:02:04.000 I don't know, and I haven't been able to find a good answer for that.

00:02:08.920 I think there is sort of one obvious answer, and you can see why NASA didn't say it out loud.

00:02:15.280 It's because the only man who could do that quickly, the only company that could do that quickly and safely,

00:02:22.080 was Elon Musk's company, SpaceX.

00:02:25.060 SpaceX literally does ten times more space missions than all the rest of the world does, combined, ten times over.

00:02:37.180 They're like more than 90% of all payloads to space.

00:02:41.280 Here's how Musk tells the story. This is him telling Joe Rogan.

00:02:46.240 Are you still rescuing those people that are stuck in the space station?

00:02:49.500 Uh, yeah, that's coming up in a couple weeks, I think.

00:02:51.620 Whoa.

00:02:51.980 They've been up there for, how long, Jamie? They were supposed to be there for a couple days, right?

00:02:56.580 I think actually probably four weeks.

00:02:58.780 They were supposed to be up there for like eight days.

00:03:01.440 Yeah.

00:03:02.040 And they've been up there for like eight months.

00:03:05.080 So a little longer than expected. 1.00

00:03:07.160 Fuck. 1.00

00:03:07.680 Yeah. 1.00

00:03:08.280 What is it going to be like for those people when they get back?

00:03:10.200 They're going to be a wreck for a long time, right?

00:03:11.980 Yeah, for the longer you stay up there, you get, you know, sort of in zero G, you get increased bone loss.

00:03:17.440 So it ended up being like this political football.

00:03:21.980 And, uh, sort of, sort of hotly contested topic.

00:03:26.700 Um, we offered to bring them back early.

00:03:29.580 This offer was rejected by the Biden administration.

00:03:32.660 Why?

00:03:33.820 For political reasons.

00:03:35.000 That's so crazy.

00:03:36.120 Well, obviously that's true because as soon as Trump gave the order to Musk, Musk just went ahead and did it.

00:03:40.960 But here's a video of the actual moment of the rescue mission arriving.

00:03:45.820 It's sort of cool.

00:03:46.420 Now, and there you are getting a great view of crew nine inside dragon freedom.

00:03:50.760 As it returns back to earth, we are awaiting the drogue deploys.

00:03:54.340 This view coming from the WB 57 high altitude plane.

00:03:57.820 And there you see it on your screen.

00:03:59.980 Drove deployment.

00:04:00.880 Drove deployment.

00:04:01.580 You know, imagine being stuck up there for nine months in that tiny space.

00:04:09.540 And here's that rescue pod when it was coming down to earth again, landing softly in the ocean with all those parachutes.

00:04:17.840 Take a look at this.

00:04:18.580 And splashdown crew nine back on earth.

00:04:36.740 And SpaceX freedom splashdown.

00:04:39.640 Now, here's that rocket pod, if that's the right word.

00:04:42.960 Musk floating on the top of the ocean, being prepared to being hauled aboard a ship.

00:04:46.360 You can see for scale, there's a man on the outside of the pod attending to certain things.

00:04:51.600 A hook, I think.

00:04:52.720 And if you can believe it, I mean, speaking of pods, there's a pod of dolphins that have come to check out what all the fuss is about.

00:05:00.120 I mean, what are the odds?

00:05:01.400 You got to look at this.

00:05:02.440 We can see that recovery vessel slowly but surely closing the distance there between.

00:05:09.480 Oh, dolphin cam back again.

00:05:10.760 We can see that the dragon capsule and the recovery vessel at distance is closing.

00:05:19.060 I tell you, the whole thing, it feels a little bit like a miracle.

00:05:22.920 It probably was a little bit.

00:05:24.500 But it was also science and technology and will and leadership.

00:05:28.660 I mean, this is the guy who can do the miracle of landing a rocket booster backwards perfectly to be recovered and reused on those.

00:05:38.500 He calls it the giant chopsticks.

00:05:39.960 Remember that?

00:05:40.820 We have liftoff.

00:05:42.320 It was one giant step for SpaceX as it launched its most powerful rocket ever built.

00:05:48.320 We're now down to three Raptor engines.

00:05:50.900 And then flew its first stage booster back to the launch pad where giant metal arms called chopsticks grabbed it just seven minutes after lifting off in Boca Chica, Texas. 0.58

00:06:02.140 What in front of the world?

00:06:04.060 I mean, that looks pretty miraculous, too.

00:06:07.240 Boeing can't do that.

00:06:09.080 Biden can't do that.

00:06:10.380 The Chinese can't do that. 1.00

00:06:11.280 The Russians can't do that. 0.84

00:06:12.780 Trump and Musk rescued some astronauts and it worked.

00:06:17.960 Two astronauts were saved.

00:06:19.020 And imagine the horror of if they had died up there.

00:06:22.420 I don't even want to contemplate it.

00:06:24.500 Now, if you're in space for nine months in a small place, I mean, there's some psychological challenges, too.

00:06:29.940 But physically, your bones and your muscles get much weaker because there's no gravity.

00:06:34.280 You're not standing.

00:06:34.920 You're not working.

00:06:35.500 You're not moving.

00:06:36.360 I wonder if it would be a little bit like being in a bed for nine months.

00:06:40.940 Not healthy.

00:06:42.760 That's why they had to be taken out of the spaceship in a kind of wheelchair. 1.00

00:06:47.080 Musk saved the day.

00:06:50.380 He just did.

00:06:51.940 He's our generation's Thomas Edison.

00:06:55.460 The left hate him viscerally because he's friends with Trump.

