Rebel News Podcast - EZRA LEVANT ｜ Freedom and censorship in America： A feature interview with Ben Weingarten

00:00:00.000 Hello, my Rebels. A very special conversation with one of America's smartest commentators,

00:00:04.520 Ben Weingarten. We're going to talk about an amazing 4th of July court case in America

00:00:10.360 striking down government censorship of the internet. Well, we Canadians can only dream of that.

00:00:17.000 But before we get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to the video version of this

00:00:20.680 podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month, which might

00:00:25.600 not be a lot of dough to you, but it really adds up for us. And that's how we stay independent

00:00:30.060 of the government. We do not take, we do not ask for, we would not accept money

00:00:35.020 from Trudeau. And it shows. That's rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.

00:00:55.600 Tonight, freedom and censorship in America, a feature interview with Ben Weingarten.

00:01:03.060 It's July 18th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.

00:01:09.060 Shame on you, you censorious bug.

00:01:12.380 You know, I can't get over the fact that in Canada, our Supreme Court has yet to hear

00:01:26.780 a single case involving infringements on civil liberties during the lockdowns, during the

00:01:32.760 pandemic. The pandemic started three and a half years ago, almost three and a half years

00:01:38.120 ago. And our Supreme Court just, you know, really couldn't be bothered. More important

00:01:43.160 things to do. And really, what would the point be, given that very early on, the Chief Justice

00:01:49.320 of the Supreme Court announced his own vaccine mandate for the court itself, for the building

00:01:54.720 itself? If you weren't jabbed, you couldn't work there. I mean, there's no guessing how he

00:02:00.120 would rule on that issue. He ordered his own staff to be jabbed or be fired. Really, what's

00:02:07.800 the point of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms? I say this because I look south, and for all

00:02:13.860 their problems and for all their scandals and all their corruption, which, of course, is

00:02:19.300 endemic in most modern democracies, at least they have some checks and balances. At least

00:02:25.820 their Supreme Court does step in every once in a while and stop out-of-control government

00:02:31.460 policies. At least their version of our parliament, their Congress, has some ability to

00:02:37.200 investigate the powers that be, unlike our system here. And so, while today we're going

00:02:43.060 to delve into the American crisis, Canadians should have no sense of righteousness about

00:02:49.940 it, because everything we're going to talk about today is worse in Canada. Not just worse

00:02:57.100 in terms of the depth of the problem, but worse in terms of the reporting on the problem

00:03:02.380 and the response to the problem. And you'll see that as we go through. Today, we will deal

00:03:07.920 with four American issues, and who better to walk us through these than Ben Weingarten,

00:03:13.980 a friend of ours. He's the senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist at Newsweek.

00:03:20.800 He joins us now via Skype. Ben, great to see you again. And I know you're in the thick of

00:03:25.940 what feels like a corruption parade, but at least you know about it. At least it's exposed. Am I right?

00:03:34.840 Well, great to be with you. And we had a massive July 4th Independence Day treat here in a federal

00:03:43.340 judge down in Louisiana defending free speech, the First Amendment on which all of our other liberties

00:03:50.380 and justice in this country rely, delivering a massive win in a landmark case, freezing our

00:03:58.920 federal government-led speech police here. And so to your point, we do have a system of checks and

00:04:05.640 balances. We do have three branches of government. Sometimes the courts are able to bail out some of

00:04:13.280 the worst inclinations of the other branches of the government, other times not. Sometimes the

00:04:19.800 legislative branch steps up, does its oversight duties, and sometimes even legislates and remedies

00:04:24.880 real problems. Other times not. But the trajectory, the trend is at an accelerating negative pace. And

00:04:34.880 we are, I guess, in many ways, falling in the footsteps of the rest of the West. Thankfully,

00:04:40.740 our progressives are slightly behind. The system itself is an exceptional system, and I love this country.

00:04:48.180 And so for anything that I say about corruption of its institutions and such, to me, it's not a reflection

00:04:54.440 on the country. It's a reflection of institutions and people not living up to the rich heritage and the

00:05:02.940 incredible history that doing injustice to the founders of this place, who, in my view, created the greatest

00:05:10.200 country in the history of mankind. And that's one of the reasons why I feel so compelled to expose when

00:05:17.060 institutions and individuals do not live up to it, because there is no other place for people who

00:05:23.000 love liberty and justice to go, ultimately. And if the U.S. loses its birthright, then so too will the rest

00:05:30.260 of the West. So it's a long-winded way of saying, great to be with you. We have problems here, but we also

00:05:37.140 have a model that provides more than all the solutions.

00:05:40.600 Yeah, you're right. And of course, I'm a Canadian born and bred, and I love Canada. I mean, that's why

00:05:46.720 I'm a critic. During the depth of the lockdowns, some of my friends, including some of our staff,

00:05:53.960 relocated to America. They just said, I'm not built for this. I don't want to live under a curfew. We had

00:06:00.440 an entire province that was under a curfew, Ben, like they were children. And this was a curfew for people

00:06:06.280 sick or healthy, vaccinated or not. I mean, imagine a province of 8 million people under a curfew, and

00:06:13.960 no challenge to that, and certainly no rebuke by the courts. Just astonishing.

