EZRA LEVANT ｜ Freedom and censorship in America： A feature interview with Ben Weingarten
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Summary
Ben Weingarten joins Ezra LeVant to discuss freedom and censorship in America, including the 4th of July victory by a federal judge who struck down government censorship of the internet in a landmark case, and why we should be grateful.
Transcript
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Hello, my Rebels. A very special conversation with one of America's smartest commentators,
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Ben Weingarten. We're going to talk about an amazing 4th of July court case in America
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striking down government censorship of the internet. Well, we Canadians can only dream of that.
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But before we get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to the video version of this
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podcast. Just go to rebelnewsplus.com, click subscribe. It's eight bucks a month, which might
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not be a lot of dough to you, but it really adds up for us. And that's how we stay independent
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of the government. We do not take, we do not ask for, we would not accept money
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from Trudeau. And it shows. That's rebelnewsplus.com. All right, here's today's podcast.
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Tonight, freedom and censorship in America, a feature interview with Ben Weingarten.
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It's July 18th, and this is the Ezra LeVant Show.
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You know, I can't get over the fact that in Canada, our Supreme Court has yet to hear
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a single case involving infringements on civil liberties during the lockdowns, during the
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pandemic. The pandemic started three and a half years ago, almost three and a half years
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ago. And our Supreme Court just, you know, really couldn't be bothered. More important
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things to do. And really, what would the point be, given that very early on, the Chief Justice
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of the Supreme Court announced his own vaccine mandate for the court itself, for the building
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itself? If you weren't jabbed, you couldn't work there. I mean, there's no guessing how he
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would rule on that issue. He ordered his own staff to be jabbed or be fired. Really, what's
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the point of our Charter of Rights and Freedoms? I say this because I look south, and for all
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their problems and for all their scandals and all their corruption, which, of course, is
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endemic in most modern democracies, at least they have some checks and balances. At least
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their Supreme Court does step in every once in a while and stop out-of-control government
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policies. At least their version of our parliament, their Congress, has some ability to
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investigate the powers that be, unlike our system here. And so, while today we're going
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to delve into the American crisis, Canadians should have no sense of righteousness about
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it, because everything we're going to talk about today is worse in Canada. Not just worse
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in terms of the depth of the problem, but worse in terms of the reporting on the problem
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and the response to the problem. And you'll see that as we go through. Today, we will deal
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with four American issues, and who better to walk us through these than Ben Weingarten,
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a friend of ours. He's the senior contributor to The Federalist and a columnist at Newsweek.
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He joins us now via Skype. Ben, great to see you again. And I know you're in the thick of
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what feels like a corruption parade, but at least you know about it. At least it's exposed. Am I right?
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Well, great to be with you. And we had a massive July 4th Independence Day treat here in a federal
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judge down in Louisiana defending free speech, the First Amendment on which all of our other liberties
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and justice in this country rely, delivering a massive win in a landmark case, freezing our
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federal government-led speech police here. And so to your point, we do have a system of checks and
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balances. We do have three branches of government. Sometimes the courts are able to bail out some of
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the worst inclinations of the other branches of the government, other times not. Sometimes the
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legislative branch steps up, does its oversight duties, and sometimes even legislates and remedies
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real problems. Other times not. But the trajectory, the trend is at an accelerating negative pace. And
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we are, I guess, in many ways, falling in the footsteps of the rest of the West. Thankfully,
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our progressives are slightly behind. The system itself is an exceptional system, and I love this country.
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And so for anything that I say about corruption of its institutions and such, to me, it's not a reflection
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on the country. It's a reflection of institutions and people not living up to the rich heritage and the
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incredible history that doing injustice to the founders of this place, who, in my view, created the greatest
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country in the history of mankind. And that's one of the reasons why I feel so compelled to expose when
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institutions and individuals do not live up to it, because there is no other place for people who
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love liberty and justice to go, ultimately. And if the U.S. loses its birthright, then so too will the rest
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of the West. So it's a long-winded way of saying, great to be with you. We have problems here, but we also
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have a model that provides more than all the solutions.
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Yeah, you're right. And of course, I'm a Canadian born and bred, and I love Canada. I mean, that's why
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I'm a critic. During the depth of the lockdowns, some of my friends, including some of our staff,
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relocated to America. They just said, I'm not built for this. I don't want to live under a curfew. We had
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an entire province that was under a curfew, Ben, like they were children. And this was a curfew for people
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sick or healthy, vaccinated or not. I mean, imagine a province of 8 million people under a curfew, and
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no challenge to that, and certainly no rebuke by the courts. Just astonishing.