00:06:58.720 That's the only reason why.

00:06:59.640 They used to love him.

00:07:01.360 And fair enough.

00:07:02.800 But they have announced their new goal to destroy him by destroying his main company, Tesla.

00:07:07.420 Tesla, by the way, is a major employer.

00:07:09.200 I think they have 80,000 jobs in America.

00:07:11.660 Actually, it's the number one selling make and model of vehicle.

00:07:14.960 And actually, the most American content for parts.

00:07:18.120 Like, they don't have parts coming in from Mexico or whatever.

00:07:21.340 A lot of people like the Teslas because they're cool and high tech.

00:07:25.220 And now they have features like self-driving.

00:07:28.260 Some people like the no gas feature.

00:07:31.980 I think it used to be the environmentalist car.

00:07:34.040 It still is.

00:07:35.080 But it's also the main reason Elon Musk is so rich.

00:07:38.780 And that's what enabled to do things like buy Twitter, for example.

00:07:43.240 It lets him find his super PAC that he did in the 2024 election.

00:07:47.500 So they're targeting him and they're targeting Tesla because that's the source of his wealth.

00:07:52.820 Take a look at this Democrat senator.

00:07:54.820 Hey, folks.

00:07:55.320 Mark Kelly here in Washington driving to work for the last time in my Tesla.

00:08:01.540 When I bought this thing, I didn't think it was going to become a political issue.

00:08:08.560 Every time I get in this car in the last 60 days or so,

00:08:13.540 it reminds me of just how much damage Elon Musk and Donald Trump is doing to our country.

00:08:20.340 Talking about slashing Social Security, cutting health care benefits for poor people, for seniors.

00:08:27.880 It's one bad thing after the next.

00:08:30.900 He's firing veterans.

00:08:32.320 I'm a veteran.

00:08:33.560 So I have a really hard time driving around in this thing.

00:08:36.360 So I think it's time for an upgrade today.

00:08:38.760 So this is going to be my last trip in this car.

00:08:42.100 There are some things I really liked about it.

00:08:45.200 There are things I didn't like about it.

00:08:47.120 But that doesn't matter.

00:08:48.700 What matters is, you know, doing the right thing.

00:08:51.560 I think it's time to get rid of it. 1.00

00:08:53.180 You know, Elon Musk kind of turned out to be an asshole. 1.00

00:08:56.820 And I don't want to be driving a car built and designed by an asshole. 1.00

00:09:03.620 So looking forward to my new ride. 1.00

00:09:06.940 Now, a lot of leftists are doing that.

00:09:09.100 Some are destroying their own cars, which is sort of weird.

00:09:12.480 Now, it's one thing to say you don't want to drive a car or own a car that symbolizes someone you disagree with.

00:09:18.300 And I can actually understand that.

00:09:20.100 And I think I'm sort of the same in my own life.

00:09:23.100 I wouldn't buy a car from communist China, I don't think, because of that.

00:09:27.860 I mean, would you buy one made by China in Tibet?

00:09:31.000 I'm guessing you wouldn't.

00:09:32.940 So I don't mind people voting their conscience with their dollars.

00:09:36.380 But they've gone much further than just selling their car or speaking out personally.

00:09:40.620 Here's the failed vice presidential candidate for the Democrats under Kamala Harris.

00:09:46.040 Maybe you've forgotten about him.

00:09:48.720 Same as Tim Wallace.

00:09:49.640 And here he is.

00:09:50.580 I don't know why they trotted him back out.

00:09:52.040 I didn't think he was appealing at all.

00:09:54.140 And he's rejoicing in recent stock market troubles for Tesla, the company on the stock market.

00:10:01.560 Take a look.

00:10:02.000 Saying on my phone, I don't know, some of you know this on the iPhone, they've got that little stock app.

00:10:06.140 I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.

00:10:10.960 $2.25 and dropping.

00:10:13.900 So.

00:10:16.880 And if you own one, if you own one, we're not blaming you.

00:10:22.420 You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off, you know, and take out just telling you.

00:10:27.700 So cheering when an American company is losing market value because you don't like its CEO's politics, that's quite a look.

00:10:35.820 Cheering on economic failure, the failure perhaps of 80,000 employees.

00:10:40.660 Democrats can't build much, can they?

00:10:43.060 But they sure can tear things down well.

00:10:46.440 So their street gangs are getting in on the action, too.

00:10:50.000 Here's Antifa across America torching Tesla dealerships.

00:10:54.360 Today that actually came to Montreal, too.

00:10:56.660 Hey, everybody.

00:10:58.260 I'm currently at Tesla dealership in Montreal.

00:11:02.180 And as you can see behind me, this is what happened this morning.

00:11:06.820 There is two activists who came here to true paint, the pink paint at the Tesla dealership.

00:11:14.700 This is the first attack against Tesla here in Canada.

00:11:19.860 It's quite a contrast, isn't it?

00:11:21.260 On the one hand, the Thomas Edison of our age rescuing stranded astronauts.

00:11:27.620 That's just unbelievable.

00:11:29.880 On the other hand, mobs torching something they could never make.

00:11:33.560 That really does sum up the distinction, the state of the two major parties in America, doesn't it?

00:11:39.780 Stay with us for more.

00:11:46.180 I know some of you know this on the iPhone.

00:11:48.000 They've got that little stock app.

00:11:49.660 I added Tesla to it to give me a little boost during the day.

00:11:52.480 And if you own one, if you own one, we're not blaming you.