00:06:21.000 So yeah, and the censorship issue you talk about, what a glorious day, what a symbolic day to have

00:06:27.920 that volley for victory. And I know the case you're talking about. You recently wrote about it in the

00:06:32.620 Epoch Times, one of our favorite newspapers, your coverage of it was headlined, U.S. government says

00:06:37.840 inability to censor you causes it irreparable harm. And you're talking about, I think we're talking

00:06:44.100 about the same case, which was basically a lawsuit brought in part by our friend Janine Yunus, who we

00:06:52.580 used to interview a lot, challenging the government for pressuring social media companies into silencing

00:07:01.340 critical voices. Are we talking about the same case, Ben? We are. Well, why don't you tell us a little

00:07:06.700 bit about that? Because we've heard of that case. We haven't had Janine Yunus on. I'm not sure if she's

00:07:11.260 available anymore, because she's no longer with the new Civil Liberties Alliance, which was like a

00:07:15.720 civil liberties law firm. She has actually gone to work in the Congress on a government committee

00:07:22.380 against the weaponization of the state, which is just incredible. I'm so glad she's there. But I think

00:07:29.360 that means we can't chat with her about things in the same way as we did before. But why don't you

00:07:33.800 tell us a little bit about the case? Janine told us about the case as it was filed. She told us that

00:07:41.340 it had a certain focus, especially on the pandemic. But maybe you can tell us about the ruling, because

00:07:46.200 we haven't had a full briefing on that yet. Tell me what the court said, how it said it, and how quickly

00:07:53.700 it enforced it. There were some wonderful parts about it, and I don't think it's got enough news up here in

00:07:58.700 Canada. Yeah, so first of all, the context for this case, which I would describe as maybe the landmark

00:08:07.180 digital free speech case to date, a historic one, potentially, and one that may ultimately end up at

00:08:14.980 the Supreme Court here. This case, Missouri v. Biden, was brought by multiple state attorneys general.

00:08:22.180 They were joined by some of the key signatories to and brains behind the Great Barrington Declaration,

00:08:30.020 and then some groups, one conservative media outlet, and then another anti-sort of draconian COVID

00:08:38.720 regulation organization. And basically, what they alleged was that the government in tandem with,

00:08:46.700 and when I say the government, I really mean almost the entirety of the federal government,

00:08:51.420 in tandem with certain putatively academic slash research organizations that bill themselves as

00:08:58.400 anti-disinformation outfits, but in reality serve as government surveillance and censorship cutouts,

00:09:04.880 coerced, cajoled, and ultimately colluded successfully with the social media platforms to surveil and

00:09:13.240 ultimately censor en masse Americans and non-Americans, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. And what they revealed

00:09:23.100 in just the discovery in this case, which led up to this initial ruling from the judge, revealed the

00:09:31.500 greatest censorship regime arguably in the history of mankind. And that is sort of how the judge

00:09:35.740 himself described it in saying that if what the plaintiffs allege is accurate. And he, by the way,

00:09:43.480 in this ruling, which I'll get to in a moment, says that they are likely to prevail on the merits of

00:09:49.700 their case, that this has been a massive First Amendment violation by government authorities. So what

00:09:55.560 exactly did that regime entail? And this is laid out in massive court filings, which have more than

00:10:03.040 enough smoking guns if we had a real media for people to win Pulitzers over, but they don't cover 0.99

00:10:08.360 it. And they say this is a nothing burger. At least they did until this ruling came down. What this shows

00:10:13.880 is a coordinated effort led by the national security and public health apparatus to, again, work with and

00:10:21.600 in some cases, help foster the creation of these third party cutouts at prestigious institutions like

00:10:28.900 Stanford University, for example, to work with the social media companies to essentially identify

00:10:34.480 specific stories, entire narratives, accounts, individual pieces of content, show them that those

00:10:44.140 ought to constitute violations of terms of service, hoover up and mask these examples of putatively

00:10:51.300 offending content that constitutes, quote unquote, mis, dis, and malinformation, and then feed it

00:10:58.820 to the social media companies and tell them, kill these accounts, undermine these narratives,

00:11:04.280 silence en masse, effectively millions of Americans, prevent people not only from speaking,

00:11:08.840 but from listening. And the evidence in this case is overwhelming and unbelievable. And again,

00:11:13.900 it's only based on preliminary limited discovery. That discovery has included depositions from many of

00:11:21.380 the government agents who led this effort to go about censoring wrongthink. And this goes to a

00:11:27.580 broader worldview that we've talked about before, which the government has effectively codified

00:11:33.500 through this public-private censorship regime of saying, wrongthink, ideas, opinions, and not just opinions,

00:11:40.220 but inconvenient facts that we don't like or that conflict with our favorite narratives,

00:11:44.580 threaten national security, or we'll get people killed because they won't be vaccinated. And consequently,

00:11:49.640 that gives us a right to push the social media companies to engage in, quote unquote,

00:11:54.240 content moderation. This started all with the idea that there was foreign influence operations using

00:12:02.720 social media to undermine democracy, quickly turned to domestic wrong thinkers, and it exploded in a few

00:12:09.700 different realms. First, with the Hunter Biden laptop story, the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story,

00:12:14.660 which in and of itself constituted maybe the gravest American national security information

00:12:20.460 operation in American history on the eve of an election, election interference effectively in grooming the

00:12:27.820 social media companies to censor that story, which is part of this case. Then it moved to election integrity and

00:12:34.780 outcomes. You're not allowed to question mass mail-in balloting. You're not allowed to question irregularities.

00:12:40.940 Historically, outcomes that you've never seen before, etc. And then expanding to virtually every aspect of COVID-19,

00:12:48.300 from its origins to mitigation techniques, draconian lockdowns, and then to a whole slew of other issues.

00:12:55.580 And you had federal authorities, again, working hand in hand with the White House, who was publicly

00:12:59.500 and privately using its bullhorns to yell at, essentially, the social media companies,

00:13:04.720 you got to do something about this misdice and malinformation that's killing people,

00:13:08.580 on top of lawmakers who threaten, obviously, with legislation and regulatory remedies,

00:13:14.940 pursuing the big tech companies, and then these third-party cutouts as well. So it was a concerted effort.