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So yeah, and the censorship issue you talk about, what a glorious day, what a symbolic day to have
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that volley for victory. And I know the case you're talking about. You recently wrote about it in the
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Epoch Times, one of our favorite newspapers, your coverage of it was headlined, U.S. government says
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inability to censor you causes it irreparable harm. And you're talking about, I think we're talking
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about the same case, which was basically a lawsuit brought in part by our friend Janine Yunus, who we
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used to interview a lot, challenging the government for pressuring social media companies into silencing
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critical voices. Are we talking about the same case, Ben? We are. Well, why don't you tell us a little
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bit about that? Because we've heard of that case. We haven't had Janine Yunus on. I'm not sure if she's
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available anymore, because she's no longer with the new Civil Liberties Alliance, which was like a
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civil liberties law firm. She has actually gone to work in the Congress on a government committee
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against the weaponization of the state, which is just incredible. I'm so glad she's there. But I think
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that means we can't chat with her about things in the same way as we did before. But why don't you
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tell us a little bit about the case? Janine told us about the case as it was filed. She told us that
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it had a certain focus, especially on the pandemic. But maybe you can tell us about the ruling, because
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we haven't had a full briefing on that yet. Tell me what the court said, how it said it, and how quickly
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it enforced it. There were some wonderful parts about it, and I don't think it's got enough news up here in
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Canada. Yeah, so first of all, the context for this case, which I would describe as maybe the landmark
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digital free speech case to date, a historic one, potentially, and one that may ultimately end up at
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the Supreme Court here. This case, Missouri v. Biden, was brought by multiple state attorneys general.
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They were joined by some of the key signatories to and brains behind the Great Barrington Declaration,
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and then some groups, one conservative media outlet, and then another anti-sort of draconian COVID
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regulation organization. And basically, what they alleged was that the government in tandem with,
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and when I say the government, I really mean almost the entirety of the federal government,
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in tandem with certain putatively academic slash research organizations that bill themselves as
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anti-disinformation outfits, but in reality serve as government surveillance and censorship cutouts,
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coerced, cajoled, and ultimately colluded successfully with the social media platforms to surveil and
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ultimately censor en masse Americans and non-Americans, tweets, Facebook posts, etc. And what they revealed
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in just the discovery in this case, which led up to this initial ruling from the judge, revealed the
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greatest censorship regime arguably in the history of mankind. And that is sort of how the judge
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himself described it in saying that if what the plaintiffs allege is accurate. And he, by the way,
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in this ruling, which I'll get to in a moment, says that they are likely to prevail on the merits of
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their case, that this has been a massive First Amendment violation by government authorities. So what
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exactly did that regime entail? And this is laid out in massive court filings, which have more than
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enough smoking guns if we had a real media for people to win Pulitzers over, but they don't cover
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it. And they say this is a nothing burger. At least they did until this ruling came down. What this shows
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is a coordinated effort led by the national security and public health apparatus to, again, work with and
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in some cases, help foster the creation of these third party cutouts at prestigious institutions like
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Stanford University, for example, to work with the social media companies to essentially identify
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specific stories, entire narratives, accounts, individual pieces of content, show them that those
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ought to constitute violations of terms of service, hoover up and mask these examples of putatively
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offending content that constitutes, quote unquote, mis, dis, and malinformation, and then feed it
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to the social media companies and tell them, kill these accounts, undermine these narratives,
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silence en masse, effectively millions of Americans, prevent people not only from speaking,
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but from listening. And the evidence in this case is overwhelming and unbelievable. And again,
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it's only based on preliminary limited discovery. That discovery has included depositions from many of
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the government agents who led this effort to go about censoring wrongthink. And this goes to a
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broader worldview that we've talked about before, which the government has effectively codified
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through this public-private censorship regime of saying, wrongthink, ideas, opinions, and not just opinions,
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but inconvenient facts that we don't like or that conflict with our favorite narratives,
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threaten national security, or we'll get people killed because they won't be vaccinated. And consequently,
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that gives us a right to push the social media companies to engage in, quote unquote,
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content moderation. This started all with the idea that there was foreign influence operations using
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social media to undermine democracy, quickly turned to domestic wrong thinkers, and it exploded in a few
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different realms. First, with the Hunter Biden laptop story, the infamous Hunter Biden laptop story,
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which in and of itself constituted maybe the gravest American national security information
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operation in American history on the eve of an election, election interference effectively in grooming the
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social media companies to censor that story, which is part of this case. Then it moved to election integrity and
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outcomes. You're not allowed to question mass mail-in balloting. You're not allowed to question irregularities.
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Historically, outcomes that you've never seen before, etc. And then expanding to virtually every aspect of COVID-19,
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from its origins to mitigation techniques, draconian lockdowns, and then to a whole slew of other issues.