00:12:06.200 You can take dental floss and pull the Tesla thing off, you know, and take out of just telling you.

00:12:11.240 He's so excited that that's Tim Walz, in case you've forgotten, which most people have.

00:12:20.320 He was the vice presidential candidate with Kamala Harris.

00:12:22.900 And he's rejoicing.

00:12:24.460 He's exuberant over apparently Tesla stock falling.

00:12:28.240 And one of the reasons Tesla stock may be falling, one big reason is that many tech stocks are down these days.

00:12:34.000 But another reason is that Tesla has found itself the target of terrorism, of domestic terrorism.

00:12:41.480 Just like in the 2020 election year, there was George Floyd racial terrorism, Black Lives Matter terrorism, fires and riots. 0.52

00:12:50.920 The far left has decided that that's their terrorist target.

00:12:53.960 In fact, we hear that just today in Montreal, Tesla vehicles have been torched by Antifa.

00:13:01.240 Our own Alexa Lavoie is on the way there. 1.00

00:13:03.140 Joining us now to talk about this is our friend Alan Bokhari.

00:13:06.600 He's the managing director of Foundation for Freedom Online.

00:13:10.120 Alan, great to see you.

00:13:11.940 There is no doubt about it.

00:13:13.660 The left has decided to go after Tesla, not just the company, but individual vehicles.

00:13:19.820 Am I right?

00:13:21.700 That's right.

00:13:22.540 There have been a string of attacks on Tesla stores across the country.

00:13:25.940 There have been fire bombings.

00:13:27.400 And just the other day I saw they're now releasing the location of Tesla, of individual Tesla owners across the country.

00:13:36.280 So it's really a targeted campaign of, you know, destruction and violence against anyone who owns a Tesla.

00:13:41.560 That's really terrifying.

00:13:43.680 I mean, I see images on social media of people just randomly keying a Tesla.

00:13:51.880 By the way, a lot of Tesla drivers would probably call themselves liberal or environmentalist.

00:13:56.860 I mean, until six months ago, I think the Tesla brand was still pretty environmentalist.

00:14:03.300 And now it is they've changed its public reputation.

00:14:07.760 And they said, basically, if you want to hit back at Elon Musk and Donald Trump, hit back at any physical object in your vicinity.

00:14:16.020 So you're victimizing an individual owner.

00:14:20.080 Maybe you're victimizing an insurance company.

00:14:22.500 But there's a political rationale for that attack.

00:14:25.960 That really is one of the definitions of terrorism, isn't it?

00:14:28.360 To have some sort of violence or threat of violence in service of a political motive.

00:14:33.900 That's terrorism.

00:14:37.540 That is terrorism.

00:14:38.800 And, you know, people don't have to die for it to be terrorism.

00:14:42.500 You know, airplane hijackings back in the 1970s often had no deaths.

00:14:48.380 You know, hostages were taken, but there were no death.

00:14:50.220 It was still an act of terrorism.

00:14:51.840 And, you know, in the 70s, you also saw strings of bombings across the country.

00:14:55.940 Bombings of government buildings, bombings of monuments, statues.

00:15:00.280 And, yeah, that was terrorism.

00:15:01.680 Not all of the events had casualties.

00:15:05.080 But when there's an organized campaign of violence and destruction, whether it's against property or anything else, that is for political reasons, that's terrorism.

00:15:15.260 The definition of terrorism is violence for political purposes.

00:15:19.200 And that's what we're seeing here.

00:15:21.180 And it's also something that seems to be tacitly encouraged by some people.

00:15:24.640 I saw a clip of Jimmy Kimmel laughing about the attacks on Tesla stores just yesterday.

00:15:30.280 Vandalizing Tesla vehicles, new Tesla vehicles.

00:15:33.540 Please don't vandalize.

00:15:35.520 Don't ever vandalize Tesla vehicles.

00:15:38.460 And so.

00:15:40.100 So there seems to be no appetite for even condemning this on the part of the legacy media or the opposition to the Trump administration.

00:15:47.220 You know, I saw a startling video.

00:15:50.420 I'm sure you did, too.

00:15:51.580 It went super viral.

00:15:52.860 It was deported members of one of the most dangerous drug cartels, Tren de la Agua, if I'm saying it right.

00:16:01.520 I know I'm saying it wrong.

00:16:03.440 They were recently classified by the Department of Homeland Security and actually up here in Canada, too, as a terrorist organization.

00:16:10.540 So it was a drug cartel.

00:16:12.660 Trump declared it a terrorist organization.

00:16:15.840 And then they didn't just arrest and deport.

00:16:18.980 I think they were largely Venezuelans.

00:16:20.680 They took them to El Salvador to the ultra high security mega prison.

00:16:27.860 So they're not just in any jail.

00:16:30.480 They're not just being deported home.

00:16:32.040 They're in Naya Bukele's mega prison.

00:16:35.260 And it was such a dramatic video.

00:16:38.360 It looked like it was from a James Bond movie or something.

00:16:42.480 I don't know.

00:16:43.460 And all I could think of was, wow, what a great way to move these prisoners beyond the reach of district judges who might want to overturn it.

00:16:52.460 But mainly, as they would say, pour encourager les autres, to send a message to the others that if you come to America, you're going to have an extremely bad ending.

00:17:04.820 Like it was so shocking.

00:17:06.740 The reason I mentioned that story, Alan, is because in at least in that one case, and perhaps some others, perhaps some of his moves in the Middle East, Trump is signaling, don't mess with me.

00:17:18.620 And so here's my question for you.