00:13:21.020 It led to probably hundreds of millions, if not more, of pieces of content being censored.

00:13:26.220 This case exposed it all. So for those who think that the Twitter files were revealing,

00:13:30.580 I urge you to check out the case docket in Missouri v. Biden, and specifically,

00:13:35.260 this ruling that this judge, Judge Doty, put forth.

00:13:38.560 Now, to that ruling, with that long-winded wind-up for it, what the judge said was, again,

00:13:44.080 the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits that this was a massive First Amendment violation

00:13:50.020 that took place. And what he did was he issued a preliminary injunction freezing government speech

00:13:58.100 policing directly and by proxy, said that all manner of defendants, again, myriad government agencies,

00:14:05.300 the White House, and basically prevented them from continuing to communicate with social media

00:14:12.100 companies about wrong-think. Overwhelmingly, of course, they targeted conservatives in the wrong-think

00:14:17.660 censorship operation, as well as even coordinating, including with their third-party private,

00:14:24.580 quote-unquote, cutouts, private cutouts who often themselves had incestuous relations with the

00:14:30.300 government agencies and, again, consulted with them in the creation of these outside,

00:14:35.360 quote-unquote, anti-disinformation organizations. So the judge said, we are freezing federal government-led

00:14:41.040 speech policing. And this led to, of course, two responses from the government. One was to appeal

00:14:47.940 the injunction, and that appeal is pending right now. The other was to seek a stay, freezing the freeze

00:14:56.360 of the speech police. And that freezing of the stay prompted this piece that I wrote,

00:15:01.180 which argues, essentially, that what the government is saying in seeking to freeze this injunction is

00:15:05.740 they want to keep violating your First Amendment. They believe that what they did was not the greatest,

00:15:11.120 not impose the greatest censorship regime in world history, arguably, but that they ought to be able

00:15:16.580 to continue doing it. And that actually, and this is a legal term of art, but I think it should be

00:15:21.400 understood plainly that it causes the government irreparable harm for the First Amendment to be

00:15:27.300 defended, because it could lead to threats to, in the government's word, democracy, and therefore

00:15:32.460 irreparable harm to the government. So the government is essentially unrepentant in its censorship.

00:15:38.720 It sought to freeze the freezing of the censorship regime. And thankfully, Judge Doty smacked the

00:15:46.300 government down and rejected, denied their motion for a stay. And so that injunction is in place right

00:15:53.760 now. We know this in part because FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary

00:16:02.480 Committee himself, noted that his agency had issued guidance for complying with that injunction. Now,

00:16:09.360 I'd really like to see what that guidance looks like. I think every agency implicated in this lawsuit

00:16:15.140 ought to show us what the guidance looks like and how they're complying with it. But nevertheless,

00:16:19.560 this is a massive victory for free speech in America and really free speech in the world when

00:16:24.900 you're talking about these platforms, which, of course, have customers that are everywhere on the

00:16:29.800 planet. Well, you're so right. I mean, even here at Rebel News, the very things you said the government

00:16:34.700 was tackling, they tackled in us. We lost our YouTube monetization. The last straw was a Donald Trump

00:16:43.100 comment that I think, like, it was when he was president. He made a statement as president.

00:16:48.060 We reported it as the news. It was questioning the validity of the 2020 elections and the fairness.

00:16:53.800 We weren't even taking sides. We were just showing what the president said. That was the excuse to turn

00:16:58.440 off about a million dollars a year from Rebel News. We were also lost our ability to do what's called

00:17:06.080 super chats, which was 400 grand a year, because we said things we weren't supposed to about the

00:17:12.060 pandemic lockdowns. So, you know, our YouTube rep is based in America, but we're here in Canada and

00:17:21.480 we suffered the same thing. And I have no plans, but Ben, if that censorship was illegal and that

00:17:30.440 censorship basically contracted out privatized government censorship, so the government itself

00:17:37.440 didn't issue a court order. The government just leaned on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram

00:17:42.240 to do the censoring for them. But here the judge is saying that's the same thing. I wonder if companies,

00:17:49.340 maybe not in Canada, but in the United States, we're surely not alone. There's countless companies

00:17:54.720 who have been truly damaged by this government action. We always assumed there was some government

00:18:01.800 pressure there, but it sounds like this ruling proved it. I wonder if American versions of our

00:18:08.700 company would be able to sue YouTube and or the government for the loss of revenues caused by

00:18:17.700 illegal government imposed censorship. What do you think of that? I think this certainly opens up a

00:18:23.820 strong legal argument for it. To your point, what this case... Like a class action, for example. I mean,

00:18:28.160 there's a class of people, mainly but not always conservatives, who simply for expressing their

00:18:34.880 legal opinion lost millions of dollars because of this government infringement. Sorry, I interrupted

00:18:39.860 you. Go ahead. No, there actually is an aspect of Missouri v. Biden where there was an attempt to

00:18:46.580 turn it into a class action suit. The judge did not rule in favor on that effort, but that doesn't mean

00:18:54.860 that it can't necessarily be brought by other parties, maybe in another court. And to your point, what this

00:19:02.460 case points to is that in U.S. law, based on case precedent, the government can't get a private actor to do

00:19:11.420 what the government itself legally cannot do. And so, you know, there are many on the government side who are

00:19:18.040 arguing, well, look, there's no coercion here. We're just pointing out, we're just talking to social media

00:19:23.280 companies about how, you know, have you looked at your terms of service around hacked and leaked