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And you had federal authorities, again, working hand in hand with the White House, who was publicly
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and privately using its bullhorns to yell at, essentially, the social media companies,
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you got to do something about this misdice and malinformation that's killing people,
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on top of lawmakers who threaten, obviously, with legislation and regulatory remedies,
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pursuing the big tech companies, and then these third-party cutouts as well. So it was a concerted effort.
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It led to probably hundreds of millions, if not more, of pieces of content being censored.
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This case exposed it all. So for those who think that the Twitter files were revealing,
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I urge you to check out the case docket in Missouri v. Biden, and specifically,
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this ruling that this judge, Judge Doty, put forth.
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Now, to that ruling, with that long-winded wind-up for it, what the judge said was, again,
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the plaintiffs are likely to prevail on the merits that this was a massive First Amendment violation
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that took place. And what he did was he issued a preliminary injunction freezing government speech
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policing directly and by proxy, said that all manner of defendants, again, myriad government agencies,
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the White House, and basically prevented them from continuing to communicate with social media
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companies about wrong-think. Overwhelmingly, of course, they targeted conservatives in the wrong-think
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censorship operation, as well as even coordinating, including with their third-party private,
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quote-unquote, cutouts, private cutouts who often themselves had incestuous relations with the
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government agencies and, again, consulted with them in the creation of these outside,
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quote-unquote, anti-disinformation organizations. So the judge said, we are freezing federal government-led
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speech policing. And this led to, of course, two responses from the government. One was to appeal
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the injunction, and that appeal is pending right now. The other was to seek a stay, freezing the freeze
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of the speech police. And that freezing of the stay prompted this piece that I wrote,
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which argues, essentially, that what the government is saying in seeking to freeze this injunction is
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they want to keep violating your First Amendment. They believe that what they did was not the greatest,
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not impose the greatest censorship regime in world history, arguably, but that they ought to be able
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to continue doing it. And that actually, and this is a legal term of art, but I think it should be
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understood plainly that it causes the government irreparable harm for the First Amendment to be
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defended, because it could lead to threats to, in the government's word, democracy, and therefore
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irreparable harm to the government. So the government is essentially unrepentant in its censorship.
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It sought to freeze the freezing of the censorship regime. And thankfully, Judge Doty smacked the
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government down and rejected, denied their motion for a stay. And so that injunction is in place right
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now. We know this in part because FBI Director Christopher Wray, testifying before the House Judiciary
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Committee himself, noted that his agency had issued guidance for complying with that injunction. Now,
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I'd really like to see what that guidance looks like. I think every agency implicated in this lawsuit
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ought to show us what the guidance looks like and how they're complying with it. But nevertheless,
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this is a massive victory for free speech in America and really free speech in the world when
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you're talking about these platforms, which, of course, have customers that are everywhere on the
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planet. Well, you're so right. I mean, even here at Rebel News, the very things you said the government
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was tackling, they tackled in us. We lost our YouTube monetization. The last straw was a Donald Trump
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comment that I think, like, it was when he was president. He made a statement as president.
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We reported it as the news. It was questioning the validity of the 2020 elections and the fairness.
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We weren't even taking sides. We were just showing what the president said. That was the excuse to turn
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off about a million dollars a year from Rebel News. We were also lost our ability to do what's called
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super chats, which was 400 grand a year, because we said things we weren't supposed to about the
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pandemic lockdowns. So, you know, our YouTube rep is based in America, but we're here in Canada and
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we suffered the same thing. And I have no plans, but Ben, if that censorship was illegal and that
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censorship basically contracted out privatized government censorship, so the government itself
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didn't issue a court order. The government just leaned on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
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to do the censoring for them. But here the judge is saying that's the same thing. I wonder if companies,
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maybe not in Canada, but in the United States, we're surely not alone. There's countless companies
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who have been truly damaged by this government action. We always assumed there was some government
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pressure there, but it sounds like this ruling proved it. I wonder if American versions of our
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company would be able to sue YouTube and or the government for the loss of revenues caused by
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illegal government imposed censorship. What do you think of that? I think this certainly opens up a
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strong legal argument for it. To your point, what this case... Like a class action, for example. I mean,
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there's a class of people, mainly but not always conservatives, who simply for expressing their
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legal opinion lost millions of dollars because of this government infringement. Sorry, I interrupted
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you. Go ahead. No, there actually is an aspect of Missouri v. Biden where there was an attempt to
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turn it into a class action suit. The judge did not rule in favor on that effort, but that doesn't mean
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that it can't necessarily be brought by other parties, maybe in another court. And to your point, what this
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case points to is that in U.S. law, based on case precedent, the government can't get a private actor to do
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what the government itself legally cannot do. And so, you know, there are many on the government side who are
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arguing, well, look, there's no coercion here. We're just pointing out, we're just talking to social media
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companies about how, you know, have you looked at your terms of service around hacked and leaked
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materials? And, you know, then in the run up to an election say, you know, be on the lookout for
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hacked and leaked materials. By the way, did you update your terms of service about it? And then,
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and then, oh, you know, watch out, there might be something around Hunter Biden. According to Yoel
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Roth, this is one of Twitter's former chief censorers. He wrote an affidavit, a sworn affidavit,
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saying that the government was tipping Twitter off to the coming of something like the Hunter Biden
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laptop story. And then that story comes out. And then under their hack and leak policies,
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they censor the story. This is the government saying, well, we're just forwarding along
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en masse Twitter and Facebook accounts and specific posts to the social media companies and saying,
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take a look at this. And then we'll follow up and we'll say, did you take any action on that?