00:17:20.800 Do you think that between Trump and his friendship with Elon Musk and the new FBI directors and the new department secretary, the attorney general, do you think that the force of the United States police and perhaps others could be used to find out who's organizing and causing these?

00:17:45.340 Because I don't believe it's organic.

00:17:46.700 I believe like Antifa, it's funded and directed by sophisticated operatives.

00:17:53.740 But I believe that if the NSA and the FBI and others were dispatched, they could actually crack the code here.

00:18:02.980 It's a very, very long preamble.

00:18:04.740 But here's my question.

00:18:06.460 Is Trump going to fight back?

00:18:08.140 So there are two elements to what you said there.

00:18:12.200 The first is, is there anyone funding it?

00:18:15.240 Which is a very interesting question.

00:18:17.200 I'll tell you one quick story on that point before I get to your second question.

00:18:20.520 So you might have heard of an individual called Susan Rosenberg.

00:18:27.020 She was a member of the May 19th Communist Organization.

00:18:32.140 They were a far left terrorist organization in the 70s and 80s.

00:18:36.080 One of many far left terrorist organizations in the 70s and 80s carried out a string of bombings across the country.

00:18:41.720 They even bombed the U.S. Senate in 1981.

00:18:45.900 Anyway, the FBI caught her.

00:18:47.380 She was in prison for a long time. 0.95

00:18:49.100 Bill Clinton pardoned her on his last day in office.

00:18:52.640 And then what does she do? 0.89

00:18:54.100 She joins a foundation called the Thousand Currents Foundation as a VP.

00:18:59.180 And that foundation goes on to fund Black Lives Matter, which were responsible, of course, for all the death, the violence and destruction in people getting killed even in the summer of 2020. 0.96

00:19:12.120 So you can actually trace present day unrest, present day political violence back to the people who perpetrated political violence in the 70s and 80s.

00:19:22.400 And again, that's a foundation that gives out grants.

00:19:24.660 It funds organizations.

00:19:25.720 And, you know, it has it has a hat or had, I think, I think she's left now, but it had a former left wing terrorist as a VP, which is which is incredible.

00:19:34.620 So I don't think for a second that any of these that, you know, these foundations that fund these left wing courses are, you know, all opposed to political violence.

00:19:42.800 And, you know, in at least one case, they weren't.

00:19:47.100 And to address your second question, and that goes into your second question, really, what's going to stop it?

00:19:53.660 The only thing that will stop it, really, because, you know, as being taskfully encouraged by people on the left, by people in the legacy media, the only thing that will really stop it is a unequivocal response from the authorities, from the FBI, from law enforcement.

00:20:07.160 And that will be the only thing that will actually deter these people, because they're perfectly happy to make heroes out of the perpetrators of violence.

00:20:16.060 An excellent recent example is Luigi Mangioni, the the person who is accused of killing the UnitedHealthcare CEO.

00:20:24.880 He's a hero to many people on the political left.

00:20:27.920 So, you know, in the minds of many of these people, there are no there are no bad tactics, only bad targets.

00:20:35.640 And, you know, when you're dealing with an attitude like that, then the only possible way to deter it is, you know, a stern response from the authorities.

00:20:43.900 Wow. I didn't know that about Susan Rosenberg.

00:20:46.860 You make me think of Bill Ayers, who is also a 70s activist, good friend of Barack Obama.

00:20:54.360 You know, Luigi Mangioni is a very interesting story because he was handsome.

00:20:59.780 I think that played a part in it.

00:21:01.500 There was a kind of glamour to what he did.

00:21:04.440 At least he tried to glamourize assassination.

00:21:09.000 And what was so important about that video that the I think I'm not sure if it was the American administration or the El Salvador,

00:21:17.200 the Salvadorian administration that made this little theatrical quality film reel.

00:21:22.660 But that de-glamorized that gang more than anything I could possibly imagine.

00:21:29.220 Like it showed them being humbled.

00:21:31.940 It's sort of like when Saddam Hussein was arrested in Iraq and they sort of, frankly, humiliated him by shaving him and cutting his hair on camera. 0.53

00:21:42.980 And whether or not you think that that was appropriate or you might even call that a war crime, treatment of prisoners, it served to reduce the morale of the fighters left in his cause.

00:21:56.720 Even, I mean, frankly, I think it probably was a violation of some Geneva convention to show a prisoner like that.

00:22:03.700 But so what?

00:22:04.860 There's a war afoot.

00:22:05.820 I think that there is a tremendous risk of violence becoming cool again.

00:22:14.160 And we've already seen several assassination attempts against Donald Trump.

00:22:19.520 Elon Musk says he has assassination threats all the time.

00:22:23.320 I think this really is an extremely serious event.

00:22:28.440 Do you think the same way the FBI went after the January 6th neanderers, that's what Gavin McInnes calls that, the great neandering.

00:22:38.980 And literally thousands of FBI agents were tasked to January 6th.

00:22:44.320 Which I, there may have been some minor offenses there, but I think it was overblown and politicized.

00:22:52.840 Do you think the FBI could be tasked to going after these actual violent firebombers?

00:22:58.420 Well, I think that's the biggest threat right now in terms of domestic political violence.

00:23:05.780 It's people who feel that political power has been taken away.

00:23:11.020 People who feel that they're not going to get political power back through the regular democratic process and are lashing out in a very violent way.

00:23:20.740 I think that that should be a focus for the FBI.

00:23:23.380 It's what they're supposed to investigate.