00:19:27.680 materials? And, you know, then in the run up to an election say, you know, be on the lookout for

00:19:32.300 hacked and leaked materials. By the way, did you update your terms of service about it? And then,

00:19:35.720 and then, oh, you know, watch out, there might be something around Hunter Biden. According to Yoel

00:19:40.020 Roth, this is one of Twitter's former chief censorers. He wrote an affidavit, a sworn affidavit,

00:19:46.180 saying that the government was tipping Twitter off to the coming of something like the Hunter Biden

00:19:50.360 laptop story. And then that story comes out. And then under their hack and leak policies,

00:19:54.900 they censor the story. This is the government saying, well, we're just forwarding along

00:20:00.060 en masse Twitter and Facebook accounts and specific posts to the social media companies and saying,

00:20:06.780 take a look at this. And then we'll follow up and we'll say, did you take any action on that?

00:20:10.140 And the government saying, well, that's not coercion. Okay. Leave aside the fact that you're talking

00:20:14.580 about the most powerful agencies in America, that they have regulatory authority and legislative

00:20:20.180 authority and all manner of other authority, implied or explicit. And that this is essentially

00:20:24.940 the mafia saying nice business there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.

00:20:31.360 What Philip Hamburger, who you mentioned the NCLA, Philip Hamburger leads that organization,

00:20:37.540 I believe. What he's argued in a Wall Street Journal editorial that I think everyone ought to read

00:20:42.460 is that even if there isn't a smoking gun of coercion, and by the way, there are many smoking guns,

00:20:47.380 again, in this case. Abridging free speech, abridging the First Amendment itself, of course,

00:20:54.660 is a First Amendment violation. And so you have that in spades here. Abridging means to shrink,

00:21:00.920 to in any way infringe upon the free speech right. And obviously, that has happened en masse,

00:21:06.940 as this case has illustrated. So I think to your point, look, there are millions of people who have

00:21:11.820 been harmed as a consequence of the censorship regime. Their business models, as yours has been,

00:21:17.560 have been upended. People have lost their most basic right to speak freely and to listen. And again,

00:21:24.820 to your point, thank God there is a First Amendment. You look at the history of it, and many of the

00:21:29.920 founding fathers here didn't even want a Bill of Rights. They didn't believe it was necessary because

00:21:34.440 the Constitution said, here's what the government can do, and then went silent about all the things it

00:21:39.280 cannot do, precisely because it was not supposed to be able to do them. But some founders felt,

00:21:44.960 as a matter of compromise, they needed to codify these natural rights that were assumed, and that

00:21:50.540 the government should have never had any business infringing upon. And yet still, you've had this

00:21:55.540 raft of violations of it. So thankfully, it's codified in the First Amendment. Thankfully, we still

00:22:01.720 have some judges who have some intestinal fortitude and fidelity of the Constitution. But the federal

00:22:07.720 government is fighting this. It's going to an appeals court. And this may end up ultimately the

00:22:12.040 Supreme Court, as I noted. And this term, Justice Gorsuch noted sort of offhanded in one of his

00:22:20.020 opinions, the idea that the Supreme Court might have to deal with essentially issues around censorship

00:22:27.740 of speech, for example, on COVID-19. So that may have been teeing up what is to come in a future

00:22:33.340 Supreme Court term. And, you know, I hope the Supreme Court, well, I hope the Supreme Court doesn't have

00:22:38.600 to rule on this, that it never even gets that far, and that this is dealt with at lower courts. But if

00:22:43.880 it does, I hope and pray that they're the defining word on this at upholding and defending the First

00:22:49.540 Amendment for Americans and people around the world. Yeah. Well, we can only dream of that outcome

00:22:56.500 up here. Rebel News itself has been a litigant in some free speech battles. And we've had some good

00:23:02.980 luck, by the way. Twice we beat Trudeau when he tried to block Rebel News from attending our version

00:23:10.000 of your presidential debates, our national leaders' debates. Twice we beat him, and we're in court

00:23:15.160 against him on a number of other matters. You probably don't know this, Ben, but Trudeau introduced

00:23:19.700 a journalistic license in Canada called the QCJO, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization. It's

00:23:27.300 administered by our version of the IRS. We call it the Canada Revenue Agency. You have to apply

00:23:33.560 for this journalism license, and a government panel investigates you. They turn down Rebel News saying

00:23:42.320 we weren't real news. We weren't trustworthy news. Yeah, Justin Trudeau certainly cannot trust us. I'm very

00:23:48.780 proud of that. So we are moving through the courts on that. That's what it looks like in a country

00:23:54.480 that does not have a First Amendment, Ben, literally applying for a journalism license. You know, I

00:24:00.780 recall that during the Cold War, you needed a license to have a typewriter in Romania. You needed a

00:24:07.920 license. And they took a sample of, because I don't know if you remember the old time typewriters when the

00:24:13.700 actual keystrokes. So each typewriter was a little bit different. This, the letter R was a little

00:24:18.720 bit higher. So it was like a fingerprint. So they would take typing samples from your typewriter when

00:24:24.700 you registered it with the police. And the reason was, if they discovered Samizdat, if they discovered

00:24:29.920 illegal political comments, they could trace which typewriter was used. That is a true story. I invite

00:24:36.800 you to read the history of licensed typewriters in Romania. And that's where we are in Canada. You need a

00:24:44.840 government license to do journalism. It's just completely outrageous. I am jealous, because for all of the

00:24:52.300 flaws that you describe in your system, at least you have some parts of it that are working. I could spend the

00:24:58.440 whole show talking about that case, Ben, but I do want to talk about a few other things, just to fill up on