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And the government saying, well, that's not coercion. Okay. Leave aside the fact that you're talking
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about the most powerful agencies in America, that they have regulatory authority and legislative
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authority and all manner of other authority, implied or explicit. And that this is essentially
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the mafia saying nice business there. It'd be a shame if something happened to it.
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What Philip Hamburger, who you mentioned the NCLA, Philip Hamburger leads that organization,
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I believe. What he's argued in a Wall Street Journal editorial that I think everyone ought to read
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is that even if there isn't a smoking gun of coercion, and by the way, there are many smoking guns,
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again, in this case. Abridging free speech, abridging the First Amendment itself, of course,
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is a First Amendment violation. And so you have that in spades here. Abridging means to shrink,
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to in any way infringe upon the free speech right. And obviously, that has happened en masse,
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as this case has illustrated. So I think to your point, look, there are millions of people who have
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been harmed as a consequence of the censorship regime. Their business models, as yours has been,
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have been upended. People have lost their most basic right to speak freely and to listen. And again,
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to your point, thank God there is a First Amendment. You look at the history of it, and many of the
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founding fathers here didn't even want a Bill of Rights. They didn't believe it was necessary because
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the Constitution said, here's what the government can do, and then went silent about all the things it
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cannot do, precisely because it was not supposed to be able to do them. But some founders felt,
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as a matter of compromise, they needed to codify these natural rights that were assumed, and that
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the government should have never had any business infringing upon. And yet still, you've had this
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raft of violations of it. So thankfully, it's codified in the First Amendment. Thankfully, we still
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have some judges who have some intestinal fortitude and fidelity of the Constitution. But the federal
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government is fighting this. It's going to an appeals court. And this may end up ultimately the
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Supreme Court, as I noted. And this term, Justice Gorsuch noted sort of offhanded in one of his
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opinions, the idea that the Supreme Court might have to deal with essentially issues around censorship
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of speech, for example, on COVID-19. So that may have been teeing up what is to come in a future
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Supreme Court term. And, you know, I hope the Supreme Court, well, I hope the Supreme Court doesn't have
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to rule on this, that it never even gets that far, and that this is dealt with at lower courts. But if
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it does, I hope and pray that they're the defining word on this at upholding and defending the First
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Amendment for Americans and people around the world. Yeah. Well, we can only dream of that outcome
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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
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a journalistic license in Canada called the QCJO, Qualified Canadian Journalism Organization. It's
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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
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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
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that does not have a First Amendment, Ben, literally applying for a journalism license. You know, I
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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
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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
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you registered it with the police. And the reason was, if they discovered Samizdat, if they discovered
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illegal political comments, they could trace which typewriter was used. That is a true story. I invite
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you to read the history of licensed typewriters in Romania. And that's where we are in Canada. You need a
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government license to do journalism. It's just completely outrageous. I am jealous, because for all of the
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flaws that you describe in your system, at least you have some parts of it that are working. I could spend the
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whole show talking about that case, Ben, but I do want to talk about a few other things, just to fill up on
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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,
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intelligent man, but he's got old school values. He's also a farmer. He's a carpenter. He's a
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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,
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pointing out that the instigator of the January 6th great meandering through Congress caught on
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video exhorting people to go inside to storm the place. Ray Epps was his name. He was on an FBI Most
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Wanted poster, still is, and he's never been arrested. Here, take a look at my favorite guy,
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Congressman Massey, raising the issue. Take a look at this.
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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.
00:26:50.460
Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed! Zed!
00:26:57.000
Okay, folks, we're at the war. As soon as the plan has done speaking, we go to the Capitol.
00:27:14.060
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
00:27:51.400
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
00:28:06.440
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
00:28:31.440
So, I'm not going to violate this norm of, uh, of, of, uh, the rule of law. I'm not going to
00:28:38.440
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.
00:48:50.660
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.