00:23:25.100 But, you know, as we know, the FBI and the security state over the past 10 years was completely radicalized and politically weaponized and, you know, really went after targets that, in my opinion, were not a really big threat at all.

00:23:40.820 People like the, you know, the January 6th protesters are now dealing with a spate of actual violence.

00:23:47.300 And, you know, I'm not sure who at the FBI, who in the security state is really, really looking at this.

00:23:53.320 I mean, they should be, you know, that's for certain, because you're not going to, like I said, you're not going to have that condemnation from the legacy media or from members of the political opposition to the administration.

00:24:03.940 At least we haven't seen that so far.

00:24:05.940 All we've seen is tacit encouragement, you know, late night hosts laughing about it on their shows.

00:24:11.020 There was even Seth Moulton, who, a Democratic congressman, who went on CNN and seemed to frame the attacks on Tesla as a legitimate form of protest.

00:24:18.920 Question, public backlash against Elon Musk.

00:24:22.780 The Trump administration is now saying that, like, if you, you know, are attacking Teslas or dealerships, going beyond vandalism, that that could be an act of domestic terrorism.

00:24:34.100 But I do want to ask about this as resistance.

00:24:37.700 Is this what resistance should look like?

00:24:39.620 So Trump thinks that if you try to kill cops to overthrow the government and change an election, that's not domestic terrorism, but somehow having a protest in front of a Tesla dealership.

00:24:49.120 So that's where we are right now.

00:24:50.900 The only thing that will deter this from happening, from continuing to escalate, is, you know, the authorities.

00:24:56.760 You know, I remember 2020 very vividly.

00:25:00.320 And by the way, Trump was still president in 2020.

00:25:03.540 He was still president until January of 2021.

00:25:06.180 So in a way, all that violence, I remember the Democrats saying that this violence is on Donald Trump's watch, which is, I tell you, the height of chutzpah.

00:25:14.840 That's like the old joke.

00:25:16.460 The definition of chutzpah is murdering your parents and then asking the court for mercy because you're an orphan.

00:25:22.200 That's, you know, the proverbial definition of chutzpah.

00:25:25.540 The chutzpah of the Democrats is they're the ones orchestrating this violence.

00:25:29.460 And they were saying, well, it's happening under Trump's watch.

00:25:31.740 The whole country's chaotic under him.

00:25:34.200 But it was true. 0.98

00:25:35.740 He didn't stop it.

00:25:37.060 He was rhetorically critical of it.

00:25:39.960 But the deep state, the security state didn't do anything.

00:25:45.580 I think I look at the FBI.

00:25:47.620 I see Kash Patel.

00:25:48.480 I don't know much about him, but he seems to be to be literally the most hardcore person in the administration than maybe Stephen Miller.

00:25:57.400 I see Dan Bongino, who at least as a rhetorical pundit on his live streams was as tough as it gets.

00:26:04.360 I just I would just hope that they move into action.

00:26:09.060 And, you know, there's this I love watching Scott Jennings.

00:26:12.180 He's a conservative pundit on CNN.

00:26:14.720 And he talks about how the Dems keep on taking the 20 side in 80-20 debates.

00:26:19.960 Like on stopping transgender athletes from going into girls change rooms, the Democrats are taking the 20 percent side of that.

00:26:29.060 He's describing what is currently the dumbest strategy in politics, which is Democrats taking the 20 percent side of every 80-20 issue in America.

00:26:38.380 Do you think this would be another 80-20 issue?

00:26:41.140 Do you think if the government cracked down on these domestic terrorists, do you think the population would cheer or do you think it would be a Luigi Mangione moment?

00:26:54.320 You know, obviously, I think the people who support this violence won't cheer for it.

00:26:57.960 But I think it's ultimately a minority of people engaging in the violence and supporting it.

00:27:02.680 And the only way it will escalate is if there isn't a crackdown.

00:27:06.240 And 2020 is a great example because I believe it was more than two dozen people who died in the in the rioting of 2020 of the summer of 2020.

00:27:17.620 And, you know, you know, the media downplayed it.

00:27:20.700 We don't even remember the names of most people who are most of the victims of the 2020 George Floyd riots.

00:27:25.740 But there were at least 25 of them.

00:27:28.800 But a few months later, you know, the same legacy media was was happy to to accuse the meanderers, as you call them, of domestic terrorism.

00:27:40.140 So it's what I published an article recently on Twitter called Forgiveness Asymmetry.

00:27:45.440 And the general gist of the argument is that for decades, for decades, there's been a general sense that if you engage in violence on the left, there'll be some form of clemency.

00:28:00.860 There'll be some form of forgiveness.

00:28:01.880 And you mentioned Bill Ayers earlier, Bill Ayers and his partner, Bernadine Dorn, they founded the Weather Underground, which carried out so many bombings across the country in the 1970s.

00:28:11.660 They faced almost no consequence of that.

00:28:13.700 I think Bernadine Dorn spent six months in prison.

00:28:16.820 Ayers didn't spend any any time in prison at all, as far as I know.

00:28:19.800 And by the 1980s, they were being hired by by prestigious law firms.

00:28:24.400 And by the 1990s, they were being given university professorships.

00:28:29.020 So that's how left wing political violence has been treated by elite institutions in this country going back decades.

00:28:38.060 So you're correcting that asymmetry, I think, is is a fundamental problem of American politics.

00:28:43.540 You know, I first learned the word denormalization when I was studying tobacco and how tobacco was denormalized.

00:28:53.940 It's hard to imagine now, but there was a time when tobacco was the leading industry in America.