00:25:03.880 American news, because there's so much going on down there. I want to show you a video. And my favorite

00:25:10.340 congressman by far, it's not even close, is Thomas Massey of Kentucky. He's so great. He's so smart,

00:25:16.920 first of all. I think he's got a master's degree in science. He really is a deeply educated,

00:25:26.260 intelligent man, but he's got old school values. He's also a farmer. He's a carpenter. He's a

00:25:32.860 renaissance man. He's got a great sense of humor. And he loves freedom. I don't know what you think of

00:25:39.180 him, but I think he's the number one congressman. And here's a video of him a few months back,

00:25:45.480 pointing out that the instigator of the January 6th great meandering through Congress caught on

00:25:57.980 video exhorting people to go inside to storm the place. Ray Epps was his name. He was on an FBI Most

00:26:04.580 Wanted poster, still is, and he's never been arrested. Here, take a look at my favorite guy,

00:26:11.980 Congressman Massey, raising the issue. Take a look at this.

00:26:16.640 There's a concern that there were agents of the government or assets of the government present

00:26:22.160 on January 5th and January 6th during the protests. And I've got some pictures that I want

00:26:29.200 to show you if the, uh, my staff could bring those to you. Uh, I'm going to put it out

00:26:37.840 there. I'm probably going to go to jail. Tomorrow, we need to go into the Capitol. Into the Capitol.

00:26:45.000 I'm afraid I, I'm afraid I can't see that at all.

00:26:49.340 He's moving!

00:26:50.460 Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed!

00:26:56.000 He's moving!

00:26:57.000 Okay, folks, we're at the war. As soon as the plan has done speaking, we go to the Capitol.

00:27:03.960 The Capitol's disconnection.

00:27:05.280 Jack, uh, is that a, uh, a few videos?

00:27:09.000 Oh, there's a video.

00:27:10.000 We're on open guard. It's that direction.

00:27:14.060 All right, you have, you have those images there, and they're captioned. Uh, they were

00:27:22.100 from January 5th and January 6th. As far as we can determine, the individual who was saying

00:27:28.660 he'll probably go to jail, he'll probably be arrested, but he wants every, but they need

00:27:32.940 to go into the Capitol the next day, is then the next day directing people to the Capitol.

00:27:38.840 And as far as we can find, this individual has not been charged with anything. You said this

00:27:43.360 is one of the most sweeping investigations in history. Uh, have you seen that video, or

00:27:49.400 those frames from that video?

00:27:51.400 So, as I, um, uh, said at the outset, uh, one of the norms of the Justice Department is to not

00:27:57.640 comment on impending investigations, and particularly not to comment about particular scenes or particular

00:28:05.440 individuals. This is...

00:28:06.440 Okay, without... I was hoping today to give you an opportunity to put to rest the concerns that people

00:28:12.440 have that there were federal agents or assets of the federal government present on January 5th and January 6th.

00:28:18.400 Can you tell us, without talking about particular incidents or particular videos, how many agents

00:28:24.440 or assets of the federal government were present on January 6th, whether they agitated to go into

00:28:29.440 the Capitol and if any of them did?

00:28:31.440 So, I'm not going to violate this norm of, uh, of, of, uh, the rule of law. I'm not going to

00:28:36.440 comment on an investigation that's ongoing.

00:28:38.440 Looks pretty suspicious. Um, everybody else was arrested. A lot of those January 6ers are still 1.00

00:28:45.320 in prison for what Gavin McInnes calls the great meandering. I got a real kick out of that. It was not

00:28:50.120 a riot. There were some windows broken and, and, uh, someone took Nancy Pelosi's lectern. It's true.

00:28:56.160 But to call that a riot is a disservice to the, uh, mostly peaceful riots that the Black Lives Matter

00:29:01.680 movement spent so much energy doing. This was a meandering. Um, but that same Ray Epps, that's the name of him,

00:29:08.360 um, is suing Tucker Carlson and Fox News for saying what, uh, Representative Massey said.

00:29:16.160 Here's the headline in the New York Times. Arizona man cited in conspiracy theories sues Fox News for defamation.

00:29:23.960 Ray Epps, a two-time Trump voter, sure he is, says Tucker Carlson repeatedly and falsely named him as a covert

00:29:30.140 government agent who incited the January 6th attacks. What do you make of this, Ben?

00:29:35.260 Well, first of all, you know, let's briefly talk about Ray Epps. It strands credulity, or it's,

00:29:41.440 it's hard to imagine someone caught more red-handed in, from the government's perspective,

00:29:48.700 provoking an insurrection, a massive domestic terrorist attack, a domestic terrorist attack

00:29:53.580 that is on par, according to senior Democrats in America, with the depths of the Civil War or Pearl

00:30:02.560 Harbor or 9-11. This man is on camera screaming for people to do that two days in a row, including

00:30:10.040 on January 6th. He's at the start, the very start of the breach. He's coordinating with people seemingly

00:30:16.260 on the ground during that day. This is someone who I believe used to be the leader of the Oath Keepers

00:30:21.700 in Arizona, and the Oath Keepers has been treated as tantamount to a domestic terrorist organization

00:30:27.000 and had their members who participated in the Capitol riot or even, you know, purportedly were

00:30:33.140 coordinating the riot subject to prosecution. So how in God's name is this person not pursued by

00:30:42.660 a Justice Department that's pursued dozens of people truly for mulling around, essentially,

00:30:48.660 inside the Capitol, and then people who weren't at the Capitol, who has pursued, you know, nonviolent

00:30:55.520 offenders, people with no criminal records, people who didn't destroy anything, etc. And here, as you

00:31:01.200 know it, you have a person who was there right when the breach occurred, who was clearly calling for

00:31:06.640 this with his rhetoric on camera, who's affiliated with an organization that's been pursued.

00:31:11.800 Why isn't he pursued? And that has led to questions of, well, look, we know, according to court filings,

00:31:21.300 and then according to reporting, that there were substantial federal assets on the ground. And

00:31:27.020 there's a question of were there just informants on the ground, or were there actually agent provocateurs

00:31:32.100 on the ground? And then you start getting into the issue of, okay, were cops provoking people

00:31:38.640 to try to further incite that riot. And this is cast as conspiracy theory and such. You know,

00:31:46.980 this is MAGA extremists talking about false flag attacks and such. But to the extent there's any

00:31:53.200 conspiracy theory here, leaving aside the fact that we know that there were informants on the ground

00:31:59.900 in court filings, and that we know, by the way, that many of the groups implicated in this

00:32:04.840 were penetrated by government authorities. Historically, set aside all of that, why won't

00:32:13.200 government authorities give straight answers about whether and to what extent there were informants,

00:32:19.440 other assets on the ground? What were they doing that day? Were they coordinating with people who

00:32:23.520 engaged in violence or other acts of criminality that day, et cetera? And every single time these

00:32:30.140 questions come up in congressional hearings, FBI officials, Justice Department officials, they

00:32:36.080 stonewall. They stonewall time and time again. And so that will only fuel conspiracy theories. The fact 0.91

00:32:42.340 that Ray Epps himself, after all this time, has not been charged, only further fuels conspiracy theories,

00:32:47.860 particularly because it's not only that he hasn't been charged, but he is lauded by the likes of the

00:32:52.280 January 6th committee. He's lauded by the New York Times and defended by those kinds of

00:32:57.660 publications. Now, as for this filing against Fox News, there are many interesting aspects of it.

00:33:06.840 One of them I just point out off the top is that Epps is represented by a lawyer who's associated

00:33:13.080 with David Brock, who's one of the Democrat hatchet men par excellence in America, which is kind of a

00:33:19.480 curious thing because Epps in this filing is described as a two-time Trump voter, an avid Fox News

00:33:26.660 watcher, I think a former Tucker Carlson fan, et cetera. I don't know any two-time Trump voting

00:33:32.460 Tucker Carlson fans who would go about hiring those who are colleagues of ultimate Democrat hatchet men

00:33:42.080 like David Brock. But okay, set that aside for a moment. Interestingly, in this filing, he says that

00:33:49.100 the DOJ contacted him and essentially said charges were forthcoming. Now, I believe that this filing was

00:33:55.560 from May. So we don't know yet whether charges have been filed, but by all appearances, they have

00:34:02.720 not been filed. So are they forthcoming? What are those charges going to look like? As many observers

00:34:07.800 have noted, including Revolver, by the way, and Revolver has done some of the best investigative work on

00:34:13.460 who all the people were in these groups like Oath Keepers who were pursued, why some people were not

00:34:20.100 pursued, which is very curious and leads to the question of, you know, were these informants or

00:34:25.300 other protected government assets that had infiltrated these groups? Set that aside for a

00:34:29.380 moment. Revolver has a very good deep dive into the filing. And, you know, what they kind of point

00:34:35.440 out is, can you, the question, and this is me paraphrasing here, but can you find anyone similarly

00:34:41.460 situated to Ray Epps who has not been charged? And then also, when the government pursues people,

00:34:46.420 oftentimes they do it with these raids, these shock and awe SWAT team kind of raids. Ray Epps gets a call

00:34:53.460 essentially, and his total charges are likely forthcoming. Now, maybe those charges have been

00:34:58.500 handed down. Maybe they will be handed down. Are those charges going to look like the charges for

00:35:03.160 those who engage in similar acts? We don't yet know. Laughably, one of the things that Epps raises

00:35:09.260 is that he was likely to be charged because of the notoriety that Tucker Carlson gave him.

00:35:16.420 So the implication there then is that Merrick Garland snaps to attention when Tucker Carlson covers

00:35:22.580 Ray Epps, who's on camera multiple times, who testifies before the J6 committee, et cetera.

00:35:29.120 Very striking. And, you know, in the revolver piece, they go into kind of what are the legal

00:35:34.140 angles here and what is the point of raising Tucker Carlson's name in connection with this? Why go

00:35:39.720 after Fox News and why go after Fox News right now? They're all manner of interesting threads there.

00:35:44.680 But Ray Epps presents the ultimate curious case in a scenario where the government is pursuing

00:35:49.760 literally everyone and their mother and their grandmother and their grandfather

00:35:53.300 associated with January 6th. Yet this person, who couldn't be caught more red-handed in the way of

00:36:01.160 calling for storming the Capitol and then being right there literally on the front line,

00:36:06.460 somehow seems to skate free. We'll see what happens ultimately if and when he is prosecuted.

00:36:11.540 But it's certainly a case worth watching because January 6th, as I noted within days of it

00:36:16.660 occurring, and I wrote about it, the Federalists, I believed would be used, exploited to engage in

00:36:23.340 a jihad against wrong thinkers in America. And that's absolutely what has happened.

00:36:28.100 Yeah. You know, it's funny, the New York Times article, when they talk about Ray Epps,

00:36:33.100 they soften the language, they say it was a pro-Trump demonstration. Ray Epps would never be part of

00:36:41.000 a riot or a terrorist attack. When he's involved, it's just a pro-Trump demonstration. I love that.