00:28:59.780 It's really the crop as much as cotton that got the 13 colonies going.

00:29:05.060 The number one thing that the founding fathers had in common is they grew tobacco.

00:29:08.360 And over the centuries, tobacco was such an industry and to be a tobacco executive was to be a leading member of society, enormous philanthropy from the tobacco companies.

00:29:21.200 But over the course of a generation, a very careful denormalization, not just of smoking, but of like now the word tobacco executive is the lowest slur you could throw at someone.

00:29:36.260 I think that it's a very powerful thing, denormalization.

00:29:40.680 I think what's happening is they're trying to denormalize Trump and Trump supporters.

00:29:47.360 Obviously, this has been going on for a while.

00:29:49.360 While they're normalizing terrorism as an act of patriotism, as an act of defiance and resistance, they're denormalizing.

00:29:56.480 And here's my point.

00:29:59.540 They're trying to make it scary for an individual person to buy a Tesla.

00:30:03.780 They're trying to make it scary for an individual person to wear a MAGA hat.

00:30:09.260 They're trying to make it so that at the very least you'll be shunned, if not physically attacked.

00:30:15.320 And I wonder what your thoughts are on the way to resist that.

00:30:20.080 Because, you know, a lot of people wear a Che Guevara shirt and no one ever punishes or shuns them, even though Che Guevara is actually a murderer.

00:30:28.720 How do we stop this cultural denormalization of anyone who supports or does it even or have we passed that in America?

00:30:37.580 Do Americans no longer care about that kind of cancel culture, media knows best approach?

00:30:43.180 So this is where censorship comes in.

00:30:47.900 And obviously, I work for a foundation that is completely concerned with online censorship and its effects.

00:30:53.040 So I think what I just called forgiveness asymmetry, where left wing terrorists are basically forgiven.

00:30:59.020 But if you're on the right, you can have your career destroyed over a mere opinion or an offensive joke or an offensive statement.

00:31:04.140 And I think that was a product of information asymmetry, right?

00:31:09.720 So the total control of every information dispersing institution by by the pro-blog political establishment.

00:31:18.740 And, you know, when I say information dispersing institutions, I mean, the legacy media, I mean, the education system, I mean, universities, all of these things were in charge of, you know, teaching America's young people.

00:31:33.120 They were in charge of distributing the news.

00:31:35.360 And because that that system was so politically partisan, that's why we had this asymmetry.

00:31:47.140 That's all broken down now.

00:31:48.800 And it broke down very, very recently.

00:31:50.740 And I think the fact that it's broken down might give us some hope when it comes to, you know, correcting this.

00:31:56.440 What I see as a fundamental imbalance of post-war American politics.

00:32:00.780 You know, I was thinking about a change that I've observed, and I'm not part of Silicon Valley.

00:32:08.160 I know you were really in the heart of that battle, and you still are.

00:32:13.100 Think about the tech people who have moved away from the Democrats over the last 10 years.

00:32:17.140 And I think, by the way, that Tim Wall's video of him laughing at the falling stock and cheering it, I think that will hit hard in Silicon Valley.

00:32:25.000 Because he's saying, I'm rejoicing in the failure of an American corporate champion.

00:32:31.080 I mean, Tesla is the largest car company by far measured by market capitalization.

00:32:36.160 It's got 80,000 employees in America.

00:32:39.260 It's actually the most popular particular brand of cars sold.

00:32:43.780 So I think that Democrats in Silicon Valley, achievers, innovators, founders, I think they'll sort of be shocked by that.

00:32:51.680 Maybe I'm wrong on that, but I look at people like Bill Ackman, David Sachs, Elon Musk, Chamath, I can't say his last name, even Peter Thiel.

00:32:59.360 I mean, he's the original.

00:33:01.700 I think a lot of people have been shocked by the anti-freedom, anti-industry mindset of a lot of the Democrats lately.

00:33:13.080 Can you comment on that?

00:33:14.360 Like, has Silicon Valley, which was forever known as the most Democrat place in the world, Nancy Pelosiville, that was where Kamala Harris, you know, made her mark. 1.00

00:33:23.820 I'm talking about San Francisco in general.

00:33:26.620 Is there a rebellion there now?

00:33:29.380 What's the split?

00:33:31.040 I'm guessing it used to be 95-5 Democrat.

00:33:34.300 What's it today?

00:33:34.980 You know, I think the biggest mistake that Silicon Valley companies made in the 2010s, especially Facebook, actually, especially Facebook, but also Twitter under Jack Dorsey, also Google, all of the big companies.

00:33:51.640 The biggest mistake they made was believing that the political establishment and the legacy media was on their side.

00:33:59.200 They were never going to be on their side forever.

00:34:03.000 I think they were on their side maybe in 2012 when Facebook was praised for its role in helping Barack Obama win re-election.

00:34:11.740 The media loved Facebook in 2012.

00:34:15.280 The blog, you know, the foreign policy blog, also loved social media around that time because they saw social media as helping them destabilize countries in the Middle East during the Arab Spring.

00:34:25.940 They saw it as a tool of American statecraft.

00:34:29.740 But there was a fundamental problem with social media in that it undermined that information dominance I was talking about earlier, that dominance of the legacy media and universities and elite institutions in controlling the flow of information.

00:34:48.280 And social media was a fundamental threat to that.

00:34:50.900 And you first saw that in 2016.

00:34:52.540 And that is the moment when the political establishment completely turns on Silicon Valley.

00:34:58.900 And, you know, they're not going to be friends with Silicon Valley again.