00:36:47.620 You know, in Canada, Ben, Trudeau was trying to replay the theater of January 6th, violent,

00:36:57.300 far-right MAGA. He was trying to graft that American narrative onto the Canadian truckers.

00:37:04.440 And I really think he would have gotten away with it were it not for citizen journalists who were 0.96

00:37:09.340 embedded with the truckers and showed how peaceful they were. In fact, I should tell you, Ben,

00:37:13.720 that there were tens of thousands of truckers, hundreds of thousands of people who came out

00:37:18.260 along the way. I believe that as many as one million Canadians either participated or physically

00:37:24.160 watched as the truckers went by. Like, even in Toronto, the largest city in Canada,

00:37:29.340 overpasses were jammed with people who just wanted to see, is this real? Like, it was a phenomenon.

00:37:36.540 It reminds me, our Canadian viewers don't know what I'm talking about, Terry Fox. People just wanted

00:37:41.580 to see with their own eyes. And were it not for citizen journalism, they would have been called

00:37:48.400 violent, uprising, insurrectionists. And it's a terrible factoid, but we should never forget it,

00:37:56.840 that there was only one shooting in the entire trucker convoy. There was a shooting in the Capitol.

00:38:04.680 A security guard shot an unarmed U.S. veteran in the Capitol and has never been shot. So there was a

00:38:11.780 murder, or at least a killing, you could say, in the January 6th. There was one person shot, Ben,

00:38:19.520 in the whole trucker convoy and all, and I don't know if you know who that was.

00:38:24.280 It was our reporter, Alexa Lavoie, who was standing with a camera filming a tense but peaceful standoff

00:38:32.560 in Ottawa. And a policeman took a riot gun, aimed it at her, and shot her. The only person over weeks

00:38:43.760 and thousands, hundreds of thousands of people who was shot. Now, a fella could come up with a

00:38:50.220 conspiracy theory about that. Or you could just say that's a hell of a coincidence. But I think that

00:38:57.060 they wanted a replay of January 6th in Canada, but they didn't get away with the narrative because

00:39:02.900 the truckers were completely peaceful. In fact, the Ottawa police said that crime fell in Ottawa

00:39:09.420 because you had all these do-gooders in town. They were tidying things up. They were shoveling the

00:39:14.760 snow. I was there. It had a festival feeling. And, you know, forgive me that detour, but I wanted to

00:39:20.360 tell you that they wanted to replay that story in Canada, but they failed. And I think our coverage

00:39:27.760 was the reason why. But you're right. There are historically infiltrators and agents provocateurs

00:39:35.800 in all these groups. In Canada, Ben, forgive me for going on, there was something a generation ago

00:39:42.140 called the Heritage Front, which was a racist neo-Nazi group. And it turns out that the man who literally

00:39:48.520 led it, who recruited members, was an agent of CSIS, Canada's version of the CIA, the boss,

00:39:57.200 his name was Grant Bristow. So there's such a paucity of actual terrorists, actual racists,

00:40:03.660 actual Nazis, that the government had to create one. In Canada also, the Canadian Nazi Party,

00:40:12.280 you'll find this hard to believe, was literally financed by the Canadian Jewish Congress. They admitted

00:40:18.280 it in McLean's magazine. I find these things so distressful, because we're such peaceful, friendly,

00:40:26.960 happy societies. But these government agencies need chaos, violence, threats, and fear to justify

00:40:35.900 their own existence, and their budgets, and their crackdown on people. And I think it's in both

00:40:41.800 countries. It's just that in your country, it smoked out a little bit better. Thanks for letting me go on

00:40:45.980 a five-minute rant, Ben. What do you think of all that? It's beyond galling, and it causes you to take

00:40:53.580 a fresh look at history and the narratives that are put forth. A narrow point, but a big one,

00:41:00.680 is you talk about licensure necessary to be a journalist. Precisely because social media platforms

00:41:07.740 permit unlicensed journalists, or why governments load the social media platforms and seek to use them,

00:41:14.760 essentially, as intelligence assets and as information operation assets to propagate favored

00:41:23.680 narratives and suppress disfavored ones. The notion of entrapping people, and the most remarkable thing

00:41:34.380 is that most of the terrorist attacks that happen in America, legitimate terrorist attacks, to a man,

00:41:40.000 almost every single person is on federal authorities' radars. So how is it that they are

00:41:45.440 able to strike? And in many instances, it's incompetence. But in other cases, you do have

00:41:51.300 substantial evidence of the government is working with someone, tailing someone, et cetera, and then

00:41:56.200 they end up engaging. Or to your point, you have something like, for example, the Governor Gretchen

00:42:02.240 Whitmer case, right before, of course, the 2020 election, where it certainly appears that people

00:42:08.660 were entrapped. And you've had cases dismissed or mistrials, I believe, in connection with that.

00:42:15.760 But that was heralded as a, this is what right-wing extremism leads to in America, kidnapping attempts

00:42:21.220 against the governor and threats on her life, et cetera. And it calls into question, you know,

00:42:26.980 your views on the fidelity of all these agencies. And right now, conservatives in America, and even

00:42:33.020 beyond conservatives, agencies like the FBI have totally lost the confidence of the American people.

00:42:38.400 They've lost the confidence of people in Congress. We'll see how far Congress goes beyond its oversight

00:42:43.380 duties in terms of, for example, there's funding on the table for a new FBI headquarters. You have

00:42:48.660 House Republicans here saying not a single penny for that new headquarters. And that's sort of a starting

00:42:53.980 point in this. But where does it go in terms of reforming agencies that end up being turned against

00:43:00.120 the very values and principles they're supposed to defend and uphold? And it's beyond galling and

00:43:05.760 distressing, in part because you need the country defended. There are adversaries out there working

00:43:12.340 every single day, day and night, to undermine us, erode our freedoms, infiltrate and coerce people 0.96

00:43:20.520 into undermining the country. And, you know, my fear is I've been a long focus, for example,

00:43:26.260 on communist China. I know you are too, in terms of the existential threat it poses to the West. But 0.74

00:43:32.060 we won't even get around to combating communist China if our own government institutions are turned

00:43:38.700 against the very, in our case, republic that they're supposed to defend. And so that's why one of the

00:43:45.220 reasons why I am so laser focused on the weaponization of these institutions, because

00:43:50.300 you can't survive long term, long term with these imperative institutions, being not only woke,

00:43:57.200 but weaponized against 50% plus of a country. Yeah. You know, we're almost out of time,

00:44:04.840 and you're very generous to spend so much time with us, Ben. But I think more and more about RFK Jr.,

00:44:10.480 who's running an insurgent campaign in trying to get a Democratic primary, I don't think they're

00:44:16.780 going to let him win. I think it's, they're going to be more brutal towards him than they were towards

00:44:20.920 Bernie Sanders challenging Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden. I, I listened to RFK Jr., and I don't agree

00:44:26.940 with him on everything. But he talks about these things. And he talks about censorship. He is being

00:44:31.940 censored. He talks about the deep state. He doesn't really use that language. But I mean, he believes

00:44:38.280 that his family was killed. And he has some evidence to support it. And it was Dwight D. Eisenhower who

00:44:50.300 first warned about the military industrial complex, if I'm not mistaken. Who was it? Was it him? Or was

00:44:55.880 it John F. Kennedy, who said the CIA needed to be smashed into a million pieces because it became,

00:45:01.780 took on a life of its own. The CIA, the FBI, these other agencies, the fact checkers,

00:45:08.260 the censors, they are a shadow government. And that's not conspiracy theory talk. They are the

00:45:14.060 ones who have been doing this. The censorship that you started our show with today, Ben, it was not

00:45:19.260 passed in a debate in the Congress. It was not subject to committee hearings and votes and lobbying. It was

00:45:26.220 all done in the shadows. And that's not a conspiracy theory. That is a conspiracy. Ben,

00:45:32.560 you've been great, as always. Last word to you. We've been pretty pessimistic because we're talking

00:45:39.020 about all the bad things. But there are some good things out there. The important Fourth of July court

00:45:45.020 case in Missouri. Sorry, the Missouri case that was heard in, I think, Louisiana. There are some flickers of

00:45:52.340 hope. I think Elon Musk is caused to be hopeful. I don't want to get my hopes too high, but they're rising.

00:45:58.140 There are some positive signs out there. What's your prediction? Are we going to win this one for

00:46:04.460 freedom or are we just going to become like the Matrix? Well, I think to your point, there are

00:46:10.960 positives that we can point to. We are probably more knowledgeable about the level of corruption

00:46:17.980 and deceit than ever before. I'm keeping an eye on here beyond the court cases, also legislation,

00:46:25.800 because court cases, while great and while incredibly impactful here, at the end of the day,

00:46:32.320 you need legislation to codify it. And in my view, it's crazy that we're talking about needing to

00:46:39.160 codify the First Amendment because it's right there. And as the founders felt, you shouldn't have even

00:46:44.000 needed it in the first place. Clearly, we did, however. You shouldn't need to codify it, but I'm

00:46:48.720 looking at legislation right now. There are spending bills out there and some other legislation

00:46:54.140 percolating that will push towards defunding and dismantling the federal government-led part of the

00:47:00.860 censorship regime. Now, by the same token, the longer-term problem that we have ultimately is that

00:47:06.160 this doesn't come from nowhere. This comes from a culture which increasingly among the elites

00:47:12.260 subscribes to the view that conservative speech or dissenting speech from ruling class orthodoxy

00:47:19.480 is harmful and that therefore the answer is we have to censor. And there's a limitless

00:47:23.980 array of reasons why censorship is justified under that sort of worldview. So ultimately,

00:47:30.980 at the end of the day, you can have great court cases, you can have legislation.

00:47:35.920 These factors matter, but you need a culture to sustain it. And the left side of this is very

00:47:43.360 organized. They never stop fighting. They're engaged in a million-front war. And we are just

00:47:51.200 waking up to it, probably don't fully comprehend the reach and the extent of it. So the optimistic

00:47:57.840 side is, look, we've barely even begun to marshal a counter-offensive here. The downside is they're

00:48:06.020 way ahead and they control all of these influential institutions. So you have to hope that what is good

00:48:11.680 and what is right ultimately prevails, that you may lose a series of battles and it may be hard fought

00:48:17.780 over time and you win the war. But the other aspect is there's no other choice. If we want to live

00:48:23.380 in a free, truly Western society, then you have to fight for these values and principles.

00:48:30.280 And it's our generation's turn to rise to the occasion.

00:48:34.960 Ben, what a beautiful way to end our conversation. Thank you for giving so much time and thoughtful

00:48:39.500 comments to us. We've been talking with Ben Weingarten, senior contributor at The Federalist

00:48:44.400 and columnist at Newsweek.com. Take care, my friend. Keep fighting for freedom.

00:48:49.720 Thank you so much. You too.

00:48:50.660 All right. Well, there you have it. Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us here at Rebel World

00:48:56.840 Headquarters, to you at home, good night and you keep fighting for freedom too.

Rebel News Podcast - July 18, 2023

EZRA LEVANT ｜ Freedom and censorship in America： A feature interview with Ben Weingarten

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