00:35:01.180 They're just not because they recognize now that the free flow of information online, the uncensored flow of information online, is a fundamental threat to their power because it breaks down that information monopoly.

00:35:13.980 Give me 30 seconds on the release of 80,000 documents touching on the assassination of John F. Kennedy.

00:35:22.120 Obviously, that suggests that not all documents were released, but quite a few.

00:35:26.020 Is there any political meaning there?

00:35:28.220 Why did Trump do it and not others before him?

00:35:30.620 Is this some sort of proof point for the Trump Republicans that they're more transparent than other parties?

00:35:36.880 I'm sure no one person has a chance to gone through much of them.

00:35:43.380 There's so many documents.

00:35:44.520 Is there any meaning there that we should take away?

00:35:49.560 Yeah, I certainly haven't looked through them myself.

00:35:52.080 I know the founder of my nonprofit, Mike Benz, has been looking through them.

00:35:56.580 I know people on social media have been looking through them.

00:35:59.060 I think the bigger point is just the level of transparency we've seen from this administration.

00:36:03.820 They've been released pretty much unredacted, as far as I can tell.

00:36:08.920 And, you know, this has been something that has been sought after by so many people for so long.

00:36:14.420 And I think there's a general recognition on the part of this administration, I think, that transparency is the way forward, especially in the era of social media, especially when you have the 24-hour news cycle.

00:36:25.920 And where people will discuss, you know, non-establishment theories, people will find information on their own, you know, trying to conceal information, conceal, trying to suppress viewpoints doesn't really work in the modern era.

00:36:42.320 And I think the total collapse of Silicon Valley censorship demonstrates that.

00:36:49.020 You know, I think the COVID experience of community guidelines banning you from being a skeptic of even, banning you from even talking about, you know, other possible remedies besides Pfizer's drug.

00:37:06.900 I mean, the Nobel Prize winning low cost remedy you weren't allowed to talk about on social media.

00:37:16.320 You weren't allowed to speculate if it was a release from the Wuhan Institute of Virology.

00:37:24.720 And so many of those things, I think the level of distrust in institutions is so high.

00:37:30.800 I think that might be part of this.

00:37:32.440 And I was thinking, why is Donald Trump talking about going to Fort Knox?

00:37:36.140 I don't know if you saw that interesting conversation he had a few weeks ago.

00:37:40.140 I thought that's really weird.

00:37:42.680 Like, where did that come from?

00:37:44.520 And I'm going to do something.

00:37:45.560 I'm actually going on this one.

00:37:46.800 You know, all my life I've heard about Fort Knox.

00:37:49.020 That's where the gold is kept, right?

00:37:50.520 I heard Fort Knox.

00:37:51.820 Oh, but, you know, we're getting a little bit shaky.

00:37:54.360 We're getting the yips on this stuff.

00:37:55.820 Like, I want to find out.

00:37:56.940 So we're going to open up the doors.

00:37:58.540 I'm going to see if we have gold there.

00:37:59.760 We want to find out.

00:38:00.740 Did anybody steal the gold in Fort Knox?

00:38:03.960 It's a pretty amazing place.

00:38:05.640 But I'm going to actually go.

00:38:06.680 We're going to open the doors.

00:38:07.560 We're going to inspect Fort Knox.

00:38:08.720 We want to make sure that we actually have, you know, 400 tons of gold or whatever the

00:38:13.840 hell it is.

00:38:14.400 It's a lot of gold.

00:38:15.840 I don't want to open it.

00:38:17.040 And the cupboards are bare.

00:38:18.980 Could happen.

00:38:20.040 But the only way it makes sense to me is he's trying to say, look, I'm going to show you

00:38:23.200 all the secrets.

00:38:23.980 If you have any curiosity or conspiracy theory, let me just show you the truth so you can

00:38:30.160 trust me now.

00:38:31.300 I won't try and keep things from you.

00:38:33.200 I won't try and trick you because I'm going to show you secrets that others have speculated

00:38:38.180 about and others have hid from you.

00:38:39.700 So to me, going to Fort Knox is about saying you can trust me not to lie or to hide things

00:38:46.240 from you.

00:38:46.540 Is that your theory, too?

00:38:47.360 I agree with that, actually.

00:38:52.000 I think political institutions and the government for so long have just had this reputation for

00:38:59.340 secrecy and for hiding things from the public.

00:39:01.860 And I think this administration is completely reversing that.

00:39:05.180 It's a really radical move on their part, actually.

00:39:08.340 But I think it's the right move because, like you said, there are all these theories that

00:39:11.800 circulate online about anything, you know, whether it's JFK or Fort Knox or the moon landing.

00:39:16.800 You name it, by finally ending the secrecy on the part of the government, I think Trump

00:39:24.020 is going to win over a lot of people.

00:39:26.280 He's going to win, win their trust, to put it that way.

00:39:29.880 And, you know, you mentioned the COVID censorship as well.

00:39:34.080 That was, it's fascinating that the current health secretary was one of the most prominent

00:39:38.540 victims of that censorship, right?

00:39:40.440 And that was, you know, he was banned on Instagram, I believe, banned on many platforms.

00:39:44.480 And that was the work of this private, this public-private partnership that the previous

00:39:50.900 administration had with censorship organizations.

00:39:53.940 That was actually the work of one of my least favorite censorship organizations, the Center

00:39:58.240 for Countering Digital Hate in the UK.

00:40:00.260 They put RFK on a list they called the Disinformation Dozen, 12 social media users that they accused

00:40:07.400 of spreading the majority of COVID disinformation.

00:40:11.280 And the Biden White House took that.

00:40:13.080 They went to the tech companies and said, you've got to shut these people down.

00:40:15.780 You've got to censor them.

00:40:17.340 And now the most prominent target of that is the health secretary.

00:40:21.060 Yeah.

00:40:21.400 It's funny how that works.

00:40:22.560 In fact, if you look at so many of Trump's appointments, he takes the biggest victim of

00:40:27.680 the institution and makes it their boss.

00:40:30.100 Tulsi Gabbard as the director of national intelligence, RFK Jr. in health, Cash Patel.

00:40:36.220 It's a very interesting strategy.

00:40:39.100 And I think it's wonderful.

00:40:40.260 Listen, it's great to catch up with you.

00:40:42.020 I remember when we first interviewed you many years ago, and I think your title back then

00:40:47.180 was senior tech editor at Breitbart.

00:40:49.140 And I thought, is that really a big enough beat?

00:40:51.420 I mean, in my mind, I thought, how is that anything other than science talk?

00:40:56.140 No, it's an everything talk.

00:40:58.220 It's because through tech, you control the whole world.

00:41:00.960 You can certainly control our perception of the world.

00:41:03.120 I did not, my mind could not imagine back then how enormous a project and a file this

00:41:09.180 is.

00:41:09.380 So it's a delight to catch up with you.

00:41:11.420 And you certainly were a pioneer in this journalism.

00:41:14.260 So it's fitting that you're now the managing director of the Foundation for Freedom Online.

00:41:18.960 I wish you so much good luck and success, because so much of our freedom counts on what you

00:41:24.660 and your team are doing.

00:41:26.160 I know your boss is really ubiquitous now, just fighting the bad guys.

00:41:30.200 So you really are a key player in freedom.

00:41:31.920 And thank you for doing that, Alan.

00:41:35.600 Thank you, Ezra.

00:41:36.560 It's great to be on, as always.

00:41:37.960 All right.

00:41:38.320 We'll keep in touch.

00:41:39.000 There he is, Alan Bokari.

00:41:40.320 Stay with us.

00:41:41.060 Your Letters to Me next.

00:41:49.260 Hey, welcome back.

00:41:50.160 Your Letters to Me, a rock and roll daddy says, good.

00:41:53.160 Mark Carney can stand with Europe, in Europe.

00:41:55.500 Keep him, please.

00:41:56.520 We do not want him back.

00:41:58.240 He's a very European guy.

00:41:59.580 He said that.

00:42:00.560 I mean, he was giving a speech when he says, as a European.

00:42:03.940 He's got a couple of European passports, England and Ireland.

00:42:08.460 He's a board member.

00:42:09.940 He just quit on the World Economic Forum.

00:42:12.200 He really does have a European mindset, doesn't he?

00:42:16.660 It's just sort of weird.

00:42:17.860 And when he came back and sort of said, I'm coming back and doing you a favor,

00:42:21.940 it felt like Michael Ignatieff and sort of felt condescending.

00:42:25.600 Kurt Laub said, Canada should be an oil powerhouse.

00:42:27.940 Now this guy's in charge.

00:42:30.200 I mean, imagine if we had built the pipelines.

00:42:32.880 Imagine if we had built Energy East to New Brunswick.

00:42:35.940 Imagine if we had built the Keystone, sorry, the Keystone XL pipeline to the United States.

00:42:40.860 Imagine if we had built the Northern Gateway pipeline to BC.

00:42:43.640 Those three pipelines together would have about two and a half million barrels of oil

00:42:48.060 in additional capacity.

00:42:50.080 That's such an astonishing amount of money.

00:42:53.040 And by going to blue waters and not just, you know, Keystone XL goes to America,

00:42:57.720 but the other two, we could be selling to Europe.

00:43:00.620 We could actually, from New Brunswick, you can actually sail more quickly all the way to India.

00:43:05.940 Given how large the Pacific Ocean is.

00:43:08.400 So, we could not only be helping other countries displace their OPEC conflict oil,

00:43:14.860 and in the case of Europe, displace Russian energy,

00:43:17.740 but we'd be getting rich off it ourselves.

00:43:20.480 I always say a barrel of oil bought and sold from the oil sands

00:43:24.640 is one less barrel bought and sold by Qatar, the terrorist supporters, 0.97

00:43:29.660 or Iraq, or Nigeria, or Venezuela. 1.00

00:43:32.040 I mean, only Canadian liberals are so stupid as to destroy our oil. 1.00

00:43:37.920 Alas, that's where we are. 1.00

00:43:39.740 Well, that's our show for today.

00:43:41.660 Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World Headquarters,

00:43:44.900 to you at home, good night.

00:43:46.500 And keep fighting for freedom.

00:43:47.440 Merry- прямо-to-wark.

00:44:03.080 We'll see you soon.

00:44:05.220 We'll see you soon.

00:44:06.320 We'll be right back.

00:44:08.580 Let's see you soon.

00:44:09.420 We'll see you soon.

00:44:09.780 Come on.

00:44:10.420 We'll see you soon.

00:44:11.240 We'll see you soon.

00:44:11.400 You'll be right back.

00:44:12.860 You'll see you soon.

00:44:13.340 Bye-bye.

00:44:14.980 Bye-bye.

00:44:15.500 You'll see you soon.

00:44:16.360 Bye-bye.

Rebel News Podcast - March 19, 2025

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Elon Musk rescues stranded astronauts, so Antifa thugs torch... Teslas？!

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